Awhile, withdrawn in secret fields of thought,

Her mind moved in a many-imaged past

That lived again and saw its end approach:

Dying, it lived imperishably in her;

Transient and vanishing from transient eyes,

Invisible, a fateful ghost of self,

It bore the future on its phantom breast.

 

Along the fleeting event's far-backward trail

Regressed the stream of the insistent hours,

And on the bank of the mysterious flood

Peopled with well-loved forms now seen no more

And the subtle images of things that were,

Her witness spirit stood reviewing Time.

 

All that she once had hoped and dreamed and been,

Flew past her eagle-winged through memory's skies.

 

As in a many-hued flaming inner dawn,

Her life's broad highways and its sweet bypaths

Lay mapped to her sun-clear recording view,

From the bright country of her childhood's days

And the blue mountains of her soaring youth

And the paradise groves and peacock wings of Love

To joy clutched under the silent shadow of doom

In a last turn where heaven raced with hell.

 

Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate.

 

(Savitri, p. 11)

With this passage of 24 lines opens the second canto of The Book of Beginnings of Savitri, the canto entitled The Issue. The opening canto, The Symbol Dawn, ends with the line “This was the day when Satyavan must die.” This is the last line of the canto having in all 341 lines,—if we go by the Centenary Edition; in the Revised Edition of 1993 there are 342 lines. This makes the line “Twelve passionate months led in a day of fate” 365th line of the epic. In the occult sense the occurrence of this line at this place seems to carry a deeper significance than is obvious when we just read on the description. Not that Sri Aurobindo was counting the number of lines and put this line here to convey the sense of a year. That would have been pretty clever but too made-up, artificial. The fact is, in the hands of a Yogi, things fall in places in their own way, because of the identification he has with them; he is in tune with the secret harmony of numbers, and there are these natural coherences. Even in his life events happen in that manner. It is not chance but a deeper relationship that comes into play.

 

Twelve passionate months—that was the prophecy made by Narad in The Book of Fate. Savitri has met Satyavan in the lonely Shalwa woods and at once they have decided to be together. The power of Love awoke in them and in the magic of that hour all got settled. It even brought to them recognition of their ancient identity. If to Satyavan it revealed the human sense of Immortality, to Savitri it seemed as if they ever lived together in the bright chamber of their souls. She remembers this aeonic association of theirs, and in it begins the new aeon.

 

With that happiness of discovered Love, and with all the eagerness of a young bride in her heart, Savitri goes back to the palace to inform her parents of the wonderful discovery she made in the distant land. She arrives, but Narad is already there in the company of the royal hosts. Narad casts his immortal look on her and already knows what had happened in the Shalwa woods. In fact, it was in that epochal sequel he had rushed to Aswapati’s palace, rushed carrying the Word of Fate, carrying  it in the name of Vishnu who is the sustainer of this creation. Savitri narrates in brief detail about her meeting with Satyavan and her intention to marry him. It is here Narad has something to say, something bearing far-reaching consequences on a cosmic plane, and having its deep impact on the evolutionary unfoldment itself. He reveals the truth that Savitri must know. Eventually, as if after considerable hesitation and persuasion he declares:

 

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...

 

In him Soul and Nature, equal Presences,

Balance and fuse in a wide harmony…

 

His sweetness and his joy attract all hearts

To live with his own in a glad tenancy, 

His strength is like a tower built to reach heaven,

A godhead quarried from the stones of life.

 

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.

 

“A lightning bright and nude the sentence fell.” One year after the marriage, this day returning, Satyavan is to die,—Narad is extremely precise in his utterance.

 

For the fated day Savitri is now well prepared. Narad had initiated her into Yoga and she has gathered the divine strength to meet the God of Death at the appointed place and moment. Twelve swift-months are over and, like a bird, the year is perched on the fate-laden branch of time. Year is the body, and now Satyavan must abandon it. From the cyclic measures of time he must step into the rhythms of the timeless.

 

The sequence of these passionate twelve months and the psychological state of Savitri is what the yogi-poet is describing in these swiftly pacing opening lines. Savitri has the frightening knowledge of the event and she is ready to face the eventuality. Satyavan must die because in his death is the end of death.

 

The Mother explains:

 

For those who have come upon earth fully conscious of their entire being and conscious of their Origin, there is at first a period when this consciousness gets veiled by the physical life and the body-consciousness. It withdraws deep within and waits for the hour when the outer circumstances will make it necessary for that inner self to manifest and to become fully active in the body. And generally, as life is organised, it is some more or less dramatic event that makes this change not only possible but needed.

 

Even those who have come fully conscious, because they are compelled to take birth in the body of a child, their consciousness withdraws for many years, more or less, and has not the full activity that it had in other worlds. But some circumstance, some event tears off the veil and the inner consciousness takes back its place and its activity. It is that that is fully described in these lines of Savitri.

 

It is only when the outer crust of the ordinary life is violently broken by some unexpected and tragic event that the inner consciousness has the opportunity of taking the place of this outward movement and governing fully the whole being. From the point of view of growth of consciousness, that is the justification of all these dramatic events. An eventless life is not often a progressive life. 

 

Savitri was given the foreknowledge because she could bear its impact and gather strength to meet the challenge thrown by destiny. It is an act of grace that destiny is kept hidden from us, we lacking capacity to prepare ourselves for the future.