Apropos of the passage from Savitri dealing with the power of silence in the depths of god, let us look at the nature of the Vedic mantra, its formulation according to Rishi Agastya. A Vedic Hymn of Affirmation—stoma—speaks of it being “framed by the heart and established by the mind”. We have in such an instructive Rik, by Agastya, the very definition of the mantra,—framed by the heart and confirmed or established by the mind, hŗdā taşto manasā dhāyi. In it is perhaps the earliest recorded theory of the creative Word, a theory expounding the process by which the supreme utterance takes birth in the consciousness of the poet who is at once a seer and a thinker, kavirmanişi. It is this mantra that makes him a poet-seer, a Rishi. Sri Aurobindo’s comment on Agastya’s Rik is as follows:

In the system of the Mystics, which have partially survived in the schools of Indian Yoga, the Word is a power, the Word creates. For all creation is expression, everything exists already in the secret abode of the Infinite, guhā hitam, and has only to be brought out here in apparent form by the active consciousness. Certain schools of Vedic thoughts even suppose the worlds to have been created by the goddess Word and sound as first etheric vibration to have preceded formation. In the Veda itself there are passages which treat the poetic measures of the sacred mantras,—anuşţubha, trişţubha, jagatī, gāyatrī,—as symbolic of the rhythms in which the universal movement of things is cast.

By expression then we create and men are even said to create the gods in themselves by the mantra. Again, that which we have created in our consciousness by the Word, we can fix there by the Word to become part of ourselves and effective not only in our inner life but upon the outer physical world. By expression we form, by affirmation we establish. As a power of expression the word is termed gīh or vacas; as a power of affirmation, stoma. In either aspect it is named manma or mantra, expression of thought in mind, and brahman, the expression of the heart or the soul,—for this seems the earlier sense of the word brahman, afterwards applied to the supreme Soul or Universal Being.

The process of formation of the mantra is described in the second verse along with the conditions of its effectivity. Agastya presents the stoma, hymn at once of affirmation and of submission, to the Maruts. Fashioned by the heart, it receives its just place in the mentality through confirmation by the mind. The mantra, though it expresses thought in mind, is not in its essential part a creation of the intellect. To be sacred and effective word, it must have come as an inspiration from the supramental plane, termed in the Veda ŗtam, the Truth and have been received into the superficial consciousness either through the heart or by the luminous intelligence, manīşā... Fashioned by the heart, it is confirmed by the mind.

While discussing the characteristics of the overhead poetic aesthesis, Sri Aurobindo writes in one of his letters that the mantra

...is a word of power and light that comes from the overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the things uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.

And what does the mantra do? what does it achieve? When established, with it the yoga of the aspirant soul progresses on its onward and upward path; marching triumphantly, he climbs peak above silent gold-and-blue peak; it moves freely in the realms of sweetness and joy and harmony, reaches the worlds of spiritual realities, spiritual plenitudes; it breathes in the sovereignty of their truth-felicities. Vast possibilities of the Truth-Consciousness open out for his possession. With it the Vedic Rishi wins spiritual riches. With it, while the shining gods take him to their heavens of beatitude, he shares their company; they have together the Drink of Immortality amŗta. Singing the word of illumination, he calls the divine Agni to burn in him in the full intensity of its splendours; he kindles it and makes to it sacrificial offerings. The body of the mantric sound becomes a chariot for his wide-ranging travels, for journeys in triple glory of the truth-conscient awareness of delight. Such become in its affirmation his accomplishments.

Even as the Rishi-Poet speaks of the truth-vision and truth-realisation, of an individual aspiring to immortality, there is also the cultural and collective life that should move in the hope and expectation of his pioneering spirit. Sri Aurobindo writes:

It is… a larger cosmic vision, a realising of the godhead in the world and in man, of his divine possibilities as well as of the greatness of the power that manifests in what he is, a spiritualised uplifting of his thought and feeling and sense and action, a more developed psychic mind and heart, a truer and a deeper insight into his nature and the meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the call upon humanity, the prospect offered to it by the slowly unfolding and now more clearly disclosed Self of the universe.

The call of poetry on such a scale becomes effective only when the poet rises in his thought and feeling and sense and action, opens himself more and more to the divine working in him, raises his prayer to the giver of boons. The mantra that is uttered can help him in establishing that state in him when a conscious effort is made in that direction.

To receive that mantra and to live and grow in it is the primary condition that must be first fulfilled. The passage we have here opens out doors for such a wide and fulfilling prospect in the individual and in the collective. That is the Chant of Affirmation, the loud Stoma in the glory of the manifesting Spirit in which we must live.