Following is the summary of Book I Canto III, The Yoga of
The King: The Yoga of the Soul's Release, pp. 22-45 as given by AB Purani in his
Savitri—an Approach and a Study, pp.
151-56.
A world's desire compelled her mortal birth.
From the legend we know that Savitri was born to the
queen of Aswapathy as the result of a boon by the Goddess Savitri. Here the
poet introduces Aswapathy and while explaining the cause of Savitri's birth
asserts that her birth was compelled by "a world's desire". Savitri
had to take mortal birth in order to meet the intense desire of a whole world.
The subsequent portion of the poem up to the end of the third book deals with
the vast background which compelled her birth.
Aswapathy's character as a seeker of the Divine and as
an adept of the great spiritual and mystic realisation of the past gives us a
wonderful picture of man's growth from mental consciousness through various
intermediate stages to the Supreme Divine Mother Consciousness.
"The Yoga of the Soul's Release" is the
subject of this Canto. Here for the first time it becomes clear that this great
epic deals with the spiritual odyssey of the soul. The poet here openly
discloses himself as the poet of divine life by beginning in this Canto the
song of the soul's liberation. The whole poem becomes the song par excellence
of man's growth on earth from the inconscient through the vital and the mental
stages to the realms of the Spirit, the realms of the Divine. It is the epic of
man's ascent from level to level of consciousness rising from world to world,
from peaks of mind to the peaks of the spirit till he reaches the supreme
Divine and by his unfailing aspiration invokes the Divine to descend into
himself so as to create divine life on earth. But this cannot be so long as
human soul is tied like an animal with the triple cord of mental, vital and
physical ignorance to the sacrificial post in the vast cosmic sacrifice to be
offered as a victim. As long as human consciousness lives in the ego, lives
subject to desire, conflict, dualities, suffering and pain, so long he cannot
fulfil' the deepest longing and the highest aspiration of his being. He must
liberate himself from the bondage of ignorance. The first release comes to man
when he can go beyond his animal propensities, when he can free himself from
the reign of desire and wake up to some ideals in his life. Therefore, we see
Aswapathy,—who symbolises man as the Lord of Life,—waking to the higher
potentialities of his nature: he is "a thinker and toiler in the ideal's
air". It is in his conception and pursuit of higher intellectual, moral
and spiritual ideals that man begins to fee! that he is not merely an animal
driven by the goad of hunger and thirst and a slave of desires, but that he has
come to this earth from some higher spiritual plane,—at least, that there is
something in him which is free from the inertia, inconscience, grossness and
coarseness of earth nature and is akin to the pure Spirit. Aswapathy felt that
he was "a colonist from immortality", and as such he tended to grow towards,
or into, the likeness of his spiritual Self. In this intense aspiration to grow
into the likeness of spiritual being "his mind was like a fire assailing
heaven".
Aswapathy's spiritual growth began by his realising
that the external being of man is not the whole of himself. There are hidden
"celestial powers" in man, immense spiritual potentialities lie
dormant in the human being. There is an immortal ineffable Spirit in man that
creates here the forms for his own manifestation. It is that spirit that
"in the worm foresees the coming god". It sees the finite that is
actual and knows the infinite that is potential and even' certain. It is when
man accepts his higher possibilities of spiritual life that he is able to
outgrow his present state of ignorance, leave behind him the limited planes of
his mental, vital and physical consciousness and rise beyond them. Then, like
Aswapathy, he "Arrive on the frontiers of eternity". He who has heard
this call of the Beyond is unable to remain satisfied with the ordinary life of
ignorance. His heart seems to be smitten by "a beam of the Eternal",
and his mind wants to expand into Infinity. When he succeeds in realising his
aspiration then the Divine begins to work overtly in him. Then,
A static Oneness and dynamic Power
descend in him.
Then a different government of his nature begins for
the individual. The divine power that descends in him begins to "turn this
frail mud-engine to heaven-use". The insignificant human being is utilised
by the divine for a divine purpose. Aswapathy found then that the whole
movement of cosmic evolution which appears on the surface like a purposeless
activity of the inconscient is in reality controlled by a secret Craftsman who
works from behind the veil of ignorance to realise here "his dreamed
magnificence of things to be". He saw that "a. mystery of married
Earth and Heaven" was a part of the divine dream. He saw the vision of the
divine life on earth and henceforth he became a seer, and he knew that he was
here as "a shining Guest of Time" from Eternity. After the vision of
the Truth to be realised here Aswapathy's limited mind became boundless, his
little ego-self completely disappeared, "The island ego joined its
continent". He was liberated from the yoke of the laws of Nature's
ignorance,—from the limitations of the intellect. Before him "there
gleamed the dawn of a spiritual day."
