The next portion of Savitri we shall discuss is as follows.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,
Her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
And in their body's lives acclimatise
That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.
Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;
Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:
It fears the pure divine intolerance
Of that assault of ether and of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost with hate repels the light it brings;
It trembles at its naked power of Truth
And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.
Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,
It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers:
Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

MEANINGS OF SOME DIFFICULT WORDS

Vain = waste,

Prodigal = Prodigal of __ = Something in excess which would be wasteful, Plenty.

Acclimatise = To make some one or something used to a new climate or new way of thinking.

Ether = Space, Heavenly, The fifth and highest element after air and earth and fire and water;
was believed to be the substance composing all heavenly bodies

Mire = A Swampy ground or bog where in one may become engulfed.

Saviour = A person who rescues you from harm or danger.

In our last post we have seen the adoration of the Divine Mother Savitri. We have seen how our
human nature denies the acceptance if Her Consciousness, Power, Glory, Bliss and Delight and
offers Her the earthly dual reality. But it does not mean that the Divine Mother has not lent Her
Grace on us. Her Grace is acting upon us Eternally.

Before we continue our discussion we need to discuss some background information which is
highly essential to get a key-in to the Spirit of the lines we are considering. In fact the very first
line it self.

In the first part of the canto we had seen that Goddess Usha, withdraws from Her full glory and
becomes veiled in the Matter. She sacrifices Her Perfection to lead us and sustain us from within.
Here Savitri too sacrifices Her Perfection when She takes a mortal birth. We have seen this in the
last post.
A vaster Nature’s joy had once been hers,
But long could keep not its gold heavenly hue
Or stand upon this brittle earthly base.

Here we need to realize why Gods sacrifice their Perfection? It is also highly important for our
Sadhana also.

When The Supremes Will was there for the creation, He, the Supreme, The Cosmic Person, the
thousand headed Purusha (Sahasra Sheershah Purushah . . . from Shri Purusha Sukta and
Narayana Sukta) sacrificed His own Perfection so that this creation could come into existence.
This would be clear to clear to you if you go through the Narayana Sukta from Maha
Narayanopanishat. Then he created Gods and then People. Then for the upliftment of the people
or the Nature, which he created as imperfect, He created a system of Yajna, for the interchanging
of the Gods and People. Yajna does not means just a ritual where in some priests chant some
mantras in front of the holy fire, and something is offered to God. Literally it means Sacrifice, a
sacrifice for the growth to His Consciousness, to invoke His Grace. This is mandatory for both
people and Gods. Let us see how is the Yajna of Gods and peoples is.

Gods Sacrifice their Perfection and take a mortal birth in this mortal world, to do His Works, to
give His message to us, and to lead us towards Him. Such is the sacrifice of The Divine Mother,
which we have discussed in both the parts of this canto.

For us, Yajna means scarifying our obscurities, our material being to grow to His Consciousness.
If you have seen any Yajna, there we offer coins, food grains, Ghee, etc. thye are all the symbols
of our material belongings. It is like we should sacrifice our material belongings to Him. All the
money all the wealth we may have is given to us by Him. So it belongs to Him. What is ours is
only His Grace and Love. So in short whatever we possess should be offered to Him, to obtain
Him.

This Yajna should be reciprocal. When He Himself sacrificed His Perfection for our creation,
here, we should also reciprocate by scarifying our imperfections to obtain the Perfection.
However, we still dwell in our material world, running behind our ,aterial desires and ambitions.
Our ignorance and inconscience is such that we are even reluctant to receive the message of The
Supreme, through Himself or by any messenger of His. In Shri Mad Bhagavad Gita, the
following verses from Chapter 9 prove this fact.

