He too is a machine amid machines;
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes;
An insentient energy fabricates a soul.

‘He’ refers to ‘man’, in the previous sentence. We human beings too are machines amongst all the rest of Nature’s machinery: our brain is just a little engine with pistons going up and down to pump out thoughts; the heart is a machine that cuts out emotions according to the patterns of nature; and all this machinery is driven by an ‘insentient energy’, an energy without feelings which ‘fabricates’ or manufactures the illusion of a soul.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

One dealt with her who meets the burdened great.
Assigner of the ordeal and the path
Who chooses in this holocaust of the soul
Death, fall and sorrow as the spirit’s goads,
The dubious godhead with his torch of pain
Lit up the chasm of the unfinished world
And called her to fill with her vast self the abyss.

In this very striking sentence, Sri Aurobindo reveals that there is ‘One’ who meets great beings when they come to earth, the beings who come with a burden, a responsibility, a mission to fulfil. That ‘One’ now dealt with Savitri. That ‘One’, assigns or sets ‘the ordeal’, the painful difficult trial or test, and the path that each of the great beings must follow. A ‘holocaust’ is a sacrifice, especially a fire sacrifice, a burnt offering. For those great beings, coming to this earth is a tremendous sacrifice. That ‘One’ chooses ‘Death, fall, and sorrow as the spirit’s goads’. ‘Goads’ are sticks or implements used to poke a bullock or an elephant to make it move faster; elephant drivers use big metal goads. That ‘One’ goads great burdened beings to fulfil their mission. Now this ‘dubious godhead’ dealing with Savitri, is lifting up ‘his torch of pain’, using suffering like a light to reveal ‘the chasm’, the deep pit, ‘of the unfinished world’, and called her ‘to fill with her vast self the abyss.’ With the pain that Savitri is feeling because of her foreknowledge of the death of Satyavan, that ‘One’ shows Savitri all the pain and imperfection that need to be transformed in this world which is still ‘unfinished’, not yet complete, not yet the divine world it is meant to become. He shows her: “Come, this is your task: you have to fill up this huge gulf of darkness with your immortal Light.”

Amal Kiran asked Sri Aurobindo about this Being. He wrote:

Who is ‘One’ here? Is it Love, the godhead mentioned before? If not, does this ‘dubious godhead with his torch of pain’ correspond to the [‘stone-still figure of high and god-like Pain’] spoken of a little earlier? Or is it Time whose ‘snare’ occurs in the last line of the preceding Passage?

Sri Aurobindo replied:

Love? It is not Love who meets the burdened great and governs the fate of men! Nor is it Pain. Time also does not do these things — it only provides the field and movement of events. If I had wanted to give a name, I would have done it, but it has purposely to be left nameless because it is indefinable. He may use Love or Pain or Time or any of these powers but is not any of them. You can call him the Master of Evolution, if you like.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks
Empowered to force the door denied and closed
Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute
And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.

Savitri embodies ‘A flaming warrior’ who has come from the highest levels of consciousness, ‘the eternal peaks’, and is ‘Empowered’ to force open a door that has been closed and forbidden. ‘Smote’ is the past tense of ‘to smite’, meaning ‘to give a blow’. With one blow, she strikes off from the face of Death its mask of absoluteness, its wordless claim to rule everything in the universe. Savitri is able to strike off that pretence and break open the limits of Nature: ‘burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.’

When we read these lines, we cannot help being reminded of the Mother’s experience on February 29, 1956. Something about these lines seems to correspond to what she has described about her experience. She was standing in front of a huge closed door, as vast as the universe, and took a great golden hammer and struck one blow on the door, which sprang open, and all the force and light of the Supermindcame pouring down on the earth.

The canto ends with the powerful words: ‘And burst the bounds of consciousness and time’: the boundaries and the limitations of the material manifestation are shattered by the great act which Savitri is empowered to perform ‘for Earth and Men’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

For this she had accepted mortal breath;
To wrestle with the Shadow she had come
And must confront the riddle of man’s birth
And life’s brief struggle in dumb Matter’s night.

This is why she has accepted to become human. She has come here to wrestle with ‘the Shadow’, the darkness in terrestrial things that will not allow ‘too glad a note’; in order to do that, she has to ‘confront the riddle of man’s birth’, the mystery of our human existence, the struggle of life with death here in this world of unconscious Matter.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Whether to bear with Ignorance and death
Or hew the ways of Immortality,
To win or lose the godlike game for man,
Was her soul’s issue thrown with Destiny’s dice.

This canto is called ‘The Issue’. What is the ‘issue’, the problem, the choice here? Savitri has to decide whether she is going to accept, ‘to bear with’ ignorance and death, or whether she is going to ‘hew the ways of immortality’. When an explorer or adventurer is going to pass through a thick jungle, he takes along a big knife to ‘hew’ or cut his way through, to create paths where he can pass. Savitri has to create a new possibility for human beings, to conquer death and make it easier for human beings to achieve immortality. She has come here to win or maybe lose this ‘godlike game’. This is ‘the issue’ that her soul has accepted; the outcome is going to be decided by a throw of the dice, just as in the dice-games described in the Mahabharata, where everything hangs on one dice-throw. ‘Destiny’ has provided the dice that are to be thrown in this game. Who will be the winner; who will lose? In any case, Savitri has not taken on this contest for her own sake, she is not playing for herself; she is playing on behalf of the whole human race, ‘To win or lose the godlike game for man’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Or a castaway on the ocean of Desire
Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport
And tossed along the gulfs of Circumstance,

‘a castaway’: someone who has fallen or been thrown overboard from a ship into the sea: the human being has been thrown into ‘the ocean of Desire’, where it is tossed this way and that by the waves of vital impulses; it has been ‘Flung to the eddies in a ruthless sport’, as if thrown into the sea in order to make fun of its desperate state. ‘Eddies’ are whirlpools; in the ocean of Desire there are whirlpools which catch hold of you and carry you round and round and down to your doom; or they toss you along in ‘gulfs’, deep stretches of sea, where you are helplessly driven by circumstances.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

If once it met the intense original Flame,
An answering touch might shatter all measures made
And earth sink down with the weight of the Infinite.

If that aspiration, the spiritual fire in us, would flame too high and really meet ‘the intense original Flame,’ the flame of divine energy on the highest levels of consciousness, and there were a response, that might ‘shatter’, break into pieces, ‘all measures made’. In the manifestation, we are living by ‘measures’, the limitations set by Nature: there are forms, there are shapes, there is the unrolling of time in days and years, which form the framework of the material manifestation; if there were a too-soon and too-powerful influx from above, then all these structures might get broken and this whole earth might sink down ‘with the weight of the Infinite’. The Infinite is beyond all measures, all limits, all forms. Our earth, our whole world, depends on measures and if the measures are shattered, it will be lost.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A bond is put on the high-climbing mind,
A seal on the too large wide-open heart;
Death stays the journeying discoverer, Life.

There is an element of our mind that aims for progress, wanting to climb higher and do better; but ‘a bond is put’ on it; it is tied down. Sometimes the heart would spontaneously like to open very wide in sympathy; but ‘a seal’ is put to prevent that. Life is always journeying, trying to discover new possibilities, but it can only go so far; Life journeys a certain distance, but sooner or later Death comes and says “Now you cannot go any further.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Accustomed to the eternal and the true,
Her being conscious of its divine founts
Asked not from mortal frailty pain’s relief,
Patched not with failure bargain or compromise.

Her being is ