Summary on Savitri by Dr. M.P Pandit

Book Two Canto V: The Godheads of the Little Life

Aswapathy sees the empire of the little Life, a narrow power with rigid forms, an unhappy place, set in ignorance. He seeks to know the secret of this world and gazes across the surface obscurity to find its law of being.

A whole crowd of tiny entities, uncouth, in constant movement appears before his eye—elves, imps, goblins, genii and the rest, half-animal, half-god. They are seen at their work behind the veil, prompting, impelling, pushing, perverting. Their only work seems to be to spoil and vitiate and amuse themselves in the process. Their activities are not confined to their own world but extend to other worlds also. Wherever there is narrowness, chaos and obscurity, there these petty beings cast their influence. They lurk in the unconscious and half-conscious parts of man and lead him astray.

The earth is not a closed system. It is open to the action of the powers of other worlds; it is a field of evolution and progress, not a set typal world like the others. All here moves through contradiction and struggle towards an eventual harmony and perfection. But the way is long and the passage is through the belts of inconscience, blindness and ignorance. However, there is a Divine Will and Power that leads the movement and assures a successful culmination into freedom and Light.

At the beginning of this mysterious world all appears to be the movement of a brute machine. But in truth there is God within, sitting unseen, and all is his action and his will.

In the course of a rapid movement the Spirit became Matter. There was a pervading silence in which forms appeared. There was no sensation yet. Consciousness was not yet patent. All was inconscient. But behind and working through this inconscient was the intelligence of God. Consciousness was concealed; so was concealed the Bliss that is at the origin of all things. All was driven by a mechanical Force.

In the first etheric space there came vibration, touch and friction. This led to the birth of Fire. Electric Energy with its wave-particles came next and this material scheme was the result with the atom holding the high potential of Power.

This miraculous world is a riddle to the intellect of man which has to proceed through its obscuring ignorance. Is it a parable of Maya? it asks itself. Perpetual motion and Energy on a static base within a fixed orbit is the picture as it appears at first. But after a time, life breaks out in Nature and a new phase of conscious movement begins.

Life animated the material forms but was subject to the laws of Matter. Though outwardly it was not conscious of its purpose, its movements bespoke an active Will within. Sensation, feeling, thrill began to reveal themselves. Life stretched itself through desire.

Gradually came the first beginnings of mind through the peerings of thought.

Animal creation followed. Man was moulded from this stuff. In him appeared the thinking mind that was to uplift life and impose an order on its restless powers. In man Nature became overtly conscious and raised her head towards the Light of Heaven above.

A developing conscious rule of Nature began to be formulated through man. The ego—a shadow figure of the true being within—was first formed by Nature with the little joys, hopes, passions and loves of a brief life centred around it. Within him was the soul that was not affected by these fleeting exercises of life and the cessations of life. It watched the toils of Nature moving steadily towards a greater future under the impulsion of a concealed Intelligence.

The mind is unable to unravel the mystery of this vast universe. It scans only the surfaces; its imaginative flights taper off into mystic altitudes. Human life, will and mind are too limited and out of accord with their universal terms to feel and know the great workings of the Cosmic Power behind the Veil. Men are moved from their subliminal and subconscient levels of being by universal Impulsions.

The mind at this stage is a thinking puppet of the life-force. It is moved and buffeted by little agents of darkness from behind, elemental spirits who are, however, used by a Power greater than themselves. Men think they act on their own; but in fact they are manipulated by these forces and beings from behind the Veil. Men are but actors in the tragi-comedy of their little lives directed by these prompters from across the border.

Such is the routine life of man as long as he is content to live subjected to his lower nature His life turns in petty grooves, happy in small pleasures, suffering in little disappointments. On occasions a help from greater Nature is vouchsafed but the human receptacle cannot hold the gift for long and it recedes.

If man were the highest poise of which Nature is capable and his limitations and deformations the final word, then this world would be little more than a meaningless accident in Time, a dream or fantasy.

But this is not the truth of things.

To a deeper seeing, beyond the limited surface sight of the mind, a greater vision reveals itself. The world vibrates with the Light of God, it is a developing play of the gods developing from the finite to the Infinite, from the Night of Inconscience to the Day of Truth. Behind the apparent, struggling Nature is at work a divine Power sure of its aim. A Presence watches and leads from above. The One is at play as the Many. Behind the pain and suffering of the world is an undying bliss. Within the Form there sits the Soul awaiting its hour of emergence, preparing its nature-parts down to the very physical cells for its manifestation. The Soul casts its rays of bliss, of beauty, of power, now and then, and those are the high moments of the outer being. Through these influxes from within and invoked descents from above the being of man shall grow, climb and rise high into the greater altitudes of the Spirit, into its unsullied realms of Power, Bliss, Light.

Aswapathy advances through the mists of the empire of the Little Life: chaotic expanses peopled with little demons of misleading shapes and whispering ghosts. He is a moving point of light showing up, as it were, the surrounding gloom of the region. All is dark here in its immensity, his spirit’s flame is the only light.