A summary of Savitri

Aswapati, the Lord of Life, embodies the aspiration of the awakened man for liberation from Ignorance into the freedom of the Spirit and for the perfection of life into the divine verities of Knowledge, Power, Bliss, Immortality. He is engaged in a multiple Yoga to acquire Self-Knowledge, World-Knowledge and God-Knowledge. At the summit of his spiritual achievements, he prays to the Divine Creatrix to come down into the mortal world, for only so can it be redeemed. The Divine Mother responds by sending down Her special Grace that takes birth in human form as Savitri. Savitri grows among men on earth shedding her innate splendour wherever she is, brightening up all in her environs. At the right time she goes in quest of her life's partner and chooses Satyavan—man of truth. The marriage takes place in spite of Narad's dire prophecy of Satyavan's death and on the appointed day, Death confronts Satyavan, who represents Man vainly seeking to establish Truth in the conditions of mortality. But the Divine Grace that is Savitri battles with the Protagonist of Negation, dissolves his form with the Light of her Spirit and wins immortality for Man and the world he builds. Sri Aurobindo fills the frame of the legend with a wealth of spiritual and mystic imagery, invests the characters with a profound evolutionary significance and lifts it up into an epic of the Conquest of Death for Man by the Divine Grace. Like the Veda which is the Book of Knowledge for the current age, Savitri is the Revelation for the New Age of the Spirit that is dawning. Like the Veda it yields different meanings to different minds.Sri M. P. Pandit goes through Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol and provides us a systematic prose summary of the poem with its key issues, points and organization, opening up Sri Aurobindo’s master work in a useful and concise way.