The transcendental divine Savitri is poised to take the mortal birth. It looks the things that are meant to happen on this “precarious earth” must now start happening, things gainful in the evolutionary march of this mortal creation at present dominated by Ignorance and Death. Suddenly in that poise of hers the parameters undergo a drastic unhappy poignant change, even as human Savitri should face the realities of this great blind suffering world. Her sight that needed not the physical eyes must function through the sense-formed eyes, and her heart beat in a dull slumberous heart, her breath be fastened to calamitous human breath: Savitri’s transcendental vision must enter into the ophthalmic vision, her super-life the small little organic life. She who was free from all these earthly limitations must accept them now. There is transience, there is fragility, there is sorrow and suffering all around, and Savitri cannot escape them if her concern is the sense of the enduring and the strong and the joyous and the agreeable. There is the heavy darkness in terrestrial things and she must bring the superconscient light even to the crude and the physical under the brutish law of inconscience. How else can otherwise the way to the bright and the felicitous and the heartening spirit be hewed? Wasn’t it for this that she accepted the mortal birth?

To win or lose the godlike game for man,

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

Was she really ruled by the uncertainties of Destiny? The answer is: Less of “Yes” but more of “No”, the assertive and emphatic “No”. In the earthly destiny there is also the divine design as far as she is concerned; her inner soul is aware of it, and she is in contact with it. And yet it is not all tailored for her, things dovetailed into each other, that all will happen automatically. The issue is Ignorance-and-Death pitched against Immortality. Her soul in the terrestrial manifestation has to measure up to meet it.

Everything is arranged and yet, paradoxically, everything has got to be worked out, worked out in every minutest detail. Nothing can be left to chance, nothing is left to it.

Savitri is great and mighty, Savitri is perfect with the perfection that can enshrine the God of Love. However, there is another greatness and another might, perfect in the absoluteness of its imperfection, the all-devouring Void who assumes the shape of Death to accost her. Can there be any better food for Death than Love? And so he puts all his strength to possess it. That is the harsh existential issue and Savitri cannot just wish it away. The absoluteness of that sombre and deep imperfection does not touch her in her transcendental home, but it has its colossal sway in the cosmic functioning. Savitri has to more than match herself with it, match in the trueness of her love. And the odds are hidden from her sight. She has to face her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice—not by Destiny, Destiny per se, but Destiny used by someone else.

Human Savitri has to prepare herself to meet the challenge of Death by doing Yoga, Yoga directly under the guidance of the supreme Shakti, her superconscient self. She has discovered Love, but Love’s safety in her humanity rests in her holding the divine Power in it, holding it in her spirit and in her equipped soul. Narad comes to initiate her on the path, that she may succeed in hewing the ways of Immortality in this mirky transient and sorrowful world, dominated since its beginning by Ignorance and Death. In this attempt of hers one day she will be standing on a dangerous brink, “carrying the world’s future on her lonely breast”. She might lose, she might stumble and fall—and the outcome is unknown even to Narad. Will it be extinction or eternal life in the Good of the Great—who knows what shall be the end? Narad foretells: Even if God seems to leave her to her lone strength, (Savitri, p. 462)

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.

She must be left to herself, to her mighty self and Fate. When she will be left to herself, will then be Love safe in her. This is what happened on the fated day in the lone and inhuman forest when the Noon was covered by the dark Shadow.

The issue of her soul has to be resolved in an irrevocable way. Attempts were made earlier and they had failed; they have to be repeated once more. There were earlier six tryouts, and the concern is it should not happen once more. But then what is the guarantee that it will not repeat this time also, that those failures will not recur, that the undertaking, the venture will succeed in the present attempt?

But, it seems, Savitri is to discover her way only after the dissolution of six creations. Perhaps those creations were based on a different principle. The present is in Equilibrium and Stability. Yet Savitri must do Yoga-Tapasya to win her goal in this promising creation, that from it may arise a New Creation, the Creation of the Future ushering in the progress of Infinity here. Narad has initiated her. Savitri has started doing her Yoga. She has found the conquering Mantra, the most marvellous discovery, the Mantra “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.” In the will of the supreme Lord is all her success. The Mantra arises from the yogic fire of her surrender to the supreme Lord, surrender in every respect, including that of the very physical. Such Yoga-Tapasya! In it her soul’s issue is settled, in “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.”

Her soul’s issue is settled in the most decisive way, and forever, in “What Thou Willest, What Thou Willest.”