Savitri
had brought with her defeatless power, wide consciousness, bliss, calm delight,
the delight that the Upanishads would say weds one soul to all, the delight
that is the key to the flaming doors of ecstasy. But the unfortunate fact is
littleness of the life that is ours, ignorant and death-bound. It denies all
that she had brought with her; she uses not the key for the doors of ecstasy.
Consequently life must suffer. The key to the flaming doors of ecstasy is to a
life that is vaster and brighter than the life that is in heavens. It is also a
life that does not remain static, is not inert and stationary in its frozen
typal joy of fixed worlds, confined to its own form of happiness, forms that
are only expressive and not determinative of the worlds to which they belong.
About his narrative poem The Life Heavens, Sri Aurobindo writes in a letter in July 1934 to Dilip Kumar Roy
as follows:
Where
do you find in The Life Heavens that
I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are glorious and suited to
the Divine Life? There is not a word to that effect there! The Life Heavens are
the heavens of the vital gods and there is there a perfect harmony but a
harmony of the sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only. If there is
to be a Harmony, it must be of all the powers raised to their highest and
harmonised together. All the non-evolutionary worlds are worlds limited to
their own harmony like the Life Heavens. The Earth, on the other hand, is an
evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious even as a material world
(except in certain appearances), but rather most sorrowful, disharmonious,
imperfect. Yet in that imperfection is the urge towards a higher and more
many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite which yet yearns to the
supreme Infinite, (it is not satisfied by sense-joys precisely because in the
conditions of the earth it is able to see their limitations). God is pent in
the mire (mire is not glorious, so there is no claim to glory or beauty here),
but that very fact imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a
consciousness which is ever rising towards the heights. And so on. That is ‘a
deeper power’, though not a greater actual glory or perfection. All that may be
true or not to the mind, but it is the traditional attitude of Indian spiritual
experience. Ask any yogin, he will tell you that the Life Heavens are childish
things; even the gods, says the Purana, must come down to earth and be embodied
there if they want mukti, giving up the pride of their limited perfection; they
must enter into the last finite if they want to reach the last infinite. A poem
is not a philosophical treatise or a profession of religious faith—it is the
expression of a vision or an experience of some kind, mundane or spiritual.
Here it is the vision of the Life Heavens, its perfection, its limitation and
the counter-claim of the Earth or rather the Spirit or Power behind the
earth-consciousness. It has to be taken at that, as an expression of a certain
aspect of things, an expression of a certain kind of experience, not of a
mental dogma. There is a deep truth behind it, though it may not be the whole
truth of the matter. In the poem, also, there is no question of a divine life
here, though that is hinted at as the inexpressed possible result of the
ascent—because the Earth is not put aside (‘Earth's heart was felt beating below
me still’); nevertheless the poem expresses only the ascent towards the
Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the Earth-Spirit claims that power
and does not speak of any descent of a divine life. (Letters on Yoga,
pp. 387-88, 19 July 1934)
In the Life Heavens is the music that wanders behind the mortal ear; the notes
of one rapture heap one over another opulent rapture; forms and senses are
a-thrill there; beauty has her enchantment in the voluptuous and the indulgent
and the affective. (Collected Poems,
pp. 574-75)
But
suddenly there soared a dateless cry,
Deep as Night, imperishable as Time;
It
seemed Death’s dire appeal to Eternity,
Earth’s outcry to the limitless Sublime.
And the result is, Eternity gets broken into fleeting lives and Godhead pents
in the mire and the stone. But beyond the flaming doors of ecstasy are forms
that are at once expressive and determinative and progressive in their flaming
moods and wide-sweeping manners of truth-and-beauty-and-delight-and-life-and-spirit.
That is the aspect of Savitri’s waking up on the fated day.
If there are flaming doors of ecstasy to which worlds do these flaming doors of
ecstasy open? Surely, they are the worlds that are far beyond the frail or
gossamer Life Heavens, beyond the celestial worlds, beyond swargaloka, the Heaven of Indra where Apsaras dance on gleaming
crystal floors, with tiny jingling silver bells tied to their anklets, and
their rich bosoms heaving in sensuous delight. Savitri’s flaming doors open to
the worlds of the transcendent spirit. The Upanishad speaks of passing through
the solar gate, sūryasya dwārah, into the world of gleaming immortality.
Such must be the flaming gates of ecstasy through which Savitri can move in and
out in her full freedom, her native freedom, in the joy that is and that shall ever
be.
Sri Aurobindo's insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact
imposes a necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is
ever rising towards the heights..." But to the modern mind it raises a
question whether the rise of techno-capitalism could be interpreted as a
disguised opportunity that imposes a necessity to break through that prison?
Can it not be the flaming door of ecstasy, it asks.
Can techno-capitalism be an opportunity for shaping the future in any decisive
way? But one wonders. Such a claim by the protagonists of science in moulding
society is not all that new; it has been made in its arrogance at every stage
after the Industrial Revolution. It was not very long ago, just a century ago,
and it happens all along, that the top physicists and savants were saying that
they were at the finis line of the last discovery and what would remain to be
done would be only tying up the loose ends. Materialism in its strident days
was very sure of it. However, it didn’t happen. In fact, can it happen at all? Came
quantum mechanics and shattered all the old dreams. But the unforgiving thing
is, those very fallacious dreams have reappeared in other garbs. The
theory-of-everything today forebodes nothing much different from the earlier
cozy feeling of understanding all that has to be understood, understood in
terms of man the master of nature and builder of humanity. That itself should make
us suspicious of science coming to the aid of the ailing we. This is in
physics, the prince of sciences, and the problem of social issues, and deeply
more of social transformation, of shaping the destinies is far more complex
than it can even be conceptualised. To claim that science or techno-capitalism
in its present clothing has is a mistaken judgement, is misapplication of reason
itself; it has absolutely no idea of the flaming doors.
