In Savitri, does Eternal Night mean the deep of Inconscience and Everlasting Day mean the bliss of Superconscience? Sri Aurobindo describes the eternal night as ‘terror’s boundlessness’, ‘ pitiless void’ or as a ‘stupendous Nought’? If this is such a dark and strong denial of being, how does Savitri 🕊️even manage to talk to Death? One can understand that in the Everylasting Day it is all so beautiful that Savitri can talk to the Lord but it is hard to makes sense of Eternal Night.

The Eternal Night is indeed the Inconscient. Its terrifying aspect is because it is a state of ultimate separation from the Divine. Hence it is full of fear and terror. The conversation takes place as the Inconscient rises up and claims the human mind. It is the mental inconscient so to say that makes it much worse. This is what is described in her experience of 1958 which she later describes in the new year message of 1959.

“This vision of the  Inconscient… (Mother remains gazing for a moment) it was the  MENTAL  Inconscient. Because the starting point was  mental. A special  Inconscient—rigid, hard, resistant—with all that the mind has brought into our consciousness. But it was far worse, far worse than a purely material  Inconscient! A ‘ mentalized’  Inconscient, as it were. All this rigidity, this hardness, this narrowness, this fixity—a FIXITY—comes from the presence of the mind in creation. When the mind was not manifested, the  Inconscient was not like that! It was formless and had the plasticity of something that is formless—the plasticity has gone.

It is a terrible image of the Mind’s action in the  Inconscient .

It has made the  Inconscient  aggressive—it was not so before. Aggressive, resistant, OBSTINATE. That was not there before.

Yes, that’s it. It was not an ‘original’ Inconscient. It was a mentalized Inconscient. With all that the mind has brought in in the way of OPPOSITION—of resistance, hardness, rigidity.

It would be interesting to mention this.

Because the starting point, precisely, was to look into the mental unconsciousness of these people. It was the mental Inconscient. Well, the mental Inconscient REFUSES to change—which is not true of the other one; the other is nothing, it doesn’t exist, it is not organized in any way, it has no way of being, whereas this one is an ORGANIZED Inconscient—organized by a beginning mental influence. A hundred times worse!

This is a very interesting point to note.

It is not the experience, which I had once before, of the original Inconscient. The experience I had this time is of the Inconscient that has undergone the influence of the Mind in creation. It has become… It has become a FAR greater obstacle than before. Before, it did not even have the power to resist, it had nothing, it was truly unconscious. Now it is an Inconscient organized in its refusal to change!”

The Everylasting Day is of course the Superconscient of which the Inconscient in the shadow. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da