Sage Narad has
unveiled Savitri's future; a future that is death. But Savitri, undaunted, has
accepted the challenge, and instead of changing her path, has decided to travel
on the same road, although fraught with seeming annihilation. And she has
uttered the word of fate that she believes more in her own immortal destiny
than in the blind workings of a mechanical God. The king and the rishi sit
quiet looking straight into the "eyes of Fate", not willing to
disturb the workings of Providence. But Savitri's mother will not so easily be
silenced. Although she is the queen, yet is she a human mother also who cannot
bear ill luck to befall her child. Aswapati's queen decides to arraign Destiny
itself.
In this
turbulent condition of mind, she loses all balance; her mind that had hitherto
won for itself a place on the higher planes of living now descends into the
vital plane where ordinary human passions rage and rule. To her now earthly
mind, the workings of destiny come as an unnatural shock. In her throat rises
the desperate cry of all humanity that groans under the load of a freakish
destiny.
Mankind is essentially ignorant of the
cause that produces the effect of human pain. Forced into a tragic condition
man cries out why there should be all this grief and pain. Savitri's mother too
questions the sage:
By what pitiless adverse Necessity
Or what cold freak of a Creator's will,
By what random accident or governed
Chance
That shaped a rule out of fortuitous
steps,
Made destiny from an hour's emotion, came
Into the unreadable mystery of Time
The direr mystery of grief and pain?
Why should
there be these perversions, these tumours and cankers in this world which
should essentially be a beautiful creation of God? Did God make his handiwork
successfully, and did some demon come afterwards to wreck its harmony?
Something must have gone wrong with creation even from the beginning:
A fatal seed
was sown in life's false start
When evil
twinned with good on earthly soil.
With the sowing
of this dragon seed, there,
.. .first
appeared the malady of mind,
Its pang of
thought, its quest for the aim of life.
Man had eaten
the forbidden fruit, alas! No more for him the life in blessed ignorance and
unfeeling matter; the free and simple ways, the guileless frankness, are lost
forever. The birth of 'mind' has ushered in the vicious circle of evil and
pain. Heaven has breathed into him reason, mind, intellect and imagination. The
rose of man has bloomed in its fullness. But in this very rose of humanity the
canker of tragedy finds a place and reduces the human flower to nought.
A grisly
company of maladies
Come, licensed
lodgers, into man's bodily house,
Purveyors of
death and torturers of life.
And the result?
Life is a marvel missed, an art gone
wry;….
God's gift of
this bright and pleasant world to man is itself darkened by a shadow
overhanging it. All Nature is ambivalent; there is a good, bright side, and
withal, a bad and cloudy side too.
Error is the
comrade of our mortal thought
And falsehood
lurks in the deep bosom of truth,
Sin poisons
with its vivid flowers of joy
Or leaves a red
scar burnt across the soul;
Virtue is a
grey bondage and a gaol.
At every step
is laid for us a snare.
Torn and frustrated at the very beginning of
our benevolent thoughts and honest actions, we espy in this world only a
wreckage before and a desert after:
A growing register of calamities
Is the past's account, the future's book
of Fate.
Not satisfied with fate's wreckage, man also
contrives miseries of his own doing. He commits countless blasphemies and
unthinkable follies and brings retribution upon himself. And drunk with
Faustus-like success he invades the secret chambers of Nature and commits again
sacrilege of various kinds:
His science is an artificer of doom;
He ransacks earth for means to harm his
kind;
He slays his happiness and others' good.
These researches of man will bring him no
good, for he has lost the Godhead's seal that alone could make his science holy
and fruitful. Instead, his science is pursued for selfish ends and brings him
only doom and death. But in spite of the heavy budget of dooms, he has not
grown any wiser; still he takes the same path of tragedy and falls headlong
into the same pit of Hell. Centuries of bitter lessons have not made him take
the path of Dharma. He has remained what he ever was; still does he fight and
war for selfish ends, and bedews Mother Earth with innocent blood. Not only
does he go in search of the Devil's tools, but he also destroys the good in the
world. Some wise men create something beautiful, but there are others to
destroy the work:
War making
nought the sweet smiling calm of life,
Battle and
rapine, ruin and massacre
Are still the
fierce pastimes of man's warring tribes;
An idiot hour
destroys what centuries made,
His wanton rage
or frenzied hate lays low
The beauty and
greatness by his genius wrought
And the mighty
output of a nation's toil.
