Then suddenly there rose a sacred stir.
Amid the lifeless silence of the Void
In a solitude and an immensity
A sound came quivering like a loved footfall
Heard in the listening spaces of the soul;
A touch perturbed his fibres with delight.

Aswapati was focussed in his consecrated heart, in the midst of a great vastness and silence, with only his own consciousness maintaining a connection between the lost terrestrial world below and the heights of the spirit, his heart praying intensely and waiting. Now suddenly something moves: ‘a sacred stir’ comes into that vast unmoving silence, bringing a sense of something holy and divine. Into ‘the lifeless silence of the Void’, of the emptiness, into that solitude and immensity where he is all alone, came ‘a sound’. It is like the footstep of somebody whom he loves very much: ‘A sound came quivering like a loved footfall’. It is heard not with the physical ears, but ‘in the listening spaces of the soul’. At the same time Aswapati feels ‘a touch’. In a way, that touch is disturbing: everything has been so peaceful, but now ‘A touch perturbed his fibres with delight’ – the delight of that touch is so intense that it is difficult for the body to bear; ‘his fibres’, the substance of his material body, are ‘perturbed’ – troubled – ‘with delight’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

The One he worshipped was within him now:
Flame-pure, ethereal-tressed, a mighty Face
Appeared and lips moved by immortal words;
Lids, Wisdom’s leaves, drooped over rapture’s orbs.

‘The One he worshipped’, the supreme divine Mother, has entered into him. He feels her ‘within him’. At the same time he can also see her: he sees a ‘mighty Face’ which is pure like flame and ‘ethereal-tressed’; a ‘tress’ is a lock of hair. Her face is surrounded by hair that is ‘ethereal’, formed of ‘ether’: the subtlest, finest, most rarified substance. He sees her mouth which speaks to him: ‘lips moved by immortal words’; he sees her eyes: ‘lids’ means ‘eyelids’. The eyelids have the shape of leaves; they are expressing Wisdom and drooping over the eyes: ‘orbs’ is a poetic word for the eyes themselves. Her eyes are full of ‘rapture’ or bliss. We can see in the sacred art of India the way that ‘rapture’, ecstasy, is sometimes expressed by half-closed eyes. The eyelids are drooping over rapturous eyes in this ‘mighty Face’ which Aswapati sees.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A Shape was seen on threshold Mind, a Voice
Absolute and wise in the heart’s chambers spoke:
“O Son of Strength who climbst creation’s peaks,
No soul is thy companion in the light;
Alone thou standest at the eternal doors.
What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more.

Aswapati sees this ‘Shape’, this form, ‘on threshold Mind’. The ‘threshold’ is the doorsill we cross over when we enter or leave a building. The Mother is standing in a subtle body on the verge of Mind. Then Aswapati hears ‘a Voice’ speaking ‘in the heart’s chambers’. That Voice is ‘absolute and wise’: powerful, irresistible, full of wisdom. The Mother salutes him, greets him. She addresses him as ‘Son of Strength’. In another place in the poem he is referred to as a ‘Son of Force’ implying that he is a child of the dynamic aspect of the Divine: Shakti, the Supreme Conscious-Force.

She tells him, “You are all alone. No other soul has reached this far”: ‘No soul is thy companion in the light’: nobody else is standing beside you in this light that you have reached. You are standing alone ‘at the eternal doors’: the doors to the Supreme. Then she tells him, ‘What thou hast won is thine, but ask no more’. “What you have won, all that you have gained by your tapasya is yours, it ‘is thine’: nobody can take it away from you – but do not ask for anything more.” Aswapati wanted to ask the Mother to come down for the whole earth, ‘for earth and men’. All the parts of his being had been praying to the Mother that she would come ‘for earth and men’. But now she tells him “This is just for you. You are the only oneto have come so far. Whatever you have gained is yours and cannot be taken away from you; but do not ask for anything more.” That is her first answer to his prayer. Then she explains why:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Awake not the immeasurable descent,
Speak not my secret name to hostile Time;
Man is too weak to bear the Infinite’s weight.
Truth born too soon might break the imperfect earth.

