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Sri Aurobindos' Savitri
(an Adventure of Consciousness) |
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Theme of Savitri
(i) Evolution of Consciousness
Introduction
To discuss the theme of a poem before actually reading it is perhaps not a very right method nor is it a happy and joyous one. It is like unstringing the harp of Sarswati to analyse and examine the strings instead of enjoying the music. But the large majority of common readers and students who are to be introduced to the reading of Savitri and their interest aroused, need some sort of foothold to step into the arena of the Unknown that forms the canvas of the poem. Savitri is no ordinary poem. All that are under the blue sky and beyond, visible or invisible, audible or inaudible, known or unknown physical or spiritual are all compacted in a single poem. Without some sort of footing an average reader of poetry is bound to lose himself in this vast ocean. At least some sort of a broad thematic design of the poem shall be a needed help so that the reader may maintain his bearing. The rest, of course, entirely, depends on the reader himself. He must know how one should read Savitri. This has been stated in the concluding section of chapter two.
Poetry of Sri Aurobindo sings of the divinity of man and his divine possibilities, flowering of the consciousness embedded in the Inconscient and Ignorance. This upward march of human soul from its earthly state ‘to the discovery of a greater self’ is what Sri Aurobindo calls spiritual evolution or evolution of consciousness. New poetry can sing of this only when its poet realises ‘a complete spiritual realisation’ in himself. Secondly, the new poetry must have the power to remould and transform the individual and the race or humanity. This can be done when the new poetry infuses human mind, life and body with a higher transformative power of consciousness.
These two characteristics which Sri Aurobindo expects the new poetry to fulfil form the poetic Agenda and format of his magnum opus, Savitri. The poetic agenda he adopts and follows in his epic reveals two major underlying currents of the poem’s theme, the two that go inseparably together and are to each other complementary. The first is the soul’s ‘epic climb’ along ‘truth’s golden road that runs through finite things to eternity’. This is what may be called spiritual evolution of man or evolution of consciousness. The second function of the new poetry is the responsibility Sri Aurobindo puts on it, i.e. to build the soul of man and ‘remould’ the earthly life into life divine. This can be done, says Sri Aurobindo, if the supramental Consciousness which alone has the power to transform can be discovered, realised and brought into the earth consciousness: “An unborn Power must build reality.” (Savitri : 46) The two threads of the poem’s theme thus are
1. Evolution of consciousness or spiritual evolution, and
2. Transformation of earthly life into life divine.
This chapter shall discuss the first theme of the poem.
“The Science of the West has discovered evolution as the secret of life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of consciousness: even, consciousness has been regarded as an incident and not the whole secret of the meaning of the evolution.”1 Let us survey in brief what this scientific theory of evolution is and if it has given a satisfactory explanation of the secret of life here on earth.
Scientific theory of Evolution: an explanation and its shortcomings:
In the nineteenth century Charles Darwin in his monumental treatise, The Origin of Species, came out with his doctrine of the evolution of species. His doctrine, based mainly on ‘survival of the fittest’ and ‘an adaptation to environment’, helped in establishing the fact that an evolution there is and species evolve from a lower stage to a higher and more complex stage by a law of heredity. Then Lamarck gave his theory of evolution by the inheritance of acquired characters. To him the acquired characters are transmitted by heredity and new advanced species evolve. Mendel, another evolutionary scientist, even reduced the recurrence of inherited characters to numerical law.
it is true that the theory of evolution has been the key-note of the thought of the nineteenth century Europe. It brought massive changes in the temperament of the European mind, her politics, her literature, her social fabric and morality; all got radically changed by this new doctrine. The new theory not only influenced science and thought-attitude of the time but ushered in an era of victory for the materialistic notion of life and the universe. The moral idea of progress in society and politics got replaced by the evolutionary notion of progress. In other words, ‘it is the victory of the economic man over the idealist’, says Sri Aurobindo.
The materialistic or scientific theory of evolution has many lacunae and shortcomings which it fails to explain. It starts with the premise that ‘all world is a development out of indeterminate Matter by Nature’. There is no cause, no aim, but simply ‘an automatic deployment’, to use a phrase of Sri Aurobindo. The scientific theory has before it ‘two eternal factors of existence, Matter and Energy’, and according to it no other factors are needed for its operations. “Its first regard is on Matter as the one principle of being and on Energy as a phenomenon of Matter; but in the end one questions whether it is not the other way round, all things the action of Energy and Matter only the field, body and instrument of her workings.”2 Here lies the first drawback of the scientific theory, and listen to Savitri:
The persistent thrill of a transfiguring touch
Persuaded the inert black quietude
And beauty and wonder disturbed the fields of God.
— Savitri : 3
It is the ‘transfiguring touch’ of some energy on inert matter that makes it vibrate with beauty and wonder of life and ‘carries our lives’.
