The Secret Knowledge: Savitri Book One Canto Four by Dr. R. Y. Deshpande

Tat Savitur Varam Rūpam,
Jyoti Parasya Dhīmahi Yannah Satyéna Dīpayét.

Let us meditate on the most auspicious form of Savitri, on the Light of the Supreme which shall illumine us with the Truth.

This is Sri Aurobindo’s Gayatri Mantra. In the mid 1930s, he had simply written down on a piece of paper but fortunately that piece of paper has been recovered and it is available in the Ashram Archives. This Gayatri Mantra in Sanskrit poetry consists of exactly 24 alphabets, 24 letters. And there is something significant about it in the sense that we have now Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, exactly 24,000 lines. In other words, Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri itself is a Gayatri Mantra. What does the Gayatri Mantra do? It illuminates us to the Truth. That is the power of Gayatri Mantra. The Mother speaks of the power of Savitri as the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision. Certainly it is a revelation but the power of the mantra, the power of the revelation is to realize what it speaks, to bring that thing into manifestation, to bring it into our daily life and to make our life the divine life. That is what a mantra does. The power of mantra is the realization of what it speaks of.

If we discuss the statistics of Savitri, we would observe that there are three Parts in it, 12 Books, 49 Cantos and 159 Sections. There are 5771 Sentences, 23811 Lines, Words 180609. The Lines per Sentence ratio is 4.126; Words per Line come to 7.585, Words per Sentence come to 31.296, Syllables per Line is 10.750 and Characters per Word is 4.698. 

We will now observe the statistics of Canto Four of Savitri. There are 8 Sections, 214 Sentences, 963 Lines and 7464 Words in it. The Syllable per Line is 10.833, Line per Sentence is 4.500, Words per Line is 7.751, Words per Sentence is 34.879 and Lines per Sentence is 4.5. 

The fourth Canto of Savitri had its first draft ready by 1942; later it underwent a few revisions. It first appeared as a fascicle in 1947. When Part One of Savitri was published in September 1950, during the presence of Sri Aurobindo himself, it had its full final form in this First or Original Edition of Savitri. This Canto is about 4% of the entire Savitri.

The Revised Edition of Savitri published in 1993 has 73 departures from the First Edition. There are verbal changes; there are differences in punctuation and in capitalisation. Many of these could be due to editorial judgement.

This Canto is rather a difficult one. But which Canto of Savitri is not difficult? It must be recognized that the difficulty of each Canto is of a different kind.

This Canto is loaded with heavy spiritual metaphysics. It is Sānkhya yet its Purusha and Prakriti are different from that of the tradition. Here Sānkhya never speaks of one Prakriti and many Purushas.The question rather is about freedom of the Spirit from the bondage of Nature.

The first two Cantos of Savitri form a dense prolegomenon. These define the issue right at the beginning. The difficulty is in the Mind of Night standing in the way of the divine Event.

If there has to be a divine manifestation in a world under the sway of Death this Mind of Night must be transformed into Mind of Light. The obscure physical’s mind must open itself to receive the supramental Light and Force.

This can be dealt with only by the supreme Power. For that she has to take mortal birth. She does come as Savitri, comes to hew the ways of immortality.

The legend tells that it was Aswapati who compelled this mortal birth of hers. He climbed the difficult Ladder of Creation and implored her to come down in the context of this death-bound anguished world. She obliges and condescends to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death. Her sacrifice of her divine royalty is an act of supreme grace.

The occasion for Savitri to meet Death is the death of her husband Satyavan, the Eternity’s delegate soul upon earth, but in the cruel grip of Death.

The imperative is declared most dramatically in the last line of the first Canto itself, in The Symbol Dawn: “This was the day when Satyavan must die.”

Aswapati’s coming with the original Permanence itself is a mighty action straight from the Supreme. He comes to do in the Inconscient world the Triple Yoga. Individual-Universal-Transcendental Yoga. The incarnate Supreme himself is doing it.

In the Yoga of the Individual there is the release of his soul from Ignorance into which he had taken the birth. Even as he has the double experience of Static Oneness and Dynamic Power, there is the soul’s release from Ignorance.

