Summary on Savitri by Dr. M.P Pandit

Book Two Canto XI: The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind

Aswapathy crosses beyond the limits of the human mind into the regions of a vaster transcending Thought. This higher Thought is allied to a Vision facing the Spirit Eternal. On these peaks are seen the glories of the Ideal Mind.

This Ideal Mind is the source and inspirer of all the great hopes and movements on earth. It is the bridge between man and God. In this world dwell the Gods who are the forms taken by the truths of the Spirit. Here are the Truth-Ideas that prefigure creation below. Their light and influence touches the human world and moves it to greater effort. The source of human faith in progress and perfection lies here.

Man is not an alien to these regions; he belongs to them on his heights. In his condition of Ignorance he is exiled from there but his thought carries memories of this origin and, in moments if rare communion, is enlivened by its light and force. Yet human will and sense act as barriers to this flow of greatness from above. The soul of man, however, can climb to these luminous planes.

Aswapathy enters into this realm and sees the pure worlds of Thought where Knowledge is the leader and thought the substance, where feeling responds readily to the Call of Truth, where form is a self-shaping of the creative Ray, will, a conscious vehicle of the Gods. Here life is brimming with scintillations of Consciousness. Joy and Bliss are natural here.

Farther off on the higher levels of Thought he espies newer heights where Time touches the horizons of Eternity and Nature communes with the Spirit.

The ascent is through a triple realm of Thought.

The first levels are close and similar to human mind—they are neither too high nor too broad for human effort. The guardians of this world intercede with the creative Puissance above and cast the immensities of Thought into life. They are the interpreters between man’s mind and God’s. They are masters of World-Time, enjoyers of World-Bliss; they form Matter by the hidden stress of Mind; they measure out World-Space. They give finite shape to infinite things, Form to the Formless. But they impose a law on every movement and turn every step into a link of the chain of Necessity. They deprive Idea of its plastic infinity and make it fit in into a worked out design. The knowledge they erect is bounded and perishable. They seek to tie down the fire and spontaneous movement of the One into determined time, space and law.

Above this belt opens another range. The beings here have a wider sight and shine with the light of a liberating Knowledge within. Their forte is vision, not conception. They penetrate into the occult mind of the creative Power and formulate their discoveries in terms of symbol, design of line and number and cosmic Law. But they try to structure the free rhythms of the infinite Consciousness into the logic of the finite thought. And in doing so, they construct a calculus of Destiny to measure the immeasurable. As a result they are lost in detail and miss the Whole. The Unknowable retains its secrecy from them.

Still higher are the kings of Thought whose all seeing gaze embraces Time and Space. They hold and transmit to earth and heaven the imperative of the creator Self. Theirs is an all-ruling Consciousness.

The cosmos is indeed no accident in Time. It is guided and led by a Truth-Wisdom. The seed of creation sprouts from the Being of the Eternal and is shaped into birth and growth by the creative gaze of the Absolute. There is a secret power in things compelling the concealed Godhead to emerge. Even Nature’s ignorance is Truth’s instrument. The Supreme Will works in the guise of destiny and the mortal grows towards the Immortal. The truth of the Spirit, however, is hidden and it reveals itself only to the inner eye bereft of ego.

This fact escapes human thinking which seeks for a rule where a free Wisdom works, which alternates between Chance and Law as the truth of life.

The Kings of Thought attempt to grasp with thought the Truth absolute, to capture Reality in the abstractions of the conceptual Mind. They eliminate sense, form, sound and make a vacuum to hold the One. They arrive at an austere negation as the meaning of all, a zero as the finis.

Such is the play of the gods of Thought trying to snare Truth into concept and phrase for the delectation of the thinker. Truth is sought to be imprisoned in the cabin of the human mind and made an instrument for man’s domination of the world.

However, in response to all these seekings from below, the Truth-Goddess appears to yield herself somewhat and consents to dwell on earth and install her presence in the human breast. Man gives her a shape according to his own mind and self, clothes her in the Idea. Each one thinks his is the sole truth.

The fact remains that the eternal Truth cannot be seized by thought or by word. The world itself lives in the ray of this Truth-Sun which cannot be imprisoned within the walls of the thought of man. However high the thought, it is still inadequate. Thought has to yield to Vision and surrender to the supreme Truth. Only then will the Unmanifest reflect himself in the living glass of the still mind.