The earth nature receives the rejuvenating touch, the awakening. But creation prefers the sleep of ignorance. There is no welcoming gesture. The Light slowly fades, its intensity diminishes and it changes into the common average light turned towards the usual common goals.
Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth, Here where one knows not even the step in front And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt, On this anguished and precarious field of toil Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze, Impartial witness of our joy and bale, Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
Earth-nature receives the Light
Sri Aurobindo describes at first the state of ignorance in which we ordinarily live. Half-lit ignorance is mental knowledge that receives some light from above but soon enough converts or distorts it into values of ignorance. Relying heavily on the sense-mind whose data we cannot really trust, our knowledge is always shadowed by doubt. Moulded almost entirely by suffering and slow and difficult progress, the physical consciousness knows not the divine Grace that watches over it. All that it experiences or witnesses are brief joys amidst the burden of life it carries. But even this physical consciousness and the material world is touched by the divine Ray.
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes; Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew, Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.
Withdrawal of the divine afflatus
The divine impulsion, which gives a new illumination uplifting everything, withdraws after a while. Its work is over, the deed done, a new direction and purpose given to the creation, a new turn taken under the creative impulsion of the embodied Divine. It leads creation as far as it can go battling against and conquering the resistances of material nature, redeeming it by its touch. But a certain amount of receptivity is needed for it to stay. Earth-nature, unable to bear the divine pressure, closes to the Light and hence it withdraws. This withdrawal, however, as the master-poet suggests, is not a withdrawal from earth but simply a moving out of the mortal range.
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace, The worship of a Presence and a Power Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts, The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
Sacred yearning
Yet all is not lost. A new aspiration has been implanted upon earth. Man’s soul has heard the call, even though his outer mind and surface heart are not yet ready. Even the withdrawal becomes a strategic one, since it awakens in our heart and our very senses a yearning, and we feel and worship the Presence that our outer mind does not know but an inner sense feels. The fading away, the disappearance of the Divine Being from earth itself becomes a divine action triggering in its wake a deeper yearning, making the aspiration soar even higher. The life of the Avatara becomes a mould for the future type to emerge, a first indication of what is going to come.
Only a little the god-light can stay: Spiritual beauty illumining human sight Lines with its passion and mystery Matter’s mask And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
Eternity and Time
The divine Advent brings a touch of the Eternal upon our time-vexed life. It is the intervention of a higher, a greater consciousness arising as a wave from the Eternal giving a new direction and goal to the cycle of Time. It brings illumination to our human mind and brings a new influx into matter itself. Yet matter cannot hold this Light for long.
As when a soul draws near the sill of birth, Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness, A spark of deity lost in Matter’s crypt Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes, That transitory glow of magic fire So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.
Diffusion of the Light
Sri Aurobindo draws a comparison between the descent of our soul in matter and the divine Advent upon earth. Our souls are sparks of the Divine, but descending into the mortal plane and assuming the cloak of the physical body, are covered with the denseness and darkness of material consciousness. So too the Light that is brought down by the embodied Divine is absorbed by the Inconscient and turned into something mechanical, routine and familiar, and therefore no more sought after or longed for! Its intensity is no longer felt as it diffuses itself in the earth-nature.
The message ceased and waned the messenger.
Cessation of the message
The Truth that has been declared and brought down is reduced in force and intensity, even as the messenger withdraws into the secrecy of silence.
The single Call, the uncompanioned Power, Drew back into some far-off secret world The hue and marvel of the supernal beam: She looked no more on our mortality.
She looked no more on our mortality
The divine Advent is a chance for the earth consciousness to redeem itself. It is an intervention that comes to change our destiny through embodied Grace. But finding a poor response from earth-nature, the divine Consciousness withdraws awhile and lets our mortal life run its course.
The excess of beauty natural to god-kind Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes; Too mystic-real for space-tenancy Her body of glory was expunged from heaven: The rarity and wonder lived no more.
The rarity and wonder lived no more
Man’s nature is still crude and unrefined. It cannot hold its gaze or fix the image of subtle forms and godlike beauty in its heart and mind. The doubts and disbeliefs of the material consciousness represented in man by our material mind need something gross for our vision to behold. Hence, the vision wonderful and the glorious body fade away.
There was the common light of earthly day.
The common light of earthly day
What follows after is the diffusion of the Light that has been left behind as an endowment of the earth. The new and greater truth brought down by the divine messenger is slowly replaced with and clothed in the common thoughts, usual practices and daily rituals to which we are accustomed.
