On hearing this, Savitri felt that the world's darkness which had worn the
symbol shape of the God of Death was now ready for Heaven-light and revealed
to him her real form. Then came upon Savitri a transformation described in these
lines:
A mighty transformation came on her.
A halo of the indwelling Deity,
The Immortal's lustre that had lit her face
And tented its radiance in her body's house,
Overflowing made the air a luminous sea.
In a flaming moment of apocalypse
The Incarnation thrust aside its veil.
A little figure in infinity
Yet stood and seemed the Eternal's very house,
As if the world's centre was her very soul
And all wide space was but its outer robe. (page: 664)
With this transformation, a descent comes over Savitri. In a flaming moment
of apocalypse the Incarnation thrust aside its veil. The Powers that she had
so far kept back came down and descended into her being all the way from the
sahasrara to the muladhara. Eternity saw into the eyes of Death and darkness
saw God's living reality.
Then a voice was heard, which sounded like the calm utterance of Infinity.
We have already analysed the content of this speech of Savitri. She hails
him as "victorious Death" for constantly prompting man to seek the
immortal being in him. The God of Death is asked to live a while and still
be the instrument of the Divine until one day man will understand his real
nature. She concludes the speech with these words:
But now, O timeless Mightiness, stand aside
And leave the path of my incarnate Force.
Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask:
Release the soul of the world called Satyavan
Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance
That he may stand master of life and fate,
Man's representative in the house of God,
The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light,
The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride. (page 666)
Death knew he was defeated and yet he stood there defiant. A pressure of
intolerable force weighed down on him from all sides. Light surrounded him
from all sides. He called to Night and hell and none came to his aid. Even
the Inconscient from which he was born was unable to help him. At last he
knew his defeat was inevitable. His shape began to crumble and finally the
universal Shadow (the God of Death) disappeared into void of the dream twilight.
With that the twilight realm passed and faded from the souls of Savitri and
Satyavan and they were alone. Neither of them stirred. Between them arose
a mute, invisible and translucent wall. "All waited on the unknown inscrutable
Will."
Now we are at the very beginning of Book XI. The first section of this canto
which consists of 267 lines begins with a description of the Eternal day.
The God of Death has already taken Savitri through several worlds, namely,
the world of Eternal Night, the world of the Dream Twilight of the Ideal and
of the Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real. And the poet graphically and very
aptly describes these worlds, and so does he with this world of God's Everlasting
Day.
The opening section of this Canto is a splendid poetic attempt to describe
God's everlasting day. From the description, it would appear that this is
not an entirely imaginary scene described by the poet. The several details
suggest that this is based on a direct experience of some of the God's everlasting
day. Everything seen, heard and experienced here seems to come from the eternal
source and from the eternal's own substance without any diminution or dilution.
A cosmic rapture seems to manifest here in an endless figuring of the spirit.
All the occult planes are seen and are found active. Even the earth nature
seems to have changed here; air and matter were transformed, other earths
are seen and also other beings. Savitri sees here children of God's day living
in a happiness never lost. All sounds here are musical, with birds with coloured
feathers singing, and with breeze full of fragrance, flowers with laughing
eyes. One felt the embrace of God in every touch. There was no suffering of
any kind here, only bliss. On this plane rapture was a common incident. There
were also seen great forms of deities, with bright bodies exuding delight.
Apsaras and Gandharvas were there. The great forefathers of mankind were also
seen moving in splendour. It must be remembered that this is a description
of something actually seen and experienced by the poet and not something woven
out of his imagination.
From the skies of ecstasy a marvellous sun shone on worlds of deathless bliss;
these worlds looked like the home of perfection, like the magical revelations
of the Eternal's smile. Savitri's body quivered with the eternity's touch;
she felt as though her soul stood close to the springs of the infinite. Savitri
was surrounded by God's everlasting day.
She felt that she lived in the finite projections of the Infinite, which
looked ever new. Infinity multiplied its vast self-look and translated its
mightiness and joy into delight which souls which lived in the realm of Time
could share in ever-new vistas, in grandeurs ever newborn from the unknown
depths, in powers that leaped immortal from unknown heights, in passionate
heart-beats of an undying love, in scenes of a sweetness that could never
fade. Thoughts sublimely born in the still beauty of creative joy came as
answers to the deep demand of an infinite sense and its need for forms to
house its bodiless thrill. Plains were there that looked like the expanse
of God's wide sleep. Even the very air seemed an ocean of felicity. A vast
and calm serenity swallowed all sound into a voicelessness of utter bliss.
Even in Matter there was an intimate spiritual touch. Twilight and mist were
banished from this air. Where there is such radiance, there cannot be a night.
The divine Artist who had dreamed these worlds into existence created in
a cosmic rapture a pageant of universal power in Time, a harmonious order
of the vasts of the self in cyclic patterns and rhythmic planes. Eternity
was the source and the substance of the beauty and the marvel here. They were
not moulded from the mist of Matter; they showed the great power from whose
depths they had emerged.
A march of universal powers in Time,
The harmonic order of self's vastitudes
In cyclic symmetries and metric planes
Harboured a cosmic rapture's revelry,
An endless figuring of the spirit in things
Planned by the artist who has dreamed the worlds;
Of all the beauty and the marvel here,
Of all Time's intricate variety
Eternity was the substance and the source;
Not from a plastic mist of Matter made,
They offered the suggestion of their depths
And opened the great series of their powers. (page 672)
A spirit wandered happily in the wind, and it brooded in the leaf and the
stone. There were eternal mountains rising ridge on gleaming ridge, like lines
engraved on a sapphire plate. From the secrecies of blue mountains, there
descended murmuring rivers which slipped past trees with branches fragrant
with flowers; there were ripples and eddies of delight in these rivers which
gradually widened and acquired and flowed into many estuaries of dream until
they formed themselves into the whispering lakes of peace.
Since she was delivered from our narrowing limits of thought and from the
narrowness of our hearts, Savitri saw all Nature as something marvellous and
without any fault. Around her lived the children of God's day in an indescribable
felicity, a glad eternity's blissful multitude. There were souls of radiant
celestial joy, faces of sheer beauty, limbs of the divine Ray of Light moulded
in form. In cities cut like gems of conscious stone were seen bright forms,
the luminous tribes of eternity. Ecstatic voices assailed the ears, there
each movement had a music of its own. Birds, the colour of whose plumage had
been caught from the rainbow, sang thrilled from the unfading branches. Immortal
fragrance wafted with the quivering breeze. The million flowers of the undying
spring, sheltered in the green of the grass, bloomed like so many stars of
delightful hues these flower-masses looked like fairies with laughter in their
eyes.
This is how the poet describes "the dancing chaos", the iridescence
of the colourful flowers:
A dancing chaos, an iridescent sea
Eternised to Heaven's ever-wakeful sight
The crowding petal-glow of marvel's tints
Which float across the curtained lids of dream. (page: 674)
This is how he describes the immortal harmonies that fill Savitri's ears:
Immortal harmonies filled her listening ear;
A great spontaneous utterance of the heights
On Titan wings of rhythmic grandeur borne
Poured from some deep spiritual heart of sound,
Strains trembling with the secrets of the gods. (page. 674)
Savitri's experience of oneness with all other forms is described vividly
in these lines:
Invaded by beauty's universal revel
Her being's fibre reached out vibrating
And claimed deep union with its outer selves,
And on the heart's chords made pure to seize all tones
Heaven's subtleties of touch unwearying forced
More vivid raptures than earth's life can bear.
What would be suffering here, was fiery bliss. (p. 675)
What Savitri had so far seen were the initial domains, the outer courts;
they were immense but least in their range and value. Now Savitri's vision
soared higher and she was admitted through large sapphire gates into the wideness
of a light beyond to worlds nobler and more felicitously fair. These heavens
too kept climbing endlessly. Then in what looked like one summit of ascent,
where the finite and the infinite join, she beheld the seats of the immortal
gods who live for a celestial joy and preside over the middle regions of the
unfading Ray. The deities with their magnificent forms were seen here in deathless
tiers; they all looked at Savitri through a transparency of crystal fire.
In the beauty of bodies wrought from rapture's lines,
Shapes of entrancing sweetness spilling bliss,
Feet glimmering upon the sunstone courts of mind,
Heaven's cupbearers bore round the Eternal's wine.
A tangle of bright bodies, of moved souls
Tracing the close and intertwined delight,
The harmonious tread of lives for ever joined
In the passionate oneness of a mystic joy
As if sunbeams made living and divine,
The golden-bosomed Apsara goddesses,
In groves flooded from an argent disk of bliss
That floated through a luminous sapphire dream,
In a cloud of raiment lit with golden limbs
And gleaming footfalls treading faery swards,
Virgin motions of bacchant innocences
Who know their riot for a dance of God,
Whirled linked in moonlit revels of the heart. (pages 675-76)
Heaven's cup-bearers went round bearing the Eternal's celestial wine. Like
sun-beams made living and divine, the golden-bosomed Apsaras (heavenly nymphs)
whirled, linked in the passionate oneness of a mystic joy. These Apsaras circle
arm in arm in groves flooded with the silver light of the moon of bliss that
floated through a luminous sapphire dream. Then there were the Gandharvas,
the celestial musicians, magic builders of sound and harmonic words; these
heavenly minstrels had wind-like hair, and their songs gave rise to and shaped
the universal thought. There were also seen our great ancestors moving in
that splendour , immortal figures with illumined brows. They had great power
but they were satisfied with knowledge. They seemed to enjoy the essence of
all that for which we mortals try. There were high seers and inspired poets
who saw the eternal thoughts coming from the higher regions and arriving into
our world deformed because of our restless search for them. She saw how mind
disfigures them. The great words of these saints and seers become feeble sounds
when they are caught by the mortal tongue for their rapture is too difficult
for us express.
Savitri's human nature was overwhelmed by the delight of this world. Her
nature was filled with flashes of glory; it melted in waves of sympathy and
sight. She was like a harp and responded to the throbs of bliss from everywhere.
She saw and bore the touch and clasp of the unveiled love denied to earth.
Worlds after worlds revealed themselves to her on the ever-soaring heights,
beyond the reach of mind. They spread out infinitely on the rising stair of
Nature.
A greater tranquil sweetness reigned there. It was a subtler and a profounder
ether's field, a scheme mightier than the most heavenly scheme one can imagine.
There, breath carried a stream of seeing mind, form was a tenuous (thin),
fragile covering of the soul instead of being an obscuring veil; colour was
significant, visual tone ecstasy. There shapes that seemed half immaterial
to the eye were yet sensuously palpable (easily perceptible) to the touch.
Each feeling here was a mighty wave of the Infinite, each thought vibrated
with a sweet flame of god.
The very air was vibrant with luminous soul-feeling; every sound carried
a soul-voice; sunlight was a vision of the soul and moonlight its dream. All
was pervaded by a lucid joy accompanied by a calm. Savitri's soul went floating
high into the summit of the worlds of this plane, like a soaring bird who
mounts unseen, voicing as it soars the throbbing heart of melody, until pause
comes when the wings closed with a last contented cry, and the soul is silent
because it has delivered the entire burden of delight it carried. Savitri
arrived at a place where Time companions with Eternity and a vast felicity
was one with a self-rapt repose.
(Mangesh Nadkarni retired
as professor of Linguistics a few years ago. He enjoys sharing
with as many people as possible what he receives from his study
of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother)
