The Winds of Wonder

Transfigured Death

Death is carrying the soul of young Satyavan, Satyavan’s time here being expended, Death taking it to his abode situated deep in the darkness of the primordial Night. Dauntless Savitri flaming from her being is following them, the spirit of Satyvan and Death. When she was questioned by Death if the Mighty Mother was with her, she reveals to him who really she is. Death, the huge black lie of the Night, admits the inevitable defeat.

He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,

He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:

He turned to the Inconscient for support,

From which he was born, his vast sustaining self:

It drew him back towards boundless vacancy

As if by himself to swallow up himself:

He called to his strength, but it refused his call. ||147.33||

There is the marvellous sun and in it Savitri has entered into the transcendental realms by cutting a door through the Void, the primordial Void, the last Nothingness, turning into a wonderful creative greatness. This back-door entry of Savitri through the Void into the supreme worlds is absolutely for the first time in the annals of occult workings. One who was seen until now as a dim mask of the Night appears in the person of all sweetness and benevolence. He is such splendour that even her heart gets blinded to the beauty of its suns. It is the Supreme himself who had taken that dire terrifying form of Deaths as a necessary early aspect of the proposed manifestation, a part of the long process, the method of being splendidly many in the richness of the spirit’s wonders and surprises.

But it must be recognised that this is not just the change in the perspective of Savitri, change of her vision, her outlook towards things something differently seen; it is the removal of the mask of the dense night he the Supreme had put on in this mortal creation.

It is not transformation of Death; it is his transfiguration.

Death is an immortal and he cannot be destroyed; but Death as a false Being can be dissolved, he can be absorbed back into his source, his first origin, that which could happen. But it is something more than that. Here he is now in his dynamic operative functions opening the ways of the Divine to the earthly creature, ushering the divine life in a divine body.

That is the real victory Savitri has won, a victory which Savitri alone can win. In her victory is the marvellous glory of Satyavan himself, the incarnate Love for the terrestrial manifestation, opening the ways of God to God. To be Many, bahusyāma, to have the divine multitude of the Rig Veda, divyam janam, was the original Desire, ichhā behind this creation, and with the transfiguration of Death Satyavan and Savitri are set to carry out the work of the Being of Ānanda, Ānandamaya Purusha, and the dynamic divine Power, Krishna and Kāli.

The Savitri-text in Book Eleven is as follows:

As one drowned in a sea of splendour and bliss

Mute in the maze of these surprising worlds

Turning she saw their living knot and source,

Key to their charm and fount of their delight,

And knew him for the same who snares our lives

Captured in his terrifying pitiless net,

And makes the universe his prison camp

And makes in his immense and vacant vasts

The labour of the stars a circuit vain

And death the end of every human road

And grief and pain the wages of man’s toil. ||149.1||

One whom her soul had faced as Death and Night

A sum of all sweetness gathered into his limbs

And blinded her heart to the beauty of the suns. ||149.2||

Transfigured was the formidable shape. ||149.3||

His darkness and his sad destroying might

Abolishing for ever and disclosing

The mystery of his high and violent deeds,

A secret splendour rose revealed to sight

Where once the vast embodied Void had stood. ||149.4||

Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. ||149.5||

The vague infinity was slain whose gloom

Had outlined from the terrible Unknown

The obscure disastrous figure of a god,

Fled was the error that arms the hands of grief,

And lighted the ignorant gulf whose hollow deeps

Had given to nothingness a dreadful voice. ||149.6||

Trans+fig|+ured was| the for|+mi+da|+ble shape.|

His dark|+ness and| his sad| de+stroy|+ing might|

A+bol|+ish+ing| for ev|+er and| dis+clos+ing|

The mys|+ter+y| of his high| and vi|+o+lent deeds,|

A se|+cret splen|+dour rose| re+vealed| to sight|

Where once| the vast| em+bod|+ied Void| had stood.|

Night the| dim mask| had grown| a won|+der+ful face.|

The featured image is by Huta. Here is Transfigured Death, the Supreme himself: