The Power that from her being’s summit reigned,
The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,
Came down and held the centre in her brow
Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits;
There throned on concentration’s native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen,
When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain
And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice
And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.

In what follows we are given a description of how the Power which rules from the highest level of Savitri’s being descends to take possession of each of her subtle centres of force or ‘chakras’ one by one. We have read a similar description of this descent in Book Seven, Canto Five, ‘The Finding of the Soul’, after Savitri discovered and united with her central being, the supreme Divine Mother. Now this realisation is expressing itself once more in response to Death’s challenge to her: “If the Mighty Mother is with you, then let me see her. Show me your strength.” Savitri does not answer him, but the ruling Power of her being descends into her, taking possession of the subtle centres one by one.

The series starts with ‘the centre in her brow’, where ‘the mind’s Lord’, the power of mind, sits ‘in his control-room’ directing whatever is going on throughout the rest of the being. That centre is the ‘native seat’ or natural point of concentration. From there, the mind’s Lord can open up the so-called ‘third eye’, ‘that third mysterious eye in man’, the subtle centre of vision from which the invisible Divine looks at ‘the unseen’, the subtle worlds which our physical eyes do not see. Sri Aurobindo says that when this centre opens up in an individual, ‘Light … fills his brain’ ‘with a golden ecstasy’. This is the centre where the Will is focussed to effectuate choices. When the human individual is possessed and driven by ‘the Eternal’s wisdom’, his mortal will is seized and guided by the ‘eternal Will’. That is happening to Savitri now.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,
And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word,
Her life sounded with the steps of the world-soul
Moving in harmony with the cosmic Thought.

Next, the Power from her summits descends further, from the Will-centre in the brow to the speech-centre in the throat: ‘the lotus of her throat of song’, words which remind us how musical Savitri’s voice is. This ‘lotus’ or subtle energy-centre is the chakra where the higher life levels meet with mind levels; from there consciousness is expressed not only inspeech but in all kinds of creativity. When the power from her being’s summit enters and inhabits this centre it has two effects: first, ‘in her speech throbbed the immortal Word’, the creative command of the supreme Mother; also her life energy is attuned to ‘the steps of the world-soul’ as it moves ‘in harmony with the cosmic Thought’, uniting with the universal life and mind energies.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Then that Power pours into the three lower chakras: first, ‘into her navel’s lotus depth’; then into ‘the little life-nature’s narrow home’, where it brings a purifying bliss which transforms ‘the body’s longings’ into ‘heaven-rapture’s flower’ and ‘made desire a pure celestial flame’; and then into ‘the cave where coiled World-Energy sleeps’: the ‘muladhara chakra’ where the Kundalini lies coiled up and sleeping. There the powerful touch from above awakens ‘the thousand-hooded serpent Force’ which towers up like a blazing flame to embrace ‘the World- Self’ in the ‘sahasradala chakra’ above the head, uniting the unresponsiveness and inertia of Matter to the superconscious silence of the Spirit, and filling ‘earth’s acts’, Savitri’s earthly actions, ‘with the Spirit’s silent power’, thus completing the ‘mighty transformation’ which has come over Savitri in response to the Death’s challenges.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

I have given thee thy awful shape of dread
And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain
To force the soul of man to struggle for light
On the brevity of his half-conscious days.
Thou art his spur to greatness in his works,
The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss,
His poignant need of immortality.
Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument.

The Mother says, “I have given you your terrifying form  and your weapons, your ‘sharp sword of terror and grief and pain’ for a reason. You exist to ‘force the soul of man to struggle for light’, for a greater consciousness to cast light on the short and half-conscious life-span of human beings. You exist and inspire ‘terror and grief and pain’ because ‘the soul of man’ needs that ‘spur’ to drive him to aim for greater knowledge and power. A ‘spur’ is a sharp metal piece which horsemen wear on the heels of their boots so that they can drive it into the side of their horse to make it run faster. For human beings, the awareness that death is inevitable makes us want to achieve ‘greatness in … works’; it is like someone whipping us, stimulating our ‘yearning for eternal bliss’ and our ‘poignant need of immortality’. So the Mother tells him ‘Live, Death, awhile’. “I am not asking you to disappear and dissolve yourself now. You must remain. You will still be ‘my instrument’. I will still need you.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But now, O timeless Mightiness, stand aside
And leave the path of my incarnate Force.
Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask:
Release the soul of the world called Satyavan
Freed from thy clutch of pain and ignorance
That he may stand master of life and fate,
Man’s representative in the house of God,
The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light,
The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride.”

