At last he wakes to a memory of Self:
He sees within the face of deity,
The Godhead breaks out through the human mould:
Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.

When Nature has done her work, the conscious being wakes up to the memory of who he really is and ‘sees within the face of deity’, the divine presence within himself. Then ‘The Godhead’, the individualised Divine ‘breaks out through the human mould’. Sri Aurobindo tells us that the human being is a ‘mould’ in which formless spirit gets shaped by the evolutionary action of Nature. When it is fully formed, then it can break out through the mould and reveal itself; and when that happens Nature too takes off her mask of unconsciousness, reveals her ‘highest heights’, and shows herself as ‘his mate’, the partner and playmate of the Lord: they are the ‘Two who are One.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book  1]

This is the knot that ties together the stars:
The Two who are one are the secret of all power,
The Two who are one are the might and right in things.

The relationship between the ‘Two who are One’ is ‘the knot that ties together the stars’: it unites the entire universe. Together, they are ‘the secret of all power’; they are ‘the might and right in things’. In this world we feel that there are two powers which determine how things go: what is ‘right’, some inner truth; and then ‘might’, power or force. These are two aspects of the Two who are One.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

His soul, silent, supports the world and her,
His acts are her commandment’s registers.

Earlier Sri Aurobindo has told us that ‘He’, the One, moves here in the manifestation as Soul, and ‘She’, his conscious Force, the creative Power of manifestation, is working in what we think of as Nature. Here it is shown that the soul, when it is silent and seems passive, is really supporting the world and Nature, who could not act at all unless she had the silent support of the Lord behind and within, saying ‘Yes’ to what she does. The silent soul that we almost do not notice is supporting the whole play of relationships that is the world, as it supports her and her action. When the soul acts, as the conscious individual, his actions are a record, a ‘register’ of what Nature has commanded.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our lives are the quivering theatre,
And none could bear but for his strength within,
Yet none would leave because of his delight.

These lines remind us of an image in Hindu iconography where we see Kali, the dynamic force, dancing; but she cannot dance unless there is something for her to dance on, so Shiva is shown lying passive, ‘inert’, allowing her to dance upon his breast. This is a traditional image which expresses the truth which Sri Aurobindo is showing us here: Kali, the dynamic force, dances in time and space, shaping all the many different forms and forces and events; but her ever-changing dance is supported by the ever-unchanging existence of the Lord. Our lives are the ‘theatre’, the stage where that dance is taking place; we are ‘quivering’, we are alive; we are moving with that dance which is so tremendous that none of us could bear it if the Lord’s strength were not within us supporting the dance; because he is in us, we share in his delight. It is a remarkable thing that however dreadful their life is, people cling to life, they do not want to leave; that is because of the delight of the Lord within enjoying Kali’s dance: ‘none would leave because of his delight’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Her happenings that exalt and smite the soul,
Her force that moves, her powers that save and slay,
Her Word that in the silence speaks to our hearts,
Her silence that transcends the summit Word,
Her heights and depths to which our spirit moves,
Her events that weave the texture of our lives
And all by which we find or lose ourselves,
Things sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean,
Things terrible and beautiful and divine.

All these things are the ‘material of her cosmic Act’. She is unrolling them all. Some of her happenings ‘exalt’ the soul, lift it up with joy; others are terrible and ‘smite the soul’, giving a dreadful shock or wound; or even, the same happenings that give a blow, if the soul is strong enough, may ‘exalt’ it, lift it up, make it feel its own strength. To ‘exalt’ means ‘to lift up’. ‘Her force that moves, her powers that save and slay’: her force moves things and events, she has great powers that can save, but they may also sometimes slay, kill, destroy. Then there is her creative Word: sometimes, when we are very silent, it speaks to our hearts and something flowers and blossoms in our life. Or beyond even that wonderful creative Word, there is a supreme silence: ‘Her silence that transcends’, that goes beyond, even the very highest ‘summit Word’. She has very high levels, ‘heights’, as well as ‘depths’, deep spaces to which our spirit can move. Then there are the small ordinary events ‘that weave the texture of our lives’: if one observes, in the course of a day many different things happen, one can have many different experiences just in the course of one day. For much of the time our life may seem to be very much the same, the days have much the same ‘texture’ or feel; ‘texture’ is a quality that we feel with our fingers; but now and then things come up and give some different feelings, the texture of our days changes. ‘The texture of our lives’ is woven by all these happenings, all these experiences, qualities, moods: everything which helps us to find ourselves, and everything by which we seem to lose ourselves, ‘Things sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean’, wonderful things or very small, petty, unpleasant things, poor, small things, as well as ‘Things terrible and beautiful and divine’. All of the things listed in theselines are part of the ‘cosmic Act’ of Nature and the scheme of her drama.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

His spirit survives amid the death of things,
He climbs to eternity through being’s gaps,
He is carried by her from Night to deathless Light.

In fact, he is still immortal; although all forms die, although everything in the universe dies, ‘His spirit survives amid the death of things’; his spirit lives on in the midst of all that dying; and there is an evolutionary process going on: he has involved himself within the manifestation, but the secret purpose in nature is that all these individual forms shall become fully conscious again; so the Divine as the individual is climbing back to eternity ‘through being’s gaps’, the subtle spaces through which the soul can grow. Nature is carrying him, in each of us, from the ‘Night’ of unconsciousness to the ‘deathless Light’ of full divine consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
In the insoluble riddle of her play,
A creature made of perishable stuff,
In the pattern she has set for him he moves,
He thinks with her thoughts, with her trouble his bosom heaves;
He seems the thing that she would have him seem,
He is whatever her artist will can make.

He submits to the action of nature. It is a mystery how the supreme consciousness can enter into this universal ignorance. How can it happen? The play of nature is like a riddle that we cannot solve, it seems ‘insoluble’. The supreme Being becomes a creature ‘made of perishable stuff’: stuff that will not last, that has to die because it is ‘perishable’, like milk and eggs and vegetables and other things that do not last long. In his many forms, the supreme consciousness accepts to move in the pattern that nature sets for him. Even thoughts which we think are our own are actually coming to us from universal mind; the conscious being in us ‘thinks with her thoughts’, thoughts formed by universal nature. Or we may feel suddenly sad, because some wave of universal sadness has entered into us: ‘with her trouble his bosom heaves’, he feels moved to weeping by intense feelings that have formed in nature’s play and have entered into his individual being. He takes on whatever appearance she wants him to wear and he becomes whatever Nature can make of him with her artistry.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

But conquering her, then is he most her slave
He is her dependent, all his means are hers
Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.

This is particularly true if we remain enslaved to the materialistic view of life, for then without her we cannot do anything at all, we are totally dependent on material nature; we cannot do without her, so she is still ruling us. This is the present state of human development. In the coming lines Sri Aurobindo will show us further evolutionary steps.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

He has sold himself into her regal power
For any blow or boon that she may choose:
Even in what is suffering to our sense,
He feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all experience meets her blissful hands;
On his heart he bears the happiness of her tread
And the surprise of her arrival’s joy
In each event and every moment’s chance.

It is as if he has sold himself as slave, a serf, ‘into her regal power’ so she can do whatever she wants with him; whether it is a ‘blow’ or a ‘boon’, a gift, the soul enjoys the touches of Nature, ‘Even in what is suffering to our sense’. When Nature gives us a blow our surface consciousness feels very unhappy and wonders why that has happened to us; but thesoul ‘feels the sweetness of her mastering touch’: he feels ‘Oh, my beloved, my Mother is caressing me.’ ‘In all experience’ he feels the touch of her hands, which brings bliss; lying beneath her feet his heart feels the happiness of her tread as she dances, even if her dance is very fierce and frightening; whatever happens, ‘In each event and every moment’s chance’, whatever comes, he feels surprise and delight: ‘Oh, she has come!’ Whatever form she takes, the soul enjoys the delight of the Mother’s touch and the Mother’s presence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The Spirit, the innumerable One,
He has left behind his lone eternity,
He is an endless birth in endless Time,
Her finite’s multitude in an infinite Space.

He is ‘The Spirit’, the One who has become ‘innumerable’, the Many, the countless beings in the manifestation. We can say that beyond manifestation the One is alone in his eternity and infinity; he contains all possibilities within him and is the sole existence. Entering into the manifestation ‘he has left behind his lone eternity’ to become an ‘endless birth in endless Time’: he is born again and again in all the different forms and beings of the manifestation. A ‘multitude’ means many, many people or things. He has become ‘Her finite’s multitude in an infinite Space’. The material world that nature has created is ‘finite’, limited, and the countless creatures in it live and die and then take other forms; that finite creation of hers exists in ‘an infinite Space’. He has become all that.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]