Affranchised from the respite of fatigue Once more the rumour of the speed of Life Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.
Rumour of the speed of life
Here, Sri Aurobindo brings us back to the day of destiny. Humanity is slowly waking up out of a state of tamas in which it had fallen due to sheer fatigue. This is the only respite that we know. We know not how to rest in Light and Peace. For us, life means restless activity, and rest means a temporary lapse into tamas, a momentary respite from fatigue. Though the Light comes to awaken us, we wake up only to go back to our usual routine, pursuing the life of blind desires. The divine energies given to us for higher purposes are diverted to continue and maintain our old pattern of life. In other words, the full results of this awakening are lost since we go back to our accustomed and inferior paths.
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts; The thousand peoples of the soil and tree Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge, And, leader here with his uncertain mind, Alone who stares at the future’s covered face, Man lifted up the burden of his fate.
Man lifted up the burden of his fate
The divine Grace comes to awaken and to save. It comes to take upon itself the burden of our destiny. But man’s mind is unable to place its trust in the Grace and prefers the leadings of his mind and the promptings of his desires and impulses. Here, Sri Aurobindo describes with a touch of irony the inadequacy and at the same time the sense of self-sufficiency of the human mind. It rejects the divine Light, preferring instead its ignorant ways. It prefers its uncertainties to the divine certitude. The human being prefers the soulless routine of his life rather than an effort towards a greater and diviner living. He prefers his stumbling mind to carry his burden of fate than trust the divine Grace and Glory that have come to save and to succour. He prefers his blindness of ignorance to the spiritual illumination.
Closing remarks
The Book of Beginnings starts from the beginning of creation itself. Through images of a slow transition from night to dawn, Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the story of creation. The master artist fills these images with suggestions of previous, successive dawns and the past attempts of mankind to bring Light into the earthly darkness. The physical Light becomes a symbol of inner illumination dispelling the ignorance of earth-nature and the night a symbol of the swoon and state of unconsciousness in which creation is plunged.
But the world is not ready. The earth-nature has strong inbuilt resistances to a divine change. Hence the divine Breath, the Glory and the Grace withdraw. Man’s mind and his material consciousness reject the Grace and prefer his old accustomed ways.
Yet something is done and slowly the Light grows and the material response feels the uplifting touch, even if only for a while. A yearning is born and a Presence is felt towards which man’s soul begins to respond, even though his entire being is not yet prepared.
This is the story so far of all divine descents. The Light of a higher consciousness that is brought down to earth by beings from a higher plane is soon turned into a fixed and rigid formula, a mechanical and soulless routine of ritual acts.
It is against this cosmic background that Sri Aurobindo, the master-poet, now introduces us to Savitri, the Divine Mother’s incarnation born in human time wearing a mortal cloak.
Savitri has come to change this scheme of things. Having given us the background of the epic, the master-poet now begins to introduce the divine personality, the main protagonist of the epic of the human soul, the incarnate dawn, Savitri.
Fading of the Light, pp. 5-6
Here where our half-lit ignorance skirts the gulfs
On the dumb bosom of the ambiguous earth,
Here where one knows not even the step in front
And Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt,
On this anguished and precarious field of toil
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness of our joy and bale,
Our prostrate soil bore the awakening ray.
Here too the vision and prophetic gleam
Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;
Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,
Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.
A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,
The worship of a Presence and a Power
Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,
The prescience of a marvellous birth to come.
Only a little the god-light can stay:
Spiritual beauty illumining human sight
Lines with its passion and mystery Matter’s mask
And squanders eternity on a beat of Time.
As when a soul draws near the sill of birth,
Adjoining mortal time to Timelessness,
A spark of deity lost in Matter’s crypt
Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes,
That transitory glow of magic fire
So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.
The message ceased and waned the messenger.
The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,
Drew back into some far-off secret world
The hue and marvel of the supernal beam:
She looked no more on our mortality.
The excess of beauty natural to god-kind
Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes;
Too mystic-real for space-tenancy
Her body of glory was expunged from heaven:
The rarity and wonder lived no more.
There was the common light of earthly day.
Affranchised from the respite of fatigue
Once more the rumour of the speed of Life
Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.
All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;
The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant’s urge,
And, leader here with his uncertain mind,
Alone who stares at the future’s covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.