ON SAVITRI AND PARADISE LOST
THE PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS
BEFORE we attempt to answer all the questions we have to ask, we must be
sure of the status of the soul and the role it plays in man's life. If it
be eternal, what business has it in this deformative structure of mind,
life and body complex? If it is not eternal, how does it lead to human
evolution from birth to birth?
Christianity considers the soul to come to birth only once, after which it
waits for the day of judgment. This means, the soul is part of the life and
mind complex and it shares equally the wrongs and the rights of its own
moral actions. This naturally means it 1s not eternal, in the sense of
immutability, and for the sake of the Last Judgment 1t has to want
centuries along with life and mind. Perhaps Christianity is not so sure of
the psychological formations and considers life and soul to be a single
unit. Whatever the idea, the fact remains that its concept is primitive,
tied down to the senses and does not attempt any deeper psychological
discovery. Such a soul cannot be the leader of evolution. And its path to
immortality is most uncertain. Modern psychology does not recognise the
soul as an entity, it only recognises the reflexes and these are to it the
supreme determinants of man. If it is not the reflexes, 1t is the desire
soul, the life-drive that is considered the soul. It can imagine a world of
life, a world of ego, but not an unfallen divine spark. As for evolution,
it thinks it to be the outer animal evolution and cannot see the link with
the soul as the leader of the evolutionary march. Thus barred by the
physical senses and many confusing differing doctrinal principles, we get
no clear concept of the soul.
Christianity stops short at ethics, life and sensations. Modern psychology
stops at the subconscient formations. Both seem to give us a confusing
aspect that has no relation with Reality.
Sri Aurobindo accepts the Indian view of the human soul. He gives it a
clarity and modifies its theory where confusion arises due to the disparity
between experience and practice. Though unfelt in the commonness of the
physical sensations, it is in fact the real mode of human destiny; because
nothing else can explain, lend full significance
to, the complex formation of human life and mind. And partial or total
error is sure to ensue as we have seen with Christianity and modem
psychology. We have marked the limitation of reason; such a limited entity
could not be the guide. Life itself slips into despondency and quagmires of
pain or sudden fleeting jubilations of enthusiasm; such a formation could
not be the leader of human destiny. In fact all our errors creep in, owing
to our not discovering our soul, the light behind all these formations,
sensations, strife. This explains all else; this gives meaning to life and
its vagrancy, to mind and its half-lit knowledge, by a nun changing
quality, a secret causeless joy and a reality that never needs an outer
support to be, no framework of limited will to act and of groping twilight
vision to know. Because Adam had not known his soul, he fell. Therefore, he
was led only by a partial light of Ethics which he could be persuaded to
abandon. If he had known and touched the secret soul, nothing would have
made him leave his path, as chalked out by the Divine. Savitri had, on the
contrary, known her true divinity within. The outer defeats became thus to
her the stepping stones to victory.
Soul, thus, is the secret reality in man that, although never
changing, has nevertheless an upward curve of progression. It works from
behind the veil and organises slowly this disharmonious structure of human
existence. Until that is done, struggle, uncertainty, doubts, sufferings
are the lot of the human instrument. But how does soul progress? What are
its elements, the conditions of its upward movement and how does it profit
by the experience of life's struggle?
We have before us the great example of Savitri. We shall refer to it in
order to prove our point and answer the problem. All souls are not equal in
status; not all souls have attained an equal degree of perfection. This
lends variety and multitudinous Ness to the scheme of the world. But the
mind can conceive or create only a uniform universe devoid of variety.
World Nature and its laws are many-sided, its workings are innumerable,
complex and yet all this diversity is not pell-mell, a creation without an
inner source of order. There is a purpose in all. So too in the development
of the souls. Each follows its own curve of fulfilment, its path is
different; each takes its own time to develop into a full-grown psychic
entity, capable of becoming a leader of human existence. This development
does not occur in its own soul space, where a soul merely resides to rest
between its journeys of birth. Its development takes place while it is in
birth and this earth is the ground of its development. Seeking fulfillment
elsewhere is a fictitious idea and an escapist attitude. There are many
elements of struggle, many contradictions that Savitri could have avoided
if she had chosen. But avoiding difficulties is not the way to vanquish
them. It is not without reason that difficulties are there in man's way; to
conquer them is the path of the hero. And there is a delight in confronting
them and subduing them.
Sometimes man is defeated. This defeat is only superficial, for it is
not the Christian fall of Man, but a setback, a temporary check, from which
the soul derives its wealth of experience-the honey of the thrill of
defeat, the joy of overcoming.
Because it is sovereign within, a defeat does not spell disaster to it.
Because it is seated in the immutable seat of joy, it can afford to sink in
the slime of pain and be trodden under by the rude hooves of destiny. The
life-forces revolt against all odds: the mind's frowning doubts, the
intense burning of sensations and passions are gathered by it as the manna
of experience, on which it thrives and grows to larger and fuller stature.
Life, mind and the senses, on their side, if they listened to its voice,
would imbibe its calmness, its plenitude, its assurance and its unperturbed
felicity.
