“O beautiful body of the incarnate Word,
Thy thoughts are mine, I have spoken with thy voice.
My will is thine, what thou hast chosen I choose:
All thou hast asked I give to earth and men.
All shall be written out in destiny’s book
By my trustee of thought and plan and act,
The executor of my will, eternal Time.

This is the Voice of the Supreme Lord, speaking to Savitri and giving full sanction to her great prayer. He acclaims her as the ‘beautiful body of the … Word’: the original creative Word ‘incarnate’, embodied in a human form. The Lord tells her, “You have expressed my thoughts, my will, and I choose what you have chosen. All you have asked for I grant, I give to you for earth and men. I promise that what you have asked for will be recorded in the book of destiny by ‘my trustee of thought and plan and act’, the force which is ‘The executor of my will’, the force which will see that my choice and yours will be carried out in the world.” A ‘trustee’ is someone who is given the responsibility to make sure that a person’s will is implemented, and an ’executor’ is the person who is responsible for seeing that the instructions are actually carried out. The Lord tells Savitri that the executor who will see that her choice, which He has sanctioned, is carried out will be the power of ‘eternal Time’. He is assuring her that everything she has asked for will be worked out in and by ‘Time’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Then He goes on to tell her much more. First He tells her what this choice she has made will mean for her personally, and later He will tell her what it will mean ‘for earth and men’. First, for Savitri herself:

He tells her:

But since thou hast refused my maimless Calm
And turned from my termless peace in which is expunged
The visage of Space and the shape of Time is lost,
And from happy extinction of thy separate self
In my uncompanioned lone eternity,—
For not for thee the nameless worldless Nought,
Annihilation of thy living soul
And the end of thought and hope and life and love
In the blank measureless Unknowable,—
I lay my hands upon thy soul of flame,
I lay my hands upon thy heart of love,
I yoke thee to my power of work in Time.

He begins by reminding Savitri of all she refused before making her choice, her momentous decision for humanity: she refused his ‘maimless Calm’, his complete and perfect unwounded Calm and quietude, and has turned away from his ‘termless’, never-ending ‘peace’, in which the face or visage of Space ‘is expunged’, wiped out or erased, ‘and the shape of Time is lost’; she refused the ‘happy extinction’ of her ‘separate self’ in the Oneness of the Lord’s ‘uncompanioned lone eternity’, because she does not want her ‘living soul’ to be annihilated in ‘the nameless worldless Nought’ of Nirvana; she does not want ‘the end of thought and hope and life and love / In the blank measureless Unknowable’. She refused all those boons, so now the Lord tells her: “Because you refused the state of happy extinction which was offered to you, I am going to put ‘my hands’ on your soul, which is as passionate and pure as a ‘flame’. I am going to take possession of your ‘heart of love’, and I am going to yoke you ‘to my power of work in Time’.” A yoke is what we put around the neck of a bullock so that it can pull a plough or a cart. The Lord tells Savitri, “I am going to yoke you, connect you indissolubly, ‘to my power of work in Time’.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Because thou hast obeyed my timeless will,
Because thou hast chosen to share earth’s struggle and fate
And leaned in pity over earth-bound men
And turned aside to help and yearned to save,
I bind by thy heart’s passion thy heart to mine
And lay my splendid yoke upon thy soul.

He tells her, “Because in spite of all challenges and discouragements and tests you have ‘obeyed my timeless will’, my will for manifestation and fulfilment, and have ‘chosen to share’ the ‘struggle and fate’ of earth, because you have ‘leaned in pity’ and compassion over these human beings who are bound to the earth, and have ‘turned aside’ from all the bliss and peace that I offered you, because you want ‘to help’, because you want ‘to save’ suffering earth and humanity, I am binding you to myself by the passion of your heart, which is so full of love. And I am putting my yoke on your soul. You will have to carry my yoke.” This word ‘yoke’ is derived from the same root as the word ‘yoga’, and has a similar meaning. A yoke joins or unites two things, so it signifies ‘union’; the meaning of the word ‘yoga’ in Sanskrit is also ‘union’. Through the practice of yoga we strive to become united with the Divine. In the Bible is recorded a beautiful saying of Christ, who told his followers, “My yoke is easy, my yoke is light”, meaning “My yoga is not a heavy painful discipline or tapasya, but one that is easy for you to bear.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

O Sun-Word, thou shalt raise the earth-soul to Light
And bring down God into the lives of men;
Earth shall be my work-chamber and my house,
My garden of life to plant a seed divine.

The Lord calls Savitri ‘O Sun-Word’. Savitri’s name marks her as the daughter of the Sun God as well as the wife and Shakti of Lord Brahma, the Creator. She represents the Word of creation, the creative command that brings things into existence. “You are bringing light; you are bringing creative power”, he says, “and through all that you have done, you have gained the capacity to lift up the soul of the earth towards the light of the highest consciousness. At the same time you have the power to ‘bring down God into the lives of men’ so that their lives can become divinised. Because of you and your prayer and your will, your aspiration, your choice, earth is going to become ‘my work-chamber’, the place where I am going to show what a marvellous artist and craftsman I am. And it will be ‘my house’: I am going to inhabit all the forms and appearances and beings of the earth. Earth will become a fruitful garden, my ‘garden of life’ where I shall ‘plant a seed divine’, which will blossom into the divine life.”

Q: God is already inhabiting all forms and appearances and beings of the world. Then why is it mentioned as something that will happen in future?

