11: Scribbled Notes — When did Savitri begin her Yoga?
There were three major phases in the composition of Savitri. The first was from 1916 to about 1920. During this period, the original narrative poem grew in length and complexity as well as in depth of meaning, but had not yet turned into a full-fledged epic. The second phase extended from somewhere around 1930 to 1945. Sri Aurobindo now considered Savitri his major literary work. He concentrated on what became Part One, greatly increasing the role of Aswapati and the element of Yogic experience and spiritual and philosophical vision in the scope of the poem. Then in the last five years, from 1945 or 1946 to 1950, he returned to the later parts. He revised what he had already written and added much new material, including several cantos on Savitri’s Yoga.
The Mother says that Sri Aurobindo has described her spiritual experiences and realisations in Savitri. Sri Aurobindo revised certain sections to reflect these experiences. Savitri portrays the Divine Mother’s descent into human nature to transform it. This descent involves taking on human limitations and suffering, not out of ignorance, but through a conscious identification with humanity. This allows her to uplift and transform the world from within. She described this as a “voluntary sacrifice” to bridge the gap between the divine and the human. She said that reading Savitri brought her into contact with the same spiritual realms and experiences described in the text. Savitri becomes an aspect of her spiritual biography.
In the poem, Savitri represents the Mother’s consciousness, embodying the divine force that confronts and overcomes death and ignorance. Satyavan symbolises the Avatar, the incarnation of the Supreme. Together, they illustrate the dynamic interplay of divine love and transformative power. Savitri is not only a literary masterpiece but also a spiritual scripture that describes the lived experiences and realisations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is an authentic original guide to follow the path of integral yoga and participate in the evolutionary transformation of consciousness.
The Book of Yoga, Book Seven of Savitri, essentially belongs to 1946. The question is, how does it present the Yoga of Savitri she must have been doing since the very beginning of this earth, if she was present right from that instant? To address this, if at all it is in our reach, we must consider the symbolic and evolutionary framework of the poem, as well as the Mother’s own insights into her eternal presence and work.
In Savitri, the remarkable protagonist is not merely a historical or mythological figure but a glowing symbolic representation of the Divine Mother herself. The Mother has explained that Savitri embodies the divine force that has been present since the beginning of the creation, working tirelessly for the transformation of consciousness and the redemption of the world. Her yoga is not confined to a single lifetime but runs through the entire evolutionary journey of the earth and humanity. This lines up with the Mother’s assertion that she has been present since the very inception of the earth, guiding its progress and participating in its struggles.
In the present Legend and Symbol, Book Seven, The Book of Yoga, focuses on Savitri’s intense inner journey as she prepares to confront Death and reclaim Satyavan. This text of the Poem captures the essence of her yoga, which involves:
- Descending into the depths of human nature: Savitri explores the darkest recesses of her being, confronting ignorance, suffering, and limitation. This mirrors the Mother’s own work of descending into the inconscient to transform it from within.
- Ascending to higher realms of consciousness: Savitri ascends to the supramental planes, drawing down their transformative power to uplift the earth. This reflects the Mother’s role in bringing the supramental consciousness into the material world.
- Uniting the transcendent and the immanent: Savitri’s yoga is a synthesis of the highest spiritual realization and the most profound engagement with earthly life. This integral approach is central to the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s vision of spiritual evolution.
While Book Seven was written in 1946, it must be understood that it, capturing the eternal and universal aspects of Savitri’s yoga, transcends historical time. The Mother’s presence “since the beginning of this earth” signifies her timeless involvement in the evolutionary process. It means, the yoga described in Savitri is not limited to any specific period but it represents the ongoing work of the Divine Mother to awaken and transform consciousness across ages.
The earth is a field for the progressive manifestation of the Divine. Savitri’s yoga, as depicted in Book Seven, reflects this evolutionary journey; in it the Divine Mother takes on the burden of human ignorance and suffering to lead creation towards its ultimate destiny of divine life.
This Book presents the yoga of timeless Savitri as a microcosm of the eternal work of the Divine Mother. It expounds in detail her unceasing effort to transform the inconscient into the supramental, bridging the gap between the divine and the human. This yoga is not confined to a single moment or lifetime but is an integral part of the evolutionary process that has been unfolding since the dawn of creation.
