POEMS AND POETS
36. MANTRA AND SAVITRI
What is mantra?
It is funny to go through the 'definitions' given by academics, scholars and others who have no background in or real exposure to a living 'mantric' culture. They are not born into it and pickled in it. Poor blind people, describing the elephant!
Like most things in authentic Hinduism, like karma, dharma, Atman, Brahman,we do not search for a definition but for understanding, and this comes by experience. The basic orthodox understanding is: mananaat trayate iti mantra: it is mantra which saves those who meditate on it. This 'meditation' is at many levels. This 'saving' is of many types. In Hinduism, most things cannot be straight-jacketed.
Tamil is the most ancient language of India after Sanskrit, though its present form is totally different,and the ancient form is hardly understood. The oldest extant work in it is Tholkappiam, literally meaning 'the ancient literature'. Its author is said to be Tholkappiar, literally meaning 'the Master or Personification of ancient literature', very much like Vyasa, not the real name. The real name is different according to Sanskrit sources..He writes of Mantra:
" Nirai mozhi maandar aanaiyir kilarnda
Marai mozhi taane mantiram enba"
That is Mantra which , embodied in the secret tongue, ( or embodying a secret) ,arises in a command of the Masters of the Perfect Speech . So the Ancients held.
This passage is remarkable. It employs the original Sanskrit word 'Mantra' in its Tamilised form 'mantiram'. It uses the original Tamil expression "marai" which refers to the Veda, meaning one whose real truth or purport is hidden ( from the profane or uninitiated). Enba is an expression used by ancient authors in humility, acknowledging even more ancient sources, often anonymous! Almost every expression in this 'sutra' has profound and many layered meaning. It shows the great reverence with which ancient masters approached a weighty subject, unlike the arrogant modern Ph.Ds.
Mantras themselves are of varied types and levels. There are those used for good purposes, and also for not so good or honourable ones. That is why orthodox teachers are very careful in choosing the person to whom the mantra is imparted.
Mispronounced mantra may be harmful, and misused mantra turns on the very person, soon or late.Tamil is the most ancient language of India after Sanskrit, though its present form is totally different,and the ancient form is hardly understood. The oldest extant work in it is Tholkappiam, literally meaning 'the ancient literature'. Its author is said to be Tholkappiar, literally meaning 'the Master or Personification of ancient literature', very much like Vyasa, not the real name. The real name is different according to Sanskrit sources..He writes of Mantra:
" Nirai mozhi maandar aanaiyir kilarnda
Marai mozhi taane mantiram enba"
That is Mantra which , embodied in the secret tongue, ( or embodying a secret) ,arises in a command of the Masters of the Perfect Speech . So the Ancients held.
This passage is remarkable. It employs the original Sanskrit word 'Mantra' in its Tamilised form 'mantiram'. It uses the original Tamil expression "marai" which refers to the Veda, meaning one whose real truth or purport is hidden ( from the profane or uninitiated). Enba is an expression used by ancient authors in humility, acknowledging even more ancient sources, often anonymous! Almost every expression in this 'sutra' has profound and many layered meaning. It shows the great reverence with which ancient masters approached a weighty subject, unlike the arrogant modern Ph.Ds.
Mantras themselves are of varied types and levels. There are those used for good purposes, and also for not so good or honourable ones. That is why orthodox teachers are very careful in choosing the person to whom the mantra is imparted.
Yes, the mantra has to be imparted by a person who has attained 'siddhi' -untranslatable, but it certainly does not mean mere proficiency. One picked up casually is not efficacious. The person imparting it has to have 'authority'. Only a burning lamp may light another.
I will give two instances from my personal knowledge. My grandfather used a mantra to counter scorpion-sting, which was very common in villages. One condition was that he had to be available any time, he couldn't refuse any one. It used to take about 3-4 minutes, at the end of which the pain was transferred to my grandfather's right arm, which was used in the ritual act, while the victim became free! But he was taught how to get rid of it. The second incident is not so edifying. My cousin and a few others were being taught Pitman's shorthand, ( in the good old 50s) and coached for a govt. examination, by an elderly gentleman who had retired from govt. service. as a 'camp clerk'..As the date of the examination neared, one of the boys absented from the classes, without paying up his fees. But he appeared for the examination. This gentleman came to know about it, and from where he was sitting at his residence,he uttered some mantra and struck on the ground thrice with the end of his walking stick. That boy could not move his hand and write anything on paper! This is just to show that there are mantras and mantras! The word mantra is applied to many, and any, formulas. Mantra has strict rules for its practice.
