B1 C2 Movement 1 Passage-by-Passage Summary
Opening Remarks
Savitri has come armed with divine Powers to accomplish her difficult divine mission of transforming earth and humanity and releasing it from the grip of Ignorance and Death. Of all the powers that she embodies the most potent is Love. Not love as we human beings understand it but the Divine Love, the supreme Love that is without any pre-conditions and flows from the Creator to the darkest depths of creation to rescue and redeem matter. Savitri is an embodiment of this all-powerful Love. What follows is a vivid description of Savitri’s inner being which could harbor this all-powerful transmuting flame of Love.
Marvel of the first descent
Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.
Love is the first power that leaped forth from the Supreme to save creation from the darkness into which it had plunged. Its first effects on material nature have been to awaken beauty and Joy in creation. It is this Love that came to Savitri, and hiding behind it came the shadow Death, possibly with the hope of its transformation.
Love’s perfect shrine
Well might he find in her his perfect shrine.
Love seeks to embody itself upon earth. It dwells in the heart of creation laboring amidst unconsciousness, darkness and evil to prepare it for the transformation. It usually works from behind, distorted and disfigured by the forms that it inhabits. It is not easy to receive its direct touch. It needs a certain degree of wideness and strength and receptivity to hold this Flame. In Savitri however Love found its perfect shrine.
A lightning from the heights
Since first the earth-being’s heavenward growth began,
Through all the long ordeal of the race,
Never a rarer creature bore his shaft,
That burning test of the godhead in our parts,
A lightning from the heights on our abyss.
Love is a power that descends from the heights as a lightning that illumines and burns down all barriers that stand between us and the Divine. One has to be not only completely unselfish and full of self-giving, but totally free from ego to be able to hold this mighty Flame. It is a shaft of Light, a shaft of Fire, which eventually tears and burns down every wall of separation built by the ego and Ignorance.
Nobler kind
All in her pointed to a nobler kind.
Once again, in his remarkable way, Sri Aurobindo summarises in one short and powerful sentence the being of Savitri, her nature so to say. All her movements, thoughts, feelings, impulsions, will and actions spring from a vastness and a height beyond our reach.
Meeting of Earth and Heaven
Near to earth’s wideness, intimate with heaven,
Exalted and swift her young large-visioned spirit
Voyaging through worlds of splendour and of calm
Overflew the ways of Thought to unborn things.
Love is the bridge that joins the two parted hemispheres of creation. It is this Power that brings into creation the Transcendent Grace. Savitri being itself becomes the bridge between Earth even as she has assumed an earthly body and Heaven from where she has descended and is intimate with. All in her being is tranquil and wide and luminous and free. She is born to bring down greater Glories of the Spirit that have not yet manifested upon Earth.
Perfect union of Wisdom and Will
Ardent was her self-poised unstumbling will;
Her mind, a sea of white sincerity, (page 15 begins)
Passionate in flow, had not one turbid wave.
Sincerity and a one-pointed will go together. When our nature is tranquil and free from the incessant cry of desire;, when we are one-pointed and sincere in our aspiration for the Truth, then only can we be strong enough to hold the Fire of Love. This is what Savitri has come to teach us, to become pure and perfect instruments of Divine Love which alone can cure and heal the Earth of all suffering and evil.
The rhythms of Truth and the New Manifestation
As in a mystic and dynamic dance
A priestess of immaculate ecstasies
Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault
Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,
A heart of silence in the hands of joy
Inhabited with rich creative beats
A body like a parable of dawn
That seemed a niche for veiled divinity
Or golden temple-door to things beyond
The mystic and dynamic dance is the dance of the New Manifestation, the New Creation that Savitri has come to establish. It is a creation based on Truth with Bliss as its goal. Right now we are ruled by falsehood and hence can only experience the mixed bag of joy and grief, happiness and suffering. But Savitri has come to change this law of a painful evolution. She has brought a new rhythm of Truth into the earthly play. Her body is the bridge between the present night through which civilization seems to be passing, and the future dawn that is awaiting its hour. By suffusing matter with the golden supramental Light, she is preparing Earth for a luminous and golden future that is sealed beyond the present limits of earth and humanity.
