Opening Remarks for the Canto One

Book Four Canto One opens with a vivid description of the seasons that pass while the earth is preparing for the Divine Birth. Keeping with the normal gestation of a human birth, we see a beautiful and symbolic description of the seasons starting with summer and ending with Spring when she is born. It is also a description of the preparation that an individual and the earth must undergo to receive the Divine. Summer is the month of hard till and effort, inner and outer. Rains signify the purification process. Autumn is the period when we are turned inwards shedding the old and waiting for the new. Spring is of course the creative impulse in nature to bring out the new possibilities whose seeds were sown in the soil. Savitri epitomises the birth of these new possibilities hidden within matter. She embodies the new creation and by bringing it along with her in a material body she automatically infuses the new forces of a higher order than man into earth and humanity. This is the main work of the Avatar, to awaken the new manifestation in matter out of the old. Her embodiment is a chance for the earth and humanity to embody a New Consciousness. This aspect of the Divine Birth is revealed to us.