Attuning to one Truth their own right rule
Each housed the gladness of a bright degree,
Alone in beauty, perfect in self-kind,
An image cast by one deep truth’s absolute,
Married to all in happy difference.

This refers to the planes. Each of them has its own dharma we can say, its own way of representing the Truth, but all of them attune ‘their own right rule’, their own true way of being, in harmony with the one overarching, over-ruling Truth. Each Of The Planes ‘housed the gladness of a bright degree’, providing a home for a particular degree of light and truth; each of them was ‘alone’, unique, in its characteristic kind of ‘beauty’; each of them was ‘perfect’ in its own distinctive way; each of them was ‘An image cast by one deep truth’s absolute’: one particular aspect of the absolute truth; and all of them are ‘married’, united, to all the other planes in a state of ‘happy difference’. In the New Creation, the planes are individualised in order to express many different degrees and aspects of Truth, but in their individualisation they are still ruled and connected and harmonised by that one ruling absolute Truth. I think that this is how we imagine the ideal society: that every individual is unique and special, each is perfect in their own way, but each is aware that he belongs with all the others, that all the other ones who are different from him are also images of that same over-ruling Truth, that each of them is necessary to express some aspect of that Truth, and so they harmonise their powers in ‘happy difference’. I thinkthis is what we finally mean when we use the inadequate term ‘human unity’. What we dream of here in Auroville is that every individual should be able to express their own uniqueness fully and richly and be ‘perfect in’ their own ‘self- kind’, and at the same time be in harmony with all the others, because all are in harmony with the One vast and infinitely complex Truth which rules all. And, of course, Sri Aurobindo and Mother tell us that this state can only be brought about bythe Supermind, the Truth-Consciouness which automatically has this harmonising effect. In the House of the Spirit, Aswapati is being given a vision of the divine supramental universe, the New Creation.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

These hues were the very prism of the Supreme,
His beauty, power, delight creation’s cause.
A vast Truth-Consciousness took up these signs
To pass them on to some divine child Heart
That looked on them with laughter and delight
And joyed in these transcendent images
Living and real as the truths they house.

A ‘prism’ is the glass that is used to split white light into its hues – the seven basic hues which we also see in a rainbow. Sri Aurobindo tells us that those ‘hues’ which were ‘Blazoned… / On the white purity of the Witness Soul’ were ‘the very prism of the Supreme’. The Supreme Himself is that white light which is being split up into different hues which express and manifest different aspects and powers of Himself. The beauty and power and delight of the Supreme are the source of all this new creation. His creative Bliss has aligned these hues in a significant order, and ‘A vast Truth-Consciousness’ has received these ‘signs’, to pass them on ‘to some divine child Heart’: a childlike aspect of the divine that looks at ‘these transcendent images’ and enjoysthem ‘with laughter and delight’. That ‘divine child Heart’ enjoys all these images which are as ‘Living and real as the truths they house.’ Each of them is holding some particular truth of the Supreme, and their expressions are as ‘Living and real’ as the truths which they are embodying.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

The eternal Goddess moved in her cosmic house
Sporting with God as a Mother with her child:
To him the universe was her bosom of love,
His toys were the immortal verities.

Aswapati perceived the ‘eternal Goddess’ moving ‘in her cosmic house’, in the universe that she has created, and playing ‘with God’ in the relationship of a Mother and her child. God is loving her as his mother and to him the whole universe is ‘her bosom of love’; he is that ‘divine child Heart’ which is enjoying the creation she has made for him, and the toys that he plays with are the immortal truths, the many, many different aspects of the Supreme. This is another expression of the ‘Two who are One, playing together

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

There Mind, a splendid sun of vision’s rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts
And moved amidst the grandeur of its dreams.

