The Winds of Wonder

34: Scribbled Notes — Siddhis of Yogas in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri

What is the single great victory of the spiritual-ādhyātmic Yoga of Aswapati. It is to compel mortal birth of the Divine Mother.

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||

Compel her mortal birth but for what?

O Truth defended in thy secret sun,

Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens

On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,

O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,

Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,

Linger not long with thy transmuting hand

Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,

As if Time dare not open its heart to God. ||90.36||

O radiant fountain of the world’s delight

World-free and unattainable above,

O Bliss who ever dwellst deep hid within

While men seek thee outside and never find,

Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,

Incarnate the white passion of thy force,

Mission to earth some living form of thee. ||90.37||

One moment fill with thy eternity,

Let thy infinity in one body live,

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

All-Love throb single in one human heart. ||90.38||

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||

This is fulfilled. There arose a wide consenting Voice.

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||

Half of Savitri is for changing Fate by an unchanging will.

Could Aswapati himself by his Yoga-Tapasyā not directly bring about that change. In the Divine Economy he wills. The execution is by Savitri, the Supreme’s Power of manifestation in the Mortal World. His is Saṃkalpa; hers is Kārya. The first is Spiritual-Ādhyātmic Yoga. The second is the Occult-Tāntric Yoga.

In her Occult-Tāntric Yoga Savitri’s first immediate task is to meet formidable Death and win victory over him. The pretext, not the first but the final cause, the necessary cause for success, is the death of her lover and husband, Satyavan. The transcendental Savitri tells the incarnate:

… Remember why thou cam’st:

Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,

In silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths,

Then mortal nature change to the divine. ||116.22||

Open God’s door, enter into his trance. ||116.23||

Conquer thy heart’s throbs, let thy heart beat in God:

Thy nature shall be the engine of his works,

Thy voice shall house the mightiness of his Word:

Then shalt thou harbour my force and conquer Death.||116.26||

She has found her soul:

Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;

They looked upon each other, knew themselves,

The secret deity and its human part,

The calm immortal and the struggling soul. ||126.9||

Then with a magic transformation’s speed

They rushed into each other and grew one. ||126.10||

Centre down Centre Divine Savitri enters into the very physical of the incarnate. But that is not sufficient. She has taken birth in a body with Inconscience in it. She must blow it out:

Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time’s work,

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name. ||128.49||

Annul thyself that only God may be. ||128.50||

She meets Death who want her to show if the Divine Mother is with her:

Show me the body of the living Truth

Or draw for me the outline of her face

That I too may obey and worship her. ||146.15||

But

The Woman answered to the mighty Shade,

And as she spoke, mortality disappeared;

Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes,

Light came a dream of heaven into her face. ||146.22||\

For Death the Game is over:

He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,

He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:

He turned to the Inconscient for support,

From which he was born, his vast sustaining self:

It drew him back towards boundless vacancy

As if by himself to swallow up himself:

He called to his strength, but it refused his call. ||147.33||

His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured. ||147.34||

At last he knew defeat inevitable

And left crumbling the shape that he had worn,

Abandoning hope to make man’s soul his prey

And force to be mortal the immortal spirit. ||147.35||

Afar he fled shunning her dreaded touch

And refuge took in the retreating Night. ||147.36||

Later, In Book Eleven, we have transfigured Death, the Transcendental Supreme himself, granting the most exceptional Boon:

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine. ||155.71||

That is the Phaḷa-Shruti, the rich golden Fruit of the two tremendous Yogas, Aswapati’s Yoga-Tapasyā, his Spiritual-Ādhyātmic Yoga, his Will, Saṃkalpa, and Savitri’s Occult-Tāntric Yoga, her dynamic executive Action, Kārya.

In the Epic each Yoga takes about 12000 lines. But their Siddhis are for what? It is for the “holy marriage of Satyavan and Savitri that the divine family be born, that there shall be the divine race, divyam janam of the Rig Veda:

One day I shall return, His hands in mine

And thou shalt see the face of the Absolute. ||124.71||

Then shall the holy marriage be achieved,

Then shall the divine family be born. ||124.72||

There shall be light and peace in all the worlds. ||124.73||

The Boon of the Epic is the coming of Krishna and Kali in the Earth-dynamics. That this earthly life shall become the life divine is what Savitri gives, yet the question remains:

Why are these two Yogas different though they are complementary to each other? Why the Presence and the Power? and their respective Yogas?

18 May 2026