23: Scribbled Notes — “The stamp of mighty memories”
We are looking into the following line which appears in Book One Canto Three of Savitri:
He bore the stamp of mighty memories.
Here is the full text:
A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth. ||5.1||
One in the front of the immemorial quest,
Protagonist of the mysterious play
In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms
And limits his eternity by the hours
And the blind Void struggles to live and see,
A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air,
Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power. ||5.2||
His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres
Into our province of ephemeral sight,
A colonist from immortality. ||5.3||
A pointing beam on earth’s uncertain roads,
His birth held up a symbol and a sign;
His human self like a translucent cloak
Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world. ||5.4||
Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time
And paying here God’s debt to earth and man
A greater sonship was his divine right. ||5.5||
Although consenting to mortal ignorance,
His knowledge shared the Light ineffable. ||5.6||
A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable. ||5.7||
An archivist of the symbols of the Beyond,
A treasurer of superhuman dreams,
He bore the stamp of mighty memories
And shed their grandiose ray on human life. ||5.8||
The birth of Savitri who is facing the death of her lover and husband Satyavan exactly one year after their marriage was brought about by Yogi Aswapati. He was carrying the “world’s desire” to the Divine Mother, compelling her to redeem this death-bound creation, for its redemption from the Doom present in it. But who else can compel her if not the Supreme himself coming here and doing the necessary occult-yogic preparation for her to dynamically do her work, preparing the ground, the ādhāra-bhūmi? Aswapati is that incarnation of the supreme, it is a “decisive action direct from the Supreme”.
The line “He bore the stamp of mighty memories” is related to the long history which he was moulding right from the beginning. Sri Aurobindo represented as Aswapati in Savitri was present throughout Earth’s history, contributing to major evolutionary transformations. The psychic memory of those events and appearances was always there with him. There is a continuity of his spiritual work across lifetimes. That is what the line’s “memories” point at.
Young Nagin Doshi asked Sri Aurobindo “Since you and the Mother were on earth constantly from the beginning what was the need for Avataras coming down here one after another?” The answer was: “We were not on earth as Avataras.” [15 December 1935] Nagin persisted: “You say that you both were not on earth as Avatars and yet you were carrying on the evolution. Since the Divine Himself was on the earth carrying on the evolution, what was the necessity for the coming down of the Avatars who are portions of Himself?” [18 Dec 1935] “The Avatar is necessary when a special work is to be done and in crises of the evolution. The Avatar is a special manifestation, while for the rest of the time it is the Divine working within the ordinary human limits as a Vibhuti.” [18 December 1935]
There is this sentence in Savitri Book Five Canto Two:
Rare is the cup fit for love’s nectar wine,
As rare the vessel that can hold God’s birth;
A soul made ready through a thousand years
Is the living mould of a supreme Descent. ||102.57||
Although the context is regarding Satyavan whom Savitri has met in the Shalwa Woods autobiographically the phrase “a supreme Descent” is the coming of the Avatar himself. The connection between the Mother and Sri Aurobindo has that deep occultly luminous antiquity.
The Mother: “Since the beginning of earth history, Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another.” You can say that all through history Sri Aurobindo played an active part. Especially in the most important movements of history he was there—and playing the most important, the leading part. But he was not always visible.” [23 January 1960] She herself speaks about her past: “Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.”
But about “He bore the stamp of mighty memories” we have something most significant from Sri Aurobindo, in his Record of Yoga, “The Evolutionary Scale”.
“We shall see how the thought of God works itself out in Life. The material world is first formed with the Sun as centre, the Sun [ ] [MS itself] being itself only a subordinate star of the great Agni, Mahavishnu, in whom is centred the Bhu. Mahavishnu is the Virat Purusha who as Agni pours Himself out into the forms of sun and star. He is Agni Twasht ´ a, Visvakarman, he is also Praj ´ apati and Matariswan. These are the three primal Purushas of the earth life, Agni Twashta, Praj ´ apati & Matariswan, all of them soul bodies of Mahavishnu. Agni Twashta having made the Sun out of the Apas or waters of being, Prajapati as Surya Savitri enters into the Sun and takes possession of it. He multiplies himself in the Suris or Solar Gods who are the souls of the flames of Surya, the Purushas of the female solar energies. Then he creates out of this solar body of Vishnu the planets each of which successively becomes the Bhumi or place of manifestation for Manu, the mental being, who is the nodus of manifest life-existence and the link between the life and the spirit.