The Mother tells Aswapati, ‘Awake not the immeasurable descent’. “Do not set off ‘the immeasurable descent’ that would bring the whole new creation pouring down on the earth at one go.” She warns him not to speak ‘my secret name to hostile Time’. There are certain things which have to be kept secret until the right time has come. The earth, imperfect as it is, and human beings, imperfect as they are, are not strong enoughor prepared enough to be able to bear the tremendous weight of the infinite. If the supreme truth were ‘born too soon’ the whole material basis of the manifestation might collapse, and that is not wished for. What is wished for is a gradual transformation, a gradual waking up, an evolutionarypreparation, a readiness, so that earth and matter too can be divinised. She is warning him, “Do not be impatient; do not be in too much of a hurry.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Thy soul was born to share the laden Force;
Obey thy nature and fulfil thy fate:
Accept the difficulty and godlike toil,
For the slow-paced omniscient purpose live.

She tells him that his soul has been ‘born to share the laden Force’, the Force that is ‘laden’, that is carrying a heavy burden, that is heavily loaded. ‘Laden’ is an adjective based on the verb ‘to load’. We see the bullocks pulling heavily laden carts, having to make such a great effort to draw them up the hill. There is a Force which is carrying the whole burden of the material universe towards its fulfilment. She says, “Your soul was born to share in the effort of that ‘laden Force’ which is carrying everything forward. So obey your nature and fulfil your fate.” In a way, this is her command to all of us, but of course she does not mean that we should obey our lower nature, the nature that ties us to the earth and the past, but rather our higher nature, our soul nature, the law of our being. She tells him, “I know that you feel that it is very difficult, but you have to accept the difficulty and the ‘toil’, the effort that demands a god-like strength.” She asks him to continue to live ‘for the slow-paced omniscient purpose’. There is a purpose in the world; the ‘laden Force’ is working for a particular aim which has been fixed by the all-knowing wisdom and will. It takes time. It is going very slowly: it is ‘slow-paced’. That is why we may feel that it is ‘fruitless’ and in vain: because it is moving so slowly that we do not see results happening. But the Mother asks Aswapati to go on living on earth to serve that purpose.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Arrived from some half-luminous Beyond
He is a stranger in the mindless vasts;
A traveller in his oft-shifting home
Amid the tread of many infinities,
He has pitched a tent of life in desert Space.

The Mother reveals that Man, the mental being, has arrived here in the material universe ‘from some half-luminous Beyond’: Mind is not the full light of consciousness; the mental plane that he has come from is only ‘half-luminous’ – a mixture of light and darkness. Man is here in the material universe, in these ‘mindless vasts’, as a stranger and a traveller; his home keeps shifting, and it is surrounded by ‘the tread of many infinities’; there are all kinds of infinities moving in the ‘mindless vasts’ of the universe. Man is not a permanent dweller in the material world; he has come here as a stranger and a traveller and ‘pitched a tent’ ‘in desert Space’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri]

An inert Soul and a somnambulist Force
Have made a world estranged from life and thought;
The Dragon of the dark foundations keeps
Unalterable the law of Chance and Death;

