Savitri Class in Hindi with Alok Pandey
Savitri Book Three: The Book of Divine Mother, Canto Four : The Vision and the Boon
The Seer-King Aswapati is the forerunner of the race. He has embodied in his heart the anguish and the aspiration of earth and humanity. What is more is that he has seen behind the veil that hangs between the lower triple creation of the worlds of Mind, Life, Matter and the higher worlds of Oneness and Truth beyond. He has entered the House of the Spirit where the Unmanifest sleeps in too much Light. He has known the original plan which the Divine has intended for earth. But since the plan never gets fully manifested, rather it gets successively distorted and deflected by lower and dark powers, earth and humanity has to go through destruction called Pralaya again and again. One such Pralaya is near at hand and it is precisely during such moments when the old is being destroyed that the New has its chance of coming in. He has foreseen such a coming, the coming of a New Race that awaits its hour to manifest. But first much has to be destroyed so that a clean ground may be prepared for the New Creation lest it is stifled in old worn-out moulds of the past.
A giant dance of Shiva tore the past;
There was a thunder as of worlds that fall;
Earth was o’errun with fire and the roar of Death
Clamouring to slay a world his hunger had made;
There was a clangour of Destruction’s wings:
The Titan’s battle-cry was in my ears,
Alarm and rumour shook the armoured Night.
But in this night of the earth there is another activity going on as well. A New Dawn is being prepared behind the folds of darkness and new sunbeams waiting to reach down to the earth and fill it with renewed Light and Life. This too has been witnessed by Aswapati, the Tapaswi and Seer. This New Light is approaching the earth and looking for bodies and mind that can hold and embody it. What follows is a marvelous description of these sun-eyed children, the heralds of Light, the forerunners and pioneers of the great change.
I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude,
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life.
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality.
Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time.
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face.
The New man will not be just an enlarged version of the old. He will be an entirely new species, a qualitative leap beyond man even as man is a leap beyond the animal. In him the fourfold soul-powers will manifest together in perfect harmony raised to their true value by the Truth-Light. It is they who are the hope of the future and not the change of governments, legislature, organisations, institutions and systems. Mankind erroneously believes that it can change the earth’s misery by changing the external machinery. But true and lasting change can only come when man changes from within. As long as man remains the same ego-bound, desire-driven creature, even the best of systems will eventually collapse and fail. All can change if man changes. And Aswapati has seen that this change is bound to come. It is inevitable in the very scheme of things.
Although Fate lingers in the high Beyond
And the work seems vain on which our heart’s force was spent,
All shall be done for which our pain was borne.
Even as of old man came behind the beast
This high divine successor surely shall come
Behind man’s inefficient mortal pace,
Behind his vain labour, sweat and blood and tears:
He shall know what mortal mind barely durst think,
He shall do what the heart of the mortal could not dare.
Inheritor of the toil of human time,
He shall take on him the burden of the gods;
All heavenly light shall visit the earth’s thoughts,
The might of heaven shall fortify earthly hearts;
Earth’s deeds shall touch the superhuman’s height,
Earth’s seeing widen into the infinite.
Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;
The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul
And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.[Savitri: 343 – 345]
