The next part of Savitri we shall discuss is as followed.

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.

MEANINGS OF SOME DIFFICULT WORDS

Luster = Brilliance,

Expunged => Expunge = wipe out, to efface, fade out.

Wane = Shrink.

Crypt = Vault, Something hidden or secret. (Encryption)

Sill = Edge or Shelf.

Accustomed = Familiar.

Affranchised = to relieve, to free from.

Respite = Period of rest.

In our last post we discussed how Goddess Usha purifies our soil with Her awakening ray. Also
we saw that Goddess Usha withdraws from Her full Glory and Power, because our Earth, our
physical Nature and we are death-bound and our aspirations are not enough to liberate ourselves
from this mortality and to see Her full Divine Glory and accept it. But, The Divine Mother wears
the mask of the Matter and is within us within every element of the Nature to lead us. In this post
also Her withdrawal and its reasoning is portrayed by Sri Aurobindo in the first part, and then
gradually he returns to the common day on earth at the end of this discussion.

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,

Birth and death are always the attributes to Creatures, to the Life (Jeeva). Not to the soul. The
soul is always pure and free from such bindings of birth and death, or our works (Karma), or
credits (Punya or Paapa). Such bindings are always for Jeeva (Life). Soul is a Divine spark that is
a Divine Spirit. Therefore, it is always pre-existent and Eternal. It can never be destroyed, as
stated in Sri Mad Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse no. 23:

lÉælÉqÉç ÍcÉÇSÇÌiÉ zÉx§ÉÉÍhÉ lÉælÉqÉç SWûÌiÉ mÉÉuÉMü: |

lÉ cÉælÉqÉç YsÉãSrÉlirÉÉmÉÉã lÉ zÉÉãwÉrÉÌiÉ qÉÉÂiÉÈ ||

´ÉÏ qÉSè pÉaÉuÉSè aÉÏiÉÉ 2.23.

Nainam Chaindanti Shastraani Nainam Dahati Paavakah |

Na Chainam kledayantyaapo Na shoshayati Marutah ||

Weapons cannot cut the soul into pieces, nor the fire can burn it. Water cannot wet it nor the air
can dry it. (Also, please refer to 2.13, in the same context)

Therefore a soul in its individual state is an Eternal Spirit of Supreme. When it takes birth on the
earth, this time-bound world, the soul gets the attributes like Jeeva(Life), Praana (Vital), Deha
(Body), Indriya (Senses), and Mana (Mind), to cross the border from Eternity to the region of
“mortal time”. These five elements Jeeva, Praana, Deha, Indriya, and Mana, constitute the
Material part of our existence. Therefore, the soul, the Divine Spirit “A spark of deity”, when
takes the birth on the earth, that is “draws near the sill of birth”, that is an edge between Eternity
and mortal Time, this spark of deity is “lost in the Matter’s crypt”. Crypt means a vault. So the
soul is lost in the Veil of Matter and “Its lustre vanishes in the inconscient planes”. That is the
brilliant consciousness of the soul, comes down to our inconscient planes. Therefore, as soul, the
Eternal Divine Spirit, takes birth in this world, it is concealed in the vault of Matter and its
supernal consciousness is sacrificed.

In this way or similarly:

That transitory glow of magic fire

So now dissolved in bright accustomed air.

Goddess Usha, the Divine Mother, the “magic fire”, Her “transitory glow”, which transformed
the Nature, and liberated it from its inconscience, such a Divine Glory of Divine Mother, now
dissolves in “bright” and “accustomed air”. Accustomed means familiar, and here the air of this
mortal world is now familiar to Goddess Usha. Therefore, as the Divine Mother wears the mask
of Nature, Her Perfection, Her Glory and Her Power are sacrificed, similar to the sacrifice of the
perfection of the soul when it takes a birth, as discussed above. Therefore, now the Glory of
Dawn recedes and common daylight starts to spread.

The message ceased and waned the messenger.

As the common daylight spreads, the thrilling message of advent of Light, the birth of
Consciousness ceases or turns inarticulate or silent. It fades away. And the Messenger, Goddess
Usha, now shrinks. Wanes or shrinks do not mean that Her Presence has shrunk. It is only Her
full Divine Glory and Power has shrunk because we cannot sustain it. Her Presence is
everywhere, every time. Those who realize Her, see Her in every form of Matter.

