Loretta reads Savitri:Six.II "The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain" part 5

Transcript of:

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

by Loretta, 2018 (34:17)

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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 5 of 5, pages 454-458

   

Savitri and her parents, the queen and king, are listening to Narad, the messenger of the gods. He is talking to them about fate, and about the great souls who come down to help mankind. He came down from the heavens to tell them that Satyavan, Savitri's chosen husband, will die in one year. And with these words he set free the springs of cosmic Fate.

Savitri's parents are understandably concerned about their daughter's fate: she wants to marry a doomed young man. And Narad has been telling them many truths about the soul's adventure in the mortal body. The adventure in the world of Nature, and the need for the experiences which most of mankind is always complaining about. But he has not yet said very much about Savitri. He hasn't spoken about what will happen to her.

And of course, this is the subject which her parents want to know about most. And of course Narad knows this.So now, he tells them about their daughter's greatness, and how she will meet the ordeal that's coming to her in the future.

As we start with the last part of the canto, Narad gives words to Satyavan's fate. He says:

It is decreed and Satyavan must die;

The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke. (p.458)

He tells her that what shall happen after he dies is written only in Savitri's soul. But we cannot read this. It will reveal itself when the time comes.

Then he goes on to tell them (and us) what our fate really is – what everybody's fate really is. Narad is still answering Savitri's father the king; the king's question was:

But what is Fate if not the spirit’s will

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

And now Narad tells the king that everyone's fate is to progress on their own chosen path to become the highest. To be the fully-conscious portion of the Supreme that we really are: the Supreme Consciousness which is our origin and our goal when we are born in a body.

Narad says, “Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.” (p.458) We are unconscious of our true nature, and the truth of the creation. In this way, we live in ignorance. Narad says:

O King, thy fate is a transaction done

At every hour between Nature and thy soul

With God for its foreseeing arbiter. (p.458)

We make our way through life in a physical body, in a world of evolving nature; and through the experiences of our life, we become more conscious of the truth.

And then Narad – this is really the key to Fate, here – he says (and of course Sri Aurobindo is telling us), that the things that happen to us on the way, which are so hard for us, are not our fate. They are not our fate. We can accept our fate or we can refuse it along the way. It's in our hands. He says our fate is our goal, and the road we choose to get to the goal.

In one of the Mother's classes to the students in the Ashram school, she spoke of making the choice of every minute, between acting and doing, thinking and feeling, from the highest truth of our being. Choosing what we know as the truth. Doing this, or doing all this out of desire, because we have a preference, and because we like something or do not like something. So we make the choice at every minute, to accept our fate, or to not accept our fate.

This act of choosing according to our inner truth, or acting out of desire, is how we shape our fate. It is how we shape ourselves, how we build ourselves. And it is how we shape the world around us. If you want to hear Mother's teaching on the subject, it's in the book Questions and Answers 1956, on the date of December 26, 1956.

Loretta reads Mother's Questions and Answers December 26, 1956

If you speak French, you'll be able to listen to the original tape recording of Mother teaching the class in French. It plays as the last part of the broadcast. And one thing that really comes out of the broadcast, is how much emphasis Mother places on making the choice from your inner truth. That's really what's most important.

Here, Narad tells the king:

Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods

Till they have opened to thee thy secret self

And made thee one with the indwelling God. (p.458)

Elsewhere, Sri Aurobindo has explained that what people call the gods are conscious powers that embody particular capacities and qualities that are part of the construction and potential of the human being. Because of the choices we make, we go through the experiences that shape us; and eventually these great powers, hidden inside us, can emerge – they can come to our surface being, as our soul comes out from behind the veil of the ignorance we have been living. Then we become our truth, which has always been living in our soul. Our truth has been there because our soul is always connected to the Supreme Truth. And this is our fate. This is our destiny.

The very beginning of Savitri, the very first line of Savitri is:

It was the hour before the Gods awake. (p.1)

And Sri Aurobindo writes and teaches and speaks on so many levels; but one of those things is: the gods awake in us. “It was the hour before the gods awake.” Because:

Across the path of the divine Event

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone

In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon Silence’ marge. (p.1)

So this is the darkness of ignorance, coming just before the dawn. And this is one interpretation that there is for those opening lines of Savitri.