Therefore the Divine Savitri who had taken the mortal birth, — even as she was compelled to take the mortal birth, — did not really need any pretext to do Yoga. She comes for a specific missioned task and to accomplish it she must do whatever is necessary for it to be done. She comes with all that knowledge and understanding, with necessary care and concern. But in the play of the cosmic forces every element comes into operation which a Legend is not obliged to spell out. The appearance of Narad in Book Six could therefore be considered as a wonderful literary device though there are constant instances of higher beings coming to promote the earthly process on its evolutionary journey.
To repeat, the pertinent deeper question is: When did Savitri begin her Yoga? It cannot be confined and restricted to any particular life; it has been throughout the unrecorded ages. But there is something very definite also about her present incarnation represented in the epic Savitri, she the resplendent Mother born on 21 February 1878. It is she who is represented by Sri Aurobindo in the epic Savitri. The Mother says: “Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.”
The implication is, her Yoga begins with the Earth born as a “significant centre”, her Yoga for the realisation of the Divine here, on Earth. There is a specificity of the Earth in the present cycle of creation. The earlier creations which had to be absorbed into the Non-Manifest did not have this “significant centre”. The Mother was not present during those periods.
Her presence is what makes Earth a “significant centre”. That is her incomparable glory. Her Yoga is for her, to dissolve the Doom and open the path for the divine Event’s appearance.
All this is not present in the Legend of Savitri but perhaps it has to be supplied in the pregnancy and significanceof the Legend itself. It is not there even in the Tale belonging to the Vedic Cycle, the earliest intuition of the birth of a divine family, divyam janam. It is Vyasa who has given this form as a graspable narrative belonging to the relatively recent times. Therefore while Sri Aurobindo goes broadly by this Vyasa-tale, calling it a Legend, he also widens it into universal realisation of the spirit’s glories in the dark and difficult matter.
But far beyond the Legend is the Mother’s experience of her body always participating in the work of transformation. Regarding supramental light in the physical she reveals: Sri Aurobindo experienced it in his consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated.”
In this context we have the following perspective coming in an email from NG:
It is presenting broadly in the sense that the method is Tantric but in sequence and circumstance there would be differences. For example Canto VI: Nirvana and the Discovery of the All-Negating Absolute and Canto VII are both descriptions of Sri Aurobindo’s own yoga of Nirvana (Canto VI) and Vasudeva (Canto VII) and even there Sri Aurobindo changes the setting from city to forest. The second aspect of why Savitri’s yoga in general corresponds to the Mother’s yoga is as the Mother said “My Body has always participated” which is what Savitri’s birth and development suggests. As for the Mother’s knowing of the psychic being is different to Savitri’s finding of the psychic **entity** as in relation the psychic entity is the secret centre of the psychic being which the psychic being has to realise in its progress. This Mother has described in two different places one is what she calls the “realisation of psychic immortality” which she dates around 1902-04 and definitely before going to Tlemcen where on her first meeting with Théon she could assert that she fears nothing being in possession of her immortal self. But in 1912 is when Mother describes a one year (reminds of Satyavan’s one year) to find the “divine Reality” or the immanent God which I suppose is the psychic entity. She further explains this as when the inmost psychic Being invades the body and the physical consciousness is universalised which kind of confirms that this is what we have in Book 7 Canto 5. So the question is about the first one or the psychic immortality or the immortality of consciousness–what does it mean in Sri Aurobindo’s yogic framework?
But if Savitri’s yoga had been a close presentation then perhaps it would have been structured like the Mother structures her yoga as happening in intervals of 12 years starting at 5/ 6 where first 12 till age 18 was for developing consciousness, the second 12 was for developing the vital (through art and occult work under Asura of Death) and the third 12 for mind (first 6 in association with Asura of Falsehood and the next 6 with the Avatar of Perfection) and the subsequent work and physical (after 1920 in any case it had merged with Sri Aurobindo’s yoga so after it we have to see it as a joint yoga and not a separate line at all).
