Loretta reads Savitri:Five.III "Satyavan and Savitri" part 2

Transcript of:

Savitri: Book Five, Canto III (part 2 of 3)

by Loretta, 2018 (34:38)

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Loretta reads Savitri Book Five: The Book of Love Canto III: Satyavan and Savitri Part 2 of 3, pages 404-408

   

Savitri has met her soul-mate. They met in the sunlit glade near his home in the remote forest.

She is a princess from Madra – a kingdom where she grew up in a remote palace. She grew up with all that a royal life could give her. He is a prince: Satyavan, the son of an exiled king, living with his family in a rude forest hermitage. He is far from the material luxuries of palace life, far from civilization – far from the crowds of people who serve royalty, and love and obey kings and queens.

Still, even without a kingdom, he is a prince among men. Just as Savitri is so developed that no man worthy of her came to claim her in marriage, so Satyavan is also the highest development in humankind.

In Book Six, “The Book of Fate”, when Savitri returns to Madra to tell her father that she has found her mate, Narad, the messenger of the gods, is waiting for her there. He has come for a divine work. In this case, his divine task is to tell Savitri something of the great work that awaits her. She has found her mate, and it is time.

Narad does not give her guidance – he simply gives her news: news which both brings her soul to strength, and opens the door of her fate. Sri Aurobindo writes that Savitri's mother is worried about what will happen to her, because Narad has started hinting that Savitri's marriage will result in doom, and that she is driven to follow a fateful path. Savitri's mother demands that Narad reveal the truth about Savitri's choice of Satyavan, and tell about her future with him. She says even though the truth is hard to bear, it is best to know the truth. And Sri Aurobindo writes:

Then cried the sage piercing the mother’s heart,

Forcing to steel the will of Savitri,

His words set free the spring of cosmic Fate. (p.429)

Now he sets free destiny in that hour. And then Narad describes Satyavan as “A marvel of the meeting earth and heavens” (p.429).

His figure is the front of Nature’s march,

His single being excels the works of Time. (p.429)

He describes many beautiful things about Satyavan, and ends by saying how sad it is that a being of so rare, so divine a make, will have to die in one year. He says that “Heaven’s greatness came, but was too great to stay.” (p.431). Naturally, Savitri's mother is alarmed – she objects to Savitri's choice. And she tells her to give up Satyavan, and go again to look for another mate. But Savitri refuses. Because for her, it is a question of having found the greatest love she can have on earth: the immortal love that she has always had with Satyavan, the love that she has always sought for. It is the all-powerful Love that will give her the strength to face almighty Death, and bring her soul-mate back to life.

But it's not only her love for Satyavan that empowers her. She has a capacity for love. Her great heart, and her great capacity to love, also give her strength.

Topic::Love is the immortal power that creates and sustains the universe. Love is the path, the goal, the answer. The answer for everyone.

In the beginning of Savitri, in Book One, Canto II, Sri Aurobindo first describes Savitri for us. And in this description, he gives us teaching about this supremely conscious force, this universal power of love, which seeks its manifestation and realization on earth. He says that love looks for people who are capable of receiving love – capable of having love express itself through them, so that love can realize its eternal aim on earth. Savitri is one of those people. He describes her as:

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,

Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;

Love in her was wider than the universe,

The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. (p.15)

He speaks of love as the godhead which can dwell in us all, if we can keep it. So when he's speaking about Savitri, he's speaking about someone who can keep it, and he says:

The great unsatisfied godhead here could dwell:

Vacant of the dwarf self’s imprisoned air,

Her mood could harbour his sublimer breath

Spiritual that can make all things divine. (p.15)

In her he found a vastness like his own,

His high warm subtle ether he refound

And moved in her as in his natural home.

In her he met his own eternity. (p.16)

In Volume 3 of Mother's Collected Works, the volume called Questions and Answers 1929-1931, Mother speaks in an early talk to some sadhaks about love. And this is what she said:

Questions and Answers 1929-1931
2 June 1929

PDF (7 pages)

“Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself and its movement is free and independent of the objects in which and through which it manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation, wherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening for it. What you call love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity to receive and manifest this universal force. […] it is a supremely conscious Power. Consciously it seeks for its manifestation and realisation upon earth; consciously it chooses its instruments, awakens to its vibrations those who are capable of an answer, endeavours to realise in them that which is its eternal aim, and when the instrument is not fit, drops it and turns to look for others. Men think that they have suddenly fallen in love; they see their love come and grow and then it fades — or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are more specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of a personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the everlasting sea of universal love.
         Love is universal and eternal; it is always manifesting itself and always identical in its essence. And it is a Divine Force; for the distortions we see in its apparent workings belong to its instruments. Love does not manifest in human beings alone; it is everywhere. Its movement is there in plants, perhaps in the very stones; in the animals it is easy to detect its presence. […] in human beings the first contact of love does bring down something of its purer substance; they become capable for a moment of forgetting themselves, for a moment its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful. But afterwards there comes to the surface the human nature”

“Wherever into a human story of love, there has entered even an atom of pure love and it has been allowed to manifest without too much distortion, we find a true and beautiful thing. And if the movement does not last, it is because it is not conscious of its own aim and seeking; it has not the knowledge that it is not the union of one being with another that it is seeking after but the union of all beings with the Divine.”

And here, in this second part of Canto III, we are told about human love that yearns for union with the Divine, through the things that Satyavan says to Savitri about his life. Sri Aurobindo has written that Savitri's father, King Aswapati, the traveller of the worlds, took his inner journey to the center of creation to find the Divine Mother and to ask her to come and help men progress more in their spiritual seeking. And here, Satyavan is speaking of this spiritual seeking to this incarnation of the Divine Mother who has come down to save him.

The goal of this spiritual seeking is full realization of man's divine essence, as supremely conscious Love.

When Satyavan continues to tell Savitri about his life – as we're going to read here in Canto III – it sounds like a life of spiritual seeking. Clearly this is the most important thing to him, and this is what he wants to share with her. And in this case, he is saying that its fulfillment comes to him through the love that they attain by loving each other. And that can be true with the love that we attain by loving anyone.

In Indian spiritual tradition, adoration of the Divine is the quickest path. They call it bhakti. And it is simply endless and boundless love for the object of one's seeking, the Divine.

In Canto II here, Sri Aurobindo has written:

To live, to love are signs of infinite things,

Love is a glory from eternity’s spheres.

Abased, disfigured, mocked by baser mights

That steal his name and shape and ecstasy,

He is still the godhead by which all can change. (p.397)

Satyavan and Savitri are the Supreme Master and the Divine Mother loving each other again on earth, in human forms. We have here the most beautiful poetic example. And all true couples are the same. The great love they love each other with is the love of the Supreme for his eternal mate, and her love for him. The eternal miracle, over and over again, through time immemorial on earth.

Mother wrote several things about what couples should share together in their relationship. In the end, she says that the final and most important thing is for them to seek the Divine together, as an integral part of their union. And here Satyavan tells Savitri all about his search for the Divine, when he describes himself to her. He tells her, “Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came.” (p.404). He tells her that he:

...caught the echoes of a word supreme

And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity

And listened through music for the eternal Voice. (p.405)

He says:

I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,

But could not clasp the body of my God

Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet. (p.405)

He is telling her that he has not succeeded so far in his sadhana. And his final sadhana is for his body to realize the Divine. He says:

I sat with the forest sages in their trance:

There poured awakening streams of diamond light,

I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.

But still there lacked the last transcendent power

And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.

The Spirit was saved, the body lost and mute

Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;

The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.

But thou hast come and all will surely change (p.405)

Then a little farther on, he tells her:

My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.

My body like my spirit shall be free.

It shall escape from Death and Ignorance. (p.406)

Our physical body is the last stronghold of ignorance. It is the most dense and unconscious expression of the Supreme Consciousness that exists in our universe. So necessarily, the final goal of our attempt to be conscious of the Supreme – to have the Supreme consciousness – is to have it in our body. Our body must be as conscious as the rest of us.

Satyavan feels that their union will bring this realization. He tells Savitri that he will “feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs” (p.406), and he will hear the World-Mother's wisdom in Savitri's sacred voice. He knows that marriage is a sacrament: a sacred worship of God's creation, in the form of relationship between him and his true mate.

And again, we see that he is alluding to marriage and physical contact, when he says, “I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs” (p.406).