This world that we live in has been made or brought about by ‘An inert Soul and a somnambulist Force’. Sri Aurobindo gave us a glimpse of this problem in the previous canto, when he showed us that the world we live in is based on two vast negations. There he said that the spirit which inhabits this world is unconscious. Here he says that the Soul which has helped to make it is ‘inert’: it does not move. The Purusha of the material world is passive and inactive, while the Force, the nature force, the Prakriti, is a sleepwalker, he says here: a ‘somnambulist’, who acts in sleep.  The nature force which has created this world seems to know in some miraculous way exactly what she must do, but she is not self-aware. Together, the ‘inert Soul’ – which is not active, not asserting its mastery, not shedding its light – and the ‘somnambulist Force’ have created a world which is ‘estranged from life and thought’, a material world where life and thought come in as strangers or even intruders. Here ‘The Dragon of the dark foundations’ rules. This Dragon is mentioned in the Vedas. It is the Dragon of the Inconscient which dwells at the base of the material world, keeping ‘the law of Chance and Death’ unchanged. It guards and protects that law as the basis of the material world. Life and thought have come into our world, but its base, its foundation, is not alive and not conscious but inert matter. This world has been made, the Mother tells Aswapati, by ‘An inert soul and a somnambulist Force’. We live in a universe that is dominated by matter, and which is ‘estranged from life and thought’. We mental beings are here as strangers. We are an amazing anomaly in the material universe. Our bodies are made of living matter, and we have some consciousness, even self-awareness, but life and mind are strangers in the material world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

His day is a moment in perpetual Time;
He is the prey of the minutes and the hours.
Assailed on earth and unassured of heaven,
Descended here unhappy and sublime,
A link between the demigod and the beast,
He knows not his own greatness nor his aim;
He has forgotten why he has come and whence.

A human day, a human lifetime, is only ‘a moment in perpetual Time’; we human beings are ‘the prey of the minutes and the hours’ – they are just eating us up. Man is ‘Assailed on earth’, attacked by all the many forces which are ‘in dire league’, allied against him. He aspires for heaven, but is not sure of reaching it. He has ‘descended here’ from his ‘half- luminous beyond’ – the mental plane. Here he suffers and is unhappy; but he is also ‘sublime’, because only heroic souls have agreed to come down from the mental heavens into the material world to undertake this dangerous and challenging adventure of involution and evolution. Mankind, the Mother says, is ‘A link between the demigod and the beast’: between the half-divine being and the beast. Perhaps by ‘the beast’ she may not mean only animal forms; she may mean the stage in which there is a human form but no developed soul: an animal consciousness in a human-like form. Human beings are a bit higher than that, but still we do not know our own greatness; and we do not know our aim, because we have forgotten why we came here and where we have come from.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A riddle of opposites is made his field:
Freedom he asks but needs to live in bonds,
He has need of darkness to perceive some light
And need of grief to feel a little bliss;
He has need of death to find a greater life.

Here are some examples of the ‘strange antinomy’ which rules our human nature: not only is our human nature ruled by duality; the field in which we move and live and grow is ‘a riddle of opposites’. We long for freedom and feel instinctively that freedom is our inborn right, but at the same time we need ‘to live in bonds’: human beings are not yet ready for freedom – we still need limits and ties. We need contrasts: we can only perceive light in contrast to darkness; we need ‘grief to feel a little bliss’. If that contrast is not there, we soon get tired even of being happy and long for some drama in our lives – and sure enough it soon comes. The Mother says that we even need death: we need to experience dissolution and rebirth, for this is a necessary part in our movement towards ‘a greater life’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

All sides he sees and turns to every call;
He has no certain light by which to walk;
His life is a blind-man’s-buff, a hide-and-seek;
He seeks himself and from himself he runs;
Meeting himself, he thinks it other than he.

Another problem for us mental beings is that we are open to all sides of the question. The animal with its instinct immediately knows what is good and bad for it and what it has to do; but a human being can see all sides of any question or issue, and he ‘turns to every call’ – to whatever appeal or suggestion comes to him. This is because ‘He has no certain light by which to walk’. In a way, instinct is a ‘certain light’, a sure light for animals; but we need a higher light, and since we have not got it yet, the mental being ‘has no certain light by which to walk’. Our life is like a children’s game: ‘Blind-man’s-buff’. ‘Buff’ is connected with ‘to buffet’, which means ‘to push someone or give them a blow’. Our life is like that: we are blind, groping around in the dark, being pushed and jostled by things we cannot identify. In ‘hide-and-seek’, everybody hides except one, whohas to try to find at least one of the others; when he finds someone, that person becomes the finder, and all the others hide again. What is Man seeking? Man is always seeking for himself, the truth of his own being; but at the same time, because of the ‘strange antinomy’ which rules his nature, he is running away from himself. He prefers to follow other calls: instead of looking within to find himself, he runs away from himself, chasing outer attractions. Of course in the outside world he does meet images and reflections of himself thatare his other selves; but he does not recognise them as such:he thinks, “Oh, that is not myself, that is something outside me.” We are all like this.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

