In the creation of the supramental world in us by the Divine Will, both are needed: constant expansion and self-perfection. Aswapati’s Yoga of Self-Perfection has to take care of the second term. He had become vast by his largeness; he must achieve self-perfection required for it. The aspect of self-perfection is the aspect of not only rising above all the workings of the blind lower inconscient Nature or Andhaha Prakriti in us, but also to make her receptive to the divine working in her, she lending herself to the action of the Consciousness-Force who alone can make such a creation possible. In fact it is she who, in the Divine Will, can establish a new world, the supramental world. The Mother’s stipulation of “expansion of consciousness”, of becoming vast by our largeness has now to accompany the “constant personal progress”, of opening ourselves to the greater possibilities of our soul and our spirit.

In Savitri we have Aswapati engaging himself in the Triple Yoga, the Individual, the Universal, and the Transcendental Yoga, the triple stride taken by the avataric Vishnu in the evolutionary march. This is the Adhyatmayoga in which he engages himself, the Yoga of the Spirit in the earth-consciousness done to prepare the needed base for the new birth and the new action. About this Adhyatmayoga, Sri Aurobindo writes in The Yoga and its Objects the following:

 

The principle of Adhyatmayoga is, in knowledge, the realisation of all things that we see or do not see but are aware of,—men, things, ourselves, events, gods, titans, angels,—as one divine Brahman, and in action and attitude, an absolute self-surrender to the Paratpara Purusha, the transcendent, infinite and universal Personality who is at once personal and impersonal, finite and infinite, self-limiting and illimitable, one and many, and informs with his being not only the Gods above, but man and worm and the clod below. The surrender must be complete… the whole world seen and unseen must be recognised as one supreme expression of concealed Wisdom, Power and Bliss, and the entire being given up… for the divine Love, Might, and perfect Intelligence to do its work and fulfil its divine Lila.

“Put yourself in the hands of the Divine Mother and let her do her work unhindered in you”—that is the state in which our surrender has to reach. We have to also stand aside from all these thousand workings of the lower Prakriti and watch all these thousand workings as a witness Purusha. The third process of this Adhyatmayoga is to acquire God-vision, perceive all things as God, every bit of it in its authentic contents. All this is for the habitation of the Lord—that is the realised declaration of the Isha Upanishad. Experiencing that in life and expressing it in it is the fulfilment of the Yoga of the Spirit, Adhyatmayoga.

The Supreme himself incarnate as Aswapati does here this Adhyatmayoga. First he releases himself from Nature’s hold. He finds the source from which his spirit came, knows his larger self and becomes one with all. But there is the ingrained reluctance in the earthly stuff. He must discover its cause and remove it. He does it. Now his body’s parts also open to the higher things, to the greater light. With the soul’s release, Aswapati has achieved everything as an individual. There must now come the spirit’s freedom from all the contingencies that arise in the process. Engaged in the Yoga of Knowledge of the Time-Born Man, he now gets a new vision of himself and of the world. He is tied to the fate of this creation and there cannot be rest for him until the dusk from man’s soul is lifted. He must attend to it.

God created Hell in his mood of infinite love and justice, this is what a mystic says; but this love has to first conquer the appalling Inane of this mortal creation. The existential problem is the denial of all that is God’s. Here are titans and maniac powers and cruel operators; here, as if allowed by the mighty Spirit, work determinedly terrible agencies. But Aswapati in the flaming strength of his soul takes up the challenge. He surveys this kingdom of pain, travels through this world of sorrow and suffering and hate, of wickedness and malignancy. Not only that. Shiva-like, he drinks all the poison, drinks till not a drop is left. In the vastness of Existence he even feels the smallness of this strange odd queer material creation. Aswapati observes that the inconscient Being is asleep, and knows not what it built in that state of slumber. But he puts his finger upon the Error and the Pain,—there at once awakens in him new knowledge. He has opened the Book of Bliss, and in it Life’s truth gets revealed. The dichotomy between Matter and Spirit gets resolved. The moment the Avatar puts his foot on the soil of the Night, there is the beginning of the Everlasting Day.

The one whom Aswapati met behind the World-Soul has to take possession of all that is and all that shall be. On the gleaming edge of this Transcendent, bordering the mortal world, in the depth of his prayerful innermost soul, he awaits the arrival that shall change the mortal’s lot. (Savitri, pp. 314-15)

 

Towards her our knowledge climbs, our passion gropes,

In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,

Her clasp will turn to ecstasy our pain.

Our self shall be one self with all through her.

In her confirmed because transformed in her,

Our life shall find in its fulfilled response

Above, the boundless hushed beatitudes,

Below, the wonder of the embrace divine.

This known as in a thunder-flash of God,

The rapture of things eternal filled his limbs;

Amazement fell upon his ravished sense;

His spirit was caught in her intolerant flame.

 

How marvellous indeed, to be caught so in her intolerant flame! “He yielded to her and his heart was glad.” That indeed is the finest moment in the pursuit of his Adhyatmayoga. In the knowledge of the Spirit arose the deep adoration of the Divine, Jnana became Bhakti. His surrender, the surrender of the incarnate Supreme to the divine Shakti is the great fulfilment of the Adhyatmayoga, the Yoga he had undertaken for the sake of the evolutionary soul of the earth. Aswapati the Yogi par excellence is persistent, and there is the wonderful response: (p. 317)

 

In the unapproachable stillness of his soul

Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone,

Patient he sat like an incarnate hope

Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.

A Strength he sought that was not yet on earth,

Help from a Power too great for mortal will,

The Light of a Truth now only seen afar,

A sanction from his high omnipotent Source.

He seeks the strength but nothing happens. The Power he is invoking is too great for the mortality's smallness, and the dynamic Truth yet remains behind the veil, and there seems to be something still wanting in the yogic effort of this Yogi. Indeed, why is the Divine Mother unobliging? But (pp. 295-96)

 

He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.

Then in a sovereign answer to his heart

A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,

And from her raiment's lustrous mystery raised

One arm half-parted the eternal veil.

A light appeared still and imperishable.

Attracted to the large and luminous depths

Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,

He saw the mystic outline of a face.

Overwhelmed by her implacable light and bliss,

An atom of her illimitable self

Mastered by the honey and lightning of her power,

Tossed towards the shores of her ocean ecstasy,

Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,

He cast from the rent stillness of his soul

A cry of adoration and desire

And the surrender of his boundless mind

And the self-giving of his silent heart.

He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.

This is the surrender of the incarnate Divine to his own transcendental Power, to Para Shakti, the evolutionary Purusha offering himself to the dynamic Consciousness-Force. (pp. 315-16)

 

A vast surrender was his only strength.

A Power that lives upon the heights must act,

Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air

And fill the finite with the Infinite.

All that denies must be torn out and slain

And crushed the many longings for whose sake

We lose the One for whom our lives were made.

Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:

Only he longed to draw her presence and power

Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;

Only he yearned to call for ever down

Her healing touch of love and truth and joy

Into the darkness of the suffering world.

His soul was freed and given to her alone.

She accepts his surrender—and the beauty is, now, she will do whatever he should will. The vastness of his offered heart is in the harsh context of the suffering world, a world which must not only be redeemed but which must become a field for her divine activities. She must now oblige him. Her activities here—that is the birth of the new world. In his will she must incarnate herself here.

Such a birth is the birth of Savitri. The birth of Savitri means the birth of the new world.