Scientific theory has given the law of heredity as the mechanism of evolution. This law has marked limitations. The process of evolution is not at all so ‘exclusively physical and biological as at first it looks’. If this were true, then ‘a law of hereditary progressive variation and a purely physical cause of all mental and spiritual phenomenon’ as conceived by the scientific theory may be accepted. But all mental and spiritual phenomena are not transmitted by heredity by which new species are or have been created; for things to be transmitted are not only physical and biological but psychological too. If physical evolution is the whole fact, there must be a capacity for the hereditary transmission of variations acquired through ‘adaptation to environment’. But it is not so. The law of heredity fails to explain this; ‘for there is the reproduction of that which was already evolved’. This is the lacuna in the law of heredity, the mechanism of the scientific theory of evolution. There is another significant and more serious question that needs much explaining by the scientific theory. Is the physical theory of evolution capable of explaining by purely material causes and a material constitution the mystery of the emergence of life in matter and the equal mystery of the emergence of mind in life? The physical and scientific explanation of the evolution is, therefore, no more than ‘a hypothetical assumption’. It has to be accepted that there is something more behind this mystery than meets the eye, ‘a more complex and less materialistic account of the truth of evolution’. The theory of science may be a correct statement of phenomenal fact, that new forms have evolved but it has miserably failed to answer the why and how of ‘one of the initial mysteries of Nature’, says Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo’s theory of Spiritual Evolution
In his explanation of the mystery of creation Sri Aurobindo puts forward ‘the cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here’. To him the truth of evolution i.e. the explanation of the mystery of creation lies in the evolution of consciousness. Science has discovered evolution as the secret of life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of consciousness’. Consciousness is regarded by it as a mere incident and has been relegated to an inferior position. Sri Aurobindo’s theory of evolution of consciousness explains the great mystery of creation and the process of evolution.
“The word evolution”, writes Sri Aurobindo, “carries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at its root the necessity of a previous involution.. all that evolves already existed involved, passive or otherwise active, but in either case concealed from us in the shell of material Nature. The Spirit which manifests itself here in a body, must be involved from the beginning in the whole of matter and in every knot, formation and particle of matter, life, mind and whatever is above mind must be latent, inactive or concealed active powers in all the operations of material energy.”3
It was as though even in this Nought’s profound,
Even in this ultimate dissolution’s core
There lurked an unremembering entity
Survivor of a slain and buried past.
— Savitri : 2
The ‘unremembering entity’ is the concealed godhead in the consciousness involved in Matter, ‘the ultimate dissolution’s core’. Evolution is the gradual release of this consciousness in forms of life and mind. “Nothing can evolve out of Matter which is not therein already contained.”4 Explaining his theory Sri Aurobindo says, “The spiritual process of evolution is then in some sense a creation, but a self-creation, not a making of what never was, but a bringing out of what was implicit in the Being.”5 Existence on earth is the result of “A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling spirit, is then the key-note, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence.”6 Sri Aurobindo’s yogic vision sees behind the appearances of the universe the presence of ‘the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal’. This One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. “Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental.”7
Creation, according to Sri Aurobindo’s theory of spiritual evolution, is the result of the action of consciousness on Matter that “Cradled the cosmic drowse of ignorant Force”:
A fallen ignorance in its covert night
Laboured to achieve its dumb unseemly work,
A camouflage of the Inconscient’s need
To release the glory of God in Nature’s mud.
— Savitri : 138
and as a result,
The first writhings of the cosmic serpent Force
Uncoiled from the mystic ring of Matter’s trance;
— Savitri : 138
It is the ‘writhings of the cosmic serpent Force’ involved in ‘the mystic ring of Matter’s trance’
That animates these mute and solid cells
And leads the thought and longing of the flesh
And the keen lust and hunger of its will.
— Savitri : 138
Thence a mighty Life-principle working in and upon the conditions of Matter and applying to it its own laws, impulses, necessities
Compelled renewed consent to see and feel
— Savitri : 3
Thus the Life energy from its own plane ‘invaded’ the material sheath to awaken the involved consciousness.
An eye of deity peered through the dumb deeps;
A scount in a reconnaissance from the sun,
It seemed amid a heavy cosmic rest,
The torpor of a sick and weary world,
To seek for a spirit sole and desolate
Too fallen to recollect forgotten bliss.
— Savitri : 2
When life reached its glory and power, and
It could not house the wideness of a soul
Which needed all infinity for its home.
— Savitri : 238-9
then the next higher principle, the Mind Force invades the living Matter. “Not Matter alone, but Life and Mind working upon Matter help to determine evolution.”8 Life and Mind are to be looked upon not merely as a phenomenon in Matter but as energies with their own peculiar qualities, powers and workings’. Such a spiritual idea of evolution could alone make the materialistic theory of evolution sustainable. Sri Aurobindo’s teaching states that “One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self-impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental.”9 Evolution is ‘the adventure of consciousness and
There is no rest for the embodied soul.
It must live on, describe all Time’s huge curve.
An Influx presses from the closed Beyond
Forbidding to him rest and earthly ease,
Till he has found himself he cannot pause.
— Savitri : 339
Evolution shall continue under the pressure from ‘the closed Beyond’,
As all must be until the Highest is gained
In whom the world and self grow true and one:
Till That is reached our journeying cannot cease.
Always a nameless goal beckons beyond,
Always ascends the zigzag of the gods
And upward points the spirit’s climbing Fire.
— Savitri : 238
“The next step of the evolution beyond Mind must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit as the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.”10
There is a being beyond the being of mind,
An Immeasurable cast into many forms,
A miracle of the multitudinous One,
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch...
— Savitri : 705
This consciousness, the supramental Truth – Consciousness, is “the fount of the creation and its works, it is the origin of all truth here” (Savitri : 705) When evolution reaches that stage, “All earth shall be the Spirit’s manifest home” (Savitri : 707),
Revealing the secret deity in the cave.
Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme.
— Savitri : 705
and
The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face.
— Savitri : 709
It is left to Sri Aurobindo to explain the scientific theory of evolution. In his theory of spiritual evolution he gives to the scientific theory its right and true place. Explaining the evolutionary working of Nature, he writes, “The terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to Mind and beyond has a double process, there is an outward visible process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery, for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is at the same time an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution, for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument, and the race, a more abiding collective formulation, would be the real step in the progressive manifestation of the cosmic Inhabitant, the universal Spirit: rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence. Each grade of cosmic manifestation, each type of form that can house the indwelling spirit, is turned by rebirth into a means for the individual soul, the psychic entity, to manifest more and more of its concealed consciousness; each life becomes a step in a victory over Matter by a greater progression of consciousness in it which shall make eventually Matter itself a means for the full manifestation of the Spirit.”11 Then
The spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.
— Savitri: 710
Commenting on the law of heredity as the mechanism of the scientific theory of evolution, Sri Aurobindo writes, “Heredity is only a material shadow of soul-reproduction, of rebirth of Life and Mind into new forms... there is the reproduction of that which was already evolved; for new characteristics to be propagated in the species they must have been accepted, received, sanctioned in the vital and mental worlds; then only can they (acquired characters) be automatically self-reproduced from the material seed.”12 If not so, the acquired characteristics are returned into ‘the treasury of the subconscient’.
For numberless millions of years, one cannot imagine for how long, Nature laboured and toiled to create a material universe of flaming suns and stars and their systems, then for a lesser but still innumerable millions of years she worked to make this earth a habitable planet. For all that long period, it seemed, she was busy only with the evolution of solid Matter. Life and mind were kept a secret in apparent non-existence. Then life manifested as a vibration in the metal, a growing and seeking and a feeling outward in the plant; ‘an instinctive force and sense, a nexus of joy and pain and hunger and emotion and fear and struggle in the animal, - a first organised consciousness’. Then Nature was busy no more ‘exclusively with matter for its own sake, but most with palpitant plasmic matter useful for the expression of life, the evolution of life was now her one intent purpose. And slowly too mind manifested in life, an intensely feeling, a crude thinking and planning vital mind in the animal, but in man the full organisation and apparatus... And from that time onward the growth of mind rather than any radical change of life became her shining preoccupation, her wonderful wager. Body appeared to evolve no more, life itself evolved little or only so much in its cycles as would serve to express Mind heightening and widening itself in the living body; an unseen internal evolution was now Nature’s great passion and purpose.’
Millenniums have passed since mind evolved into an organised entity and yet no new species have appeared or evolved. To the outward eye it would seem as if evolution has stopped with perfecting of the mind. Of course ‘the physical evolution at least were finished long ago leaving man behind as its poor best result and no new beings or superior creations were to be expected any longer. But this appears to us so long as we look at forms and outsides only and not at the inner significances of the whole process.’ The theory of evolution of consciousness can very well solve this riddle too. “New living forms may no longer be appearing freely, but this is because it is not, or at least it is not primarily, new living forms that the Force of evolution is now busied with evolving, but new powers of consciousness.”14 In other words the Force of evolution has shifted its field of action from the outward to a more internal evolution, from developing new forms to ‘new powers of consciousness’. And Sri Aurobindo’s vision of spiritual evolution speaks of the emergence of higher and still higher levels of consciousness till the highest, the supramental Truth-Consciousness, is attained,
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre in man,
Yet is the source of all things thought and done....
— Savitri: 705
This is the supreme Truth-Consciousness, ‘the fount of the creation’, ‘the origin of all truth here’. Such beings of Truth-Consciousness shall be ‘the high forerunners, the heads of Time’ and ‘the first-born of a new supernal race’.
Consciousness:
Sri Aurobindo’s theory of spiritual evolution, as we have seen in the foregoing pages is basically an evolution of consciousness. But what after all is consciousness, its characteristics, power and function, mode of working and so on. During his yogic exploration Sri Aurobindo discovers that “Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence — it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it — not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself.”15
This inherent reality in existence is “not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces.”15 All that concerns awareness, forces, power, energy comes under the domain of consciousness.
The home of consciousness is in the transcendent where it stays involved in the Superconscient. This creative Energy descends from the transcendent plane and flows down into Space and Time for the purpose of creation and in a joy of ‘self-creation without end or pause’ it creates innumerable worlds, ‘the grandeurs of the infinite’:
It flung into the hazards of its play
A million moods, a myriad energies,
The world – shapes that are fancies of its Truth
And the formulas of the freedom of its Force.
— Savitri: 95
The potential energy of the consciousness involved in the Being turns into its kinetic form and ‘a limitless movement filled a limitless peace’, ‘the thousand —fold expression of the One’. The consciousness continues descending, fragmenting its energy and as a result universal states or worlds come into existence. These universal states created by the consciousness may be called its gradations although it itself remains one single energy. “It will be evident that by consciousness is meant something which is essentially the same throughout but variable in status, condition and operation...”16
The gradation of worlds or planes (the universal states or variables of consciousness) form a great connected complex movement. Savitri describes it in many beautiful expressions, as ‘the World-Stair’ ‘a lone immense high-curved world pile / Erect like a mountain – chariot of the gods’; ‘a brief compendium of the Vast’; ‘a summary of the stages of the spirit’, and so on. The gradations or planes of consciousness are universal states and form ‘a great connected complex movement’: “the higher precipitate their influences on the lower, the lower react to the higher and develop or manifest in themselves within their own formula something that corresponds to the superior power and its action. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental plane. In more detail particular forces, movements, powers, beings of a higher world can throw themselves on the lower to establish appropriate and corresponding forms which will connect them with the material domain and, as it were, reproduce or project their action here. And each thing created here has, supporting it, subtler envelopes or forms of itself which make subsist and connect it with forces acting from above. Man, for instance, has, besides his gross physical body, subtler sheaths or bodies by which he lives behind the veil in direct connection with supraphysical planes of consciousness and can be influenced by their powers, movements and beings. What takes place in life has always behind it pre-existent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes pre-existent movements and forms in the occult mental planes... But all this must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. It is an immense plastic movement full of the play of possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense in the seeing consciousness.”17
The physical is not the only world created by the consciousness. Many are the worlds and realms created in universal Nature. “There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours; vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature.”18
This long explanation so explicitly and convincingly written with Sri Aurobindo’s vision and experiences that one has no choice but to accept the cardinal truth that consciousness is the moving spirit behind all creation, and consequently of evolution. In his theory of spiritual evolution we get a very satisfying explanation of the great mystery of Creation.
Book Two of Savitri – ‘The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds’ – comprising fifteen cantos, describes the various worlds and realms of consciousness in the universal Nature and narrates how the seeker climbs one realm of consciousness to a higher in his upward march,
A voyager upon uncharted routes
Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,
Adventuring across enormous realms,
He broke into another Space and Time.
— Savitri : 91
So begins his journey into another space and time. This journey carries him along the worlds or realms of consciousness in universal Nature:
Alone he moved watched by the infinity
Around him and the Unknowable above.
— Savitri : 95
But, first, one must find a means for this difficult journey back to his goal. After long and difficult yogic exploration Sri Aurobindo discovers the means the All-Wise had already provided in the form of ‘the World –Stair’ made of hierarchies of cosmic worlds, hidden in our inner consciousness,—
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high - curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain - chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
As if from Matter’s plinth and viewless base
To a top as viewless, a carved sea of worlds
Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme
Ascended towards breadths immeasurable;
— Savitri : 98
Planted firmly on earth the Stair holds in it all the realms of consciousness, ‘a brief compendium of the Vast’. In truth this World-Stair is
A summary of the stages of the spirit
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies
Refashioned in our secret air of self
A subtle pattern of the universe.
— Savitri : 98
This ‘holds the key to our ascending fate’ —
It calls out of our dense mortality
The conscious spirit nursed in Matter’s house.
The living symbol of these conscious planes,
— Savitri : 99
and
Its steps are paces of the soul’s return
From the deep adventure of material birth,
A ladder of delivering ascent
And rungs that Nature climbs to deity.
— Savitri : 99
The World-Stair, ‘a connected and complex movement’, is made up of universal realms of consciousness in general Nature when the consciousness took a plunge from its transcendent plane —
Once in the vigil of a deathless gaze
These grades had marked her giant downward plunge,
The wide and prone leap of a godhead’s fall.
— Savitri : 99
In this ‘holocaust of the Supreme’, there is formed the ‘ladder of delivering ascent’ and along this ladder begins the upward climb of the consciousness. Leaving his mind consciousness the adventurer enters one by one the ascending hierarchies of universal Nature. Passing through the realm of vital plane, the world of life force, to the mental plane, consciousness attempts to reach still higher planes. At each plane, the consciousness creates form to suit that particular plane. This form continues life after life through reproduction and heredity till the consciousness evolves further and there is then a change in the form, minor or major, as required according to its need. Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual evolution is veritably an unfolding of the consciousness that got imprisioned when it plunged from the superconscient level and becomes inconscient.
Explaining the evolutionary working of Nature, Sri Aurobindo writes, “This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to Mind and beyond has a double process. There is an outward visible process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery, — for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is at the same time an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery.”19
The spiritual process of evolution, according to Sri Aurobindo’s vision is “in some sense creation, but a self-creation, not a making out of what never was, but a bringing out of what was implicit in the Being.”20 A spiritual evolution, “an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling spirit, is then the key-note, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence.”21
About the mystery of creation and the art of evolution Sri Aurobindo comments: “In a sense, the whole of creation may be said to be a movement between two involutions, Spirit in which all is involved and out of which all evolves downward to the other pole of Matter, Matter in which also all is involved and out of which all evolves upwards to the other pole of Spirit.”22 Without involution, no evolution is possible, for “Nothing can evolve out of Matter which is not therein already contained.”21 The creation oscillates between the highest omnipotent Spirit wherein all is involved and hidden in the superconscient Light and the equally omnipotent dark abyss of inconscient Matter. The inconscient Matter is, therefore, “not so much a matrix as a chamber of materialised energy in which are gathered up all the powers of the Spirit; they are there, but work in the conditions of the material energy, involved, we say, and therefore not apparent as themselves. Material energy would be then life packed into the density of Matter... Life itself would be an energy of a secret mind, a mind imprisoned in its own forms and quivering out in nervous seekings of life for its intenser recognisable power of consciousness”21 says Sri Aurobindo. And between the two poles of involution, ‘the path of the divine Event’, the Being eternally moves—
A power of fallen boundless self awake
Between the first and the last Nothingness,
— Savitri : 1
The theory of spiritual evolution implies a double evolution. The Consciousness-Force inherent in the Infinite Being “brings out eternally the structure of its action in a universe of which the last descending scale is based upon an involution of all the powers of the Spirit into an inconscient absorption in her self-oblivious passion and structural workings.22 This is the first evolution from the top downward; from the first involution of the Consciousness-Force in the Superconscient to the second involution in the Inconscient is the passage of becoming. This is the Spirit’s manifestation through gradual self-forgetfulness till it plunges into the Inconscient, a state of utter self-forgetfulness. This passage of the Spirit’s manifestation may be called Devolution. “Thence comes an ascent and progressive liberation of power after power till the Spirit self-disclosed and set free by knowledge and mastery of its works repossesses the eternal fulness of its being.”22
But the oblivion that succeeds the fall,
Had blotted the crowded tablets of the past,
And all that was destroyed must be rebuilt
And old experience laboured out once more.
