All the world’s possibilities in man
Are waiting as the tree waits in its seed:
His past lives in him; it drives his future’s pace;
His present’s acts fashion his coming fate.

This is an apparently simple but momentous statement: all the possibilities and potentialities of this manifestation are contained within us in seed form, in the same way that all the possibilities for the growth of a great tree are held in a seed. The entire history of the universe is still alive within each one of us, and that past is impelling us into our future. What each of us does now is shaping our personal future, as well as the future of humanity and of the earth.

The unborn gods hide in his house of Life.
The daemons of the unknown overshadow his mind
Casting their dreams into live moulds of thought,
The moulds in which his mind builds out its world.
His mind creates around him its universe.

Within our living bodies are divine powers that have not yet been manifested, ‘unborn gods’. Our minds are being influenced by ‘The daemons of the unknown’ – the divine spirits of things that are yet to be revealed; those spirits are dreaming out the future, and their dreams get cast, shaped or moulded, in the thoughts of human beings, in forms of thought that affect the world we live in. Each of us creates our own universe around us through our mental perceptions and movements, and those individual universes are reflected in the universe as perceived by human beings in general.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Only a little of us foresees its steps,
Only a little has will and purposed pace.
A vast subliminal is man’s measureless part.
The dim subconscient is his cavern base.

Only a very small part of us is able to foresee and plan its next steps, only a very small part of us has ‘will’ – the capacity to choose and implement its choices. Out of the reach of our surface consciousness is ‘A vast subliminal’: an immeasurably huge part of our being which lies below the threshold of our normal waking awareness, and beneath that our ‘cavern base’ – the foundation of our existence, which is like a dark cave, totally unknown to us.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The unremembering hours repeat the old acts,
Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings
And drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,
Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise,
Old thoughts, old longings, dead passions live again,
Recur in sleep or move the waking man
To words that force the barrier of the lips,
To deeds that suddenly start and o’erleap
His head of reason and his guardian will.

In present time, we do not remember what has happened in the past, but because of its influence we tend to repeat things that have happened before. We may feel that the past is dead and gone, but its influence is clinging to ‘our future’s ankles’ slowing down our progress, as if we are walking through some thick undergrowth and vines are restricting our free forward movement. Our new nature wants to move forward with a ‘glorious stride’, courageous and powerful steps, but all the time these influences from the past are holding us back. The past may be dead, even buried, but from that ‘corpse’, from that dead body of the past, ‘old ghosts’ rise up in the form of thoughts or longings; things that we used to wish for come up again, or things that we used to feel very passionately long ago but have now forgotten suddenly become alive again. They may show themselves ‘in sleep’ or they may even come up when we are awake. We may not notice them much but suddenly find ourselves saying something and wonder “Where did that come from? How could have I said those words?” These are ‘words that force the barrier of the lips’: they just push their way out of our mouths and we do not know why. Or the influence of the past may drive us to do things that our reason would have advised us not to do. Our conscious ‘guardian will’ would protect us from doing things like that, but we find ourselves doing them, without knowing why. They may be happening because of the pressure of influences from the past.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

An old self lurks in the new self we are;
Hardly we escape from what we once had been:
In the dim gleam of habit’s passages,
In the subconscient’s darkling corridors
All things are carried by the porter nerves
And nothing checked by subterranean mind,
Unstudied by the guardians of the doors
And passed by a blind instinctive memory,
The old gang dismissed, old cancelled passports serve.

Each time that we are born, we put on a ‘new self’ to fulfil our soul’s intentions, but hiding within that new self are all the old selves that we have been in previous lives. This makes it very difficult to escape from what we have been in the past. Those old selves with their habits and movements are still being carried along in the subconscious parts of our being, in the nerves and the underground levels of mind. ‘Subterranean’ means ‘underground’. Down there in our depths, there are parts that should be protecting us, but they are lazy and sleepy. Because those movements from the past are familiar, they just accept them, like a guard who lets in people who have been expelled, criminals whose passports have been cancelled: because their faces seem familiar, he does not check properly but just lets them in.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Our greater self of knowledge waits for us,
A supreme light in the truth-conscious Vast:
It sees from summits beyond thinking mind,
It moves in a splendid air transcending life.
It shall descend and make earth’s life divine.

Not only do we have vast subconscient parts: our being has a ‘greater self of knowledge’, which is waiting for us to evolve into it in the future. That greater self has a power of vision much more powerful and penetrating than ‘the uncertain ray of human mind’. Its very nature and substance is light, the light of consciousness, and it lives in ‘the truth-conscious Vast’, the Supramental World and even higher levels. From those ‘summits’, those topmost levels, it can look down on our world. There, our greater self moves in ‘a splendid air’ which goes beyond life. Sri Aurobindo assures us that this ‘greater self of knowledge’ ‘shall descend and make earth’s life divine’.

