Re: 09: Her Mortal Birth by RY Deshpande A heart riven with the world’s agony
As one particular incarnation,—call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth, call her the sweet Mother,—she, in the field of evolution, has ever been engaged in the work of her Lord. Her yoga-tapasya progresses in the Will of the Lord, her power grows in the Will of the Lord, her action is done in the Will of the Lord. A prayer of the Mother speaks of amplitude and majesty, nobility and grace, charm and grandeur, variety and strength, “for it is the will of the Lord to manifest.”
For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept cruel “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births. This is the personal aspect of the Sacrifice, of the Divine Soul. More specifically, Savitri’s mortal birth was compelled by the world’s desire; she came here answering the earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss. Savitri came here to hew the ways of Immortality. But she has been here all along, and she will continue to be here even as the evolution marches from Ignorance into Knowledge. Apropos of the mode and purpose of incarnation, Sri Aurobindo writes that it is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar. As a cosmic Goddess she suffers for the soul of the earth bears the pangs, toils beneath the stars: (Savitri, p. 503)
A moon-bright face in a sombre cloud of hair,
A Woman sat in a pale lustrous robe.
A rugged and ragged soil was her bare seat,
Beneath her feet a sharp and wounding stone.
A divine pity on the peaks of the world,
A spirit touched by the grief of all that lives,
She looked out far and saw from inner mind
This questionable world of outward things,
Of false appearances and plausible shapes,
This dubious cosmos stretched in the ignorant Void,
The pangs of earth, the toil and speed of the stars
And the difficult birth and dolorous end of life.
Accepting the universe as her body of woe,
The Mother of the seven sorrows bore
The seven stabs that pierced her bleeding heart:
The beauty of sadness lingered on her face,
Her eyes were dim with the ancient stain of tears.
Her heart was riven with the world’s agony
And burdened with the sorrow and struggle in Time,
An anguished music trailed in her rapt voice…
And the Goddess herself tells to Savitri: (pp. 503-05)
To share the suffering of the world I came,
I draw my children’s pangs into my breast.
I am the nurse of the dolour beneath the stars;
I am the soul of all who wailing writhe
Under the ruthless harrow of the Gods.
I am woman, nurse and slave and beaten beast;
I tend the hands that gave me cruel blows…
The scream of tortured flesh and tortured hearts
Fallen back on heart and flesh unheard by Heaven
Has rent with helpless grief and wrath my soul…
Nothing refusing of creation’s load,
I have borne all and know I still must bear…
I have borne the calm indifference of Heaven,
Watched Nature’s cruelty to suffering things
While God passed silent by nor turned to help…
I am the hope that looks towards my God,
My God who never came to me till now;
His voice I hear that ever says ‘I come’:
I know that one day he shall come at last.
Not only does the Divine Shakti suffer as a cosmic power; she suffers, and perhaps suffers more, even as the incarnate one in the mortal world. The strange thing is, a “world’s desire” compels her birth and she yields to the coercion, gets persuaded. The attraction is the Soul of Evolution. RYD
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