Savitri summons her “spirit’s flame of conscient force”

The Purusha Sukta, An Aurobindonian Interpretation— The Fourfold Order and the Four Powers of the Divine Mother by RY Deshpande 5 December 2006 on Wed 06 Dec 2006 11:51 AM PST Permanent Link

"The Brahmin represents the mouth of this Cosmic Being, and the Kshatriya his arms. The Vaishya emanated from the Lord’s thighs and the Shudra from his feet.” The Purana describes the result but does not give the process, except by saying that it was the Will of the Lord and the agent to effect it was Time, Kala. Purusha Sukta provides the details.

It is said that Purusha Sukta “speaks of the restoration of the divinity of creation by the supreme holocaust of the Divine. It is this sacrifice that distributes the divinity among the Gods, the Prajas, and the whole of the universe enabling them to move jointly and integrally toward Immortality.” But what seems to be presented in the Sukta is only one particular aspect of the Creation; it is an important aspect, an episode no doubt, but it is just an episode in the sequence of countless and recondite operations that go in making this great and meaningful involutionary-evolutionary Becoming. We must understand that the author of the hymn was not setting himself to write a modern thesis or treatise giving the details of the creation or its processes, an exhaustive document with its prolegomenon and epilogue; instead, what is given is the dense but luminous esoteric knowledge of the things, with one aspect in view, one particular window opened out for seeing them.

It was written in a milieu in which the alert and perceptive receiver at once got in contact with the reality from which it had originated; it had taken for granted the common knowledge of the tradition and it is this knowledge which was further extended or enriched by such explorative-creative presentations. It was in fact the mode of establishing a new power of the spirit in the ready consciousness of the race. It contributed to progress in knowledge. There are a number of aspects present in the Sukta: the transcendental Absolute poised for manifestation, its necessary projection in the cosmic field, holding back its own glory and majesty, its aishwarya, its Ishwarahood in order that multiplicity might become possible, putting into operation Four Qualities, Four Powers of the divine Person in the universal play, return of the Gods to their earlier status,—these are astounding events narrated by it. And these have been established by doing Yajna, the Path of Progress charted out by the Vedic Rishis.

About Yajna or Sacrifice, Sri Aurobindo writes: “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. ‘For with sacrifice as their companion,’ says the Gita, ‘the All-Father created these peoples.’ ”

In the Gita we have: “From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman, Brahman is born of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the sacrifice.” And again: “Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.”

In Savitri there is a situation when the God of Death just refuses to yield to the demands of Savitri, she claiming the soul of Satyavan back. In fact it is a kind of deadlock. The stubborn irredeemable God has snatched the soul of her lover and husband, and she does not see any prospect of its release from the noose. But she is intent upon her silent will and, in her meditation’s house, she summons her “spirit’s flame of conscient force”.