“The present earth in its turn appears as the scene of life, Mars being its last theatre. In the Bhumi Agni Twashta is again the first principle, Matariswan the second, finally, Prajapati appears in the form of the four Manus, chatv´aro manavah. Not in the physical world at first, but in the mental world which stands behind the earth-life; for earth has seven planes of being, the material of which the scenes and events are alone normally visible to the material senses, the vital of which man’s pranakosha is built and to which it is responsive, the mental to which his manahkosha is attached, the ideal governing his vijnanakosha, the beatific which supportshis anandakosha, & the dynamic and essential to which he has not [p. 1324] yet developed corresponding koshas, but only unformed nimbuses of concrete being. All the gods throw out their linga-rupas into these worlds of earth and through them carry on her affairs; for these lingas repeat there in the proper terms of life upon earth the conscious movements of the gods in their higher existences in the worlds above Bhu. The Manus manifested in the Manoloka of Bhu bring pressure to bear upon the earth for the manifestation of life and mind. Prajapati as Rudra then begins to form life upon earth, first in vegetable, then in animal forms. Man already exists but as a god or demigod in Bhuvarloka of Bhu, not as a man upon earth.
“There he is Deva, Asura, Rakshasa, Pramatha, Pisacha, Pashu or as Deva he is either Gandharva[,] Yaksha, Vidyadhara or any of the Karmadevas. For Man is a son of the Manu and is assigned his place in Div & Pradiv, in Heaven & in the Swargabhumis. Thence he descends to earth and thither from earth he returns. All that will be explained afterwards. When the human body is ready, then he descends upon earth and occupies it. He is not a native of earth,
nor does he evolve out of the animal. His manifestation in animal form is always a partial incarnation, as will be seen hereafter.
“The animal proper is a lower type. Certain devas of the manasic plane in the Bhuvarloka descend in the higher type of animal. They are not mental beings proper, but only half-mental vital beings. They live in packs, tribes etc with a communal existence. They are individual souls, but the individuality is less vigorous than the type soul. If theywere not individual, they would not be able to incarnate in individual forms. The body is only the physical type of the soul.
“The soul, if it were only a communal soul, would manifest in some complex body of which the conglomeration of the different parts would be the sole unity; say, a life like that of the human brain. The animal develops the tribe life, the pack or clan life, the family life. He develops chitta, manas, the rudiments of reason. Then only man appears.
“How does he appear? Prajapati manifests as Vishnu Upendra incarnate in the animal or Pashu in whom the four Manus have already manifested themselves, and the first human creature who appears is, in this Kalpa, the Vanara, not the animal Ape, but man with the Ape nature. His satya yuga is the first Paradise, for man begins with the Satya Yuga, begins with a perfected type, not a rudimentary type. The animal forms a perfect type for the human Pashu and then only a Manuputra or Manu, a human, a true mental soul, enters into existence upon earth, with the full blaze of a perfect animal-human mentality in the animal form.
“These are man’s beginnings. He rises by the descent of ever higher types of Manu from the Bhuvarloka, first he is Pashu, then Pishacha, then Pramatha, then Rakshasa, then Asura, then Deva, then Siddha. So he ascends the ladder of his own being towards the Sat Purusha.
“Manu, the first Prajapati, is a part of Mahavishnu Himself descended into the mental plane in order to conduct the destinies of the human race. He is different from the four Manus who are
more than Prajapatis, they being the four Type-Souls from whom all human Purushas are born; they are Manus only for the purpose of humanity & in themselves are beyond this manifest universe & dwell for ever in the being of the Para Purushas. They are not true Manomaya Purushas. But Manu Prajapati is a true manomaya Purusha. He by mental generation begets on his female Energies men in the mental&vital planes above earth, whence they descend into the material or rather the terrestrial body. On earth Manu incarnates fourteen times in each Kalpa & each of these fourteen incarnations is called a Manu. These fourteen Manus govern human destinies during the hundred chaturyugas of the Prati-Kalpa, each in turn taking charge of a particular stage of the human advance.