All throughout Savitri, Sri Aurobindo emphasizes the fact that we are not the helpless victims of destiny. We are not the helpless victims of the karma that we have created for ourselves by our past actions. When we work to get to the truth of our spirit, and we live in that truth, these karmic bonds dissolve. Of course, one thinks perhaps that people are so far from this – because it takes a huge effort to change. But change will come.

And here, through Narad's answer to the king, Sri Aurobindo tells us how hard it is. He describes the spirit's fate as “battle and ceaseless march / Against invisible opponent Powers”. He calls the spirit's fate “A passage from Matter” – where we have to live in a physical body, and do all the things that have to bring consciousness into the physical – “into timeless self.” (p.458) And he points out that death does not stop our work. Death does not stop our walk on our path. In fact, it helps us.

He also points out that doom and tragedy make our spirit grow stronger and greater. The spirit's wings grow mightier with each fall. Our spirit's fate is the struggle of matter becoming consciousness. And again, this is our wok.

Mother spoke of her own work to have conscious physical cells, all through the Agenda. We have the history of her progress with her cells over the years. And it is the story of Mother's matter becoming conscious. Since Mother was connected to everything, since her consciousness was universal and she was in everything, the work that she did in her matter opened many doors for those who wish to follow.

Here, Narad speaks the language of war to show us how hard it is. The terminology of battle. He speaks of “guarded lines and dangerous fronts,” “dire assaults,” “wounded slow retreats” (p.459). The invisible and opponent Powers that he mentioned are the Titans that we've been hearing about all through Book Six, “The Book of Fate”. They are the rock on our road; so our fate necessarily includes having to deal with these things. And Mother and Sri Aurobindo teach that they are all the old energies and consciousness of the different stages of evolution, which still hang on and still want to keep everything their own way. And this is natural, for this level of the creation.

Mother explained that all things in the creation tend towards manifestation. Everything wants to come out and be itself. So these energies automatically continue to manifest whenever they can. We have to become conscious of them and reject them, so we can have the higher energy and consciousness of our soul. And finally, so that we can receive the highest energies of the supramental which are pouring into the creation more and more.

Narad goes on to say that a vast intention has brought the two souls of Savitri and Satyavan close together. He says it is part of God's secret plan. “A conscious power has drawn the plan of life” (p.460). And he likens this plan of life to the plan of an architectural building. And then he says that Savitri is one of the master builders of life.

Now he begins to talk about Savitri. He turns to the queen. And he says:

Queen, strive no more to change the secret will (p.460)

He tells her, “don't try to intervene in a battle too great for you”. And then he describes Savitri's greatness, and how her soul's strength will face the universe and Fate, and will not ask for help from man or God. So the queen has to step out of the way. He says, “Alone she is equal to her mighty task.” (p.460) And he tells the queen, “

A day may come 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,

To conquer or fail on a last desperate verge,

Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge. (p.461)

Then he speaks about the “deciding hour” in the world's fate, where Savitri stands sole with Death or sole with God, where alone she must conquer, or alone must fall. “Her hour must come”, he says, “and none can intervene” (p.461). We know that Savitri is the Divine Mother, who has come into a human body to help the beautiful soul of man on earth; and we know that the sole of man on earth is personified by Satyavan. We know that Sri Aurobindo and Mother came here to go through the many inner experiences of difficulty and struggle, so that the new consciousness will manifest more and more now. They spoke of what we call our ‘death’ as having no place as human evolution proceeds down the centuries.

When we come to Savitri's long confrontation with Death, starting in Book Nine, after Satyavan dies and she begins to follow Death, we're going to learn a lot about the subtle things which we have inside us, that lead us into dying, instead of keeping us into continuous living. Finally, Narad says to the queen:

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. (p.462)

Then Narad left the palace of the king, where he had come to deliver the message that set free the springs of cosmic destiny. He turned to his far-off blissful home, and vanished into the light of the Unseen.

But still a cry was heard in the infinite,

And still to the listening soul on mortal earth

A high and far imperishable voice

Chanted the anthem of eternal love. (p.462)

Savitri, “The Book of Fate”, “The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain”. In King Aswapati's palace in Madra, Narad is speaking of fate. And he says...

