It is first talk of the retreat "The Dialogue with Death, and Quest for Immortality", July 2015 at SAYFNA (www.sayfna.org).satsang with Dr Alok Pandey.
What really is Indian culture? What we see today is a mixture of many currents and streams and forces and practices. But behind it all is the core of Indian culture burning like a flame of aspiration ever bright and high.
"All life to harmonise by thought's control,
She with the huge imbroglio struggles still;
Ignorant of all but her own seeking mind
To save the world from Ignorance she came."
Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
Still regions of imperishable Light,
All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss
And calm immensities of spirit space.
A huge inertness is the world's defence,
Even in change is treasured changelessness;
Into inertia revolution sinks,
In a new dress the old resumes its role;
The Energy acts, the stable is its seal:
On Shiva's breast is stayed the enormous dance.
Death ends his retort mocking love and disdaining man. But Savitri replies giving a glimpse of the divinity that is working in her bosom. She shows him what Love truly is and not what it has become under Death’s dark influence.
Impassible she waits long for the sun’s gold and the azure,
The sea’s song with its slow happy refrain’s plashes of pleasure, —
As man’s soul in its depths waits the outbreaking of the light and the godhead
And the bliss that God felt when he created his image.
A technician admirable, a thinker crude,
A riveter of Life to habit's grooves,
Obedient to gross Matter's tyranny,
A prisoner of the moulds in which it works,
It binds itself by what itself creates.
Death continues his gospel condemning man’s hopes for the Ideal as sheer vanity and a fantasy. He tries to show the ‘harsh reality’ of earthly life to Savitri to discourage her from pursing her quest for making Earth a home for Heavenly truths.