“While that stage lasts he directs it both from the mental world and by repeated incarnations upon earth. When Manu Prajapati wishes to incarnate in a fresh form, he has a mental body prepared for him by evolution of births by a human vibhuti, Suratha or another&takes possession of it at the beginning of his manvantara. Each manvantara is composed of a varying number of chaturyugas according to the importance & difficulty of the stage with which it is concerned. Once at least in each chaturyuga the Manu of the Manvantara incarnates as a man upon earth, but this never happens in the Kali Yuga. The seventh & eighth Manus are the most important in each Prati Kalpa & have the longest reigns, for in their Manvantaras the critical change is finally made from the [p. 1326] type which was completed in the last Prati Kalpa to the type which is to be perfected in the present Kalpa. For each of the ten Prati-Kalpas has its type. Man in the ten Prati-Kalpas progresses through the ten types which have been fixed for his evolution in the Kalpa. In this Kalpa the types, dashagu, are the ten forms of consciousness, called the Pashu, Vanara, Pishacha, Pramatha, Rakshasa, Asura, Deva, Sadhyadeva, Siddhadeva and the Satyadeva. The last three are known by other names which need not be written at present.
“The Pashu is mind concentrated entirely on the annam, the Vanara mind concentrated on the Prana, the Pishacha mind concentrated on the senses & the knowledge part of the chitta, the Pramatha mind concentrated on the heart & the emotional & aesthetic part of the chitta, the Rakshasa is mind concentrated on the thinking manas proper & taking up all the others into the manas itself; the Asura is mind concentrated on the buddhi & in the Asura Rakshasa making it serve the manas & chitta; the Deva is mind concentrated in vijnanam, exceeding itself, but in the Asura Deva or Devasura it makes the vijnana serve the buddhi. The others raise mind successively to the Ananda, Tapas & Sat & are, respectively, the supreme Rakshasa, the supreme Asura, the supreme Deva. We have here the complete scale by which Mind ascends its own ladder from Matter to pure Being evolved by Man in the various types of which each of the ten principles is in its turn capable. To take the joy of these various types in their multifold play is the object of the Supreme Purusha in the human Lila.
About ape-like we have this in Savitri’s Swapna Yoga, [Book Seven Canto Two] when a dream discloses to her the cosmic past as well as with an indication how the future is to come:
In the prone obscure beginnings of the race
The human grew in the bowed apelike man. ||117.81||
He stood erect, a Godlike form and force
And a soul’s thoughts looked out from earthborn eyes;
Man stood erect, he wore the thinker’s brow:
He looked at heaven and saw his comrade stars;
A vision came of beauty and greater birth
Slowly emerging from the heart’s chapel of light
And moved in a white lucent air of dreams. ||117.82||
He saw his being’s unrealised vastnesses,
He aspired and housed the nascent demi-god. ||117.83||
Out of the dim recesses of the self
The occult seeker into the open came:
He heard the far and touched the intangible,
He gazed into the future and the unseen;
He used the powers earth-instruments cannot use,
A pastime made of the impossible;
He caught up fragments of the Omniscient’s thought,
He scattered formulas of omnipotence. ||117.84||
Thus man in his little house made of earth’s dust
Grew towards an unseen heaven of thought and dream
Looking into the vast vistas of his mind
On a small globe dotting infinity. ||117.85||
At last climbing a long and narrow stair
He stood alone on a high roof of things
And saw the light of a spiritual sun. ||117.86||
Aspiring he transcends his earthly self;
He stands in the largeness of his soul new-born
Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things
And moves in a pure free spiritual realm
As in the rare breath of a stratosphere. ||117.87||
A lost end of far lines of divinity,
He mounts by a frail thread to his high source;
He reaches his fount of immortality,
He calls the Godhead into his mortal life. ||117.88||
All this the spirit concealed had done in her:
A portion of the mighty Mother came
Into her as into its own human part:
Amid the cosmic workings of the Gods
It marked her the centre of a wide-drawn scheme,
Dreamed in the passion of her far-seeing spirit
To mould humanity into God’s own shape
And lead this great blind struggling world to light
Or a new world discover or create. ||117.89||
Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state. ||117.90||
But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature’s crowded rooms
And stand uncovered in that nature’s front
And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life. ||117.91||
This appearance of Man, well-made for habitation of the gods maintained by the Upanishad is the arrival of Manomaya Purusha, the Mental Being, for which Adam and Eve had to step out of the paradisal world of life.