...
It is decreed and Satyavan must die;
The hour is fixed, chosen the fatal stroke.
What else shall be is written in her soul
But till the hour reveals the fateful script,
The writing waits illegible and mute.
Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate, — they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God.
O soul, intruder in Nature’s ignorance,
Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights,
Thy spirit’s fate is a battle and ceaseless march
Against invisible opponent Powers,
A passage from Matter into timeless self.
Adventurer through blind unforeseeing Time,	p.459
A forced advance through a long line of lives,
It pushes its spearhead through the centuries.
Across the dust and mire of the earthly plain,
On many guarded lines and dangerous fronts,
In dire assaults, in wounded slow retreats,
Holding the ideal’s ringed and battered fort
Or fighting against odds in lonely posts,
Or camped in night around the bivouac’s fires
Awaiting the tardy trumpets of the dawn,
In hunger and in plenty and in pain,
Through peril and through triumph and through fall,
Through life’s green lanes and over her desert sands,
Up the bald moor, along the sunlit ridge,
In serried columns with a straggling rear
Led by its nomad vanguard’s signal fires,
Marches the army of the waylost god.
Then late the joy ineffable is felt,
Then he remembers his forgotten self;
He has refound the skies from which he fell.
At length his front’s indomitable line
Forces the last passes of the Ignorance:
Advancing beyond Nature’s last known bounds,
Reconnoitring the formidable unknown,
Beyond the landmarks of things visible,
It mounts through a miraculous upper air
Till climbing the mute summit of the world
He stands upon the splendour-peaks of God.
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.
For out of danger and pain heaven-bliss shall come,
Time’s unforeseen event, God’s secret plan.
This world was not built with random bricks of Chance,
A blind god is not destiny’s architect;	p.460
A conscious power has drawn the plan of life,
There is a meaning in each curve and line.
It is an architecture high and grand
By many named and nameless masons built
In which unseeing hands obey the Unseen,
And of its master-builders she is one.
“Queen, strive no more to change the secret will;
Time’s accidents are steps in its vast scheme.
Bring not thy brief and helpless human tears
Across the fathomless moments of a heart
That knows its single will and God’s as one:
It can embrace its hostile destiny;
It sits apart with grief and facing death,
Affronting adverse fate armed and alone.
In this enormous world standing apart
In the mightiness of her silent spirit’s will,
In the passion of her soul of sacrifice
Her lonely strength facing the universe,
Affronting fate, asks not man’s help nor god’s:
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.
Intervene not in a strife too great for thee,
A struggle too deep for mortal thought to sound,
Its question to this Nature’s rigid bounds
When the soul fronts nude of garbs the infinite,
Its too vast theme of a lonely mortal will
Pacing the silence of eternity.
As a star, uncompanioned, moves in heaven
Unastonished by the immensities of Space,
Travelling infinity by its own light,
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;
The soul that can live alone with itself meets God;
Its lonely universe is their rendezvous.	p.461
A day may come 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,
Alone with death and close to extinction’s edge.
Her single greatness in that last dire scene
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 tremendous silence lone and lost
Of a deciding hour in the world’s fate,
In her soul’s climbing beyond mortal time
When she stands sole with Death or sole with God
Apart upon a silent desperate brink,
Alone with her self and death and destiny
As on some verge between Time and Timelessness
When being must end or life rebuild its base,
Alone she must conquer or alone must fall.
No human aid can reach her in that hour,
No armoured god stand shining at her side.
Cry not to heaven, for she alone can save.
For this the silent Force came missioned down;
In her the conscious Will took human shape:
She only can save herself and save the world.
O queen, stand back from that stupendous scene,
Come not between her and her hour of Fate.
Her hour must come and none can intervene:
Think not to turn her from her heaven-sent task,
Strive not to save her from her own high will.
Thou hast no place in that tremendous strife;
Thy love and longing are not arbiters there;
Leave the world’s fate and her to God’s sole guard.
Even if he seems to leave her to her lone strength,
Even though all falters and falls and sees an end
And the heart fails and only are death and night,	p.462
God-given her strength can battle against doom
Even on a brink where Death alone seems close
And no human strength can hinder or can help.
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.”
He spoke and ceased and left the earthly scene.
Away from the strife and suffering on our globe,
He turned towards his far-off blissful home.
A brilliant arrow pointing straight to heaven,
The luminous body of the ethereal seer
Assailed the purple glory of the noon
And disappeared like a receding star
Vanishing into the light of the Unseen.
But still a cry was heard in the infinite,
And still to the listening soul on mortal earth
A high and far imperishable voice
Chanted the anthem of eternal love.
END OF CANTO TWO
END OF BOOK SIX