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An Aurobindonian Interpretation—

The Fourfold Order and the Four Powers of the Divine Mother 

by RY Deshpande
5 December 2006

Purusha Sukta in the Rig Veda (X: 90) celebrates famously the Sacrifice of the Purusha performed by the Gods, the Rishis and the Sadhyas, the accomplished celestial beings. All is established in the Sacrifice and therefore Sacrifice is the best means of achieving whatever has to be achieved, asserts a scriptural text. What did these sacrificers intend to achieve by performing the difficult sacrifice? the cosmic order, the possibility for growth, conquest, expansion, winning new grounds, making the law of the higher truth-existence operational in the universal functioning, instituting the dharma? Indeed, it was for that, and only by it could they themselves ascend to greater realms of immortality. It is in the Sacrifice of the Purusha, the Holocaust of the primal Being, Yajna of the Great Person that the incomparable deed was carried out. In an enterprising act, by making an offering of this Purusha himself, the Male who is the begetter of things in all the worlds was this Yajna completed. Its jubilation in the Rig Veda is a forceful triumph-song of the Creator poised for Cosmic Action,—“a profound composition,” as Sri Aurobindo says about it. 

Cosmic activity got initiated in the performance of this Yajna. It is said that Brahma remained inactive “because of not knowing” and he was advised, as we have in the Sakalya Bramhana, to perform a Yajna. “From your sacrificed body you shall create bodies for all living creatures, as you have done in Kalpas before this, in the earlier Eras.” The recommended Yajna was the Sarvahuta Yajna, the Offering of All, presented in the Purusha Sukta. In it Male the Begetter was the Ahuti, the sacrificial offering to the Mystic Fire; Spring and Autumn and Summer in the completeness of cyclic Time were the elements for the offering; the Gods, Sadhyas the accomplished beings, and the Rishis were the Ritviks, the priests performing the Yajna; in it all Nature was the Barhisha, the Altar. And what was the yield of the Yajna? It consisted of clarified butter mixed with white curd, and the birds and the beasts, the Sun, the Moon, the Wind-God, and Indra and Agni, and the Metres and the Hymns and the Chants, and the realms of bright dwelling, and the Ordinances of the Truth, the Directives of the Dharma. To establish all this, the sacrifice was performed; in it Sacrifice itself became a sacrifice in greatness of the cosmic working. Thus in it the Gods ascended to heaven, opening the path of immortality. 

We shall first go though the text with a free rendering, more in terms of its swift intuitive-perceptive sense than the exact literary phrasing or contents, in the suppleness of the meaning and the shades the roots of the words bear. This is more an interpretative trans-creation than the strict analytic-discursive argument presented about the process of this cosmic functioning. In fact the Sukta is a small beautiful poem in sixteen stanzas, a well-structured, well-argued well-presented significant thesis in poetry extending to universal dimensions. Such indeed is the power of all genuine mystic speech which has found the original expression, an expression that springs up from the depths of luminous silence. Its metaphor is bold, such as the transcendental Purusha being a four-footed creature, like Vamadeva’s Agni the Bull with four horns; its lyricism is dense and classical, functional as well as suggestive; its symbolism is vibrant with the life of the object that it represents; its image is Keatsian, and minute and sharp, the sight behind it making the invisible at once visible, tangible; its lines, coming from infinity, have the power to carry us to the infinity to which they go, to which they belong. They bring the knowledge they possess in such abundance and in such exaltation. And yet we must appreciate that the language of the Purusha Sukta is essentially ritualistic. To the modern mind it might appear archaic and it will be difficult for it to fully or enthusiastically comprehend it; but it is a highly charged expression. There is also the difficulty that its idiom belonging to the classical Sanskrit can be taken in several ways, both literal and symbolic, aspects whose deeper psychological connotations we have lost in the intervening centuries. However, there is something astonishing also about the hymn. Though it is a composition belonging to the Vedic period, it is unusually fresh even today. What is necessary is to know how to enter into its living spirit and move in its dynamism which is powerful as well as felicitous. 

From a psycho-spiritual point of view we can prepare ourselves to enter into its richness, into its contents and meaning by absorbing what Sri Aurobindo has written in The Essays on the Gita: “All this manifold universe comes into birth and is constantly maintained by God’s giving of himself and his powers and the lavish outflow of his self and spirit into all these existences; universal being, says the Veda, is the sacrifice of the Purusha. All the action of the perfected soul will be even such a constant divine giving of itself and its powers, an outflowing of the knowledge, light, strength, love, joy, helpful shakti which it possesses in the Divine.” But first let us hurriedly run through the Purusha Sukta. 

The Sukta-text as we have in the Tenth Mandala of the Rig Veda, consisting of sixteen stanzas, is reproduced in the following. A possible interpretative-suggestive rendering is also presented; the intention is not only to get some general feel of what it is trying to convey, but also to have an idea of its charged ambiance so as to move in its vibrancy. 

sahasra śīrşā puruşah sahasrākşah sahasrapāt |

sa bhÅ«mim vishvato vÅ—tvātyatiÅŸÅ£had daśāngulam ||1|| 

Purusha the Cosmic Being has a thousand heads, and he has a thousand eyes and a thousand feet to walk; he has chosen this bhÅ«mi the Earth for his growth, for increase, to extend himself, to widen; while doing so, he stands apart by the width of ten fingers, far seeming yet close to this chosen place. 

puruşa évédam sarvam yadbhutam yaccha bhavyam |

utāmÅ—tatvasyéśāno yadannénātirohati ||2|| 

This Purusha alone, and none else, is all what had been and what shall be, that which existed in the extreme past, and that which shall appear in the times to come; truly, he is the Lord of the immortal realms, excellent, and reigning over the worlds, Ishan, and also of that which grows abundantly by food, in the richness of matter. 

étāvānasya mahimāto jyāyāmccha pūruşah |

pādosya vishvā bhÅ«tāni tripādasyāmÅ—tam divi ||3||  

All that is here, that is visible, that indeed is his greatness, but much more is the glory and greatness, the distinction of the Purusha; this, what is seen is, just one-fourth of him, one leg of the creature, the other three, invisible, being in the heaven of immortality. 

tripādūrdhva udaitpuruşaha pādosyéhābhavat punah |

tato viÅŸvaň vyakrāmatsāśanānaÅ›ané abhi ||4||   

With those other three parts this great Purusha ascended above, went up to the heaven of immortality; one alone remained here, this one becoming again and again, and from this came, extending over every side, sentient and insentient objects, objects and beings, those eat and those eat not. 

tasmādvirāļajāyata virājo adhi pūruşah |

sa jāto atyarichyata paschādbhÅ«mimatho purah ||5|| 

Thence was born Viraj, the Splendid, the Excellent, the King, and in this birth of Viraj came things concerning the Purusha; thus born, he grew at once large, exceedingly large, eastward and westward, extending beyond the Earth, both behind and in the front. 

yatpuruşéna havişā dévā yajnamatanvata |

vasanto asyāsÄ«dājyam grÄ«ÅŸma idhmah Å›araddhavih ||6||  

Even as the Gods performed the Yajna, this Purusha himself was made a sacrificial offering, an oblation to the great Mystic Fire. The Spring became the clarified butter, and the Summer the Fire-wood, and the Autumn the burnt offering to the Yajna. 

tam yajnam barhişipraukşan puruşam jātamagratah |

téna dévā ayajanta sādhyā Å—ÅŸyascha yé ||7||  

That splendid Being, Purusha, who was born before the beginning of things, ahead of everything, the earliest, they made him the oblation in the Yajna; on the seat of sacred grass they sprinkled on him the consecrated water, the Accomplished and the Seers and the Gods performed the sacrifice.  

tasmādyajnāt sarvahutah sambhŗtam pŗşadājyam |

paśūn tāmschakré vāyavyānāraņyān grāmāscha yé ||8||  

This was the Sarvahuta Yajna, Offering of the All, made by them, and from it was obtained clarified butter mixed with coagulated milk; from it winged forth birds flying in the air, and beasts in the wild woods, and the meek ones of the small villages. 

tasmādyajnāt sarvahutah ŗchah sāmāni jajňiré |

chhandhāmsi jajňiré tasmāddyajustasmādajāyata ||9|| 

From that Sarvahuta Yajna in which the Cosmic Being was sacrificed came the hymns of the Rig Veda, and the songs of praise, the chants of the Sama Veda, the Riks and the Samans; in them were born the Metres that govern the movements of the things in the universe, and soon the conduct of the rites, the sacrificial formulae of the Yajur Veda. 

tasmādashvā ajāyanta yé ké chobhayādatah |

gāvo ha jajňiré tasmāt tasmādjjātā ajāvayah ||10|| 

Horses, and creatures with only one row of teeth, and with two rows one in each jaw, and the cattle of the pasteur, the kine, and the goats, and the sheep were born in that sacrifice.  

yatpuruşam vyadadhuh katidhā vyakalpayan |

mukham kimasya kau bāhÅ« kā urÅ« pādā uchyété ||11||  

When this Purusha was dismembered, in how many parts did they do so? and how did they specify these parts? in what forms they shaped him? What became of his mouth, and by what do they call his arms, his thighs, and his feet, how are these named? 

brāhmaņosya mukhamāsīdbāhū rājanyah kŗtah |

urÅ« tadasya yadvaiÅ›yah padbhyām Å›udro ajāyata ||12|| 

His head is the Brahmin, the wise and the learned, and his arms became Rajanya, the king, the man of valour; what were his thighs they were made into Vaishya, the man of transaction, the tradesman and the dealer and the agriculturist, even as his two feet turned into Shudra, the labourer and the artisan and the doer of perfect works.  

chandramā manaso jātaschakşoh sūryo ajāyata |

mukhādindraschāgnischa prāņādvāyurajāyata ||13|| 

From his mind was born the Moon, and the Sun had the birth in his two eyes; from the mouth came Indra and Agni, and from his breath issued forth the Wind-God, Vayu. 

