We had the privilege of listening to the talk of Sri S. S. Lahiri, from the Sri Aurobindo Bhavan, Ulsoor on the evening of the 28thof September, 2014. As an added bonus, Lahiri-ji had compiled excerpts of his talks from his notes, which we reproduce here. The subject of the talk was on ‘Savitri – The Symbol Dawn’. Sri Lahiri explored many ideas presented in this canto lucidly and candidly, drawing from other works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother as well as ancient Vedic texts and epics and his constant cross-references to world events and events that occurred in the lives of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. We present these notes in two parts. The November 2014 issue of our Newsletter contained Part1, and below is the concluding part.
The Dawn, Night and Inconscient
in the opening section of
The Symbol Dawn
(continued from the November 2014 issue)
Part 2
1.
In the
Vedas Nakt Usha is the term used to covey the idea of Night and Dawn,
the two mothers who suckle the child sun. In Savitri and specially in The
Symbol Dawn these mothers have been extensively and very vividly portrayed.
The night symbol itself has been portrayed as a double symbol- a temporary one
and the other the primordial Night. The temporary fall is brought out
“…As
in a dark beginning of all things…”
“…A
mute featureless semblance of the Unknown…”
“…Thrown
back once more into unthinking dreams…”
“…Condemned
to resume the effort and the pang…”
The primordial and the fundamental fall is also
depicted and we find terms like,
”…Abysm of unbodied Infinite’’….
“…Fallen boundless self…’’
“…Vacant Naught’’…
“…Athwart the vain enormous trance of space,…’’.
2.
In the
opening canto, Sri Aurobindo brings in an infinite number of suggestive lines
to depict the emergence of Dawn with a failing of darkness, ‘Dawn built her
aura of magnificent hue’. Amal Kiran
says, ‘So subtle is the flexibility of expression, that one tends to get blown
away and often fail to notice the
richness so delicately spread.’
3.
As the
Mother says “Satyavan is the soul of the earth, the earth’s jiva”. Then it is
Satyavan, the soul of earth, who has been kneading the soil of earth, and
making it ready, for the descent of the Truth.
But the final descent of the Sun of Truth would perhaps require an
encounter with Night. In his poem The Pilgrim of the Night he says, “… my
footprints’ track shall be A pathway towards Immortality”. Then only “
Heaven’s fire is lit in the breast of the earth And the undying suns here burn”. Likewise Savitri tells her queen mother in the
presence of Narad,“I am stronger than death and greater than my fate; “The
Mother says that the big difficulty in Matter is the material consciousness;
the mind in Matter was formed under great difficulties, obstacles and struggle.
It was “worked out” by these agencies and that gave it the impression of
defeatism and pessimism. These are the greatest of all difficulties, and Matter
needed to be “whipped” into action. This is the difficulty with the Night that
has to be tackled.
4.
We find in the second sentence
of the canto
“Across the path of the divine Event
The huge foreboding mind of Night,
alone
In her temple of eternity,
Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’
marge.”
The advent of the divine Event of the Supramental
decent is prevented by the formidable ‘mind of Night’. The term ‘mind of Night’
came as a replacement of the previous term, ‘mind of Spirit’. The term, ‘mind
of Light’ got introduced by Sri Aurobindo some time in 1935. By this phrase it
was meant the physical’s mind receiving the Supramental Light. Drawing from
this we may say ‘mind of Night’ would mean physical’s mind receiving the
Inconscient. Mother says in her talks on 21 Aug 65, “The physical’s mind (or
the mind of Matter) is the link joining the physical mind and this material
substance”. It is the most unconscious part. So the real problem lies in the
very Matter, in the very cells as also the solution too lies there. Satprem
says in his book, ‘Mother on Divine Materialism’, “… He (Sri Aurobindo) set into motion Matter’s
truth so that Matter itself would do the work- which is precisely what happened
when Sri Aurobindo was speaking to Richard; without his trying….silence was
established in Mother from within….. He let Matter itself speak if we may say
so …”
5.
Therefore
first the advent of Truth and then the descent of Divine Love would follow. And
for Truth to win, Falsehood must be transformed. Then,
“… God needed no more the Inconscient’s
screen.”(664).
The return of Savitri and Satyavan followed by
Krishna Kali is the statement made through the epic, that the work on the earth
has begun. What was fore-shadowed, would be true. The Mother says, “Savitri is
the epic of the victory over death.”
-
Sri Lahiri
Om Sri Aurrobindo Mirra.
(concluded)
No comments:
Post a Comment