Savitri's Swapna Yoga: A dream disclosed to her the cosmic past

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Savitri has met Satyavan in the Shalwa Woods. It was an instant recognition of their timeless identity. They immediately pledge to be together, that the identity be renewed in another step of time. The doors have opened out and they are going to join in “unforgettable bliss”. She was told to obey the call of her soul and make a choice in one who shall bring fullness to her life, to life. That implied ascending from Nature to divinity’s heights, facing the high gods, meeting a greater God, her own self beyond Time. She is assured that her soul has noble strength, and that it alone could be her unfailing guide, she needing none else. In the occult design

There shall draw near to meet thy approaching steps
The second self for whom thy nature asks, 
He who shall walk until thy body’s end 
A close-bound traveller pacing with thy pace,
The lyrist of thy soul’s most intimate chords 
Who shall give voice to what in thee is mute. ||98.52||

Then shall you grow like vibrant kindred harps, 
One in the beats of difference and delight, 
Responsive in divine and equal strains, 
Discovering new notes of the eternal theme. ||98.53||

One force shall be your mover and your guide, 
One light shall be around you and within; 
Hand in strong hand confront Heaven’s question, life:
Challenge the ordeal of the immense disguise. ||98.54||

The union of these deathless lovers is in the context of a question Heaven poses to life which is afflicted by pain and sorrow and death. It is an intended union though there is the natural spontaneity which is not subject to any contingency. There is the immense disguise of Love, the covering of inconscience that had remained all along unredeemed. Love has to face the ordeal of Death. Savitri has to go through the Fire-Test, pass Agni-Parikshā. She is meeting Love who unknown to himselfis accompanied by the universal Shadow that is Death. She must confront Death. She must dismiss Death who is hiding behind Love. And Savitri is ready to accept the challenge. In her long journey she is driven from within, and there is no question of her drifting away from her marked goal. In the silence of the Shalwa Woods the natural miracle is wrought again, making the human moment eternal. She confides:

My heart will stay here on this forest verge
And close to this thatched roof while I am far:
Now of more wandering it has no need. ||105.5||

But I must haste back to my father’s house 
Which soon will lose one loved accustomed tread 
And listen in vain for a once cherished voice. ||105.6||

For soon I shall return nor ever again 
Oneness must sever its recovered bliss 
Or fate sunder our lives while life is ours. ||105.7||

Will fate sunder their lives while life is theirs? On hastening blue-bright wings of ecstasy arrives the heavenly sage Narad well before Savitri’s return to the palace, even as she is impatiently anxious to disclose to her parents about her meeting with Satyavan. And there Narad brings the Word of Fate, that one year after their marriage Satyavan will die, that twelve swift-winged months are given to him and her and this day of his pronouncement returning he has to die. Did Savitri have the premonition of this? Did her Yogi-Father Aswapati have that presentiment when he said that Savitri must stand up to the challenge the immense disguise would bring to her? And how did Narad know it,that all the three in the palace took it without questioning the authenticity of his words? If he was such a knowledgeable person why did he ask as on high mission had Savitri travel