The holocaust of the Supreme
In 1927 Sri Aurobindo wrote about the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother. She does it “to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite”. She accepts to be “borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death”. One who is all sovereignty and greatness accepts the ignominy of narrowness and pain and suffering, yet remaining above them. Its earliest revelation is in the Purusha Sūkta of the Rig Veda, “the sacrifice of the Purusha”. The passage in The Mother gives revealingly all the details.
“The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.”
Written some fifteen years later this necessary tremendous holocaust presented in the fuller contextual thesis we have in Savitri, as follows:
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky. ||26.1||
Acting upon this visible Nature’s scheme…
It labours towards a superconscient Light. ||26.9||
Its steps are paces of the soul’s return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity. ||26.13||
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall. ||26.14||
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state;
Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness
Divinity’s lapse from its own splendours wove
The many-patterned ground of all we are. ||26.16||
An idol of self is our mortality. ||26.17||
[Savitri Book II Canto 1]
“The great World-Mother by her sacrifice” of Savitri and “the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother” of The Mother could be taken to be the same.
Here is a painting of this holocaust by Huta as the featured image. It is based on the sketch drawn by the Mother, given below.
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall. ||26.14||
Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme. ||26.15||
The great World-Mother by her sacrifice
Has made her soul the body of our state; … ||26.16||
Savitri Book 2 Canto 1 – The World-Stair
Let us scan this passage:
Once in| the vig|+il of| a death|+less gaze|
These grades| had marked| her gi|+ant down|+ward plunge,|
The wide| and prone| leap of| a god|+head’s fall.|
Our life| is a hol|+o+caust| of the| Su+preme.|
The great| World-Moth|+er by| her sac|+ri+fice|
Has made| her soul| the bod|+y of| our state;|
The Winds of Wonder 
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