In the texture of our bound humanity
He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb
Of our inconscient and unseeing base,
The stubborn mute rejection in life’s depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things.

When Aswapati looks to see why no response is coming, why nothing is changing, he feels ‘the stark resistance huge and dumb’ that is in the very ‘texture of our bound humanity’. Aswapati wants to bring about a great change for ‘earth and men’; that is his intense aspiration and hope. But then why is he not experiencing any sanction? It is because in the very substance of ‘our bound humanity’ something ‘huge and dumb’ is resisting that aspiration, saying ‘No’ in a very absolute way. This is the resistance of our ‘base’. We have evolved up out of the ‘inconscient’ and we are carrying this ‘unseeing’, unconscious, basis which is with us all the time in the ‘texture’ of our humanity, which does not want to change. That is how the poem starts: it begins with the ‘mind of Night’ refusing to wake up, resisting the coming of the divine Light. The resistance Aswapati is feeling now is an expression of that refusal. Despite all that he has done and seen and achieved, now as he aspires for the great change, not only for himself but ‘for earth and men’, he becomes aware of ‘The stubborn mute rejection in life’s depths, / The ignorant No in the origin of things’. In the very depths of life, there is this ‘stubborn mute rejection’, saying “No, I do not want it”. It does not put it in words, it just refuses and goes on refusing; something that is ‘stubborn’ does not want to change. This ‘rejection’ lies in the very ‘depths’ of life, and goes even deeper than that: it is ‘The ignorant No in the origin of things.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A veiled collaboration with the Night
Even in himself survived and hid from his view:
Still something in his earthly being kept
Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came.

Aswapati sees that a ‘veiled collaboration with the Night’ is still there ‘Even in himself’. When Sri Aurobindo’s or the Mother’s sadhana encountered a universal problem like this, expressing ‘The ignorant No in the origin of things’, they looked within, to find it and work upon it in themselves. In a similar way now Aswapati recognises that ‘Even in himself’ there remains some kind of ‘collaboration’ with the ‘Night’ of unconsciousness, inertia, falsehood and refusal. It is still surviving despite everything that he has done andexperienced so far. ‘Still something in his earthly being kept / Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came’: a part of his ‘earthly being’ is still holding on to its close connection with the original ‘Inconscient’ from which it has evolved.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

This now he willed to discover and exile,
The element in him betraying God.
All Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare,
All her dim crypts and corners searched with fire
Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts
Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary
Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.

This is what the sadhak has to do when he becomes aware of some ‘treacherous’ element in himself: his aspiration and surrender have to be expressed by a sincere and active rejection. Aswapati was absolutely committed to his aim, so ‘he willed to discover’ what was holding him back, what was resisting. He is determined to ‘exile’ the resistance, this ‘element in him’ which is ‘betraying God’, which is not faithful to the Divine: to rid himself of it, to get it out of his being. In order to ‘discover’ and ‘exile’ it, he has to strip bare ‘All Nature’s recondite spaces’: all the secret, hidden, concealed spaces in the lower levels of Nature. He does not want to allow the dissident element any dark corner to hide in, so he searches all the ‘dim crypts and corners’– all the deep places where there is very little light. He searches them ‘with fire’, because fire not only gives light, it is also purifying, and is the expression of his will and his aspiration. It is as if he uses a flame-thrower to search all the places where these ‘instincts’ might hide. These instincts are natural to us in a way: they belong to our evolutionary past; but now they are refugees, they are running away from the transforming truth; they have to be exiled, just like the ‘unshaped revolts’. These are all things in the subconscient that are resisting, that are refusing to obey. They do it without expressing themselves clearly, in a secret ‘unshaped’ way, so that they are difficult to recognise. Aswapati wants to make sure that they cannot remain anywhere in him and that nowhere is left unsearched where they might find shelter ‘in darkness’ sanctuary’. The ‘sanctuary’ is the most sacred place at the inmost centre of a temple or a church. In early medieval times in Europe, if you were a fugitive, a criminal, or enemies were pursuing you, you could ‘take sanctuary’ in the church: you could go and hold on to the altar, and then nobody was supposed to touch you; so ‘sanctuary’ means ‘a sacred place’ but it also means ‘A safe place’. Nowadays we have bird sanctuaries, places where birds can nest and raise their young in safety. But Aswapati does not want to allow those ‘treacherous elements’ to be able to take refuge in any ‘sanctuary’ of darkness where they might be able to hide from ‘the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame’: the ‘flame’ of divine truth that demands ‘purity’ and cleans out everything that is impure.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth
He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.