In her soul, Savitri knows he is her mate. She says:

Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,

I would know thee as if we had ever lived

Together in the chamber of our souls. (p.406)

Satyavan's answer to Savitri tells us a story of the soul's awakening to the wonder and beauty of love for its own soul-mate. In Canto II, Sri Aurobindo has written:

The soul can recognise its answering soul

Across dividing Time and, on life’s roads

Absorbed wrapped traveller, turning it recovers

Familiar splendours in an unknown face

And touched by the warning finger of swift love

It thrills again to an immortal joy

Wearing a mortal body for delight. (p.397)

Here in a few brief sentences, Satyavan says to Savitri many truths about the contact that soul-mates have, even before they meet. And all of us have those truths in our lives – in our inner lives – because our consciousness is connected with the consciousness of the ones that we love. And Satyavan says:

“O golden princess, perfect Savitri,

More I would tell than failing words can speak,

Of all that thou hast meant to me, unknown,

All that the lightning-flash of love reveals

In one great hour of the unveiling gods.

Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.

For now I know that all I lived and was

Moved towards this moment of my heart’s rebirth;

I look back on the meaning of myself,

A soul made ready on earth’s soil for thee. (p.406)

Then he tells her how her coming will fulfill all that his aspiring soul longs for. He says that when his days were like other men's days, there came glimpses of a deeper self, and a feeling of a truth and a greatness working towards a hidden end. Then he tells of how he searched for what he knew was there. And here, Sri Aurobindo gives us a brief summary of how the mind's working – how mental processes, and outward forms – cannot reveal the integral truth of being. Satyavan says that with all that he tried with his mind, still he “lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.” (p.407) Whatever he tried with form and understanding secrets, he “looked upon the world and missed the Self” (p.407) . And when he found the Self, he lost the world. He lost “the body of God, / The link of the finite with the Infinite,” (p.408), our final realization. He lost “The bridge between the appearance and the Truth” (p.408); and he lost the mystic sense of immortality.

But he tells Savitri that she has brought him the gold link, and God's gold sun shines on him from her face.

Gold is the color associated with the supramental consciousness. His heart is changed; the earth is changed; his mind, which could not help his sadhana, transfigures now into a rapturous seer. Again he proposes their marriage (!). He says:

...Air, soil and stream

Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee (p.408)

In the first part of this canto, he asked her to come down from her chariot. “Descend,” he said, “Let thy journey cease, come down to us.” (p.402). And as we're going to end the second part of this canto, he says to her words that are loved by so many who read Savitri – he says:

Descend, O happiness, with thy moon-gold feet

Enrich earth’s floors upon whose sleep we lie. (p.408)

So, Savitri. Book Five: “The Book of Love”. Canto III, “Satyavan and Savitri”, part 2.

As we return to the forest glade, Satyavan is telling Savitri about his early life. He says...