nābhyā āsīdantarikşam śīrşņo dyauh samavartata |

padhyām bhÅ«mirdiÅ›ah srotrāttathā lokāmm akalpayan ||14||  

From the navel of this Purusha appeared the mid-region, and from the crown of his head spanned out celestial realms, and Bhumi the Earth from his feet, and from the ears the ten directions; by the sheer power of formulation came into existence organised worlds. 

saptāsyāsan paridhayastrih sapta samidhah kŗtāh |

dévā yaddyajnam tanvānā abadhnan puruÅŸam paÅ›um ||15|| 

Seven were the pieces of the fuel-wood laid around the Fire, and were used three times seven the fuel sticks, samidhah; in this Yajna, in which the Gods are the performers of the rite, they tied this Purusha in the manner of a sacrificial animal.  

yajnéna yajnamayajanta dévāstāni dharmāņi prathamānyāsan |

té ha nākam mahimānah sachanta yatra pÅ«rvé sādhyāh santi dévāh ||16|| 

By the Yajna did the Gods perform the Yajna, Sacrifice in the sacrifice as a sacrifice, and in it were established the first associated Ordinances of the Truth; such in their excellence and in their glory did in them the Gods ascend to heaven, there where they were the earlier Gods and the Achievers, the Claimers of the Truth everywhere. 

The language of the hymn is at once revelatory and powerful; it has mantric force in it: its inspired diction carries the intention of the sacrificers to their desired fulfilment. The theandric aspect in which the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas are involved has in it the full merit of accomplishing what is proposed to be accomplished. Out of the body of the Cosmic Purusha, the one-fourth who remained here, the Beast who had his one leg dangling down in the cosmic sphere, the Purusha whom the sacrificers sacrificed in the Yajna, Viraj the first divine emanation in the immense operation, arose the realms of grandeur, and the powers and divinities in several functionings, and the rhythms of the ever-increasing truth and the formulations of the righteous conduct, and the fourfold order of society that presently governs all the movements and operations of the earthly world. The focal point in this Sacrifice of the Purusha is Bhumi, the Earth for his growth, for propagation, for riches, prosperity, to extend himself in ten directions of the creation. This sacrifice indeed is the Transcendent’s own willing and felicitous sacrifice, a wise and judicious rewarding investment in the Cosmos, showing also his great concern for the creation. By Yajna the process was set into motion; by Yoga it will be fulfilled. 

In the Bhagavata Purana there is an elaborate discourse given by Brahma himself to the sage Narad. Narad wanted to understand the essence of the truth in the universe, wisdom which makes one realise the principles of the spirit, Atmatatva. The Creator concedes that it is actually Vasudeva himself who is the Begetter of the worlds and their inhabitants. “The macrocosm in the form of an egg lay on the causal waters in a lifeless condition for a thousand years. With the help of Time as well as of the destiny and innate disposition of the individual souls, however, at the end of this period the Lord infused life into this egg. Bursting that cosmic egg, issued therefrom the same Cosmic Being with thousands of thighs, feet, arms, and eyes and thousands of faces and heads too. It is in his limbs that the wise locate the various worlds comprised in this universe—the seven lower spheres below his waist and the seven higher spheres above his hips and loins. The Brahmin represents the mouth of this Cosmic Being, and the Kshatriya his arms. The Vaishya emanated from the Lord’s thighs and the Shudra from his feet.” The Purana describes the result but does not give the process, except by saying that it was the Will of the Lord and the agent to effect it was Time, Kala. Purusha Sukta provides the details. 

It is said that Purusha Sukta “speaks of the restoration of the divinity of creation by the supreme holocaust of the Divine. It is this sacrifice that distributes the divinity among the Gods, the Prajas, and the whole of the universe enabling them to move jointly and integrally toward Immortality.” But what seems to be presented in the Sukta is only one particular aspect of the Creation; it is an important aspect, an episode no doubt, but it is just an episode in the sequence of countless and recondite operations that go in making this great and meaningful involutionary-evolutionary Becoming. We must understand that the author of the hymn was not setting himself to write a modern thesis or treatise giving the details of the creation or its processes, an exhaustive document with its prolegomenon and epilogue; instead, what is given is the dense but luminous esoteric knowledge of the things, with one aspect in view, one particular window opened out for seeing them. It was written in a milieu in which the alert and perceptive receiver at once got in contact with the reality from which it had originated; it had taken for granted the common knowledge of the tradition and it is this knowledge which was further extended or enriched by such explorative-creative presentations. It was in fact the mode of establishing a new power of the spirit in the ready consciousness of the race. It contributed to progress in knowledge. There are a number of aspects present in the Sukta: the transcendental Absolute poised for manifestation, its necessary projection in the cosmic field, holding back its own glory and majesty, its aishwarya, its Ishwarahood in order that multiplicity might become possible, putting into operation Four Qualities, Four Powers of the divine Person in the universal play, return of the Gods to their earlier status,—these are astounding events narrated by it. And these have been established by doing Yajna, the Path of Progress charted out by the Vedic Rishis. 

