“Prisoner of Nature, many-visioned spirit,
Thought’s creature in the ideal’s realm enjoying
Thy unsubstantial immortality
The subtle marvellous mind of man has feigned,
This is the world from which thy yearnings came.

Death tells Savitri that she is a ‘Prisoner of Nature’, unable to escape from her earthly human state. But he also calls her a ‘many-visioned spirit’. Within the prisoner of Nature is a spirit who sees many wonderful visions and dreams of a more ideal state and enjoys a sense of ‘immortality’. But he tells her that this spirit is actually a creation of Thought, of the mind, and that the immortality she feel is ‘unsubstantial’, an illusion produced by the ‘subtle marvellous mind of man’. ‘To feign’ means ‘to pretend’ or ‘to create an illusion’. Death tells Savitri that this Dream-Twilight realm is the world from which her ‘yearnings’, her longings, have been born, and that they have no lasting significance or reality, no substance. They are nothing but wishful thinking.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

This is the stuff from which the ideal is formed:
Its builder is thought, its base the heart’s desire,
But nothing real answers to their call.

Death tells Savitri, “This attractive but insubstantial stuff is what all your high ideals are made of. They are formed by thought, based on ‘the heart’s desire’. They are nothing but wishful thinking. They have no reality, they do not correspond to anything real, lasting or meaningful: ‘nothing real answers to their call’, to the longings of these ideas and ideals.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A beast of prey that pauses in its prowl,
It crouches under a bush in splendid flower
To seize a heart and body for its food:
This beast thou dreamst immortal and a god.

Death depicts love as a predator, a wild animal, always in search of prey to feed on. It ‘pauses in its prowl’, its stealthy hunt for food, and hides itself under a beautiful bush covered in lovely blossoms, ready to jump out and seize a human heart, a human body to feed on; and he mocks Savitri, saying that this predator, this hungry wild beast is what you call ‘Love’, imagining that it is immortal and divine.

All this is true to a certain extent about ordinary human love, but I do not think that even Death believes that this is the whole truth about Love. He is telling Savitri this to discourage her, to make her give up her determination to return to earthwith living Satyavan, and he has a lot more disillusioningthings to tell her and us in the course of the next pages.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

O human mind, vainly thou torturest
An hour’s delight to stretch through infinity’s
Long void and fill its formless, passionless gulfs,
Persuading the insensible Abyss
To lend eternity to perishing things,
And trickst the fragile movements of thy heart
With thy spirit’s feint of immortality.

Now Death addresses Savitri as a mental being: ‘O human mind’. He tells her, “What you are doing is in vain, futile, useless: you want to prolong the brief delight you have enjoyed with Satyavan, to stretch it out into the long emptiness of infinity. You think that you can fill the ‘formless, passionless gulfs’ of infinity with the delight of your brief love.” When Death speaks of torture and stretching here, he is using the image of the ‘rack’, a terrible instrument of torture which was used in Europe in the Middle Ages to extract confessions from suspects. The victim was tied to a wooden frame, and levers were then used to stretch out the limbs and eventually separate the joints – wrists, elbows, ankles, knees, etc. He is telling Savitri that her demand for Satyavan’s soul to be allowed to return to earth is a forcible attempt to extend the delight which she has enjoyed for a short time with Satyavan beyond its natural limit, stretching it out into infinity. He says, “You want to persuade or convince ‘the insensible Abyss’, the deep gulf of unconsciousness which lies beyond this illusory world of time and space, where there are no feelings, no sensibility, to ‘lend eternity to perishing things’. Everything you enjoy here on earth is perishable and cannot last for eternity. But you are trying to prolong the brief moment of delight that you experienced with Satyavan for ever: ‘through infinity’s / Long void’.” He says, “Thou ‘trickst the fragile movements of thy heart / With thy spirit’s feint of immortality’.” The verb ‘to trick’ has two meanings and both of them apply here: the usual meaning is ‘to deceive’, a less common one is ‘to dress up’ or ‘to adorn’. Death is telling Savitri that she is deceiving herself by dressing up ‘the fragile movements’ of her perishable human heart with ‘thy spirit’s feint of immortality’. A ‘feint’ is a pretence, a deceptive movement used in the sport of fencing to mislead the opponent, or by a conjuror to mislead his audience into believing they have seen something they did not see. Death is warning Savitri not to allow herself to b  convinced that she is immortal. Instead he will give her his ‘Gospel’, his version of the truth.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

In vain to clothe love’s perishable mud
Thou hast woven on the Immortals’ borrowed loom
The ideal’s gorgeous and unfading robe.
The ideal never yet was real made.

