Andromeda and the problem of existence

A play by Sri Aurobindo and an experience by the Mother

In or around June 1906, Sri Aurobindo wrote a play called Perseus the Deliverer.¹ Its plot derives from the Greek legend of Perseus and Andromeda. In its preface, Sri Aurobindo writes:

the ancient legend has been divested of its original character of a heroic myth; it is made the nucleus round which there could grow the scenes of a romantic story of human temperament and life-impulses on the Elizabethan model. The country in which the action is located is a Syria of romance, not of history.... In a romantic work of imagination of this type ... anachronisms romp in wherever they can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations from all climes and epochs mingle; myth, romance and realism make up a single whole. For here the stage is the human mind of all times: the subject is an incident in its passage from a semi-primitive temperament surviving in a fairly advanced outward civilisation to a brighter intellectualism and humanism—never quite safe against the resurgence of the dark or violent life-forces which are always there subdued or subordinated or somnolent in the make-up of civilised man—and the first promptings of the deeper and higher psychic and spiritual being which it is his ultimate destiny to become.

The play was brought out serially in 1907 in Bande Mataram, a journal of political opinion edited by Sri Aurobindo. To place it in its historical context, we recall from an earlier post that Sri Aurobindo returned to India in 1893, after completing a thorough classical education at King’s College, Cambridge. This was followed by thirteen years in the service of the Maharaja of Baroda, where he acted primarily as Vice-Principal of Baroda College. During this period Sri Aurobindo worked behind the scenes to establish a revolutionary movement.

In 1905, the announcement by the British Government that Bengal would be partitioned provoked unprecedented agitation. Seeing improved prospects for open political action, Sri Aurobindo accepted an offer to become the first principal of the newly founded Bengal National College, went to Calcutta, and plunged into the fray.

Sri Aurobindo wrote Perseus shortly before his departure from Baroda, in June or July 1906. When, decades later, he was asked by a disciple “What led you to Yoga?”, he replied²:

God knows what. It was while at Baroda that Deshpande [a Bombay journalist who had been Sri Aurobindo’s best friend at Cambridge] and others tried to convert me to Yoga. My idea about Yoga was that one had to retire into mountains and caves. I was not prepared to do that, for I was interested in working for the freedom of my country.

Then I began to practise Pranayama—in 1905. A Baroda engineer who was a disciple of Brahmananda³ showed me how to do it and I started on my own. Some remarkable results came with it. First, I felt a sort of electricity all around me. Second, there were some visions of a minor kind. Third, I began to have a very rapid flow of poetry. Formerly I used to write with difficulty. For a time the flow would increase; then again it would dry up. Now it revived with astonishing vigour and I could write both prose and poetry at tremendous speed. This flow has never ceased.

Hence Perseus, along with many other works of the same period.

By August 1905 Aurobindo had concluded that the pursuit of inner mastery and the pursuit of political freedom were not mutually exclusive. He had learned that spiritual knowledge bestows power, and he had experienced and seen enough to believe that it was true. Further on Sri Aurobindo recounts:

I thought: great men could not have been after a chimera, and if there was such a more-than-human power why not get it and use it for action?... When I went to Bengal for political work, my Pranayama became very irregular. As a result I had a serious illness which nearly carried me off. Now I was at my wits’ end. I did not know how to proceed further and was searching for some guidance. Then I met Lele....

Sri Aurobindo first met Lele on the last day of 1907. As previously quoted in this post,

the only help [Sri Aurobindo] received was from the Maharashtrian Yogi, Vishnu Bhaskar Lele, who instructed him how to reach complete silence of the mind and immobility of the whole consciousness. This Sri Aurobindo was able to achieve in three days with the result of lasting and massive spiritual realisations opening to him the larger ways of Yoga. Lele finally told him to put himself entirely into the hands of the Divine within and move only as he was moved and then he would need no instructions either from Lele himself or anyone else.

(Sri Aurobindo wrote this letter in the third person because it was published with a prefatory note stating that the information was provided by his secretary.) What Sri Aurobindo realized in three days was laya (the annulation of the individual soul in the Infinite) or nirvana (extinction, not necessarily of all being, but of ego, desire and egoistic action and mentality). “Certainly the path of laya or nirvana is difficult in the extreme to most,” he later wrote, “although in my case I walked into nirvana without intending it or rather nirvana walked casually into me not so far from the beginning of my Yogic career without asking my leave”.⁴

Perseus the Deliverer thus predates the beginning of Sri Aurobindo’s yogic career by well over a year.

So what’s the relevance of all that?

In her Agenda of February 6, 1962, the Mother starts out by saying:

These past few days I have been reading Perseus—it was performed here [in the Ashram in 1954], so I knew a little of it but it never much interested me. But reading it the way I read now, I have found it very interesting, I have discovered all kinds of things, all kinds. [...]

I am always up against the same problem. Looking at it as a difference in attitude, the question is readily cleared up. But if I want the truth—the true truth behind this difference, it becomes very difficult. And that is exactly what I have seen in the light of the events described in Perseus.

Before getting to the problem, I should give a rundown of the play.

Act 1

Andromeda (the daughter of King Cepheus of Syria and Queen Cassiopeia) recounts to her servant and playmate Diomede a dream in which “her sun had risen”: a bright god with wings on his feet and a sword to kill monsters, who had smiled upon her. Diomede then describes to her in graphic detail a shipwreck that has occurred the same morning.

Andromeda: How had you heart to look at what I cannot bear to hear?

Diomede: I suppose it must have hurt them. Yes, it was pitiful. Still, ‘t was a sight.

Andromeda: Alas, the unhappy men, the poor drowned men who had young children somewhere whom they loved!

Diomede: Why do you weep for them? they were not Syrians.

Andromeda: When Iolaus [Andromeda’s brother] fell upon the rocks and hurt himself, you did not then forbid me to weep!

Praxilla [head of the palace household]: He is your brother. That was loving, tender and right.

Andromeda: And these men were not brothers? They too had sisters who will feel as I should if my dear brother were to die so wretchedly.

Praxilla: Let their own sisters weep for them: we have enough of our own sorrows.... Come, Diomede, tell her the rest.

Andromeda (covering her ears with her hands): I will not hear you.

Diomede (drawing her hands away): But I will tell you of your bright sun-god.

Andromeda: He is not my sun-god or he would have saved them.

Diomede: He did.

Diomede recounts how suddenly there appeared a man with wings on his feet, a vision whom the blue heavens seemed to have created out of the sunlight. He caught two drowning merchants by their robes and drew them safe to land. Iolaus and his band, however, captured the two “to die according our Syrian law” on the altar of the sea-god Poseidon. Then Poseidon’s priest Polydaon came, and along with him Phineus (King of Tyre, to whom Andromeda is betrothed) who ordered the arrest of Andromeda’s sun-god. Needless to say, the latter beat off Phineus’ soldiers.

Diomede: The soldiers ran in terror, Polydaon went snorting off like a black whale harpooned, and even Phineus fled.

Andromeda: Was he not killed? I wish he had been killed.

Praxilla: This is your pity!

Act 2

Polydaon (to Cepheus): A victim has been snatched from holy altar: to fill that want a victim is demanded.

Iolaus explains that the one who has been snatched from holy altar was “a calm god or glorious hero who came by other way than man’s to Syria’s margin.” Nor was he rescued by “rash steel or battle”: “With the mere dreadful waving of his shield he shook from him a hundred threatening lances.” Phineus persuades Polydaon that the void on his altar must be filled by Iolaus.

Iolaus: I laugh to see wise men catching their feet in their own subtleties. King Phineus, wilt thou seize Olympian Zeus and call thy Tyrian smiths to forge his fetters?... ’Tis well; the danger’s yours. Give me three days and I’ll produce him.

In the next scene Andromeda demands that the two Babylonians who survived the shipwreck be given to her as slaves.

Cepheus: Was ever such a perverse witch? To ask the only thing I cannot give!... It is Poseidon’s will these men should die upon his altar. ’Tis not to be questioned.

Andromeda: It shall be questioned. Let your God go hungry.

Cepheus: I am amazed! Did you not hear me, child? On the third day from now these men shall die. The same high evening ties you fast with nuptials to Phineus, who shall take you home to Tyre.

Andromeda: Father, you’ll understand this once for all,—I will not let the Babylonians die, I will not marry Phineus.

Praxilla: Andromeda, you will obey your father?

Andromeda: You are not in my counsels. You’re too faithful, virtuous and wise, and virtuously you would betray me. There is a thing full-grown in me that you shall only know by the result.

In the next scene Iolaus meets Perseus.

Iolaus: Perseus, I am a warrant-bearer to you, friend.

Perseus: On what arrest?

Iolaus: A debt that must be paid. They’ll not be baulked their dues of blood, their strict account of hearts. Or mine or thine they’ll have to crown their altars.

Perseus: Who’s this accountant?

Iolaus: Poseidon’s dark-browed priest, as gloomy as the den in which he lairs, who hopes to gather Syria in his hands upon a priestly pretext.... Three days you are given to prove yourself a god! You failing, ’tis my bosom pays the debt.

Perseus: Rise, and be my guide. Where is this temple and priest?

Iolaus: The temple now?

Perseus: Soonest is always best when noble deeds are to be done.

Iolaus: What deed?

Perseus: I will release the men of Babylon from their grim blood-feast.

Act 3

Andromeda: If there is any god in the deaf skies that pities men or helps them, O protect me! But if you are inexorably unmoved and punish pity, I, Andromeda, who am a woman on this earth, will help my brothers. Then, if you must punish me, strike home. You should have given me no heart; it is too late now to forbid it feeling.

Athene appears.

Andromeda: Thou art! there are not only void azure and cold inexorable laws.

Athene: Stand up, O daughter of Cassiope. Wilt thou then help these men of Babylonia, my mortals whom I love?

Andromeda: I help myself, when I help these.

Athene: But dost thou know that thy reward shall be betrayal and fierce hatred? God and man shall league in wrath to kill and torture thee mid dire revilings.

Andromeda: My reward shall be to cool this anguish of pity in my heart and be at peace: if dead, O still at peace!

Athene: Go, child. I shall be near invisibly.

In the next scene Iolaus and Perseus enter the temple of Poseidon. Perseus orders Cireas, a servant in the temple, to bring forth the Babylonian captives. Perseus shears with his sword the chains of Tyrnaus. They withdraw into the dimness of the temple. Andromeda and Diomede enter. Andromeda orders Cireas to undo the bonds of Smerdas. Before Cireas complies, Tyrnaus comes forward.

Andromeda: Already free! Who has forestalled me?

Tyrnaus: A god as radiant as thyself, thou merciful sweetness.

Andromeda: Tyrnaus, did that radiant helper who clove thy chains, forget to help this poor pale trembling man?

Tyrnaus: Because he showed too much the sordid fear that pities only itself, he left him to his fate.

Andromeda: Alas, poor human man! Why, we have all so many sins to answer, it would be hard to have cold justice dealt us. We should be kindly to each other’s faults remembering our own.... I think that even a snake in pain would tempt me to its succour, though I knew that afterwards ’t would bite me! But he is a god perhaps who did this and his spotless radiance abhors the tarnish of our frailer natures.

Having released Smerdas with instructions to remain hidden till nightfall, Athene addresses Poseidon.

Andromeda: Alone I stand before thee, grim Poseidon, here in thy darkness, with thy altar near that keeps fierce memory of tortured groans and human shrieks of victims, and, unforced, I yet pollute my soul with thy bloody nearness to tell thee that I hate, contemn, defy thee. I am no more than a brief-living woman, yet am I more divine than thou, for I can pity. I have torn thy destined prey from thy red jaws. They say thou dost avenge fearfully insult. Avenge thyself, Poseidon.

In the next scene Polydaon enters the temple, discovers that the captives are gone, and strikes the temple gong. Poseidon appears, “vague and alarming at first, then distinct and terrible in the darkness,” demanding his victims. Phineus and his soldiers enter, then Cepheus and Dercetes (a Syrian captain) with his soldiers, followed by a throng of Syrians. Cepheus orders the captains to scour all Syria for the fugitives. Dercetes leaves with his soldiers. Polydaon threatens the Syrians with a cruel fate if they fail to bring him Cassiopea and her daughter. Dercetes returns, announcing that one of the fugitives has been seized. Soldiers drag in Smerdas, who reveals that he was rescued by Andromeda. Cassiopea enters with Andromeda and Diomede. Asked why she released the Babylonian merchant, Andromeda replies:

Because I would not have their human hearts mercilessly uprooted for the bloody monster you worship as a god! because I am capable of pain and so can feel the pain of others! For which if you I love must kill me, do it. I alone am guilty.

Act 4

The people, led by Polydaon, march upon the palace crying “Slay the King, butcher the Queen, and let Andromeda and Iolaus die.” In a subsequent scene Polydaon commands that Andromeda be taken to the beach and chained to the rocks. A townsman raises a question:

Damoetes: Where’s Iolaus? Shall he not also die?

Polydaon: Too long forgotten! O that I should forget my dearest hatred!

We remember that Phineus persuaded Polydaon to demand the head of Iolaus in lieu of the calm god/glorious hero who came “by other way than man’s to Syria’s margin,” and that Iolaus promised to produce the same, before informing Perseus that he is given three days to prove himself a god: “You failing, ’tis my bosom pays the debt.”