All these details I had put up in the following compilation:
Here are just a few revelations from the Mother:
When I returned from Japan and we began to work together, Sri Aurobindo had already brought the supramental light into the mental world and was trying to transform the Mind. ‘It’s strange,’ he said to me, ‘it’s an endless work! Nothing seems to get done—everything is done and then constantly has to be done all over again.’ Then I gave him my personal impression, which went back to the old days with Theon: ‘It will be like that until we touch bottom.’ So instead of continuing to work in the Mind, both of us (I was the one who went through the experience… how to put it?… practically, objectively; he experienced it only in his consciousness, not in the body—but my body has always participated), both of us descended almost immediately (it was done in a day or two) from the Mind into the Vital, and so on quite rapidly, leaving the Mind as it was, fully in the light but not permanently transformed.
The Mother, Mother’s Agenda — 1961: November 7, 1961
At times I sense there’s an extraordinary secret to discover, just there at my finger tips; I feel that I am going to catch the Thing, to know … Sometimes, for a second, I see the Secret; there is an opening, and again it closes. Then once again it is unveiled for a second and I come to know a little more. Yesterday the Secret was there completely clear, wide open. Sri Aurobindo speaks of this Secret almost everywhere, especially in his Essays on the Gita. He tells us that in the Gita itself one gets glimpses of this thing which is beyond the Impersonal, beyond even the Personal behind the Impersonal, beyond the Transcendent.
Well, I saw this Secret—I saw that the Supreme only becomes perfect in terrestrial matter, on earth. ‘Becomes’ is just a way of speaking, of course, for everything already is, and the Supreme is what He is. But we live in time, in a successive unfoldment, and it would be absurd to say that at present Matter is the expression of a perfect Divine.
I saw this Secret (getting more and more perceptible as the Supramental becomes clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects … a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom.
I am not saying that the ‘Divine’ becomes perfect in Matter—the Divine is already there—but that THE SUPREME becomes perfect in Matter.
The Mother, Mother’s Agenda — 1951-1960:May 6, 1960
I read a part of Savitri which tells how the king is transformed—those are ALL the experiences my body is now going through! I knew nothing about it … and I seemed to be reading all the experiences my body is now going through…. It’s interesting. There’s EVERYTHING in this Savitri! And to be able to describe those experiences like that, he must have had them.
The mystery is always why he left. Yes. I remember quite clearly and precisely (I still see the whole setting, in his room) a conversation I once had with him—in what connection, I don’t know…. It was… (I forget what preceded), he told me, “We can’t both remain upon earth, one must go.” Then I said to him, “I am ready, I’ll go.” Then he told me, “No, you can’t go, your body is better than mine, you can undergo the transformation better than I can do.”
But I didn’t attach too much importance [to that conversation]; it’s only when he left that it suddenly came back, and I thought, “So there, he knew!…” It was… I don’t know. It was almost like a speculation, you understand, which he was just mentioning. It was at the time of our moving from the other house to this one,2 because it took place one day in that room, here [downstairs], and it was before his accident, before he broke his leg. In what connection, I forget. That’s gone. But I remember clearly, so clearly, I still see the room and everything, how he was, how he told me, “We can’t both remain upon earth.” That’s all.
But when he said it to me, I found it so obvious that I didn’t even ask him. So it must have followed something, and that something is gone. Because I remember, I told him, “I am absolutely ready, I’ll go.” Then he looked at me, and he said, “No, no, your body is better than mine, it can undergo…” Why?… How many times since then I have asked myself that question.
“Your body on earth…” Sri Aurobindo said, “What I see is that your body is the only one that has sufficient endurance to go through the ordeal.” But, you understand, this body knew nothing about it, it has no ambitions (!), still less pretensions. But basing myself on that, when he told me, “You will do the work,” I said yes. So there we are.
As for me, the power of consciousness goes on increasing; for the time being—I repeat, for the time being—the physical power is reduced to almost nought. I am forced to stay here, minding nothing, and make shift with seeing people. So I need some persons to do the practical work I used to do before and can no longer do… (Mother is short of breath). I can’t speak with the same strength as before—the physical is undergoing a transformation, you know. Sri Aurobindo himself had said—and rightly so—he said (because one of us had to go, and I offered to go), “No, your body is capable of enduring it, it has the strength to undergo transformation.” It’s not easy. I can assure you, it’s not easy. Yet my body is good-willed, it is really good-willed. But for the moment it is in the process of… well, it is no longer quite on this side but not yet on the other. The transition isn’t easy. So I am stuck here, like an old woman, incapable of doing any work.
18 March 2026
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