25: Scribbled Notes — About the mightier Task
Book Three Canto Three opens with this line.
A mightier task remained than all he had done. ||83.1||
A might|ier task| remained| than all| he had done.|
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What is that “mightier task” which Yogi Aswapati has yet to attend? The perception of this task comes to him after his adoration of the Divine Mother and surrender to her, in the previous Canto. Until now all that he had yogically done was only to prepare a field, small beginnings asking for mightier ends. Immeasurable has grown his heart’s demand. Heaven’s Light cannot be seized by our outstretched hands. It comes not by struggle or by thought. So
A vast surrender was his only strength. ||82.8||
A Power that lives upon the heights must act,
Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air
And fill the finite with the Infinite. ||82.9||
Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:
Only he longed to draw her presence and power
Into his heart and mind and breathing frame;
Only he yearned to call for ever down
Her healing touch of love and truth and joy
Into the darkness of the suffering world. ||82.11||
His soul was freed and given to her alone. ||82.12||
There is the yogic introspection. He has to discover in him the elements “betraying God”. The Inconscient too is infinite, and the more one plumbs it the more it deepens.
All Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare,
All her dim crypts and corners searched with fire
Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts
Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary
Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame. ||83.12||
With that tremendous work there is a response to his urge and solicitation.
Then suddenly there came a downward look
As if a sea exploring its own depths;
A living Oneness widened at its core
And joined him to unnumbered multitudes. ||85.1||
A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love
Caught all into a sole immense embrace;
Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast
And each became the self and space of all. ||85.2||
The great world-rhythms were heart-beats of one Soul,
To feel was a flame-discovery of God,
All mind was a single harp of many strings,
All life a song of many meeting lives;
For worlds were many, but the Self was one. ||85.3||
In that Oneness, “not tied to monotone”, is witnessed the outbreak of “perfection’s law”.
There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density,
An artistry of glad outwardness of self,
A treasure-house of lasting images
Where sense can build a world of pure delight:
The home of a perpetual happiness,
It lodged the hours as in a pleasant inn. ||86.22||
The senses there were outlets of the soul;
Even the youngest child-thought of the mind
Incarnated some touch of highest things. ||86.23||
There substance was a resonant harp of self,
A net for the constant lightnings of the Spirit,
A magnet power of love’s intensity
Whose yearning throb and adoration’s cry
Drew God’s approaches close, sweet, wonderful. ||86.24||
Not only that; there is something most assuring:
He saw a world that is from a world to be. ||87.10||
Will that world manifest? Has the ground for its manifestation well-prepared? Yes, it has been.
Aswapati argues with the Divine Mother. He tell her:
I saw the Omnipotent’s flaming pioneers
Over the heavenly verge which turns towards life
Come crowding down the amber stairs of birth;
Forerunners of a divine multitude
Out of the paths of the morning star they came
Into the little room of mortal life. ||90.28||
I saw them cross the twilight of an age,
The sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn,
The great creators with wide brows of calm,
The massive barrier-breakers of the world
And wrestlers with destiny in her lists of will,
The labourers in the quarries of the gods,
The messengers of the Incommunicable,
The architects of immortality. ||90.29||
Into the fallen human sphere they came,
Faces that wore the Immortal’s glory still,
Voices that communed still with the thoughts of God,
Bodies made beautiful by the Spirit’s light,
Carrying the magic word, the mystic fire,
Carrying the Dionysian cup of joy,
Approaching eyes of a diviner man,
Lips chanting an unknown anthem of the soul,
Feet echoing in the corridors of Time. ||90.30||
High priests of wisdom, sweetness, might and bliss,
Discoverers of beauty’s sunlit ways
And swimmers of Love’s laughing fiery floods
And dancers within rapture’s golden doors,
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light on Nature’s face. ||90.31||
He insists that the Divine Mother herself should incarnate and change the lot of this suffering mortal creature, the sway of Doom deep in his body:
Immortal, treading the earth with mortal feet
All heaven’s beauty crowd in earthly limbs! ||90.39||
Omnipotence, girdle with the power of God
Movements and moments of a mortal will,
Pack with the eternal might one human hour
And with one gesture change all future time. ||90.40||
Let a great word be spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate. ||90.41||
She grants the Boon:
One shall descend and break the iron Law,
Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power. ||91.4||
She comes, vanquishes Death, and receives the Assurance, that earth shall open to divinity:
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine. ||155.71||
We have the “crimson seed” of this in the very first meeting on Sunday 3.30 PM 29 March 1914 the Mother had with Sri Aurobindo. Later she reveals its momentous significance:
“I shall relate an experience of mine when I first met Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry. I was in deep concentration, seeing things in the Supermind, things that were to be but which were somehow not manifesting. I told Sri Aurobindo what I had seen and asked him if they would manifest. He simply said, ‘Yes.’ And immediately I saw that the Supramental had touched the earth and was beginning to be realised! This was the first time I had witnessed the power to make real what is true: it is the very same power that will bring about the realisation in you of the truth when you come in all sincerity, saying, ‘This falsehood I want to get rid of’, and the answer which you get is ‘Yes’.”
That is the fructification of the “mightier task” in the sequel the incarnate Mother doing the Yoga of the Cells for the earthly life to become the life divine.
Savitri Book 3 Canto 3 – The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
All had not ceased in the unbounded hush. ||88.8||
His heart lay somewhere conscious and alone
Far down below him like a lamp in night; ||88.9||
In the centre of his vast and fateful trance
Half way between his free and fallen selves,
Interceding twixt God’s day and the mortal’s night,
Accepting worship as its single law,…
To her it turned for whom it willed to be. ||88.11||
All had| not ceased| in the| un+bound|+ed hush.|
His heart| lay some|+where con|+scious and| a+lone|
Far down| be+low| him like| a lamp| in night;|
In the cen|+tre of| its vast| and fate|+ful trance|
Half way| be+tween| his free| and fall|+en selves,|
In+ter+ced|+ing twixt| God’s day| and the mor|+tal’s night,|
Ac+cept|+ing wor|+ship as| its sin|+gle law,|
To her| it turned| for whom| it willed| to be.|
23 April 2026
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