Loretta reads Savitri:Six.II "The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain" part 4

Transcript of:

Savitri: Book Six, Canto II (part 4 of 5)

by Loretta, 2018 (32:04)

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Loretta reads Savitri Book Six: The Book of Fate Canto II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain Part 4 of 5, pages 454-458

   

The divine all-seeing sage Narad has just explained to Savitri's mother the queen that she must not try to change things by force. He has cautioned her not to try to take the Titan's road. And then he described the way of the Titan, the adverse being who sees the image of God as power. God for him is power itself. And “He sees his little self as very God”, because “His ego has stretched into infinity” (p.453).

Narad advised the queen to bear this great world's law of pain, and to lean for her soul's support on the strength of heaven. “Turn towards high Truth,” he told her, “aspire to love and peace.” (p.451) He explained that God's power is within her, but her consciousness forgets to be divine as it lives on in a body of flesh. Therefore, she cannot bear the world's tremendous touch, and she cries out and says that there is pain.

Yet the goal of her spirit is God's infinity. Its bliss is there, behind the world's face of tears. Bliss is the secret stuff of all that is. “Bear,” Narad tells the queen; “thou shalt find at last thy road to bliss.” (p.453)

As we begin this part of the canto today, Narad says to the queen:

“O mortal who complainst of death and fate,

Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;

This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,

Thou art thyself the author of thy pain. (p.454)

So he is basically telling the queen that because her soul chose to take birth in a human body on earth, she has chosen her own condition. So she has to be responsible, for getting through her life in the best way possible.

He speaks about the soul in its eternal infinity, in a vastness of truth and consciousness and light. He speaks of the soul being drawn to something other. He describes this universe, which is made of inconscient matter, as a negative infinity – a huge void which Nature has created, and which is unconscious, made of the inconscient stuff. He says:

As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void

The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:

It longed for the adventure of Ignorance

And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown (p.455)

Then Narad goes on. He describes some of what awaits the growing soul who decides to incarnate in a physical body.

Mother and Sri Aurobindo teach that our soul – or as they often called it, our psychic being – is the immortal part of us which is also the line of continuity of consciousness that we have been through all our lives, and that we will continue to be through all following lifetime. Any past-life memories that we have come from our soul, because it's the only thing that survives from life to life to life. And past-life memories are usually memories of significant moments which shape us in any particular lifetime. Because our soul chooses the life-experiences we will have in each birth for our own personal progress, it remembers the formative experiences. And so these are our past-life memories.

In Book Two, “The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds”, the king enters into the soul of the world. All souls return into the world-soul to take rest between lifetimes. There in that rest, they assimilate the experiences of the life that they have just lived. When that has been done, the soul is ready to choose another life.

The soul's resting period between lives can take a short time or a long time, depending on the person, the many previous lifetimes they have had, and how spiritually developed they are. Mother once told the class that she has been present at numerable incarnations, and that incarnations can all be very different. Basically, anything could happen, particular to the particular being and the particular incarnation. The soul chooses the circumstances of our next birth, for the best situations for growth and progress. (Even if we don't happen to think so when we're going through it.)

In Book Two, Canto XIV, which is called “The World-Soul”, Sri Aurobindo has a long, clear description of souls that have returned to the world-soul. He describes clearly the soul's experience as it is resting in the world-soul:

Immersed in voiceless internatal trance

The beings that once wore forms on earth sat there

In shining chambers of spiritual sleep.

Passed were the pillar-posts of birth and death,

Passed was their little scene of symbol deeds,

Passed were the heavens and hells of their long road;

They had returned into the world’s deep soul.

All now was gathered into pregnant rest:

Person and nature suffered a slumber change.

In trance they gathered back their bygone selves,

In a background memory’s foreseeing muse

Prophetic of new personality

Arranged the map of their coming destiny’s course:

Heirs of their past, their future’s discoverers,

Electors of their own self-chosen lot,

They waited for the adventure of new life.

A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,

Although the same for ever in many shapes

By the outward mind unrecognisable,

Assuming names unknown in unknown climes

Imprints through Time upon the earth’s worn page

A growing figure of its secret self,

And learns by experience what the spirit knew,

Till it can see its truth alive and God.

Once more they must face the problem-game of birth,

The soul’s experiment of joy and grief

And thought and impulse lighting the blind act,

And venture on the roads of circumstance,

Through inner movements and external scenes

Travelling to self across the forms of things.

Into creation’s centre he had come.

The spirit wandering from state to state

Finds here the silence of its starting-point

In the formless force and the still fixity

And brooding passion of the world of Soul.

All that is made and once again unmade,

The calm persistent vision of the One

Inevitably re-makes, it lives anew:

Forces and lives and beings and ideas

Are taken into the stillness for a while;

There they remould their purpose and their drift,

Recast their nature and re-form their shape.

Ever they change and changing ever grow,

And passing through a fruitful stage of death

And after long reconstituting sleep

Resume their place in the process of the Gods

Until their work in cosmic Time is done.

     Here was the fashioning chamber of the worlds.

An interval was left twixt act and act,

Twixt birth and birth, twixt dream and waking dream,

A pause that gave new strength to do and be. (p.293)

Coming back now to Book Six, Canto II, after Narad has explained that the soul itself has chosen to descend into earth's inconscience, Savitri's father, King Aswapati, asks a question. The king has traveled all the world of his inner being – and therefore he has traveled all the universal planes of consciousness. He was searching for the Divine Mother. And when he found her, she promised him that she would take birth as his daughter to help suffering mankind.

Narad clearly knows all of this, and he has been hinting that Savitri will do this, by telling the queen and the king about other great beings who have come to take on the tremendous task – the task of changing the world, and having to bear the world's pain to do it.

Last time he described the world-redeemer, and his heavy task. So now, Aswapati asks Narad:

Is then the spirit ruled by an outward world?

O seer, is there no remedy within?

But what is Fate if not the spirit’s will

After long time fulfilled by cosmic Force? (p.456)

Then he says about his daughter:

I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;

Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate? (p.456)

So he is saying that since Savitri is really the Divine Mother, surely she has power to change her own fate; but remember, Narad has just spent a long time speaking about all the suffering that these great saviors have to go through. In Aswapati's polite and subtle words, he is asking Narad to tell them who Savitri really is, and what she will do.

But Narad is all-seeing. And in his own polite and subtle way, he refuses to be drawn into the subject. Sri Aurobindo writes:

But Narad answered covering truth with truth (p.456)

And then he goes on to explain that whatever we want, whatever we think is happening, there is a wisdom and a truth-consciousness which sees all from above, and directs our lives. He says heaven's wiser love keeps Savitri's privilege of pain for her. There is a greatness in her soul, which can transform herself and all around. But, she must cross on stones of suffering to its goal. He says, all her cause of joy must transmute to pain, and she must “share the human need of grief” (p.457). But he does not elaborate on the subject. Instead he changes the subject completely. And he starts to speak about how man's mind is bound by imperfect thought.

We know that when the day of Satyavan's death draws closer and closer, grief over losing Satyavan will become a food of mighty love in Savitri's heart. Sri Aurobindo wrote, “it filled the whole world; / It was all her life, became her whole earth and heaven.”(p.473) It's clear that Narad knows – but he's not going to distress his listeners with this information. Instead he explains that man cannot know God with his limited mind, which cuts things into small pieces, and takes each piece for the totality. And therefore, man cannot see the workings of an all-wise force, or feel the mystic Mother's heart, or know the will of the timeless working out in cosmic Time. Narad is very carefully and diplomatically saying that the king, like the queen, has missed seeing the truth.

Sri Aurobindo and Mother teach that this mind and thought of which Narad speaks here is the common sense-bound mind of ordinary man. The mind which receives all its information from our imperfect senses.

In Book Two, Sri Aurobindo maps out the climbing hierarchy of mental abilities. This particular mental function, this common mind, is found in Canto X, which is called “The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind”. Sri Aurobindo has written about it a lot in letters to the ashramites; because getting beyond the mind is a big step in yoga, in any spiritual practice. So he had lots of questions to answer. And these letters are published in the Letters on Yoga.

Mother also spoke a lot about our mental functioning in her classes for the children. They come up here and there as different subjects. And this is published in Mother's Questions and Answers.

When one goes beyond this little mind, and one achieves what Sri Aurobindo calls “The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind”, one can begin to receive higher knowledge. One can begin to know more the truth of things. Sri Aurobindo has described it in detail; there are different levels, different abilities. Eventually, our mental development leads us to the supramental consciousness. The supramental consciousness encompasses the manifested creation and the unmanifested creator. And when one has that, one is moved by the divine will quite consciously. And this is what Narad says (although he says it briefly). He says:

Yet can the mind of man receive God’s light,

The force of man can be driven by God’s force,

Then is he a miracle doing miracles.

