THE
THEME OF DELIVERANCE
(A Note on Sri Aurobindo’s Works)
K. V. S. MURTI
“I
take my stand on my feeling and experience...
as Keats did on his, about truth and beauty.”
–SRI AUROBINDO
The
soul is the replica of the Universe: a refraction of the Divine. Yet it is
imprisoned in the corporeal shape. Man’s state is an incarceration in the
encircling Evil or the circumambient Maya. The lure of the mundane, the
magic of Maya, distracts the soul from the Real: the many-coloured dome of life’s fatalism obscures the Vision. Man
or his soul so remains dim. The release from the terrestrial magic or evil is
the process of refinement, or deliverance, from the virtual to the Real, from Bheda to Abheda,
from dissonance to assonance. The refinement requires the delivering Agent
or Sadhana. Sri Aurobindo has achieved
it through Love and Yoga. And the Saint has loaded every rift of his
literary output with the ore of his Refinement, or
Deliverance, that can be succinctly illustrated.
Sri
Aurobindo symbolically dramatizes the ‘concept of Deliverance’ in his plays. He
has defined the horrid captivity of Evil in the unfinished fragment: The
House of Brut. The diabolic Albion-like King Humber captures Princess Estrild, employs her as a slave, and compels her to dance and
serve him wine in a ‘goblet fashioned out of her father’s skull.’
Me
the Omnipotent
Made
from His being to lead and discipline
The
immortal spirit of man, till he attain
To
order and magnificent mastery
of all his outward world........
I
bid thee not,
O
azure strong Poseidon, to abate
Thy
savage tumults: rather his march oppose.
For
through the shocks of difficulty and death
Man
shall attain his godhead.
The theme is reiterated in the chorus-like
summing-up of Perseus at the end:
But
the blind nether forces still have power...
....little
by little earth must open to Heaven
Till
her dim soul awakens into light.
In
Eric, Vasavadutta and Rodogune,
he dramatizes the ‘leap of love across the abyss of hate’. Love is the
delivering agent releasing the self from the captivity of Hate and Spite. In Eric,
this is what he articulates in the voice of Aslaug:
Love
is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine.
Iron
is broken, the sword
Sleeps
in the grave of its lord;
Love
is divine.
She is the sister of Swegn
killed by the evil Eric. With murderous dagger in her bosom, the spiteful Aslaug comes to the court of Eric. Wily Eric imprisons her.
Her beauty refines him and he requests her to eschew hatred. Gradually she too
finds her ‘soul into the grasp delivered’. The result is a double deliverance,
the union of refined bosoms in harmony. Similarly, in Vasavadutta
too: King Mahasegu designs a trap, captures Udayan, and keeps him ‘a captive in Ujjayini’s
golden groves’, under the care of his lovely daughter Vasavadutta.
Between the Prince and the Princess, the lute plays as a symbol of love. Hatred
is neutralized and truth and beauty are united. The whole design finally
appears to be a contrivance to bridge the gulf of enmity between the rival
kingdoms. The play reminds us of Shakespeare’s Tempest. The theme is
further lifted to tragic glory in Rodogune.
Beautiful Rodogune, the daughter of the Parthian
King Phraates is placed as a captive attendant of the
Syrian Queen Cleopatra. Her two sons Antiochus and Timocles
fall in love with Rodogune. But the love of Rodogune and Antiochus is mutual. Timocles
is Evil and the fire of Evil is fanned by Malignity (the Chancellor, Phayllus).
Brother,
brother,
unto eternity
We
are divided.
I
must live for ever
Unfriended, solitary in the shades;
But
thou and she will lie at ease in armed
Deep
in the quite happy asphodel
And
hear the murmur of Elysian winds
While I walk lonely.
The plays of Sri
Aurobindo are thus a symbolic dramatization of ‘the deliverance of the
individual self from the captivity of Evil’
II
Implicated in a bomb-case during the Indian struggle for
I looked at the jail that secluded me from men...It was Vasudeva who surrounded me ... I lay on the coarse blankets
that were given to me for a couch and felt the arm of Srikrishna
around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover...This was the first use of the
deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail...it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused
bodies.
The Saint’s experience of self-refinement and yearning
for the deliverance of the self and the universe from the captivity of Evil and
Maya are expressed in two fine short poems..
