In a brief moment caught, a little space,
All-Knowledge packed into great wordless thoughts
Lodged in the expectant stillness of his depths
A crystal of the ultimate Absolute,
A portion of the inexpressible Truth
Revealed by silence to the silent soul.

Inspiration may come just for a moment, a little space of time; but in that ‘brief moment’, in that ‘little space’ he is able to catch ‘All-Knowledge’. It is as if all the infinite Knowledge of the Supreme has been brought together and ‘packed’ into ‘great wordless thoughts’ which transcend ‘mortal speech’, and are expressed in music, in rhythms that convey a meaning beyond words. These great wordless thoughts containing the ‘All-Knowledge’ form ‘A crystal’, a shining form like a gemstone. This crystal comes from ‘the ultimate Absolute’, the supreme Reality, and is ‘A portion of the inexpressible Truth’. The Truth of the ultimate Absolute, which is the source of all the truths we seek for and believe in, can never be fully expressed, it is ‘inexpressible’; but a portion of it, in the form of this crystal which contains ‘All-Knowledge packed into great wordless thoughts’, gets ‘Lodged in the expectant stillness of his depths’. In order to receive inspiration, Aswapati had to become deeply silent, deeply still and unmoving – not just on the surface of his being, as we may sit without speaking, trying to meditate, to concentrate, but all the time thoughts and feelings and sensations are buzzing away beneath the surface; he has become deeply still. His mind is silent, his heart is like an empty cup, his soul is silent, receptive, aspiring for some great gift from above; and into the ‘expectant stillness of his depths’ comes this crystal which by the power of silence reveals a portion of the inexpressible Truth to the silence of his soul. It gets ‘Lodged’ in his depths: it remains there, and does not go away.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A gleaner of infinitesimal grains of Truth,
A sheaf-binder of infinite experience,
She pierced the guarded mysteries of World-Force
And her magic methods wrapped in a thousand veils;

Here Sri Aurobindo continues and expands the image of harvesting. The goddess acts as a ‘gleaner’. Gleaners were poor people who were allowed to go behind the harvesters to pick up every dropped grain. She gathers those tiny little grains of Truth that would otherwise be overlooked. ‘Infinitesimal’ means ‘extremely small’. She also acts as a ‘sheaf-binder’. The harvesters would work with their scythes to cut down the stalks of wheat, and behind them people would gather the stalks up into bundles called ‘sheaves’, tied skilfully so that as little as possible would be lost; the bundles would be piled together to be collected and carted away to the threshing grounds. The goddess picks up even the tiniest grains of truth and gathers together bundles, sheaves of ‘infinite experience’. Like a little harvest mouse, she can penetrate even the most secret places: she will bore her way into ‘the guarded mysteries of World-Force’, the secrets of the creative power, the Creatrix of the World, and find out ‘her magic methods wrapped in a thousand veils’. The World-Force keeps her methods a secret; they are guarded, they are magical, occult, ‘wrapped in a thousand veils’, but the power of intuition can penetrate them and share them with Aswapati.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A traveller between summit and abyss,
She joined the distant ends, the viewless deeps,
Or streaked along the roads of Heaven and Hell
Pursuing all knowledge like a questing hound.

The goddess has ‘lightning feet’: she can travel great distances in an instant and connect things that are widely separated. She can travel between the ‘summit’, the highest level of consciousness, and the ‘abyss’, the deepest depths. In her movement, she can join ‘the distant ends’, the faraway fulfilment of things and ‘the viewless deeps’, those unseen and invisible origins from which they have started. Or like a hunting dog, a hound, she travels at great speed through all the worlds, the high paradisal worlds and the dreadful hellish worlds. She can go everywhere, very quickly, like a streak of lightning, in pursuit of knowledge. This is one of the important functions of intuition. In the old Vedic legend of the Angirasas, when the rishis are searching for ‘the lost herds of the Sun’, the cows of light and consciousness that have been stolen and hidden by the powers of division and darkness, Sarama, the goddess of intuition, like a hunting dog on the scent, finds out the cave where they have been hidden. Aswapati experiences this action of hers, ‘like a questing hound’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Above the reason’s brilliant slender curve,
Released like radiant air dimming a moon,
Broad spaces of a vision without line
Or limit swam into his spirit’s ken.

Reason is the highest power that we normally have access to in our mentality. Here Sri Aurobindo images it as a moon, the thin moon in its last phase in the eastern sky in the very early morning before sunrise. Above the ‘brilliant slender curve’ of mind, new spaces open up: ‘Broad spaces of a vision without line or limit’. It seems as if they have been ‘Released’, set free from the darkness surrounding the moon, and their brightness, their radiance makes the moon, which was ‘brilliant’, seem dimmer: ‘like radiant air dimming a moon’. There seems to be no horizon, no ‘limit’ to these ‘Broad spaces’ that are opening. Those bright spaces ‘swam into his spirit’s ken’. Our ‘ken’ is what we know; things that are ‘beyond our ken’ are things that we do not know yet, things that we do not know and do not understand. Here Sri Aurobindo is not talking about the mind’s knowing but about the spirit: Aswapati‘s spirit is becoming aware of these new spaces, as if they are swimming into his awareness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Immense realities took on a shape:
There looked out from the shadow of the Unknown
The bodiless Namelessness that saw God born
And tries to gain from the mortal’s mind and soul
A deathless body and a divine name.

But now Aswapati sees something that is real: ‘Immense realities took on a shape’, a form which he can perceive. Sri Aurobindo gives a list of these ‘Immense realities’ and evokes them for us. First ‘The bodiless Namelessness that saw God born’; this seems to be the Origin: That which is eternal, beyond all form and name, That which has seen the birth of what we call ‘God’. Aswapati sees it looking out ‘from the shadow of the Unknown’, as if from behind a dark cloud or mist; and he sees that ‘The bodiless Namelessness’ is trying to gain ‘A deathless body and a divine name.’ Perhaps this is the Spirit, and this is its desire. To fulfil its desire, the universe has been created: because that nameless bodiless Existence wants to gain the fulfilment of its desire ‘from the mortal’s mind and soul’, through the intermediary of human beings. Although we are in the grip of Death and Ignorance, the eternal Spirit wants to gain through us, for itself, ‘A deathless body and a divine name’. Perhaps this is the whole meaning of the manifestation, and the reason why we are here.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Hardly for a moment glimpsed viewless to Mind,
As if a torch held by a power of God,
The radiant world of the everlasting Truth
Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night
Above the golden Overmind’s shimmering ridge.

Aswapati even gets a brief glimpse, just for a moment, of something that cannot be seen by Mind: ‘The radiant world of the everlasting Truth’, the Supramental World. This is his first glimpse of that world, and he hardly glimpses it, just for a moment. He sees it ‘glimmering’, glowing faintly, ‘like a faint star’. He sees the Overmind plane like a shining golden mountain range. ‘Shimmering’ suggests a movement of light, of atmosphere, as we see hot air above a road or a bare field quivering and glowing: shimmering. Above that ‘shimmering ridge’ of the Overmind there is darkness, like the night sky or the darkness of outer space, and on the edge of it, this faint star, ‘As if a torch held by a power of God’. This is the first time that the supramental world is mentioned in the poem. Aswapati glimpses it just for a brief moment, ‘like a faint star’, it is so far away; what we see as a faint star may be a vast galaxy of suns but we can hardly see it, because it is so far away that only a little of its light reaches us.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The inspiring goddess entered a mortal’s breast,
Made there her study of divining thought
And sanctuary of prophetic speech
And sat upon the tripod seat of mind:
All was made wide above, all lit below.