Thus man unmakes
God's beautiful and kindly creation and "wallows in his self-made
misery". What is this life on earth, made miserable by ruthless fools? Is
it not merely "an episode in a meaningless tale?" It has been said
that we have come here from a heavenly source, and that in us is lodged the
heavenly Life-spark. It has also been said that the ultimate goal of our life
is to return to our harbour-home, that golden source of the Life Divine. If
that were so, if we are of Heaven and are to return there again, where is the
need for this strange savage interlude of the earth? Why should we be made to
pass through this aimless futile drama of pain, terror, rapine and death? The
queen's mind is indeed a whirl of questions. Why, why this tragedy of a world
signifying nothing? Is all the world, is all life, a mere illusion? In the end,
the tragedy that threatens Savitri turns her mother almost into a nihilist.
Perhaps the
soul we feel is only a dream,
Eternal self a
fiction sensed in trance.
The queen is a
woman, and being also a mother, she has come to a stage when the higher
thinking powers have been numbed by the shadow of a doom. Now it behoves Narad
to guide the sorely afflicted queen out of the labyrinth of her ignorance. So
the eternal seer begins:
Was then the
sun a dream because there is night?
Hidden in the
mortal's heart the Eternal lives:...
It is the cloud
of unknowing that prompts us to deny the light of the world and the spirit. The
sun does not cease to exist during the night. Even so, the presence of tragedy
does not exclude the reality of the Eternal spirit that abides in our inmost
heart. Our own ignorance veils the light within us, even from ourselves.
Because of this ignorance in mankind pain was born, for pain naturally follows
ignorance. And it is also true that one cannot attain joy without first
undergoing pain. But for the throes of labour, there would be no birth. Even in
the beginning of things, "by pain Life
stirred in the
subliminal deep"; so does pain through shock and difficulty push mankind
to the heights:
Pain is the hammer of the Gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortal's heart,
His slow inertia as of living stone.
The image of
the Superman is hewn out of the earthy mortal by inflicting on him the pain of death.
Unless we are tested and tempered by failures, we would rest quite Oblomov-like
in a trance of success and miss the chance of self-transcendence, for it is
when we are struck by tragedy that we wish to transcend to the higher states:
If the heart were not forced to want and
weep,
His soul would have lain down content, at
ease,
And never thought to exceed the human
start
And never learned to climb towards the
Sun.
Hence the
Divine Mother cries out for yet bigger and acuter trials for mankind, so that
out of the tremendous labour and pain a greater creation may come into being.
Vain are the deluded cries of mortals like the queen against the pain inflicted
by Providence:
Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing
men
To
greatness: an inspired labour chisels
With heavenly cruelty an unwilling mould.
In every mortal
resides the divine spark; it is to be fanned into a divine flame. The greater
the pain the mortal undergoes, the sooner will it assume its real glow. Of
course it is all very easily said, but actually the cosmic pain and the cosmic
evolution implicit in the process are indescribable. It is on those who are
selected to undergo this cosmic suffering, it is on those who wish to save this
world, that the mantle of thorns unerringly falls. They are the persons who
have to undergo this cosmic pain. As examples Narad (or Sri Aurobindo) projects
before us the vision of Christ and the vision of Shiva. There is Christ who has
"drunk the bitter cup" and who "has signed salvation's testament
with his blood":
It is finished, the dread mysterious
sacrifice,
Offered by God's martyred body for the
world;
Gethsemane and Calvary are his lot,
He carries the cross on which man's soul
is nailed;
His
escort is the curses of the crowd;
Insult and jeer are his right's
acknowledgement;
Two thieves slain with him mock his
mighty death.
