An Exchange of Emails
Pravir Malik
When I read the line “It was the hour before the Gods awake.”, I interpret it in the context of “This was the day when Satyavan must die.”
My reasoning is the following:
- Satyavan’s ‘death’ means he is now reborn in some higher consciousness (is this The Flame-Child, or not quite yet?)
- Being reborn in a higher consciousness (even if not as a flame-being) means that now the Gods can awake (because they can descend into more advanced earthly beings, and ‘awake’ to another way of being?)
Thanks for your comments.
RY Deshpande
This is an excellent way of looking at the text with which Savitri is opening.
The third Canto begins with the line “A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth.” The “world’s desire” is carried by the supreme Yogi Aswapati himself, the Incarnate, he himself the “World’s Desire” embodying the aspiring Urge.
The insistence is for the Divine Mother to carry out the transformative mission by entering into the mortal birth. It is her work in removing the obstacle standing across the path of the divine Event, the obstacle that is Death, the Mind of Night; it is the Mind of Matter, Matter’s Mind, the physical’s Mind which is under the sway of Inconscience, total unawareness of the Divine.
Eventually In the long occult-spiritual sequel will Satyavan be born as the flame-child, Satyavan who will be no longer in the grip of strong formidable Death, the Supreme himself having put on that functionally necessary mask. Since the beginning of the evolutionary manifestation upon earth Satyavan is the evolutionary Incarnation of the Supreme. His release from the grip of Death ushers in the divine life in a divine body, as a new race in this mortal world. Mortality will then have the sense of the change of form not through death but upon the needs of Consciousness.
The first two Cantos in the swiftness of the epic narrative present these entire operative details, the why and the how of this mortal creation. The transcendental Gods may well now participate in this glory and in this triumphant creative joy. The whole issue is at once brought into focus, the raison d’être of Savitri. It is the Prolegomena of a mighty and majestic theme. It could perhaps be seen as a flashback very creatively used by the Poet, but the Book of Beginnings begins with the beginning. And this what a profound beginning!
Pravir Malik
Thanks. Have begun listening to your Savitri talks. Will take me a while get through them.
So the flame child is not yet, but is yet to come, and the transcendental Gods have yet to begin to participate?
RY Deshpande
This has already been done in the occult, the Mother’s Essential Agenda is that miraculous work done. She sees, it is the psychic being who will materialise and become the supramental being, psychic being the immortal in the mortal of the Rig Veda.
The psychic being materialising is the flame-child.
RY Deshpande
Have a look at this:
The featured image is the Dawn Fire at Auroville, an invocation to the Flame-Child.
[Dr Pravir Malik lives in Berkeley Calif USA]
Painting by Huta
Night the dim mask had grown a wonderful face. Savitri Book XI
The Winds of Wonder 
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