The first two cantos of this ‘Book of Beginnings’, which we have already explored, form an overture or introduction to Sri Aurobindo’s epic. After showing us the ‘symbol dawn’ of the day on which Satyavan must die, he introduces us to Savitri: who she is, her qualities, and ‘the issue’, the mission that she has taken birth to fulfil ‘for Earth and Men’. At the end of Canto Two, he tells us that she fulfils her mission. It is a tremendous challenge, but she is empowered to carry it out: she stands up and performs the great act which changes everything.

The rest of Part One is concerned with her father, King Aswapati. Savitri has come into the human world because of a tremendous effort of tapasya, spiritual endeavour, on the part of this King. That is why here at the beginning of Canto Three Sri Aurobindo says:

A world’s desire compelled her mortal birth.

Savitri has been born as a human embodiment of the Supreme Divine Mother in response to the desire and aspiration of the whole world, embodied in one person, King Aswapati, who becomes her human father.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

Original and supernal Immanence
Of which all Nature’s process is the art,
The cosmic Worker set his secret hand
To turn this frail mud-engine to heaven-use.

‘Immanence’ means ‘dwelling within’; the immanent Divine dwells within the entire manifestation, and within each of these material forms of itself; it is the ‘Original and supernal Immanence / Of which all Nature’s process is the art’. This indwelling Presence is the artist and sculptor of his own beauty and delight; all Nature’s processes are the art of that artist, the ‘cosmic Worker’ who is shaping the whole universe from within. In Aswapati ‘The cosmic Worker set his secret hand / To turn this frail mud-engine’, the human body, this little engine made of matter, ‘to heaven-use’. When the cosmic Worker takes up ‘this frail mud-engine’ it can be made fit for use by heavenly powers.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres
Into our province of ephemeral sight,
A colonist from immortality.

This is what the Mother has said about this passage: This is the description of the One through whom Savitri was born. Sri Aurobindo says that it is through the intermediary of somebody who did not belong to the earth but came from the higher and freer regions. … This is the description of one of those who are not purely human, but whose origin is far higher, far greater, and whose existence is much longer than the existence of the earth. When these come upon earth, it is to help the whole of humanity to rise towards the highest Consciousness.

A great soul has come down from ‘larger spheres’ into ‘our province of ephemeral sight’. A ‘province’ is a part of a country. Sri Aurobindo describes the human world as a province, part of a larger empire which contains many other realms; it is a ‘province of ephemeral sight’: ‘ephemeral’ means ‘lasting only a short time’, ‘quickly passing’: our world is a place where things are seen for only a short time. Here on earth everything is subject to time, nothing lasts long, and our sight is fleeting, we see things only for a very short time. That great being has come into our province as ‘A colonist from immortality’. A ‘colonist’ leaves his home country to establish a colony somewhere else; in principle, it should be a place that is not yet developed or civilised. In the city- states of ancient Greece every seven years they would select young people of certain generation, give them a boat and send them out to find a suitable place to found a new city which would be a colony of the mother state. The earth was much less populated then than it is now. That is how the Greeks spread their civilisation around the Mediterranean. When this ‘protagonist’ came down from his larger spheres of immortal existence into ‘our earthly province of ephemeral sight’, he came in order to establish here on earth a colony of the larger immortal spheres which are his home.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time 
And paying here God’s debt to earth and man
A greater sonship was his divine right.

‘Affiliated’ is a word which is found in business and legal contexts, when units, businesses or institutions are closely linked. King Aswapati is ‘affiliated’, closely connected, closely related ‘to cosmic Space and Time’, to the larger immortal spheres that he has come from. He has come to earth as a colonist in order to pay ‘God’s debt to earth and man’. God owes us a debt. Sri Aurobindo tells us in several places that a mutual debt binds god and humanity. God’s debt to us is that he has created all this and put us in this situation, and he owes it to us to get us out of it! On the other hand, we owe him a debt because he has created us to carry out his purpose of evolution; we have to pay our debt to him and he has to help us; that is his debt to us. Sri Aurobindo says that for Aswapati ‘a greater sonship was his divine right’: he was not only a son of man, a human being; he was also a son of God, a divine being with a divine right. He has come here, to suffer ‘the indignity of mortal life’, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, for a purpose: to help pay the debt of God to man by uplifting the human race, helping it to move forward to its true destiny.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable.

Aswapati is a power, a strength from ‘the original Permanence’. What is permanent does not change; behind all the changing appearances of the world, there is an original unchanging Permanence that remains forever the same; out of the ‘original Permanence’ this strength has come, and although here on the earth he is ‘Entangled’, tied up in the flow of time, he still keeps within him the vision of the ‘Vasts’ that lie behind and beyond Space and Time. When you are in strong wind, your hair gets ‘entangled’, tangled up so that you cannot get a comb through it easily; or if you go deep into the forest you may get tripped up and caught amongst creepers so that you cannot move: you get ‘entangled’. Aswapati has come here into the entanglement of Time, but he still keeps ‘the vision of the Vasts behind’. ‘A power was in him from the Unknowable’, from the ever-mysterious transcendent Reality. Beyond the highest that can be known there lies the great mystery, the ‘Unknowable’ that is forever beyond total comprehension.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A skyward being nourishing its roots
On sustenance from occult spiritual founts
Climbed through white rays to meet an unseen Sun.

The image is of a plant growing: Aswapati is ‘A skyward being’, constantly growing towards the sky, the higher levels of consciousness; his being is ‘nourishing its roots’, getting its ‘sustenance’, the food it needs to grow, from hidden ‘spiritual founts’, sources of spiritual energy. A plant has its roots in the earth and draws up nutrients mixed in water in order to grow; it also manufactures food from sunlight falling on its leaves; Aswapati’s being is nourishing its roots from hidden sources of spiritual energy and growing up towards the higher levels of consciousness through the pure and integral ‘white rays’ of the inner sun. A plant needs sunlight, and grows towards the light; similarly, Aswapati’s ‘skyward being’ is growing up towards ‘an unseen Sun’, a divine source of Light and Energy which cannot yet be seen.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

This bodily appearance is not all;
The form deceives, the person is a mask;
Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell.

‘This bodily appearance’, the physical appearance we present to the outside world, is not all there is to us; the outer form is deceptive; it does not show what is hidden within; ‘the person’, the role that we play to the world and to ourselves, is a ‘mask’ that has been put on temporarily by the inner being; behind the appearances and the superficial personality heavenly powers are hidden; deep within our humanity ‘celestial powers can dwell’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In the mute strength of the occult Idea
Determining predestined shape and act,
Passenger from life to life, from scale to scale,
Changing his imaged self from form to form,
He regards the icon growing by his gaze
And in the worm foresees the coming god.

The sculptor, the artist spirit, uses ‘the mute strength of the occult Idea’ which lies hidden in that little seed to determine ‘predestined shape and act’. ‘Predestined’ implies that things are decided in advance, that our lives and actions are predetermined; it is not a very popular idea nowadays, for we feel that we have a power of choice; but still, most people believe in cause and effect, and know that our choices lead to certain consequences. Determinism says that things and people are shaped by what happens to them and the experiences they pass through, and these things will have effects in the future. Here Sri Aurobindo says that the sculptor spirit hidden in the form determines in advance the course of development of the seed he has planted. He himself lives within that seed; he passes ‘from life to life, from scale to scale’, changing the size and shape he has imaged for himself. A human sculptor uses hands and tools to create his forms; the artist spirit uses his power of vision to shape the progressive forms of his creations. He is always watching, seeing all that is happening; that look of his, that ‘gaze’, guides the seed how it has to grow. Sri Aurobindo calls the form an ‘icon’: an image of a god. The icon is changing ‘from life to life, from scale to scale’, but all the changes that it goes through are determined by the gaze of the artist spirit dwelling within it, the ‘Artist of his own beauty and delight’. Through the whole process of evolution he watches that individual seed growing; when it is only a worm, an insect or an amoeba he knows that in the full course of its development it will become a divinity: ‘in the worm’ he ‘foresees the coming god.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

His soul breaks out to join the Oversoul,
His life is oceaned by that superlife.

Sri Aurobindo is describing what happens to different parts of the being: the heart feels a beam of eternal light striking it, the mind opens, the whole nature widens and becomes vast; his soul, his flame of God, breaks out of its coverings, its disguises, and unites with its origin, ‘the Oversoul’, the central being above. His life changes too: our individual life force is limited; but when the soul breaks out of the human limits it feels itself absorbed into the limitless ocean of superlife.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Immortally she conceives herself in him,
In the creature the unveiled Creatrix works:
Her face is seen through his face, her eyes through his eyes;
Her being is his through a vast identity.

‘Immortally she conceives herself in him’: the Mother of the worlds prepares to give birth to herself in that one individual in an immortal form; ‘in the creature’ (the human frame) ‘the Creatrix’ (the creative Mother) works ‘unveiled’. She is working secretly all the time, of course, in all of us; but it is only after this moment of realisation comes that she can work ‘unveiled’, openly revealing her work. ‘Her face’, the face of the Mighty Mother, ‘is seen through his face, her eyes through his eyes’, and there is an identification: ‘Her being is his through a vast identity’, a vast oneness: Spirit and Supernature become one.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Then is revealed in man the overt Divine.
A static Oneness and dynamic Power
Descend in him, the integral Godhead’s seals;
His soul and body take that splendid stamp.