Even now of course the Lord is inhabiting every part of his Creation, but at the moment He is veiled, involved, hidden. But He is promising to Savitri that through her, through her prayer and her choice, He will be revealed, working openly in the universe, so that everyone and everything will be able to consciously experience and enjoy His presence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

In the nudity of thy discovered self,
In a bare identity with all that is,
Disrobed of thy covering of humanity,
Divested of the dense veil of human thought,
Made one with every mind and body and heart,
Made one with all Nature and with Self and God,
Summing in thy single soul my mystic world
I will possess in thee my universe,
The universe find all I am in thee.

“You will have ‘discovered’ yourself”, He says. “You will have become naked in the sense that there will be no covering of protecting ignorance. You will have discovered who you really are. You will be identified with, feel and experience your oneness with, everything that exists. You will no longer be wearing the disguise of a human being: You will have been ‘Disrobed’: the disguise of humanity will have been removed, and the ‘dense veil of human thought’, of human mentality, will have been taken away from you too. You will experience your oneness ‘with every mind and body and heart’. You will feel your oneness ‘with all Nature, with Self and God’. In your single soul, you will be summing up the whole of ‘my mystic world’, so I will be able to possess my whole universe by possessing you, and ‘The universe’ will be able to find everything about me, about my divine nature, by knowing you.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The pains of hell shall be to thee my kiss,
The flowers of heaven persuade thee with my touch.
My fiercest masks shall my attractions bring.
Music shall find thee in the voice of swords,
Beauty pursue thee through the core of flame.
Thou shalt know me in the rolling of the spheres
And cross me in the atoms of the whirl.

The poet is describing apparently contradictory and opposite experiences which Savitri will undergo. “You will desire me in beautiful things and terrible ones. ‘The pains of hell’, the intense sufferings of the lowest vital regions, you will experience as ‘my kiss’, my embrace, and also all the beautiful ‘flowers of heaven’ will be persuading you ‘with my touch’. Even ‘My fiercest masks’, all the most terrible disguises that I can put on, will bring you ‘my attractions’, showing you how attractive I can be even when I am disguised so terribly. When you hear conflict, ‘the voice of swords’ fighting, it will be like music to you. You will hear beautiful music even in the clash of strife. Beauty will follow you everywhere; it will be hunting you everywhere, even ‘through the core of flame’: the very heart of intensity, of burning passionate feeling. You will know me, you will recognise me, my presence, my power, my beauty, my love ‘in the rolling of the spheres’: in all the planets and galaxies and realms of the universe, and you will also find me ‘in the atoms of the whirl’. I will be there too, where the infinitesimal atomic and subatomic particles and forces are whirling around inside all Matter. I am there too; you will find me there too.”

We are in the middle of the long speech of the Supreme in response to Savitri’s soul’s choice: “The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation”. He has granted the boons that she asked for earth and men and now He is telling her what this will mean for her. Later on He will tell what this is going to mean for the earth, but now He is telling Savitri what it will mean for her personally.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Hearts touched by thy love shall answer to my call,
Discover the ancient music of the spheres
In the revealing accents of thy voice
And nearer draw to me because thou art:
Enamoured of thy spirit’s loveliness
They shall embrace my body in thy soul,
Hear in thy life the beauty of my laugh,
Know the thrilled bliss with which I made the worlds.

“Hearts that are touched by your love, the love that you are going to be spreading around you to everyone, will ‘answer to my call’, they will be attracted to me, and when they hear your voice, ‘the revealing accents’ of your voice, they will ‘Discover the ancient music of the spheres’.” There is an old, old tradition that if your ears are attuned you can hear the cosmic music created by all the ‘spheres’, the heavenly bodies which are moving and circling around in the universe: as they move, each of them produces a particular note and together those notes make up the enchanting ‘music of the spheres’. The Lord tells Savitri that people will hear that music in the sound of her voice.

Here he says, “People who are touched by your love will respond to my call. They will hear that ancient music of the spheres ‘In the revealing accents of thy voice / And nearer draw to me because thou art’.”

[ Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

All that thou hast, shall be for others’ bliss,
All that thou art, shall to my hands belong.
I will pour delight from thee as from a jar,
I will whirl thee as my chariot through the ways,
I will use thee as my sword and as my lyre,
I will play on thee my minstrelsies of thought.

He says, “Everything you have will be for the bliss of other people; and everything that you are will belong to me, to the One. And I am going to make use of you: I am going to ‘pour delight’ onto everyone from you as if out of ‘a jar’; I am going to make you ‘my chariot’: I will ride in you through the world, and ‘I will use thee as my sword’”: sometimes she will be Kali; she will have to fight and destroy, but He will also use her ‘as my lyre’, His musical instrument. He says, “On you, I will play ‘my minstrelsies of thought’.” A ‘minstrel’ is a musician, particularly a travelling musician who carries a lyre to accompany himself as he chants; Savitri will be The Lord’s musical instrument, on which He will play all his melodies, all the wonderful, glorious, beautiful ideas that thought can produce.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

And when thou art vibrant with all ecstasy,
And when thou liv’st one spirit with all things,
Then will I spare thee not my living fires,
But make thee a channel for my timeless force.

“When you are vibrating with all possible forms of ecstasy, and when you are united in ‘spirit with all things’, everything in the universe, then I will not spare you the intensity of ‘my living fires’: I will make you ‘a channel for my timeless force’ from beyond manifestation: the supreme tapas: I will pour all that through you. You will become the channel and the instrument.” I think this is the supreme realisation and experience.

You know what it is like if you just touch your finger on a flame for a moment; it is such an intense feeling. Imagine that the living fires of the Supreme are pouring through your whole being: what kind of a fiery experience that is going to be! That is why he says, “I will not spare you.”

Q: What does he mean by ‘my living fires’?