This is unequivocally autobiographical. Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga began in the first week of January 1908 when he was in Baroda; there he had the realization of the Silent Mind, of Static Oneness, Passive Brahman.

Within months of this came the realization of Dynamic Power where he saw the divine Presence everywhere. This was in August of the same year, in Alipore Jail where he was incarcerated as an undertrial prisoner.

Already the very body took a splendid stamp. This is followed with the spirit’s freedom from Nature’s bondage. He breaks into another Space and Time. With that begins his cosmic voyage across the extensions of the universe.

Aswapati approaches the Divine Mother and compels her to take birth in this mortal world. That is the birth of Savitri with her task to vanquish Death.

The first section of the fourth Canto of Savitri has 30 sentences, 126 lines and 913 words. With the soul’s release from cosmic Ignorance Aswapati is standing on a height from which are seen greater heights, calm immensities of the Spirit. There are all-seeing eagle peaks of silent Power, and moon-flame oceans of fathomless bliss; a wider consciousness opens its doors; a ray of timeless Glory stoops down.

The second section consists of 48 sentences, 214 lines and 1671 words.

From a greater height on which he is standing Aswapati sees things that totally defy description. Against this a sharp contrast is also marked as life here is a precarious experiment and soul in this ignorant world is a flickering light. We live beneath unbreathing shadows, shadows that run faster than us.

But there is the labouring Earth-Goddess and Aswapati meets her. She longs for love; there is a flame of aspiration within her. And comes the vision of supernal Powers. She prays to invisible Gods.

But of that longing of hers there is no recognition by us. While the Earth-Goddess is aspiring and toiling we get concerned only with trivial inconsequential things. We fail to grasp the original Idea that is working behind all this.

That is our serious limitation. However, that is not how the Immortals see it. The Immortals who are not circumscribed by Time and Space do see the Idea and the Might that can change the course of life.

They hear the galloping hooves of the unforeseen Event, the event of the arrival of a new consciousness, arrival of unfading Light. They witness the coming of the superhuman Rider, he riding the galloping hooves, he the leader and the builder of a new creation, he the first of the race.

There is the certitude of theirs in that Idea and the Might and in that they return to the place where from they had come; they go back, back to the hills of God. Even while they return they leave on the trampled breast of life their mark.

Assuredly, this wonder is going to be, the coming of the unforeseen Event.

But only a few discern it, intuit it, and none understands it.  With our mental wisdom we refuse to believe in it; we will not believe in it perhaps until this work is done. The beauty is, the wonder is, man shall grow unexpectedly divine.

The third section has 34 sentences, 178 lines and 1351 words. It tells us that, we do not know our own truth; we have no idea of the bright prospects waiting for us. We do not know what is the origin of this creation, what the purpose of its existence. The beginning and the end remain an enigma.

The head and the tail of this astounding Creature are, as Rishi Vamadeva of the Rig Veda says, not visible to us; the superconscient and the inconscient are beyond the reach of our sight.

At one extreme is Matter with all its possibilities and potentialities locked within itself; at the other is the Spirit eager to pour its abundances on the dim soul of the earth. These two extremes, Alpha and Omega, have remained unjoined.

It seems that this river has no source nor the sea to reach. Yet our need is to join these two extremes. The locked potencies of Matter in the darkness and non-action, these potencies are subject to death.

At the other end, absolute, burn in the supremacies of the thoughts of God the potencies of the Spirit. These are deathless even as they look on hidden things. Although such is the dichotomy a secret spiritual aid is there; a mighty Guidance.

There is the certitude that calm and distant Mights shall act at last. An unseen Presence shapes things, unseen Presence and Power. Our task is to lend ourselves to that working.

In the fourth section, there are 27 sentences, 96 lines and 789 words. There is a twin aspect in the working at all levels: Presence and Power; Being and Consciousness-Force; Self and Nature, Spirit and Energy; Purusha and Prakriti; Right and Might; He and She; Brahma and Maya; Ishwara and Ishwari. 

