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The opening lines of Savitri have a multi-tiered meaning suggesting the temporal and the eternal, the particular day and the beginning of cosmos, the day Satyavan must die and the day Savitri conquers death, the darkness of the soul and the darkness of pre-creation. ’Rapid transitions from one image to another’ emphasise sometimes on one meaning suppressing the other suggestions. ”I am selecting certain ideas and impressions”, writes Sri Aurobindo, ”to form a symbol of a partial and temporary darkness of the soul and Nature which seems to a temporary feeling of that which is caught in the Night as if it were universal and eternal”. (Savitri p, 829)
So having grasped the ’universal’ meaning of the ’great event’, as described by the Mother in her explanation of the birth of the four powers, we may
have to return to the transitional hour, the dawn, and the particular day. In the context of the present and the transient, the ’great event’ could be dawn itself. And, as this dawn is proceeding on its way towards
darkness, the conscious Night or the mind of Night, anticipates and fears the dawn because the light of dawn is going to dissolve the Night. Here, Night is personified just as Dawn is personified as Usha. So, this
dark person - Night - has a ’huge foreboding’ that is, it has a strong feeling that something terrible is going to happen to herself - perhaps, its dissolution. So, she lies across the path of Dawn, resisting
her, trying to obstruct her onward and eternal march. Was she afraid that she would be eaten up by light, her ’spirit devoured'?
Perhaps, these first lines presage the ultimate battle, between Light and Darkness, between Savitri and ’annihilation’s mystery’, Death:
The two opposed each other face to face...
Light like a burning tongue licked up his thoughts,
Light was a luminous torture in his heart,
Light coursed, a splendid agony, through his nerves...
His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.
So, Night, apprehending, her end ’Lay stretched immobile upon silence’ marge. She lay ’immobile’, because there is no awakening as yet of
the Gods and it is only with their awakening that the daily activities in the temple and with the ’tribes’ would begin. Seen on the cosmic level, Night is ’immobile’ because the dart of awakening light has not yet
stirred it up. So all is motionless, still and silent.
The darkness of the Night is ’opaque’ ’impenetrable’ for it is so very dense and deep. One could almost feel it with the senses, just as one can feel
it when one goes into the deep silence of the forests or the vast silence of the mountains. There, indeed, silence is palpable.
On the cosmic level, the Night is ’The abysm of the unbodied Infinite’. In this abysmal darkness of the Inconscient, there was no form as yet -
’unbodied’ - for.
In the beginning was darkness hidden by darkness,
And all was an ocean of Inconscience.
These lines from the Nasadiya Sukta find their echo in Sri Aurobindo’s poem Who:
When darkness was blind and engulfed within darkness
He was seated within it immense and alone.
It is this blindness of the darkness that Sri Aurobindo may be alluding to in the line:
In the sombre symbol of her eyeless muse
’Eyeless’ musing is blindness, lack of sight; light, both, external and internal, were not there for vision to be possible. The ’temple of
eternity’ is still ’unlit’ awaiting the light of the Dawn. And until she comes,
A fathomless zero occupied the world,
This line catches the sense and mood of this night scene. It is not just the dense darkness that has occupied the world. It is not
just the unconscious state of our night sleep. There is beyond this description of the physical night and physical dawn, "a real symbol of an inner reality and the main purpose is to describe by suggestion the
thing symbolised”. (Savitri, p. 907) The thing symbolised is actually "’a relapse into the Inconscient”, ”a fathomless zero”. Could this fathomless zero be what the Nasadiya Sukta described:
”Then there was neither death nor deathlessness,
Nor any indication of day and night.
The one breathed without breath by its self-law
In the beginning was darkness hidden by darkness,
And all was an ocean of Inconscience.
Or is it what is described in the Katha Upanishad:
There the sun cannot shine and the moon has no lustre:
all the states are blind:
there our lightnings flash not,
neither any earthy fire.
Nolinikanta Gupta combines these two views when he explains: ”The original inconscience is a non-existence a nihil in which all existence is rolled up
and dissolved, an infinite non-entity or zero. This is the zero here below, on the reverse side of reality. But there is another zero up above and beyond, beyond the superconsciousness, the Sunya, beyond
Satchidananda. In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where the gods are asleep. When the Divine, the One indivisible existence felt the first stirring and was moved to create, he divided himself
and cast himself as it were out of himself. And the Light and Consciousness of his Being forthwith leaped into darkness and inconscience. That is the involution of the Supreme into material existence.” (Vol. 4. p.
306)
This process of Involution is again beautifully described in the Nasadiya Sukta:
”In the beginning that moved as desire within,
Which was the first seed of mind,
The seers, having meditated in their hearts
Discovered the connection of the Existent in the Non-Existent.
A ray stretched out that cut the Existent from the Non-Existent.
What was there below? what was above?
There were impregnators, there were mighty forces,
There was self-law below, and a Will above.
Who truly knows? Who here may declare it?
Whence it is born? Whence indeed this creation?
Even the gods were subsequent to the world’s emergence;
Then who knows from whence it arose?
So, it is the zero here below that is ”the womb of creation, it is something akin to Hiranyagarbha of Indian tradition” clarifies Nolinikanta Gupta. It
is that vast ocean of Inconscience from which nothing has yet been created though it carries in itself everything that is to evolve in the future.
On the psycho-physical level, it is the night before dawn which is supposed to be most dense and yet impregnated with the first rays of the
dawn. The night is darkest before dawn ”because the darkness tries to prevent the light from coming” explains the Mother. The Night that "lay stretched immobile", is in reality ”a power of fallen boundless
self". It is Consciousness in Light, which by "cutting himself from his Origin, he went down and down towards Unconsciousness.” It is the fallen archangel, Satan, the power of darkness and inconscience. It
is ”between the first and the last Nothingness”, that is to say, it is between the zero here below and the Sunya beyond the superconsciousness. ”In between is the world of night, the world of gestation where
the gods are asleep”, comments Nolinida. This power, this Night,
”Recalling the tenebrous womb from which it came,
Turned from the insoluble mystery of birth
And the tardy process of mortality
And longed to reach its end in vacant Nought”.
The Night "recalls the tenebrous womb", the place of its birth, the Hiranyagarbha, the golden womb which has in itself in an embryo stage all
the future forms of evolution. This Night shrinks from the very thought of starting upon a new cycle of evolution, of "the mystery of birth" and the tiring "process of mortality".
In itself, the mystery of birth is insoluble because we, who are part of this birth, cannot understand the purpose and origin of our birth. Is it the
body that is born or is it the soul that takes birth? Why the birth of infinite multiplicity? For what end? And this "mystery of birth" repeats itself endlessly as there emerge new forms in the
evolutionary process. The endless process of mortality is "tardy", wearisome, burdensome. And, the very thought of all these vibrations and formations of creativity make the Night long ”to reach its end in
vacant nought”. It is as though the Night wants to send back into the tenebrous womb from which it came.
"The Mind of this Night”, explains A. B. Purani, ”wanted even to end itself in mere nothingness rather than undertake the fast. It is
when her mind consents that cosmos can come into being". That is to say, the Night has to be ready to receive the Higher Light, the will of the Transcendent, the Fiat of the Supreme and only then can evolution
begin. Does the Night receive the "Message" of the Deity?
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