B1 C2 Movement 1, Part 2 Passage-by-Passage Summary
At the Feet of The Mother
Dr Alok Pandey and Narad on Savitri (VIDEO)
"Life’s meanings fled from the pursuing eye.
Life’s visage hides life’s real self from sight;
Life’s secret sense is written within, above.
The thought that gives it sense lives far beyond;
It is not seen in its half-finished design.
In vain we hope to read the baffling signs"
Released from the prison house of Matter, Savitri enters into the dangerous and delightful, fitful and fanciful world of life. She has come out of individual ignorance but has entered into the cosmic ignorance, a much vaster and mixed territory where truth and error walk hand in hand.
A talk by Dr Alok Pandey (AUDIO IN HINDI)
"Savitri has chosen Satyavan for her partner in the game of life. This choice has implications upon future that is yet sealed to human view. But there, in the court of King Aswapati, are seated two great beings - King, a yogi and seer, and Narada, the demigod, who has privy to the book of Fate. A brief exchange between three of them follows."
Dr Alok Pandey and Narad on Savitri (VIDEO)
"In the sleepy splendour of her noons he saw,
A perpetual repetition through the hours,
Thought’s dance of dragonflies on mystery’s stream
That skim but never test its murmurs’ race,
And heard the laughter of her rose desires [...],
Jingling sweet anklet-bells of fantasy."
video
"However long Night’s hour, I will not dream
That the small ego and the person’s mask
Are all that God reveals in our life-scheme,
The last result of Nature’s cosmic task."
A talk by Dr Alok Pandey (AUDIO IN HINDI)
"[...] the seer King bids Narada to bless his daughter to lead a happy, fruitful life in the future, oblivious of sorrow and pain. And yet as Aswapati speaks, he betrays the deeper truth that God’s chosen ones must pass through the test of fire to fulfill the work they have come to accomplish."
Savitri pierces the thick screen that separates this gross material life, sensed and perceived through our material senses, and the subtle inner worlds. She opens the doors and enters through the threshold between the waking and dream world.
Dr Alok Pandey and Narad on Savitri (VIDEO)
"There beat a throb of living interchange:
Being felt being even when afar
And consciousness replied to consciousness.
And yet the ultimate oneness was not there."
We see that She was simultaneously working on the transmutation of Her own body as well as working out the stages through which humanity would walk that path. The path was opened now in both directions but the actual process remained still an adventure.
"Not only has She been concerned with human beings, but the animal creation and the life of plants too have shared in her direct touch. The Veda speaks of the animal sacrifice, but the Mother has performed her consecration of animals in a very novel sense [...] She took a few cats as representatives of the animal world."
video
"This mute stupendous Energy that whirls
The stars and nebulae in its long train,
Like a huge Serpent through my being curls
With its diamond hood of joy and fangs of pain."
Dr Alok Pandey and Narad on Savitri (VIDEO)
"This wider world our greater movements gives,
Its strong formations build our growing selves;
Its creatures are our brighter replicas...."
The very first Canto of the First Book has been aptly titled The Symbol Dawn. All new life begins with the advent of Light. The first touch of this Light that awakens us out of the state of Ignorance is the Dawn.