There is the functional division of the Job between them. If at the base are the inconscient Self and the somnambulist Energy, at the top work Truth-Being and Consciousness-Force. He is the substance and she wraps him in her moods. She new-shapes him; his movements are centred around her.

The fifth section has 21 sentences, 119 lines and 974 words. In this section Purusha gives consent to Prakriti, he is a witness to her work. Her sweet and dreadful force drives him. He lends himself to her that, unhindered and free, she can act.

Her concern is to realize a greater plan, plan of his. He has made her the master of his fate, that thus alone the things intended by the Spirit materialise. Through her he explores the ceaseless miracle of himself.

Thus they together promote the designs and activities of a higher vaster Nature, the possibilities in the unfolding evolution.

In the sixth section, there are 10 sentences, 44 lines and 324 words.

This is the shortest Section in the Canto. We may say it is the Nāsadiya Sūkta of Savitri, revealing the Hymn of Creation of the Rig Veda, Hymn X:129, concerned with cosmology and origin of the universe, in seven verses in trishtubha metre.

There is first the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone, the Source of all that is and will be, the Origin. Whatever is that, that is Perfect, and is by itself, but with a power to will and to come into manifestation, make manifest his potentialities.

Because they remain non-manifest in him he becomes the Unknowable. When poised to plunge into manifestation he calls his own Force present silent in him; she is now one who sets things into motion.

She gives rise to a creation, its birth making her a Mother, Aditi of the Rig Veda. Her first child is Sachchidananda, the only one perhaps, one who can be known to us, the Knowable.

But even as the creation proceeds, and moves into an independence of expression, freedom being the most operative principle, they could start working independently, could even cut themselves off from the Origin.

The great Idea is of expressions that will be the infinity of his Joy, innumerably One. That is what the Upanishad means by “I want to be many”, bahusyāmaprajāyéyéti. Our life may look like a paradox, that from the All-Delight should have appeared Pain and Suffering and Mortality.

But God himself is the key to resolve the Paradox, to solve the Riddle of this World. The whole idea is to have distinct personalities expressive of his countless qualities, each with its own swabhāva, characteristic flames in the Flame.

The seventh section consists of 13 sentences 61 lines and 472 words.

To be many — that is the saṃpalka, that is the urge, that is the will, the Desire of the Non-Manifest Supreme, of the Unknowable, the Absolute. He is now Truth in search of Truth, search through Inconscience. He wills and his Power discovers.

This is the agreement between the two. The quest for Truth is by the process of self-limitation in the dynamism of Truth-Consciousness. It is the search of Truth with wonder-faces, of multiplicity in the greatness and glory of the Spirit.

There is a meaning hidden in life’s forms, and that must be discovered to unfold its own countless creative possibilities. That indeed is the real quest.

Aswapati the incarnate is set on that great discovery. Aswapati is the voyager in the Legend of Savitri. Aswapati is the divine Soul in the evolutionary journey in the Symbol of Savitri. Aswapati is the Traveller, the Immortal in the Mortal, the mystic Agni of the Rig Veda, sent inward by the Gods, sent in their passion. He accepted their advocacy.

In the eight section, there are 30 sentences, 124 lines and 961 words.

Aswapati hears the sound of larger seas. He is the super-Victorian sailor on the voyage to unknown waters and lands. The finite’s boundlessness has to be experienced in the understanding of this comic functioning, its possibilities and its enlargements in the extensive dimensions of the Spirit.

Here is a truth to know, here is a work to do, that the world manifests the unveiled divinity. That is why he left his infinity, his own home, and accepted the smallness, to know death that there be the immortality in the mortal world, to know falsehood that there be the truth, to know pain that there be the bliss.

His search is for light that takes away all darkness, truth without falsehood. He has a secret mission assigned to him by the Mother of the Universe. It is to evoke a person in the impersonal Void, that the world manifests the Divine.

Aswapati, even as he has now this secret knowledge, gets the spirit’s freedom from all bondages. With that he explores these cosmic vastnesses. His quest is for that Power who can change the law of mortality in this world. He must bring down that Power, must compel her mortal birth.

