The Winds of Wonder

The Revelation and the Flame

We are looking into five sentences in the opening Canto of Savitri, The Symbol Dawn, sentence numbers 20-24. The Canto is an absolute marvel of poetry, spiritual knowledge about the appearance of the earthly world, about mortality and the meaning and the objective of this existence, transcendental philosophy, with the beginning of the creation the definiteness of an evolutionary manifestation leading to this life becoming the life divine. There is the black quietude and it must get transformed into brightness in the beauty and wonder of the Creator. Earth’s aspiring soul opened out and there was the outpouring of the revelation and the flame.

The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch

Persuaded the inert black quietude

And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.

A wandering hand of pale enchanted light

That glowed along a fading moment’s brink,

Fixed with gold panel and opalescent hinge

A gate of dreams ajar on mystery’s verge.

One lucent corner windowing hidden things

Forced the world’s blind immensity to sight.

The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak

From the reclining body of a god.

Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first

Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,

Outpoured the revelation and the flame.

https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/33/the-symbol-dawn

Let us scan these lines:

The per+sis|+tent thrill| of a| trans+fig|+ur+ing touch|

Per+suad|+ed the| in+ert| black qui|+e+tude|

And beau|+ty and won|+der dis+turbed| the fields| of God.| 1.20    

A wan|+der+ing hand| of pale| en+chant|+ed light|

That glowed| a+long| a fad|+ing mo|+ment’s brink,|

Fixed with| gold pan|+el and| opal+|escent hinge|

A gate| of dreams| a+ja on mys|+ter+y’s verge.| 1.21

One lu|+cent cor|+ner win|+dow+ing hid|+den things|

Forced the| world’s blind| im+men|+si+ty| to sight.| 1.22

The dark|+ness failed| and | like a fall|+ing cloak|

From the| re+clin|+ing bod|+y of| a god.| 1.23

Then through| the pal|+lid rift| that seemed| at first|

Hard+ly| e+nough| for a trick|+le from| the suns,|

Out+poured| the rev|+e+la|+tion and| the flame.| 1.24

The pentametric lines have a smooth gracious flow of rhythm with vowels enhancing the beauty of the vowels, the accented metre discovering a splendorous movement, the overhead æstheis bringing the melodies of the vast and sweeping sounds of silence. Take the third line:

And beau|+ty and won|+der dis+turbed| the fields| of God

with iamb-anapæst-anapæst-iamb-iamb, there is the hastening assurance that beauty and wonder come somewhere from infinity on the far left, deliver the charge, with a pause, and disappear somewhere into the infinity on the right. In it there is the outpouring of the revelation and the flame. Indeed,

All grew a consecration and a rite. ||1.34||

Air was a vibrant link between earth and heaven;

The wide-winged hymn of a great priestly wind

Arose and failed upon the altar hills;

The high boughs prayed in a revealing sky. ||1.35||

Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs

On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,

Here where one knows not even the step in front

And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,

On this anguished and precarious field of toil

Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,

Impartial witness to our joy and bale,

Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray. ||1.36||

Miracles have happened. Out of the absolute Void, out of the “last Nothingness”, appeared the Inconscient, and the stiff rock, and the tree, and the animal, and the mental being. But that cannot be the last miracle. The miracle is, miracle gives rise to miracle, and there has to be a conscient being in his deathlessness living a life divine in a divine body.

Here too the vision and prophetic gleam

Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;

But for this great change to take place there has to be a sufficient readiness which has got to be occult-yogically prepared. In its absence this is what has happened:

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,

Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range. ||1.37||

In the totality of this context we have to see what the Mother revealed after Sri Aurobindo’s withdrawal on 5 December 1950:

About a year ago, while I was discussing things, I remarked that I felt like leaving this body of mine. He [Sri Aurobindo] spoke out in a very firm tone, “No, this can never be. If necessary for this transformation, I might go, you will have to fulfil our Yoga of supramental descent and transformation.” [1950; this is a spoken comment of the Mother noted from memory and approved by her for publication.]

https://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/mahasamadhi

In this context let us read what the Mother in her class dated 25 August 1954 as we have in the Collected Works of the Mother. This is “about other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down”. It is with her personality of Ananda that the wonderful divine life here can become possible. The Mother answers:

“She has come, bringing with her a splendour of power and love, an intensity of divine joy unknown to the earth so far. The physical atmosphere was completely changed by it, saturated with new and marvellous possibilities. But for her to be able to settle and act down here, she needed to meet with at least a minimum of receptivity, to find at least one human being having the requisite qualities in the vital and physical nature, a kind of super-Parsifal endowed with a spontaneous and integral purity, but at the same time having a strong and balanced body in order to bear the intensity of the Ananda she had brought without giving way. Till now she has not obtained what was necessary. … So, at times, she thinks of withdrawing, finding that the world is not ready to receive her. And this would be a cruel loss. It is true that for the moment her presence is more nominal than active, for she does not have the opportunity to manifest herself. But even so, she is a powerful help in the Work. … I have not said that she has gone away. I said that she thinks of going away, sometimes, from time to time.”

Was her act of coming down too early? premature? But then there was a possibility and in the pragmatism of things a certain stage was reached when she could descend. This was in 1946.

https://incarnateword.in/cwm/6/25-august-1954

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,

Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.

This “unwanted” had to be dealt with occult-yogically. The spledidest strategic move was to fix it in the physical body and then pass on into the subtle-physical to operate from over there. That was Sri Aurobindo’s well-aimed deliberate and tactical withdrawal on 5 December 1950, when he passed on all the supramental Light and Force gathered in him to the Mother. She was later told that it would be she on earth who would do their work of supramental descent and transformation. For this work it was her body that was better than his. It is the divine Purusha who wills, who decrees, and it is the divine Shakti who acts, who executes the will. Both the will and the action form one single movement.