To hope to receive, use and form in oneself a supramental being, and consequently a supramental world, there must first of all be an expansion of consciousness and constant personal progress, the constant idea of the being, the constant will of the being, the constant preoccupation of the being, there must be enough aspiration and adhesion in the being to make the expansion of the being, the expansion of consciousness possible. There must be great widening to make room for the movements of the Supermind.

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The new creation established by Aswapati by his yoga-tapasya has many worlds. Breathing in topaz radiance here are worlds of beauty, love, joy, thought, will, knowledge, power, light, form, all made of reality’s substance. They are with a perfection that belongs to the supreme state, to the dynamic immortality. But their materialisation upon earth must await the “veiled Transcendent’s ultimate decree”. In the House of the Spirit this new creation is ready, in fact it is poised for precipitation if the conditions here should prove appropriate and receptive.

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If we have to write a biography of Aswapati, it is his willing in the World, his performance of the Yajna of the Creation, that must be recognised and presented. Such is the most wonderful achievement, siddhi of the great Yogi. In fact he came to earth to hasten its advent and “to announce the manifestation of a new race and a new world: the Supramental.” Aswapati willed it and fixed it in the gleaming greatness of the Spirit. The contingent factor for its dynamic manifestation that remains to be reckoned with in the evolutionary process is its readiness to accept it. But such a 'readiness' is the work to be carried out by the executive Force.

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The transcendental idea-forces and powers can now enter into Aswapati’s earthly mind; indeed his mortal nerves can receive them in their full grandeur. His will, thought, feeling can hold their absolutes. His brain is now the Mind of Light, overwhelmed with its radiances. He is poised on the outer edge of Supermind, and it is from there that he is seeing this vast creation extending down below. From that position he is also looking above, and beyond, at the bounds of the Unknowable, at its mystery which appears to be more enigmatic than the mystery of the Shadow-Sphinx, the Sphinx of the nether Depths who keeps the Dark Foundations. This brilliant Sphinx of topaz Light is different from the Shadow-Sphinx who, negatively, has the power of total dissolution, of annihilation, of reducing everything to nought. But the Sphinx of the topaz Light is, creatively, all possibilities and potentialities. And yet she is a great Mystery. Only to some does she yield her secret.

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This atheism at the base of the evolution cannot be off-hand dismissed. At the same time, a great effort is needed to take care of it, if one has to be more prude and sagacious. But, then, the Son of Strength cannot take that it is by default the process will proceed, he cannot wait and let it move in the pace of a straggler, the uncertain working of Nature somehow and sometime arriving at this stage of affirmation. No doubt, in it there is sufficient intention and one day or other it may happen that way. But then there are also uncertainties, and its failure could possibly mean another dissolution or pralaya

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There is a problem and Aswapati has to get the answer for himself, know it from within; it has to come from his soul and his spirit. He is stuck, and no response to his prayer from the supreme Height comes. Surely, there must be some wisdom in it, and the Yogi-Scientist must discover it himself. There is a difference between he discovering and he getting the answer, and the greatness lies in making the individual explore the unknown domains. There are, so to say, tests, at every point and one has to be alert to what these mean, where these tests lead to. The quality of one’s own yoga-tapasya and the pursuit determines the quality of the response, and therefore it is certainly desirable to look at the fundamental issues, both as an individual and the collective. It is as though the “austere peak” threw him back with a purpose, that he may make this last discovery. Perhaps to solve the riddle of the supreme Secrecy, his nature born of inconscience,—rather born into Inconscience,—was herself helping him, albeit in a characteristic way of the Secrecy itself. She is not directly telling him anything; but she is prompting him. It is in that sense that the Secrecy does the yoga of discovery in us.

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The Unknowable’s mystery would be on the point of revealing itself to Aswapati, and he is waiting for the sign. But nothing happens, no movement, no stir, no response. The Strength he sought would not oblige, and there doesn’t seem to be any aspect of optimism to keep his sprit upbuyod. No consenting Voice stoops down in answer to his prayer, the Unapproachable is cold, obstinate, stubborn, inattentive, and all that he had done until now seems to be proving inconsequential. His yoga-tapasya would not bear the fruit, of divine destiny, for which he had takent this painful mortal birth. The question is, why is the Secrecy so uncompromising, why she is not obliging the seeker-soul’s ardent aspiration? What is that he is short of that it be provided, supplemented? Aswapati must trace the cause for the lack of response. In our bound humanity he felt the stark resistance huge and dumb, the stubborn mute rejection in Life's depths, the ignorant No in the origin of things. He must conquer it.