The single Call, the uncompanioned Power,

Drew back into some far-off secret world
The hue and marvel of the supernal beam:

The Divine Mother now drew herself back into the “far-off secret world”. Here secret world
means She hides Herself instead of manifesting overtly, in the veil of Matter. Goddess Usha
“The hue and the marvel of the supernal beam” is addressed as “The Single Call” and “the
uncompanioned Power”. Because, the Supreme Sun of Truth, The Omnipotent, The Supreme
who is Her partner in all Her works, is still veiled behind Her, but not with Her. Please recall
from our previous discussions that Goddess Usha is a “reconnaissance from the sun”. She also
looks back at the Supreme Sun who is veiled behind Her, for while before starting Her duties.

She looked no more on our mortality.

She no longer looks on our mortality, and mortality of our world. This does not mean she stops
caring for us. This means She expects us to win this mortality, She expects Sadhana from us.
Now what is Sadhana actually? Is it the study of books of thousands of pages, understanding
them, or being a person known to everyone in this way? If you ask The Mother and Sri
Aurobindo they say NO. It is not the entire part of Sadhana. The whole of the Sadhana is to
aspire! Aspire for Her Grace. Dedicate and devote us completely to Her! It is the complete
Surrender of ours what She expects from us. Rest is taken care by Herself! Sri Pradeep Narangji
of Sri Aurobindo Society once said in a meeting “We are required to do only 1% of the Sadhana,
remaining 99% The Mother will take care of, in fact She has already done and still She does the
Sadhana for everyone being in the sookshma shareera”. This 1% is nothing but our complete
surrender to Her. Such is the attenuation of Her Love for Her children. So can’t we do this 1%
for our Mother, who has done so much for us?

But because of our human nature, even this 1% is very difficult sometimes. What it requires is
the ultimate Faith, and Devotion for Her. And who gives it? Herself! When we pray in Her to
give us what we need She indeed gives us what we need. Because Her rule is “Every call is
answered, All sincere Prayers are granted”. With a sincere heart if we ask Her for anything,
She will definitely gives us. She even gives us the material worthily things like money and
richness! But that is to only prove that She can give us what we need. What actually we need
from Her? It is not the money, not the material pleasures, we should always beg in Her for only
three things and they are Jnaana, Bhakti and Vairaagya. But we keep asking her for all the sort
of material pleasures. She gives us these material pleasures to test whether we turn towards Her,
by realizing Her after we get the things we desire. If we realize this, and then pray for Her Grace
instead for any material pleasure, definitely we will realize Her full Glory. Or else we will
proceed into the same cycles till we aspire for Grace.

Therefore, we should only aspire for Her Grace and pray in Her to give us Jnaana, Bhakti and
Vairaagya to realize Her full Divine Glory and Power. This is further justified when we go
through the next lines.

The excess of beauty natural to god-kind

Could not uphold its claim on time-born eyes;

The beauty of the Divine Mother is natural to god-kind not to mankind. Therefore mankind has
to be prepared to receive such excess beauty of Goddess Usha. Therefore, she unveils herself.
Her beauty is ultimately luxuriant and dazzling to our mortal eyes or time bond eyes. Why Sri
Aurobindo calls our eyes as time-born or time-bond is because our eyesight diminishes, but Her
Glory, Her Beauty is Eternal. They never diminish with the passage of time, because they are
never bound by time. These two lines once again re-affirm the need of our Sadhana. Because,
we, in our natural state can never accept anything from The supreme Divine. We need to be
prepared to receive the same. This process of preparing ourselves is nothing but our Sadhana.

Too mystic-real for space-tenancy

Her body of glory was expunged from heaven:

“Her body of glory” which is “Too mystic”, a visionary, not substantial to our mortal eyes, but
yet it is real. Such a glorious physical presence of the Divine Mother is now “expunged” or
expelled or wiped out from the “heaven”. Here “heaven” means our sky. Because generally
when we refer to heaven, casually we look towards the sky, as we don’t know where actually the
heaven is? Therefore, these lines do not suggest that Goddess Usha was expelled from Heaven,
her own Native. Here “heaven” and “space-tenancy” go in line. Therefore, we should get the
spirit of these lines as the physical presence of the Divine Mother was too mystic for the space
tenancy or to stay for long or forever in our skies. Therefore, it was wiped out by itself.

Therefore:

The rarity and wonder lived no more.

