Yoga of King Aswapathy

This is the description of the One through whom Savitri was born.

Sri Aurobindo says that it is through the intermediary of somebody who did not belong to the earth but came from the higher and freer regions.

Sri Aurobindo says there, that all the world is governed by what He defines as the "All-Wise" ; and this king, who became the father of Savitri, was sufficiently transparent and conscious so that the wisdom from above could, through his Consciousness, touch the inconscient world.

It is because, in spite of his incarnation in this world of ignorance, he had kept sufficient consciousness of his Origin that he could not only aspire to bring down the Divine upon earth, but have the power to realise it.

~From the Mother's explanation of the opening passages of Aswapathy's Yoga.

In the epic poem of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo has depicted Aswapathy, King of Madra and father of Savitri as a symbolic character, representing human race. In Mahabharata, King Aswapathy was childless. He performed eighteen years of Tapasya with austerities and hundred thousand sacrifices to have a child. The Divine Mother appeared before him out of sacrificial fire. She bestowed upon him a daughter as a boon. But Aswapathy of Sri Aurobindo pleads and persuades the Supreme Mother to descend on earth and transform mortality to immortality. She was pleased and consented to be born as his daughter, Savitri; and said "Fate shall be changed by the unchanging will" (91.9). Sri Aurobindo conceived Aswapathy as a symbol of aspiring human soul descended on earth from divine heights to acquire knowledge of the Self and the World as a human being. The opening sentence of the Canto on Yoga of King- "A World's desire compelled her mortal birth." (5.1), clearly indicates the symbolic role of Aswapathy.

Aswapathy was a forerunner to do yoga for the transformation of the earth to heaven and material life to divine life. His penances were trials and tribulations of the evolving soul of humanity and was a long struggle to attain Truth and realise the Self. Having realised the Self, he prayed to the Supreme Divine Mother to bring heaven to earth and to divinise human life. She was pleased with his ascention, realisation and achievements. She revealed herself before him and asked him to be content with his personal achievements and leave the rest to the destiny. But Aswapathy, not being satisfied with his individual release persisted and persuaded Her to descend and change the earth and Nature and remove the suffering in the world. She consented and blessed him with a boon that she would be born as his daughter.

The world on earth is still in darkness and is struggling between Inconscient around and Superconscient above. It is a masked Infinite appearing as Nescience. The Mother says Earth is formed for the sake of evolution and ascension towards Consciousness, but in the Unconscious and in the Nothingness. A fathomless Zero, a pregnant shunya has occupied the earth. Earth is wheeling in the hollow gulfs of space, as if abandoned to herself. In that inscrutable darkness some unthought Idea stirred. It was insistent and self-existent. This exerted pressure and teased the Inconscient to wake ignorance. Sri Aurobindo has explained that this Inconscient is very real and concrete. In Savitri, he writes:

....... the Inconscient too is infinite;

The more its abysses we insist to sound,

The more it stretches, stretches endlessly".

It must be disturbed, goaded into some awareness. The stir has produced a moving wave and gave room for an old tired want unfulfilled. This want has been lying in the subconscient levels in a dark moonless cave. This has raised its head looking for light. This cannot die because it is the seed, the very essence of Immortality. It contains an upward drive and a downward drag of the evolutionary movement that has created the Cosmos. The present determinism of Nature is to perpetuate the rule of Ignorance in mankind. Its chief fulcrum is Ego in the human being and Desire is its dynamic support. These forces give rise to pain and suffering.

Nature has worked out man from animal who is the outcome of life evolving from Matter through the passage of plant, bird and beast. Man is part of Nature. He obviously belongs to the realms of Matter (body), life (vital) and mind and mostly functions at this level. He also contains other deeper and higher realms of which he is not yet aware. Even within these surface realms of physical, vital and mental, there are many layers which need to be understood before attaining the knowledge of deeper and higher realms. These are at the root of man's development, and he functions predominantly at any one of these levels. The physical Purusha dominates his life and mind and leads a corporeal life with habitual needs. The vital Purusha is concerned with self affirmation, aggrandisement and leads a life of ambition, passion and desire. The mind at these two levels is primitive and not developed. To bring in harmony and to evolve further Nature has provided man with evolving mind. At present man is the latest species on earth and he is the summit of all that has been achieved so far by Nature. But man at his present state is too imperfect. It is only the physical aspect that has reached perfection. Man is not the crown or the ultimate evolution. He is not the last poise of Nature. As Aurobindo has said in Savitri:—

"If this were all and nothing more were meant,

If what now seems were the whole of what must be,

If this were not a stade through which we pass

To the Light that made the worlds, the cause of things,

Well might interpret our mind's limited view

Existence as an accident in Time,

Illusion or phenomenon or freak".

So man is only an end product of animal evolution and precursor to the advent of divine humanity.

In our present time man has become the central theme of almost all philosophical thinking. He has to play an important role in the existent world and the cosmic drama. But the goal and purpose of man has still to be fully understood and defined. The relation of man, the individual to other individuals and to the community of men is hazy and distorted. Man, as an individual and as a social being, has been suffering from all-round malaise. He is riddled with suffering, evil, falsehood, limitations of various kinds and finally death. A great black cloud is hanging over the world that may break into an unimaginable horrible disaster.

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