The Greater Task ahead and the Ignorant No in Things, pp. 317-318 (SH 162)

Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey
Savitri Book Three: The Book of Divine Mother, Canto Three : The House of the Spirit and the New Creation

Aswapati, the forerunner of the future, is face to face with the Divine Mother. Her Darshan fills his being with infinite Bliss and a hymn of adoration spontaneously bursts forth from his soul. He is in front of the giver of all boons, the transmuting alchemist Energy that alone can change all future Time. But the Seer-king, the protagonist of the human race has by now grown wide and cannot ask for a boon only for himself. He has experienced the cry and pain of all sentient things and seeks to call Her healing Touch and Power and Grace and Love for all.

This is the greater task that awaits him. Even as he stands at the threshold of ‘That’ from which all being comes, the Omnipotent Source, his entire being becomes a prayer, a prayer seeking for Strength and Light and Power to uplift the fallen race.

A MIGHTIER task remained than all he had done.
To That he turned from which all being comes,
A sign attending from the Secrecy
Which knows the Truth ungrasped behind our thoughts
And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze.
In the unapproachable stillness of his soul,
Intense, one-pointed, monumental, lone,
Patient he sat like an incarnate hope
Motionless on a pedestal of prayer.
A strength he sought that was not yet on earth,
Help from a Power too great for mortal will,
The light of a Truth now only seen afar,
A sanction from his high omnipotent Source.

But there is still some impurity lurking in his subconscious parts. There is still some resistance towards Light and Truth that clings to the old under different masks and justifications. The old-world frame is not yet completely broken. Its ghost whispers in the dream-states and murmurs at his vast aspiration.

But from the appalling heights there stooped no voice;
The timeless lids were closed; no opening came.
A neutral helpless void oppressed the years.
In the texture of our bound humanity
He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb
Of our inconscient and unseeing base,
The stubborn mute rejection in life’s depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things.
A veiled collaboration with the Night
Even in himself survived and hid from his view:
Still something in his earthly being kept
Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came.
A shadowy unity with a vanished past
Treasured in an old-world frame was lurking there,
Secret, unnoted by the illumined mind,
And in subconscious whispers and in dream
Still murmured at the mind’s and spirit’s choice.
Its treacherous elements spread like slippery grains
Hoping the incoming Truth might stumble and fall,
And old ideal voices wandering moaned
And pleaded for a heavenly leniency
To the gracious imperfections of our earth
And the sweet weaknesses of our mortal state.

But Aswapati is determined. He refuses to give up hope and aspiration. Instead he makes one final gesture, a heroic effort to remove and give up that which still shelters in the folds of darkness. One mighty movement, the power of sincerity uproots all that still hides cunningly and resists. Now the ground is made clear, the seat prepared thoroughly, washed with his own blood for the admittance of the powers of the Higher Nature. He is now ready for the great transfiguration that he hopes for.

This now he willed to discover and exile,
The element in him betraying God.
All Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare,
All her dim crypts and corners searched with fire
Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts
Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary
Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.
All seemed to have perished that was undivine:
Yet some minutest dissident might escape
And still a centre lurk of the blind force.
For the Inconscient too is infinite;
The more its abysses we insist to sound,
The more it stretches, stretches endlessly.
Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth
He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.
Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.

[Savitri: 317 – 318]