Perspectives of Savitri

Sri Aurobindo considered Savitri as his "main work" and out of his precious time allotted every day two and a half hours for its composition. This was in the late forties when the tempo of work had speeded up considerably. In fact he was otherwise engaged with it almost for fifty years though with some long gaps in between. Today we have a poem written in pentametric blank verse form running almost to twenty-four thousand lines. Divided into twelve Books as is the tradition for an epic, it has forty-eight Cantos and an Epilogue. Part I consisting of the first twenty-four Cantos was published about twelve weeks before Sri Aurobindo's passing away, in September 1950; Part II and Part III as a single volume appeared in May 1951. It is significant to note that Sri Aurobindo regarded Savitri as his main work. It does not mean that he took time off from his spiritual pre-possession simply for the purposes of a happy literary pursuit. Rather it was his constant companion in the task of realisation and establishment of the dynamic Truth in this creation. He worked upon it again and again until the kind of yogic perfection he wanted was achieved in it, that it could also become a means to achieve that perfection even in a literary endeavour. We have an early letter of Sri Aurobindo to this effect: "I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began with it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote from that level.... In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness and how that could be made creative." In another letter he writes: "Savitri is the record of a seeing." The birth and growth of Savitri as a "flamechild" is therefore a Yogi's spiritual autobiography. Its birth is in the Tapas-Shakti of one who is committed to discover the Word that can transform the lot of our mortality and its growth is in the action that can bring felicitous prosperity to it. Therefore Savitri is also named the Sun-Word or the Daughter of Infinity. To describe Savitri we may very well apply the epithets Vyasa used for characterising Aswapati's daughter Savitri. She is a radiant daughter, kanya tejasvini, she is a damsel of heaven, devalcanya, she is heavenly and radiant in form, devarupini; she is Goddess Fortune and one who brings the wealth of auspicious happiness, is beautiful and charming, and is also an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyanayogaparayana, thus equipped to accomplish the purpose for which she has taken this mortal birth in the world of men. In the Mother's words Savitri is the "supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision."4 Its subject is universal and its revelation is prophetic. About this prophetic character she speaks elsewhere as follows: "That marvellous prophetic poem... shall be humanity's guide towards its future realisation." A divine fulfilment in this long and difficult evolutionary process is its theme and the assertion is that it can bring even to this existence what it confirmatively states. Therefore Savitri becomes a Yogic Word which always has the power to affirm in life the transcendental Truth it proclaims. The more we plunge into the tranquil-emerald of Savitri's ocean the more we discover its richnesses of truth, light, beauty, joy, sweetness, harmony, strength, perfection. Even when one reads Savitri on a mental level it can open out for us prospects of lustrous spiritual realisations; it can lead us to "understand deeper things". Though Savitri is a text-book of the Yoga of Physical Transformation and continually needs the author's "knowledge and experience for understanding it," its esotericism in some respect can yet be grasped if we read it with a silent mind.