A world that knows not its inhabiting Self
Labours to find its cause and need to be;
A spirit ignorant of the world it made,
Obscured by Matter, travestied by Life,
Struggles to emerge, to be free, to know and reign;
These were close-tied in one disharmony,
Yet the divergent lines met not at all.

These are the two negations which are the basis of the world which we know: first, it is a world, a manifestation, that is ignorant of the ‘Self’ inhabiting it; this world is struggling, labouring to find out why it exists, what its cause is, why it needs to exist at all. On the other hand, there is a ‘spirit’ which is ‘ignorant of the world it made’; the spirit which created this world has become ‘Obscured’, made dark, ignorant, unconscious, ‘by Matter’. It has become ‘travestied by Life’: to travesty something is to make a caricature of it, a distorted, ugly, untrue picture of it. The life that we know is an ugly, distorting representation of the spirit which has made it. That spirit is struggling ‘to emerge’ from the distortion of its present state of life and the dark obscuration of Matter, struggling ‘to be free, to know and reign’. These two, this ignorant world and this obscured spirit, are tied closely together in ‘one disharmony’: they are not in tune with each other, and they are developing in different directions, along ‘divergent lines’ which do not meet, which are moving further and further away from each other. This world and this spirit are ignorant of each other and negate each other, each denying the reality and value of the other. That is the state of the world we live in.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

This darkness hides our nobler destiny.
A chrysalis of a great and glorious truth,
It stifles the winged marvel in its sheath
Lest from the prison of Matter it escape
And, wasting its beauty on the formless Vast,
Merged into the Unknowable’s mystery,
Leave unfulfilled the world’s miraculous fate.

But then Sri Aurobindo shows us another side to this picture. He tells us that all this ‘darkness’, this obscurity, is hiding ‘our nobler destiny’. Humanity has a nobler destiny, but at present it is not obvious, it is still hidden in the darkness. This darkened state is ‘A chrysalis of a great and glorious truth’. The ‘chrysalis’ is the second stage in the development of an Insect.  Eventually the chrysalis bursts open, and out comes a beautiful butterfly. The ‘darkness’ of our present state is like that: it is holding within it the potentiality of ‘a great and glorious truth’. Just now the ‘darkness’ is stifling ‘the winged marvel’; the ‘great and glorious truth’ which is going to emerge like a magnificent butterfly is stifled in that ‘darkness’. When you stifle somebody you make it difficult for them to breathe. The darkness is keeping the ‘winged marvel’ – the soul – enclosed in its protective ‘sheath’ so that it does not escape too soon ‘from the prison of Matter’. The soul is deliberately kept in this chrysalis of ‘darkness’ and unconsciousness, because if it emerged too soon it would waste ‘its beauty on the formless Vast’, in empty space, and would become ‘merged’ with its origin in the ‘Unknowable’s mystery’, and thus ‘Leave unfulfilled the world’s miraculous fate’. The soul, the ‘great and glorious truth’ is kept imprisoned in its dark material chrysalis so that something in Matter itself can be changed; if the soul emerges too soon, that fulfilment will not happen. Here Sri Aurobindo is telling us something remarkable and very important. We may wonder why it is not easier to find the Psychic Being, why it is not easier to unite with the Divine and why we are kept in this prison of Matter. It is because we have something to do here. Until the transformation comes about, we must stay here and do the work that we have agreed to do, although by now we have forgotten all about it.

[Shraddhavn’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

As yet thought only some high spirit’s dream
Or a vexed illusion in man’s toiling mind,
A new creation from the old shall rise,
A Knowledge inarticulate find speech,
Beauty suppressed burst into paradise bloom,
Pleasure and pain dive into absolute bliss.

And then Sri Aurobindo gives us a promise: ‘A new creation’ is going to rise out of the old one, out of the ‘chrysalis’, out of this dim, obscure scheme that we are experiencing now. At the moment we tend to think that the ‘new creation’ is just a ‘dream’ of some ‘high spirit’, or a ‘vexed illusion’ in the struggling mind of man. But Sri Aurobindo assures us that it is going to emerge out of our present state. ‘A Knowledge’ involved in Matter, which is now ‘inarticulate’ – unable to express itself – shall ‘find speech’.  ‘A Knowledge inarticulate’: if we are ‘inarticulate’ we cannot get our words out, or cannot find the right words to express what we are thinking or feeling. That involved inarticulate Knowledge is going to find a language in which to express itself. Beauty that is now suppressed in Matter and unable to show itself shall ‘burst into paradise bloom’, like an unimaginably lovely blossom opening up. ‘Pleasure and pain’, opposite disguises of ananda, will both ‘dive’ and rediscover themselves in the ‘absolute bliss’ which is the underlying truth of them both.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Bolume 3]

A tongueless oracle shall speak at last,
The Superconscient conscious grow on earth,
The Eternal’s wonders join the dance of Time.

An ‘oracle’ is supposed to communicate messages from the gods, but how can it do that, if it has no tongue to articulate with? When the transformation comes about, at last it ‘shall speak’, and share its precious messages. ‘The Superconscient’ shall grow conscious here on earth: it will not be superconscient any longer, but become a normal part of the earth consciousness. ‘The Eternal’s wonders’ that are now unmanifest, hidden from us in the transcendent, will manifest here to join the unfolding ‘dance of Time’. This is Sri Aurobindo’s assurance of how things shall be when the ‘new creation’, which Aswapati experienced in the House of the Spirit, rises ‘from the old’ creation, this one that we live in, which is its ‘chrysalis’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

He saw a world that is from a world to be.
There he divined rather than saw or felt,
Far off upon the rim of consciousness,
Transient and frail this little whirling globe
And on it left like a lost dream’s vain mould,
A fragile copy of the spirit’s shell,
His body gathered into mystic sleep.
A foreign shape it seemed, a mythic shade.

This is what Aswapati saw. He is still in the New Creation, the world of the future, the world that will be, the ‘world to be’; from there, he is seeing our world, the ‘world that is’: ‘He saw a world that is from a world to be’. There, in the ‘world that is’, he did not exactly see, did not exactly feel, but somehow sensed or ‘divined’ or made out our earth, and on it his own body. The verb ‘to divine’ is connected with the French word ‘deviner’, which means ‘to guess’; A water diviner walks across the ground with his wand or stick, and can sense the right place to dig a new well. Aswapati ‘divined’ or became aware of the earth, ‘this little whirling globe’, very far away, on the farthest outer edge of consciousness. It is ‘transient and frail’: it is weak, fragile, anything can blow it up; it has been born and it will die, it is passing, ‘transient’. On it he becomes aware of his own body, left there in a kind of trance: ‘His body gathered into mystic sleep’. It feels to him like ‘a lost dream’s vain mould’. Now his body seems to him like the useless, unnecessary mould of some long ago dream that has been lost; it is ‘A fragile copy of the spirit’s shell’: a breakable, perishable copy of the outermost shell of the spirit. When he senses it lying there, it seems to be something that does not belong to him: ‘A foreign shape’, or even just ‘a mythic shade’, a shadow that has never had any real existence. Here ‘mythic’ means ‘unreal’; the word has other meanings too, but that is how it is used here.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]