The deliverance of the spirit is the piercing through the magic shell of maya through sadhana
and identifying with the Fine. The Gita says:
Dhyanenatmani pasyanti Kechidatmanamatmana
(XIII, 24)
‘Some
by meditation (dhyana) release, the self to
behold the Self (Paramatma) in their mind’. Sri Aurobindo employs
his own terminology to mention the stages of deliverance: ‘Mind’, ‘Higher
Mind’, ‘Illumined Mind’, ‘Intuitive Mind’, ‘Overmind’
and ‘Supermind’. And the flight of the thought as in dhyana, transgressing the different hurdles
of maya between the individual self and
the Universal Self, is beautifully presented in the poetic fragment, Thought
the Paraclete, employing the triple image
‘archangel’ and ‘hyppogriff’ and ‘paraclete’
and the range of the colour-imagery: ‘green’ -
‘orange’ - ‘gold red’ - ‘pale blue’ - ‘crimson white’ – ‘white fire’ – ‘eternal
sunned’. Here are the stages:
As
some bright archangel in vision flies
Plunged
in dream-caught spirit immensities
Past
the long green crests of the seas of life,
Past
the orange skies of the mystic mind
Flew
my thought self-lost in the vasts of God.
Sleepless
wide great glimmering wings of wind
Bore
the gold-red seeking of feet that trod
Space
and Time’s mute vanishing ends.
The
face
Lustered pale-blue-lined of the hippogriff,
Eremite,
sole, daring the bourneless ways,
Over
world-bare summits of timeless being
Gleamed:
the deep twilights of the world-abyss
Failed below.
Sun-realms of supernal seeing.
Crimson-white
mooned oceans of pauseless bliss
Drew its vague heart-yearning with voiceless sweet.
Hungering,
large-souled to surprise the unconned
Secrets
white-fire-veiled of the last Beyond,
Crossing
power-swept silences rapture-stunned,
Climbing
high-far ethers eternal-sunned,
Thought
the great-winged wanderer paraclete
Disappeared, slow-singing a flame-word rune.
The climaxing movement is that the magic of the
personal consciousness yields place completely to the total identity of the
individual self with the universal self–
Self
was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.
The process, of conquering the practical
knowledge about the fusion of the individual self with the Cosmic Self is Jnana Yoga, Self-illumination or Atmadarsan. It is an exercise of reaching and
catching the tantalizingly held-out Grapes of Illumination. With the Jnana in the breast, the involved invocation
to the Divine to glow in Human Mind for the deliverance of Mankind is real Bhakti
Yoga. This inversion of Jnana Yoga into
Bhakti Yoga (like the inversion of a sand-glass) is the essence of the
tiny poem: The Rose of God. The rose is a symbol of God: Bliss (heart),
Light (mind), Power (will), Life (body) and Love (soul) are the colourful petals of the Rose. The Rose of God is invoked: Bliss, is invited to leap in human heart, Light to live in
the mind, Power to ablaze the will, Life to transform the body, and Love to
arise in the soul. The Divine is thus begged to ‘make the earth the home of the
wonderful and life Beatitude’s kiss.’
The concept is given
sublime treatment in his two major works–The Life Divine and Savitri. The Life Divine is indeed ‘a
treatise on metaphysics.’ Sri Aurobindo in the first volume describes
‘Omnipresent Reality and the Universe.’ And in the second volume, he explains
the process of deliverance. In a key-passage, he says:
We perceive that our
existence is a sort of refraction of the divine existence, in inverted order of
ascent and descent, thus ranged:
Existence
Consciousness-Force
Bliss
Supermind
Mind
Psyche (Soul)
Life
Matter
The Divine descends
from pure existence through the play of Consciousness-Force and Bliss and the
creative medium of supermind into cosmic being; we
ascend from Matter through a developing life, soul and mind and the
illuminating medium of supermind towards the divine
being. The knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemisphere, is where mind
and supermind meet with a veil between them. The
rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity; ...
The Divine Grace
descends into the pure self and lifts it through the ‘Higher Realms of Satchidananda.’ This is the process of
transfiguration or refinement of the self; the deliverance from Bheda to Abheda,
from Ignorance to Reality.
Savitri is the continuation and
conclusion of The Life Divine. With all the literary beauty, it is a
‘Cosmic Epic.’ ‘Deliverance or transcendance’
of the ‘Earth and Mankind’ is its central theme. It is ‘A Legend and a Symbol.’
