(This November-2025 Darshan issue of The Descent is offered at the Lotus Feet of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo on the occasion of the 99th anniversary of Their Siddhi day, 24.11.2025. In this issue, Auroprem’s Savitri Study of Book-1, Canto-5, ‘The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness,’ third revision is taken as part of our pending action of concentration and meditation in renewing and widening our existing limited understanding on it.)

Synopsis of Book-1, Canto-5:

Book 1, Canto 5 – The Yoga Of The Spirit’s Freedom and Greatness
A Brief Restatement:

            Here, the King’s adventure into the Spiritual planes has been revealed and they are divided into seven parts.

First part: The transition from ordinary life to Supramental life where ‘all (the knowledge of three times and Spiritual history of earth.) is for ever known’ (Savitri-74) and ‘all that the Gods have learned is there self known…And the secret code of the history of the world.’ (Savitri-74) The King Aswapati was able to build in Ignorance the steps of Light, saw the unshaped thought in soulless form, knew Matter pregnant with Spiritual sense, Mind dared the study of the Unknowable; Life was the gestation of the Golden Child, in the Void ‘he saw throned the Omniscience supreme.’ (Savitri-76)

Second part: He entered the experience of Vedantic ascent to ‘unseen spiritual heights’ (Savitri-76) without any descending link and solution to the problem of the earth nature. The King was like ‘The infant soul (Dvija) in its small nursery school’ and his body is ‘ilumined with the indwelling God.’ (Savitri-76) The greatness of the eternal Spirit appeared but it could not transform Matter. This height of the Spirit repels the lowness of the earthly state and hurriedly glimpsed the imperfection of heavenly things. From cradle to grave he lives with little mental hope, faint rays of happiness, thrills of flesh, Love’s broken reflexes of unity, wounded happiness, mutilated ecstasy and forfeited heavenly bliss. He realised partially the Psychic Being, above the limitation of Nature and Fate and realised partially the Spiritual being as ‘the Knower beyond Time.’ (Savitri-78)
 

Third part: Then he experienced Vedantic ascent like a burning cone of fire and descent of Consciousness, making the cosmic murmur fall still and bear the silence of the Infinite.  With the opening of King’s Spiritual being, ‘he lived immune from earthly hopes’ and ‘The Silence was his sole companion left.’ (Savitri-79) A call he received from intangible height. His Spiritual being was open towards universal light and ‘A golden influx flowed through heart and brain;’ and A Divine force and current from eternal Seas of Bliss came down into his heart, brain and into his mortal limbs; made him aware of his dynamic occult Omnipotent Source and turned to his immense Spiritual Fate. He listens to the Spiritual being as a bodyless guide and travels back in time, living ‘in the hush before the world was born.’ (Savitri-80) 

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Fourth part: King Aswapati’s this particular experience is often compared with the Mother’s experience of Divine Love in (April-13) 1962 and Supramental descent in (29th February) 1956.  His being towered into pathless height to meet bare, pure and ruthless Divine Love. A strong Descent of Might, Flame, Beauty, and violent Ecstasy leaped down and enveloped him by penetrating into nerve, heart and brain with its stupendous limbs. By the touch of Divine Love, earth Nature’s obsolete laws were overpowered and the scripts of fixed destiny were abolished.
(King’s experience of Divine Love:)

“A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,
A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,
A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,
Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs
And penetrated nerve and heart and brain
That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:” (Bliss Self-experience.) Savitri-81

“By a Power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven,
Taken sovereignly into eternal arms,
Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss,
In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
Hurried into unimaginable depths,
Upborne into immeasurable heights,
It was torn out from its mortality
And underwent a new and bourneless change.”  Savitri-81

(The Mother’s experience of 13 April, 1962)

“Everything was Personal, nothing was individual.

This was going on and on and on and on….

The certitude that what is to be done is DONE.