Truth made the world, not a blind Nature-Force.

Sri Aurobindo can assure us that this is going to happen, because he has perceived and experienced that our world has been created not by ‘a blind Nature-Force’ but by Truth.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Our larger being sits behind cryptic walls:
There are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts
That wait their hour to step into life’s front:
We feel an aid from deep indwelling Gods;
One speaks within, Light comes to us from above.

That greater and larger being of ours is hidden from us behind ‘cryptic walls’, mysterious divisions and defences. Within us, ‘hidden in our unseen parts’, there are immense potentialities that are waiting for the time to become ripe when they can step forward into the front of our lives. We may already feel indications of the presence of those hidden ‘greatnesses’ when we sense some mysterious help that comes ‘from deep indwelling Gods’ – divine presences and powers deep within We may hear a voice speaking within us, or experience a Light coming to us from above.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Our inner Mind dwells in a larger light,
Its brightness looks at us through hidden doors;
Our members luminous grow and Wisdom’s face
Appears in the doorway of the mystic ward:
When she enters into our house of outward sense,
Then we look up and see, above, her sun.

Beneath the surface consciousness lie deeper and subtler powers of our being: the inner Mind, the inner life-self, and the subtle body consciousness. Our inner Mind lives in ‘a larger light’, a vaster light of consciousness. That bright consciousness is aware of our outer being; it ‘looks at us through hidden doors’. If we find one of those doors to the inner Mind its influence can become stronger in us, so that ‘Our members’ – all the different parts of our being – become ‘luminous’: filled with the light of its vaster consciousness, and we get a glimpse of the power of divine ‘Wisdom’ appearing ‘in the doorway of the mystic ward’. A ‘ward’ is a protected place. It is connected with the word ‘guard’: the two words come from the same root. When Wisdom steps out of that protected inner space into ‘our house of outward sense’, our material body which depends on the physical senses for its awareness, then even our outer consciousness can look up to the higher levels where she lives, ‘and see, above, her sun’ – her great Light, the source of Wisdom.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Man stood erect, he wore the thinker’s brow:
He looked at heaven and saw his comrade stars;
A vision came of beauty and greater birth
Slowly emerging from the heart’s chapel of light
And moved in a white lucent air of dreams.
He saw his being’s unrealised vastnesses,
He aspired and housed the nascent demigod.

When man stood erect, he also wore ‘the thinker’s brow’; the ‘brow’ or forehead is an indication of the power of thought. As this power developed, human beings started looking up at the skies, at heaven, and seeing the stars they felt a connection with them, thought that they must be comrades, friends and companions. From the very beginning of human history it seems that some ‘vision … of beauty and greater birth’, greater than this present human birth, has emerged from ‘the heart’s chapel of light’. A ‘chapel’ is a very small and simple church where the divine is worshipped in a humble way. This vision of future realisation ‘moved in a white lucent air of dreams’ – a pure air, full of light: the first dreams of humanity. In this way the human race received its first intuitions of its greater possibilities, the ‘unrealised vastnesses’ lying ahead and waiting to be achieved. Man began to aspire towards and hold within himself ‘the nascent demigod’, the semi-divine being preparing to be born.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Out of the dim recesses of the self
The occult seeker into the open came:
He heard the far and touched the intangible,
He gazed into the future and the unseen;
He used the powers earth-instruments cannot use,
A pastime made of the impossible;
He caught up fragments of the Omniscient’s thought,
He scattered formulas of omnipotence.

As this process continued, ‘The occult seeker’ concealed within us came out of ‘the dim recesses of the self’, the shadowy inner spaces, ‘into the open’. That ‘occult seeker’, using the hidden powers of inner nature, could do far more than the outer surface knowledge ever can: hearing things or voices that are happening very far away, perhaps even in other countries, touching ‘the intangible’ – things that cannot be felt by the physical sense of touch, and seeing into the future, into the invisible, using ‘powers earth-instruments cannot use’, easily achieving the apparently impossible. In this way Man could catch hold of ‘fragments of the Omniscient’s thought’ and scatter ‘formulas of omnipotence’. The thought of the ‘Omniscient’, the All-Knowing, the Divine, is all-encompassing. Human beings grasp ‘fragments’, little broken pieces of that vast thought, and scatter here and there ‘formulas of omnipotence’, of all- powerfulness; perhaps this may refer to scientific formulas, mathematical formulas, formulas of physics and chemistry, and also occult formulas, different ways of summing up the workings of the universal nature which have given humanity the power to grasp and control our environment and the conditions of our existence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Aspiring he transcends his earthly self;
He stands in the largeness of his soul new-born,
Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things
And moves in a pure free spiritual realm
As in the rare breath of a stratosphere;