About Yajna or Sacrifice, Sri Aurobindo writes: “The law of sacrifice is the common divine action that was thrown out into the world in its beginning as a symbol of the solidarity of the universe. It is by the attraction of this law that a divinising principle, a saving power descends to limit and correct and gradually to eliminate the errors of an egoistic and self-divided creation. This descent, this sacrifice of the Purusha, the Divine Soul submitting itself to Force and Matter so that it may inform and illuminate them, is the seed of redemption of this world of Inconscience and Ignorance. ‘For with sacrifice as their companion,’ says the Gita, ‘the All-Father created these peoples.’ ” In the Gita we have: “From food creatures come into being, from rain is the birth of food, from sacrifice comes into being the rain, sacrifice is born of work; work know to be born of Brahman, Brahman is born of the Immutable; therefore is the all-pervading Brahman established in the sacrifice.” And again: “Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.” In Savitri there is a situation when the God of Death just refuses to yield to the demands of Savitri, she claiming the soul of Satyavan back. In fact it is a kind of deadlock. The stubborn irredeemable God has snatched the soul of her lover and husband, and she does not see any prospect of its release from the noose. But she is intent upon her silent will and, in her meditation’s house, she summons her “spirit’s flame of conscient force”. There she observes 

Imperishable, a tongue of sacrifice,

[Flaming] unquenched upon the central hearth

Where burns for the high house-lord and his mate

The homestead’s sentinel and witness fire

From which the altars of the gods are lit. 

Ishwara and Ishwari themselves are doing together the Yajna in the heart of Savitri and the result at once is that she becomes the controller of events in the occult battle against the God of Death. Such is the efficacy of the Vedic Yajna. 

The power and preeminence of the supreme Purusha are indescribable, the mahimā of the Non-manifest is incomprehensible; even as luminous being he indeed is with a form that cannot be figured out, divyam puruÅŸam achintya rÅ«pam, as the Gita would say. But when turned towards transcendental manifestation he becomes fourfold, a Beast with Four Legs, a Bull with Vamadeva’s Four Mystic Horns, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss-Knowledge, Sat-Chit-Ananda-Vijnan. There he is the Primal God, Adi Deva, the Ancient or Purana Purusha, there the supreme Abode, Param Nidhan wherein all abide. He as Vijnan Purusha, the Creator of the Worlds projects himself into cosmic working. He sacrifices his royalty, his greatness, his splendour and wealth, his vaibhava, and assumes the limitations for the purposes of world manifestation.  While in the transcendent, he has all the richnesses, and has all its luminous dynamism; but here in the projected sphere he acts through his delegate, the Overmind Purusha in the greatness of multiplicity of every kind, with a thousand heads and a thousand eyes and a thousand feet. It is he who can perhaps be identified with the Vedic Vishvakarman or with Viraj of the Purusha Sukta.  About Vishvakarman the maker of the worlds, we have the following description in the Rig Veda: he has his eyes on all sides, a mouth on all sides, arms and feet in all sides, he who has given rise to earth and heaven, he the one who gives commands to them all. 

We could perhaps appreciate it better in the modern language as we have in The Essays on the Gita: “Vasudeva, the eternal Being, is all, says the Gita. He is the Brahman, consciously supports and originates all from his higher spiritual nature, consciously here becomes all things in a nature of intelligence, mind, life and sense and objective phenomenon of material existence. The Jiva is he in that spiritual nature of the Eternal, his eternal multiplicity, his self-vision from many centres of conscious self-power. God, Nature and Jiva are the three terms of existence, and these three are one being. How does this Being manifest himself in cosmos? First as the immutable timeless self omnipresent and all-supporting which is in its eternity being and not becoming. Then, held in that being there is an essential power or spiritual principle of self-becoming, svabhāva, through which by spiritual self-vision it determines and expresses, creates by liberation all that is latent or contained in its own existence. The power or the energy of that self-becoming looses forth into universal action, Karma, all that is thus determined in the spirit. All creation is this action, is this working of the essential nature, is Karma. But it is developed here in a mutable Nature of intelligence, mind, life, sense and form-objectivity of material phenomenon actually cut off from the absolute light and limited by the Ignorance. All its workings become there a sacrifice of the soul in Nature to the supreme Soul secret within her, and the supreme Godhead dwells therefore in all as the Master of their sacrifice, whose presence and power govern it and whose self-knowledge and delight of being receive it. To know this is to have the right knowledge of the universe and the vision of God in the cosmos... .”  