Earlier the ‘inspiring goddess’, was coming and going; but now she enters Aswapati’s breast and makes it ‘her study’, the place where she does her work of ‘divining thought’ – perhaps we can call it intuitive knowledge. She sits there ‘upon the tripod seat of mind’. Here Sri Aurobindo pictures ‘the inspiring goddess’ sitting upon ‘the tripod seat of mind’. Our mind has three feet or legs, three elements or strands: the physical mind, the vital mind and the mental mind proper, the reason. In Aswapati’s mind, supported on these three legs, these three kinds of mind, the goddess sits and shares her inspired knowledge with him. As a result, for Aswapati ‘All was made wide above, all lit below’: higher levels of consciousness widened out above his mind, and everything below, all the lower levels of being, were lit up.

[Shrddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In the deep subconscient glowed her jewel-lamp;
Lifted, it showed the riches of the Cave
Where, by the miser traffickers of sense
Unused, guarded beneath Night’s dragon paws,
In folds of velvet darkness draped they sleep
Whose priceless value could have saved the world.

The previous sentence, together with this one, reminds us of the Vedic myth of the Angirasas, a parallel myth to that of Satyavan and Savitri. The Vedas seem to be built around and refer to a series of symbolic myths, and one of these is the story of the Cave. The Rishis know that there is a cave in which the herds of the Sun are hidden; the herds of the Sun are the rays of light of the supreme consciousness; they called them ‘cows’ because the word for ‘cow’ and the word for ‘light’ are the same in Vedic Sanskrit. The Rishis have to find those cows, those rays of the supreme light of Consciousness, and get them out of the cave. They cannot do it alone. The first one who helps them is Sarama, the goddess of intuition; she takes the form of a hound, a hunting dog; she follows her nose and traces the cows. Following her, the Rishis realise where the cows are hidden in the Cave, but they cannot get them out so easily; they ask for the help of Indra, the divine Mind, the king of Mind. I think he utters a great noise, a cry that shatters the mountain and breaks open the cave: then all the light-cows, the golden Herds of the Sun, are released. When they are freed, bringing the light of Knowledge, of full consciousness, then rivers of divine energy pour down from the heavens. The goddess has shown Aswapati the way to the Cave that has been forbidden and made invisible by the hostile powers; it is in the ‘deep subconscient’. She holds up ‘her jewel-lamp’, and Aswapati can see all the treasures that are hidden in that deep Cave of the subconscient.  Here Sri Aurobindo speaks about ‘the miser traffickers of  sense’. These are the Panis. They live in us as long as we are limited by our sense-mind and see everything through our physical senses; it is as if our senses are misers, keeping hidden and holding on to all the experiences that should be part of the divine Delight, instead of offering them to the Divine. A miser is a person who has some wealth but will not spend or share it; he just holds on to it, he is not ready to make the sacrifice, the exchange that the Oneness demands. These misers are also ‘traffickers’: they are dealing, exchanging these riches for gain; not for the divine purpose but for selfish gain. So those wonderful treasures are ‘unused’: they are ‘guarded beneath Night’s dragon paws’. In almost all the stories about dragons, they live in caves lying on heaps of treasure. All this goes back to the Vedas. This dragon is Night, the Night of the Inconscient. It is guarding the divine treasures. They are ‘draped’, covered up, ‘in folds of velvet darkness’ and they are asleep. These are psychological treasures. It is not a treasure of diamonds and gold and things like that, those are just symbols. The ‘priceless value’ of these treasures ‘could have saved the world’; and when, with the help of the divine Light and Force, they are found and brought out of the cave of the Inconscient, they will save the world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A darkness carrying morning in its breast
Looked for the eternal wide returning gleam,
Waiting the advent of a larger ray
And rescue of the lost herds of the Sun.

