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<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; line-height:150%; margin-top:0">
<b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><font size="4">Love and Death</font></b></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>ONE of the earliest poems
of Sri Aurobindo – a juvenile work – has the title <i>Love and Death. </i>This
is indeed the central theme, the core of the inspiration running through the
whole of his poetic world culminating in the grand symphony of <i>Savitri. </i>As
a matter of fact his vision and the mission of his life are <span class=SpellE>epitomised</span>
in those three words, namely 'Love conquering Death.'</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>I
shall leave aside his other works and take up his dramas, his five complete
major dramas in which the theme has been developed and the problem set and
solved in somewhat different ways but always leading to the same conclusion
'Love <span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>&nbsp;</span>conquering Death.'</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>Death
according to Sri Aurobindo is not merely the death or disintegration of the
body. Death truly is the death and disintegration of the consciousness. It is
unconsciousness, inconscience. Death-bound world is this world of unconsciousness
or half consciousness, this world of ignorance.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>To
grow into consciousness, to rise towards the light is the way to the conquest
of Death. To rise in consciousness means to rise out of the shades of egoism;
it is the ego that ties man down to this lower consciousness which is the
domain of death, and the only antidote of egoism is love, love human or divine.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.45pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i>Perseus
the Deliverer </i>is obviously the story of the deliverance of human soul from
the siege of the emissaries of Death, the lower consciousness. It is also the
legend of the destruction of a darker age of civilisation and the advent of a
new age of greater light. The reign of Poseidon represents man in his half animal
stage worshipping the dark vital gods. Pitted against that rose later, as the
scholars say, the Aryan civilisation represented in <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>
by the Greeks – worshippers of the solar</p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<font size="2">Page – 383</font></p>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>
<span class=GramE>gods</span>,
Gods of Light and Love. The force that transforms darkness into light, passion
into pure energy, gloom into happiness, is the touch of Love. Even the human
agencies of this divine element acting in the human way express as Sri
Aurobindo has shown, something of the magic and beauty and the sense of
elevation here below, something from love's higher native state.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.95pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>In <i>Eric,
</i>Love's appeal is to the heroic soul. Love as commonly understood in its
human form seems to be nothing else but loose sentiment and feeling, a play of
mere emotion. As such it is usually made out to be as sweet as possible and as
weak as possible, –even in its external violence. Weakness, frailty is promoted
as a woman's character and also her charm and beauty. On the other hand,
heroism, force and vigour form the masculine <span class=SpellE>charater</span>.
But that is evidently a superficial and a limited and decadent view. A heroic
soul to be genuinely heroic and complete must be a loving soul and in the same
way love in a woman must carry in it a strong heroic element. The marriage of
love and heroism is the story of <i>Eric, </i>how heroism adds force and
strength and nobility to love and how love lends grace and beauty and <span
class=GramE>an other</span>-worldly charm to force and strength. In <i>Eric </i>Love
attains a stronger, a larger, <span class=GramE>a</span> royal fulfilment in
its human mould, on this earth.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>A
different, almost a contrary denouement attends Love in <i>Rodogune. </i>Love
here passes through the normal tragic trials and tribulations, even through the
final trial, even death. But for love it is <span class=GramE>not the end nor</span>
defeat, rather a higher fulfilment. Real gold brightens up, shines gloriously
when passed through fire. The end of the body is not the end of <span
class=GramE>love,</span> it exists even while in the body apart from the body
and maintains its autonomous existence undimmed by external barriers and
difficulties even by the disappearance of the body. The legend of loves
frustrated in this life but reunited in another world is not pure fiction but a
truth obvious to the <span class=GramE>seeing eye</span>. In fact Love is an
immortal being and human persons are its receptacles and formations for a
special play upon this earth. Earthly fate only serves to increase the delight
that forms the true body of love.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i>The
Viziers of Bassora </i>represents Love in its mood of frolicsome, almost
frivolous dalliance, clothed, it would appear, in</p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 384</span></p>

<hr size=2 width="100%" align=center>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>
<span class=GramE>a</span>
body purely made of the fluid, i.e., playful senses. There is no need, no
question of moral or social inhibitions – love is in its absolute spontaneous
sportive natural state, natural to an earthly being. The beauty that unhindered
love displays here has no stain in it, a stain that a more sophisticated and
cultured nature contracts: it is the smiling radiance of the unspoiled limpid
consciousness of a child. Yes, it is the Brindaban-lila of Love in its very
human, very secular movement. Love is here of earth and of an earthy mode and
yet somehow it has maintained its purity, its very spontaneity and simplicity
has, as it were, miraculously by its very naturalness purified it of its dross
and made it akin to something aerial and heavenly.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0'>In <i>Vasavadutta,
</i>Love is depicted as something royal and noble and aristocratic, it is
something refined and beautiful, an adornment of a consciousness cultured and
luminous; it is a special gift bestowed by the Gods only upon a few godly creatures,
men and women.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>As I
have said, love depicted here in these plays of Sri Aurobindo is of earth,
earthly, even earthy: it is not, one might say, the Divine Love – embodiment of
the Supreme Ananda or Sachchidananda. And yet Love is one and indivisible, it
is always and everywhere the same, essentially the Divine Love – in various
moulds. And the mould in which Sri Aurobindo has cast even earthly human love
is divinely noble and beautiful. Love has been uttered, as it were, by a Divine
tongue and it has been transmuted, irised and is full of the redolence of
heaven's delight: if it cannot claim to be the very delight of Brahman
(Brahmananda) yet it is as the ancients declared, <i>hrahmanandasahodaro –
consanguinous, </i>of one blood, with Divine Delight.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:150%;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 385</span></p>

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