— Savitri : 3
This retracing of the path to Spirit’s self-knowledge or self-finding is the present terrestrial evolution or the second creation.
Bases of Evolution and its mechanism:
“There is not only this material plane of being that we see... there is more; for beyond these many couches of the physical existence are other supraphysical degrees, a many layered plane of Life, a many layered plane of Mind, planes of Supermind, of Bliss, of Consciousness Force and of infinite Being on which the physical existence depends for its origination and its continuance. It is higher planes that flood the constantly unfolding unseen energies which have raised its evolution from the obscurity in which it began to the splendour of a light of consciousness to which the highest human mind shall only be the feeble glimmer of a glowworm fire before the sun in its flaming glories.” (Essays Divine & Human, 261) Here Sri Aurobindo gives in a nutshell the salient characteristics of and key to the great Mystery of Creation and its evolution on this earth and to which the epic Savitri gives a poetic expression and which forms the epic adventure of the poem. If the passage is properly understood and analysed not with the rigidity of human logic, then we get the following fundamentals of creation and its evolution as envisaged by the yogi.
First, there is a stupendous hierarchy of grades or variables of consciousness, of supraphysical degrees, between the darkest inconscient Matter and the most luminous spirit. In other words all that happens in creation takes place between the two poles of the omnipotent Inconscient and the omniscient Superconscient. Secondly, the physical existence depends for ‘its origination and its continuance’ on these higher planes of consciousness that constantly flood the unseen energies unfolding from the Inconscience. This implies an involution of ‘unseen energies in the obscurity of the Inconscient. Lastly, the origination of the physical existence i.e. its creation, and its continuance i.e. its evolution depends on the higher supraphysical grades.
Let us take up one by one these fundamentals that form bases of evolution. Sri Aurobindo says that besides the material plane of existence, there is a stupendous hierarchy of grades of consciousness of supraphysical degrees, between inconscient Matter and the most luminous superconscient Spirit. Two very all important questions face us here that need some explaining. The first of the two questions is – How does the stupendous hierarchy of grades or realms of consciousness come into existence? The creation of these supraphysical worlds of consciousness is the result of the infinite Being’s self-manifestation, fragmentation of the Consciousness Force through self-forgetfulness. It may be called the joy of becoming, to create from One’s own substance; it may also be an attraction for an adventure in the unknown, and so on. This infinite Spirit has twin aspects of Being and becoming, the eternity of Oneness and the eternity of pluralism. The infinite Being’s will to be many, his insistence on adopting a pluralistic attitude, leads to the fragmentation of the Consciousness Force and as a consequence the creation of a hierarchy of worlds from top downward—
Creation leaped straight from the hands of God;
Marvel and rapture wandered in the ways.
Only to be was a supreme delight,
— Savitri : 124
These supraphysical grades of consciousness are ‘rather different scales of one graded and interwoven system of being, parts therefore of one complex universal system’. Moreover as they are in ‘a more subtle substance and with other movements’, their presence can have no verifiable proofs. These higher planes in fact require no verifiable proof as these worlds enter into the field of man’s consciousness.
The immortals have their entries in his life:
The Ambassadors of the Unseen draw near;
A Splendour sullied by the mortal air,
Love passes through his heart, a wandering guest,
Beauty surrounds him for a magic hour,
He has visits of a large revealing joy,
Brief widenesses release him from himself,
— Savitri : 340
Or, sometimes
His mind is crossed by strange discovering fires,
Rare intimations lift his stumbling speech
To a moment’s kinship with the eternal Word;
A masque of Wisdom circles through his brain
Perturbing him with glimpses half-divine.
— Savitri : 340
Or again,
Sometimes the inexpressible Mystery
Elects a human vessel of descent.
A breath comes down from a supernal air,
A Presence is born, a guiding Light awakes,
A stillness falls upon the instruments:
— Savitri : 42
But man too can ‘project himself partially into these higher planes under certain conditions’—
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
— Savitri : 42
Or,
He lays his hands sometimes on the Unknown,
He communes sometimes with Eternity
— Savitri : 385
and then
Out of some vast superior continent
Knowledge breaks through trailing its radiant seas,
And Nature trembles with the power, the flame.
— Savitri : 54-5
These are the inner and spiritual evidences of the existence of some higher, other-worldly and supraphysical realms that come in contact with human consciousness; or man may even under certain conditions project himself into those worlds. In either way there is an interaction between man and the higher planes. Hence no need of any verifiable proofs of the existence of higher supraphysical grades of consciousness.
The second question in regard to this stupendous hierarchy of supraphysical realms of consciousness that needs much explaining is: Do these realms or Worlds have any significant role to play vis-a-vis this terrestrial creation and its evolution? In what way the physical existence depends on these higher planes for ‘its origination and its continuance’ as Sri Aurobindo says. These higher planes or systems are the self-existent typal worlds and are ‘at least coeval and coexistent’ with the physical universe. “A secret continuous action of the higher powers and principles from their own planes upon terrestrial being and nature... must have an effect and a significance”23, says Sri Aurobindo. The truth of this statement is corroborated by human experience too; in rare and exceptional moments when man is open inwardly, suddenly he is transported to things unborn and beyond, or from some unknown continents other-worldly thoughts, ideas, images flash upon the inward eye; this may be taken as influences from higher planes as the action of Grace.