For only so can he be Nature’s king. (p.457)

So, Savitri, “The Book of Fate”. “The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain”...

....
“O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;
This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
The soul looked out from its felicity.
It felt the Spirit’s interminable bliss,
It knew itself deathless, timeless, spaceless, one,
It saw the Eternal, lived in the Infinite.
Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
It sensed a negative infinity,
A void supernal whose immense excess
Imitating God and everlasting Time
Offered a ground for Nature’s adverse birth
And Matter’s rigid hard unconsciousness
Harbouring the brilliance of a transient soul
That lights up birth and death and ignorant life.
A Mind arose that stared at Nothingness	p.455
Till figures formed of what could never be;
It housed the contrary of all that is.
A Nought appeared as Being’s huge sealed cause,
Its dumb support in a blank infinite,
In whose abysm spirit must disappear:
A darkened Nature lived and held the seed
Of Spirit hidden and feigning not to be.
Eternal Consciousness became a freak
Of an unsouled almighty Inconscient
And, breathed no more as spirit’s native air,
Bliss was an incident of a mortal hour,
A stranger in the insentient universe.
As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:
It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
And the endless possibility that lurked
In the womb of Chaos and in Nothing’s gulf
Or looked from the unfathomed eyes of Chance.
It tired of its unchanging happiness,
It turned away from immortality:
It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,
It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain,
Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,
The music of ruin and its glamour and crash,
The savour of pity and the gamble of love
And passion and the ambiguous face of Fate.
A world of hard endeavour and difficult toil,
And battle on extinction’s perilous verge,
A clash of forces, a vast incertitude,
The joy of creation out of Nothingness,
Strange meetings on the roads of Ignorance
And the companionship of half-known souls
Or the solitary greatness and lonely force
Of a separate being conquering its world,
Called it from its too safe eternity.
A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
And what the soul imagines is made a world.
A Thought that leaped from the Timeless can become,
Indicator of cosmic consequence
And the itinerary of the gods,
A cyclic movement in eternal Time.
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.”
Then Aswapati answered to the seer:(p.456)
“Is then the spirit ruled by an outward world?
O seer, is there no remedy within?
But what is Fate if not the spirit’s will
After long time fulfilled by cosmic Force?
I deemed a mighty Power had come with her;
Is not that Power the high compeer of Fate?”
But Narad answered covering truth with truth:
“O Aswapati, random seem the ways
Along whose banks your footsteps stray or run
In casual hours or moments of the gods,
Yet your least stumblings are foreseen above.
Infallibly the curves of life are drawn
Following the stream of Time through the unknown;
They are led by a clue the calm immortals keep.
This blazoned hieroglyph of prophet morns
A meaning more sublime in symbols writes
Than sealed Thought wakes to, but of this high script
How shall my voice convince the mind of earth?
Heaven’s wiser love rejects the mortal’s prayer;
Unblinded by the breath of his desire,
Unclouded by the mists of fear and hope,
It bends above the strife of love with death; (p.457)
It keeps for her her privilege of pain.
A greatness in thy daughter’s soul resides
That can transform herself and all around
But must cross on stones of suffering to its goal.
Although designed like a nectar cup of heaven,
Of heavenly ether made she sought this air,
She too must share the human need of grief
And all her cause of joy transmute to pain.
The mind of mortal man is led by words,
His sight retires behind the walls of Thought
And looks out only through half-opened doors.
He cuts the boundless Truth into sky-strips
And every strip he takes for all the heavens.
He stares at infinite possibility
And gives to the plastic Vast the name of Chance;
He sees the long results of an all-wise Force
Planning a sequence of steps in endless Time
But in its links imagines a senseless chain
Or the dead hand of cold Necessity;
He answers not to the mystic Mother’s heart,
Misses the ardent heavings of her breast
And feels cold rigid limbs of lifeless Law.
The will of the Timeless working out in Time
In the free absolute steps of cosmic Truth
He thinks a dead machine or unconscious Fate.
A Magician’s formulas have made Matter’s laws
And while they last, all things by them are bound;
But the spirit’s consent is needed for each act
And Freedom walks in the same pace with Law.
All here can change if the Magician choose.
If human will could be made one with God’s,
If human thought could echo the thoughts of God,
Man might be all-knowing and omnipotent;
But now he walks in Nature’s doubtful ray.
Yet can the mind of man receive God’s light,
The force of man can be driven by God’s force,	p.458
Then is he a miracle doing miracles.
For only so can he be Nature’s king.