Here he says that it is Force, the creative Conscious-Force of the Supreme Divine Mother. To be able to bear this, the human instrument has to be completely transformed. Otherwise it is not possible.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

In the world of my knowledge and my ignorance
Where God is unseen and only is heard a Name
And knowledge is trapped in the boundaries of mind
And life is hauled in the drag-net of desire
And Matter hides the soul from its own sight,
You are my Force at work to uplift earth’s fate,
My self that moves up the immense incline
Between the extremes of the spirit’s night and day.

He says, “This world that you are in is my world, even though it is a world of ‘ignorance’ as well as of ‘knowledge’.” This earth is the world of God’s ‘knowledge’ and ‘ignorance’, where knowledge and ignorance are mixed and mingled. In this world ‘God is unseen’: we do not see God as He really is; He is hidden from us by the material appearances of things; to us He is only ‘a Name’ we have heard of. In this world, ‘knowledge is trapped in the boundaries of mind’ – imprisoned and restricted by the limitations of our mental workings. Our life is also trapped: it is being ‘hauled’, dragged along like fish caught in a net, the ‘drag-net of desire’. This net is not woven of strings like the ones that fishermen use, but from our own desires and fears and preferences. Just as the fish can rarely escape from the fishermen’s net, it is very difficult for human beings to escape from this ‘drag-net of desire’. In our world, ‘Matter hides the soul from its own sight’. We cannot see our souls or the souls of others because our physical eyes cannot perceive the soul-substance they are made of, but see only the outer material appearances.

The Lord tells Satyavan and Savitri: “In this world, ‘You are my Force at work to uplift earth’s fate’. The two of you together are a dual power of my Force, which is working to uplift the earth. Together you are ‘My self that moves up the immense incline / Between the extremes of the spirit’s night and day.’” An ‘incline’ is a slope or hill. If you go into the mountains you may see road-signs warning that soon you will reach a steep incline: a steep hill. Apparently there is a very long steep slope between ‘the extremes of the spirit’s night and day’: the darkness of its lowest levels and the light of its highest ones. The Lord has involved Himself in inconscient matter, but through the process of evolution He is moving up this immense incline. It is very, very far from the bottom to the top, between ‘the extremes’, the ends. The Lord tells Satyavan and Savitri that together they represent or embody His Force which is driving the world up the immense upward path joining the lowest levels with the highest ones.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

It climbs to the greatness it has left behind
And to the beauty and joy from which it fell,
To the closeness and sweetness of all things divine,
To light without bounds and life illimitable,
Taste of the depths of the Ineffable’s bliss,
Touch of the immortal and the infinite.

“Satyavan is my soul”, He says. This soul is climbing up from the ‘nescient Night’: the dark depths of unconsciousness. It is climbing up ‘to the greatness’ which it left behind when it descended into the grip of ignorance and death upon earth. This ‘hedged creation’, the material manifestation itself, is climbing back ‘to the beauty and joy from which it fell’ when it left the superconscient heights. It is climbing up ‘To the closeness and sweetness of all things divine / To light without bounds’: unlimited light, the Everlasting Day which we saw Savitri experiencing at the beginning of this Book, and to ‘life illimitable’: infinite life. It is climbing up to where it can get a ‘Taste of the depths of the Ineffable’s bliss’. The bliss of the Ineffable is not something that is on the surface, a passing movement, but something extremely deep, fathomless. The word ‘ineffable’ means ‘inexpressible’, ‘beyond description’, something that cannot be put into words, so ‘the Ineffable’ is one of our names for the Lord, for God, for the Supreme. Representing the soul of mankind, Satyavan is climbing up to the ‘Touch of the immortal and the infinite’: the state of immortality and infinity.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

He is the godhead growing in human lives    
And in the body of earth-being’s forms:
He is the soul of man climbing to God
In Nature’s surge out of earth’s ignorance.

He, Satyavan, is the divine being, ‘the godhead’, which is ‘growing in human lives’ and ‘in the body of earth-being’s forms’: in all earth’s different material forms the divine superhuman being is growing. Satyavan ‘is the soul of man climbing to God / In Nature’s surge out of earth’s ignorance’. A ‘surge’ is the sudden movement of a big wave, or we may say that a bird surges up, flies up suddenly from its nest into the sky. In the process of evolution Nature is surging up, rising up to escape from the ignorance of the mortal state in this world of matter.

In these four sentences the Lord has described the significance of Satyavan, who he is and what he represents. Now He will say something about Savitri:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

While the dim light from the veiled Spirit’s peak
Falls upon Matter’s stark inconscient sleep
As if a pale moonbeam on a dense glade,
And Mind in a half-light moves amid half-truths
And the human heart knows only human love
And life is a stumbling and imperfect force
And the body counts out its precarious days,
You shall be born into man’s dubious hours
In forms that hide the soul’s divinity
And show through veils of the earth’s doubting air
My glory breaking as through clouds a sun,
Or burning like a rare and inward fire,
And with my nameless influence fill men’s lives.

Here the Supreme Lord begins a long prophetic description of what Savitri’s great aspiration and her victory will mean ‘for earth and men’ in the future. First He speaks of the earth as it isat that time, in a state where the Truth-Light from the peaks, the summit of the Spirit, is falling only as a ‘dim light’ on the ‘stark inconscient sleep’ of Matter, like ‘a pale moonbeam on a dense glade’. A ‘glade’ is an open space in a forest, surrounded by trees so that light from the moon can penetrate only as ‘a pale moonbeam’. The Lord says that as long as things remain like that and the Spirit’s light falls only very faintly onto the inconscience of matter; as long as the power of Mind is moving only ‘in a half-light’, the faint twilight of knowledge and ignorance, surrounded by misleading ‘half-truths’; as long as ‘the human heart knows only human love’, not yet true divine love; as long as the power of Life remains only ‘a stumbling and imperfect force’, not the great divine power that it is meant to become; as long as the body has to count out ‘its precarious days’ (‘precarious’ means ‘in danger’) because at any moment something may happen to the body and it may not have any more days; as long as it is like that, the Lord says: “You two, Satyavan and Savitri, will ‘be born’ again and again into the doubtful hours of human life, in human forms ‘that hide the soul’s divinity’,” concealing the divinity of the soul within the form. “You will be born in appearances like other human beings, in forms that show only glimpses of the power and beauty of the divine soul, seen through ‘veils of the earth’s doubting air’ as if through thick mists, forms that reveal my glory only for a moment now and again like a sudden ray of sunlight shining through thick cloud-cover. Your human bodies will be expressing the glory and divinity of your inner beings only dimly like that, or it will be able to burn brightly but only very rarely and from deep within.” “But still,” He tells them, “even in those forms which disguise your divinity, you will be doing my work. You will be filling men’s lives ‘with my nameless influence’.”

Q: Does Satyavan also have the same mission, of spreading the divine influence in human lives?

Satyavan represents the godhead growing in human lives. A spark of divinity inhabits every earthly form, but through the course of its evolution that divine spark grows and becomes stronger and more complex. We can say that this growing godhead is the evolving soul-personality in each being. This is what Satyavan represents, and that was why it was so important to rescue him, as the soul of humanity, from the grip of death and ignorance.

Q: Satyavan also embodies the Lord’s power? The Lord describes Savitri and Satyavan as complementary aspects of his power: Savitri is the divine power that has come down to save and Satyavan is the growing soul, still needing to be rescued from ignorance and death. They constitute a dual power which has a dual influence, two aspects working together. We can see this represented in Sri Aurobindo’s symbol, where one triangle is pointing downwards and the other upwards: together they represent the upward movement of aspiration and the response of the Grace from above.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

But more there is concealed in God’s Beyond
That shall one day reveal its hidden face.
Now mind is all and its uncertain ray,
Mind is the leader of the body and life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul
Carrying the luminous wanderer in the night
To vistas of a far uncertain dawn,
To the end of the Spirit’s fathomless desire,
To its dream of absolute truth and utter bliss.

The Lord tells Savitri and Satyavan that He has much more hidden in His ‘Beyond’ which will one day be revealed, but which cannot be seen as long as ‘mind is all’ and human beings have only its ‘uncertain ray’ to lead their body and life. He says that Mind is like a chariot which is being driven by ‘thought’. That ‘thought-driven chariot’ is ‘Carrying the luminous wanderer in the night’: the soul which is full of light but wandering in the darkness of the earthly ignorance. Mind is carrying the soul towards ‘vistas of a far uncertain dawn’: a dawn that will come in the far-distant future. A ‘vista’ is a view into the far distance. It is difficult for Mind to believe in that dawn which seems so far away and so uncertain, but nevertheless the soul is being carried towards that distant dawn. For a time, Mind is the leader that is carrying the soul towards the fulfilment ‘of the Spirit’s fathomless desire’ and deep purpose: ‘To its dream of absolute truth and utter bliss’. But beyond mind, other possibilities are preparing.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The Spirit’s mightiness shall cast off its mask;
Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world’s course:
It shall be seen in its own veilless beams,
A star rising from the Inconscient’s night,
A sun climbing to Supernature’s peak.

The Lord tells Satyavan and Savitri, “Now the power of the Spirit is veiled from humanity, disguised as a mask of matter. But it is going to become so powerful that it can throw away ‘its mask’ and then human beings will become aware of it: ‘Its greatness shall be felt shaping the world’s course’. Human beings will become aware of the Spirit’s greatness and be able to see how it is shaping events that will determine the way the world evolves.”

This prophecy of the Lord is meant also for us. The power of the Spirit is shaping things even now, but we ignorant human beings find it hard to see beyond the mask of appearances: disasters and catastrophes and shocks of all kinds. But when we can go beyond the ignorant mind, we will be able to feel the greatness of the Spirit shaping the world’s course and be able to see it ‘in its own veilless beams’, as it truly is: as ‘A star rising from the Inconscient’s night’ and as ‘A sun climbing to Supernature’s peak’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Abandoning the dubious middle Way,
A few shall glimpse the miraculous Origin
And some shall feel in you the secret Force
And they shall turn to meet a nameless tread,
Adventurers into a mightier Day.

The ‘dubious middle Way’: We human beings are advised sometimes by teachers to stick to the middle way, to avoid extremes. Also in a sense we are here on middle earth between the lower depths and the higher heights. But what the Lord is saying here is: “Because of your influence, Savitri and Satyavan, a few people will abandon that doubtful, ‘dubious’, unclear, uncertain ‘middle Way’. A few people will ‘glimpse the miraculous Origin’, the Source of things. And a few people will feel in you, Savitri and Satyavan, ‘the secret Force’ of the Divine. Then they will turn away from that middle way ‘to meet a nameless tread’.” ‘To tread’ means ‘to set foot on the ground’. Those few humans will become aware of some feet that are not treading the dubious middle way but are following another path. Those special beings will follow that tread, ‘Adventurers into a mightier Day’. ‘Adventurers’ are brave people who dare to go where no one else has gone, to attempt the unknown, to discover the unknown. The Lord tells Satyavan and Savitri, “Feeling your influence a few people will dare to abandon the ‘dubious middle Way’ that ordinary human beings are treading, and take another path, move in another direction, daring to attempt extreme adventures.”

Q: Why does he say that ‘the middle Way’ is ‘Dubious’ ?

It means ‘doubtful’ or even ’untrustworthy’. Sri Aurobindo uses this word quite often in Savitri, referring to our human condition in which we are not sure of anything so everything is doubtful and uncertain to us. We do not know where things are going, where they have come from. We are not even sure of where we ourselves have come from and where we are going. Anything that is doubtful or unclear is ‘dubious’, and we may refer to a person we do not trust as ‘dubious’ too.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Ascending out of the limiting breadths of mind,
They shall discover the world’s huge design
And step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast.

Those adventurers, those few who abandon the dubious middle way, will rise up – ‘Ascending’ means ‘rising’ – ‘out of the limiting breadths of mind’. Mind can be quite broad and wide, interested in many different things, but the Lord says that even those ‘breadths’ are limiting. Those adventurers will rise up beyond the limits of mind and ‘discover the world’s huge design’, the cosmic plan: What is all this for? Why are we here? Why have we been born? Where is all this going to? We cannot discover the answers to those questions if we remain within the limits of the ordinary human mind. If we rise above mind then we may become able to see the plan, the huge design of the world. Those adventurers will even be able to ‘step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast’: the world that the Vedic rishis glimpsed and aspired to attain: the world of Truth, of Right Knowledge and Right Action, the world of unlimited vastness, the state of consciousness and existence which the Vedic rishis aspired to. The Lord is telling Savitri and Satyavan: “Through your joint influence as my living Force, a few people will be able to achieve that high state.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

But when the hour of the Divine draws near
The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time
And God be born into the human clay
In forms made ready by your human lives.

There will come a time of fulfilment. When that approaches, then ‘The Mighty Mother’, the supreme divine Mother, will ‘take birth in Time’. ‘And God will be born into the human clay / In forms made ready by your human lives’: the many human lives of Savitri and Satyavan will have prepared new forms in which the Mighty Mother and God himself will be born ‘into the human clay’.

At that time what will happen? The Lord says:

Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men:

“At that time when you, Savitri, are born as an incarnation of The Mighty Mother in Time and Satyavan is born as The Divine in human clay, in forms that have been prepared by your many human lives, ‘Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men’: not just to a few but to humanity in general.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Then the Lord begins to describe how, in that future time, ‘the Truth supreme’ shall be ‘given to men’. He says:

There is a being beyond the being of mind,
An Immeasurable cast into many forms,
A miracle of the multitudinous One,
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.

‘There is a being beyond the being of mind’. There is a mental purusha – the Manomaya purusha, ‘the being of mind’; but here the Lord speaks of a being which exists beyond that: ‘An Immeasurable’ being, beyond all measures and limits, which nevertheless pours itself into many different forms. ‘To cast’ is the verb that we use for the process of shaping objects out of wax or metal, such as wax candles or cast-iron or bronze figurines and statues. The wax or metal is heated until it becomes liquid and can be poured or ‘cast’ into a mould, where it is then left to cool and solidify. After some time the mould can be removed, and the cast form remains. Here the poet implies that all the forms of nature are moulds into which the Immeasurable miraculously pours himself: ‘A miracle of the multitudinous One’. ‘Multitudinous’ is an adjective derived from the word ‘multitude’ meaning a great number or quantity of things. The One has created all the ‘multitudinous’ forms and movements of the universe by casting himself into each and every one of them, as ‘the multitudinous One’ who is also each and every one of the Many.

There is not only ‘a being beyond the being of mind’: where there is Being, there must also be Consciousness. The Lord tells Savitri and Satyavan that there is also ‘a consciousness mind cannot touch’, a consciousness that is unknowable to the mind. Mental ‘speech’ cannot express it in words, nor can the thoughts of the mind reveal it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Infinity’s heaven that spills the rain of God,
The Immense that calls to man to expand the Spirit,
The wide Aim that justifies his narrow attempts,
A channel for the little he tastes of bliss.

It is ‘Infinity’s heaven’: the infinite transcendent realm from which divine energy, ‘the rain of God’, pours down into the material world to make it fertile and fruitful.

It is ‘The Immense’: the vast existence which is constantly calling us to ‘expand the Spirit’: to widen our potentialities of existence, consciousness and bliss. The very fact that this immeasurable ‘Immense’ exists ‘calls to man’ and drives human beings ‘to expand the Spirit’: That is the push or drive that makes us want to widen and grow deeper and greater.

That Source and Origin is also ‘The wide Aim’ of our lives. We are not aiming at any limited goal. Our human life is aiming at something immeasurably rich and vast. This ‘Aim’ ‘justifies’ all our ‘narrow attempts’: everything that we try to achieve, every little effort that we make is justified by the wide goal towards which everything is moving.

That Greatness, that Origin is also ‘A channel for the little’ that we human beings can taste ‘of bliss’. Bliss is a divine state, and something in us is always longing for that ananda, that perfect delight. We get little tastes of it and those little tastes of bliss come to us from that Origin; it channels some drops of bliss towards us.

From above, this supramental Being and Consciousness will be working to divinise the earth life, and some humans will be collaborating with them. That is what the Lord explains next to Savitri and Satyavan.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Some shall be made the glory’s receptacles
And vehicles of the Eternal’s luminous power.
These are the high forerunners, the heads of Time,
The great deliverers of earth-bound mind,
The high transfigurers of human clay,
The first-born of a new supernal race.

The Lord says that some people will ‘be made the glory’s receptacles’: a ‘receptacle’ is a vessel, a holder or container. Some people will be allowed to receive and hold something of that divine glory. They will be made ‘vehicles’ like chariots, instruments ‘of the Eternal’s luminous power’ which is full of light. Those people will be ‘the high forerunners’: the ones who go in front of all the rest, the leaders. They are the ones who will deliver ‘earth-bound mind’, setting free and illuminating the mind that is fixed on the material world and its surface appearances. They will be able to transfigure the ‘human clay’: to change even the substance of our bodies into something much more luminous and powerful. Those few people will be ‘The first-born of a new supernal race’, a race much higher than humanity.