‘Lest’ is a small word which is very useful to poets. It means ‘so that not’: Instead of writing “So that ‘a human cry’ should not ‘spoil the Truth’ ” he writes ‘lest’. For poets this is a useful little word which says a lot in one syllable. Aswapati found a radical solution: so that no treacherous element, no ‘human cry’ of protest could possibly remain to ‘spoil’ the ‘incoming Truth’ that he is calling for, ‘He tore desire up from its bleeding roots / And offered to the gods the vacant place.’ We can imagine how painful it must be to have to pull out one of our own teeth; what Aswapati does is an even more radical operation: he tears out of his being the very principle of desire. A ‘vacant place’ is left where the desire was rooted, and he offers that empty space within him to ‘the gods’: the cosmic powers which work for the divine purpose.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

His soul was all in front like a great sea
Flooding the mind and body with its waves;
His being, spread to embrace the universe,
United the within and the without
To make of life a cosmic harmony,
An empire of the immanent Divine.

The soul is usually deep within and working from behind; but now, with this ‘last and mightiest transformation’, Aswapati’s soul comes forward. ‘His soul was all in front like a great sea’ – a limitless ocean, ‘Flooding the mind and body with its waves’: his outer being is flooded by the waves of that ‘great sea’ of soul. His individual being has widened so much that it can now ‘embrace the universe’. It is able to unite ‘the within and the without’ – to bring together and harmonise the inner and the outer parts – and in that way ‘To make of life a cosmic harmony’: a universal harmony and ‘An empire of the immanent Divine’, the indwelling Divine. The Divine is ‘immanent’ everywhere and in everything. There is nowhere that the Divine is not dwelling. But the indwelling Divine is not always overtly active; it is not always ruling directly. Mostly it acts through the nature, with all its limitations and imperfections. When the ‘within’ and ‘without’ are united and the soul comes to the front, the whole of life becomes ‘a cosmic harmony’ and ‘an empire of the immanent Divine’, ruled directly by the indwelling Divine Presence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

He felt the joy of others as his joy,
He bore the grief of others as his grief;
His universal sympathy upbore,
Immense like ocean, the creation’s load
As earth upbears all beings’ sacrifice,
Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace.

It is not easy to bear the joy and grief of the whole world in one’s own heart, as one’s own; in fact, it is not possible unless it is being borne by the Divine Presence in us. That is Aswapati’s experience now: he feels ‘the joy of others as his joy’, he bears ‘the grief of others as his grief’; he can do this because of this ‘last and mightiest transformation’ which has enabled his being to spread ‘to embrace the universe’. Now his ‘universal sympathy’ is supporting, bearing up, the ‘load’ of the whole creation. We know what ‘sympathy’ is – literally it means ‘feeling together with others’; we can do that to a small extent, but if we start to imagine experiencing the joy and the suffering of all sentient creatures on earth, we know very well that we could not possibly bear it. What can bear it? Only ‘the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace’, which is above and beyond all egoistic limitation, is able to bear that ‘universal sympathy’. Sri Aurobindo gives two interesting similes for this universal sympathy which Aswapati experiences: it is ‘Immense like ocean’ and it is like ‘earth’. The earth-consciousness, the earth Goddess, our Mother Earth, is holding up the ‘sacrifice’ of all beings. This reflects the Vedic idea that every movement of life, all these multifarious experiences, are part of the ‘sacrifice’ which is constantly being offered up by the earth to the higher levels of consciousness; and because the sacrifice is being offered up, in exchange, blessings and help come down to assist the evolutionary process to move forward. Like the limitless ocean, like the earth herself, Aswapati has become able to upbear all the immense complexity of joyful and painful experience that makes up life on earth, and like the earth herself he can feel ‘Thrilled with the hidden Transcendent’s joy and peace’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

His nature grew a movement of the All,
Exploring itself to find that all was He,
His soul was a delegation of the All
That turned from itself to join the one Supreme.

