On our onward journey with Savitri as theme, we take a glimpse at Ashwapathy in this month’s issue of the Newsletter. This choice is also in line with the much awaited month of August that observes the 145th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo.
Even as Sri Aurobindo penned the epic poem, he poured his whole consciousness into it; his autobiography in part, Savitri is an intimate aid for Spiritual growth. For through King Ashwapathy, the human father of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo conveys his lifelong sadhana in integral yoga and the entire gamut of his experiences. Through Ashwapathy, Sri Aurobindo hews a path across a virgin forest for the travellers of the future advancing towards the grand discovery of the Divine plan. It is notable that Ashwapathy’s yoga, recounted in Books 1 to 3, in 10,000 lines, holds a central place in the epic and covers almost half of its length, alongside Savitri’s yoga. The Mother asserts that what Sri Aurobindo conveys through the lines on Ashwapthy and his journey are “experiences lived by him, realities, supracosmic truths…He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda.”
Turning to Ashwapathy, he is Ashwapathy the King of Madra and the one whose yearning for a greater good for humanity brought about the birth of Savitri, the great World Mother into the human world. Ashwapathy, dissatisfied with the cosmic and microcosmic state of affairs prevailing in him and around him, makes an attempt to realise the Sublime and Supreme in the mundane. He plunges into himself to seek himself out and work out a transformation in himself, seeking a greater good in himself and the whole of humanity.
His journey brings him into the occult regions of his inner self. This results in his own psychological and spiritual transformation. He is carried into another dimension of space and time. He plunges into the dark world of Night and meets the Mother of Evil and her Sons of Darkness. He journeys then through the planes of the physical, vital, mental and the psychic and spiritual planes of existence. As a climatic treat for all lovers of Savitri, Ashwapathy comes face to face with the Supreme Divine Mother. His ardent aspiration for the transformation of the Earth results in The Mother granting him the boon of “One who shall descend and break the iron law”. Thus was the “One”, Savitri, gifted to the world for its transformation through King Ashwapathy’s Yoga. In his own words, Sri Aurobindo describes King Ashwapathy as, “the Yogi who seeks the means to deliver the world out of Ignorance,” reflecting the turn Sri Aurobindo’s own life took on earth for the purpose of realising the Supramental Truth and manifesting it upon the earth plane, giving an influence and a grand uplift to all the workings of Nature. Ashwapathy:
Immeasurable by the common look,
He made great dreams a mould for coming things
And cast his deeds like bronze to front the years.
Let us contemplate on these laden lines as we approach the special day this August, not forgetting to reflect on our purpose here, in the wide and divine scheme of things.
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