Death continues his attempt to convince Savitri to give up her quest, telling her that earthly love is dependent on the ‘perishable mud’ of a body which is not going to last long. She is dressing up human love in the ‘gorgeous and unfading robe’ of an illusory ideal, which she has woven for it ‘on the Immortals’ borrowed loom’. A ‘loom’ is used to weave cloth. He says that she has borrowed a loom from another world, from the world of Immortality, and woven on it a lovely ideal robe to dress up her human love – but that kind of ideal does not apply in the mortal world, where ‘The ideal never yet was real made’. No ideal has ever yet been realised in the material world, he says. He has shown her the beautiful realm of ‘The Dream Twilight of the Ideal’, full of inspiring and delightful but fleeting experiences. Now he is telling her that all those lovely ideals have never been and can never be realised in the real world of matter. This ‘vanity of the ideal’ corresponds to our earthly experience, where high ideals can be inspiring, but seem to be forever unrealisable. These lines are important for us because we are drawn to Auroville by the call of an ideal which we are invited to make real. But Death tells us that ‘The ideal never yet was real made’ and implies that it can never be made real.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Imprisoned in form that glory cannot live;
Into a body shut it breathes no more.
Intangible, remote, for ever pure,
A sovereign of its own brilliant void,
Unwillingly it descends to earthly air
To inhabit a white temple in man’s heart:
In his heart it shines rejected by his life.

The glory of the ideal cannot live when it is ‘Imprisoned in form’: if it is given an earthly form, a body, it will die; it will not be able to breathe and live. In its very nature the ideal is ‘Intangible, remote’: it cannot be touched, it is very far away from us, ‘for ever pure’. It rules in a world of its own, which is a ‘brilliant void’ in which there are no forms and ‘Unwillingly it descends to earthly air’. It will come down to us, we human beings may get touched by an ideal, but it will only ‘inhabit a white temple’, a pure shrine in our heart where it shines and illumines us; it will inevitably be rejected by our life which cannot live up to it; it will never become real here in the world of form, he says.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

How shall the Ideal tread earth’s dolorous soil
Where life is only a labour and a hope,
A child of Matter and by Matter fed,
A fire flaming low in Nature’s grate,
A wave that breaks upon a shore in Time,
A journey’s toilsome trudge with death for goal?

How is it possible for the glorious and shining Ideal to walk here on earth, on earthly soil which is so ‘dolorous’, full of sorrow and suffering, where life is ‘only a labour and a hope’, full of toil and effort and only hope keeps us going? Life here on the earth is ‘A child of Matter’, nourished by and dependent upon Matter. Our life-force is a very weak little fire, a feeble energy, ‘flaming low in Nature’s grate’. A ‘grate’ is something we are not familiar with here in the tropics. Only up in the hills there may be houses and bungalows that have a fireplace with a grate for burning wood or coal. The ‘grate’ is a lattice of metal strips on which logs or coals can be safely placed and lit, so that as they burn air is drawn up from below and smoke from the fire is drawn up the chimney and out of the house. In the earth-life, Nature provides support to the feeble flame of life-energy. Or life on earth is like a wave that emerges from the ocean of existence, lasts a while and then is shattered and disperses when it reaches the shore. Life on earth is a ‘journey’s toilsome trudge’. ‘Trudging’ is walking with effort: you have to keep going although you are completely exhausted. There is no joy in that kind of work or walking. And where is the journey leading? Our only destination is death.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The Avatars have lived and died in vain,
Vain was the sage’s thought, the prophet’s voice;
In vain is seen the shining upward Way.

‘The Avatars’, those divine beings who have incarnated on earth to help it to progress and move closer to its true destiny ‘have lived and died in vain’, he says: their sacrifices and efforts and sufferings have had no effect. The great thoughts of wise men, the words of the prophets have all been in vain. They may have given human beings a glimpse of ‘the shining upward Way’ to a higher and truer consciousness and existence, but others have not been able to follow it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;
She loves her fall and no omnipotence
Her mortal imperfections can erase,
Force on man’s crooked ignorance Heaven’s straight line
Or colonise a world of death with gods.