He has trod with bleeding brow the
Saviour's way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body's death his soul's vast
light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his
death.
It is clear
that Narad here wants to prepare Savitri's mind and strengthen her will by
describing the tribulations of the world-redeemers. She herself is one; Narad
tells her how Christ and Shiva did their tasks unflinchingly, undaunted by
death or poison. Mankind has its ills and pains; no human being is exempt from
them. But the tortures that a saviour of mankind has to undergo are tremendous
and have epic dimensions. The pertinent question would of course be: Why should
a saviour be subjected to these mortal tribulations? But even a saviour must
know what afflicts mankind before he could prescribe the necessary cure:
Exempt and unafflicted by earth's fate,
How shall he cure the ills he never felt?
Therefore Christ had to undergo the jeers
of the lewd people and had to be nailed on the cross. It is for the same
purpose Shiva had to drink the poison from the sea. To save mankind, God dons a
mortal garb, undergoes human suffering and ultimately even 'dies' to give birth
to a brave new world. The saviour's situation is terrible indeed. The very
people whom he has sought to save turn against him, mock at him, and do their
best to wreck his hard-wrought handiwork.
This is because
there is a dark spot in man's own mind that continuously instigates the lower
instincts in him, and drags him to Hell. Hence, however often the great
saviours come to this earth, they in the end succeed in saving only a few. So,
first of all, a "larger light" must come and clear man's heart of the
dark spots, and hand him over as a clear plate for God to write thereon the
Song Celestial of Eternal Life.
The ordinary
mind of man must give way to a "supramental plane of mind" where
everything is pure white, and nothing sullies its white radiance. Till that is
done,
.. .till the
evil is slain in its own home
And Light
invades the world's inconscient base
And perished
has the adversary Force,
He still must
labour on, his work half done.
The
world-redeemer, the divine soul, stands steadfast in this tremendous task, and
is neither tired nor daunted by failures and difficulties. His will is of
steel, his determination of iron. In spite of the barriers and troubles,
In the dreadful
passages, the fatal paths,
Invulnerable
his soul, his heart unslain,
He lives
through the opposition of earth's Powers
And Nature's
ambushes and the world's attacks.
This saviour
who has understood the way-s of the world and the workings of fate, the gnostic
being, undergoes the darkest of earth's terrors, the acutest of the world's
pains and the deepest of human sufferings, so that he may bring to the dark
world—even to the dark world—the Light Divine:
He must enter the eternity of Night
And know God's darkness as he knows his
Sun.
For
this he must go down into the pit,
For this he must invade the dolorous
Vasts.
Having passed through this dark night of
the soul, the gnostic being would emerge
into the Eternal Light.
The
superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes
And the
truth-conscious world come down to earth
Invading Matter
with the Spirit's ray,
Awaking its
silence to immortal thoughts,
Awaking the
dumb heart to the living Word.
This mortal
life shall house Eternity's bliss,
Tie body's self
taste immortality.
Then shall the
world-redeemer's task be done.
After this
lucid account of man's spiritual becoming, Narad turns to the immediate problem
and warns the queen not to meddle with the decree of Providence. Any attempt to
assume a greater cunning, and try to change the course of destiny, would bring
the late that befalls the titans. The path of the titans is self-destructive.
By denying God's sovereignty the titan brings retribution on his own head. The
queen will be well advised not to tempt Providence. But if she will bear her
yoke patiently by strengthening her will, all will yet turn out well.
Thy spirit's
strength shall make thee one with God,
Thy agony shall
change to ecstasy,
Indifference
deepen into infinity's calm
And joy laugh
nude on the peaks of the Absolute.
While trying to
explain to the queen the birth of pain in this world, Narad tells her a short
parable. The spirit of mankind was originally perfection itself. But the spirit
was not content to rest in its perfect state. It wished to see what the world
was like. In this adventure it descended into the lower levels and travelled
through the vital planes. In this original descent was the fall that brought
pain in its wake.