And this drama continues from life to life, from stages of birth till the
individual soul becomes the full-grown psychic entity ready to lead other
souls and other collective entities. But the possibility of its escape into
the infinite beatitude of the Beyond remains open to it. Some choose this
and merge in the Transcendent Ocean of all pervading luminosity while
others come back as Avatars, Vibhutis, Saints, Prophets, and the great
masters of human destiny. Savitri on her side is not one out of many souls,
but the one soul that has come from age in different roles, names, aspects
and individualities to guide the world and hasten the march of evolution.
She did not begin as an obscure psychic entity, but was from the very
outset the emanation of the Supreme Consciousness. She revealed more and
more of herself as the world grew more ready for her light. Satyavan is the
fully awakened soul, ready to obey the final call of the Supreme. He
becomes the battling-ground of the power of Ignorance and the divine
manifestation of Light.
Adam represents the ethical consciousness. His soul, as an entity, is yet
in a raw state of development, and timidity, fear, the awe of an ethical
divinity rules the being.
His is the base where Satyavan's is the summit of soul-development. In him
soul remains far behind, covered by the veils of ethical conventional
doctrines and the physical mentality that moves along a beaten track,
avoiding the surprises of discovery. And the disobedience that is so much
cursed by the Christian is a deliberate choice of his soul. This at once
liberates him from the hedged-in existence in Paradise and the scales of
conventionalism are broken forthwith. The wrath of ethical Justice
frightens the timorous physical entity; but he is now on his way to a
fulfilment he could never have if he remained shut up within the precincts
of paradisal existence determined by moral laws and ordained by the
vigilant eye of unfailing convention. No doubt, there would be hardship and
suffering in front: but these are the anvils for the shaping of the soul's
consciousness.
Soul thus is an emergent entity. It is the immanence of the divine in us
and grows back to its own native status. Life and mind too are divine in
their intrinsic essences but they are not conscious of their origin and the
pall of ignorance is heavy on them; hence to guide them out of the chaos,
the soul, the divine representative, comes and leads them and in the
process is shaped itself. This is one point which the later Vedanta missed.
The over-mature Indian mind thought all things in terms of Illusion and
escapism and overlooked this cardinal factor of soul's role in the evolving
world.
The problem is indeed not a problem when viewed from the Aurobindonian
standpoint. The emphasis on Illusion, on reason, on the physical aspect of
evolution, on the outer facet of determinism of fate, all this creates the
problem and hinders the real solution. Together with it goes the mind's
misconception of the soul's character. The misconception stems from lack of
direct experience or from taking other parts of life or the desire-soul or
the reason to be the soul. If authentic spiritual experience were to have a
priority, there would be no misconception at all. The Miltonic Christian
has no experience of the soul except to think of it as a moral entity bound
by certain doctrinal concepts. The Indians too lay emphasis on the Shastra
rather than on
direct experience. The modem man thinks in terms of Libido, Sex, Ego and
the Unconscious. All these put stress on wrong elements because of
misleading ideas; the last-named suffers also from the scientific
callousness to all things spiritual and occult.
If we had the insight, we would discover all formations to have a
significance in terms of soul-reality and soul-need. All acts,
circumstances, occurrences, behaviour, even the larger units of national
formations, their destinies, have a direct relation to the soul behind,
which causes these as effects of its will. What happens exteriorly is only
a minute portion of what has occurred within. Nothing is haphazard or
pell-mell, each has a significance and is a symbol; each act is an
experience for the soul; not the experience of an outer sense, but the
experience of an in living deity who feels the real essence of all
experiences and not just their crude physical form which is sensed by life
or the reason. Its will is not its own will based on ego. Its will is one
with the will of the Unseen. It never revolts like the life-urge or doubts
like reason. This constant faithfulness and sincerity are its cardinal
marks of identification. There is no fall or rise, no good destiny or bad
doom, no opposition of circumstances or aiding conditions.
It does not bank on any outer support; it has no need of praise or blame;
no stigma of evil sticks to it; no influence of any moral Good conditions
it. While determined by none, it determines all actions and conditions.
Thus is the path of the soul towards immortality.
Our whole essay may seem a refutation and negation of all western religious
doctrines. We have touched those points that are at variance with the
Aurobindonian view and we have indicated what seems to us the truth. We
have no quarrel with Christ, but the moral and dogmatic precepts as
enunciated by the later Christian apostles, thinkers and theologians are
worlds apart from the real truth of spiritual experience. It is on these
falsities that we have wanted to put our finger on it. The problems these
scholars evoke and the answers they give do not satisfy us, who have seen
the whole gamut of religious evolution and find the inability of religion
to answer any valid human or psychological problem. This spiritual poverty
is the cause of Milton's failure to give us a message, which was his
mission when he began his epic. We have
touched on issues raised by Paradise Lost mainly. But we have also seen
some others that are beyond its scope so that we may have a more or less
comprehensive picture of the main problems dealt with in the two epics. The
treatment may appear too philosophical to have a place in an essay on
literature; but we are not confined to literature and Milton himself wants
us to make a note of the theological content of Paradise Lost, which is
strictly outside the scope of literature. Theology, religion, philosophy
and spirituality are the inner contents of both these poems; hence an
examination of all these issues would not be out of place if we must make a
proper evaluation of the two poets. A mere criticism of form and style is
not enough. We want to examine both from various points of view so that a
full and unbiased evaluation may be arrived at .
( courtesy Justice Maharajan) KR IRS 16922
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