The creation and its evolution of Life, Mind and Spirit in the physical are, according to Sri Aurobindo, the result of two co-operating forces. The opening sentence of that power – packed scripture of Integral Yoga – The Mother – categorically states: “There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.” These form the two forces of evolution
1. ‘an upward-tending force from below’, and
2. ‘an upward-drawing and downward – pressing force from above’. The upward-tending force is the power of aspiration calling from below in order to be released into some higher plane of consciousness from the inscrutable darkness of inconscient Matter where the Spirit had plunged during devolution of the Consciousness Force. This aspiration is the power that
Inspires our ascent to viewless heights
As once the abysmal leap to birth and life.
— Savitri : 101
The aspiration of the ‘fallen boundless self’, that afflicts the Inconscient with the need to be, is
A nameless movement, an unthought Idea
Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,
Something that wished but knew not how to be,
Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignornace.
— Savitri : 1-2
The World Force from its inertia is thus wakened and stirred to its kinetic state and a self-impelled inertia then acts to bring the consciousness involved in the Inconscient, for
All was found there the Unique has dreamed and made
— Savitri : 97
This happens at every stage of evolution.
The ‘upward – tending force from below’ is certainly the initial power to tease and afflict the Inconscient with the need to be. But this alone cannot evolve what is latent in the omnipotent hold of the Inconscient. There is need of an additional and co-operating force for this tremendous labour. That force of evolution is the ‘upward-drawing and downward-pressing force’ provided from above by the higher, supraphysical grades of consciousness. This force has two aspects. One is the ‘upward drawing force’ which is needed to pull out of the Inconscient the spirit imprisoned in it: “To release the glory of God in Nature’s mud.” (Savitri – 138) The second aspect of the force, ‘the downward-pressing force’ of the superior planes acts simultaneously to manifest their world and nature on the material plane so as to induce the like consciousness to emerge from the in conscient’s depth
A splendour presses or a Power breaks through,
Earth’s great dull barrier is removed awhile,
The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes
And we grow vessels of creative might
— Savitri : 108
As the higher principles manifest their worlds here by their ‘downward-pressing’ force, the Godhead concealed in the inconscient matter finds greater, wider and higher realms of consciousness for the release of its glory, enters these kingdoms as and when manifested on earth. This is the way by which the fallen Godhead journeys back to its more luminous state. This is the mechanism of evolution according to Sri Aurobindo’s vision. He writes, “it is the pressure of the Life – world which enables life to evolve and develop here in the forms we already know; it is that increasing pressure which drives it to aspire in us to a greater revelation of itself and will one day deliver the mortal from his subjection to the narrow limitations of his present incompetent and restricting physicality.”24
Life heard the call and left her native light.
Overflowing from her bright magnificent plane
On the rigid coil and sprawl of mortal Space,
Here too the gracious great - winged Angel poured
Her splendour and her sweetness and her bliss,
Hoping to fill a fair new world with joy.
— Savitri : 130
By the pressure from the Life world the life consciousness
... stooped to make her home in transient shapes,
In Matter’s womb she cast the Immortal’s fire,
In the unfeeling Vast woke thought and hope
— Savitri : 130
and as a result
New sentient creatures filled the unseen depths,
Life’s glory and swiftness ran in the beauty of beasts,
Man dared and thought and met with his soul the world.
— Ibid
“It is the pressure of Mind-world which evolves and develops mind here and helps us to find a leverage for our mental self-uplifting and expansion, so that we may hope to enlarge continually our self of intelligence and even to break the prison-walls of our matter-bound physical mentality.”24
A difficult evolution from below
Called a masked intervention from above:
Else this great, blind inconscient universe
Could never have disclosed its hidden mind.
— Savitri : 146-7
As the earthly life “could not house the wideness of a soul / which needed all infinity for its home” (Savitri : 238-9), so from a still higher realm of the Mind the pressure arrives—
A musing spirit looked out on the worlds
And like a brilliant clambering of skies
Passing through clarity to an unseen Light
Large lucent realms of Mind from stillness shone.
— Savitri : 239
Similarly, it is the pressure of the supramental and spiritual worlds which is preparing to develop here the manifest power of the Spirit and by it open our being on the physical plane into the freedom and infinity of the superconscient Divine; that contact, that pressure can alone liberate from the apparent Inconscience, which was our starting point, the all conscient Godhead concealed in us.”25
This is how each stage of creation evolves here on earth
As if reversing a deformation’s spell,
Released from the black magic of Night,
Renouncing servitude to the dark Abyss,
It shall learn at last who lived within unseen
— Savitri : 171
The pressure of the higher principles of the Supermind, of Bliss, of Conscious Force and of infinite Being when ‘felt in the unconscious universe’ can create happier and wider fields for the concealed godhead to emerge into these more luminous realms,—
It made the breath a happy mystery.
And brought a love sustaining pain with joy;
A love that bore the cross of pain with joy
Eudaemonised the sorrow of the world,
Made happy the weight of long unending Time,
The secret caught of God’s felicity.
— Savitri : 312-3
The pressure from the higher realms of the supraphysical grades has two purposes. It is this pressure from above that ultimately ‘held the spirit to its miraculous course’ along the World-Stair, and thereby “to release the glory of God in Nature’s mud” into higher, wider, and more subtle realms of consciousness: “To free the self is but one radiant pace” (Savitri: 353) There is a more significant purpose: “Here to fulfil himself was God’s desire.” (ibid) When all these supraphysical worlds are manifested on the material plane – “A million lotuses swaying on one stem” (Savitri: 279)
then there is Divine fulfilment in creation. But at present while the tardy evolution is still on its half way at the mental plane, the situation is—
A world that knows not its inhabiting Self,
Labours to find its cause and need to be;
A spirit ignorant of the worlds it made,...