As a result the
inner splendour was veiled from its casket, man. The forbidden fruit had been
plucked and eaten. So the pain of knowledge came and, with it, this half-seen,
little understood, undefined world:
Thus came, born
from a blind tremendous choice,
This great
perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of
Ignorance, this home of Pain:
There are
pitched desire's tents, grief's headquarters.
A vast disguise
conceals the Eternal's bliss.
Pain is now
quite natural to mankind, and a world-redeemer like Savitri has to carry her
own tremendous load of pain and affliction.
The king now questions the sage whether
there is any power in man to save himself, or is he merely ruled by an external
spirit. He had heard, on her birth, that such an inner power had descended with
Savitri. Is not this inner power equal to the task of facing the threatened
fate? Can she not save herself from pain through the exercise of this power? In
answer, Narad tells the king that the Superior Divine rejects the prayers of
unthinking mankind for unbroken joy on the mortal plane. It is true that
Savitri is born with an imprisoned splendour:
A greatness in
thy daughter's soul resides
That can
transform herself and all around
But even she, the daughter of Aswapati,
"must cross on stones of suffering to its goal". Man's mental machine
is limited in its scope, and cannot perceive the integral truth and the self
that lurks behind the law of the universe. The limited vision of man sees only
a lifeless law in the workings of the universe and thus misses the fact that
the spirit of man works along with the wisdom and spirit of the Universe.
For Savitri's
future, the external spirit, God, has pronounced its decree. Now it remains for
the internal spark to burst into a flame. But it is not for Narad to say what
exactly is going to happen:
It is decreed
and Satyavan must die;
The hour is
fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.
What else shall
be is written in her soul
Fate's decree
is not altogether final; "Man can accept his fate, he can refuse".
And if man is thwarted once, he can always rise again and again to fulfil his
real destiny. The true seeker after Truth will not be frightened even by the
dread alarm of fate. So if Savitri's destiny is to achieve ultimate victory,
she will never waver in her quest for the Life Divine. Even if trouble and pain
lie before her, she will not fail to advance.
Hence the king
need entertain no doubts regarding her future, and try to change the course of
her destiny. And neither Aswapati nor his queen should try to separate the
young lovers because of the encircling doom. The present situation is all for
the best:
In vain thou
mournst that Satyavan must die;
His death is a
beginning of greater life,
Death is the
spirit's opportunity.
A vast
intention has brought two souls close
And love and
death conspire towards one great end.
Narad further
tells the queen to leave the course of destiny to its own fulfilment. Nor need
she think that Savitri is too trail and weak to be the agent of the world's
redemption:
Sometimes one
life is charged with earth's destiny,
It cries not
for succour from the time-bound powers.
Alone she is
equal to her mighty task.
Soon will a day
come when, armed by her own will, she will be facing alone a mighty power. But
in her loneliness she will find her strength:
The great are
strongest when they stand alone.
A God-given
might of being is their force,
A ray from
self's solitude of light the guide;
thus armed and
strengthened, Savitri will have to face the day,
.. .when she
must stand unhelped
On a dangerous
brink of the world's doom and hers,
Carrying the
world's future on her lonely breast,
Carrying the
human hope in a heart left sole
To conquer or
fail on a last desperate verge,. . .
Must cross
alone a perilous bridge in Time
And reach an
apex of world-destiny
Where all is
won or all is lost for man.
In that hour neither the queen nor
anybody else can help her, "alone she must conquer or alone must
fall". The queen would do better to stand back and leave Savitri to work
out mankind's destiny:
Think not to intercede with the hidden
Will,
Intrude not twixt her spirit and its force
But leave her to her mighty self and
Fate.
Having done his
appointed task of enlightening the queen and strengthening Savitri's will,
Narad now vanishes from the human scene. But even after he has gone, even after
the holy seer has merged with the skies, the listening souls on earth, the
king, the queen and Savitri, hear a golden song of hope from the eternal
heavens:
A high and far imperishable voice
Chanted the anthem of eternal love.
(An excerpt from “Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri – A study of
the cosmic epic”, Dr. Premanandakumar, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)
