The theme of this edition of the Newsletter is ‘Satyavan and Savitri’. What is the significance of Satyavan and Savitri in union? Satyavan is “the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of death and ignorance;” while Savitri is “the Divine Word, daughter of the Sun, goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save;” These are words from Sri Aurobindo as he pens the Author’s note in his great master-piece epic, ‘Savitri’. The symbolism in the two characters, as emphasized earlier in several issues, need closer scrutiny if one were to dive into the deeper meanings that these symbols lead us into, so that our contemplation may be deeper and better placed. Once the characters become symbols, then they transcend the common lure of the well beaten trend of human interpretation and stand to be revealed to all who seek the spirit behind the words. Once again, what do Satyavan and Savitri in union, bound seemingly by the nuptial knot, represent, and stand to reveal in the collective working and integration of who they really are in spirit? Lines describing the first meeting reveals the recognition of soul by soul:
Yet in the heart their secret conscious selves
At once aware grew of each other…
The suggestion of a timeless relationship between souls is intriguing and therein is sealed the knowledge that theirs was no ordinary meeting and union. And here are the words that sealed their fate and tied them into a single knot, from wherein unfolds the future work before them:
O Satyavan, I have heard thee and I know;
I know that thou and only thou art he.
And the wedding takes place of two souls on earth soil. What did her soul fathom? It was the knowledge that it was with him that she needed to carry out a work of significance for the whole of humanity. What work? Savitri’s symbolism gives us a clue. She is the Divine Word; Daughter of the Sun; Goddess of the supreme Truth, descended here upon the earth. All of Savitri’s role upon this earth is revealed. She appears to be the glorious Light itself, Divinity, born upon earth and that too, born to save. In contrast, we have Satyavan, descended into death and ignorance. However, the saving grace in the birth of Satyavan is that divinity is working in him too. He has evolved as the perfect purusha manifest on earth. This divinity in itself brings him, perhaps, close to that Divine daughter born to save. She is born to save him, as we will see ultimately, in the poem and with him, symbolically, the whole of mankind.
A close bond as lover and beloved, as man and wife, as Divinity and the bound soul - theirs too is a relationship stretching into the occult vistas. Could their union also spell to each of us another truth? Of the presence in us of a Satyavan and so too, a glorious Savitri; an aspiring soul and an enlightened central Godhead both on the path of at first a rediscovery and then a merger and union within ourselves, of the union spirit and our nature?
The union of Satyavan and Savitri is an important topic worth contemplating upon. There is a strong presence of Divinity dancing in the two symbols of Satyavan and Savitri and when our contemplation rests on either of their qualities or both together in union, there dawns a special awakening within, a certain uplifting of what one may call one’s consciousness, even if for fleeting seconds. With these seeds for contemplation, may we also await the 104th Anniversary of The Mother’s arrival in Pondicherry, on 24th April 2018, another significant event for all of existence.
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