Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death

Or hew the ways of Immortality,

To win or lose the godlike game for man,

Was her soul's issue thrown with Destiny's dice.

 

But not to submit and suffer was she born;

To lead, to deliver was her glorious part.

Whether to bear with Ignorance and Death

Or hew the ways of Immortality…

 

Does Savitri possess an alternative, either to bear the yoke of Ignorance and Death or to hew the ways of Immortality? In fact that question doesn’t arise in her case. By the yoke of Ignorance and Death she has to hew the ways of Immortality. The passage of Immortality has to cut through Ignorance and Death,—or else there will really be no meaning in her taking the mortal birth. Where there is Ignorance there is Death and as long as Death is present Ignorance cannot go away. True, in the meanwhile, Death has a role to play as if to promote evolutionary march through the fields of universal Ignorance; mortality advances because of Death. Therefore the Immortal accepts the condition of Death and Ignorance, that thus alone Death can be met and conquered. It is not a shadow battle, not an abstract confrontation; the full might of Death is what offers itself for change, for transformation. Both life and death are the fuel for the unceasing fire of the incarnate Immortal and it is they together who give seeing sight for the blind to love. This must now come to a terminus when the possibilities of seeing sight in the waking of knowledge can open out. In fact there is a degree of inevitability in it and the question of “or” cannot rise. “Supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of the earth-consciousness; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit.” That is the path of Immortality beyond the summits of mind which has to be hewed. But in order that that happens, the Yogi must meet the Night in her own Den of Darkness, he must become the Pilgrim of the Night:

 

I made an assignation with the Night;

In the abyss was fixed our rendezvous:

In my breast carrying God’s deathless light,

I came her dark and dangerous heart to woo.

I left the glory of the illumined Mind

And the calm rapture of the divinised soul

And travelled through a vastness dim and blind,

To the grey shore where her ignorant waters roll.

I walk by the chill wave through the dull slime

And still that weary journeying knows no end;

Lost is the lustrous godhead beyond Time,

There comes no voice of the celestial Friend,

And yet I know my footprints’ track shall be

A pathway towards Immortality.     

Apropos of the line “hew the ways of Immortality”, there is a letter by Sri Aurobindo written to Amal Kiran in November 1936. It is as follows:

 

Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in the far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of Immortality”.

 

On the basis of the full letter the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo has reservations in accepting Savitri as a possible source for obtaining material for a biography; he even states that Savitri is a “fictional creation”. If this were true, then hewing the ways of immortality would amount to an imaginative story and one should dismiss any notion of deriving conclusions on its basis. That will reduce Sri Aurobindo’s “Record of Yoga”, rather Record of Realisations that is Savitri to a mere story with no relevance to spiritual achievements and attainments, to yogic siddhis.

In her talk dated 15 May 1963 while explaining Thoughts and Aphorisms 88-92, the Mother said the following.

 

88: This world was built by Death that he might live. Wilt thou abolish death? Then life too will perish. Thou canst not abolish death, but thou mayst transform it into a greater living.

89: This world was built by Cruelty that she might love. Wilt thou abolish cruelty? Then love too will perish. Thou canst not abolish cruelty, but thou mayst transfigure it into its opposite, into a fierce Love and Delightfulness.

90: This world was built by Ignorance and Error that they might know. Wilt thou abolish ignorance and error?

Then knowledge too will perish. Thou canst not abolish ignorance and error, but thou mayst transmute them into the utter and effulgent exceeding of reason.

91: If life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality; if love were alone and not cruelty, joy would be only a tepid and ephemeral rapture; if reason were alone and not ignorance, our highest attainment would not exceed a limited rationality and worldly wisdom.

92: Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality; Cruelty transfigured becomes Love that is intolerable ecstasy; Ignorance transmuted becomes Light that leaps beyond wisdom and knowledge.

 

It's the same idea, that opposition and opposites stimulate progress. Because to say that without Cruelty, Love would be tepid ... The principle of Love, as it is beyond the Manifest and the Nonmanifest, has nothing to do with either tepidness or cruelty. But Sri Aurobindo's idea, it seems, is that opposites are the most effective and rapid way to knead Matter so that it may intensify its manifestation.

 

As an experience, it's absolutely certain: when you come in touch with eternal Love, supreme Love, the first, immediate ... (what should I say?) perception or sensation (it's not an understanding, it is much more concrete) is that even the most enlightened, kneaded, prepared material consciousness is INCAPABLE of manifesting That! The first impression is that sort of incapacity. Then comes the experience of something manifesting a type of ... not exactly "cruelty," because it's not cruelty as we conceive it; but in the totality of circumstances, there is a vibration which is felt as a certain intensity of refusal of love as it is manifested here—that's exactly the thing: something in the material world refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at present (I don't refer to the ordinary world but to the consciousness at its present highest). It's an experience, I am speaking of something that has taken place. Then the part of the consciousness that has been touched by that opposition calls out directly to Love's origin WITH AN INTENSITY IT COULD NOT HAVE HAD WITHOUT THE EXPERIENCE OF THE REFUSAL. Limits are broken, a flood descends which could NOT manifest before, and something is expressed which was not expressed before.