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Will this world remain as it is, from morning till evening, through weeks and weeks, through the ages that unroll in the tardy process of evolutionary growth? Will it also be that, this world being God’s creation, cannot fail in the purpose for which it was planned, for which it was created? If it is going to be a failure it will be God’s failure, and so it cannot be our concern. Even if it could be, hardly there is anything which this little creature standing or walking on thin legs can do. There could be an assurance also to the seeker-soul that, he should rest content in the wisdom and efficacy of the Will that is there behind this. True, there is travail, and suffering and ignorance and falsehood and death all around; true that the past attempts in redeeming the lot of the mortal were not all that famous. But the counsel to Aswapati is that he should have confidence in the divine Shakti whose “fire and sweetness are the cause of life”.

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Aswapati has to make a choice which is going to prove crucial. The moment of truth has arrived on which is hinged the future of this creation. He must decide whether to renounce the claims of the world and live in magnificence of the undying splendours of heaven, or transform this burdensome mortality in the possibilities of the Spirit expressing itself in them. “He stood compelled to a tremendous choice.” He has to decide upon the alternatives—forget this world and live in light, or bring that light to this dark world that it be illumined. The implications of the choice are such that either he must give up all and disappear into That, or else he must transform them into the self of the unnameable and inexpressible Supreme.

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Aswapati has to take second birth, birth in the evolution. By it he has to be reborn on earth also, he has to become a Brahmin, he has to be a dwija. It is by this birth he shall become fit to do holy sacrifices in the rites of the supreme Knowledge for begetting the world. However, in spite of all these great and shining realizations and siddhis in his possession, this birth of Aswapati can occur only when the World-Force will have made corresponding progress in the evolutionary process. This means that, while supernal birth of the Seer-Yogi has already become a consummated fact on the earth-plane, it is the Executrix who has now to execute its grand accomplishments. She has to open it out, she has to make it available to the collectivity that shall be in a state of preparedness to receive it. The march from the individual to the broad and ready communal aggregate has to get started. The divine focus is on the Many breathing in the world-possibility.

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If there has to be a radical change here in the earth-life and earth-consciousness, in this sorrowful and transient creation, in the world of suffering mortality, then it can happen not through human effort but by the action of the divine Shakti, the dynamic Truth-conscient power alone. She must enter into the evolutionary process. She must come and lead it in its unfolding integrality. But that is not going to happen by itself. The foremost condition is the ground for her work should be well prepared, there has to be the support, ādhāra, the yogic foundation on which she can act. Aswapati establishes that. Having established that, he now approaches her with a prayer in his soul to take the mortal birth. That is when the transformation can become operationally real.

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Beyond Night and beyond Sleep is the supernal world of the supreme Trinity and that must establish itself in him if another failure or frustration is to be avoided. The arduous Raja Yoga of Aswapati has to first become Vishva Yoga of the Universal Being. But that Yoga must fulfill itself in the Adya Yoga of the Divine Shakti. Then only can the Colonist from Immortality hope to acquire the threefold mastery and become the Lord of Life. This is a major step, radical in its character, and it has got to be taken if the attempt is to succeed in this death-bound inconscient world. Aswapati recognises this and sets himself on the unprecedented task.

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Mighty powers are now at the command Aswapati. Ulysses-like, and undaunted by the dangers lurking in innumerable domains of this vast manifestation, from sapta-pātāla down below to sapta-swarga above, the precipitous downward-sinking slopes of Hell and the difficult and austere ascending slopes of Heaven, all of them he has measured with one immense look. Limitless it is in its scope and in its possibilities also, and he moves through them, and alone, exploring them and finding the purpose and the content of their existence in the scheme of things.

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In Savitri we have a beautiful description of the climbing hierarchy of the innumerable worlds that are the expression of the thousandfold One. In it cosmic dimensions open up for the traveller of the worlds who is about to undertake the task of finding the meaning, the cause, the rationale of this vast creation; he is set also to explore the issue involved in it.

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Aswapati has by this time well understood the problem, and his Grand Odyssey takes him to the supreme Goddess herself. If it is a mighty inconscient Denial, then he is certain that it can be replaced by the luminous Assertion only if her superconscient Force is brought down here. Therefore this Bhagiratha of the Future invokes the descent of the Ganges of Heaven, the swift-pacing Mandakini of luminous currents towards the Earth. He invokes her to come down and flood the subterranean fields of ignorant consciousness. Aswapati’s tapasya presently advances to hold in his sunbright locks the inrush of that surging Power. In fact he shall now guide her course here.