The light his soul had brought his mind has lost;
All he has learned is soon again in doubt;
A sun to him seems the shadow of his thoughts,
Then all is shadow again and nothing true:
Unknowing what he does or whither he tends
He fabricates signs of the Real in Ignorance.

When we come into the material world our soul brings some light with it, which would be a certain guide if we could hold on to it; but as the mind develops, we lose touch with the light of the soul which perhaps we were aware of when we were small children. The mind learns: as we grow we learn things; but whatever we learn, before long whatever we think that we know, is ‘again in doubt’: some new theory comes up and tells us that the way we had of seeing and understanding things is not really right, there is another perspective which we had missed; so Man, the mental being, is always looking for a ‘certain light’. He may see something that seems like a guiding sun; but it is just a projection, a shadow of his own thoughts; and soon that light fades; everything is dark again, and nothing seems to be true. Man does not know what he is doing, and he does not know where he is going or where his steps are leading him. He ‘fabricates’, makes up or constructs, ‘signs of the Real’ to guide him through this state of ignorance.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

He has hitched his mortal error to Truth’s star.
Wisdom attracts him with her luminous masks,
But never has he seen the face behind:
A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore.

There is a song, ‘Hitch your wagon to a star’ which was popular in the 1940s or 50s; actually this line was written in the seventeenth century by the poet John Donne. You may have only an ordinary ‘wagon’, like a bullock-cart, which normally will not travel very fast or carry you very far; but if, instead of hitching it to a bullock, you hitch your wagon to a star, to some high hope or ideal, that may carry you far on your journey. Here Sri Aurobindo takes up that image. The Mother says that Man ‘has hitched his mortal error to Truth’s star’, which suggests that even though he cannot helpmaking mistakes all the time because of his ignorance and his ‘mortal error’, he is connected to the faraway light of the Truth, which he is always aiming at even without knowing He is attracted by wisdom but he only sees its masks, its disguises, not the real wisdom behind; he sees only outsides and appearances: he has never ‘seen the face behind’. ‘A giant Ignorance surrounds his lore’: ‘lore’ is what we think we have learned – the traditional knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. Over the centuries humanity may have acquired some ‘lore’, some generally accepted knowledge, but it is surrounded by ‘a giant Ignorance’ – all that we do not know.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

His body he resigns to death and pain,
Abandoning Matter, his too heavy charge.

So many great souls have abandoned Matter because it seemed too difficult for them to handle: changing the laws of Matter seemed, and still seems, an impossible task, so we feel that death and physical pain are an unavoidable necessity which we must resign ourselves to.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Half-way he stops his star of destiny:
A vast and vain long-tried experiment,
An ill-served high conception doubtfully done,
The world’s life falters on not seeing its goal, —
A zigzag towards unknown dangerous ground
Ever repeating its habitual walk,
Ever retreating after marches long
And hardiest victories without sure result,
Drawn endlessly an inconclusive game.

