Skip to main content

A synthesis of Savitri and Theosophy - Painting No 15

 Today we continue to contemplate on the remaining lines from Page 5 of the Symbol Dawn of Savitri. 


"Here too the vision and prophetic gleam

Lit into miracles common meaningless shapes;

Then the divine afflatus, spent, withdrew,

Unwanted, fading from the mortal’s range.

A sacred yearning lingered in its trace,

The worship of a Presence and a Power

Too perfect to be held by death-bound hearts,

The prescience of a marvellous birth to come."


'Here' stands for our ordinary human world where the vision and prophetic brief light of Goddess lit the ordinary shapes miraculously into divine meaning for few moments. But then the divine creative impulse or inspiration was spent and feeling unwanted withdrew and faded from the range of mortal men. Once gone it left behind a sacred yearning in the hearts of those later realized what had happened. The presence and Power of Divine Goddess was too perfect to be worshipped to be held steady by death-bound hearts of ordinary mortals. The Dawn-Goddess carried the foreknowledge of a Divine Avatar or Saviour (Savitri) to come in the future on her divine mission to sacrifice herself in order to save the soul of humanity (Satyavan).     


"Only a little the god-light can stay:

Spiritual beauty illumining human sight

Lines with its passion and mystery Matter’s mask

And squanders eternity on a beat of Time."


Again only a little light of the divine presence can stay with men for a little time. The beauty of divinity casts light upon the mask of Matter and reveals for a moment the mysteriousness of the marvel of indwelling divinity hiding beneath the veil of matter. The riches of the eternity are all spent in one short moment of revelation.  


"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."


In these lines, a picture of soul descending from the psychic planes (more accurately from the devachan of theosophists) is being painted. It is coming near the threshold of birth where a transition from Timelessness to mortal time is being made. As this transition is made, its fire of divinity is forgotten in the tomb of material world hiding the light of higher planes. It has entered lower planes of matter where its shining light vanishes. With this transition the passing glow of magic fire cannot last long and gets dissolved in the ordinary air of the human world.     


"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 Goddess delivered her message, and now the message ends with the messenger like a waxing moon fades away. Her Call to evolve into a higher state of consciousness and Power that works alone unaccompanied withdrew into some secret far-off world. The astonishing heavenly tone of celestial dawn is drawn away from our mortal world. 


"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."


The eyes of ordinary mortal men were blinded by worldly material glamour and the native beauty of Divine-Goddess could not be imposed on them for long. Her unrestrained glorious body was too real in a mystic sense to dwell on the earthly space and was wiped out into the common light of an every-day light. The unique awe unfortunately vanished from the daily earth scene. 


The Mother guides Huta with a sketch of the vision of the feet of Divine-Goddess vanishing into the sky from a common earth scene underneath and then Huta paints it in her studio.


A theosophical synthetic perspective:


The picture of Dawn-Goddess could be symbolic of those divine messengers of the Brotherhood of Masters (starting with Blavatsky, followed by Sri Aurobindo, Alice Bailey and many more) who were born on earth renewing the ageless wisdom at the dawn of an aquarian age. Their message is essentially same as that of the Dawn-Goddess regarding the prescience of future coming the Christ-Kalki-Boddhisatva Maitreya or World-Teacher to assist the souls ready for next stage of evolution into the sixth race (of Blavatsky), or supermind race (of Sri Aurobindo) or new age synthetic man (of Alice Bailey and Cedercrans) or agni-yogis (of Roerichs and Vicente Beltran Anglada) in order to master the lesson of synthesis. This is symbolic of the coming of Savitri to save Satyavan as portrayed by Sri Aurobindo in his epic mantric poem.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More on Synthesis

 Again we shall contemplate on a few more words on the wisdom of synthesis (navigating the "narrow razor-edged Path" between duality or the "noble middle path" of Buddha) from our beloved DK. However I wish to emphasize that Djwal Khul and Alice Bailey demonstrated practical (not just theoretically) synthesis. For instance Alice Bailey being born in the west was open enough to acknowledge and bring forth teachings from a far wiser eastern/oriental master Djwal Khul. She could both surrender herself (a difficult quality to develop for the western concrete mind with its overemphasis on freedom) and at the same time was careful enough to guard herself against foolish blind devotion (a vice of oriental masses). Another disciple who demonstrated practical synthesis was Blavatsky (synthesis of religions). She established Theosophical society headquarters in the west and soon shifted it to the east although she worked and died for the cause of theosophy in the west. One mo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Third Initiation : Disciple and Mental Body

 We studied initiations until the second in our ealier posts. Today let us look at the third especially from the perspective of a disciple (rather than the ray as well as the external ceremonial aspect conferred during the wesak full moon which we will cover later). The third initiation marks the culmination of complete mastery of the mental (in the same way that the earlier two initiations resulted into the control of physical and astral planes). It is a distinct initiation, which marks a definite transition out of the form consciousness (lower personality of mental, emotional(astral) and physical planes), and the initiate can function at will on the plane of the intuition though soul (ego). Between the second and third initiation work is struggling with and mastering the energies of the mental world. What kind of work ? DK sums that for us (details found in TWM book) as -  "A. Work on the mental plane produces realisation of duality. The disciple seeks to blend and merge the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Aphorisms as seed-thoughts

 Subsequent to our discussion on seed-thoughts, another great example of seed-thouht I think is an aphorism. The complete agni-yoga series of books by Roerichs are aphorisms of Ethical living (and give Ray 1 flavour of fiery will to the yoga of synthesis). Similarly the temple aphorisms of Francia A. La Due give a Ray 5 flavour of occult science to the works of H.P. Blavatsky and William Q. Judge. We quote those aphorims (as seed-thoughts) from temple teachings of Master H. (with his image):  "Days come and days go, but if thou watchest thou shalt see: THE LOAD thou hast laid on the heart of a friend will God transfer to thine own heart; heavy as it presses on the heart of thy friend, heavier will it press on thine own heart in the days to come. THE STONE thou hast cast from the path of the blind will smite the adder lying in wait for thee. THE WEIGHT thou hast clamped on the feet of another will drag thine own feet into Hadean desolation. THE SHELTER thou hast given the wayfa...
Post a Comment
Read more