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Aswapati enters into the region of the World-Soul where the dangers and the cherished joys of Nature, both, are but a mighty beat of the vast breathing Spirit. It is there that there has to be a power which alone can reveal the divinity behind things. It is there, in the world-soul, that the silent soul can heal the bitter cruelties of the earth; it is that which can transform all experience into experience of absolute delight.

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The mission of Aswapati’s soul was never to lead him merely to the high states of beatitude, that he may simply stay there. Indeed, he needed not those states for himself, he being their rightful or natural inhabitant. His soul therefore makes a unique choice, a well-intentioned and deliberate choice in full awareness of the context of the evolutionary earth. But the significant aspect of this choice of the soul of his is that, there is also the sanction from the Supreme, there is Grace, bhagavadkŗpā; whatever is going to be accomplished will be accomplished in it. But the choice is not just one choice among many choices: it is actually a firm yogic will to which now there is the answering consent, the endorsement, the authorization from the High. The dynamic will and the rewarding sanction are the great certainty of his Yoga’s success.

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The Yoga of the Supreme is a twofold Yoga in the context of a divine creation here in the mortal world, this mŗtyuloka. If the first is called the Yoga of Sacrifice or Yoga Yajna, the second is the Yoga of Realisation or Yoga Tapasya. It is as though the Supreme stepped out of his state of Non-manifestation and plunged into a gainful occult Void to ‘real’-ise in it the rich magnificence of manifestation for his own habitation. To be many, bahusyām prajāyeyeti—that was the desire he had cherished, and he set himself in right earnest to fulfil it, to get done the happy splendid task. This stepping out of his is the Yoga Yajna, the Holocaust of the Supreme, the glorious, the wonderful creative Sacrifice. But after this stepping out, after treading the path of the swift divine Declivity, facilis descensus in the Divine sense, is to be pursued the Path of Ascension, of climbing the ascending slopes of heaven. The path or the movement has to turn around and become the slow and long arduous path of luminous Acclivity, that through it may materialize, in the awareness of the timeless Spirit, the intended fulfilment of the delight-of-existence, delight in several and in respective details. The second of these two celebrated laps in the entire process of creation is dealt with, in a symbolic way, in the Legend of Savitri. But that Legend itself consists of two parts, the part belonging to the Being as an extension of truth-reality everywhere, and the part belonging to the Power of execution or manifestation. The first is associated with the supreme Purusha and the second with the dynamic executive Force or the divine Shakti, with the Supreme incarnate in a twofold way as Aswapati and Savitri. Aswapati the Yogi moves across the length and breadth, moves up and down, from the abyss to the summit of this cosmic vastness consisting of countless worlds inhabited with all kinds of beings. Even as he moves through them he leaves behind, in those worlds, the divine Presence in the necessity of the divine work. He then occulty-yogically establishes a new creation in the Transcendent, a creation that must be in the fulfilment of the objective of this mortal world, this mŗtyuloka. He then approaches the supreme Shakti to incarnate herself by taking a mortal birth and undertake the task of bringing down that new and marvellous creation here upon earth. In order to accopmplish it she comes as Savitri. If Aswapati’s is Adhyatma-Yoga, Savitri’s is the Shakti-Yoga, the two done in a divine way for the Divine’s creation. In Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri is the complete revelation of this splendid modus operandi. The two halves of Savitri deal with these respectively. At present we are trying to get an idea about the first part, the Adhyatma-Yoga of Aswapati.

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Here is a synoptic presentation of the yoga-tapasya of Aswapati, the divine Incarnate himself who had taken the mortal birth to redeem the lot of the suffering and unfulfilled mortal creature. It is a triple yoga-tapasya covering the Individual, the Cosmic and the Transcendental relationships in the context of the Sachchidanandaic possibilities manifesting in the terrestrial evolution of things, things of the truth and beauty and delight and life and spirit. This can happen only when the divine Power steps into this mortal creation and removes the obstacle standing across the path of such an Event. Simultaneously, and equally significantly, the Incarante travels through all the worlds of this vast cosmic existence and leaves behind in them his Presence, thus readying the ground for her work. We may thus call this as the Adhyatma Yoga of the Supreme, Yoga because it is done in the Soul of the evolutionary Earth, Adhyatma because the powers of the transcendental Spirit get founded in their realities in the reality of this suffering and unfulfilled mortal creation.

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Aswapati becomes conscious of his own self that is wide and free; but it is also bound and struggling—because it has accepted the conditions of this bound and struggling creation. But with his “offered heart” he waits for the “fiat of the Word”, the Word coming from the Supreme himself. That is the arrival of the Boon.

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