From Chaos to Synthesis: At the gateway of new Civilisation, Culture and Ideals of the Aquarian Age

 In the Witness’s occult rooms with mind-built walls On hidden interiors, lurking passages Opened the windows of the inner sight. He owned the house of undivided Time. Lifting the heavy curtain of the flesh He stood upon a threshold serpent-watched, And peered into gleaming endless corridors, Silent and listening in the silent heart For the coming of the new and the unknown. He gazed across the empty stillnesses And heard the footsteps of the undreamed Idea In the far avenues of the Beyond. He heard the secret Voice, the Word that knows, And saw the secret face that is our own. The inner planes uncovered their crystal doors; Strange powers and influences touched his life. From the mystic spaces where Ashwapati resided, he now took the role of a Witness. The mysterious rooms of Ashwapati's experiences as a witness were built by mind. The windows of inner sight opened and he could see the inner paths actively hiding from a normal sight. His inner eyes could see the past, present and

 He sat in secret chambers looking out Into the luminous countries of the unborn Where all things dreamed by the mind are seen and true And all that the life longs for is drawn close. He saw the Perfect in their starry homes Wearing the glory of a deathless form, Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace, Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy. He lived in the mystic space where thought is born And will is nursed by an ethereal Power And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths Till it grows into the likeness of a god. In these lines, Sri Aurobindo is penning Ashwapati's experience of his deeper sheaths (bodies) and visions as they appear in the secluded silent spaces of his soul. As Ashwapati sat in the secret chambers of the deeper cave of his soul, looking out with his subtle eyes, he saw dazzling lands of the future where all the perfection aspired by the mind was found. These lands dismissed as simply illusions by material-minded were true and real for the soul. All the

For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above. In the griffin forefront of the Night and Day A gap was rent in the all-concealing vault; The conscious ends of being went rolling back: The landmarks of the little person fell, The island ego joined its continent. Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms: Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown. In earlier lines we read Aswapati being transformed into a Seer, by the Divine 'Presence' at work. In next lines here Sri Aurobindo is describing few qualities of Aswapati as a Seer. He says: Aswapati overcame the limiting states of a conventional mind. He was no longer stuck in those limited and fixed states from which a conventional man is unable to go beyond. 'Griffin' is a dual combination of lion and eagle who are symbolic of the powers on the land and sky. A griffin is at the forefront of duality of Night and Day, and with his powers dragging a conventional man through those powers of duality of a material word. How

 A Presence wrought behind the ambiguous screen: It beat his soil to bear a Titan’s weight, Refining half-hewn blocks of natural strength It built his soul into a statued god. The Craftsman of the magic stuff of self Who labours at his high and difficult plan In the wide workshop of the wonderful world, Modelled in inward Time his rhythmic parts. Then came the abrupt transcendent miracle: The masked immaculate Grandeur could outline, At travail in the occult womb of life, His dreamed magnificence of things to be. A crown of the architecture of the worlds, A mystery of married Earth and Heaven Annexed divinity to the mortal scheme. A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time. A Divine 'Presence' that dwells within the entire manifestation and 'In which we live, move and have our being' was at work behind the ambiguous screen of material world. It was laboring behind the screen on Aswapati. It battered the soil of his physical self to make it strong and bear a gigantic super

 After an introduction in the first two cantos, the entire Part One of the Epic, including remaining three cantos of the first book and books two and three are on King Ashwapati. A WORLD’S desire compelled her mortal birth. One in the front of the immemorial quest, Protagonist of the mysterious play In which the Unknown pursues himself through forms And limits his eternity by the hours And the blind Void struggles to live and see, A thinker and toiler in the ideal’s air, Brought down to earth’s dumb need her radiant power. Savitri is an emanation of "The Divine Mother". She has been forced to take a birth in a human body due to the Tapasya, intense spiritual endeavour of King Aswapati. Aswapati is a single individual who embodies in himself the entire World's blind desire. He is a leader of the age-old quest of self-realization and divine fulfilment. As the leader moves forward so do all the rest of humanity following him. He is in-fact the main character in the mysteriou

 The great World-Mother now in her arose: A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn, Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance, Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel And stopped the mute march of Necessity. A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks Empowered to force the door denied and closed Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time. In earlier lines we read that Savitri held a lever that moves 'the veiled Ineffable's timeless will'. Now, a giant power of the Divine-Mother arose in her. A 'living choice' of Savitri was never to accept the destined fate of Satyavan: to die. She affirmed her choice: 'Satyavan must live'. She overthrew the 'cold dead turn' of fate. Her spirit crushed the Circumstance underneath it's feet. It halted the senseless dire revolving Wheel of Samsara going round and round without truly moving forward. And ended the mute march of Necessity. A fighter on fire

 Across the awful march no eye can see, Barring its dreadful route no will can change, She faced the engines of the universe; A heart stood in the way of the driving wheels: Its giant workings paused in front of a mind, Its stark conventions met the flame of a soul. A magic leverage suddenly is caught That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will: A prayer, a master act, a king idea Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force. Then miracle is made the common rule, One mighty deed can change the course of things; A lonely thought becomes omnipotent. Savitri faced the 'engines of the universe': the mechanical laws of material physics that are propelling the universe unendingly. Like the engines of a gigantic locomotive that keep it marching onwards on its predetermined route, these Laws of Nature are carrying us frightfully forward on a journey whose destination we cannot see with our naked yet we cannot say 'no' to them. Savitri's stood confronting these drivin

 A bond is put on the high-climbing mind, A seal on the too large wide-open heart; Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life. Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe While the tardy coilings of the aeons pass And the Animal browses in the sacred fence And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more. A mind that is too eager or impatient to advance and progress higher is chained and tied down. A heart that attempts to open too deeply and spontaneously is prevented by a  mark or a seal. Life that is on a tour of discovering new possibilities, is halted by Death. Therefore the power and authority of the Inconscient continues to rule subconsciously. We often feel trapped by those 'dual tables and karmic norms' set by the Laws of Nature. The phrase 'tardy coilings of the aeons' indicates extremely slow passing of manvantara or a long period of evolutionary activity in a cylic or spiral manner. The vast stretches of evolutionary movement often frustrates a soul that is eag