Nature and soul are two aspects of our existence. Aswapati now experiences ‘His nature’ – everything that connects him to the evolution and to the universe – as ‘a movement of the All’: a movement of the universal nature which through its evolving growth has been exploring itself, to discover eventually that all of it is ‘He’ – the Lord. At the same time, Aswapati sees that his soul is ‘a delegation of the All’. A ‘delegation’ is a representative of a larger group. Aswapati sees that his soul has been delegated on behalf of ‘the All’, as a representative of the whole universe; it is giving up all limited personal concerns, turning away ‘from itself to join the one Supreme’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Transcended was the human formula;
Man’s heart that had obscured the Inviolable
Assumed the mighty beating of a god’s;
His seeking mind ceased in the Truth that knows;
His life was a flow of the universal life. 

As a movement of the All and a delegate of the Supreme, the nature and soul of Aswapati have ‘transcended … the human formula’, going far beyond the combination of a separate and limited body, life and mind which is characteristic of humanity. He had started out with a typical human heart: ‘Man’s heart that had obscured the Inviolable’. ‘The Inviolable’ refers to the supreme Existence. Since the Supreme, the transcendent Absolute, cannot be limited by our descriptive words, very often Sri Aurobindo uses a negative, such as ‘the Unknowable’ [31 usages in Savitri], ‘the Ineffable’ [29], ‘the Incommensurable’ [2], to refer to the Supreme Reality; here he says ‘the Inviolable’, meaning the One that is beyond all wound or imperfection. In the ordinary ‘human formula’ ‘Man’s heart … had obscured the Inviolable’; but now in Aswapati, as a result of the great transformation that has come over him, his human heart has changed its way of beating and ‘Assumed the mighty beating of a god’s’: it has become like the heart of a divine immortal power. The ‘seeking mind’, which is also part of the ‘human formula’, ‘ceased’: it has stopped seeking because it has entered ‘the Truth that knows’, so there is no need for it to seek anything any longer. ‘His life’ has become ‘a flow of the universal life’: all the elements of the ‘human formula’ have been transformed from their limited state into a higher, universal condition.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Sense failed in that tremendous lucency;
Ephemeral voices from his hearing fell
And Thought potent no more sank large and pale
Like a tired god into mysterious seas.

‘Sense’ is another part of the ‘human formula’: it is the way that we relate with the material world, by using our five senses; but in that ‘tremendous lucency’, that flood of light, ‘Sense failed’ – it could no longer function. One of the five senses is ‘hearing’, which enables us to receive the ‘Ephemeral voices’ of the material world, which are not eternal but short- lived; those ‘Ephemeral voices’ now fell away from Aswapati’s ‘hearing’. And ‘Thought’, which is also an important part of the ‘human formula’, lost its power: it was ‘potent no more’. Aswapati perceived ‘Thought’ as a god who had becomeweak and tired, sinking ‘large and pale’ into ‘mysterious seas’ beyond the scope of Mind.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

The last movement died and all at once grew still.
A weight that was the unseen Transcendent’s hand
Laid on his limbs the Spirit’s measureless seal,
Infinity swallowed him into shoreless trance.

Even ‘The last movement died’, so that everything ‘grew still’: unmoving. Aswapati feels ‘a weight’, a pressure from above. He feels that this weight is ‘the unseen Transcendent’s hand’. A pressure from what lies beyond all form is felt ‘on his limbs’: on his body. It is placing the ‘the Spirit’s measureless seal’ on his limbs. A king or ruler will put his ‘seal’ on something to show that it belongs to him or that he has approved it; or we may ‘seal’ an envelope or a parcel, closing it up. The hand of the Transcendent is putting the ‘measureless seal’ of the Spirit on Aswapati’s physical being, both to mark it and to seal it up. As a result, ‘Infinity swallowed him into shoreless trance’. He no longer feels his body, and his consciousness is swallowed up into the limitless ocean of infinity. The description of Aswapati entering into trance begins with the last line on page 319: ‘Sense failed in that tremendous lucency’. That lineand the 15 lines that follow describe step by step how his whole being is swallowed up into ‘shoreless trance’. In the rest of the canto we shall read about his experiences in that state beyond our universe.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]