The cross Savitri
has to carry has been made known to her by Narad. She has chosen Satyavan as
her lover and husband and she is firm about the choice irrespective of whatever
it might entail. Narad is going round and round, and not coming to the point
straightaway. He knows everything, and already the royal audience has
understood that there is something ominous about what Savitri has decided to
do. But now the queen-mother of
The truth thou hast claimed; I give
to thee the truth.
A marvel of the meeting earth and
heavens
Is he whom Savitri has chosen mid
men,
His figure is the front of Nature's
march,
His single being excels the works
of Time.
A sapphire cutting from the sleep
of heaven,
Delightful is the soul of
Satyavan,
A ray out of the rapturous
Infinite,
A silence waking to a hymn of joy.
But
O loss, if death into its elements
Of which his gracious envelope was
built
Shatter this vase before it
breathes its sweets,
As if earth could not keep too long
from heaven
A treasure thus unique loaned by
the gods,
A being so rare, of so divine a
make!
In one brief year when this bright
hour flies back
And perches careless on a branch of
Time,
This sovereign glory ends heaven
lent to earth,
This splendour vanishes from the
mortal's sky:
Heaven's greatness came, but was too great to stay.
Twelve swift-winged months are
given to him and her;
This day returning Satyavan must
die.
The indelible sentence is served.
Only twelve swift-winged months are given to the young couple and exactly one
year after the return of that moment, the moment the prophecy of doom was made,
Satyavan is bound to die, he has to die. That is the recognizable cross Savitri
has to carry. But Narad goes further and tells what exactly is stored for her
in future. In fact, in that way, he has already initiated Savitri into the Yoga
of the Conquest of Death. In that sense, it also becomes a happy cross for her.
Narad tells
Queen, strive no more to change the
secret will;
Time's accidents are steps in its
vast scheme.
Bring not thy brief and helpless
human tears
Across the fathomless moments of a
heart
That knows its single will and
God's as one:
It can embrace its hostile destiny;
It sits apart with grief and facing
death,
Affronting adverse fate armed and
alone.
In this enormous world standing
apart
In the mightiness of her silent
spirit's will,
In the passion of her soul of
sacrifice
Her lonely strength facing the
universe,
Affronting fate, asks not man's
help nor god's:
Sometimes one life is charged with
earth's destiny,
It cries not for succour from the
time-bound powers.
Alone she is equal to her mighty
task.
Intervene not in a strife too great
for thee,
A struggle too deep for mortal
thought to sound,
Its question to this Nature's rigid
bounds
When the soul fronts nude of garbs
the infinite,
Its too vast theme of a lonely
mortal will
Pacing the silence of eternity.
As a star, uncompanioned, moves in
heaven
Unastonished by the immensities of
space,
Travelling infinity by its own
light,
The great are strongest when they
stand alone.
A God-given might of being is their
force,
A ray from self's solitude of light
the guide;
The soul that can live alone with itself
meets God;
Its lonely universe is their
rendezvous.
A day may come when she must stand
unhelped
On a dangerous brink of the world's
doom and hers,
Carrying the world's future on her
lonely breast,
Carrying the human hope in a heart
left sole
To conquer or fail on a last
desperate verge.
Alone with death and close to
extinction's edge,
Her single greatness in that last
dire scene,
She must cross alone a perilous
bridge in Time
And reach an apex of world-destiny
Where all is won or all is lost for man.
In that tremendous silence lone and
lost
Of a deciding hour in the world's
fate,
In her soul's climbing beyond
mortal time
When she stands sole with Death or
sole with God
Apart upon a silent desperate
brink,
Alone with her self and death and
destiny
As on some verge between Time and
Timelessness
When being must end or life rebuild
its base,
Alone she must conquer or alone
must fall.
No human aid can reach her in that
hour,
No armoured God stand shining at
her side.
Cry not to heaven, for she alone
can save.
For this the silent Force came
missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took
human shape:
She only can save herself and save
the world.
O queen, stand back from that
stupendous scene,
Come not between her and her hour of Fate.
Her hour must come and none can
intervene:
Think not to turn her from her
heaven-sent task,
Strive not to save her from her own
high will.
Thou hast no place in that
tremendous strife;
Thy love and longing are not
arbiters there,
Leave the world's fate and her to God's sole guard.
Even if he seems to leave her to
her lone strength,
Even though all falters and falls
and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are
death and night,
God-given her strength can battle
against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone
seems close
And no human strength can hinder or
can help.
Think not to intercede with the
hidden Will,
Intrude not twixt her spirit and
its force
But leave her to her mighty self
and Fate.
But this is a different kind of
cross Savitri has to carry. It is not the cross which has been offered to her
by human agents and human organizations; it is not a product of human rules and
laws. It is a cross of the hoary occult kind, prepared by the Darkness himself.
He was presented the crown of God’s love and beauty and joy; instead what he
gave back was the inflexible gray cross of the Law of Death, the Cross prepared
for her by the great Soul of Inconscience. One may legitimately ask if she will
be able to bear it and survive. The Siege of Nothingness might be able to
defeat her, swallow her up. But there is the tapasya of her Yogi father
Aswapati on which her work stands, and there is the Will of the Supreme that
itself has incarnated in her form, and there is the Mighty Mother overseeing
the activities and actions of her Child. When Narad says that we should leave
her to her might self and Fate, it also means the end result is already
decided. But the end result fructifies only when first she bears this Cross.