Suprmental beauty manifesting in form
Immortal rhythms swayed in her time-born steps;
Her look, her smile awoke celestial sense
Even in earth-stuff, and their intense delight
Poured a supernal beauty on men’s lives.
Whatever she did, wherever she looked, there She poured Divine Love and Delight and opened for man the doors to the Divine.
The wide self-giving of Love
A wide self-giving was her native act;
A magnanimity as of sea or sky
Enveloped with its greatness all that came
And gave a sense as of a greatened world:
Her kindly care was a sweet temperate sun,
Her high passion a blue heaven’s equipoise
It is only Divine Love that can give itself so naturally and yet temper its Rays to the needs of one and all. Such is the love that flows through the being of Savitri; such is her kindness and care for all creatures. All who are touched with this love and are open to it, feel as if enveloped by and uplifted towards the heights of their possibilities. Her love makes no distinction even as Heaven make no distinction in giving its Light. All that is needed on our part is an opening and receptivity to this Love that Savitri has come to establish here upon Earth.
A haven of Safety and splendid soft repose
As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.
This world is world of suffering and pain where the human soul is as if constantly at war against cosmic forces that oppose its progress. And yet there is a safety, a sovereign refuge accessible to all who have faith. It is to take refuge in the Divine Mother who protects and succours, gives us the Peace and Joy, that is our native right.
It is a remarkably beautiful passage describing the power of Compassion that and Love that Savitri has brought to earth.
A being of Compassion and Love
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
Savitri, the incarnate Divine Mother is full of Compassion for all creatures. Her Love is the key to man’s progress and further ascension. It is Her Love that opens a door to the Glories of the Spirit, awaiting our discovery. None is an outcaste in Her heart, none is deprived or orphaned of Her Love, none is condemned or punished. All who can open themselves through faith can find shelter in Her vast Heart and ascend towards Beauty and Light and Truth and Bliss.
We may add that with the present incarnation of the Divine Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s action revealing to us the secrets of the Divine Mother’s incarnation through Savitri, her action has become even more powerful and decisive. Reading of Savitri and contemplating upon it makes us open and receptive to Her ever present help.
The great unsatisfied godhead
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. (page 16 begins)
The great unsatisfied godhead is Love who has labored upon earth since its inception to prepare a body perfectly capable of holding its transmuting Flame. But it is not easy to hold this fire. It demands a total self-forgetfulness, an utter self-giving, a complete consecration to the very Highest. Even the slightest mixture and impurity that comes from Desire and the Ego covers this flame. One has to be vast, very vast and free from all pettiness and narrowness, to harbour this most powerful force. Savitri shows us the way by the example of her own life.
The Light hidden in the Abysses
For even her gulfs were secrecies of light.
Savitri could hold this vast, impersonal Power of Divine Love because she lived in a constant state of an integral purity that comes from a total and integral surrender to the Divine, leaving no dark or unconscious corners untouched by the transmuting Power.
Love moved in her as in his natural home
At once she was the stillness and the word,
A continent of self-diffusing peace,
An ocean of untrembling virgin fire;
The strength, the silence of the gods were hers.
Tranquil and still, full of a radiating Peace and purity, a speech filled with the nectar of the Divine drawing truths hidden in the heart of Silence, a Strength that combines the powers of the gods, – such is the state granted as the result of a constant living in the Divine Love.
In her he found his own eternity
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.
Love is the eternal truth that never dies. It looks behind the forms through which it moves. Its home is the very Source and Fount of Creation, and it returns back to Him through the forms that it links by its intangible Force that knits all things, weaving them together as a wonderful sheaf. Here, in few well-knit lines, we have the perfect description of Savitri’s divinity, Her being of Compassion and Love that has come down to save mankind and assist in the labour of the gods to transform man into a perfect image of divinity.
Closing Remarks
Thus closes this wonderful passage that not only describes or reveals, but also, by the power of consciousness infused into it, brings us in intimate contact with the being of Savitri. It inspires and uplifts, sets a supreme and sublime example before humanity, opens our inner doors to the Divine Mother’s wonderful Heart of Love, filling us with Her Peace and Light and Sweetness and Bliss.