Act 5

Andromeda (chained to the cliff): my heart is torn with misery: for by my act my father and my mother are doomed to death, my dear kind brother, my sweet Iolaus, will cruelly be slaughtered; by my act a kingdom ends in miserable ruin. I thought to save two fellowmen: I have slain a hundred by their rescue. I have failed in all I did and die accursed and hated. Yet I repent not. I have done what my own heart required of me. I have been true to myself and to my heart, I have been true to the love it bore for men, and I repent not.

After a while:

Andromeda: Alas! is there no pity for me? Is there no kind bright sword to save me in all this world? Where art thou, O beautiful still face amid the lightnings, Athene? Does a mother leave her child? And thou, bright stranger, wert thou only a dream? Wilt thou not come down glorious from thy sun, and cleave my chains, and lift me in thy arms to safety? I will not die! I am too young, and life was recently so beautiful. It is too hard, too hard a fate to bear.

Eventually she sees a golden cloud moving towards her.

Perseus: Look up, O sunny-curled Andromeda! Perseus, the son of Danaë, is with thee to whom thou now belongest. Fear no more sea-monsters nor the iron-souled Poseidon, nor the more monstrous flinty-hearted rabble who bound thee here.

In the next scene Perseus and Andromeda enter the temple.

Perseus (to Polydaon): Priest of Poseidon and of death, three days thou gav’st me: it is but the second. I am here. Whose knife is ready? Let him approach.

Subsequently he explains what has happened to Polydaon, who had gone stark raving mad.

Perseus: This man for a few hours became the vessel of an occult and formidable Force and through his form it did fierce terrible things unhuman: but his small and gloomy mind and impure dark heart could not contain the Force. It turned in him to madness and demoniac huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him leaving the broken incapable instrument, and all its might was spilt from his body.

The final scene:

Andromeda: Perseus, you give and never ask; let me for you ask something.

Perseus: Ask, Andromeda, and have.

Andromeda: Then this I ask that thy great deeds may leave their golden trace on Syria. Let the dire cult for ever cease and victims bleed no more on its dark altar. Instead, Athene’s name spread over all the land and in men’s hearts. Then shall a calm and mighty Will prevail and broader minds and kindlier manners reign and men grow human, mild and merciful.

Perseus (to Cepheus): To Zeus and great Athene build a temple between your sky-topped hills and Ocean’s vasts: Her might shall guard your lives and save your land. In your human image of her deity a light of reason and calm celestial force and a wise tranquil government of life, order and beauty and harmonious thoughts and, ruling the waves of impulse, high-throned will incorporate in marble, the carved and white ideal of a young uplifted race. For these are her gifts to those who worship her. Adore and what you adore attempt to be.

Cepheus: Will the fiercer Grandeur that was here permit?

Perseus: Fear not Poseidon; the strong god is free. He has withdrawn from his own darkness and is now his new great self at an Olympian height.

Cassiopea: How can the immortal gods and Nature change?

Perseus: All alters in a world that is the same. Man most must change who is a soul of Time; his gods too change and live in larger light.

Cepheus: Then man too may arise to greater heights, his being draw nearer to the gods?

Perseus: Perhaps. But the blind nether forces still have power and the ascent is slow and long is Time. Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase: The day shall come when men feel close and one. Meanwhile one forward step is something gained, since little by little earth must open to heaven till her dim soul awakes into the Light.

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Returning now to Mother’s Agenda:

The problem is roughly this: nothing exists that is not the result of the divine Will. [...]

Generally speaking, the antidivine is easily understood, but in the minute details of daily life, how do you choose between this and that?... What is the truth behind the thing you choose and the one you don’t choose? And you know, my standpoint is totally beyond any question of egoistic, individual will—that isn’t the problem here.

In other words, it has nothing to do with moral notions.

It’s not that. As soon as you try to say it, it evaporates. Yet it is something very, very acute. [...]

Perhaps the problem is the opposition (if it is an opposition) between two attitudes, both of which should express our relationship with the Supreme. One is the acceptance—not only voluntary but perfectly content—of everything, even the “worst calamities” (what are conventionally called “the worst calamities”). [...] If Andromeda were a yogi [...] she would accept the idea of death readily, easily. Well, it’s precisely this conflict between an attitude quite ready to accept death [...] because it is the divine Will, for this reason alone—it’s the divine Will, so it’s quite all right; since that’s how it is, it’s quite all right—and at the same time, the love of Life. This love of Life.

Following the story, you would say: she lived because she had to live—and everything is explained. But that’s not what I mean. I am looking at this outside the context of the story. Because things like that happen in the consciousness of.... it always bothers me to get into big ideas and big words, but to truly explain myself, I should say: the Universal Mother.

