Here was a quiet country of fixed mind,
Here life no more was all nor passion’s voice;
The cry of sense had sunk into a hush.
Soul was not there nor spirit but mind alone;
Mind claimed to be the spirit and the soul.

In her exploration of her inner being, Savitri has now left behind the realms of life and come to a country which belongs entirely to mind. It is ‘a quiet country’, but there is something ‘fixed’ about it. The passionate voice of life is no longer heard, nor the clamour of the senses. ‘Soul was not there nor spirit but mind alone’: there is no room for either soul or spirit, because she has reached a level where ‘Mind claimed to be the spirit and the soul’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The spirit saw itself as form of mind,
Lost itself in the glory of the thought,
A light that made invisible the sun.

It is even the self-view of the spirit: in this realm the spirit sees itself as a ‘form of mind’ and loses its true self ‘in the glory of the thought’, which is so bright and dazzling that ‘the sun’, the light of the divine truth-consciousness, can no longer be seen. That is the trouble with the brilliance of the mind: it is so clever and ingenious, it makes shining thought-forms and expresses them in glorious words and these can blind the spirit to the true light of the sun, its own source.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

– a divine message coming through a sacred messenger. Here is what he says to Savitri:

“Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world,
Fortunate art thou to reach our brilliant air
Flaming with thought’s supreme finality.
O aspirant to the perfect way of life,
Here find it; rest from search and live at peace.
Ours is the home of cosmic certainty.
Here is the truth, God’s harmony is here.

He addresses her in a patronising tone, giving her an official welcome as a ‘Traveller or pilgrim of the inner world’ and congratulating her on her good fortune in reaching that shining realm whose atmosphere, he says, is ‘Flaming with thought’s supreme finality’: it is brilliantly lit by the highest possible level of thought. He tells her, “Whatever you were looking for, now you have found it. Here everything has been thought about and worked out. You are an ‘aspirant to the perfect way of life’; and ‘Here’ you can ‘find it’. You do not have to search any further. You can stay with us, and ‘live at peace’. This is ‘the home of cosmic certainty’. We are sure about everything in the universe. ‘Here is the truth, God’s harmony is here’.” I am remembering a poem by the Polish Nobel laureate for literature, Wisława Szymborska. She describes the Island of Truth as a desert island where there is nothing to be seen but footprints leading into the sea. Everybody who reaches that island leaves it: no real Truth-seeker can be satisfied with something that is fixed and labelled, a small, isolated island where nothing grows. But in a way, that is what this figure of authority is offering Savitri: “You have reached the goal of your search – congratulations! You can stay here with This is the perfection you were looking for.” Savitri will surely not be satisfied with what he offers.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Here is the safety of the ultimate wall,
Here is the clarity of the sword of Light,
Here is the victory of a single Truth,
Here burns the diamond of flawless bliss.
A favourite of Heaven and Nature live.”

That commanding being is inviting Savitri to live in this realm: “You are one of the favoured few, one of the elite, ‘A favourite of Heaven and Nature’. Here, you will be safe, protected by ‘the ultimate wall’ of mind; here you will find ‘the clarity of the sword of Light’ which distinguishes the true value and place of everything.” We speak about the ‘sword of discernment’ that casts a clear light to show the difference between truth and falsehood, what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is not. So here there is no mystery or confusion – ‘Here is the victory of a single Truth’ – everything is clear in the light of that ‘single Truth’ –the eternal Truth is infinite but any ‘single Truth’ must necessarily be very limited. ‘Here burns the diamond of flawless bliss’, a hard, bright, shining gemstone without any shadow or stain. Come and live with us, as ‘A favourite of Heaven and Nature’.” This is the fixed mind, very self-satisfied and sure of itself. How will Savitri respond to him?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

But to the too satisfied and confident sage
Savitri replied casting into his world
Sight’s deep release, the heart’s questioning inner voice:
For here the heart spoke not, only clear daylight
Of intellect reigned here, limiting, cold, precise.

This is a ‘sage’, a wise man, but he is ‘too satisfied’ and too ‘confident’. In her reply to him, Savitri throws something new and precious ‘into his world’ that is so fixed and sure of itself. She presents two things that are missing in that world: ‘Sight’s deep release’, the liberation from error provided by true vision; and ‘the heart’s questioning inner voice‘ which is not too easily satisfied, but asks “Is this really what I am looking for?” In that world, ‘the heart’ does not have anything to say; what rules there is only the ‘clear daylight’ of the intellect, which is ‘limiting, cold, precise’. It cannot satisfy the inner heart which is looking for genuine conviction and truth. This is what she says to him:

[Shraddhavn’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

“Happy are they who in this chaos of things,
This coming and going of the feet of Time,
Can find the single Truth, the eternal Law:
Untouched they live by hope and doubt and fear.

The Mother tells us that when she was in her teens, her family lived in an apartment where their neighbours were a family of Catholic believers; she was friendly with the daughters of that family and she tells us “I thought how fortunate they are. They have this fixed belief; they know, they understand everything. There is no fear and hope and doubt or anything like that. They just know how things are.” But she also knew that she herself had not yet found that kind of comforting conviction. If you want to find your soul, you will have to move on from such limited convictions, because there is much more mystery and truth in the world than that. Savitri replies to the sage from a different viewpoint, first saying that in this confused world of mingling and contradictory forces and tendencies, ‘this chaos of things’, and the ‘coming and going of the feet of Time’, the way that things change and pass and then come back in a different form, people who can find something that seems to them like ‘the single Truth’ and ‘the eternal Law’ can be happy, because that gives them a lot of certitude and comfort in their lives.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Happy are men anchored on fixed belief
In this uncertain and ambiguous world,
Or who have planted in the heart’s rich soil
One small grain of spiritual certitude.
Happiest who stand on faith as on a rock.

People who have been able to ‘anchor’ themselves ‘on fixed belief’, can live ‘Untouched’, unaffected, ‘by hope and doubt and fear’, because they are like a ship with its anchor down, firmly fixed so that it cannot drift too far and get lost. ‘Fixed belief’ is a wonderful anchor ‘In this uncertain and ambiguous world’. People who have been blessed enough to be able to plant even one ‘small grain of spiritual certitude’ in their hearts can also be happy, because that seed will sprout and grow stronger and stronger ‘in the heart’s rich soil’ and carry them through all the difficulties and dangers of life. But those who have a firm faith are the happiest of all, because faith is an expression of the soul’s deep knowledge, a reliable rock to base their lives on.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

But I must pass leaving the ended search,
Truth’s rounded outcome firm, immutable
And this harmonic building of world-fact,
This ordered knowledge of apparent things.
Here I can stay not, for I seek my soul.”

Then she adds: “Now I have to move on. You people have certitude; you have ended your searching and are sure that you have discovered ‘Truth’s rounded outcome firm, immutable’, clear and unchanging; you have built on it your harmonious world where everything is in its place, and clearly arranged all your ‘ordered knowledge of apparent things’. But I cannot stay here, because I am still looking for my soul.”

This is the mind-world. ‘A rational religion’ is there, but it is a level of mind which is ‘too satisfied and confident’ that it has found all the answers. Savitri is very sure that she is looking for something truer.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

“Who then is this who knows not that the soul
Is a least gland or a secretion’s fault
Disquieting the sane government of the mind,
Disordering the function of the brain,
Or a yearning lodged in Nature’s mortal house
Or dream whispered in man’s cave of hollow thought
Who would prolong his brief unhappy term
Or cling to living in a sea of death?”

“Who is this person who does not know that ‘the soul’ is just a function or malfunction of the physical body, ‘a least gland or a secretion’s fault’: an unimportant little gland, or something that has gone wrong with a gland, that has caused some disorder in the way the brain works and upset the healthy ‘government of the mind’?” The liquids that glands produce are called secretions. ‘Sane’, in its origin, means ‘healthy’, but we use it specifically about reasonable, commonsensical people. But sometimes even ‘sane’ people, because of something wrong with one of their glands, may start to speak and act in a wild way. He thinks that the feeling that we have a soul is due to something wrong with the physical functioning that is ‘Disordering’ or upsetting the way the brain works. That is one way of looking at it, that something wrong in the body makes us feel that we have a soul. Or perhaps the idea that we have a soul is a mental construction based on ‘a yearning’, some longing, ‘lodged in Nature’s mortal house’, in the body; or maybe on a ‘dream’, an unrealistic suggestion ‘whispered in man’s cave of hollow thought’. The speaker is saying that something might have gone wrong with a person’s mind so that his thoughts have become empty or ‘hollow’ like a ‘cave’, and into that emptiness a meaningless ‘dream’ has come, suggesting “Maybe you have an immortal soul”; and because he does not want to die, because he wants to ‘cling to living in a sea of death’, in this material world where everything is dying, and to ‘prolong his brief unhappy term’ on earth, he accepts the suggestion and imagines that he has an undying immortal soul. Others look at it in another way:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Each soul is the great Father’s crucified Son,
Mind is that soul’s one parent, its conscious cause,
The ground on which trembles a brief passing light,
Mind, sole creator of the apparent world.
All that is here is part of our own self;
Our minds have made the world in which we live.”

Their view is that every individual soul is like Christ, the son of God who was ‘crucified’, put to death on a cross; and that like everything else in the world, the soul is a product of mind, because although mind is only a ‘ground on which trembles a brief passing light’ of consciousness, it is the only creator of the illusory ‘apparent world’ we see around us. Everything in the world is part of our own individual self, because ‘Our minds have made the world in which we live.’ There is something true in that: we think that because we can touch and see and smell and feel things, they are real; but through our senses and our sense-mind we are not contacting the things in themselves: we only receive an impression of them through the sense organs, which can be very misleading. The sense impressions we receive are then processed by our physical mind, which is often influenced by emotions or preconceived ideas. The appearances we perceive of all the objects and events around us are essentially only mental constructions created by the mind. In our present state of consciousness, the only evidence we have that anything outside ourselves exists are ideas based on sense-impressions which do not give us any direct knowledge of the reality, but only some indirect and distorted impressions that come into our mind. That person says, everything ‘that is here is part of our own self; / Our minds have made the world in which we live.’ There are different ways of understanding these words, but there is a certain truth behind them. These beings say that spirit is the creation of mind because they believe that mind is the ultimate principle, and therefore if at all anything like ‘spirit’ exists, it must be a creation of mind.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri: Book 7}

Another with mystic and unsatisfied eyes
Who loved his slain belief and mourned its death,
“Is there one left who seeks for a Beyond?
Can still the path be found, opened the gate?”

These are different kinds of ‘passers-by from kindred spheres’ or worlds, who react to Savitri’s words according to their own ideas and standpoints. One of them, ‘with mystic and unsatisfied eyes’ was a believer but has lost his belief. Like Savitri, he is not fully satisfied by the mind but he has accepted it; he is in that mental world. But he ‘loved his slain belief’ and now he is mourning that it is dead. When he hears Savitri say that she is searching for her soul he is touched, and wonders “Is there still someone who is looking for something more, ‘for a Beyond’? Can the way still be found? Is there really an opening out of this world? Is it possible to go further?”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]