Savitri is a many-layered mantric epic that Sri Aurobindo has gifted to earth and men. It contains a whole cosmos as the story moves through earthly and unearthly landscapes, now climbing to heights and pinnacles of glory, now dipping in the dark stream that runs below the surfaces of life drawing us towards the abysses of nature. At each level, we are brought face to face with the breath of divinity, the Divine Presence hidden in everything. Thus Savitri becomes at once a story of creation and of evolution, thereby harmonising the two in a beautiful synthesis. It can best be described through some phrases we find in Savitri itself, such as, ‘the diamond script of the imperishable’, ‘the message of the superconscient fire’, ‘the lyric of love that waits through time’, ‘a paean-song of the free infinite’, ‘a mystic volume of the book of bliss’. In essence, it is the story of the soul climbing out from its state of ignorance and the iron grip of death towards Freedom, Light, Bliss, Oneness and Immortality, assisted by the divine Grace and Love. It is the story of creation as seen with the divine vision in its completeness including the birth of Space and Time, the progressive manifestation that takes place through outer challenges and inner pressures to evolve towards the great Goal to which man and earth and creation moves. But most of all it is the story of the Divine Mother in her earthly Incarnation to lead the soul of man through the gates of death to states of immortality, eventually culminating in the escape of the body itself from the clutch of ignorance and death.
Indeed the story begins with a wonderful image of the first Advent of the Divine Mother described by the divine Artist in a significant and symbolic image of dawn. It closes with the victory of the Divine Mother over death and ignorance for man on earth but not before the promise of yet greater dawns to come. In between, the narrative reveals to us various powers and aspects of the Divine Mother, first, as the individual incarnate Divine doing the sadhana for earth. She is also revealed to us as the World-Mother who holds creation in her womb and carries it forward with her stride. Above and beyond creation She appears to the subtle vision of the seer-yogin Aswapati as the transcendent Mother who stands above all and yet embraces all. Ancient spiritual traditions, especially the Tantra, share revelations of the Divine Mother at different levels of our being culminating in the crowning Glory of her as the World Mother or the universal Mother. However, we do not find anywhere the revelation of the transcendent Mother who is there ‘supreme behind the God’. Besides these three there are many other ways of being of the Mother, many modes of her workings, impossible to recount and understand even by the swiftest intelligence. Most of all She brings for us the alchemic power of transformation, the victorious power of divine Love that alone can enter the abyss and transmute falsehood and all that is fed by it into the true image of Truth.
Given the mantric nature of Savitri and the incarnate Divine Mother at the centre and core of the yoga of supramental transformation, it is felt that invoking her Presence with the help of these mantric lines is bound to help the aspiring soul to open more and more to her who holds the key to change human nature into divine nature. Though the entire Savitri is mantric, even within this ocean of Light there are waves and ripples that carry a special intensity and can carry us in a sweeping moment closer to the Heart that is one with every heart. Through these magical and mantric lines, Sri Aurobindo draws the Divine Mother closer to us and opens us to recognise and worship and adore and give ourselves to her. After all, one of the purposes of the mantra is to bring us closer to the Deity we adore. Savitri indeed brings us closer to the Mother and thereby brings us in dynamic contact with her transforming Consciousness and absolute Power.
It is with this purpose that these passages have been selected, passages that reveal to us the Glory of the Divine Mother and her vast, all-embracing, all-transmuting Love. The titles are given by the editor just to give a little perspective. They are not meant to be explanatory in nature as much as to facilitate our meditation upon her who is beyond the reach of mind and intellect yet intimate and near, nearer than our very breath and more intimate than our heart-beats.
May her glory shine in all beings and may this earthly substance be transformed by her magical touch.
Alok Pandey
Pondicherry, January 2021