Index

Book Seven Canto IV: The Triple Soul-Forces

Savitri begins her ascent.

She meets a Woman with a bright face who is sitting on a rugged ground with a sharp and wounding stone beneath her feet. She embodies divine pity, for she is a spirit touched by the grief of all that lives in the world. She is the Mother of Seven Sorrows. She tells Savitri that she is her own secret soul that has come to share the suffering of the world. She is present wherever there is grief, pain and sorrow. She brings pity, sympathy and compassion. She works and suffers hoping that one day God will come and give succour.

As she ceases speaking there comes up like an echo the voice of the Man of Sorrows who complains bitterly that God has deliberately inflicted suffering and sorrow on him. He is ever doomed to disappointment, failure and death. He has no force to revolt against this dispensation of God; he must accept to live with grief and misery.

Savitri tells the Madonna of suffering that she is a portion of her own self put out to bear the sorrow of the world; but hers is the power to solace, not to save. She then answers the Mother of divine grief and compassion that one day she will return with the Strength of the Eternal and the world shall be freed from pain and suffering.

Savitri ascends further and meets a woman in gold on a throne-like boulder, armed with trident and thunderbolt, with her feet upon a lion lying below.

She is the Mother of Might guarding the hosts of Light from the forces of Night and Death. She tells Savitri that she is her own secret soul come down into the human world to protect and save the threatened, to reward the strong. She topples down tyranny and injustice. She is Durga, she is Lakshmi, She is Kali, who is charged to do God's mighty work. She awaits the advent of God.

Immediately there arises a warped echo from the dwarf Titan, the Ego of the world of desire. This Voice of the vital Man declares that he is heir to the forces of the earth, the premier claimant to the throne of heaven. All Nature is to serve his ambitions and he is to complete what God has left imperfect. He has exploded' the atom, conquered Space and soon he shall make of the gods his menials.

Savitri tells the Madonna of Might that she is her own portion put forth to help mankind onward on the route to the Supreme. But though she has given strength to men, she could not give wisdom. Savitri assures her that one day she will return with the saving Light; hatred, fear and weakness shall go, and the cry of the ego shall be hushed for ever.

Savitri ascends still further and steps into a happy felicitous air. Here she meets the Mother of Light who tells her that she is Savitri's own secret soul that has come down to heal the pangs of earth, draw down the harmony of the higher spheres, establish peace in man. She is Knowledge, she is the Power leading towards God. She is all that is the best in humanity and she works to lift man's soul towards the Light, to prepare the ground for Love to tread the earth's soil.

A warped echo rises from the sense-shackled mind of man, proud even in its self-evident limitation in ignorance. This voice of man the limited mental being claims to have fathomed matter and life by its all-discovering Thought, but confesses to have come to a dead end before a wall of all-round mystery which it cannot solve. It wonders, however, if it is not best after all to stay confined to its known natural limits and leave it to the wizard Gods to dream of greater heights.

Savitri tells the Madonna of Light that she is a portion of her own self come to awaken and raise the soul to its rightful destiny in God. But it is vain to shower the golden rain of heaven on the hard soil of the intellect. The mind of man mistakes even the rays of intuition to be its own flamings, his spiritual ego swells and he stays content in the shell of his sainthood.

Nevertheless Savitri assures the Madonna of Light that one day she will return with the hand of God in hers so that the Face of the Supreme may be seen, the divine family be born and light and peace reign in all the worlds.