Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey
Savitri Book Four: The Book of Birth and Quest, Canto Three: The Call to the Quest
Seer-King Aswapati, the human father of Savitri, receives a message from the Superconscient realms in an indrawn state. Just then Savitri enters the scene as if in answer to the voice within. Moved by the Higher Consciousness, the Seer-King speaks to Savitri in words with far-reaching consequences. He bids Savitri to go in search of a suitable groom with whom she can share her life. In ancient India, this practice of Swayamvara was followed wherein the prospective bride chose her husband from a number of suitors. This practice allowed for woman’s freedom and respect for her choices. There is as such nothing unusual in the father-King asking her daughter to make this choice. It is part of the original main plot itself. What is unusual is that this common-place event opens the doors to a kind of destiny that will test Savitri’s love to the limits and expand its scope much beyond her personal life. The words of her father sink deep into her carrying within them a mantric power that releases forces and energies and a wisdom that the laboring mind cannot fathom at once.
“O spirit, traveller of eternity,
Who cam’st from the immortal spaces here
Armed for the splendid hazard of thy life
To set thy conquering foot on Chance and Time,
The moon shut in her halo dreams like thee.
A mighty Presence still defends thy frame.
Perhaps the heavens guard thee for some great soul,
Thy fate, thy work are kept somewhere afar.
Thy spirit came not down a star alone.
O living inscription of the beauty of love
Missalled in aureate virginity,
What message of heavenly strength and bliss in thee
Is written with the Eternal’s sun-white script,
One shall discover and greaten with it his life
To whom thou loosenest thy heart’s jewelled strings.
O rubies of silence, lips from which there stole
Low laughter, music of tranquillity,
Star-lustrous eyes awake in sweet large night
And limbs like fine-linked poems made of gold
Stanzaed to glimmering curves by artist gods,
Depart where love and destiny call your charm.
Venture through the deep world to find thy mate.
For somewhere on the longing breast of earth,
Thy unknown lover waits for thee the unknown.
Thy soul has strength and needs no other guide
Than One who burns within thy bosom’s powers.
There shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps
The second self for whom thy nature asks,
He who shall walk until thy body’s end
A close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace,
The lyrist of thy soul’s most intimate chords
Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute.
Then shall you grow like vibrant kindred harps,
One in the beats of difference and delight,
Responsive in divine and equal strains,
Discovering new notes of the eternal theme.
One force shall be your mover and your guide,
One light shall be around you and within;
Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life:
Challenge the ordeal of the immense disguise.
Ascend from Nature to divinity’s heights;
Face the high gods, crowned with felicity,
Then meet a greater god, thy self beyond Time.”
This word was seed of all the thing to be:
A hand from some Greatness opened her heart’s locked doors
And showed the work for which her strength was born.
As when the mantra sinks in Yoga’s ear,
Its message enters stirring the blind brain
And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;
The hearer understands a form of words
And, musing on the index thought it holds,
He strives to read it with the labouring mind,
But finds bright hints, not the embodied truth:
Then, falling silent in himself to know
He meets the deeper listening of his soul:
The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:
Thought, vision, feeling, sense, the body’s self
Are seized unutterably and he endures
An ecstasy and an immortal change;
He feels a Wideness and becomes a Power,
All knowledge rushes on him like a sea:
Transmuted by the white spiritual ray
He walks in naked heavens of joy and calm,
Sees the God-face and hears transcendent speech:[Savitri: 374 – 375]