That happened not very long ago.

 

Seeing that, there is obviously a similar experience in connection with what is called life and death. It's a sort of "overhanging" (it comes to me in English, that's why I have difficulty) of that constant presence of Death or possibility of death. As he says in Savitri, we have a constant companion all the way from the cradle to the grave, we are constantly shadowed by the threat or presence of Death. Well, this gives the cells an intensity in their call for a Power of Eternity which would not be there without that constant threat. Then we understand—we begin to understand very concretely—that all those things are only goads to make the Manifestation progress and grow more intense, more perfect. If the goads are crude, it is because the Manifestation is very crude. As it grows more and more perfect and apt to manifest something ETERNALLY PROGRESSIVE, those very crude methods will give way to more refined ones, and the world will progress without the need for such brutal oppositions. It is only because the world is in infancy and the human consciousness in its very early infancy.

 

It's a very concrete experience.

 

So, when the earth no longer needs to die in order to progress, there will be no more death. When the earth no longer needs to suffer in order to progress, there will be no more suffering. And when the earth no longer needs to hate in order to love, there will be no more hatred.

 

(silence)

 

It is the quickest and most effective method of pulling the creation out of its inertia and leading it on to its blossoming.

 

(long silence)

 

There is a particular aspect of the creation (a very modern aspect, maybe): a need to get out of disorder and confusion—of disharmony and confusion. A confusion, a disorder which assumes all forms, turns into struggles, pointless efforts and wasted energy. It depends on which level you stand on, but materially, in action, it means unnecessary complications, wasted energy and materials, waste of time, incomprehension, misunderstanding, confusion, disorder—what in ancient days they called deformation, crookedness in the Vedas (I don't know the French word for it, it's something crooked which, instead of shooting straight to the goal, weaves its way in sharp and unnecessary zigzags). It's one of the things farthest from the harmony of a purely divine action—which is something so simple.... It looks like child's play ... and direct—direct, without those absurd and completely useless twists and turns. Well, it is clearly the same phenomenon: that disorder is a way to stimulate the need for pure and divine simplicity.

 

The body feels strongly, very strongly that everything could be so simple, so simple!

 

And for the being—that sort of individual aggregate—to be transformed, it needs in effect to grow simpler and simpler. All those complexities of Nature which man is now beginning to understand and study, which for the smallest thing are so complex (the smallest of our physical workings is the result of such a complex system that it's almost unthinkable ... certainly it would be impossible for the human mind to think up and contrive all those things), are now being discovered by science. And it's quite plain to see that for the functioning to become divine, that is, to escape Disorder and Confusion, it must grow simpler and simpler.

 

(long silence)

 

In other words, Nature, or rather Nature in its effort towards expression, was compelled to have recourse to an unbelievable, almost endless complexity in order to reproduce the original Simplicity.

 

It brings us back to the same thing: it is that excess of complexity which makes possible a simplicity that isn't empty—a rich simplicity. An all-embracing simplicity, whereas without those complexities, simplicity is empty.

 

This has been my experience these last few days.

 

They are making discoveries like that. In anatomy, for instance, they are making discoveries for surgical treatments that are unbelievably intricate! It's the same for their division of Matter's constituents—a frightful intricacy! And all that is with the view and endeavor to express Oneness, the ONE Simplicity—the divine state.

 

(silence)

 

Maybe it will go fast.... But the question boils down to a SUFFICIENT aspiration, sufficiently intense and effective to attract That which can transform all this: complication into Simplicity, cruelty into Love ... and so forth.

 

It's no use complaining and saying it's a pity things are that way. They are the way they are. Why? ... When things are no longer that way, we'll probably know why. Or to put it differently: if we knew why, they would no longer be that way.

 

So speculations such as, "It would have been better if it had not existed," and so on, are all impractical—irrelevant, absolutely useless.

 

We should hasten to do what we have to do to put an end to it, that's all, that's the only practical thing.

 

For the body, it's very interesting. But it's a mountain, you see! A mountain of apparently tiny experiences, but in such large numbers that they become sizable.

 

[Later the Mother remarked, "Scientists will deny it, they will say I am talking nonsense; but that's because I don't use their language, it's just a question of vocabulary."]