Opening Remarks
It is not just the journey to find her partner but the journey to her own greater fate towards which Savitri is traveling. Sri Aurobindo reveals here a little bit of the workings of Fate.
Masked hooded godheads of fate
A guidance turned the dumb revolving wheels
And in the eager body of their speed
The dim-masked hooded godheads rode who move
Assigned to man immutably from his birth,
Receivers of the inner and outer law,
At once the agents of his spirit’s will
And witnesses and executors of his fate.
However anomalous events may seem to our surface vision, there is a guidance behind life. It turns the wheel of our journey by forces and beings appointed to execute the scroll of fate for each one’s destiny. They receive the impulsion to act and the knowledge needed for their task. Yet are they instruments of the spirit’s will who are at once the executor and witness of man’s fate.
Nature’s sequence
Inexorably faithful to their task,
They hold his nature’s sequence in their guard
Carrying the unbroken thread old lives have spun.
Though forgotten to our surface self these godheads hold the unbroken thread of man’s fate running through several lives. They know the sequence and the steps of the unfolding of fate and faithfully execute it.
Even in casual steps
Attendants on his destiny’s measured walk
Leading to joys he has won and pains he has called,
Even in his casual steps they intervene.
Attending on man’s walk of life they intervene even in his casual steps bringing to him joys he has won and pains he has invited through his own deeds.
Energy loosed
Nothing we think or do is void or vain;
Each is an energy loosed and holds its course.
All we have ever done or even released into this world as thought and feeling and will (for each is an energy) goes around and returns bringing the consequence of what we have released into the world.
Fruit of forgotten deeds
The shadowy keepers of our deathless past
Have made our fate the child of our own acts,
And from the furrows laboured by our will
We reap the fruit of our forgotten deeds.
There are beings and powers appointed for this task of holding our past in some subconscious state as fragments of memory. It is these energies born out of our actions that create our fate. It is on the furrows and grooves created by our will that the seeds of our deeds are sown that bear fruits at a later date.
Present born from an unknown past
But since unseen the tree that bore this fruit
And we live in a present born from an unknown past,
They seem but parts of a mechanic Force
To a mechanic mind tied by earth’s laws;
Yet are they instruments of a Will supreme,
Watched by a still all-seeing Eye above.
We do not know the long forgotten deed and the personality of previous life in which the seed was sown. We live only in the present moment and are unaware of our past. Hence it all seems the working of a mechanic Force through a mechanic mind tied by earth’s laws. Yet it is not a mechanical and mathematical account but a conscious Will supreme that arranges these things, a Wisdom that watches it all from great heights.
Prescient architect
A prescient architect of Fate and Chance
Who builds our lives on a foreseen design
The meaning knows and consequence of each step
And watches the inferior stumbling powers.
The All-knowing, all-seeing Intelligence is the final Master and builder of our lives and fate. He builds according to an already foreseen design and knows the meaning and purpose and consequence of each step and watches the workings of inferior powers that act as executors of destiny.
Closing Remarks
The sequential unfolding of fate, what is called in India as the law of karma has been revealed here. Destiny is no blind. It is our own soul’s choice and serves a greater purpose than our surface minds may deduce in its workings.