If we think that escaping from the world is what we have to do, then we are stopping our ‘star of destiny’, the star that we hitched our wagon to, which is supposed to lead us to our goal. As a result, the world’s life just ‘falters on’ unchanged. ‘To falter’ means to walk waveringly, unsteadily and uncertainly. If the great souls escape and leave the world unchanged, Life cannot see clearly where it is going. The life of the world is a vast experiment and it seems to be in vain; it has been tried again and again and again for such a long time, apparently without any positive result. It is a ‘high conception’, a great idea, but the artist who had this conception has not yet been able to carry it out; so far, it has been ‘doubtfully done’ and ‘ill-served’ because the ‘high conception’ has not found the instruments needed to carry it out fully. Because the world’s life is faltering on, ‘not seeing its goal’, it takes a ‘zigzag’ path, heading first this way and then that way and then another way, ‘towards unknown, dangerous ground’. It keeps repeating ‘its habitual walk’, always returning to familiar steps and ways; and even when it has made long marches and seems to have covered a great distance, even when it seems to have won ‘hardiest victories’, daring victories that required a lot of courage and endurance, it always has to retreat: still there has not been any ‘sure result’ or lasting outcome. It all seems like an endless game of contending forces where there is no clear victory: the game is always ‘drawn’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Because the human instrument has failed,
The Godhead frustrate sleeps within its seed,
A spirit entangled in the forms it made.

The Mother says that this is ‘Because the human instrument has failed’: because Man, the mental being, keeps going away leaving his work half-done, humanity has not yet been able to fulfil its role of enlightening the world’s life and showing it the way forward. So the possibility of manifesting a divine being in the material world still ‘sleeps within its seed’: the seed of divine manhood and a divine life on earth has been prevented from sprouting and from growing. The spirit still remains ‘entangled in the forms’ that it has created, unable to emerge and show itself fully.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A Light there is that leads, a Power that aids;
Unmarked, unfelt it sees in him and acts:
Ignorant, he forms the All-Conscient in his depths,
Human, looks up to superhuman peaks:
A borrower of Supernature’s gold,
He paves his road to Immortality.

But Man is not alone; we are not left alone in the scheme, as Sri Aurobindo tells us many times. A Light is leading the soul forward, even though we do not feel it or notice it at work; and there is ‘a Power that aids’, that helps. That Power is within. It is acting and organising things so that each of us learns everything we have to learn. It is ‘Unmarked’, unnoticed, and it is ‘unfelt’; but although we do not notice or feel that Power and Light, it is in us and it sees where we have to go and guides us on the way. It is the Power which really ‘acts’. Whatever we may think we are choosing to do, that will is prevailing, cancelling our conscious choice. Man is ‘Ignorant’, but within each of us the ‘All- Conscient’ is forming; it is being shaped in the depths of our consciousness through our experiences, our lives, our dramas; all these things help to form the ‘All-conscient’ in our depths. At present, ‘the embodied soul’ is human, with all the limitations and imperfections which that implies; but Man can look ‘up to superhuman peaks’. The individual embodied soul is ‘A borrower of Supernature’s gold’: the gold that is the pure, incorruptible, lasting Truth of Supernature. On the higher levels there is not only Superconscience, but also Supernature with its golden Truth. As we grow and develop, the embodied soul borrows and draws on that Truth of Supernature and gradually ‘paves his road to Immortality’: not just to the consciousness of immortality, which Sri Aurobindo says is accessible to all mental beings, but to the possibility of material immortality in a transformed body and a divine life upon earth.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A splendour sullied by the mortal air,
Love passes through his heart, a wandering guest.
Beauty surrounds him for a magic hour,
He has visits of a large revealing joy,
Brief widenesses release him from himself,
Enticing towards a glory ever in front
Hopes of a deathless sweetness lure and leave.