The glorious physical presence of Goddess Usha no longer stays in our skies of our mortal
world.

Now let us conclude what has happened so far, before we continue. Goddess Usha appears at a
stage when the Nescient Nature aspired for a distant change, for evolution. She is “A scout in the
reconnaissance form the sun” who calls the Nature to take up the adventure of consciousness
and joy. For this she lends the vision and senses to the nature. Her task appears impossible to us
but “All can be done if god-touch is there”. Her touch is a transforming touch, which transforms
the Nature that leads the Nature from darkness to the Eternal Light. Goddess Usha, the divine
Mother, “A heart of silence in the hands of joy”, from “far beatitudes”, turns everything in this
Nature into “a consecration and rite” and every element of Nature rejoices and adores Her. The
Divine Mother purifies our soil with Her awakening ray and turns everything here into miracles.

But She is aware that our and Nature’s aspiration is not up to Her expectation and we are still
bound by Time, by Death and She withdraws from Her full Glory and Power and wears the mask
of Matter and imparts Her Divine Presence everywhere, in the veiled form. That is She sacrifices
Her perfection for the sake of leading us on our way of Sadhana. It has been possible for us to do
our very little Sadhana, because of Her profound and concrete Presence. It is because of Her
descent into our Nescience that Sadhana is possible from us and we can conquer the obstacles
and transforms from inconscience to consciousness, from our ignorance to knowledge. This off
course also requires our part, our 1% of Sadhana, which we all know.

Here, I remember a very awakening instance. Once during prayers, one of my friends asked my
grand father a question. “How is it possible for the Gods to be present everywhere? Divine
Mother manifests in all the forms of Matter, but how? When she does so wont Her Divinity gets
diminished?” My grandpa’s answer was wonderful, which gave us one more element of Vedas.

mÉÔhÉïqÉSèÈ mÉÔhÉïÍqÉSqÉç mÉÔhÉÉïiÉç mÉÔhÉïqÉÑScrÉiÉã |

mÉÔhÉïxrÉ mÉÔhÉïqÉÉSÉrÉ mÉÔhÉïqÉãuÉÉÎuzÉzrÉiÉã ||

Poornamadah Poornamidam Poornaat Poornamudachyate |

Poornasya Poornamaadaaya Poornamevaavashishyate ||

Poorna means One. In our calculation, if you add One and One you get two. If you deduce One
from One you get Shunya, the Zero. But in Divine’s calculation, if you add One to One what you
get is One only. If you deduce One from One you get One only.

Let us have an example. A pregnant woman is complete (Poorna). The infant in her womb is also
Poorna, that is complete. The baby is born. That is a Poorna infant is deduced from a Poorna
Mother. Will there be any difference in the completeness of the mother? No! Her completeness is
perfected in fact!

Another Example. We have just now discussed that Soul is a complete Spirit of divine. There is
no doubt that Divine is complete! When the soul rejoins the Supreme, is there any value addition
to Supreme? No!

Similarly, when the Divine Mother leaves Her presence in every form of Matter, there is no
difference in Her completeness. This is Divine Calculation. Not a human calculation. We fail to
understand the our mathematics only saying that it is very difficult. But Divine’s Mathematics is
so easy. The only thing is we need to explore this.

Now what is left is:

There was the common light of earthly day.

Now when Goddess Usha recede, there spreads the common earthly daylight. Not the Eternal
Light of Goddess Usha. In such common Light:

Affranchised from the respite of fatigue

Once more the rumour of the speed of Life
Pursued the cycles of her blinded quest.

“Once more the rumour of the speed of Life” the common issues of our life, resumes their cycles
of “blinded quest”. Untill this outbreak of Dawn, the Life on earth was having a period of rest –
respite – and the reason for this rest is its fatigue! Here Sri Aurobindo turns to daily or routine
proceedings of humans and creatures after portraying the Dawn as a symbol of the Creation of
this cosmos. Our daily activities are like some quests without an aim, which go into cycles.
Therefore, at the end of the day we are subjected to stress and fatigue and we go for rest at the
end of the day. This is true for only those who go into these cycles of blinded quests. Those who
have realized the ultimate quest of the life, to realize the Supreme, will never rest until they
accomplish. This ultimate quest is first of all difficult to realize. Because we are completely lost
in our material world, full of inconscience. Sometime, when we feel the Divine Spirit amidst our
obscurities, we would realize this. Such an encounter with Him initiates a spark of aspiration in
us. Then, it is up to us to grow further. Therefore, we should realize that our ultimate quest is to
realize Him, not any material professional or personal achievements. You may ask that this
ultimate quest will be very difficult, how can I take it up? The thing is The Mother and Sri
Aurobindo have made it very simple and easy for us. They do not expect us to perform complex
rituals, thousand of chanting (japa) in a day or any such things. They have just said to aspire! To
dedicate and devote ourselves to them! That’s all! If you are hungry for knowledge Sri
Aurobindo has blessed you with Savitri. If you want more? There is Essays on Gita, Synthesis of
Yoga, The Divine Life, The Mother, and so many knowledge banks he has blessed us with.
Therefore our ultimate quest should be to realize the One within and everywhere. Not some
professional or personal ambitions.