This is the command which the Supreme Divine Mother is giving to Death. She has hailed him and acknowledged him and has said, ‘Live, Death, awhile; be still my instrument’; but now, although still acknowledging his greatness and addressing him as ‘O timeless Mightiness’, she tells him, “ ‘stand aside’; ‘leave the path of my incarnate Force’: stop blocking Savitri’s path.” Savitri is the Force of the supreme Mother incarnated in a human body. And then she says ‘Relieve the radiant God from thy black mask’, telling Death that behind his ‘black mask’, his disguise of darkness and negativity, there is a shining god; it is now time to remove that black mask and set free the shining god hidden behind it. She commands him, ‘Release the soul of the world called Satyavan’. Sri Aurobindo tells us in his ‘Author’s Note’ to the poem that ‘Satyavan is the soul carrying the divine truth of being within itself but descended into the grip of ignorance and death’ and that ‘Savitri is the … goddess of the supreme Truth who comes down and is born to save.’ Now the Mighty Mother is telling Death to set Satyavan free from the grip of pain and ignorance so that he can take up his true role as ‘master of life and fate’: as the representative of the whole human race, ‘Man’s representative in the house of God’ and as ‘The mate of Wisdom and the spouse of Light / The eternal bridegroom of the eternal bride’. While ‘The eternal bridegroom’ is the Lord, the soul of the world, ‘the eternal bride’ is his shakti, his supreme conscious force, the Mother, here incarnating as Savitri. She is commanding Death to set Satyavan free.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Her mastering Word commanded every limb 
And left no room for his enormous will
That seemed pushed out into some helpless space
And could no more re-enter but left him void.

The Mother’s Word of command, the power of Truth, is ‘mastering’ and cannot be resisted. It controls ‘every limb’ of Death’s being so that there is no room left for the action of ‘his enormous will’, which seems to be ‘pushed out’ of him ‘into some helpless space’ beyond him where it is powerless and cannot return to him. He is left empty of strength and will power. He calls for help:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

He called to Night but she fell shuddering back,
He called to Hell but sullenly it retired:
He turned to the Inconscient for support,
From which he was born, his vast sustaining self;
It drew him back towards boundless vacancy
As if by himself to swallow up himself:
He called to his strength, but it refused his call.
His body was eaten by light, his spirit devoured.

‘He called to Night’, to his power of darkness but she is afraid: ‘she fell shuddering back’, shaking with fear, shrinking away from the Mother’s Light. ‘He called to Hell’, the power of falsehood and evil, but it too draws back, ‘sullenly’, resentful and angry, full of bad will. He turns for support to ‘the Inconscient’, the source of death, ‘his vast sustaining self’, his origin and essence. It draws him back into itself towards the ‘boundless vacancy’ from which he has emerged, as if swallowing him up into his own nothingness. ‘He called to his strength, but it refused his call’ and does not respond to him. ‘His body’, his form, is ‘eaten by light’ and even ‘his spirit’ is ‘devoured’, swallowed up by the Mother’s Light.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

At last he knew defeat inevitable
And left crumbling the shape that he had worn,
Abandoning hope to make man’s soul his prey
And force to be mortal the immortal spirit.

At last he has to admit that his ‘defeat’ is ‘inevitable’, unavoidable: he cannot prevail against the Will of the Mighty Mother. He leaves the symbolic form which he has been wearing and it crumbles, disintegrates. He himself has told Savitri that it was only an appearance; now that he has been defeated, he is abandoning it, giving it up. He is also having to give up his ‘hope to make man’s soul his prey’. Death is the force of destruction that eats up everything in the material world, just as a lion or leopard will feed on a deer or other prey; that is its nature. But this force of death was claiming the right, not only to consume the animal body but also the human soul, forcing even ‘the immortal spirit’ to be ‘mortal’: subject to death. Now he is forced to abandon that attempt.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

In the dream twilight of that symbol world
The dire universal Shadow disappeared
Vanishing into the Void from which it came.
As if deprived of its original cause,
The twilight realm passed fading from their souls,
And Satyavan and Savitri were alone.

Death has been leading Savitri through a series of symbol worlds: the World of Eternal Night and then the World of Double Twilight, ‘The Dream Twilight of the Ideal’ and ‘The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real’. This last confrontation has been taking place in ‘The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real’. So when Death, the ‘dire universal Shadow’, that dark and menacing presence, disappears, vanishing into the emptiness, the nothingness from which it came, the symbol world which he has made also seems to have lost its reason for existing, and it too disappears, ‘fading from their souls’. Satyavan and Savitri are left alone.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]