The sense of the root pÅ— from which the word Purusha comes is: to fill, to place, set, fix, direct, cast; to cause to work; to protect, maintain, sustain; to promote, advance; and the root sah means: he; it is ‘he who is complete’, or ‘who is everywhere’. Purusha has also the connotation of the seven divine or active principles of which the universe was formed. Purusha is not only the individual and the cosmic Man; he is also the personal aspect of the whole reality, they all having an essential internal relationship. Everything that is, is a member of the one and unique Purusha. Such could be the connection with the Dashangula Purusha the Sukta speaks of, the Purusha who stands just ten-finger-width away from us. In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo speaks of the three poises of the Non-Manifest Supreme, the Avyakta, the first Nothingness of Savitri. In the Philosophy of the Upanishads he writes about Parabrahman in the course of evolving phenomena as follows: “The first condition is called avyakta, the state previous to manifestation, in which all things are involved, but in which nothing is expressed or imaged, the state of ideality, undifferentiated but pregnant of differentiation…” Beyond them all, beyond Parabrahman is the utter Unknowable about which it is pointless to speak. But what is profitable to speak of is the Infinite of the Chhandogya Upanishad. Sanatkumar tells Narad that, which is Infinite is the plenum and is alone Happiness, tatsukham. The Rishi calls it Bhuma. The concept of Bhuma is something very rich indeed. In the pure Infinite all aspects such as Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, Knowledge, Power, everything are kind of frozen entities, they do not grow, expand, gather richnesses, the static Brahman. But that is what Bhuma does; he brings in the dynamism of growth, advance, progress, increase, evolution. The root meaning of the word is “to grow”; its feminine is Bhumi, who upholds growth. And this Bhumi is our Earth, the precious little Earth where alone growth is possible, growth by the process of evolution. That makes Earth a “significant centre” of the universe, upholding the spiritual geo-centricity. No wonder, our central being got attracted by it and opted for the adventure of the Strange, with the confidence of finding a joy that is new and ever-growing, ever-widening. It wanted to discover new wealth and hence it came here, kind of plunged into the obscure unknown. The triple poise of the Supreme is described, in the language of the Gita, in terms of Kshara-Akshara-Uttama Purusha. In the metaphysical description these are the aspects of one and single indivisible Reality, the Transcendental-Universal-Individual, the Absolute poised for manifestation. “This triple aspect of the reality must be included in the total truth of the soul and of the cosmic manifestation, and this necessity must determine the ultimate trend of the process of evolutionary Nature,” writes Sri Aurobindo. Of this triple aspect of Reality, the three poises, the Purusha Sukta is chiefly concerned with the Cosmic Poise, the Cosmic Being. In it the concept of Dashangula Purusha becomes felicitous indeed, in the warmth of immanence of the Divine. If we have to quote Paul Eluard that, “there is another world, but it is in this one,” then “in this one” refers to Bhumi the Earth with the “another world” entering into it,—because of the Sacrifice of the Purusha. 

The other important idea, and a very daring idea certainly, the Sukta has introduced is of the dismemberment of the Sacrificial Being, Viraj, an idea which is not found anywhere else in the early Vedic revelations. While the Supreme Being who stands beyond all that is, beyond everything and whose majesty and preeminence, whose mahimā cannot be described there are, apart from transcendental aspects, aspects of manifestation also. It is in that specific context, of manifestation, that the Sukta, which is in a way the hymn of cosmic organisation and functioning, celebrates exultantly the Sacrifice of the Purusha. The Purusha in his cosmic poise has given up his sovereignty of the transcendental existence and accepted the travail of the lower working, Purusha subjecting himself to Prakriti. That indisputably is tyāga; but much more than tyāga or abandonment or renunciation it is the sacrifice, a willing sacrifice made by the Purusha, subjecting himself to be victimised; he has offered himself to be consumed in the Mystic Fire for the purposes of creation. “Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire.” If Yajna is a mechanism, a means to initiate a certain cosmic operation, then the readiness of the Purusha to offer himself in sacrifice becomes a splendid act indeed, absolutely a worthy and creditable act which can be taken up only by such a being. But it seems that it has also to be prompted by somebody else. “From your sacrificed body, you shall create bodies for all living creatures, as you have done in Kalpas before this, in the earlier Eras,”—that was the advice given to Brahma before he undertook the performance of the Sarvahuta Yajna. The desire, the urge, the impulse, the goodwill of the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas compelled him to accept the proposal, seeing that thus alone could the cosmic operation get going. It is in his consent that the fiery Yajna was performed, with himself becoming the Fire-offering, Ahuti. Only when Brahma agreed to sacrifice his body and when the sacrifice was performed that new bodies could be created. In the Vedic terminology, it is the Purusha who has been made the ritualistic food prepared for sacrifice, food to be given to the Yajna-Purusha; he responded to the invocation of the contemplators and doers of the sacrifice and offered himself voluntarily for the purpose. But what kind of bodies came out of this Sarvahuta Yajna? These were bodies subject to decay-disintegration-death. These bodies are subject to the laws of the mortal world; progress in life here becomes possible by accepting death as an efficient mechanism, a necessary mechanism also in the present mode of growth. That is the scope of the Vedic Sarvahuta Yajna. If there has to be progress in the truth-dynamism of immortality then another kind of Yajna will have to be performed. Wasn’t that the work the Mother and Sri Aurobindo doing? We shall see it separately. 

