24: Scribbled Notes — A Wedding again on Earth
In Book Five of Savitri we have this:
Thus were they in each other lost awhile,
Then drawing back from their long ecstasy’s trance
Came into a new self and a new world. ||104.16||
Each now was a part of the other’s unity. ||104.17||
The world was but their twin self-finding’s scene
Or their own wedded being’s vaster frame. ||104.18||
On the high glowing cupola of the day
Fate tied a knot with morning’s halo threads
While by the ministry of an auspice-hour
Heart-bound before the sun, their marriage fire,
The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse
Took place again on earth in human forms:
In a new act of the drama of the world
The united Two began a greater age. ||104.19||
In the silence and murmur of that emerald world
And the mutter of the priest-wind’s sacred verse,
Amid the choral whisperings of the leaves
Love’s twain had joined together and grew one. ||104.20||
The natural miracle was wrought once more:
In the immutable ideal world
One human moment was eternal made. ||104.21||
This is the pledge they have made together, Satyavan and Savitri meeting on the roads of long time, in the sylvan privacy of the Shalwa Woods, watched by the trees and the flowers and the mountains and the streams and the birds and the rapturous winds and the happy blue skies one above another and the Gods in splendid realms of the tranquil Heaven. Savitri after a long journey through the ways of the vast world has found love, even as she was bidden by her Yogi father to discover herself in the embrace of undying love:
Ascend from Nature to divinity’s heights;
Face the high gods, crowned with felicity,
Then meet a greater God, thy self beyond Time. ||98.55||
But that ascent to “divinity’s heights” has to meet also the God of Doom. Promptly comes Narad the heavenly Sage from Paradise to promote that ascension in another decisive way. She has found God of Love; she must also find God of Death and conquer him in the splendour of deathlessness in life on earth. The Sage discloses the miracle of the approaching Destiny:
In one brief year when this bright hour flies back
And perches careless on a branch of Time,
This sovereign glory ends heaven lent to earth,
This splendour vanishes from the mortal’s sky:
Heaven’s greatness came, but was too great to stay. ||106.145||
Twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her;
This day returning Satyavan must die. ||106.146||
Throughout Savitri there is a constant tolling-knelling-pealing sound of “Satyavan must die”, “Satyavan must die”, Satyavan has to die; the whole poem is centred around it. It is a divine necessity to meet Death, meet to vanquish him. That is the luminous focus of the rich and loaded prophecy. It is a prophecy made in the chant of Vishṇu’s Name taking the evolution forward into the glories of the manifesting Spirit. This is a well-designed event and the steps of Time have arrived at this moment, the forces of Nature and of the cosmic workings, and of the divine teleology joining together in the dynamics of the executive Will. It is Savitri who is going to be the strong Executive to carry out the task. Yet as she has taken a human birth there have to be prompting factors and the legend has well-knit all these beautifully and impeccably.
Yet everything is present in her deep psychic being, Narad only providing occasioning cause and impulsion. Such is the nature of the lives of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Their very first meeting on 29 March 1914 in the Guest House on Rue Françoise Martin in Pondicherry has this designed Chance. This had to happen, and everything fell into appropriate places. Coherences have their own occult modes of working, these beyond the reach of human understanding and recognition. She says: “Since the beginning of the earth, wherever and whenever there was the possibility of manifesting a ray of Consciousness, I was there.” There must have been crucial moments in her past lives, but never was there this Narad-moment. It only shows the intensity of gathered-in events and actions for making a quantum leap into the Unknowable’s purpose vis-à-vis the evolutionary soul of the Earth.
But this happens only when the wedding takes place again, not in Heaven but on Earth:
The wedding of the eternal Lord and Spouse
Took place again on earth in human forms:
In a new act of the drama of the world
The united Two began a greater age. ||104.19||
The glory and triumph of this wedding is in the context of “a new act”, an act in which the divine family will be born. Savitri, in the context of raising the spirit to its forgotten heights, had promised to the Madonna of light, Mother of joy and peace that one day she would come back with His hands in hers she shall see the face of the Absolute.
Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,
Then shall the divine family be born. ||124.72||
Savitri is returning to earth with the soul of Satyavan held like a bird close to her breast — and
Drawn by white manes upon a high-roofed car
In flare of the unsteady torches went
With linked hands Satyavan and Savitri,
Hearing a marriage march and nuptial hymn,
Where waited them the many-voiced human world. ||159.3||
The Mother narrates her experience she had in Apri 1962:
Night of April 12-13: Suddenly in the night I woke up with the full awareness of what we could call the Yoga of the world. The Supreme Love was manifesting through big pulsations, and each pulsation was bringing the world further in its manifestation. It was the formidable pulsations of the eternal, stupendous Love, only Love: each pulsation of the Love was carrying the universe further in its manifestation. And the certitude that what is to be done is done and the Supramental Manifestation is realized.
Purpose of the wedding of eternal Lord and Spouse again in human forms is accomplished.
Paintings are by Huta.
Featured Image: Sacrament of Joy:
Savitri Book 5 Canto 3 – Satyavan and Savitri
A sacrament of joy in treasuring palms
She brought, flower-symbol of her offered life,
Then with raised hands that trembled a little now
At the very closeness that her soul desired,
This bond of sweetness, their bright union’s sign,
She laid on the bosom coveted by her love. ||104.8||
A sac|+ra+ment| of joy| in treas|+ur+ing palms|
She brought,| flow+er|-sym+bol| of her of|+fered life,|
Then with| raised hands| that trem|+bled a lit|+tle now|
At the ver|+y close|+ness that| her soul| de+sired,|
This bond| of sweet|+ness, their| bright un|+ion’s sign,|
She laid| on the bos|+om cov|+et+ed| by her love.|
He gathere all Savitri — what a daring!!!
Leave a Reply