AuÉeÉÉlÉÇÌiÉ qÉÉqÉç qÉÔRûÉ qÉÉlÉÑzÉÏqÉç iÉlÉÑqÉÉÍ´ÉiÉqÉç |

mÉUqÉç pÉÉuÉqÉeÉÉlÉÇiÉÉã qÉqÉ pÉÔiÉ qÉWãûµÉUqÉç ||

Avajaananti Maam Moodha Maanusheem Tanumaashritam |

Param Bhaavamajaananto Mama Bhuta Maheshwaram ||

Deluded minds despise ME lodged in the human body because they know not My
supreme nature of being, the great lord of Existences.

qÉÉãbÉÉwÉÉ qÉÉãbÉMüqÉÉïhÉÉã qÉÉãbelÉÉlÉ ÌuÉcÉãiÉxÉÈ |

UɤxÉÏqÉÉxÉÑUÏqÉcÉæuÉ mÉë¢ÑüiÉÏqÉç qÉÉãÌWûÌlÉÍ´ÉiÉÉqÉç ||
Moghaasha Moghakarmana Moghajnaana Vichetasah |
RakshreeMaasureemChaiva Prakrateem Mohineeshritaam ||

They are of vain hopes, vain actions, and vain knowledge. Devoid of true
consciousness, they dwell in the deluding Rakshasik and Asuric Nature.

Therefore, we should always do our part in the Divine works, through our Sadhana. Our Sadhana
itself is our Yajna.

With this purport we can now proceed with Savitri, who is an incarnation of Divine Grace, come
to battle with Death and win immortality for humanity.

In vain now seemed the splendid sacrifice.

Savitri has arrived from her celestial home. She left her Glory, Eternity and Infinity and took a
mortal birth, a great and “splendid sacrifice”. But now it seems to be in vain or seems to be
going waste. Because there is no reciprocation of the devotion and dedication by the nature. But
it does not mean that Her Grace will stop working upon us. She is our Mother, even though we
are not up to her expectation, She will never desert us.

A prodigal of her rich divinity,

Her self and all she was she had lent to men,
Hoping her greater being to implant
And in their body's lives acclimatise
That heaven might native grow on mortal soil.

Savitri in “Her self and all she was”, “A prodigal of her rich divinity”, that is Her Nature was so
Vast, so wide, which She lends to every one generously. She gives herself to all men, all Her
Power, Light, Wisdom, Delight, Ananda, and everything that She embodies. She does with a
hope to implant Her Greater being in us. Here “Hoping” again re-emphasizes our part of Yajna
or Sadhana. The Mother’s Grace is eternally with us, which itself is sustaining us throughout our
life. But we need to be conscious about it and we should not utilize this Grace for material
expectations or desires or ambitions. We should aspire for Her full manifestation, overtly in our
life, in our being. Because, She is our Divine Mother who sacrificed her Perfection, Her Divinity
and her lerger Being comes down to earth to human level, hoping that “heaven” her native might
grow on earth our mortal soil. As She has lent us Her Self, Her Presence is eternally within us, to
“acclimatise” us or to prepare us or to lead us to through our Sadhana, to make us able to receive
Her full divinity and get acquainted with Heaven.

However:

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature's change;

Mortality bears ill the eternal's touch:

To persuade “earth-nature” of humanity for change is very hard and extremely difficult.
Humanity in its very normal state is intolerant about Divine that is “Mortality bears ill the
eternal’s touch”. In turn, it reacts in a diametrically opposite direction to Divine’s touch. Jesus
Christ, a Being, A Soul who lived to spread the Love and Grace of Divine. How did the world
react to him? Those, who could find the eternal Love in him, were totally relieved from all of
their miseries and sorrows. But rest? Whenever, a higher Being descends to earth to give us the
message of Him, only few can get it. Not all. It is because of our “earth-nature”. Sri Aurobindo
continues to explain why our human or earthly nature is reluctant to Divine, as follows:

It fears the pure divine intolerance

Of that assault of ether and of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost with hate repels the light it brings;
It trembles at its naked power of Truth
And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

The Supreme Divine insists on everything being equally pure, and it does not tolerate any
impurity. Here is a reference from “The Mother”, by Sri Aurobindo.

But the supreme Grace will act only in the conditions of the Light and the Truth; it
will not act in conditions laid upon by the Falsehood and the Ignorance.

The Mother, Page no. 1.