When that happens, ‘the overt Divine’ is ‘revealed in man’. ‘Overt’, means open, no longer hidden, occult or covert. The overt Divine is expressed in two aspects: a ‘static Oneness’, unchanging and immutable, supporting everything; and a ‘dynamic Power’ which acts; both the Oneness and the Power descend into the realised individual as ‘the integral Godhead’s seals’, the marks or signs of integral divinity; ‘His soul and body take that splendid stamp’: this is the goal of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga: both soul and body shall be stamped by the seals of integral Godhead, and the whole being shall be transformed.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A crown of the architecture of the worlds,
A mystery of married Earth and Heaven
Annexed divinity to the mortal scheme.
A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time.

It appears as a ‘crown of the architecture of the worlds’, a supreme crowning achievement of the manifestation, a ‘mystery of married earth and Heaven’; perhaps we can say a union of matter and spirit which connects ‘divinity to the mortal scheme’. Sometimes a country will take over or ‘annexe’ another,  making them one; this ‘mystery of married earth and heaven’ unites ‘the mortal scheme’ to ‘divinity’: Aswapati has become the connecting link between them. ‘A Seer was born, a shining Guest of Time’: a ‘Seer’ is a rishi, a prophet, a highly-developed being who is no longer limited by time, but living in it as a guest. Aswapati is this rishi, this ‘shining Guest of Time’.

For him mind’s limiting firmament ceased above.

When the cosmic Worker has done his work, Aswapati is no longer limited by the human mind, which for us is like a ‘limiting firmament’; ‘firmament’ implies something that is fixed and immovable; for us mind is like that, a state that we cannot get out of or go beyond. Now Aswapati is released from that limitation. There is no longer any limit for him; everything opens up.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

All the grey inhibitions were torn off
And broken the intellect’s hard and lustrous lid;
Truth unpartitioned found immense sky-room;
An empyrean vision saw and knew;
The bounded mind became a boundless light,
The finite self mated with infinity.

‘All the grey inhibitions were torn off ’: an ‘inhibition’ is an inner restriction that holds us back. Perhaps you would spontaneously like to do something, but you feel: “Oh, people will be upset. I’ve been taught that I mustn’t do this thing.” There are many inhibitions that prevent us from acting entirely spontaneously, and sometimes they even hold back the soul. Sri Aurobindo says the inhibitions are ‘grey’, a grey veil or skin, a covering that is limiting the soul, holding it back. For Aswapati now, these ‘grey inhibitions’ are torn off, and the hard, shining lid formed by the mind, ‘the intellect’s hard and lustrous lid’ is broken. The Upanishads speak of a golden lid that hides the Truth from us; as long as we are limited by that lid we cannot grasp the Truth, which is so infinitely vast. We can only get a little bit of truth into our minds, and we put it into the shape of words, of concepts and ideas and hold on to those and feel, think and say: “That is the truth.” It is only when a gap is rent in the all-concealing vault, the grey inhibitions are torn off and the intellect’s hard and lustrous lid is broken that we can experience ‘Truth unpartitioned’, Truth no longer separated and divided. We use a partition to divide one room into two, or a country gets partitioned, divided. ‘Truth unpartitioned’ is no longer divided; it finds ‘immense sky-room’: Aswapati has the living experience that there is no limit to the infinite extent of Truth.

This is a very strong, absolutely overpowering experience, the experience of the spiritual realisation. Everything that is familiar, all the landmarks of the little person, are gone; instead there is ‘An empyrean vision’. The ‘empyrean’ is the heavenly sky. Now Aswapati has a power of vision like the boundless sky, he can see everything in a single gaze: his ‘bounded mind became a boundless light’. There are no more boundaries, no more limits. ‘The finite self’, this little limited self, ‘mated with infinity’, which is another way of saying that ‘The island ego joined its continent’: the ‘finite self’ is not dissolved, it is still there, but it has united with its infinite source.

Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

His march now soared into an eagle’s flight.

Aswapati has been marching forward on the human journey, but at this point his march becomes ‘an eagle’s flight’. Eagles have powerful wings and can fly very high; they can also see very acutely, and it is even said that the eagle can look directly and steadily at the sun without damaging its eyes; its superb powers of flight and vision make the eagle a good symbol for a great soul.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Out of apprenticeship to Ignorance
Wisdom upraised him to her master craft
And made him an archmason of the soul,
A builder of the Immortal’s secret house,
An aspirant to supernal Timelessness:

As a human being, Aswapati has been apprenticed to Ignorance; an apprentice is a young person who learns a craft by acting as an assistant to a master. So far, Aswapati has been an apprentice of Ignorance; Ignorance has been teaching him, helping him to grow. But now Wisdom comes, takes him away from Ignorance, raises him up and makes him into a master craftsman, ‘an archmason of the soul’. An ‘archmason’ is not just a simple builder but a highly skilled master mason. Aswapati is building ‘the Immortal’s secret house’. That is what all of us eventually have to do: we have to help build the Immortal’s secret house so that the divine presence can be expressed here, even in the body. He is also ‘An aspirant to supernal Timelessness’: he is aspiring to a divine immortal state that is free from the constraints of Time and Space.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]