But as far as the Sarvahuta Yajna is concerned, the deed was done. But how was the Purusha dismembered? He was cut up into four parts, head-arms-thighs-legs, and offered in the Yajna. The names given to these four parts are: Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra which essentially connote four qualities that have entered into the cosmic scheme, four qualities, four svabhāvas, the fourfold soul-force operational in the present working. About it Sri Aurobindo writes as follows: “…in the soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents itself as a fourfold effective Power, catur-vyÅ«ha, a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labour and service, and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and inner and outer operation of these four things. The ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold type of active human personality and nature built out of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal, suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and is one of some considerable importance in the perfection of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament, soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free spiritual Shakti in which they find their culmination and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya or Shudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth of our being. The psychological fact is that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive Shakti within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life. But they are more or less present in all men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power.” In the Gita, Krishna also asserts this fourfold order, this caturvarņa, as created by him, created according to the divisions of quality and active function. Indeed, this caturvarņa is present everywhere, in all the societies and during all the periods of time. Plato and Kant and Einstein were Brahmins, Julius Caesar and Eisenhower and Alexander the Great were Kshatriyas, Henri Ford and DuPont or the present-day Bill Gates make the Vaishyas, the factory worker and the smith and the bank employee and the government servant including the highest secretary are Shudras. That is the eternal caturvarņa. In the Indian social organisation, however, caturvarņa later became four castes. That was the Great Fall which is unfortunate, speaking of the decadent nature of the society; but the more unfortunate result is that the original caturvarņa got much maligned in the process. Its justification nor disownment rests with the dead society. What is necessary is that the maligned system has to be redeemed by breathing the spiritual fire into it—as fire is the purifier of everything, Agni Pavaka as the Veda speaks of Agni the Mystic Fire. This has got to be corrected, this crude distortion of caturvarņa; original caturvarņa needs to be recovered in its true sense. Perhaps another Sarvahuta Yajna needs be performed again. 

It is interesting to note how Sri Aurobindo looks at caturvarņa from the point of view of the Vaishnava experience. It is as follows: Vishnu as the Sustainer of the Creation has four forms: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna, and  Aniruddha. Mahavira is the Brahmin possessing Knowledge and Light and Awareness; Balarama embodies Kshatriya quality of Force and Dynamism; Pradyumna the Vaishya is one who expresses the quality of Love and Beauty; Aniruddha is Shudra with competent service, and with the quality of organisation and execution in details; it was he who had prompted Brahma to do the Sarvahuta Yajna when he had remained inactive. If such is the origin of the four qualities, then how can these be disputed anywhere or at any time? In fact, their truth is present in all the four, in varying degrees in all the individuals and in all societies or functioning groups, including the corporate organisations.

 
Vivekananda brings out the yogic aspect of the caturvarņa in another beautiful manner, in a forceful manner indeed. When he speaks of Jnana Yoga, Raja Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Karma Yoga he is also suggesting the methods available for the Divine’s realisation for the corresponding type or quality or cast of the soul present in this manifestation. That is the marvellous truth of caturvarņa, founded in the Sacrifice of the Purusha.  

The Vedic Purusha Sukta thus becomes very meaningful because of the fundamentals it provides to us in its suggestive-intuitive but loaded language. The appearance of the four aspects is only the beginning in the process of cosmic manifestation, and only when these four have founded their harmony and freedom can other aspects, the higher powers descend into it. At a deeper level, it is the impregnation of the material existence that is spoken of by it. God seems to become greater by the sacrifice, by relinquishment without ceding anything, by the fall to initiate from timelessness the works of Time. 

The Mother explains the aspect of Sacrifice of the Purusha as follows: “The Divine has sacrificed Himself in Matter to awaken consciousness in Matter, which had become inconscient. And it is this sacrifice, this giving of the Divine in Matter, that is to say, His dispersion in Matter, which justifies the sacrifice of Matter to the Divine and makes it obligatory; for it is one and the same reciprocal movement. It is because the Divine has given Himself in Matter and scattered Himself everywhere in Matter to awaken it to the divine consciousness, that Matter is automatically under the obligation to give itself to the Divine. It is a mutual and reciprocal sacrifice. And this is the great secret of the Gita: the affirmation of the divine Presence in the very heart of Matter. And that is why, Matter must sacrifice itself to the Divine, automatically, even unconsciously—whether one wants it or not, this is what happens.”  

The Sacrifice of the Purusha is a Vedic image. It is the Being who is projecting himself in the Cosmic and Individual play of manifestation. What is understood in it is that he is doing it by the power of his own Purushahood, Consciousness-Force inherently present in the Truth-Existence, in the uncleavable oneness of the Presence-and-Power the Presence acting because of his self-potency, of the full executive Power resting in him, by resort to his own nature, prakÅ—ti.m svām, as the Gita would say. 

Sri Aurobindo views this Holocaust of the Divine Soul not in terms of the Being but in terms of the Consciousness-Force, the creation of the worlds and beings being the task of the Divine Shakti, the executrix She, the Mother of all that is here and that shall be here. 

Our life is a holocaust of the Supreme.

The great World-Mother by her sacrifice

Has made her soul the body of our state;

Accepting sorrow and unconsciousness

Divinity's lapse from its own splendours wove

The many-patterned ground of all we are. 

He says, “…this is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. The higher or transcendental Nature, Para Prakriti operating in the field of Ignorance as Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force. 

About the “holocaust of Prakriti”, Sri Aurobindo mentions both the impersonal and personal aspects of the Sacrifice: “The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda.” 

