Scenes from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri

On August 16th and 17th, there was a theatre presentation of Scenes from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri in the small amphitheatre in the Unity Garden, close to the Matrimandir and the Banyan. Three key moments from the poem were focussed upon – the meeting of Savitri and Satyavan, Narad’s revelation that Satyavan would soon die, and the dialogue between Savitri and Death. At certain times, a narrator explained the deeper significance of the characters and the story and linked the episodes.

Dramatising this epic poem is, of course, hugely ambitious. Nevertheless, there have been many attempts to perform Savitri in Auroville, through dance, recitation and music.

In many respects, this latest performance was the most successful. Partly this was due to the magical setting of the Unity Garden amphitheatre, with the illumined pond becoming a stage and the Banyan and the Matrimandir brooding behind in the darkness. Partly it was to do with the staging itself – the background chanting of the mantra, the simple, classical costumes that evoked ancient times and eternal spaces, the austere lighting and the unaffected acting.

In fact, everything was designed to focus upon and exemplify the language of Sri Aurobindo. In this, it was very successful. As the great lines rang out through the darkness, I don’t think I have ever experienced so strongly the collision of quotidian concerns with that of a higher destiny, nor the reality of the great Forces that stand behind and are being played out behind our transient lives. In this context, it is important to remember what Sri Aurobindo wrote about Savitri: “The characters are not personified qualities, but incarnations of living and conscious Forces with whom we can enter into concrete touch”.

The dialogue with Death, in particular, was a triumph. As the menacingly hooded figure of Death pursued Satyavan’s soul round and round the amphitheatre, so Savitri followed Death, steadfastly refusing Death’s nihilism and the calls for her to accede to an ineluctable Fate. Finally, Death challenges Savitri to reveal her Power, to show the Mighty Mother’s face. When she does, in a magnificent coup de theatre Death takes off the black-cowled robe to reveal a beautiful robe of gold. The god within stands revealed.

As Savitri and Satyavan disappear into the darkness, hand-in-hand on their way back to earth, the chant of the Savitri mantra swelled, then gradually faded away. For a long time, nobody in the audience moved. Then quietly, inwardly, we made our way to the Matrimandir gate, immensely moved by the evening’s performance.

It seems unfair to single out individuals from such a fine overall performance, but Anandamayi was a superb Savitri, poised and articulate in her determination to defy Fate, and Srimoyi was a magnificently menacing figure of Death. Above all, Aryamani, the Director, did a wonderful job in selecting key passages from Savitri, and then finding ways to illustrate them that evoked the epic nature of the material without falling into the trap of empty stylization or bluster.

Spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. … Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, pp. 889-90

The Mother, in describing the nature of a true Aurovilian, said the first step is “the inner discovery by which one learns who one really is behind the social, moral, cultural, racial and hereditary appearances” and the discovery that “at the centre there is a being, free, wide and knowing, who awaits our discovery and who ought to become the acting centre of our being and our life in Auroville.”

For there is a starting-point: “when you have found within yourself the light that never wavers, the presence which can guide you with certitude, then you become aware that constantly, in everything that happens, there is something to be learnt, and that in the present state of matter there is always a progress to be made. That is how one should come, eager to find out at every minute the progress to be made. To have a life that wants to grow and perfect itself, that is what the collective ideal of Auroville should be: “A life that wants to grow and perfect itself”, and above all, not in the same way for everyone – each one in his own way.