To live
with grief, to confront death on her road,—
The mortal’s
lot became the Immortal’s share.
(Savitri, p. 7)
Savitri
coming as an incarnation means she accepting the mortal’s lot, the indignity,
the ignominy that is there in the human life. The Immortal has consented to
share, the lot, the plight of the suffering soul, all the uncertainties that
fill this creature’s daily life. In a way it is as if thus alone could she rise
to a yet higher state of immortality. Indeed, if the gods wish to rise to
higher worlds they must come down and take a human birth. Progress is here, and
this beautiful birth though downhearted and full of misfortune and affliction
is the Creator’s wonderful boon given to heighten the soul in the glory, in the
possibilities of the widening manifestation. This is what the Vishnu Purana
says: gods come here to make progress, the progress is here and nowhere else.
This is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have said a number of times. But most
of the gods are happy with their lot. Perhaps they can afford to be so; perhaps
they do not wish to undergo the travail that is associated with this life of
the mortal. But we are tied to this condition, to this state of things; in fact
by that very token we will not be allowed to remain where we are.
“The gods,” says the Mother, “do not have within them the divine spark which is
the core of the psychic, because only on earth—I am not even speaking of the
material universe—only on earth did this descent of divine Love took place,
which was the origin of the divine Presence in the core of Matter. And
naturally, since they have no psychic being, they do not know the psychic
being. Some of these beings have even wanted to take a physical body so as to
have experience of the psychic being—but not many of them. As a rule, they did
it not only partially, through an ‘emanation’, not a total descent. For
example, Vivekananda is said to have been an incarnation—a Vibhuti—of Shiva;
but Shiva himself has clearly expressed his will to come down on earth only
with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for the supramental life,
he will come. And almost all these beings will manifest—they are waiting for
that moment, they do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity…
None of these gods has a psychic being. It is only by coming down and uniting
with the psychic being of a man that they can have one, but they have none
themselves.” (12 January 1965)
Is Shiva going to miss something by opting to come down on earth only with the advent
of the supramental, coming down only after the arrival of that world? By not participating
in the present process is he going to miss the joy, the experience, the realization
of the evolutionary being in his march towards the supramental life, the life
of the earth turning into the divine life? Possibly so,—for the simple reason
that the Mother had at all made such a suggestion to him.
And then, in contrast to this, the Mother says something interesting about her
experience with Durga: “…I was in touch with her during my meditations
upstairs, and this new power in the body was in me then as it is in me now,
and… (how to put it?) I made her participate in the concept of surrender. What
an experience she had! An extraordinary experience of the joy of being
connected with That. And she declared, ‘From now on I am bhakta of the Lord.’
It was beautiful. Truly… truly, it was beautiful. I knew how it was with her
because I remember the days when Sri Aurobindo was here and I used to go
downstairs to give meditations to the people assembled in the hall. There’s a
ledge above the pillars there, where all the gods used to sit—Shiva, Krishna,
Lakshmi, the Trimurti, all of them—the little ones, the big ones, they all used
to come regularly, every day, to attend these meditations. It was a lovely
sight. But they didn’t have this kind of adoration for the Supreme. They had no
use for that concept—each one, in his own mode of being, was fully aware of his
own eternal divinity; and each one knew as well that he could represent all the
others (such was the basis of popular worship, and they knew it). They felt
they were a kind of community, but they had none of those qualities that the
psychic life gives: no deep love, no deep sympathy, no sense of union. They had
the sense of only their OWN divinity. They had certain very particular
movements, but not this adoration for the Supreme nor the feeling of being
instruments: they felt they were representing the Supreme, and so each one was
perfectly satisfied with his particular representation. Except for
And for Savitri, who accepted to pass through the portals of the birth that is
a death. She came here to do the Lord’s work. When the Mother was asked (on 19
February 1969) if the gods can help the work of transformation, she replied:
“It is too soon to put such a question.” What chance then for techno-capitalism
and our ideas of post-human destinies? What chance for the human potential?
Perhaps nigh none.
Savitri came to live with grief; she came to confront death; she bore the
mortal’s lot. Gods and Goddesses don’t do that; they wish also not to do that;
they “do not want any of the present struggle and the obscurity”. It is one
Savitri who can do it and she does it—because such is the command of the Lord
to her. She has with her the unfailing Mantra of Surrender to the Lord and it
is that alone which can accomplish the great miracle of transformation. She has
found it, that Mantra with its efficacy in the deathful circumstance prevailing
here. Gods and Goddesses perhaps do not even have the knowledge of it. In the
process, to redeem in its greatness the creation, Savitri is willing to undergo
all the misery and suffering. She has faith and she has utter confidence that
things here will change. That is the faith born in the power of the Mantra, the
Mantra of complete surrender to the Lord, to do things in his will alone.
The Mother’s prayer is such a happy splendid assurance: “What are these
powerful gods whose hour of manifestation upon earth has come, if not the
varied and perfected modes of Thy infinite activity, O Thou Master of all
things, Being and Non-Being and What is beyond, Marvellous Unknowable One, our
sovereign Lord?... What are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities,
these countless sunbeams illumining, conceiving and fashioning all forms, if
not one of the modes of being of Thy infinite Will, one of the means of Thy
manifestation, O Thou Master of our destinies, sole unthinkable Reality,
sovereign Lord of all that is and all that is not yet… And all these mental
powers, all these vital energies, and all these material elements, what are
they if not Thyself in Thy outermost form, Thy ultimate modes of expression, of
realisation, O Thou whom we adore devotedly and who escapest us on every side
even while penetrating, animating and guiding us, Thou whom we cannot
understand or define or name, Thou whom we cannot seize or embrace or conceive,
and who art yet realised in our smallest acts… And all this enormous universe
is only an atom of Thy eternal Will. In the immensity of Thy effective Presence
all things blossom!” (August 2, 1914)
But what else are these manifold brilliant intellectual activities if not one
of the modes of being of the Infinite’s Will? In it is the place for our
thought, for our philosophy, for our sciences and arts, for all the thousand
human occupations that make a wider and brighter and nobler place for the
Lord’s habitation. If human endeavour has a justification in shaping the
destinies, it is here. The mortal’s lot then becomes the Immortal’s glad
acceptable share. That is the joy of participation which is, indeed, also such
a marvellous gift given to us. Should we not be thankful for it? Which means,
should we not grow in it? Man’s manhood lies in it, in that superb greatness.