After this spiritual awakening "Humanity framed
his movements less and less". It was no longer possible for him to allow
the human elements in him to govern his life, and to accept as final the
limitations of human nature. He awoke in himself latent powers, faculties that
lay dormant in him—powers of pure perception, intimate vision, and also of
spiritual experience. He could know the motives, ideas and wishes in other men
and he felt also world thought-streams running into his own mind. He could hear
secret voices and the "Word that knows". He came in contact with
planes of consciousness other than the consciousness of the earth and contacted
beings on occult planes. In fact, his consciousness ceased to be limited in the
individual nature, and began to widen out into the cosmic. He voyaged from
plane to plane till he came to the end of the world of symbols and signs.
From there he crossed beyond into the world of the
Formless where there is no object cognizable either by the sense or by the
thought. There he found that the whole world became a single Being which felt
everything as its own Self. There
The Supreme's gaze looked out through human eyes
And saw all things and creatures as itself.
There "...oneness is the soul of multitude".
It was a realm of knowledge in which eternal calm prevails. It is a realm where
one experiences boundlessness;
While there, one can be wider than the world;
While there, one is one's own infinity.
With this experience Aswapathy entered a still
Consciousness that sustains all, and a peace that passes all understanding.
There he found all contradictions of life resolved, sorrow, pain and conflict
ceased, because there the Truth was living its own real life. He, thus,
realised the origin of the spirit and established his being in the Infinite and
his life upon the Eternal.
When he looked at the world from his new spiritual
poise he saw that the world was only "A small result of a stupendous
force". But the ordinary instruments of human nature are incapable of
supporting these higher states of being. They hanker after their normal
littleness, they want to go back to their petty activities. The gravitational
pull of the lower consciousness brings down the consciousness from its height
and, at times, man sinks even lower than the normal consciousness during such
periods of downward movement. But even these periods of spiritual set-backs are
utilised by the Divine within for his own work and are made to contribute to
man's growth. The lower ignorant nature of man also has got to receive the
divine in order to undergo a change, otherwise soul alone would reach its perfection
and nature remain imperfect and earth unfulfilled. He found that, at times, the
higher consciousness came down like rain from above, sometimes a flood of
illumination descended and he could retain the Light for longer periods. During
these periods of ascent and descent, his being was integrated in the process
and attained complete equality, tranquil purity, serene strength and lasting
peace. He also saw that this tranquillity, was not merely a static condition,
but a dynamic power which helped the toiling world by its silent working. He
saw from the height of his spiritual consciousness a new self-creation
A transfiguration in the mystic depths,
A happier cosmic working could begin
And fashion the world-shape in him anew,
God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God.
The light of this higher consciousness penetrated his
lower consciousness, or the lower parts of his nature. And knowledge used to
come to bun by an act of intuition.
Inspiration also came down into him often in silence.
The closed Beyond was opened with "A stab of flame". When the light
of intuition came, the mind overlapped itself and his spirit pursued knowledge
like a hound. The sparks of intuition and lightnings of inspiration led him to
and gave the knowledge of the various realms of the Infinite, and though he saw
the play of ignorance and chance in the world, he saw also, through the veil,
and comprehended, the world-design behind its outer appearance. He saw the
logic of the infinite Intelligence working in. the finite ignorance. In fact,
he saw the origin of the world as it is in the spirit—the Divine builder in
sleep behind the world. Beyond his plane of inspiration, he could glimpse the
Overmind.
When inspiration came down into him, it was like a
divine messenger coming with its own rhythm. Sometimes like a bliss pouring
down, or a wordless thought, an all-seeing ray, or at times the closed Beyond
was opend with "a stab of flame". At other times it became an eye
that awakes in trance, or he felt as if inspiration was plundering the vast
estate of the Superconscient for him. It became a "gleaner of grains"
or worked like a "sheaf-binder" gathering up parts of knowledge and
making them into a whole. At times it worked as a reporter, or like a hound
pursuing knowledge. It opened the vision of the Truth or brought the word of
the Supreme. Its action made Aswapathy comprehend the world-design and behind
the apparent working of chance he saw the unfolding of a world-idea.
In the light of his spiritual experience he saw the
tree of cosmos supported by the Spirit. He knew the original divine Desire that
gave rise to this creation. He could then understand the wisdom that permits
this long game of evolution and even feel the Love that sanctions these
workings. From his height he saw that the energies of the lower nature had many
occult and spiritual powers hidden under their ignorant workings which, if
awakened, would be a very precious acquisition for man. He felt a divine
presence and greatness everywhere. This universe became
...a living movement of the body of God.
The world was a conception and a birth of Spirit in
matter from where rose
The divine Dwarf towered unconquered worlds.
His spirit was the witness-spirit and—
Existence a divine experiment
And cosmos the soul's opportunity.
All the suppressed powers of the subconscient and the
ignorant instruments of Nature began to blossom into manifestation in him.
Thus, was he released from ignorance. Knowledge of the
Divine poured upon him from above and world-knowledge welled out from within
Lonely his days and splendid like the sun's.
All his actions sprang out of Light and all his
thoughts referred to the True and the One. He saw other worlds, other forms, other
gods, other beings and he deafly experienced that his life had emerged from the
Divine. Now, his only work in life was to help mankind by raising it to this
higher level and "Feeling earth's smallness with their boundless
breadths," and for this
He drew the energies that transmute an age.