...
Before Fate led me into this emerald world,
Aroused by some foreshadowing touch within,
An early prescience in my mind approached
The great dumb animal consciousness of earth
Now grown so close to me who have left old pomps
To live in this grandiose murmur dim and vast.
Already I met her in my spirit’s dream.
As if to a deeper country of the soul
Transposing the vivid imagery of earth,
Through an inner seeing and sense a wakening came.
A visioned spell pursued my boyhood’s hours,
All things the eye had caught in coloured lines
Were seen anew through the interpreting mind
And in the shape it sought to seize the soul.
An early child-god took my hand that held,
Moved, guided by the seeking of his touch,
Bright forms and hues which fled across his sight;
Limned upon page and stone they spoke to men.
High beauty’s visitants my intimates were.
The neighing pride of rapid life that roams
Wind-maned through our pastures, on my seeing mood
Cast shapes of swiftness; trooping spotted deer
Against the vesper sky became a song	p.405
Of evening to the silence of my soul.
I caught for some eternal eye the sudden
King-fisher flashing to a darkling pool;
A slow swan silvering the azure lake,
A shape of magic whiteness, sailed through dream;
Leaves trembling with the passion of the wind,
Pranked butterflies, the conscious flowers of air,
And wandering wings in blue infinity
Lived on the tablets of my inner sight;
Mountains and trees stood there like thoughts from God.
The brilliant long-bills in their vivid dress,
The peacock scattering on the breeze his moons
Painted my memory like a frescoed wall.
I carved my vision out of wood and stone;
I caught the echoes of a word supreme
And metred the rhythm-beats of infinity
And listened through music for the eternal Voice.
I felt a covert touch, I heard a call,
But could not clasp the body of my God
Or hold between my hands the World-Mother’s feet.
In men I met strange portions of a Self
That sought for fragments and in fragments lived:
Each lived in himself and for himself alone
And with the rest joined only fleeting ties;
Each passioned over his surface joy and grief,
Nor saw the Eternal in his secret house.
I conversed with Nature, mused with the changeless stars,
God’s watch-fires burning in the ignorant Night,
And saw upon her mighty visage fall
A ray prophetic of the Eternal’s sun.
I sat with the forest sages in their trance:
There poured awakening streams of diamond light,
I glimpsed the presence of the One in all.
But still there lacked the last transcendent power
And Matter still slept empty of its Lord.
The Spirit was saved, the body lost and mute	p.406
Lived still with Death and ancient Ignorance;
The Inconscient was its base, the Void its fate.
But thou hast come and all will surely change:
I shall feel the World-Mother in thy golden limbs
And hear her wisdom in thy sacred voice.
The child of the Void shall be reborn in God,
My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.
My body like my spirit shall be free.
It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.”
And Savitri, musing still, replied to him:
“Speak more to me, speak more, O Satyavan,
Speak of thyself and all thou art within;
I would know thee as if we had ever lived
Together in the chamber of our souls.
Speak till a light shall come into my heart
And my moved mortal mind shall understand
What all the deathless being in me feels.
It knows that thou art he my spirit has sought
Amidst earth’s thronging visages and forms
Across the golden spaces of my life.”
And Satyavan like a replying harp
To the insistent calling of a flute
Answered her questioning and let stream to her
His heart in many-coloured waves of speech:
“O golden princess, perfect Savitri,
More I would tell than failing words can speak,
Of all that thou hast meant to me, unknown,
All that the lightning-flash of love reveals
In one great hour of the unveiling gods.
Even a brief nearness has reshaped my life.
For now I know that all I lived and was
Moved towards this moment of my heart’s rebirth;
I look back on the meaning of myself,
A soul made ready on earth’s soil for thee.
Once were my days like days of other men:
To think and act was all, to enjoy and breathe;	p.407
This was the width and height of mortal hope:
Yet there came glimpses of a deeper self
That lives behind Life and makes her act its scene.
A truth was felt that screened its shape from mind,
A Greatness working towards a hidden end,
And vaguely through the forms of earth there looked
Something that life is not and yet must be.
I groped for the Mystery with the lantern, Thought.
Its glimmerings lighted with the abstract word
A half-visible ground and travelling yard by yard
It mapped a system of the Self and God.
I could not live the truth it spoke and thought.
I turned to seize its form in visible things,
Hoping to fix its rule by mortal mind,
Imposed a narrow structure of world-law
Upon the freedom of the Infinite,
A hard firm skeleton of outward Truth,
A mental scheme of a mechanic Power.
This light showed more the darknesses unsearched;
It made the original Secrecy more occult;
It could not analyse its cosmic Veil
Or glimpse the Wonder-worker’s hidden hand
And trace the pattern of his magic plans.
I plunged into an inner seeing Mind
And knew the secret laws and sorceries
That make of Matter mind’s bewildered slave:
The mystery was not solved but deepened more.
I strove to find its hints through Beauty and Art,
But Form cannot unveil the indwelling Power;
Only it throws its symbols at our hearts.
It evoked a mood of self, invoked a sign
Of all the brooding glory hidden in sense:
I lived in the ray but faced not to the sun.
I looked upon the world and missed the Self,
And when I found the Self, I lost the world,
My other selves I lost and the body of God,	p.408
The link of the finite with the Infinite,
The bridge between the appearance and the Truth,
The mystic aim for which the world was made,
The human sense of Immortality.
But now the gold link comes to me with thy feet
And His gold sun has shone on me from thy face.
For now another realm draws near with thee
And now diviner voices fill my ear,
A strange new world swims to me in thy gaze
Approaching like a star from unknown heavens;
A cry of spheres comes with thee and a song
Of flaming gods. I draw a wealthier breath
And in a fierier march of moments move.
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.
A foam-leap travelling from the waves of bliss
Has changed my heart and changed the earth around:
All with thy coming fills. Air, soil and stream
Wear bridal raiment to be fit for thee
And sunlight grows a shadow of thy hue
Because of change within me by thy look.
Come nearer to me from thy car of light
On this green sward disdaining not our soil.
For here are secret spaces made for thee
Whose caves of emerald long to screen thy form.
Wilt thou not make this mortal bliss thy sphere?
Descend, O happiness, with thy moon-gold feet
Enrich earth’s floors upon whose sleep we lie.
...

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