Here the Mother speaks about Love, Beauty, Joy, Wideness, high hopes– perhaps these are all ‘Ambassadors of the Unseen’. Love is a divine Power, ‘a splendour’; ‘to sully’ means ‘to make dirty, to stain or spoil’: when divine Love passes through the human heart it gets ‘sullied’, dirtied by this ‘mortal air’, the air of material existence dominated by death and separation. But still it comes to us and passes through our hearts; it stays with us for a while as a ‘wandering guest’ and then moves on. There are wonderful magic hours when for a short time we become aware of Beauty all around us; at times, we are visited by ‘a large revealing joy’ which opens us up to new realisations; we can experience ‘Brief widenesses’ that ‘release’ us, setting us free from the limited selves we normally are. ‘Hopes of a deathless sweetness lure and leave’: another Ambassador from the Unseen comes in the form of Hope; we are given a glimpse of ‘a deathless sweetness’, an eternal delight which is irresistibly attractive; those Hopes come and entice us, lure us ‘towards a glory ever in front’, which is always ahead of us, which recedes as we approach it. Those ‘Hopes of a deathless sweetness’, lure us, entice us, and then they leave; we miss them and long for them and then they return and lure us further, leading us on towards our higher destiny.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A strange and grandiose symbol was his birth
And immortality and spirit-room
And pure perfection and a shadowless bliss
Are this afflicted creature’s mighty fate.

The Mother continues speaking to Aswapati about humanity, about ‘Man’: She says that the birth of a human being or of humanity is ‘A strange and grandiose symbol’: a symbol which is mysterious and has a very great significance. Man, she says, is an ‘afflicted creature’, but this ‘afflicted creature’ has ‘a mighty fate’: although we are afflicted, although we suffer, although we have to face so many difficulties, our fate is a mighty one: we are destined to enjoy ‘immortality and spirit- room’, the infinite space of spirit; we shall experience ‘pure perfection and a shadowless bliss’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

A witness to God’s parley with the Night,
It leaned compassionate from immortal calm
And housed desire, the troubled seed of things.
Assent to thy high self, create, endure.
Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast.

She tells him, “Your spirit has been ‘a witness’, it has seen ‘God’s parley with the Night’”. A ‘parley’ is a negotiation between opposing parties, an attempt to work out an agreement. Aswapati’s soul has seen that interchange between God and the Night, the Night of Unconsciousness, unreality, untruth; it has chosen, out of compassion, to lean down from its state of ‘immortal calm’; it has accepted to be human here on earth and to house ‘desire’ which is ‘the troubled seed of things’. Desire always brings some disturbance; but it is through that wanting and wishing and longing that things change and grow in this evolutionary world. She asks him, ‘Assent to thy high self, create, endure’: ‘Assent’, accept: say “Yes” to your highest self; go on creating, go on enduring all the difficulties. ‘Cease not from knowledge, let thy toil be vast’: “Do not give up your search for and use of knowledge; go on working in the universe, continue to toil in the service of the divine purpose.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

My light shall be in thee, my strength thy force.
Let not the impatient Titan drive thy heart,
Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize.

The Mother promises Aswapati, “I will be with you. My light will be within you and my strength will be yours.” Then she warns him, “Do not be in a hurry.” There is something Titanic in us which wants to get everything immediately; she asks him not to allow that ‘impatient Titan’ to drive his heart. She wants him to be patient, and tells him, ‘Ask not the imperfect fruit, the partial prize’. The fruit of his effort and aspiration is not yet ripe; whatever reward she could give him now would not be the real full prize that will come in the future, when the time is ripe. Then she suggests an alternative:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Above blind fate and the antagonist powers
Moveless there stands a high unchanging Will
To its omnipotence leave thy work’s result.
All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour.”

It may look as if human beings are in the grip of ‘blind fate’; things seem to be fixed without reason; and there are ‘antagonist powers’ that are hostile and try to prevent the divine fulfilment; but beyond the power of fate, the power of cause and effect or karma, and above ‘the antagonist powers’,there is ‘a high unchanging Will’: the original Will which has initiated the entire manifestation. That Will stands above; it does not move; it does not change; it is always there; and it is omnipotent, all-powerful. She tells Aswapati, “Leave the result of your work and your effort to that omnipotent Will which has set the whole course of the universe.” She promises him that because of that Will, ‘All things shall change in God’s transfiguring hour’: everything will change in the divine Hourof God; everything will be transfigured, and turned into its most divine form.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]