Up to this point, Sri Aurobindo has been using the past tense, implying that the developments described have already been established in human evolution. But now he changes to the present tense, as if the next stage which he is describing is still in the process of being fixed in the evolutionary process. By the power of aspiration, a human individual can transcend or go beyond ‘his earthly self’ and be reborn into ‘the largeness of his soul’; then he is ‘Redeemed from encirclement by mortal things’, set free from limitation by all the material forms and movements around him which are all subject to death and decay. Instead he can move freely in ‘a pure free spiritual realm / As in the rare breath of a stratosphere’. Earth’s ‘stratosphere’ is a high level of our surrounding atmosphere, miles up above the surface of the planet. It is as if the liberated individual has risen up above the earth’s surface and the lower levels of our atmosphere. Our bodies cannot breathe that air; even when we go up a high mountain we have the same difficulty – in the high Himalayas we may have breathing difficulties because the air up there is rarer, thinner than down here, and contains less oxygen. The man who has become free from ‘his earthly self’ and from ‘encirclement by mortal things’ can rise up in his consciousness into that ‘pure free spiritual realm’ and breathe in a purer atmosphere.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A last end of far lines of divinity,
He mounts by a frail thread to his high source;
He reaches his fount of immortality,
He calls the Godhead into his mortal life.

The realised spiritual individual who is making this new attempt represents a fulfilment of the long lines of evolution up to the present stage: ‘A last end of far lines of divinity’ which stretch far back into the past. At this point there are no more stairs, for this being has reached the highest point of human evolution so far established. To go even higher, he has to pull himself up ‘by a frail thread’, a weak and delicate thread connecting him to ‘his high source’, ‘his fount of immortality’. Then, once the contact with his transcendent, immortal and eternal Origin has been established ‘He calls the Godhead into his mortal life’: he aspires for the Divine to enter his human part, to inhabit and make use of his body and life and mind. This is the goal of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga: to find our soul, to realise our spiritual self, to unite with our source and then to surrender our formed individuality and body here on earth entirely to the Divine so that it can become an instrument and willing servitor of the Divine consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

As all this is revealed to Savitri, she understands that this entire development has already been secretly carried out in her by the power of the spirit. ‘A portion of the mighty Mother’ has come into her and made her ‘its own human part’. In the midst of ‘the cosmic working of the Gods’, the action and processes of the universal divine powers, Savitri has been chosen as ‘the centre of a wide-drawn scheme’ – the complex divine plan for the divinisation of Earth and men. ‘The mighty Mother’, in the intensity of her vast vision and will has dreamed ‘To mould humanity into God’s own shape’ and has chosen Savitri as her human instrument to ‘lead this great blind struggling world to light / Or a new world discover or create’. In this way Savitri is shown her role and position in the divine plan, her mission and the reason for her birth in human form. She realises that for the divine plan to be fulfilled,

Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state. 

But how can this transformation come about? Savitri is shown the way:

But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature’s crowded rooms
And stand uncovered in that nature’s front
And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.

For such an immense transformation to come about, the soul, ‘The heavenly Psyche’, must reveal herself, removing her veil of secrecy and emerging from her secret refuge, ‘the mystic cavern in man’s heart’. The soul must step forward ‘into common nature’s crowded rooms’, into the noisy and busy spaces of ordinary human life, show itself openly there, to rule and govern the thoughts of men and fill their ‘body and life’.

[Shraddhavan’s English Of Savitri, Book 7]

Obedient to a high command she sat:
Time, life and death were passing incidents
Obstructing with their transient view her sight,
Her sight that must break through and liberate the god
Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man.

Savitri remains sitting, ‘Obedient to a high command’ – the command that she was given by the Voice from her heights. She sees that her inner sight is being obstructed, blocked, by the ‘transient view’, temporary view of ‘passing incidents’ of ‘Time, life and death’. ‘Her sight … must break through’ those obstructions in order to set free the divine being that is ‘Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man’, the ordinary human being.

The inferior nature born into ignorance
Still took too large a place, it veiled her self
And must be pushed aside to find her soul.

Savitri realises that her ordinary human nature, ‘The inferior nature born into ignorance’ which she had taken on by accepting a human birth, is still too dominant in her being. It is veiling her true self ‘And must be pushed aside to find her soul.’ How Savitri achieves this is recounted in the rest of Book Seven, The Book of Yoga.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]