This also does not mean that we should completely ignore or neglect our professional and
personal ambitions. We should do full justice to them to all our responsibilities. But we should
not get lost in them completely. We should find some time out of our material life for our
ultimate task, for our Sadhana. And our Sadhana should not only be for ourselves, it should be
for the whole of the mankind, for the whole universe. Because, Sri Aurobindo’s Sadhana was not
just for himself, it was for the whole universe. Our approach should also be the same. Let us
don’t be selfish about our Sadhana. Let us involve every one in it. This is why Sri Aurobindo has
given equal importance and weightage to both individual as well as collective Yoga or Sadhana.

All sprang to their unvarying daily acts;

The thousand peoples of the soil and tree
Obeyed the unforeseeing instant's urge,

Now when the common daylight spreads, all the creatures resume their unchanging activities in
their routine. This moment, the dawn and then the morning, has an impulse, an urge to spring
them on to their respective activities. But it is an “unforeseeing instant” , that is it does have any
prescience of the eve next moment. We simply cannot predict what is going happen even in few
moments later. Everything in the material world is uncertain. The only certain thing is The
Mothers; Grace and Love. Provided our part is there for Her and that is again our aspiration,
dedication and devotion. So easy is our ultimate task, due to Her Grace. Certainly she leads us to
the best for us, when we are dedicated and devoted to Her.

Otherwise? Let us see the next lines:

And, leader here with his uncertain mind,

Alone who stares at the future's covered face,
Man lifted up the burden of his fate.

The Man, the “leader” of all the creatures, but with an “uncertain mind”, “lifted the burden of
his fate”. Those who continue to dwell in the material Nature, there is no growth, and they
continue the cycle of lifting their burden of fate. But, here Sri Aurobindo calls the man as
“leader” of all creatures. He is “Alone” among all the creatures “who stares at the future’s
covered face”, but not any other creature on this earth aspires to know the future. This also
implies that only we have the ability to change our future, though it is covered or masked or
unknown. This is because we have the attenuated ability to do our Sadhana, than any other
creature in this world. Therefore, let us determine and commit for our Sadhana.

It also does not mean necessarily that other creatures do not have the ability to do Sadhana. They
do have. But their ability is not as great as ours is. But there are many exceptions. In our
Shaastras also there numerous such examples. One example is Jatayu in Sri Mad Ramayana, who
sacrificed his life to rescue Seeta from Ravana. Above all our own Kiki! The Mother’s cat! I
hope you have head its stories. Therefore, The Mother is for the whole universe. She loves every
creature, every element of the universe. We need to realize this.

We have now completed the entire first paragraph of Canto 1 “The Symbol Dawn”. What all we
can conclude from this discussion so far is the importance of our aspiration, dedication and
devotion. I don’t know whether it is boring you to see the same words again and again, but that’s
how the Sadhana is and that’s all our Sadhana is. Therefore, let us aspire for Her Grace and
Love. Let our dedication and devotion for Her be complete and total. Let us find some time out
of our uncertainties to find the certain, for Her works. Let us evolve from our inconscience to
consciousness of The Mother. Let us evolve from our ignorance to Her knowledge. Let us evolve
from our Darkness to Her Eternal Light.

AxÉiÉÉãqÉÉ xÉSè aÉqÉrÉÉ |

iÉqÉxÉÉãqÉÉ erÉÉãÌiÉaÉïqÉrÉÉ |
qÉëÑirÉÉãqÉÉï AqÉëÑiÉçÇaÉqÉrÉÉ ||

Shri Krishnaarpanamastu.