Yogically, by the efficacy of his prayer and entreaty he makes her do so. This knowledge first he has of time-born man. The body’s rules bind not the spirit’s powers. Even when heartbeats stop breaks not in death.

That is the siddhi over death, the physical’s triumph. On this occult-yogic foundation the Yogi can look into larger issues, of the universal working, these in the midst of Death and Ignorance. With it begins his Yoga for the Cosmos.

This shall prompt him to the supreme Yoga of the Transcendent where he shall compel the Divine Mother to take mortal birth to open out the way for a divine manifestation, of a divine life in a divine body. That shall usher in the reign of Krishna and Kali, of divine Ananda and divine Dynamism.

A few Examples of Scansion

Let us look at some of the lines from this Canto to grasp and enjoy their metrical-artistic features and nuances. It must be immediately noted that it is inspiration which shapes the technique, for the well-prepared artist it is always the power of inspiration.

Our souls can visit in great lonely hours

Still regions of imperishable Light,

All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power

And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss

And calm immensities of spirit Space. ||10.12||

This is mystic poetry at one of its best. The lines can be scanned as follows:

Our souls| can vis|it in| great| lone|lyhours|

Still re|gions of| imper|isha|bleLight,|

All-see|ingea|gle-peaks| of si|lent Power|

And moon-|flame o|ceans of| swiftfath|omlessBliss|

And calm| immen|sities| of spir|itSpace.| ||10.12||

iamb-iamb-pyrrhic-spondee-iamb

spondee-pyrrhic-iamb-pyrrhic-iamb

trochee-iamb-iamb-iamb-amphibrach

iamb-iamb-pyrrhic-spondee-anapæst

iamb-iamb-pyrrhic-iamb-iamb

The musical beauty of the lines is in feet variation, with delightful suppleness which is also enthusing and shiningly gripping. Inspiration brings the rhythm and the metre.

*

This gem is most unusual, embracing a kind of surprise in it:

Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient ||10.21||

Metrically and artistically it is of a unique class. It can be scanned as

Our minds| hush to| a bright| Omni|scient|

iamb-trochee-iamb-iamb-pyrrhic.

But the surprise is in the use of “Omniscient”, an adjective becoming a noun. The phrase is “a bright Omniscient”. We leave behind the mental world; charm and loveliness and beauty of spiritual light, and murmuring tongue of a celestial fire, bring to us extraordinary realisations. A bright Omniscient is at work.

*

And, there is something very musical in these lines:

A Si|lenceo|verhead,| an in|nerVoice,|

A liv|ingim|ageseat|ed in| the heart,|

An un|walledwide|ness and| a fath|omlesspoint,|

The truth| of all| these cryp|ticshows| in space,|

The Re|alto|wards which| our striv|ingsmove,|

The se|cretgran|diosemean|ing of| our lives.| ||10.26||

This is sheer Overhead Poetry, easy and pure Intuition borne by a Silence overhead, with its wideness and its fathomlessness.

About Metrical Aspects

In this context we should also appreciate what Sri Aurobindo said about metrical aspects, about inspiration, poetic technique, rhythm and movement. In 1936 he writes to Amal Kiran  that if the inspiration is the right one perfect lines come with perfect rhythm, these fusing into an inseparable and single unity. Always the determinative fundamentalist Inspiration, it bringing with it all the required technique, the necessary Art.

Overhead Poetry is a question of the right concentrated silence; we have to learn to live in it, into it, in that right concentrated silence, we have to let its rhythms stream into us and flood us.

If poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality has to be realized, it “is only possible when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of verbal form and thought-substance, of style, and a highest intensity of the soul’s vision of truth.” Intensities of rhythm-substance-vision, of sight and sense and sound, are the heart and art of poetry.