Despite all the efforts of the avatars, the sages and prophets, still ‘Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun’. ‘Earth’, this material world, Death says, is in love with her fallen state, and there is no power that can erase or do away with her ‘mortal imperfections’ which make her forever subject to death and ignorance. He insists that it is impossible to impose Heaven’s straight path to truth on the ‘crooked ignorance’ of humanity, and that there is no power which can populate this Earth with gods, immortal beings, because it is a material world in which everything has to die sooner or later. All beings on earth are mortal, subject to death.

The word ‘colonise’ refers to an old custom of the city states of ancient Greece:, they would select some of their best young men and women and give them a ship and supplies and send them off to find a new place to settle and build a new city where they would establish their Greek customs and way of life;.  Similarly perhaps gods, immortal beings from higher planes might try to colonise the earth and establish a higher life here. But Death says that this is an impossible dream: there is no power strong enough to do that, because of the very nature of the material earth.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

It is a conscious yearning of thy flesh,
It is a glorious burning of thy nerves,
A rose of dream-splendour petalling thy mind,
A great red rapture and torture of thy heart.

He characterises love as a physical experience, ‘a conscious yearning’ of the ‘flesh’, the physical substance of the body, and ‘a glorious burning’ of the nerves, as the whole body thrills with intense feelings. In the mind it blossoms like a ‘rose of dream- splendour’, far lovelier than any earthly rose. In the heart it is experienced as a mixture of ‘rapture’, intense delight, and ‘torture’, intense pain, because the feelings aroused by love can be overwhelming and difficult to bear.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A sudden transfiguration of thy days,
It passes and the world is as before.
A ravishing edge of sweetness and of pain,
A thrill in its yearning makes it seem divine,
A golden bridge across the roar of the years,
A cord tying thee to eternity.

But these intense sensations do not last long, he says. For a while love is experienced as a ‘sudden transfiguration’ of one’s life, a magical change – but that enchanted state passes, and the world becomes just as ordinary as it always was. But as long as this ‘ravishing edge of sweetness and of pain’ lasts, it seems to be something more than earthly, more than human: it seems divine. Anything that is ‘ravishing’ is so compellingly

delightful that it carries you away from your normal state into one of ecstasy and rapture. The image here is of a knife- blade: the sweetness and the pain of love come together as if on the sharp edge of a blade; the pain makes the sweetness more intense and the sweetness makes the pain not only bearable but irresistible. Another characteristic of love is yearning; it wants to be satisfied, it wants to feel fulfilled and achieve oneness, but in that yearning, there is a thrill, an excitement that makes the state of being in love seem divine. This state may even seem like a ‘golden bridge across the roar of the years’, convincing us that love will last through all the difficult times, that it will be like a golden bridge, carrying us beyond time, connecting us to timelessness, to eternity, to a divine state beyond mortality.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A word, a moment’s act can slay the god;
Precarious is his immortality,
He has a thousand ways to suffer and die.

That divine feeling of love which has come like an immortal god to light up our life can be destroyed at any moment by a disillusioning word or action. You may have had this experience, of feeling very much in love with someone, but one day they said or did something that destroyed your love in a moment. Love may seem like an immortal god, but his immortality is ‘Precarious’. It is not safe and durable and everlasting: it is always in danger, because love as we know it ‘has a thousand ways to suffer and die’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

An outward and uneasy union lasts
Or the routine of a life’s compromise:
Where once the seed of oneness had been cast
Into a semblance of spiritual ground
By a divine adventure of heavenly powers
Two strive, constant associates without joy,
Two egos straining in a single leash,
Two minds divided by their jarring thoughts,
Two spirits disjoined, for ever separate.

