Savitri is the Epic of Triumph—of the Conquest of Death

Re: A Spiritual Biography of Savitri
by RY Deshpande on Thu 20 Sep 2007 04:14 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link

The Mother narrates the story of creation on a number of occasions in her talks to the children of the Ashram school. In it Four Powers of the Supreme, —Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth,—in their absolute freedom went far away, quite far away that they lost contact with the Source from where they had come. As soon as there was separation, separation from the Divine, Consciousness changed into Inconscience, Bliss into Suffering, Life into Death, and Truth into Falsehood. The moment this horror was seen, the divine Mother implored the Supreme and he plunged into that Void as Love. Love became the permanent Avatar because of whose presence the contact with the Supreme could be re-established. It is with this story that the Mother opens her explanation of Savitri to Huta who did the Savitri-paintings directly under her.

This story of creation appears in several places in the respective contexts in Savitri. Sri Aurobindo has not spoken of it anywhere else in any direct specific manner and it is only in Savitri that we have reference to it in a fundamental way. The reason for this to be so is perhaps because the story belongs, as the Mother says, to an ancient occult tradition and Sri Aurobindo, in his intuitive-discursive rationally projected prose writings would not bring that occult element in the presentation...

In Savitri the Story of Creation appears in vivid details at a very early stage itself, when Aswapati sees how this little life, this small ignorant world is ruled by Nature who herself is under the sway of the insentient Nought. Why all this and what is the way out?—that is the question which has to be understood and answer to it found: (pp.140-41) In the enigma of the darkened Vasts, In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite...

In Savitri we are meeting the embodied Nothingness, and it is that that gets absorbed; it vanishes into the One from whom it had come. But it is this shadow that was standing across the path of the divine Event, and Savitri has now removed it. That is her conquest over Death. It is such a conquest that in it Death himself can also become an instrument to carry out her will in the Will of the Supreme. Transformation, immortality of the physical etc--all those aspects form another story, a story of the future pertaining to the terrestrial evolution. The present epic, Savitri, is the Epic of Triumph—of the Conquest of Death. It is specific in its connotations and the rest is implied, implied because otherwise it would be speculative. That is how we might understand it. RYD