The poetry of this Canto, The Secret Knowledge, is inspirationally rich and superlative, dense, luminous, all in the manner of some super-logic of truth-utterance, organised and very tight, with the power of metrical expression, in the flow and at the same time the solidity of the impelling overmental afflatus. When a group of chanters recites some of these passages in a repetitive style the outspreading and down-rushing sound of silence fills with its effectuating dynamism the sky and the earth and the intermediate zones. There is all-embracing volume and transformative content in the impacting affirmation of the spirit-force on the very physical. That also makes this Canto somewhat special in the Epic. Its many-sided richness is astounding indeed.

Only the Immortals

We may take an example in the following passage, a single 14-line sentence.

Only the Immortals on their deathless heights

Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space,

Masters of living, free from the bonds of Thought,

Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will

And experts of the theorem of world-need,

Can see the Idea, the Might that change Time’s course,

Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds,

Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,

The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,

Bearing the superhuman rider, near

And, impassive to earth’s din and startled cry,

Return to the silence of the hills of God;

As lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass

And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life. ||11.38||

Now and then the poet comes out with an inspired artistry that is elaborate in design and sure in its power and in its effect. There is extra luminosity and density in a description which is also the splendour of surprise and profundity.

So is the Immortals’ vision drawn closer to us in the present passage. Suggestion upon suggestion with the finest sweep of poetry is piled with great skill and creativity in a revelatory statement that can be simply paraphrased thus: The Immortals see the Idea and the Might, they come maned with light, and hear the nearing of the unforeseen event, perhaps a long-awaited event, and return.

The subtlety and many-sidedness of thought running through it is an absolute marvel, in the sense that the more we ponder on it the more of the incoming truth of the truth-world enters into our stuff. Realm after luminous realm opens in inner dimensions, as much as the sublimity of heights that hardly our vision can reach, all in wide and bright and enthusiastic joyous spaces.

That is the power of authentic revelatory poetry. In fact it is the power of the Yogi-Poet himself, coming through the lucidity and authority of his expression. It is also a fine example of intuitive thought reaching an absolute of the Truth-Substance as much as the Truth-Rhythm in the astonishment of Truth-Beauty. One wonders whether such descriptions exist at all anywhere else. This is the hallmark of new creative poetry.

But who are these Immortals who see the superhuman Rider approaching us? But one thing is certain. Because of them we assuredly feel that we are not all a death-bound littleness; indeed, our souls can visit regions of imperishable Light. Sometimes a breath does come down, a Force does sweep in, even a greater Personality does possess us. Constantly the Earth-Goddess toils in the fields of Time, and her prayer to the invisible Gods is for superior Mind and Will and Strength and Joy to be hers, to be here in her sweetness and love and consciousness. But to see that, we have to have a deeper sight.

But the Immortals on their deathless heights can see the Idea and the Might that change the humdrum, the unexciting, the daily dull course of the Time in which we move, move without escape from it. They can see, they can hear; but we cannot. They, the Immortals, come down from those great lofty unreachable realms, from those deathless heights; they come and they hear the galloping hooves bearing on its back the superhuman Rider. In it, in his coming, in the coming of the superhuman Rider, they feel assured and, calm and unmoved and serene and unaffected by the earthly din and startled cry, they return; they feel assured in his coming, that he is coming; then they return, go back to deathless heights, feel assured and go back to their deathless heights.

All this is possible because, because, above the world, stand the world-creators; they go back, return, because these world-creators, these Immortals, see the mystic source behind the short-living phenomenon. The likelihood is, eventually, the masked Transcendent will reveal himself and mount his throne. That undeniably is the prospect.

But who are these Immortals? Are they our ancient forefathers who by their tapasyā have become these immortals? Or are they the Beings of Light in the Overmental world? Or are they the mighty Gods who dwell in the infinity-wide Home of Truth?

Let us look into the metrical aspect of the sentence.