Some marriages are only ‘An outward and uneasy union’, maintained by social convention or convenience, or ‘the routine of a life’s compromise’. The couple had perhaps once experienced a ‘seed of oneness’ being planted into what appeared like a fruitful spiritual soil by a ‘divine adventure of heavenly powers’. Perhaps something from above has brought them together, but then after some time, the partners find themselves linked together in life but unhappy, ‘constant associates without joy’. They are like two dogs on a ‘single leash’, unable to separate but pulling in opposite directions. Their egos have discordant demands, their minds are not in harmony ‘divided by their jarring thoughts’. ‘Jarring’ is what happens when a door is not open and not properly closed but ‘ajar’ so that with every little movement of air it bangs against its frame, making a very irritating sound, again and again. Some couples are like that, constantly annoying each other and quarrelling: their spirits are no longer united but ‘disjoined, for ever separate’. Although they may have to share a house, their spirits are living in separate worlds.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Thou too shalt know, thy heart no anchor swinging,
Thy cradled soul moored in eternal seas.

In this beautiful image Sri Aurobindo puts into the mouth of Death all the allure of the eternal and infinite that has made the escape from earthly life the goal of so many great souls, so many yogas and spiritual disciplines. He images the heart as a ship which is not anchored or attached to anything, but feels absolutely safe as if held in a mother’s arms because it is ‘moored in eternal seas’. ‘Moored’ means ‘tied securely’. When a ship enters a port it will be ‘moored’, fastened firmly by ropes or chains to a post or bollard on shore; and if there is no port nearby, the captain will try to steer his ship to a place where he can let down the anchor to attach his craft to the sea-bottom to keep it in place. But here Death is saying that if the ship of the heart is not attached to anything at all, it will find that it is forever cradled and moored in the safety of the ocean of eternity where no storms come. Although these words are spoken by Death, to me they are amongst the most moving lines in the entire epic.

Then he tells her:

Vain are the cycles of thy brilliant mind.

“Your mind may seem to be ‘brilliant’, full of shining light, but it turns and turns in repetitive cycles that have no value, no effect: ‘Vain are the cycles of thy brilliant mind’. Earlier he was telling Savitri not to trust the impulses of her too-passionate heart. Now he is telling her not to trust the light of her mind either. So what should she do?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Renounce, forgetting joy and hope and tears,
Thy passionate nature in the bosom profound
Of a happy Nothingness and worldless Calm,
Delivered into my mysterious rest.
One with my fathomless Nihil all forget.

He is telling her to ‘Renounce’, to give up her ‘passionate nature’, to forget all its intense emotions and urges, its ‘joy and hope and tears’, to let them all drown and dissolve in the deep ocean of ‘happy Nothingness and worldless Calm’ that he is offering her. Then she will be ‘Delivered’, liberated, set free from the turmoil of human emotions, in the ‘mysterious rest’ of a state where there is no suffering, no effort, no passion, no world at all. That is the peace which Death is offering her. He urges her to merge into, to become one with, his deep ‘fathomless Nihil’, his Nothingness, and to forget everything.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

When worlds broke forth like clusters of fire-flowers,
And great burning thoughts voyaged through the sky of mind
And Time and its aeons crawled across the vasts
And souls emerged into mortality.”

What a wonderful evocation of the history of our universe! But Death tells Savitri, “You can forget all about that. You can go back into a state before the beginning of the manifestation and find your soul, cradled like a child, forever safe and at peace, lulled and protected in the ocean of Eternity. You can merge your soul into the silence of my Nothingness and be at peace for ever.”

Here Sri Aurobindo is showing us that the spirituality which aims at liberation by detaching itself from the universe of space and time and individual existence is actually leading to a kind of death. This goal has had a very powerful appeal in the history of humanity’s spiritual quest; but it is not Savitri’s goal and it is not the aim of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But I forbid thy voice to slay my soul.
My love is not a hunger of the heart,
My love is not a craving of the flesh;
It came to me from God, to God returns.

She knows with certainty that her love for Satyavan, her love for the world is not ‘a hunger of the heart’ or ‘a craving of the flesh’, an emotional or physical need. The love she is standing for is a divine Power that has come from God and which she is returning to God: her love for Satyavan is love for God.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Even in all that life and man have marred,
A whisper of divinity still is heard,
A breath is felt from the eternal spheres.
Allowed by Heaven and wonderful to man
A sweet fire-rhythm of passion chants to love.