The three poises of the Consciousness-Force, the Divine Mother are: the Transcendental as the original supreme Shakti standing above the worlds and linking the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme; the Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti creating all these beings and these worlds, containing and entering, supporting and conducting all these million processes and forces; the Individual, she embodying the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, making them living and near to us and mediating between human personality and the divine Nature. It is all her work, extension and expansion of her dynamism. The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted to her by the Supreme. Each of the worlds is one play of the Mahashakti, her chid-vilāsa. At the summit of this manifestation there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands as the unveiled eternal Power. Nearer to us are the worlds of the supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. But here are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from her source, of which the earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too is upheld by the Universal Mother, guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti. This is what we have in Sri Aurobindo’s little Masterpiece The Mother. 

The Mother’s powers and personalities here are for a cosmic work. Sri Aurobindo described four of them in his letter to Kapali Shastri which was included afterwards in that little Masterpiece. These four powers in the cosmic working are: Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, and Mahasaraswati, they respectively having the qualities of Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, and Perfection. These four powers of the Mother are the fourfold soul’s forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things. It is because of them that the present cosmic order is functioning. 

The equivalence of the terms Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection of The Mother and Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra of the Purusha Sukta is striking. In fact, both are the same: the Vedic phraseology based on the Purusha-principle as the Creator and the other viewing it as chid-vilāsa, the presentation of Consciousness-Force as the Executive She —both are one and the same. If the work of the highest Consciousness-Force, the Divine Mother, supreme Shakti is the work of manifestation, then that manifestation in the universe is through her four great powers as Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati. The Shakti formulation given to us by Sri Aurobindo is practically absent in the Veda; but that does not mean that it does not recognise the aspect of manifestation through the creative power of the Being or Purusha. Essentially, both are describing the same reality. At a deeper level, the Will of the Purusha is put into action by the Prakriti: he wills; she executes,—that is the formula describing the entire design or system of operation. “His soul, silent, supports the world and her,” and “She through his witness sight and motion of might unrolls the material of her cosmic act.” 

We may therefore with some justification use both the Purusha and Prakriti formulations interchangeably. Out of the Holocaust of Prakriti got established the Four Powers: Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati. Out of the Sacrifice of the Purusha arose the Four Qualities: Brahmin-Kshatriya-Vaishya-Shudra. In the Sarvahuta Yajna the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas willed their appearance, brought about from the body of the sacrificed Purusha this cosmic creation. If the Holocaust of the Prakriti is also the result of a similarly willed action, then the extent and the scope of work of the Four Powers are then necessarily governed by that will. No doubt, they are great Presences, and that the “human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to support their mighty action.” But there are also “other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down.” Sarvahuta Yajna is not adequate to bring them down in the cosmic functioning. The will of the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas falls short of it.  

What does that mean? Let us put it in the manner of the following question: Is the Sacrifice of the Purusha a Divine Will that is constantly streaming into the Avidya and driving the evolutionary process? Or is the sacrifice the “beginning”, an Involution and the expectation of a “Return”, or an entry by miracle but not a continuing entry? Firstly, the Sacrifice of the Purusha is not happening directly as a result of the Divine Will; it was willed by the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas. Therefore the aspect of constant streaming of the Divine Will must be seen in the context of the evolutionary progress that has so far been made and is not always automatic, it cannot be taken for granted; there has to be the invocation from below and there has to be the needed spiritual support, ādhāra, for the action to take place here. It is quite important to recognise the fact that invocation for the divine descent or the sacrifice is not just a one-time affair, that things will keep on happening afterwards. Evolution or Divine Manifestation upon Earth is not a linear process, a Newtonian-Cartesian formulation, a mechanical chain of events; there are strands cutting into strands, and there are wheels within wheels making it a multi-parametric business, with known and unknown factors interwoven into it. The basic line, its fundamental raison d’étre is understandable and recognisable; it is also enviable and attractive, but the details remain complex and uncertain. Call it Yoga, call it Tapasya, call it Yajna, there has to be a call from below, an ardent aspiration, invocation, and then only can the answering Grace descend. The Four Powers appeared in response to a call. 

“There are,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth spirit.” But these Four Powers—Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection or Maheshwari-Mahakali-Mahalakshmi-Mahasaraswati— were brought down, if we go by the Purusha Sukta description, by the Gods, the Rishis, and the Sadhyas, they performing the Sarvahuta Yajna and making their appearance here possible. But this Yajna, as we have seen, seems to prove inadequate to bring down other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, Personalities whose presence is indispensable if evolution has to step from Ignorance into Knowledge. In Sri Aurobindo we have the following: “There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation,—most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe...” But then he adds, importantly: “Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible.”  

If there are “Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation,” the question is: What is that Yajna that can bring down those indispensable Presences, particularly that Personality of Ecstasy and Ananda? and who is going to do that Yajna? That leads to another subsidiary issue: Are we ready to receive her? Indeed, only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom can she come down. Our collective life here at the moment does not meet that demand and therefore the work which we have to do is to establish life based on Wisdom-Strength-Harmony-Perfection. They are there in the cosmic field, and they are working also constantly; but they have to become a part of our being, individual and collective, they have to enter in our body and life and mind and soul and the spirit. This is the aspect that must be addressed by an enlightened social scientist, one who has to be a seer himself. The fact of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings, is greatly dependent upon it. 