In the New Creation, ‘Mind’ shines like ‘a splendid sun of vision’s rays’: the ‘rays’ of that sun are powers of vision, of sight. That Mind-sun ‘shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts’. Mind has the power to shape substance into forms by thought; and the thoughts of that splendid Mind-sun were full of ‘glory’. Naturally the dreams and imaginations of that Mind were grand and glorious. It ‘moved amidst the grandeur of its dreams’: it shaped its universe around itself. That is what our mind does too, but many of our dreams are not full of ‘grandeur’ but distorted and troubled, and unknowingly we are shaping the substance around us all the time in the image of those troubled dreams of ours. One of the powers of mind is Imagination. What is imagination really meant to do? What is that great power of imagination? What is its work?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Its power that makes the unknowable near and true,
In the temple of the ideal shrined the One:
It peopled thought and mind and happy sense
Filled with bright aspects of the might of God
And living persons of the one Supreme,
The speech that voices the ineffable,
The ray revealing unseen Presences,
The virgin forms through which the Formless shines,
The Word that ushers divine experience
And the Ideas that crowd the Infinite.

In this wonderful poem, Sri Aurobindo is using many beautiful images and suggestive words to stimulate our imagination, because it has the power to make ‘the unknowable near and true’ to us. In the new creation which Aswapati is experiencing, the power of imagination formed ‘a shrine’, a home for a divinity to live in: it enshrined ‘the One’ ‘In the temple of the ideal’, by creating ideal forms of expression for it. Imagination shaped ‘bright aspects of the might of God’ and ‘living persons of the one Supreme’ into forms that could enter and fill ‘thought and mind and happy sense’. It also fills them with ‘The speech that voices the ineffable’. You remember that the ‘ineffable’ cannot be expressed; but the power of imagination creates a ‘speech’, a language, that can express what is beyond expression. It also brings ‘The ray revealing unseen Presences’: a ray of light that reveals hidden, unseen Beings, as well as ‘The virgin forms through which the Formless shines’. The Supreme Existence is referred to as ‘the Formless’ because it is not limited to any form, but it can put on different forms and reveal itself through them; imagination reveals something of the One through such pure and perfect forms. The ‘ensorcelling rod’ of imagination also summons up ‘The Word that ushers divine experience / And the Ideas that crowd the Infinite’. To ‘usher’ means to introduce or to welcome something in.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

There was no gulf between the thought and fact,
Ever they replied like bird to calling bird;
The will obeyed the thought, the act the will.
There was a harmony woven twixt soul and soul.
A marriage with eternity divinised Time.

In our human experience there is a kind of gap, a ‘gulf’ between the ‘thought’ and the ‘fact’; but in that New Creation there was no ‘gulf’, there was no gap ‘between the thought and fact’. There they responded to each other, the thought responding to the fact and the fact responding to the thought like two birds calling to each other. ‘The will obeyed the thought’ and ‘the act’ obeyed ‘the will’ so that the thought was implemented exactly in the way that it had been conceived. That happens very rarely in our world, because there are so many interferences and interruptions that come in between the thought and its realisation. In the New Creation there was ‘a harmony woven’ between all the different souls, connecting and harmonising them. ‘Time’ there was divine because it was married to, united with, ‘eternity’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

At hide-and-seek on a Mother-Wisdom’s breast,
An artist teeming with her world-idea,
She never could exhaust its numberless thoughts
And vast adventure into thinking shapes
And trial and lure of a new living’s dreams.

In the New Creation, Life is playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with herself; and all her play is safe, protected, because it is happening ‘on a Mother-Wisdom’s breast’. Life is like a child playing in the arms of her mother – the Supreme Wisdom. Life is also like ‘An artist teeming with her world-idea’: her imagination, her power of conception, is ‘teeming’ – packed with many bright new creative ideas and possibilities which she plays out in her vision of the world. She can never ‘exhaust’ that stock of ‘numberless thoughts’ – there is no end to them. And she can never reach the end of this ‘vast’ field of ‘adventure into thinking shapes’ – forms which are conscious – or the ‘trial and lure of a new living’s dreams’: she is attracted by dreams of a new living, and has to try out and test all of them. There is something forever new and fresh about this divine life, and yet it has characteristics that we can recognise in the life that we know, that we too enjoy, and that give meaning to life for us here: adventure and risk and challenge and fun and the exploration of new possibilities.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

There Matter is the Spirit’s firm density,
An artistry of glad outwardness of self,
A treasure-house of lasting images
Where sense can build a world of pure delight:
The home of a perpetual happiness,
It lodged the hours as in a pleasant inn.