Q: I think we read that King Aswapati saw some of those forerunners coming to earth?

What Aswapati experienced was envisioned in trance: he was carried into a state of trance and was shown the New Creation. What he was shown has to be brought down to the earth. Savitri and Satyavan are going to be the ones who will do that. What the Lord is describing now to Satyavan and Savitri is not yet that New Creation. But this description is one of the most powerful parts of Savitri: it describes the ideal state and the ideal society that we dream of – something in us is always dreaming of that. But when that ideal state was revealed to King Aswapati, he was also made to look back at the poor earth and see what a state that it is in. That caused him to wonder how to create the connection between the earth as it is and the earth as it should be. That led him to implore the Supreme Divine Mother: “Won’t you send someone to help us? Please embody something of yourself to help humanity progress more quickly!” She accepted his prayer, and promised that an incarnation of herself would be born in human form to bring about a great change for the earth and humanity. Savitri is the one who was born as an incarnation of the Mother of Truth and Love in response to King Aswapati’s prayer. It is Savitri’s mission to fulfil King Aswapati’s aspiration and his quest, and to prepare the fulfilment of the New Creation on earth.

Q: Isn’t this ideal state or ideal society what we call ‘Heaven’?

Death was always telling Savitri: “Heaven and Earth are opposites, how can they ever meet?” But she replied, “They are not meant to remain separated for ever. They are connected by a golden ladder. The Divine in man is driving humanity towards higher and higher states of consciousness and possibility. Humanity has come from the heights of the Spirit, and it will also return there.” Sri Aurobindo does not accept the idea of a permanent separation between the heights and the depths. We cannot help feeling, “Oh, the heavens are so distant.” But something in us knows what they are like. When we read his description, then we say, “Oh yes, that is it, that is what we are all dreaming of and longing for.”

Q: Will Aswapati’s vision be fulfilled?

Those high forerunners whom Aswapati saw in his vision will surely come and others also. The things that were promised will surely be fulfilled. That is what the Lord speaks of next:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door,
Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
The superman shall wake in mortal man
And manifest the hidden demigo
Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force
Revealing the secret deity in the cave.

‘The incarnate dual Power’ means ‘the mighty Mother and God’, as we read in these lines: ‘The mighty Mother shall take birth in time / And God be born into the human clay / In forms made ready by your human lives’. This ‘dual power’ is also Savitri and Satyavan: Savitri, the incarnation of the supreme Mother, and Satyavan, the divine Soul. In their human lives they are already preparing the final victory, and eventually, together, they will open up the way to the great transformation: ‘The incarnate dual power shall open God’s door’. The door will be opened so that ‘Eternal supermind’ can ‘touch earthly Time’. This promise was fulfilled by the Mother in 1956 when with a mighty golden hammer she broke open the door and the Supermind came flooding down into the material world. As a result, ‘The superman’, the next higher species, ‘shall wake in mortal man’, in human beings. He will ‘manifest the hidden demigod’, the half-god who is hidden within human beings. Or he will himself ‘grow’, be transformed, ‘into the God-Light and God-Force / Revealing the secret deity’: that hidden divinity ‘in the cave’, in the heart-cave, in the subliminal. The Divine Being hidden in the deep heart-cave will be revealed and brought into action in the human world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

His living cosmic spirit shall enring,
Annulling the decree of death and pain,
Erasing the formulas of the Ignorance,
With the deep meaning of beauty and life’s hid sense,
The being ready for immortality,
His regard crossing infinity’s mystic waves
Bring back to Nature her early joy to live,
The metred heart-beats of a lost delight,
The cry of a forgotten ecstasy,
The dance of the first world-creating Bliss.

Here ‘His’ refers to the Supreme, the Transcendent. ‘His living cosmic spirit’, his universal spirit will ‘enring’ or surround ‘The being ready for immortality’. That ‘living cosmic spirit’ will annul or erase, ‘the decree of death and pain’ by which our world is ruled at present because of the nature of our mortal being which still remains in the grip of Ignorance and Death. A ‘decree’ is an order passed by someone with authority which has to be obeyed like a law. The action of the Transcendence will erase or wipe out ‘the formulas of the Ignorance’: the set patterns of Ignorance which are currently dominating us will be eliminated and replaced by an awareness of ‘the deep meaning of beauty’ which is the natural expression of delight and bliss, and of ‘life’s hid sense’: the secret meaning and significance of life itself. All this will be given to the being that is ‘ready for immortality’.

The ‘regard’, the look, of the Transcendent ‘crossing infinity’s mystic waves’ – all the way from the transcendence into our earth – will ‘Bring back to Nature her early joy to live’: the original delight experienced by Nature at the beginning of the Creation. The touch of that transcendent gaze will bring back to her the ‘metred’ or rhythmic heartbeats of a delight which she now seems to have lost: ‘The cry of a forgotten ecstasy’ and ‘The dance of the first world-creating Bliss’. We have seen statues of that dance: the ecstatic cosmic dance of Siva bringing all this creation into existence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The Divine will be at work, and one aspect of his action will be through the mind, as ‘A thinker waking the Inconscient’s world’, the world of Matter, expressing himself as ‘A thinker’. He does not move and he does not think. But this projection of himself through the human mind as the thinker is one aspect of his action.

Q: What kind of ‘mind’ is being referred to here?

The mind of that future time when the embodied being will be something completely different from what it is now. That is what comes in the next sentence:

Then shall the embodied being live as one
Who is a thought, a will of the Divine,
A mask or robe of his divinity,
An instrument and partner of his Force,
A point or line drawn in the infinite,
A manifest of the Imperishable.

In that future time when the Supramental is established on earth, ‘the embodied being’ here in the material world will not be living as we do, as ignorant half-conscious beings. He will be living ‘as one / Who is a thought, a will of the Divine’. His outer nature as an individual being is like ‘A mask’. Actually the word ‘person’ comes from the Greek word for a mask, particularly the mask that the actors wore to indicate which role they were playing in a drama. The embodied being is representing the divinity, but in the world, for the action of the world, he puts on a particular ‘persona’, a particular ‘mask or robe’. He acts as ‘An instrument and partner of’ the divine ‘Force’. In himself he is ‘A point or line drawn in the infinite’. In geometry a point has no dimensions, and a series of dimensionless points creates a line, a line in the infinite that has no beginning and no end. This is ‘A manifest’, a way of expressing ‘the Imperishable’: the one who never dies, the Supreme, the Eternal. The embodied beings will be like that. That is how they will live: as conscious instruments and partners of the divine force representing the divine at work and also representing something in infinity: ‘A manifest’, an expression of the imperishable.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The supermind shall be his nature’s fount,
The Eternal’s truth shall mould his thoughts and acts,
The Eternal’s truth shall be his light and guide.

This is a very clear summing up of it: ‘The supermind’, that highest creative level of Nature, will be the origin and source of the nature of the embodied being. ‘The Eternal’s truth’ will be moulding, shaping his thoughts and his actions and ‘The Eternal’s truth’ will be his ‘light and guide’, showing him
which way to go.

What is being described here is a supramentalised individual being, an embodiment of the divine, an individual living in the world as an embodiment, a representative expression of the Supreme.

All then shall change, a magic order come
Overtopping this mechanical universe.
A mightier race shall inhabit the mortal’s world.

When this stage is reached, when supermind is the fountain of the nature of the individual embodied being, everything will change. Humanity can look forward to a time when ‘a magic order’ will come, a new harmony and order ‘Overtopping’ or exceeding and going far beyond the apparently ‘mechanical universe’ we know now, which seems to be governed by the laws of physics, the laws of nature. Then ‘A mightier race’ than our present humanity will ‘inhabit the mortal’s world’ and the world of ignorance and death will be radically changed.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Then in the process of evolving Time
All shall be drawn into a single plan,
A divine harmony shall be earth’s law,
Beauty and joy remould her way to live:
Even the body shall remember God,
Nature shall draw back from mortality
And Spirit’s fires shall guide the earth’s blind force;

The Lord tells Savitri and Satyavan about the unfolding of the divine plan in ‘the process of evolving Time’. When this transformation begins to come about, everything will ‘be drawn into a single plan’. At the moment many, many different movements are pulling and pushing our lives in different directions and seem to be clashing and not harmonised, but in that future time which the Lord is foretelling ‘A divine harmony’ will become the law of earth and ‘Beauty and joy’ will ‘remould’, completely reshape, the earth-life, so that the physical body, the human body, maybe even animal bodies, will ‘remember God’: remember the divine presence dwelling within them. Then ‘Nature shall draw back from mortality’, not needing to make use of death so much as a tool of its action. The ‘Spirit’s fires’, the energy, light, force and aspiration of the Spirit will be guiding the blind consciousness which drives earth nature at the moment. Even now Nature is moving evolution forward and organising the species, but when that blind force is replaced by the conscious force of Spirit then a very great change will come about:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Knowledge shall bring into the aspirant Thought
A high proximity to Truth and God.

What we see now in the world is the dominance of a mind which is not very illumined. There are illumined individuals, but the general mind which is dominating the earth consciousness at the moment is rather an ignorant mind. Nevertheless, this ignorant mind has had an immense effect on all the rest of nature. The Lord prophesies that we can look forward to a much more conscious mind, Supermind, ruling earth-life and bringing true Knowledge, which will carry ‘the aspirant Thought’ of sincere human beings much closer ‘to Truth and God’. It is my belief that with the advent of that true Knowledge, all the dreadful harm we are doing to the earth at present can be healed by a higher harmony so that everything will be brought back into a much better state.

Q: Will progress and realisation in a few individuals bring progress in universal Nature?

The two things go together. There are the evolutionary possibilities which Nature allows or enables, and then there are aspiring individual souls making use of the highest possibilities Nature provides to develop even further. The forward movement happens through the development of individuals, but universal Nature is also evolving. At one time in the history of our universe there was only Matter. Consciousness was there, involved in Matter, but its possibilities of expression and development were very limited. Then several levels of Life evolved which allowed individual consciousnesses more scope to express, discover and develop themselves. The evolution of Mind has enlarged that scope very much, but it can be enlarged much, much further as we rise towards the higher possibilities of mind: spiritual mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind, supermind.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Even should a hostile force cling to its reign
And claim its right’s perpetual sovereignty
And man refuse his high spiritual fate,
Yet shall the secret Truth in things prevail.

Throughout the poem in several places Sri Aurobindo has been telling us that it is the role of humanity to bring about this big change. But it is hardly possible for us to do so as long as we are being obstructed by adverse forces that are still insistent on maintaining their dominance and the reign of not only unconsciousness and ignorance but also the falsehood that comes about as a result of the unconsciousness. Here the Lord assures Satyavan and Savitri that even if ‘a hostile force’ clings ‘to its reign’, holds on to its rule, and claims the right to rule forever, perpetually, and even if as a result of the clinging on of that hostile force human beings should refuse their ‘high spiritual fate’, still, nevertheless, ‘the secret Truth’, which is in all things will ‘prevail’: It will be stronger than that hostile force. It will be fulfilled. This is the Lord’s great Promise.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

But first high Truth must set her feet on earth
And man aspire to the Eternal’s light
And all his members feel the Spirit’s touch
And all his life obey an inner Force.