Struggles to emerge, to be free, to know and reign;
— Savitri : 329
The gradation of supraphysical worlds or planes is one whole. The material world has evolved life in obedience to a pressure from the vital plane, mind in obedience to a pressure from the mental plane. It is now trying to evolve supermind in obedience to a pressure from the supramental plane...
And when that greater Self comes sea-like down
To fill this image of our transcience,
All shall be captured by delight, transformed:
In waves of undreamed ecstasy shall roll
Our mind and life and sense and laugh in a light
Other than this hard limited human day,
The body’s tissues thrill apotheosised,
Its cells sustain bright metamorphosis.
— Savitri : 171
and then
This little being of Time, this shadow soul,
This living dwarf figure-head of darkened spirit
Out of its traffic of petty dreams shall rise.
Its shape of person and its ego face
Divested of this mortal travesty,
Like a clay troll kneaded into a god
New made in the image of the eternal Guest.
— Savitri : 171
“What takes place in life has always behind it pre-existent movements and forms in the occult vital planes; what takes place in mind presupposes pre-existent movements and forms in the occult mental planes.”26 This becomes more and more evident as one progresses in a ‘dynamic yoga’. Savitri gives a clear poetic expression to this symbolic truth in Book Two. Sri Aurobindo, however, cautions, “But all this must not be taken in too rigid and mechanical a sense. it is an immense plastic movement full of the play of possibilities and must be seized by a flexible and subtle tact or sense in the seeing consciousness. It cannot be reduced to a too rigorous logical or mathematical formula.”26
The stupendous hierarchy of the grades or realms of consciousness as ‘a many layered plane of life, a many layered plane of Mind, planes of Supermind, of Bliss, of Consciousness Force and of infinite Being’, is a great connected complex movement, rather superimposed with no rigid line of demarcation, each melting into the higher and lower worlds. The poet gives a beautiful symbolic description of the hierarchy of these self-existent worlds—
There walled apart by its own innerness
In a mystical barrage of dynamic light
He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile
Erect like a mountain chariot of the Gods
Motionless under an inscrutable sky.
— Savitri : 98
This is Sri Aurobindo’s famous ‘World-Stair’ metaphor, of course a symbolic one, on which is based the entire principle of the spiritual evolution as enunciated by the poet of Savitri. The poet describes the World-Stair as
Planted on earth it holds in it all realms:
It is a brief compendium of the Vast.
This was the single stair to being’s goal.
A summary of the stages of the spirit,
Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies...
A subtle pattern of the universe.
— Savitri : 98
“Each plane, in spite of its connection with others above and below it, is yet a world in itself, with its own movements, forces, beings, etc., working under its own laws, for its own manifestation. It does not follow that the self-creation of any higher plane on the material will be in its totality. Many are the possibilities of the self-creations of the higher planes on the material; ‘some fail altogether (to manifest) and leave at the most an idea that comes to nothing; some try seriously (to manifest) and are repelled and defeated... Others effectuate a half manifestation’, and so on. This is because the higher supraphysical realms along the ‘World-Stair’ to manifest themselves on the material plane “come into conflict and have not only to overcome the resistance of the physical consciousness and of matter, but their own internecine resistance to each other.”27
As a higher plane attempts to manifest on the material, it comes in direct confrontation with the resistances from the omnipotent Inconscient
But while the magic breath was on its way,
Before her gifts could reach our prisoned hearts,
A dark ambiguous Presence questioned all.
The secret Will that robes itself with Night
And offers to spirit the ordeal of the flesh,
Imposed a mystic mask of death and pain.
— Savitri : 130
The higher realm which comes to manifest a higher grade of consciousness on the physical, now ‘must obey the inert Inconscient’s law’ —
Whose stamp of failure haunts all ignorant life.
Inflicting still its habit on the cells
The phantom of a dark and evil start
Ghostilike pursues all that we dream and do.
— Savitri : 140
Or,
Its treacherous elements spread like slippery grains
Hoping the incoming Truth might stumble and fall,
— Savitri : 317-8
Only in rare cases a higher plane succeeds in precipitating its result in a more complete and successful creation.
In principle the manifestation of a supraphysical plane on the material is expected to be exactly similar, but not in actuality; “the very fact of translation into another substance and another rhythm of manifestation makes a difference. It is something new that has manifested and it is that that makes the creation worth while.” Sri Aurobindo illustrates, “What for instance would be the utility of a supramental creation on earth if it were just the same thing as a supramental creation on the supramental plane? It is that, in principle, but yet something else, a triumphant new self-discovery of the Divine in conditions that are not elsewhere?28
Process of Creation & its evolution:
The word evolution carries in it an intrinsic sense of a previous involution, for only that which existed involved can alone evolve. “Nothing can evolve out of Matter which is not therein contained,”4 says Sri Aurobindo. The terrestrial evolution, therefore, has to be part of a larger and an integral process, and then only it becomes meaningful. Some sort of a driving force inherent in inconscient matter must be behind the evolutionary urge of Nature. The entire process of the spiritual evolution as enunciated by Sri Aurobindo, has in it fourfold movements.