She tells him that even in all the imperfection of human life there is still a trace of divinity. Even in everything that human life and human beings have ‘marred’, spoiled and damaged, still within them ‘A whisper of divinity is heard’: there is a trace of divinity in all the great ideals that have been spoiled in earth-reality, and when those ideals come to us, they bring the touch of ‘A breath … from the eternal spheres’, from the perfect everlasting realms beyond this material manifestation which is subject to imperfection, ignorance and death. She affirms that Heaven allows and approves the love that is so wonderful to humanity. It is irresistible to us because ‘A sweet fire-rhythm of passion’ a rhythm, a beat, of great intensity and sweetness is singing a sacred song to us in it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

One day I shall behold my great sweet world
Put off the dire disguises of the gods,
Unveil from terror and disrobe from sin.
Appeased we shall draw near our mother’s face,
We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap;
Then shall we clasp the ecstasy we chase,
Then shall we shudder with the long-sought god,
Then shall we find Heaven’s unexpected strain.

The world ‘strain’ here means ‘music’, ‘melody’. Savitri is looking into the future. She is quite sure that one day she will see this ‘great sweet world’, not only the earth but the whole universe, removing the dreadful disguises worn by the cosmic powers, casting away its veils of terror and sin. ‘Sin’ is the sense that you have done something unforgivable which separates you forever from the Divine. It is as unreal – and as real to human experience – as terror, intense fear. Savitri looks forward to a time when all of us, ‘Appeased’, satisfied and at peace, will come very close to our Divine Mother; looking into her eyes ‘We shall cast our candid souls upon her lap’. ‘Candid’, means ‘simple and pure’, ‘frank and fresh’, ‘sweet and spontaneous’, ‘without any concealment or pretence’. We shall be able to give our souls entirely to her, and then we shall actually be able to clasp, to embrace, the ananda which we have always been chasing after. Our whole being will be thrilled and shaken by the nearness of the Divine that we have been seeking so long. Then at last we shall experience the unexpectedly beautiful music of heaven.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Then she adds:

Not only is there hope for godheads pure;
The violent and darkened deities
Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find
What the white gods had missed: they too are safe;
A mother’s eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.

We human beings cannot help thinking in terms of rewards and punishments. We think that if we live virtuous and pure and sattwic lives, naturally the Divine will be pleased with us and reward us. But here Savitri says that the hope of meeting the Divine Mother and experiencing her love and blessing is not only for pure souls, pure divinities. ‘The violent and darkened deities’, the immortal beings we call Asuras and Rakshasas, the devils and demons that we think are responsible for all the falsehood and evil in the world, have also come from the breast of the One, they too are children of the Divine Mother. She says that they have ‘Leaped down’ from their divine Origin, ‘from the one breast’, ‘in rage’, in anger, to find something that ‘the white gods’, the pure deities ‘had missed’. We can read in Mother’s Agenda that when Satprem pointed out these lines to the Mother and asked her, “What have they missed?” she answered “the joy of conversion”! On another occasion she told Satprem that there are beings who will not convert until the final fulfilment of everything. That is the moment which Savitri is speaking about here.

they too are safe;
A mother’s eyes are on them and her arms
Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons.

What a wonderful knowledge Sri Aurobindo is sharing with us through these lines! I remember some people I met long ago, who took a perverse pleasure in provoking and upsetting everyone they met, being so horrible and negative and quarrelling with everybody and making everyone they came in contact with unhappy in the process. They were doing it deliberately, and I wondered what was making them like that. Then I realised that they were desperately hunting for something which could not be destroyed or spoiled. Such troubled beings are also safe: the Divine Mother’s eyes are on them and she is stretching out her arms to them, longing for her rebel sons to come home and experience the bliss of her unconditional love.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

He named himself for me, grew Satyavan.
For we were man and woman from the first,
The twin souls born from one undying fire.

Savitri says that the one eternal lover has come to her in the form of Satyavan. He and she have been lovers, ‘man and woman from the first’, from the beginning of Time. They are ‘The twin souls born from one undying fire’, the two-in-one born from the eternal fire of Love, now wearing human forms.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But Mind, a glorious traveller in the sky,
Walks lamely on the earth with footsteps slow;
Hardly he can mould the life’s rebellious stuff,
Hardly can he hold the galloping hooves of sense:
His thoughts look straight into the very heavens;
They draw their gold from a celestial mine,
His acts work painfully a common ore.

On the other hand, Mind may be ‘a glorious traveller in the sky’, who can fly freely all over the universe, but on the earth he walks ‘lamely’, with a limp: he is disabled, hampered: he cannot move freely and swiftly here. Mind has great difficulty in shaping the ‘rebellious stuff’ of Life, which resists his impulsions. Life is not willing to be led by Mind – rather it tries to dominate it. Only with great difficulty can Mind control ‘the galloping hooves of sense’. The senses are like the wild horses of our life-force. It is very difficult for Mind to restrain and tame them, to gain control over them. Mind’s thoughts can look ‘into the very heavens’ without any obstruction, and there they can extract wonderful golden ideas from heavenly mines. But when it comes to action here on earth, the mind has to ‘work painfully with a common ore’. Those golden ideas are not very effective here on earth, in the realm of matter, says Death. Here Mind has to deal with ‘a common ore’: ordinary rock that does not yield precious metal.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

It is the first-born of created things,
It stands the last when mind and life are slain,
And if it ended all would cease to be.
All else is only its outcome or its phase:
Thy soul is a brief flower by the gardener Mind
Created in thy matter’s terrain plot;
It perishes with the plant on which it grows,
For from earth’s sap it draws its heavenly hue:
Thy thoughts are gleams that pass on Matter’s verge,
Thy life a lapsing wave on Matter’s sea.

If we look at the evolutionary history of the earth, of the universe as we know it, we may accept Death’s statement that Matter is ‘the first-born of created things’; but we may not agree that ‘It stands the last when mind and life are slain’ – that when the mind and life are dissolved, only Matter remains, still less with his claim that ‘if it ended all would cease to be’ – for what about Soul and Spirit? Here he is claiming that all the other powers of existence depend upon Matter: ‘All else is only its outcome or its phase’: everything that seems to be immaterial is in fact only a product or a temporary state of Matter – so naturally if Matter dissolves and ceases to exist there can be no life, no mind, no soul, no spirit.

Here he is playing the role of a materialist, insisting on the primacy of Matter. Later on he will contradict himself and express a different view, but now he is trying to convince Savitri that all the other powers of existence are the outcome, the products or phases, modes, of Matter. He tells her that her soul is nothing but ‘a brief flower’ that has been planted and grown by ‘the gardener Mind’ in ‘matter’s terrain plot’, the little garden of the material body – so naturally the soul will perish ‘with the plant on which it grows’: when the body dies, the soul must die too because its lovely colours depend on ‘earth’s sap’, the physical life-force. He tells her that her brilliant thoughts are only passing gleams of light touching the fringes of Matter, and that her individual existence is nothing more than a temporary formation: a wave that rises out of the ocean of Matter and dissolves back into it again. His words are intended to discourage Savitri’s faith in higher Ideals, and they can indeed sound convincingly discouraging because we are carrying this discouragement in us. We are carrying the voice of Death in us, and often his words may seem more convincing to us, more ‘realistic’, than those of Savitri.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A careful steward of Truth’s limited means,
Treasuring her founded facts from the squandering Power,
It tethers mind to the tent-posts of sense,
To a leaden grey routine clamps Life’s caprice
And ties all creatures with the cords of Law.

Death says that Matter is a ‘careful steward of Truth’s limited means’, very prudently taking care of the limited resources of Truth. Like a wise manager Matter is hoarding and protecting the ‘founded facts’ that Truth has been able to establish, from ‘the squandering Power’: the extravagance of Nature, of life and mind. Matter ‘tethers mind to the tent-posts of sense’, like tying an animal to a post so that it cannot stray: Matter ties the mind firmly to the fixed posts which hold up the tent of sense, the sense impressions. Through the sense impressions data comes into the mind, which forms an image of the world around it based upon that limited data. Life is full of fanciful wishes which it would like to indulge freely, but Matter restricts it, holds it tight to the ‘leaden grey routine’ of all the things that have to be done every day to enable it to remain in the body: getting food, preparing and eating it, then the washing up and the digesting and resting which does not leave much time for anything else. The domination of Matter keeps all creatures, all living beings, tied tightly with ‘the cords of Law’, the laws of Nature, the laws of physics, the laws of Matter.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Yet this security and guarantor
Pressed for credentials an impostor proves:
A cheat of substance where no substance is,
An appearance and a symbol and a nought,
Its forms have no original right to birth:
Its aspect of a fixed stability
Is the cover of a captive motion’s swirl,
An order of the steps of Energy’s dance
Whose footmarks leave for ever the same signs,
A concrete face of unsubstantial Time,
A trickle dotting the emptiness of Space:
A stable-seeming movement without change,
Yet change arrives and the last change is death.

