Parting Was a Dream
A NEW MANIFESTATION is taking place out of the old. The Lord is awake not only in one body but in all those bodies that have opened to his influence and respond to his call. He has conquered death. His passing was a dream. His being with us is the eternal truth, the truth that abides and will one day be revealed in many bodies and many births.
With his arms’ encircling hold around her locked,
A living knot to make possession close,
He murmured with hesitating lips her name,
And vaguely recollecting wonder cried,
“Whence hast thou brought me captive back, love-chained,
To thee and sunlight’s walls, O golden beam
And casket of all sweetness, Savitri,
Godhead and woman, moonlight of my soul?
For surely I have travelled in strange worlds
By thee companioned, a pursuing spirit,
Together we have disdained the gates of night.
I have turned away from the celestials’ joy
And heaven’s insufficient without thee.
Where now has passed that formidable Shape
Which rose against us, the Spirit of the Void,
Claiming the world for Death and Nothingness,
Denying God and soul? Or was all a dream
Or a vision seen in a spiritual sleep,
A symbol of the oppositions of Time
Or a mind-lit beacon of significance
In some stress of darkness lighting on the Way
Or guiding a swimmer through the straits of Death,
Or finding with the succour of its ray
In a gully mid the crowded streets of Chance
The soul that into the world-adventure came,
A scout and voyager from Eternity?”
But she replied, “Our parting was the dream;
We are together, we live, O Satyavan.
Look round thee and behold, glad and unchanged
Our home, this forest with its thousand cries
And the whisper of the wind among the leaves
And, through rifts in emerald scene, the evening sky,
God’s canopy of blue sheltering our lives,
And the birds crying for heart’s happiness,
Winged poets of our solitary reign,
Our friends on earth where we are king and queen.
Only our souls have left Death’s night behind,
Changed by a mighty dream’s reality,
Illumined by the light of symbol worlds
And the stupendous summit self of things,
And stood at Godhead’s gates limitless, free.” [717-718]
Satyavan is back from the shadows. He has returned to earth. In a way he is reborn. The conquest over inevitable fate means a washing away of the entire chain of cause and effect that determine man’s destiny. It means a new life without any karma. It is not just a rebirth but a new birth out of the old. Such is the state into which Satyavan is born.
All Now Is Changed
THE LORD has assured us and the prophesy will be fulfilled. It is no more hearsay but the Lord himself who has come and settled the issue of creation. Let us just open ourselves and receive it with humility and gratitude.
“All now is changed, yet all is still the same.
Lo, we have looked upon the face of God,
Our life has opened with divinity.
We have borne identity with the Supreme
And known his meaning in our mortal lives.
Our love has grown greater by that mighty touch
And learned its heavenly significance,
Yet nothing is lost of mortal love’s delight.
Heaven’s touch fulfils but cancels not our earth:
Our bodies need each other in the same last;
Still in our breasts repeat heavenly secret rhythm
Our human heart-beats passionately close. [719]
Thy body is my body’s counterpart
Whose every limb my answering limb desires,
Whose heart is key to all my heart-beats,—this
I am and thou to me, O Satyavan.
Our wedded walk through life begins anew,
No gladness lost, no depth of mortal joy.
Let us go through this new world that is the same,
For it is given back, but it is known,
A playing-ground and dwelling-house of God
Who hides himself in bird and beast and man
Sweetly to find himself again by love,
By oneness. His presence leads the rhythms of life
That seek for mutual joy in spite of pain.
We have each other found, O Satyavan,
In the great light of the discovered soul.
Let us go back, for eve is in the skies.
Now grief is dead and serene bliss remains
The heart of all our days for evermore.
Lo, all these beings in this wonderful world!
Let us give joy to all, for joy is ours.
For not for ourselves alone our spirits came
Out of the veil of the Unmanifest,
Out of the deep immense Unknowable
Upon the ignorant breast of dubious earth,
Into the ways of labouring, seeking men,
Two fires that burn towards that parent Sun,
Two rays that travel to the original Light.
To lead man’s soul towards truth and God we are born,
To draw the chequered scheme of mortal life
Into some semblance of the Immortal’s plan,
To shape it closer to an image of God,
A little nearer to the Idea divine.” [720]
A new creation is upon earth. It is not yet fully visible, though its stirrings can be heard and felt by a few who are already becoming part of this new creation. Yet a day will come when even the blind will be able to see and recognise it.
Resurrection
THE MOTHER SAID:
Resurrection means, for us, the falling off of the old consciousness; but it is not only a rebirth, a sudden change which completely breaks with the past. There is a certain continuity in it between dying to your old self, your low exterior nature and starting quite anew. In the experience of resurrection the movement of discarding the old being is closely connected with that of the rising up from it of the new consciousness and the new strength, so that from what is thrown off the best can unite in a new creation with what has succeeded. The true significance of resurrection is that the Divine Consciousness awakes from the unconsciousness into which it has gone down and lost itself, the Divine Consciousness becomes once more aware of itself in spite of its descent into the world of death, night and obscurity. That world of obscurity is darker even than our physical night: if you came up after plunging into it you would actually find the most impenetrable night clear, just as returning from the true Light of the Divine Consciousness, the supramental Light without obscurity, you would find the physical sun black. But even in the depths of that supreme darkness the supreme Light lies hidden. Let that Light and that Consciousness awaken in you, let there be the great Resurrection. [CWM 3:147]
As yet thought only some high spirit’s dream
Or a vexed illusion in man’s toiling mind,
A new creation from the old shall rise,
A Knowledge inarticulate find speech,
Beauty suppressed burst into paradise bloom,
Pleasure and pain dive into absolute bliss.
A tongueless oracle shall speak at last,
The Superconscient conscious grow on earth,
The Eternal’s wonders join the dance of Time. [330]
Om Namo Bhagavate
Om Namo Bhagavate
Om Namo Bhagavate