The Winds of Wonder

04: Notes — The Boon

Savitri, Book Three Canto Four

The meeting between Aswapati and the Divine Mother takes place at the “threshold mind”. She first speaks with a voice “absolute and wise”. The wisdom is, in telling him, to let Time work out things in its process. She has built her case with systematic logic, surveying the entire situation perceptively. Her wise advice is, Aswapati should not insist on things with a Titan’s impatience. The Earth-Mother is there and she is doing whatever has to be done, with her patient dynamism the end is drawing closer:

A godhead drawn from her transmuted limbs,

An alchemy of Heaven on Nature’s base. ||89.59||

But Aswapati has another truth-perspective, a truth that need be in conflict with another truth, the play of manifold truths certainly possible in the Truth-working.

He asks her:

How long shall our spirits battle with the Night

And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,

We who are vessels of a deathless Force

And builders of the godhead of the race? ||90.5||

He continues:

Ever the centuries and millenniums pass. ||90.7||

Where in the greyness is thy coming’s ray? ||90.8||

Where is the thunder of thy victory’s wings? ||90.9||

Only we hear the feet of passing gods. ||90.10||

Yet of course he knows that her creation cannot fail:

I know there shall inform the inconscient cells,

At one with Nature and at height with heaven,

A spirit vast as the containing sky

And swept with ecstasy from invisible founts,

A god come down and greater by the fall. ||90.23||

A power arose out of my slumber’s cell. ||90.24||

He already sees flame-pioneers crowding the amber stairs of birth entering into the little room of mortal life.

Was she not aware of it? Of course she was. She must have been cognisant of the giant dance of Shiva, and the awakening of the mind of matter ready to usher in a superior life without death, the forms changing according to the needs of consciousness. But that could happen only by the executive presence and power of the supreme Creatrix. She must enter into mortal birth. This has to be only by the “world’s desire” being taken to her, she being compelled to come down into this mortality. What a plea! And the prayer that receives the consent:

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry. ||91.3||

One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power. ||91.4||

A limitless Mind that can contain the world,

A sweet and violent heart of ardent calms

Moved by the passions of the gods shall come. ||91.5||

All mights and greatnesses shall join in her;

Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth,

Delight shall sleep in the cloud-net of her hair

And in her body as on his homing tree

Immortal Love shall beat his glorious wings. ||91.6||

A music of griefless things shall weave her charm;

The harps of the Perfect shall attune her voice,

The streams of Heaven shall murmur in her laugh,

Her lips shall be the honeycombs of God,

Her limbs his golden jars of ecstasy,

Her breasts the rapture-flowers of Paradise. ||91.7||

She shall bear Wisdom in her voiceless bosom,

Strength shall be with her like a conqueror’s sword

And from her eyes the Eternal’s bliss shall gaze. ||91.8||

A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will. ||91.9||

The featured image is a painting by Huta