Only| the Immor|tals on| their death|lessheights|

Dwelling| beyond| the walls| of Time| and Space,|

Masters| of living,| free from| the bonds| of Thought,|

Who are o|verseers| of Fate| and Chance| and Will|

And ex|perts of| the the|orem of| world-need,|

Can see| the Ide|a, the Might| that change| Time’scourse,|

Comemaned| with light| from un|discov|ered worlds,|

Hear,| while the world| toils on| with its deep| blindheart,|

The gal|lopinghooves| of the| unforeseen| event,|

Bearing| the su|perhu|man rider,|near|

And,|impassive| to earth’s| din and star|tled cry,|

Return| to the si|lence of| the hills| of God;|

As lightn|ingleaps,| as thun|dersweeps,| they pass|

And leave| their mark| on the tram|pledbreast| of Life.| ||11.38||

In the line “Only| the Immor|tals on| their death|lessheights”| the first two feet can be scanned as trochee-anapæst or dactyl-iamb, but here trochee-anapæst seems to be a preferred combination. In the trochee-anapæst scanning the distinctive character of those Immortals comes out with emphasis. Sense would prefer this scansion.

Here is an example of a headless line:

Only the Immortals on their deathless heights …

Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds,

Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart,

The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event, …||11.38||

The third line “Hear,| while the world| toils on| with its deep| blindheart,|” is taken as a headless line, “Hear” as an iamb, with a powerful spondee at the end. In fact the last two feet could be pyrrhic-molossus, “|with its| deepblindheart,|” a headless line ending with a commanding molossus, a rare jewel indeed.

Our life is a paradox with God for key

To conclude our brief presentation of the Canto let us run through the following.

Both Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, Being and Consciousness-Force are aspects of the Absolute in the poises of manifestation. He the supreme Unknowable has called out of his Silence this mute Force whom the Veda names Aditi, the Indivisible. In his Will she enters into action. She becomes the Mother when she gives birth to her first Child, Sachchidananda.

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone

Has called out of the Silence his mute Force …||15.7||

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone

Has entered with his silence into space:… ||15.8||

He has made this tenement of flesh his own,

His image in the human measure cast

That to his divine measure we might rise;…||15.9||

This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:

A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:

His nature we must put on as he put ours;

We are sons of God and must be even as he:

His human portion, we must grow divine. ||15.10||

Our life is a paradox with God for key. ||15.11||

This is the core of Nāsadiya Sūkta of Savitri, in 5 sentences 31 lines 212 words.

To re-paraphrase: when she the mute Force is called out and is in action, countless persons of one self come into being; he the one who lived in his Vast alone lives now in these myriad persons. He the Immanent, however, remains unaffected by their smallness. He assumes their imperfection, yet is always perfect. The purpose of his assuming this imperfection is, that we might grow in his measure of perfection. This transfiguration of ours is a commitment of his, and he is tied to it, as much as we are to grow in it. That is the key to our life which otherwise is a paradox to us.

In order that this is achieved, he himself has become imperfect. That is perhaps the only way by which something new can come out of the Absolute, from the Perfect. But this is the work not directly carried out by the Absolute himself; it is implemented by his Force, his own executive Force, Consciousness-Force in her dynamism. In it has to be the discovery of a new mind and body for the dwelling of God himself, for his work. His Desire to be many gets accomplished, to be many — bahusyāmaprajāyèyèti.

Here is the quintessential revelation, a luminous truth-force which is also dynamic in its role of implementation, effecting in this beautiful terrestrial soul the divine vision and work, a manifestation of the non-manifest in a multiplicity of the truth-creation in its ever growing happiness and power. In this cosmic manifestation that truth-force stands out prominently with her Personalities through whom she acts on her creatures.

Will the body be able to follow?

Let us refer to the Mother:

It was to realise the phenomenon of a consciousness which would have at the same time the individual consciousness and the consciousness of the whole, a consciousness at the same time individual and total. And all this labour is for the sake of uniting the two consciousnesses into one single consciousness which is that at the same time. … For the individual consciousness, the thing is translated by time. The question is to know whether the body will be able to follow. In order to follow, not only must it endure but acquire a new form, a new life. What is to be found is the plasticity of Matter, so that Matter is able to progress always. [30 October 1971]

That is the deepest occult of the Secret Knowledge, it leading to a new form, a new life. The process has started in the Mother’s tremendous pursuit even when belief shall be not till the work is done. But who cares for that belief? It has been done, and done in the Will of the Supreme, and that is all what matters.