First, Death asserts that Matter is the firm basis of everything; but then, like the modern physicists who have shown thatwhat we regard as solid Matter is in fact made up of 99% empty space, he says that it is just ‘A cheat of substance’, a false appearance, ‘an imposter’ pretending to be a reliable support, a guarantee of reality, when in fact it is nothing but ‘An appearance and a symbol and a nought’. Ultimately, he says, this stable-seeming Matter is an illusion: it does not really exist: its forms have ‘no original right to birth’, no essential reality. This appearance of stability and reliability is only a misleading disguise covering ‘a captive motion’s swirl’, a limited circular movement which traces the ‘order of the steps of Energy’s dance’ forever in movement, repeatedly leaving the same signs over and over again like footprints creating a path, or a stream of faint points like ‘A trickle’ of drops of water ‘dotting the emptiness of space’ and giving an apparently material appearance to something which is really unsubstantial – Time. These movements of energy seem to be stable and unchanging, but Death points out that change does come eventually: they disintegrate, disaggregate, and ‘the last change is death’: there is no permanent reality but that. This is ‘the Gospel of Death’. This is what he wants to make Savitri believe.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

All by Death’s mercy breathe and live awhile,
All think and act by the Inconscient’s grace.

He says “I, Death, am allowing all these illusory appearances to ‘breathe and live awhile’: they owe their temporary existence to my ‘mercy’, my kindness and generosity. You are all thinking and acting because of the ‘Inconscient’s grace’, because the Inconscient allows you to do so.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Inconscient in the dumb inconscient Void
Inexplicably a moving world sprang forth:
Awhile secure, happily insensible,
It could not rest content with its own truth.

Now Death will give us his version of the creation of the universe we live in. He tells Savitri that this ‘moving world’, this universe of movement, appeared ‘Inexplicably’, in some mysterious way that cannot be explained. It was ‘Inconscient’, without consciousness, and it ‘sprang forth’, it emerged in nothingness, ‘in the dumb inconscient Void’, in the unconscious Emptiness of the beginning.

This is what the physicists and cosmologists also tell us: there was nothing, no time or space or anything; then there was a big bang and all the energy and all the matter that make up our universe were suddenly there – ‘inexplicably’: they have no explanation for it.

Death says that the universe remained like that for some time: ‘secure’, safe, undisturbed by anything because it was ‘happily insensible’, without any feeling. That state was ‘its own truth’, the reality of matter, the way it was meant to be. But, he says, the inexplicable ‘moving world’ was not able t  remain like that, because ‘It could not rest content with its own truth’, its own reality. Why?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Then Thought came in and spoiled the harmonious world:
Matter began to hope and think and feel,
Tissue and nerve bore joy and agony.

But something has gone wrong with his creation, something has come in and spoiled it. ‘Thought came in and spoiled the harmonious world’ of Matter. ‘Matter began to hope and think and feel’. In living matter, in physical bodies ‘Tissue and nerve bore joy and agony’ – not only sensations, but emotions: ‘joy and agony’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The inconscient cosmos strove to learn its task;
An ignorant personal God was born in Mind
And to understand invented reason’s law,
The impersonal Vast throbbed back to man’s desire,
A trouble rocked the great world’s blind still heart
And Nature lost her wide immortal calm.

That ‘inconscient cosmos’ made an effort to become conscious and began to ‘learn its task’: its mission, its reason for existing. Mind is a universal divine power, but in the material universe it manifested at first as an ‘ignorant personal God’ in the first mental beings. That ignorant mind struggled to understand its environment, and to do so it developed ‘reason’s law’, an orderly process of investigation and deduction, logic and so on. To the efforts and longings of mental beings there was a kind of response from the ‘impersonal Vast’, which resonated in response to the vibrations of human thought and desire. That has brought about a disturbing change in the universe: ‘A trouble rocked the great world’s blind still heart / And Nature lost her wide immortal calm’. The harmony of the purely material universe was shaken, giving rise to the ‘warped incomprehensible scene’, the twisted and puzzling environment we inhabit.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Immortality thou claimest for thy spirit,
But immortality for imperfect man,
A god who hurts himself at every step,
Would be a cycle of eternal pain.