A ‘herd’ is the word we use for a group of cows or goats or horses. These ‘lost herds of the Sun’ are the rays of divine Light that have been lost, stolen. Inside the cave there is ‘A darkness’, a symbol night; and every night carries within it the possibility of morning; even in the deepest darkness there is hidden a light which is going to emerge eventually. Aswapati sees that the deep darkness of unconsciousness is ‘carrying morning in its breast’; the darkness itself is waiting for some new dawn to come, it is looking for the ‘eternal wide returning gleam’, of the divine Dawn and it is ‘Waiting for the advent’, the coming, the arrival of ‘a larger ray’: a ray of divine Light that is brighter and stronger than any that has so far come into the manifestation, the ray that will enable all these imprisoned lights, the ‘lost herds of the Sun’ to be rescued and all the treasures to be brought out into the light and used for the transformation of the world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The universe was not now this senseless whirl
Borne round inert on an immense machine;
It cast away its grandiose lifeless front,
A mechanism no more or work of Chance,
But a living movement of the body of God.

As a result of this reversal of values Aswapati sees things in a completely new way: ‘The universe’ lost its appearance of a ‘senseless whirl’. A ‘whirl’ is a circular movement such as an eddy or whirlpool; ‘senseless’ has a double meaning: ‘without senses’, insensible, without the capacity to feel; and also ‘meaningless’, without significance. For a long time to our mind, to our perception, the universe may look like a ‘senseless whirl / Borne round inert on an immense machine’, being carried around helplessly on some huge meaningless machine; Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita speaks of the entire material world being carried around by Nature, as if on a machine. Now, to Aswapati’s new way of seeing things, the universe ‘cast away its grandiose lifeless front’, lost its appearance of being lifeless, yet huge, grandiose, magnificent to look at. When we see the wonderful photographs that are made through telescopes looking out into Space, the universe appears amazingly beautiful, but lifeless; Sri Aurobindo says that this is just a ‘front’, a first appearance; it is not the inner truth of the universe. For Aswapati now that ‘front’, that appearance is thrown away. The universe no longer appears like ‘A mechanism’ that is driven purely by the laws of physics, or a ‘work of Chance’. The strict materialist view tells us that everything has happened mechanically and by chance; but now Aswapati sees it all as ‘a living movement of the body of God’. This entire vast material universe is a living movement of the body of the Supreme Divine.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Life kept no more a dull and meaningless shape.
In the struggle and upheaval of the world
He saw the labour of a godhead’s birth.

So long as we do not see the universe like that, life can often seem ‘dull and meaningless’: what are we here for? There does not seem to be any higher meaning to many of the things that we have to do. But for Aswapati now it is not like that any longer. In all the ‘struggle’, all the difficulty, the clash, the conflict, the ‘upheaval’, the constant change that seems so often to bring disorder and destruction, and things that make us think, ‘Oh, it should not be like this’, Aswapati could see that the ‘struggle and upheaval’ is the expression of ‘the labour of a godhead’s birth’: the Divine is being born in the world, in life, in more and more perfect forms. In that birth a great effort is involved. The word ‘labour’ means two things: it means hard work and it also means the pains that a mother goes through when giving birth to a child. The whole of Nature is giving birth to that divine child. When Aswapati saw that, life no longer appeared dull and meaningless but was filled with a marvellous significance and purpose, ‘heightening life’s aim’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A secret knowledge masked as Ignorance;
Fate covered with an unseen necessity
The game of chance of an omnipotent Will.

Human beings live in a state of ignorance; but Aswapati sees now that this ‘Ignorance’ is a mask for ‘a secret knowledge’ that lies behind and within all the struggle and upheaval in life. The word ‘mask’ is usually a noun, and is sometimes used in the adjectival form ‘masked’: ‘a masked face’; here Sri Aurobindo has used it as an active verb in the past tense: the ‘secret knowledge’ is playing in disguise, hidden by its mask of ‘Ignorance’; this is an unusual way of using the word. Aswapati also sees that ‘Fate’, which appears to be inescapable destiny, is really covering ‘The game of chance of an omnipotent Will’. There is an all-powerful ‘Will’, the will of ‘the formless Everlasting’, the will of the Creator; it is all- powerful but it has chosen to play a ‘game of chance’, like the game of dice that the kings play in the old stories: when you throw the dice, you do not know what the outcome will be; so in some respects what happens in the universe has not been fully predetermined: it is as if the all-powerful Will has said, ‘Let us set up this set of conditions and see what happens’. The dice are thrown and you see what happens – it seems to be a game of chance; but behind the play of chance, there is an omnipotent Will, and also an ‘unseen necessity’: there is a reason and a choice behind, even though we cannot see why things happen the way they do. They are the outcome of ‘The game of chance of an omnipotent Will’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A heavenly impetus quickened all his breast;
The trudge of Time changed to a splendid march;
The divine Dwarf towered to unconquered worlds,
Earth grew too narrow for his victory.

Aswapati experiences ‘A heavenly impetus’: an ‘impetus’ is a drive, a dynamic urge to movement. From the higher levels of consciousness some new energy is coming into his life-force which ‘quickened all his breast’. To ‘quicken’ means to make quicker, in both senses: to make it move faster, and also to make it more alive, alert and sensitive. Aswapati’s ‘breast’, his heart, the centre of his emotional being, gets speeded up and made more intensely alive by this ‘heavenly impetus’, this push or urge that is coming to him from above; this changes ‘the trudge of Time … to a splendid march’. To ‘trudge’ means to walk slowly, with difficulty, heavily putting one foot in front of the other. Time sometimes seems to move slowly and in a dull, heavy, tired way. Now for Aswapati, because of that ‘heavenly impetus’, the new energy that has come to him, the slow passage of time changes ‘to a splendid march’: each hour, each day, moves forward with eager enthusiasm on its wonderful journey. ‘The divine Dwarf towered to unconquered worlds, / Earth grew too narrow for his victory.’ Here is an allusion to the traditional story about one of the ten Avatars of Vishnu – Vamana, the divine dwarf. The Lord comes to the earth in the form of a dwarf, dressed as a Brahmin; he approaches the king and asks for a boon: he asks to be given some land, as much space to rule as he can cover with three steps. The king sees that little dwarf and says, ‘Is that all? Yes, surely you can have it’. With his first step the dwarf covers all the earth; with his second step he covers all the sea and the sky; then he asks, ‘Where can I put my third step?’ The king bows down and says, ‘Put it on my head’, surrendering to the Lord. This ‘divine Dwarf’ is perhaps the individual Divine within us, said to be no bigger than the thumb of a man. When he reaches his full stature, he has not only conquered the earth and the heavens, he is looking for ‘unconquered worlds’; he is no longer a tiny thumb-sized figure: he towers, he becomes immense, huge. Similarly for Aswapati ‘Earth grew too narrow for his victory’; his greatened being is looking for more worlds to conquer.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The world was a conception and a birth
Of Spirit in Matter into living forms,
And Nature bore the Immortal in her womb,
That she might climb through him to eternal life.

Aswapati sees the world as ‘a birth’: first there is ‘a conception’ and then ‘a birth / Of Spirit in Matter into living forms’. ‘Nature’ is not a blind power at all: she is a great conscious Force who is carrying ‘the Immortal in her womb’ as a mother carries her child, so that by giving birth to the godhead being born in all the forces and forms in the world, she herself can climb ‘through him’, through his many births, ‘to eternal life’. From the inertia of Matter to ‘living forms’, then through mental forms and still higher ones, Nature is climbing, developing, evolving towards ‘eternal life’. When Aswapati sees all this, his experience of himself also changes:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Even his body’s subtle self within
Could raise the earthly parts towards higher things
And feel on it the breath of heavenlier air.

We are based in the gross physical body, but we would not be living beings unless there were also a subtle body inhabiting and enlivening the physical body. Aswapati’s ‘subtle self’, the more conscious and flexible subtle physical being, becomes able to ‘raise the earthly parts towards higher things’ and to ‘feel on it the breath of heavenlier air’: the prana, atmosphere and life-force of a diviner plane.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]