The Savitri-Satyavan legend in the Mahabharata is
used as a symbol of the ‘Cosmic Theme of Deliverance.’ The epic is designed in
three parts. The three major characters are: Savitri,
Satyavan, and Yama. Next in
importance are: Aswapathy, his Consort, and Narad. The epic describes a three-tier action. At the
legendary level: King Aswapathy worships the Divine
Mother and obtains a daughter Savitri as a boon; she
marries the ill-fated Satyavan, defeats Yama, and regains her husband from the jaws of death. At
the spiritual level: the ‘Yogic Spirit’ invokes the ‘Infinite Spirit’ to
descend; the ‘Infinite’ descends and delivers the ‘Finite Spirit’ from the
‘Spirit Death.’ At the cosmic level: Savitri
symbolizes Beauty, Devotion, and Power; Satyavan
denotes Purity, Love, and Truth; Yama stands for
Darkness, Fate, and Death; the cosmic ‘Time, Space, Action’ are displayed in
terms of the ‘Triumph of power over Death reinforcing Eternal Truth’. Aswapathy is the ‘Aspiring King’–the Yogin
and the ‘Witness of World-Transformation.’ Sri Aurobindo writes:
Aswapathy’s yoga falls into three
parts. First he is achieving his own self-fulfilment
as the individual and this is described as the yoga of the king. Next, he makes
the ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of
discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness and this is
described in the second book: but this too is as yet only an individual
victory. Finally, he aspires no longer for himself but for all, for a universal
realization and new creation. That is described in the book of the Divine
Mother.
The Yogin
in his dhyana lifts his mind into
the higher realms of ‘Secret Knowledge’ shelving down the robes of maya. A ‘wide God-knowledge pours down from
above,’ ‘the Individual Self’ and the ‘Universal Self’ meet in ‘the magnitude
of God’s embrace,’ and ‘bearing the burden of the world’s desire’ the self
passes through Satchidananda. He falls
‘at her feet unconscious, prone.’ His will takes up
‘the reins of Cosmic Force’ and invokes the Divine Mother for the deliverance
of the ‘Earth and Mankind.’ ‘One shall descend and break the iron law’ and
‘Beauty shall walk celestial on the earth’–that is the boon granted by the
Divine Mother. ‘The descent, the action, and the fulfilment’
are described in the second and third parts. Savitri,
the ‘Incarnation of the Divine Mother’, is born as the daughter of Aswapathy. She prepares herself to face the battle with Yama (Death) for the deliverance of Satyavan
(Human Race). She becomes a Yogin and
acquires Spiritual power through sadhana. She
fulfils herself in the triple role: as ‘devout wife, spiritual saviour, and World-Deliverer.’ The fatal moment approaches:
Satyavan cries out for Savitri
and falls dead. She observes ‘Visible Death’ standing there. The strife between
Savitri and Yama, Love and
Death, Light and Darkness, is spread over the entire third part. Vanquished Yama takes ‘Refuge in the Night’–‘the dire universal
shadow’ disappears ‘vanishing into the Void from which it came.’ Man is
delivered from Darkness and Death. Savitri’s victory
means:
A power leaned down, a
happiness found its home.
Over wide earth brooded
the infinite bliss,
which is the deliverance of
the Earth. Night fades away yielding place to Dawn: it is a ‘New Dawn,’ the
‘Eternal Dawn’ of ‘the blissful life of Mankind.’
To conclude: in the
drama’s, deliverance from the evil circles of Inferno is described; in
the poems, the peak of Purgatorio is
displayed; and in the major work, the Paradiso
of the deliverance of ‘the self and the star-crossed race of man’ is
embellished in cosmic dimensions.
Our human ignorance
moves towards the Truth
That Nescience may become omniscient.
–such is the robust optimism of Sri Aurobindo
conveyed his literary art as a unique Indo-English writer.
Sir,
I am engaged on a study
of the life, letters and works of the late Dr. Ananda
K. Coomaraswamy. To augment my collection of material, I should be grateful if
anyone who has letters, pamphlets, articles, tributes, reviews, books or
information dealing with him would communicate with me. Letters and MS. will be
copied and returned by registered post and a catalogue of all sources of
information will be published.
I shall be glad to hear
of any photographs, paintings, drawings, or other material that should be
recorded in the preparation of this work.
S. DURAI RAJA SINGAM
House Seven,
Section Eleven - Three,