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.

Can anything definite be said about the outcome of Savitri’s encounter with Death? Surely, she has come here to conquer him, has come to hew the path of immortality for the evolutionary soul of the earth, for the march of the future. It must step from darkness into light, from ignorance into knowledge, from mortality into deathlessness. And yet there is the play of the unknown Destiny. Is her work going to be influenced by providence, luck, chance, circumstances? Is she going to be governed by the forces emerging from the womb of evil and falsehood and obscurity and all that is downward pulling, pulling into the abyss of Inconscience? Then there is no hope for this creation.

 

There are always occult forces which operate with their various pushes and pulls and can greatly determine the course of events in definite ways in this world of ours. This is particularly so when there are higher interventions coming into play. The invisible beings governing them can be very busy and can be busy in a surprisingly clever manners; that is their nature. If leading the humans down the path is one of their small concerns, the major one is to see that the march of evolution itself is halted, if not reversed. They work for ultimate dissolution. It is here that Father Destiny could come to help and support them. In the process is thrown the die, essentially for self-preservation, as if it chance by which they live and breathe and thrive.

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, the Roman Empire was born and the course of European civilization took a new turn. Caesar’s growing popularity posed a threat to the Senate and to Pompey who held the power in his arms. To nullify him, he was called to resign his command and disband his legions.

 

“It was January 49 BC, Caesar was staying in the northern Italian city of Ravenna and he had a decision to make. Either he acquiesced to the Senate's command or he moved southward to confront Pompey and plunge the Roman Republic into a bloody civil war. An ancient Roman law forbade any general from crossing the Rubicon River and entering Italy proper with a standing army. To do so was treason. This tiny stream would reveal Caesar's intentions and mark the point of no return.” But the die was cast and history worked out its own line of destiny.

 

Suetonius, a Roman historian and biographer, narrates the events as Caesar receives the news that his allies in the Senate have been forced to leave Rome:

 

When the news came [to Ravenna, where Caesar was staying] that the interposition of the tribunes in his favour had been utterly rejected, and that they themselves had fled Rome, he immediately sent forward some cohorts, yet secretly, to prevent any suspicion of his plan; and to keep up appearances, he attended the public games and examined the model of a fencing school which he proposed building, then—as usual—sat down to table with a large company of friends.

 

However, after sunset some mules from a near-by mill were put in his carriage, and he set forward on his journey as privately as possible, and with an exceedingly scanty retinue. The lights went out. He lost his way and wandered about a long time—till at last, by help of a guide, whom he discovered towards daybreak, he proceeded on foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road. Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the frontier of his province, he halted for a while, and revolving in his mind the importance of the step he meditated, he turned to those about him, saying: “Still we can retreat! But once let us pass this little bridge,—and nothing is left but to fight it out with arms!”

 

Even as he hesitated this incident occurred. A man of strikingly noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand, and played upon a pipe. To hear him not merely some shepherds, but soldiers too came flocking from their posts, and amongst them some trumpeters. He snatched a trumpet from one of them and ran to the river with it; then sounding the "Advance!" with a piercing blast he crossed to the other side. At this Caesar cried out, “Let us go where the omens of the Gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE IS NOW CAST!”

 

Accordingly he marched his army over the river; [then] he showed them the tribunes of the Plebs, who on being driven from Rome had come to meet him, and in the presence of that assembly, called on the troops to pledge him their fidelity; tears springing to his eyes [as he spoke] and his garments rent from his bosom.

Savitri has chosen in distant Shalwa Woods Satyavan as her lover and life’s partner. After returning to the palace and after being asked by her father to disclose the choice she had made, Savitri “as one who speaks beneath the eyes of Fate” replies:

 

Father and king, I have carried out thy will,

One whom I sought I found in distant lands;

I have obeyed my heart, I have heard its call.

On the borders of a dreaming wilderness

Mid Shalwa's giant hills and brooding woods,

In his thatched hermitage Dyumathsena dwells,

Blind, exiled, outcast, once a mighty king.

The son of Dyumatsena, Satyavan

I have met on the wild forest's lonely verge.

My father, I have chosen. This is done.

 

She is firm. She asserts: “This is done.” The die is cast. There is now no question of her changing the decision she had taken. She is not going to change it even after Narad’s prophecy of the death of Satyavan one year after the marriage. But her mother is full of grief and persuades Savitri to make another choice, as death had made it vain. Savitri remains firm in her resolve and, her voice calm and her face fixed like steel, answers:

 

Once my heart chose and chooses not again.

The word I have spoken can never be erased,

It is written in the record book of God.

The truth once uttered, from the earth's air effaced,

By mind forgotten, sounds immortally

For ever in the memory of Time.

Once the dice fall thrown by the hand of Fate

In an eternal moment of the gods.

My heart has sealed its troth to Satyavan:

Its signature adverse Fate cannot efface,

Its seal not Fate nor Death nor Time dissolve.

Those who shall part who have grown one being within?

Death's grip can break our bodies, not our souls;

If death take him, I too know how to die.

Let Fate do with me what she will or can;

I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;

My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me

Helpless against my immortality.

Fate's law may change, but not my spirit's will.

 

An adamant will, she cast her speech like bronze, maintaining “Once the dice fall thrown by the hand of Fate”.

 

Yet there seem to exist alternatives:

 

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.

 

Is she going to win or lose? Even Narad is not in a position to fix the alternatives. He of course asserts that this death of Satyavan is the beginning of a greater life, that is a spirit’s opportunity. But will that opportunity materialize?

 

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. …

 

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. …

 

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.

 

“Alone she must conquer or alone must fall.” But will she conquer or will she fall? Even the best of foreknowledge Narad has comes only from the Overmind world where there cannot be absoluteness of knowledge. Absoluteness of knowledge belongs only to the Supermind but Narad, standing on the border between Overmind and Supermind, has a certain intuition of it and he is declaring the outcome in its full operative convincingness. He also knows that the outcome can be affirmed only when Savitri shall do successfully the Yoga of the Conquest of Death. Until then this “or”.