All the results of the Falsehood had disappeared: Death was an illusion, Sickness was an illusion, Ignorance was an illusion – something that had no reality, no existence…. Only Love, and Love, and Love, and Love – immense, formidable, stupendous, carrying everything.” The Mother’s Agenda-April-13, 1962

(King’s experience of Supramental descent)
“The great hammer-beats of a pent-up world-heart

Burst open the narrow dams that keep us safe

Against the forces of the universe.

The soul and cosmos faced as equal powers.

A boundless being in a measureless Time

Invaded Nature with the infinite;

He saw unpathed, unwalled, his titan scope.” Savitri-83

The Mother’s experience of Supramental descent on 29th February, 1956:

“This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine… As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that THE TIME HAS COME’, and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces… Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.” The Mother’s Agenda/February 29, 1956

“Even when I had that experience [the ‘first supramental manifestation’ of February 29, 1956], when the Lord said, ‘The time has come,’ well, it was not a complete descent; it was the descent of the Consciousness, the Light, and a part, an aspect of the Power. It was immediately absorbed and swallowed up by the world of Inconscience, and from that moment on it began to work in the atmosphere. But it was not THE thing that comes and gets permanently established; when that happens, we won’t need to speak of it – it will be obvious!… Although the experience of ‘56 was one more forward step, it’s not…. It’s not final.” The Mother’s Agenda/November 5, 1961

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Fifth part: King Aswapati’s experience of Vedic sacrifice (occupied a large section of this Canto, signifying its importance for a developed Soul) resulted first the descent of Divine Mother Force projected here as almighty Occultist, who plunged from graded Law of Timeless Eternity into the Time. Then up a golden ladder carrying the Soul from birth to death, the beauty of the Matter’s shapes, life’s adventure and delight and glory of the multitudinous mind, he climbed back from Time into undying Timeless Self, tying with diamond threads the Spirit’s extremes. Here in this Vedic sacrifice or Prakriti Yajna, the higher Divine Consciousness dropped to lower consciousness and then the lower consciousness soared to higher Consciousness.

“In this drop from consciousness to consciousness…

In this soar from consciousness to consciousness” Savitri-89 (Example of Vedic sacrifice.)
 

Sixth part: Then, during these double movements of consciousness, a last high world of Bliss sheath was seen where all the other nine worlds meet. In this summit Bliss world there was no Night and Sleep and the light of the Trinity supreme that of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss was visible. All that we seek here on earth are discovered there and freed the finite into boundlessness and rose into its own eternity.

“A last high world was seen where all worlds meet;

In its summit gleam where Night is not nor Sleep,

The light began of the Trinity supreme. 

All there discovered what it seeks for here.” Savitri-89

Seventh part: By the pressure of this high plane, the bottom Inconscient Sheath discovered its heart, the Divine All in the form of Inconscient Self. Thus all the ideas and feelings of Ignorance clutched to the body of the Truth. ‘A grand solution,’ (Savitri-90) due this discovery of the Inconscient Self, closed the long impasse; the music and perfect rhythm were born in Matter’s silences and a reconciling wisdom was found which lifted the striving undertone of mind, the confused refrain of human hopes, inarticulate murmur of our lives, under ground of pain, soul’s faint scattered utterances, disjointed mutterings in sleep into sweet and happy Divine Call.

“A grand solution closed the long impasse

In which the heights of mortal effort end.

A reconciling Wisdom looked on life; 

It took the striving undertones of mind 

And took the confused refrain of human hopes

And made of them a sweet and happy call;” Savitri-90
           Lastly, this Canto asks a Sadhaka to become the Voyager and Adventurer in Consciousness and to discover another Time and Space other than the experience of the divisible time and divisible space of the surface mind. And also it hints about Sadhaka’s enjoyment of the Lord’s double protection by opening towards ‘dual eternity’ (Savitri-82) of vast invasion of Divine Force above the head and below the feet and this exercise ultimately vanishes the enormous role of the dark Forces. (Savitri-82)

“A voyager upon uncharted routes 

Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,

Adventuring across enormous realms, 

He broke into another Space and Time.” Savitri-91

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OM TAT SAT

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