Death is mocking the high ideals that Savitri is upholding. One of them is ‘Immortality’. Savitri is claiming that she is not only a human being, but also an immortal spirit. But Death tells her that human beings are imperfect and constantly cause suffering to themselves and others. If human beings gained immortality like the gods, their immortality would be a constant ‘cycle of eternal pain’. We are all the time doing things that cause suffering for ourselves and other people – how terrible it would be to never have any relief from all that!

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But not on earth can divine wisdom reign
And not on earth can divine love be found;
Heaven-born, only in heaven can they live;
Or else there too perhaps they are shining dreams.

Nevertheless Death insists that divine wisdom cannot rule on earth, and divine love cannot be found on earth, because true Wisdom and divine Love are heaven-born powers: they are born in heaven and they can live only in heaven; or perhaps even there they may not really exist but be only ‘shining dreams’: perhaps even in heaven they have no power and no reality.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Impotent to live by their own right divine,
Convinced of their brilliant unreality,
When their supporting ground is cut away,
These children of Matter into Matter die.

Life and mind, he repeats, have no inborn right to exist. They are ‘Impotent’ – powerless ‘to live by their own right divine’: they are just illusory appearances relying on material force. Although they feel convincingly real to themselves, in fact their existence is only a ‘brilliant unreality’: when their material basis, ‘their supporting ground’, the body, dies and is removed, naturally ‘These children of Matter into Matter die’: the life and mind also die and disappear.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A noble fiction of thy yearnings made,
Thy human imperfection it must share:
Its forms in Nature disappoint the heart,
And never shall it find its heavenly shape
And never can it be fulfilled in Time.

Your Ideal, he says, is a ‘fiction’ – it is made up, it has no reality. It may be a ‘noble fiction’, fine and inspiring, but it is born from your ‘yearnings’, your longings and desires: a product of wishful thinking. It cannot help sharing your ‘human imperfection’. An ideal can never really be realised in matter. The forms it takes on earth, in earth Nature, ‘disappoint the heart’ – they are bound to be unsatisfactory and cannot live up to your dreams. The Ideal, he says, will never be able to ‘find its heavenly shape’ on earth and can never be ‘fulfilled in Time.’

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

O soul misled by the splendour of thy thoughts,
O earthly creature with thy dream of heaven,
Obey, resigned and still, the earthly law.
Accept the brief light that falls upon thy days;
Take what thou canst of Life’s permitted joy;
Submitting to the ordeal of fate’s scourge
Suffer what thou must of toil and grief and care.

On the basis of all that he has told her, Death will now give Savitri some advice. He addresses her first as a soul, saying ‘O soul misled’ (led astray) ‘by the splendour of thy thoughts’, and then as an ‘earthly creature’, a child of earth-nature. He says, “You are dreaming of heaven, of a perfect, other-worldly state; but as an earthly creature, you have to obey the laws of earth-nature; so you should resign yourself to accepting those laws and obeying them calmly. ‘Accept the brief light that falls upon thy days’, your short lifetime. Take whatever joy you can, whatever life permits you, and calmly submit ‘to the ordeal of fate’s scourge’.” All human beings have to do that: they have to endure the painful tests that life makes them undergo. “Accept that, as an earthly creature you will have to suffer whatever amount of ‘toil and grief and care’ earth-fate deals out to you: hard labour, grief and anxiety.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

There shall approach silencing thy passionate heart
My long calm night of everlasting sleep:
There into the hush from which thou cam’st retire.”

“In the end”, he says, “you will be liberated from that earth- fate, because ‘My long calm night of everlasting sleep’ will come to you. Then all the trouble of your ‘passionate heart’ will fall silent. In that ‘long calm night’ you will be able to withdraw into the silence from which you were born”: ‘There into the hush from which thou cam’st retire.’ This is what Death offers to us human beings. He says, “This life of yours is not going to last long. Coming towards you, to silence all your intense feelings, is my long, calm night that is going to bring you everlasting sleep. In that night you can withdraw into the silence from which you came. Meanwhile, accept the brief light that falls upon your days. Take whatever joy you can; submit to whatever suffering comes. Soon will come ‘My long calm night of everlasting sleep’. That is what I offer to all souls, to all earthly creatures.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]