We may incidentally look into the evolution of homo sapiens as presented by the science of biology, particularly the field of paleoanthropology. The biological mould for the appearance of Man has a certain significance, and it could indicate how someone more than man be biologically formed, with a double movement with and urge and a push from below and with the formation of a spiritual prototype up there. The Mother was busy with the latter. About the biological understanding and teleology connected with it here is a part of discussion with Gemini AI. It of course needs a more intensive probing.
Paranthropus is a genus of specialized, ape-like hominins that lived in Eastern and Southern Africa approximately 2.7 to 1.4 million years ago. Known for their massive, robust skulls with powerful jaws, large molars, and a sagittal crest, they were adapted to eating tough, fibrous plant foods. Recent evidence suggests they were more adaptable than previously thought, potentially using tools while walking upright.
Key Characteristics and Species
Paranthropus (often termed “robust australopithecines”) consists of three recognized species:
- P. aethiopicus (2.7–2.3 mya): Considered the ancestor of the later species, with a more projecting face.
- P. boisei (2.3–1.2 mya): Found in East Africa, highly specialized with extreme cheek teeth and thick dental enamel.
- P. robustus (1.8–1.5 mya): Primarily found in South Africa.
The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program +4
Physical and Dietary Adaptations
- Skull and Jaw: They had small brains (around) and broad, dish-shaped faces with flaring cheekbones. A large, bony sagittal crest on the top of the skull anchored powerful muscles used for heavy chewing.
- Teeth: Their front teeth (incisors and canines) were small, but the molars were massive and coated in very thick enamel.
- Diet: While traditionally viewed as “specialists” on hard foods, newer studies suggest they were generalists, feeding on abrasive plants (grasses or sedges) and using harder foods as “fallback” resources.
- Bipedalism: Paranthropus walked upright, with pelvises adapted for bipedalism.
The Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program +2
Behaviour and Environment
- Habitats: They inhabited wooded, riverine landscapes, wetlands, and arid woodlands.
- Tool Use: Recent findings of hand and foot bones indicate that P. boisei possessed key manipulative capabilities similar to Homo. New evidence from 2025 suggests they may have been capable of making and using stone tools in some capacity.
- Sexual Dimorphism: Males were considerably larger than females.
- Extinction: They coexisted with the genus Homo (e.g., H. erectus). Their extinction, likely around million years ago, was probably due to environmental changes making their, as revealed in a New Scientist article and Wikipedia’s Paranthropus entry, specialized habits less advantageous.
New Scientist +3
These are paleontological findings, specifically belonging to the field of paleoanthropology, which is a specialized branch of paleontology that focuses on human evolution. The contribution of the Leaky family is noteworthy. The study of Paranthropus in this region is a multi-institutional effort. The findings are rigorously peer-reviewed. It’s a fascinating area of science where global teams are constantly piecing together our family tree.
The featured image is a painting by Huta.
Savitri Book 1 Canto 3 – The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release
A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth. ||5.1||
One in the front of the immemorial quest,…
A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air,
Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power. ||5.2||
A world’s| de+sire| com+pelled| her mor|+tal birth.|
One in| the front| of the| im+me+mo+|+al quest,|
A think|+er and toil|+er in the| i+dea|l’s air,|
Brought down| to earth’s| dumb need| her ra+di|+ant pow+er.|
Last line: spondee-iamb-spondee-amphibrach-amphibrach
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