Our human nature or earth-nature fears this intolerance of Divine towards its impurities. It is
more attached to the Falsehood and the Ignorance, and feels that they are the Bliss. Therefore, it
fears the Divine’s Grace which is like a fire and its intensity and the air (ether) associated with it.
It “murmurs” or complains that “sorrowless happiness” the Supreme and Divine Mother
bestows, is boring, because if you are happy continuously at some stage you will get bored! It is
entirely because of Ignorance and its attachment to material life. We do not know the extreme
Rapture of the Supreme, and we believe that our material pleasures are the extreme ecstasies.
Therefore, our nature “Almost with hate repels the light”, the Supreme’s Grace brings with it.

The Truth of The Supreme is irresistible in its unveiled form. One has to accept it. When this
Truth nears the earth-nature, it trembles; it fears the Truth of The Supreme. Because, once the
advent of the Truth takes place, it is the very end of the earth nature! Therefore, we run away
from the Transcendent Truth. Not just the power of Truth, the earth-nature fears it voice, which
is mighty and absolute. It does not entertain any denial. Self assertive therefore it is. But yet is
sweet and warm.

Like this our earthly nature, stops us from moving towards the Infinite and confines us to the
finite. Recently a Politician belonging to Communist Party gave a statement. “It is not God
created people. It is we the people who created the God”. A truly democratic statement. Such
statements and behaviors are the result of encapsulation of ours by Falsehood and Ignorance, and
colleagues of theirs, the Ahankaara, or the eath-nature as Sri Aurobindo calls it, which stops us
from moving towards Him, towards His Truth and Grace.

Not only our earth-nature gives such negative reactions, it does some repulsion:

Inflicting on the heights the abysm's law,

It sullies with its mire heaven's messengers:

Here “abysm” refers to our material world, which has it’s own laws like limitations, ignorance,
inconscience, death, etc. in contrary to the “abysm”, Sri Aurobindo speaks of “heights” which
naturally refers to The Supreme or His Region, from where the Truth descends. The earth-nature
“Inflicts” the laws of our material world on such heights. Sri Aurobindo holds a mirror here. We
always tend to “confine” the Divine according to our limitations or even to be on a fair side even
according to our convenience. One general example. If you ask some one “Where is God?” 99%
of the chances are that he or she may show you a temple. Temples are the places where a
particular deity, which is a semblance of a particular form of Grace of The Supreme, is
profoundly instituted for our concentration. But we limit – if it can be said so - Divine only to
temples and we do the things against Him in other places, just making it convenient for us to
carry our illegal activities. Not just this, our material nature does not accept the message of the
“heaven’s messengers” and “sullies” then with “mire”. Here “mire” means a lot. Forget about
accepting the Divine’s message, we humiliate the messengers, just like what happened with
Jesus Christ.

Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

Whenever a messenger from the Supreme comes here with a message and conveys the same to
us, our “fallen nature” which Sri Aurobindo compares to thorns, puts up certain defense against
such “sons of god” and turns these thorns as return for their “saviour hands of Grace”. The
Grace of Supreme always protects us from any sort of difficulties or problems or difficulties. But
our nature for which ignorance and inconscience are the Bliss, constantly rejects His Grace and ti
always makes us to take up a path that takes us away from Him. Further Sri Aurobindo says, our
nature “meets the sons of the God with death and pain”. For the messengers like Jesus Christ,
not only our Nature’s response was “pain” and “death”, I personally feel one more dimension to
these words here. If we do not accept the message from the Divine, through such messengers it
gives them pain, a sharp pain. They suffer a lot because of our reluctance to them. Any
reluctance or ignorance shown to by us to them is their “death”. Because they sacrifice their
Perfection, take a mortal birth, live in a mortal body, to uplift our Consciousness, and lead us to
Supreme. And if we do not accept their message and be those values, their sacrifice is going
waste.

To us The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have given us a message, a message to evolve from earth-
nature to Divine Nature, to Super Human Nature. The Mother has promised us that She will take
us to our real destiny. The only things we are supposed to are aspire higher and higher for such
Nature, and reject all the things which diverts us from the Divine Path and finally a Total and
Integral Surrender.

Let us complete this discussion with a prayer in Her Lotus Feet to bestow us with the aspiration
that leads us to reject all the things which keeps us away from Her and enables us to surrender
ourselves completely, totally, integrally to Her.