In God’s Earth built in God’s Darkness God lifted the burden of God’s Fate. In festive dynamics of the creative Spirit it is the Smile that will change the destiny of the world.

It is Sri Aurobindo who decreed the supramental change, but its manifestation has been the work of the Mother. This has already happened in the subtle-physical of the earth. That is their work done together.

She is the Sun-Word who shall raise the earth-soul to Light and bring down God into the lives of men. And God is now seated flourishingly in the subtle body of the earth. That is the Unknowable’s supreme executive Power, of Manifestation, and she has taken upon herself the work of building a supramental race as the next evolutionary step on earth.

Glory to her. Glory to her. Glory to her. Glory to her in all the worlds.

*

About the Author: Born on 17 April 1931 RY Deshpande is a professor, philosopher, author, poet and inmate of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. After graduating from Osmania University, Hyderabad, he joined the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai as a research physicist in 1955 and worked in this organization till 1957. In 1957 he joined the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai where he worked till 1981 and headed several Atomic Energy and Space Projects in Advance Technology with Dr. Raja Ramanna. Having received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1964, he worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California USA from 1964 to 1965. He has some fifty research papers published in national and international scientific journals. He was also an examiner for a number of Ph.D. theses in the field of Solid State Physics. In 1981 Deshpande joined Sri Aurobindo Ashram of Pondicherry. For thirty years, he taught physics and a few other subjects such as Astrophysics, Savitri, The Future Poetry, Science and Society at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education. For eight years he was the associate Editor of Mother India, a Monthly Review of Culture, published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. During 2007-2008 Deshpande was the editor of a web-magazine titled Science-Culture-Integral Yoga founded in Los Angeles. His published works in prose and poetry include titles like Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium, Vyasa’s Savitri, The Ancient Tale of Savitri, “Satyavan Must Die”, All Life is Yoga, Nagin-bhai Tells Me, The Rhododendron Valley, All is Dream-Blaze, Under the Raintree, Paging the Unknown, The Wager of Ambrosia, Savitri: Notes and Comments, Elements and Evolution, Sri Aurobindo’s Narad, The Birth of the Sun-God, Hymns to Becoming, These Mountains, The Secret Knowledge, Savitri Talks: The Symbol Dawn, Islam’s Contribution to Science, Big Science and India, Running Through Savitri, A Look at the Symbol Dawn: Observations-Comments-Discussions, Savitri: The Poetry of Immortality,  and Sanatana Dharma: An Aurobindonian Perspective to name a few. He has also edited the following books: Nirodbaran: Poet and Sadhak, Amal Kiran: Poet and Critic and Perspectives of Savitri

4 Replies to “The Secret Knowledge: Savitri Book One Canto Four by Dr. R. Y. Deshpande

  1. I am much beholden to you dear Anurag for this sharing with me the link.. I regard this great Canto as the acme and supreme peak of “Savitri”radiating unsurpassable beauty, grace and grandeur

    Surendra Singh Chouhan

  2. Further to this , our profound gratitude reach out to Shri Deshpande -ji for the magnificent word by word and much more than this elucidation , to offer us a very lucid explanation of this grand Canto .. . Param Vach – the Supreme Word – the Supreme Secret – Uttamam Rahahsyam – the Royal Knowledge .. the Raj Vidya .. knowing which nothing remains to be known …everything is there in this ” Canto “and our very learned professor Dr RY Deshpande has done full justice in an extraordinary manner to give us the completest possible overview of the Canto from all diverse perspectives
    .. it leaves one speechless ..what a scholarship !..what a vision !.. what Tantra calls this kind of faculty ” Pashyanti Vak ” .. Seeing intelligence .. it is Param Nidhi – a supreme treasure to cherish ..Thank you , Sir – you never cease to surprise us .. Keep us surprising like this by ditilled wisdom of yours …Surendra s chouhan – SAICE’ 69
    Aum.. Aum . .. Aum – Salutations to Lord Sri Aurobindo and the Divine Mother again and again –

Leave a Reply to Surendra s chouhan Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *