A border sovereign is the occult Force.
A threshold guardian of the earth-scene’s Beyond,
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods
And cut through vistas of intuitive sight
A long road of shimmering discoveries.

She is ‘A border sovereign’: a ‘sovereign’ is a ruler, and she rules the border lands between one world and another; she is ‘the occult Force’, the secret creative power that we meet when we first enter the subtle worlds. She is ‘A threshold guardian of the earth-scene’s Beyond’. The ‘threshold’ is the sill that we step over when we go through the doorway at the entrance to a building, a temple or a house; although we do not see them, guardian beings are protecting the threshold; the secret Nature who was described in the previous section, the ‘occult Force’, is ‘A threshold guardian’ ruling the border between the earth-scene that we know and the ‘Beyond’ that is unknown to us. ‘She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods’: she has made channels to carry energies that are overflowing or breaking out from the worlds of the Gods. By making a canal or channel we can guide water to where it is needed; similarly she channels forces from the higher worlds. She has ‘cut through vistas of intuitive sight’: a ‘vista’ is a long view through a narrow opening: down a street with tall buildings on either side, or through a clearing in the forest. Typically in a vista we see different layers: a foreground and a middle ground and then a far distant view: a vista, a view. We look at a vista with our physical eyes; this border sovereign has cut vistas for the intuitive vision to see far distances, ‘A long road of shimmering discoveries’ which gives a prospect of many marvellous discoveries; those who travel that road can experience one wonderful discovery after another as they pass through the different layers of the vista. ‘Shimmering’ describes the movement of light, light that is moving on water, or on silk cloth that shines as it is moved; on a very hot day we may see air shimmering above the surface of a dark road: the air above the road heats up and moves, reflecting light and shimmering in the heat. The long road through the intuitive vista is shimmering with the light of the marvellous discoveries that lie along the way.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Abysms infernal gaped round the soul’s steps
And called to its mounting vision peaks divine:
An endless climb and adventure of the Idea
There tirelessly tempted the explorer mind
And countless voices visited the charmed ear;
A million figures passed and were seen no more.

This borderland is a realm where many different worlds meet. In the previous section Sri Aurobindo mentioned that the secret Nature was working on the margin of many meeting planes. There are ‘Abysms infernal’: very deep, dark, black holes; ‘infernal’ refers to the lower worlds and means ‘hellish’. The Italian word for hell is ‘inferno’; it is the name of the first part of La Divina Commedia, the three-part epic of the great Italian poet Dante in which he describes going down into the infernal regions and exploring them before moving on and up into higher worlds. ‘Abysms’ are huge, deep gulfs. Aswapati sees them ‘gaping’, opening up around the soul as it moves; but at the same time there are divine mountain peaks attracting the soul as it looks up into the heights. There the mind is constantly ‘tempted’ and allured by the prospect of endless progress through exciting new possibilities of the ‘Idea’. The senses too are attracted and delighted: ‘countless voices visited the charmed ear’. ‘A million figures passed and were seen no more’: endlessly passing, seen for a moment and then disappearing again, forms from many subtle worlds appear and vanish.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Its shadows gleaming with the birth of gods,
Its bodies signalling the Bodiless,
Its foreheads glowing with the Oversoul,
Its forms projected from the Unknowable,
Its eyes dreaming of the Ineffable,
Its faces staring into eternity.

These lines suggest different aspects of the unknown which Aswapati sees. There are shadows, ‘gleaming’, glowing, because in them gods are taking form, being born; he sees bodies that are ‘signalling the Bodiless’, sending out signs and signals that represent and remind us of the ‘Bodiless’, the unmanifest supreme Being behind and beyond them. Faces are seen there, whose foreheads are ‘glowing with the Oversoul’, the great Soul of which we are all small souls. All those forms are being ‘projected’, sent out, emitted or emanated from ‘the Unknowable’, the transcendent mystery; there are ‘eyes dreaming of the Ineffable’, which cannot be expressed, and ‘faces staring into eternity’. Such wonderful significant figures and beings are lodged there at the entrance to ‘God’s thousandfold house’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]