What is ‘Matter’? It is a ‘firm density’: solid and durable substance. ‘There’, in the New Creation, it is felt and experienced as a density of Spirit, not a mass of atoms. The poet tells us that there is ‘an artistry’ about the forms that are shaped in this ‘density’ and they express a ‘glad outwardness of self’ – the self is within, but the substance expresses it outwardly in surfaces and forms, creating ‘Atreasure-house of lasting images’. The crucial characteristic of Matter is stability and durability: It is not indestructible, but it lasts; if you arrange things in a room they stay like that for some time, until somebody moves them. There the forms and material objects are images, wonderfully beautiful images, and Matter there creates ‘A treasure-house of lasting images / Where sense can build a world of pure delight’. Using ‘sense’, mind builds up a picture of the world around us. There the quality of the Matter is such that the senses can convey ‘a world of pure delight’, a world that is ‘The home of a perpetual happiness’ for the mind and the life and spirit, and ‘the hours’ – the moments of time – can stay in that home ‘as in a pleasant inn’. An ‘inn’ is a place where people come, stay awhile and go away again. The moments come, enjoy their stay, and pass on.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

The senses there were outlets of the soul;
Even the youngest child-thought of the mind
Incarnated some touch of highest things.

For us, the ‘senses’ are like doors or gateways through which our consciousness relates to the world outside us; but there, they were ‘outlets of the soul’: through the senses the soul could flow outwards to explore the world around. And there, ‘Even the youngest child-thought of the mind’ – every little idea that came up – ‘Incarnated some touch of highest things’: provided a form to embody some divine impulsion.an’s

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

Its solidity was a mass of heavenly make;
Its fixity and sweet permanence of charm
Made a bright pedestal for felicity.

The substance which Aswapati experiences in the new creation is quite different from the dull, unconscious, inert matter that we know here. ‘Its solidity was a mass of heavenly make’: a divine mass that has been formed by the higher levels of consciousness. Like our Matter it has ‘solidity’ and ‘fixity’ – it does not move by itself; but this gives a ‘sweet permanence of charm’: there is something delightful about its firmness and ‘fixity’, which provides ‘a bright pedestal for felicity’. A ‘pedestal’ is the firm base on which a statue is placed; the ‘fixity’ of this divine Matter provides a firm and durable base for ‘felicity’, delight, happiness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

All that now passes lived immortal there
In the proud beauty and fine harmony
Of Matter plastic to spiritual light.

It has been explained to us that physical bodies have to die because they are not able to keep up with the growth of the spirit that is inhabiting them; the matter that our bodies are made of is not ‘plastic’ enough, not flexible and responsive enough, to be able to go on forever growing and living and developing and renewing itself, and reflecting the experiences of the growing soul within. In the new creation, it is quite different: there ‘Matter’ is ‘plastic to spiritual light’: it is able to respond; it can express ‘the proud beauty and fine harmony’ of all the parts of the being. Here everything material ‘passes’: it is impermanent and perishable; there it lived immortally.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]

An architect hewing out self’s living rock,
Phenomenon built Reality’s summer-house
On the beaches of the sea of Infinity.

‘Phenomenon’ refers to the appearances and events of the manifestation that emerge out of the essential Reality. Sri Aurobindo says that in the new Creation, ‘Phenomenon’ – the power of becoming – is an ‘architect’, a designer and builder, who uses ‘self’s living rock’, the living substance of the self, to create a ‘summer-house’: a pleasant place to stay in and enjoy. ‘Phenomenon’, the passing forms of the new creation made out of the substance of the one self, provides a pleasant habitation for what is truly real: ‘Reality’ with a capital ‘R’. That delightful ‘summer-house’ is built ‘On the beaches of the sea of Infinity’: on the shores of the infinite ocean, the New Creation provides a gift from the manifestation to its source and origin, the supreme Reality, by providing a place of play and recreation for it to enjoy. What a wonderful, magical evocation of something that we cannot really imagine! And yet a part of us is always longing for that New Creation.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 3]