What happened to Socrates? and to Christ to whom we offered the flower of
suffering? To Priscillian of Avilla in 385? To Giordano Bruno in 1600 who
became a martyr to the cause of free thought? and so on. When in 313
The problem of mire Savitri speaks of is far deeper than these means can
even reach it; they can hardly come anywhere closer to it; they are not even
scratching its surface. The prospects offered by science and techno-capitalism are
far and yet far beyond them. What are we, when confronted with such a
situation? The answer is, we are a strange irrational product of the mire
itself, a compromise between the beast and god. (Savitri, p. 343) What
change can we then really bring about? None at all, none whatsoever.
Instead what is necessary is, a mystic deep attempt must begin. We dream of
bridging the gulf between man’s mind and God’s, we hope to translate heaven
into a human shape; but someone else has to come and confront Time and
Circumstance, and accomplish it. (Savitri, p. 353) Here are “gods
disfigured by pangs of birth”. Not the human soul, the soul that is too weak to
bear the Infinite’s weight, but the divine Shakti alone can do it. Savitri
herself speaks who she is, she who can change things here. She asserts
triumphantly: (Savitri, pp. 648-49)
My
mind is a torch lit from the eternal sun,
My
life a breath drawn by the immortal Guest,
My
mortal body is the Eternal's house.
Already
the torch becomes the undying ray,
Already
the life is the Immortal's force,
The
house grows of the householder part and one…
I
am not bound by thought or sense or shape;
I
live in the glory of the Infinite,
I
am near to the Nameless and Unknowable,
The
Ineffable is now my household mate.
But
standing on Eternity's luminous brink
I
have discovered that the world was He;
I
have met Spirit with spirit, Self with self,
But
I have loved too the body of my God.
Savitri speaks of the immortal Guest, now poised for the decisive action; he is
no more the embodied Guest within making no response. Here is Sri Aurobindo's
insight: "...God is pent in the mire.., but that very fact imposes a
necessity to break through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising
towards the heights..." Could this itself be interpreted as a disguised
opportunity that "imposes a necessity to break through that
prison..."? If it were such an opportunity, Sri Aurobindo would have
certainly explored it fully, instead of engaging himself in the “severe and
painful” work. And the agony the Mother was experiencing when she was busy with
the transformation of the cells of the body. The situation is so daunting that
it looks to be totally beyond man’s best effort to succeed in it. Man can be a
conscious helper in the process, and that is what is expected of him, but the
radical transformation is beyond his capacity and capability. If it were so, it
would make the coming of the Avatar superfluous. The special birth of Savitri
is special. It is that birth alone which can throw open the flaming doors of
ecstasy.
Here is
the full poem, The Life Heaven, Sri
Aurobindo wrote on 15 November 1933:
The
Life Heavens
A life of intensities wide, immune
Floats behind the earth and her life-fret,
A magic of realms mastered by spell and rune,
Grandiose, blissful, coloured, increate.
A music there wanders mortal ear
Hears not, seizing, intimate, remote,
Wide-winged in soul-spaces, fire-clear,
Heaping note on enrapturing new note.
Forms deathless there triumph, hues divine
Thrill with nets of glory the moved air;
Each sense is an ecstasy, love the sign
Of one outblaze of godhead that two share.
The peace of the senses, the senses' stir
On one harp are joined mysteries; pain
Transmuted is ravishment's minister,
A high note and a fiery refrain.
All things are a harmony faultless, pure;
Grief is not nor stain-wound of desire;
The heart-beats are a cadence bright and sure
Of Joy's quick steps, too invincible to tire.
A Will there, a Force, a magician Mind
Moves, and builds at once its delight-norms,
The marvels it seeks for surprised, outlined,
Hued, alive, a cosmos of fair forms,
Sounds, colours, joy-flamings. Life lies here
Dreaming, bound to the heavens of its goal,
In the clasp of a Power that enthrals to sheer
Bliss and beauty body and rapt soul.
My spirit sank drowned in the wonder surge:
Screened, withdrawn was the greatness it had sought;
Lost was the storm-stress and the warrior urge,
Lost the titan winging of the thought.
It lay at ease in a sweetness of
heaven-sense
Delivered from grief, with no need left to aspire,
Free, self-dispersed in voluptuous innocence,
Lulled and borne into roseate cloud-fire.
But suddenly there soared a dateless cry,
Deep as Night, imperishable as Time;
It seemed Death's dire appeal to Eternity,
Earth's outcry to the limitless Sublime.
"O high seeker of immortality,
Is there not, ineffable, a bliss
Too vast for. these finite harmonies,
Too divine for the moment's unsure kiss?
"Arms taking to a voiceless supreme delight,
Life that meets the Eternal with close breast,
An unwalled mind dissolved in the Infinite,
Force one with unimaginable rest?
"I, Earth, have a deeper power than Heaven;
My lonely sorrow surpasses its rose-joys,
A red and bitter seed of the raptures seven; -
My dumbness fills with echoes of a far Voice.
"By me the last finite, yearning, strives
To reach the last infinity's unknown,
The Eternal is broken into fleeting lives
And Godhead pent in the mite and the stone."
Dissolving the kingdoms of happy ease
Rocked and split and faded their dream-chime.
All vanished; ungrasped eternities
Sole survived and Timelessness seized Time.
Earth's heart was felt beating below me stilI,
Veiled, immense, unthinkable above
My consciousness climbed like a topless hilI,
Crossed seas of Light to epiphanies of Love.