1. The first original Involution when all is involved in the Superconscient:
2. Devolution i.e. the first evolution from top downward or manifestation of the Spirit.
3. The second Involution when all powers of the descending consciousness of the spirit get involved in the Inconscient.
4. Evolution terrestrial, the process of the spirit’s self-finding or step by step release from its involved state in the Inconscient.
First Involution:
Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual vision sees that ‘behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal’. The fourfold movement of the evolutionary process is truly He alone and from Him proceeds the whole creation: “Himself the play, Himself the player, Himself the playground.”29 He beyond Time and Space, the pure Being and Consciousness, the supreme Existence in ‘the Eternal’s stillness’ in unmoved joy where and in whom all is in a state of involution, hidden in the blaze of Superconscient Light. All is contained in this blissful peace of the superconscience, though formless—
There only reigns the Spirit’s motionless power
Poised in itself through still eternity
And its omniscient and omnipotent peace.
— Savitri : 321
and
Of all the beauty and the marvel here,
Of all Time’s intricate variety
Eternity was the substance and the source;
— Savitri : 672
Here lies the origin and cause of creation.
Devolution:
The word ‘devolution’ connotes descent through a series of changes; or for our understanding a creation from the top downward or simply manifestation of the One Being. Sri Aurobindo sees the presence of the Reality of one Being and consciousness behind the appearances of the universe. All things are one Being, “but a one who insists on his own infinite diversity and even a suggestion that there is in this eternal unity an eternal pluralism; the Infinite Being self-repeated in an infinite multiplicity of beings, each unique and yet each the One.”23 The supreme Reality has twin aspects of Being and Becoming.
Devolution is the result of the Being’s becoming, the Being’s ‘will to be many’ and His delight of self-creation ‘to house its bodiless thrill’ in forms. It is His insistence on His ‘own infinite diversity’, ‘an eternal pluralism’, — May I be many, and
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
— Savitri : 67
The Consciousness – Force lies involved in the superconscient’s Silence; it is only when the Being wills to be many that the involved Consciousness — Force separates from the Being, and His ‘rapturous and unstumbling Force’ turns kinetic and begins her act of creation.
The serried kingdoms of the graded Law
Plunged from the Everlasting into Time
— Savitri : 88
and ‘flashing out of the Timeless leaped the worlds’. And the consciousness – Force—
In her mystery’s moods divorced from the Maker’s laws
She too as sovereignly creates her field,
Her will shaping the undetermined vasts,
Making a finite of infinite;
— Savitri : 84
and
As if her rash superb wagered to outvie
The veiled Creator’s cosmic secrecies.
— Ibid
The Consciousness-Force fragments and plunges, plunges and fragments in the act of creation.
It flung into the hazards of its play
A million moods, a myriad energies,
The world-shapes that are fancies of its Truth
And the formulas of the freedom of its Force.
— Savitri : 95
Sri Aurobindo says, “Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably. The Omnipotent has formulated itself in a vast cosmic self-driven Inertia that by disintegration creates; the Infinite is self-expressed here in a boundless fragmentation.”30 And all the while
The Eternal’s stillness saw in unmoved joy
His universal Power at work display
In plots of pain and dramas of delight
The wonder and beauty of her will to be.
— Savitri : 95
The Master of existence then enters ‘the world-shapes’ that the Force has created
Along a naked curve in bourneless Self
The points that run through the closed heart of things
Shadowed the indeterminable line
That carries the Everlasting through the years.
— Savitri : 40
and
The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible...
And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
— Savitri : 66-7
As a result of the devolutionary creation, ‘a carved sea of worlds’ descending from the top is created at each level of fragmentation of the Force. Descending from breadths immeasurable, creating world after world, the Force becomes darker, less conscious and less intense in power and under its self-impelled inertia is hurled headlong to plunge into utter and dark unconsciousness. With the fragmentation of the Force during devolutionary creation, there enters in the manifestation the element of rigid separativity. Thus is formed the cosmic ignorance, the worlds of the finite: ‘divorced from the Maker’s laws’—
Her will shaping the undetermined vasts,
Making a finite of the infinity;
— Savitri : 84
and
In this drop from consciousness to consciousness
Each leaned on the occult Inconscient’s power,
The fountain of its needed Ignorance,
Archmason of the limits by which it lives.
— Savitri : 89
All the while
In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
In the insoluble riddle of her play,
— Savitri : 64
the Conscious – Being becomes ‘whatever her artist will can make’. Offering ‘His substance a material for her works’—
Driven by his own formidable Power,
His chosen partner in a titan game,
Her will he has made the master of his fate,
Her whim the dispenser of his pleasure and pain;
He has sold himself into her regal power
For any blow or boon that she may choose:
Even in what is suffering to our sense,
He feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all experience meets her blissful hands;
— Savitri : 66
and ‘He builds bodies for his shapeless energy’ and enters every formation
All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal, dallies with mortality.
The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible.
Incarnate in a world of strife and pain,
He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe.
— Savitri : 66-67
Second Involution :
Numberless are the worlds formed in hierarchical descending order during the great plunge, and infinite are the gradations and variables of consciousness during its devolutionary fragmentation. All these form a sort of ladder, ‘the World-Stair’ wherein “Aspects of being donned world-outline” (Savitri. 96) The Being’s ‘will to be’ at last reaches the ultimate stage of the fragmentation of His Force. The Soul looks out into a dark unknown world and out of curiosity He too plunges into that ‘negative infinity, the Inconscient formed by the plunge of His Force;—
Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
It sensed a negative infinity,
A void supernal whose immense excess
Imitating God and everlasting Time
Offered