Ritual reading of some scriptures like the Ramayana, Bhagavatam ,Bhagavad Gita, Narayaneeyam or other regional language scriptures is very common in India and it is only for benign use. The scriptures contain lot of passages of mantric potency but in ritual reading they are used more as prayer than as mantra as such. The Gayatri is both mantra and prayer. ( See I.K.Taimni's book on the subject) The Vishnu Sahasranam is also very popular , being prescribed by Ayurveda, Hindu astrology, and mantra sastra as remedy for many ills. But one has to be initiated into its recital by a qualified elder. One may refer to the works of Sir John Woodroffe on mantra sastra. He was one of the few Westerners who knew what he was writing about, but he is almost never mentioned by the paper academics!
Another method used to find relief at a particularly troubled moment or answer to a pressing problem is to open the family scripture casually, and pick up the page or the item there and read it with devotion, several times. A living culture evolves its own ways with time. It is free as the bird, while academics would lay rails, mark boundaries and erect fences.
Alas! In all such cases, no one reads the scriptures as even exalted poetry!
Savitri is the longest epic poem in English literature, running into more than 24,ooo lines. In Sri Aurobindo's own words:
"......an attempt to catch something of the Upanishadic and Kalidasian movement so far as that is a possibility in English."
"....an attempt to render into poetry a symbol of things occult and spiritual."
"...Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousness"
" ...if I had to write for the general reader I could not have written Savitri at all."
..."....The thinking is not intellectual but intuitive or more than intuitive, always expressing a vision, a spiritual contact or a knowledge which has come by entering into the thing itself, by identity."
The foregoing would show that Savitri is neither an epic, nor a poem in the ordinary sense of the word. It covers an ancient legend, occurring in the Mahabharata, dear to the heart of India, and converts it into a symbol of humanity's quest for immortality. Divine Mother herself incarnates as Savitri "to hew the ways of Immortality". Sri Aurobindo worked on it for over 30 years till the very end of his earthly days. It demands a certain fitness, a certain frame of mind on the part of the readers. Almost no one familiar with Sri Aurobindo's life and Yoga reads it as literature, for mere pleasure or as entertainment or pastime. Its study is invariably taken up as sadhana.
Sri Aurobindo once said that it did not matter if one did not understand his writing on first reading ; if one is inclined to take up the reading, understanding would come in time. This is the real secret of the mantra: there is a certain force, spiritual power or influence on the sadhak, entirely depending on his sincerity of purpose. There are qualifications for the sadhak too. For such a sadhak, who is intent on spiritual realisation, Savitri serves as a guide. But one has to be careful. It describes many partial views of reality, besides the total one, as it deals with the whole gamut of human spiritual endeavour ie Yoga.
Oft inspiration with her lightning feet,
A sudden messenger from the all-seeing tops,
Traversed the soundless corridors of his mind
Bringing her rhythmic sense of hidden things.
A music spoke transcending mortal speech.
As if from a golden phial of the All-Bliss,
A joy of light, a joy of sudden sight,
A rapture of the thrilled undying Word
Poured into his heart as into an empty cup....
A portion of the inexpressible Truth
Revealed by silence to the silent soul.
Savitri, p.38
As when the mantra sinks in Yoga's ear,
Its message enters stirring the blind brain
And keeps in the dim ignorant cells its sound;
The hearer understands a form of words
And, musing on the index thought it holds,
He strives to read it with the labouring mind,
But finds bright hints,not the embodied truth:
Then, falling silent in himself to know
He meets the deeper listening of his soul:
The Word repeats itself in rhythmic strains:
Thought,vision, feeling,sense, the body's self
Are seized unutterably and he endures
An ecstasy and an immortal change.
Savitri,p 375
The first passage is an indication of the source of real mantric revelation- it is not a product of cerebration or deliberate mental straining. The second passage shows that the hearer (or reader) cannot understand it by a mental effort. He has to raise his aspiration and consciousness , quieten the mind and then understanding will dawn.His life will be changed.
Over the years, many practices and beliefs have grown around the reading of Savitri. It is not read casually, but as a spiritual discipline. Then, it is said it should be read methodically. There are those who use for guidance, by opening and reading at random. There are many passages which provide inspiration to any spiritual aspirant.
I look upon Savitri primarily as mantric poem of the highest order. Sri Aurobindo said that the true poetry of the future will have to contain " a supreme harmony of five eternal powers": Truth, Beauty, Delight, Life, and the Spirit. ( The Future Poetry, p.222) Savitri is the supreme example we have of this combination in modern times, in English. About mantra, Sri Aurobindo wrote that it is-
" the highest and intensest revealing form of poetic thought and expression. What the Vedic poets meant by the Mantra was an inspired and revealed seeing and visioned thinking, attended by a realisation, to use the ponderous but necessary modern word, of some inmost truth of God and self and man and Nature and cosmos and life and thing and thought and experience and deed. ....came on the wings of a great soul rhythm, chandas."
" a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and its very truth".The Future Poetry, Part II, chap 1.
We can see what Mantra is. It is in this sense that Savitri is both poem and mantra!
Note: SAVITRI is published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram , who hold the copyright, in many editions. See Sri A.S.Dalal's compilation from Savitri, "The God-Touch".
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