‘But first high Truth must set her feet on earth’. That is why Auroville has been established as the City at the Service of Truth, and why Huta’s beautiful paintings showing The Victory of Truth and Truth and Love are very significant. The rule of the divine’s love cannot come about until Truth has set her feet upon the earth. That is the Great Work which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have undertaken: “To hasten the rule of the Divine’s Love upon Earth. That is why we are here, working for and aspiring for the Victory of the Truth, because Sri Aurobindo has told us that we human beings have a part to play in bringing about that great Victory. We have to aspire, to aim for ‘the Eternal’s light’, and a change must come about in our bodies so that all our ‘members’, every part of us, ‘feel’ the touch of the Spirit ‘And all his life’, all the vital or life energy of human beings learn to ‘obey an inner Force’, the Force of the Soul.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

This too shall be; for a new life shall come,
A body of the Superconscient’s truth,
A native field of Supernature’s mights:
It shall make earth’s nescient ground Truth’s colony,
Make even the Ignorance a transparent robe
Through which shall shine the brilliant limbs of Truth
And Truth shall be a sun on Nature’s head
And Truth shall be the guide of Nature’s steps
And Truth shall gaze out of her nether deeps.

Then the Lord again promises that this will happen: ‘This too shall be’ because a new kind of life ‘shall come’, a divine life. That life will be ‘A body of the Superconscient’s truth’, a form that can hold and express the truth of the Superconscient, consciousness so far above ours that we cannot even imagine it. And this new life will be ‘A native field of Supernature’s  mights’, not this earth-nature that we know now but the truth-conscious ‘Supernature’. That divine life will inevitably come about on earth, making this earth, our nescient base,into a ‘colony’ of Truth, transforming it completely. Even ‘the Ignorance’ will become like ‘a transparent robe’ of Truth. If a robe is transparent we can see the body which is wearing it. Earth’s Ignorance will become a transparent robe ‘Through which shall shine the brilliant limbs of Truth’: the beautiful shining body of Truth will shine through even this robe of Ignorance. Truth will be ‘a sun’, a powerful source of energy and force on the highest levels of Nature, and ‘Truth shall be the guide of Nature’s steps’ showing her which way to go. ‘Truth’ will even ‘gaze out of’ the ‘nether deeps’ of nature. ‘Nether’ means ‘lower’. Out of the lowest, darkest, most obscure depths and abysses of Nature, Truth will gaze, and we shall be able to see her looking out at us even from those depths.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

The Spirit’s tops and Nature’s base shall draw
Near to the secret of their separate truth
And know each other as one deity.

The Lord foretells that through the influence and mediation of supermind and the supramental race ‘The Spirit’s tops’, the very highest levels of spiritual consciousness, ‘and Nature’s base’, the very lowest levels of Nature, these two extremes will ‘draw / Near to the secret’, the mystery ‘of their separate’ truth. Why and how do the Spirit’s heights and Nature’s base seem to us to be so separated in our experience, in material experience? It is a mystery. Here the Lord prophesies that both the higher and the lower levels will come closer to their own true source and origin and thus realise that they are ‘one deity’: not two separate powers, but two faces or aspects of one divine being. This is elaborated in the next two lines:

The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze
And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face.

This can only happen because they are one deity: ‘The Spirit shall look out through Matter’s gaze’, through the physical eyes of living beings, and apparently unconscious Matter will ‘reveal’ the face of the Spirit.

Then man and superman shall be at one
And all the earth become a single life.

Human beings and ‘the higher kind’ will ‘be at one’, in harmony. For some people the idea of a superhuman race is frightening because they think that those superhuman beings will probably treat us human beings in the thoughtless and unkind way that human beings often treat animals and plants and the earth. But Sri Aurobindo is saying, “No, it is not like that. They will be in harmony and the higher kind will be helping all the other kinds to rise up to its own heights: ‘Then man an  superman shall be at one / And all the earth become a single life.’”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Earth’s bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
Mortality’s bondslaves shall unloose their bonds,
Mere men into spiritual beings grow
And see awake the dumb divinity.

Not only the mind and heart shall be transformed: even our physical bodies will become conscious of the soul inhabiting them. That transformation will make it possible for human beings, who are at the moment ‘bondslaves’ to death, to become free from their slavery to death and ignorance. At present we do not have any choice about the matter because of the nature of our physical bodies: we know that our bodies will have to die. But the Lord is promising that in that future time our physical bodies shall become conscious of the soul inhabiting them and we shall become able to ‘unloose’ our ‘bonds’, free ourselves from the grip of ignorance and death. Then even ordinary people shall grow ‘into spiritual beings’, so that not only in vision or in dream but in the ordinary waking state they will be able to experience the presence of ‘the dumb divinity’: the silent divine being within.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.

‘A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell’, controlling, taking charge of ’breath and speech and act’. That is what will be in control of every breath, the speech and the actions of the body. ‘And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns’. This is a description of the Mind of Light: the physical mind receiving the supramental light. Then ‘every feeling’ will be ‘a celestial thrill’, a thrill of divine delight.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.”

This summarises everything: Nature will exist only ‘to manifest’, to show, to make outwardly real to us, the God who is at the moment kept secret and hidden from us by the appearances of Nature. Now the human play is dominated by mind and life and body, but then ‘The Spirit shall take up the human play’ and the ‘earthly life’ shall ‘become the life divine’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 11]