"Satyavan must die"

Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri is both a legend and a symbol, legend belonging to the Vedic cycle and symbol describing evolutionary manifestation of the Consciousness of Immortality, manifestation in this material creation. Its sweep of about 24,000 lines encompasses at once the individual, the universal, and the transcendental dimensions, with the mystic-spiritual voice that has the power to make these real in our midst. Indeed, it is that gleaming potency which is sought to give to our life its wonderful completeness in the expressions of the spirit. If there is a divine possibility to bring out from the secret inconscient beginning all its multiple grandeurs, then the joy of that possibility itself is another cherished joy and must be given full scope to emerge. The progressive march of humanity has already come to this point and the supreme Creatrix-Mother should now take up the difficult issue in her hand to triumph over all that opposes it. This divine Event can succeed only when the Mind of Night, the physical's mind holding the darkness, it standing on the path, is removed. It is for this purpose that the supreme She has incarnated here as Savitri. The incarnation is to rescue the divine Soul that is Satyavan, he in the grip of Death, the cosmic Power of Annihilation; the obstacle presents itself in the form of embodiment of the primordial Void in which has taken place the divine Plunge which is the presence of Satyavan. That is the sense, the nature of the death of this Soul in this mortal world. The imperative is, the subjugation of this divinity to the mortality's law has to be got rid of by dissolving that subjugation itself, by giving to the Subjugator his original form of Reality, gracious and transcendental. This has to happen as if by summoning all the agents in one decisive act in the death of Satyavan; it is therefore necessary that Satyavan must die. That is the necessity, that is the condition for the transition from death to immorality, from falsehood to truth, from grief and sorrow and suffering to bliss. In fact it is something different something, more than that, not just transition from death to immortality, but the active expressive dynamism of immortality in the state of deathlessness. The work being presented here is one such thematic study of the magnificence that Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri is. There are many aspects as much occult-spiritual as encyclopaedic in character and their study will be always rewarding. In fact the epic is a veritable treasure-house of esoteric knowledge and the more we explore it the more rich we grow in it, grow in the infinities of the spirit. Possibly these could be taken up in several attempts in several details and several manners to make Savitri a constant companion of our very physical body and mind and heart, our very soul and the spirit. That indeed could be the mode of our spiritual pursuit for continuous progress.