Thursday, June 04, 2009

It is possible only when the mind falls silent. Savitri demands that throughout

Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Across the Path of the divine Event RY Deshpande
Sri Aurobindo was a master of English literature in its several branches and had taught poetry; he also showed the possibilities that are open to it, rather the direction in which it should move in future. No wonder with this vast professional background Tennyson’s phrase "divine event" should come to him with perfect naturalness when it is going to serve a definite purpose in developing his own composition. But in the alchemic process of spirituality the very phrase undergoes a most wonderful transformation.

The line “Across the path of the divine Event” is definitely coming from a “far-off” place, from a blue sky far high above our imagination and thought and feeling and perception; it is coming from some Overhead plane with its own sense of powerful rhythm and substance and wideness of vision. The best way to, so to say, understand the nature of the “divine Event” is therefore to rise to that overhead height. It is possible only when the mind falls silent. Savitri demands that throughout. It is in some omniscient hush only that its contents get revealed.

The huge foreboding mind of Night RY Deshpande
The purport of the yogic Savitri is well set right at the beginning in this crucial phrase the “mind of Night”. It is a difficulty lying across the path of the divine Event, the divine creation that will go and on for eternity, the luminous and ever-progressive possibilities of the Spirit manifesting in this mysterious evolutionary world. The focus is defined in these first two lines and the Yogi-Poet sets himself to work out the details in their thousandfold ramifications in the following 23 835 lines of the epic.

That also shows the great skill Sri Aurobindo as a poetic artist displays in formulating his vast and amazing composition. This is simply astounding, something incredible, beyond belief, inconceivable, something beyond the reach of mind. Yogic Savitri is all like that. How did he do it? But who can answer it?

No comments:

Post a Comment