But long before that Personality of Ecstasy and Ananda can come, someone else has to come here first. The ground for her coming has to be prepared. The dark foreboding mind of Night standing across the path of the divine Event has to be transformed, made receptive to the descending Light and Power, the obstacle on the evolutionary course removed, the massive golden door shutting us from the Divine smashed with a golden hammer. The divine Shakti must incarnate herself here. Will she come of her own? 

An answer to this question is available to us in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo’s epic based on the ancient tale of Savitri given in the Mahabharata. In the story, Aswapati performs the Savitri-Yajna for eighteen years and, in response to it, receives a boon from the Goddess Savitri. She tells him that soon a radiant daughter, kanyā tejasvinÄ«, will be born to him, she who will bring fulfilment by winning a victory over Yama, the stiff God of Death. Aswapati was assured that one shall descend, descend bearing Wisdom in her voiceless bosom, and that she shall possess strength of a conqueror’s sword; she shall come with Jnana and Shakti. She was born and, in honour of the Goddess, was named Savitri. 

Connected with “one shall descend”, we have in Savitri the following: “A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth” and

 
Answering earth’s yearning and her cry for bliss,

A greatness from our other countries came.

 
Aswapati carried the “world’s desire” to the Divine Mother and, in answer to that earth’s yearning, Savitri came from our other countries. But when did she come? “Savitri is represented in the poem,” writes Sri Aurobindo in a letter, “as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality’. ” It was the Yoga-Yajna of Aswapati that brought her down as an incarnation. She accepted mortal birth. She accepted “to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death.”  

If the Sarvahuta Yajna of the Purusha Sukta, performed by the Gods and the Rishis and the Sadhyas, established the Four Powers of the Divine Mother here in the Cosmos, the Savitri-Yajna, performed by Aswapati, compelled the Goddess’ mortal birth on Earth. But there is a difference between the two, a difference of capital importance. The Four Powers are basically typal; Savitri’s is an incarnation, a mortal birth, she passing through the portals of the birth that is a death. She is present here in the evolutionary process all the while, she executing the Will of the Supreme in Evolution. Indeed she does the Yoga of Surrender to the Supreme and in his Will identifies her will to shape the destiny of the world. Only the incarnation that took place in the far past times can do it and not other powers and personalities or embodiments of the Divine Mother, the Consciousness-Force of the Divine, who have another role to play in the Cosmos. Savitri’s surrender to the Supreme is the surety of success in reaching the set goal. That is the perfection, of total Surrender to the Supreme, which she alone can possess, which the other powers and personalities or embodiments are incapable of possessing. That is the “greatness” Savitri is, she who was “sent forth of old beneath the stars” of the dark Night. 

The phrase “portals of the birth that is a death” is a beautiful description of this world of ours, of our mortal lot, our mortal state, of the conditions in which we make progress through them both together; in just a few words we have here an accurate picture of this mortal world, mÅ—tyuloka. Its poetic enchantment is such that the fright, the obscurity and darkness and falsehood in which we live become their opposites. What we have in this mortal world is “the birth that is a death”. From the prayers of the Mother, we might get some idea as how that “greatness” suffered while accepting such a birth. Thus: 

“My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: ‘Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world; life without Thee is a death, a perpetual hell; doubt has usurped the place of Hope and revolt has pushed out Submission; Faith is spent, Gratitude is not born; blind passions and murderous instincts and a guilty weakness have covered and stifled Thy sweet law of love. Lord, wilt Thou permit Thy enemies to prevail, falsehood and ugliness and suffering to triumph? Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.’ Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee; and, from the depths of the abyss, I beheld Thee in Thy radiant splendour; Thou didst appear and Thou saidst to me: ‘Lose not courage, be firm, be confident,—I COME.’ ”  

Such intensity of anguish! Such totality of commitment to do the work the Lord gave her to do! She is prepared to bear the assaults of the adversary force, the extreme of pain and suffering. Hers is the work connected with the evolutionary soul of the earth into which she has entered, and no hardship she discounts in making it progress towards the Divine. It is for that purpose she passes through the portals of the life that is a death. Other powers of the Divine Mother don’t do that; nor perhaps do they experience the same distress and agony. They have, no doubt, left their luminous realms of Truth and Light and Joy and Power and accepted their stations in the field of Ignorance; but they do not pass through the portals of the life that is a death, they are essentially non-evolutionary in character. There are goddesses and goddesses, but Savitri is someone else, with a soul.  

What were the gifts received as a result of doing the Sarvahuta Yajna, the Offering of the All, the Yajna of the Purusha Sukta? Out of the sacrifice emerged, among many splendid things, Indra and Vayu and Agni. But who are they, these Gods? These are the Gods connected with Mind and Life and Matter, the mental, the vital, and the physical worlds, the Divine Mind, the Lord of Life, and the Seer-Will in Matter. In The Secret of the Veda Sri Aurobindo writes: “The sons of the Infinite have a twofold birth. They

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