Automatically, everything that exists is a natural expression of divine Joy, even the things human consciousness finds most horrifying—this is understandable. But at the same time there is this aspiration, so intense that it’s almost anguish, for a perfection of creation to come. And it does seem that this intense aspiration and anguish in the material world is a necessary preparation for this perfection to come. Yet at the same time, whatever exists is perfect at each moment, since it is entirely the Divine. There is nothing other than the Divine. So there is simultaneously this plenitude of Divine Joy in each second, in whatever exists, and the aspiration, the anguish—and the difficulty lies in joining the two, there you have it.

Practically, you go from one to the other, or one is in front and the other behind, one active and the other passive. With the feeling of perfect joy comes an almost static state (certainly the joy of movement is also there, but all anticipation of the goal stays in the background). Then, when the aspiration of the Becoming is there, the joy of divine perfection at each moment withdraws into a static state. And this very going back and forth is the problem.

My two cents: Sri Aurobindo has formulated the most mentally satisfying and convincing reason for the existing of this messy world in which we live. Take, for instance, this quote from my last post:

To the human mind one might answer that ... once manifestation began, infinite possibility also began, and among the infinite possibilities which it is the function of the universal manifestation to work out, the negation, the apparent effective negation—with all its consequences—of the Power, Light, Peace, Bliss was very evidently one. If it is asked why even if possible it should have been accepted, the answer nearest to the Cosmic Truth which the human intelligence can make is that in the relations or in the transition of the Divine in the Oneness to the Divine in the Many, this ominous possible became at a certain point an inevitable.

For once it appears it acquires for the Soul descending into evolutionary manifestation an irresistible attraction which creates the inevitability—an attraction which in human terms on the terrestrial level might be interpreted as the call of the unknown, the joy of danger and difficulty and adventure, the will to attempt the impossible, to work out the incalculable, the will to create the new and uncreated with one’s own self and life as the material, the fascination of contradictories and their difficult harmonisation—these things translated into another supraphysical, superhuman consciousness, higher and wider than the mental, were the temptation that led to the fall. For to the original being of light on the verge of the descent the one thing unknown was the depths of the abyss, the possibilities of the Divine in the Ignorance and Inconscience.

Yet even the consciousness of the Universal Mother—of the very creatrix of this “messy” world—runs up against the tension of contrast between those two “attitudes.” There is a solution, a synthesis, but it is beyond the reach of words. For it to be reached, human mind must abdicate in Light / Or die like a moth in the naked blaze of Truth (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 306). As the Mother says later in the same conversation:

A problem like that reaches a point of such acute tension that you feel you know nothing, understand nothing, you will never understand anything, it’s hopeless. When I reach that point, I always tilt in the same direction, it’s always: “All right, I adore the Lord, as for the rest, it doesn’t matter to me!” [...] But this would only be suitable for those who have stopped thinking.

She goes on to recount an experience she had “a day or two ago,” which was “like a solvent”:

everything seemed to dissolve: the world, the earth, people, life, intelligence, all of it, everything was dissolved. An absolutely negative state. And my solution was the same as always: when the experience was total and complete, when nothing was left, then: “Who cares!” It could really be put in the most ordinary words: “I adore You! “ And the “I” was something utterly insubstantial: there was no form, no being, no quality—only “I adore You.” This “I” was “I adore You.” There was just enough “I” to adore You with.

From that moment on there was an inexpressible Sweetness, and within that Sweetness, a Voice ... so sweet and harmonious too! There was a sound but no words—yet it held a perfectly clear meaning for me, like very precise words: “You have just had your most creative moment”!

Oh really! Well, that’s fine!

After that (laughing), I rang down the curtain!

1. Sri Aurobindo, Collected Plays and Stories, pp. 325–528 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1998).

2. Nirodbaran, Talks with Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 1, pp. 106–8.

3. Swami Brahmananda lived on the banks of the Narmada river near the town of Chandod. He was immeasurably old: two, perhaps three hundred years, people said, and at any rate a generation older than the oldest man in town. Through a combination of rajayoga meditation and hathayoga exercises, he had preserved his health and vitality, remaining “a man of magnificent physique showing no signs of old age except white beard and hair, extremely tall, robust, able to walk any number of miles a day and tiring out his younger disciples,” with “a great head and magnificent face that seemed to belong to men of more ancient times.” (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, p. 15.) When Sri Aurobindo visited Brahmananda with Deshpande and one of the swami’s disciples, he was “greatly impressed” by him. (Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes, p. 110.)

4. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga IV, p. 683 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 2014).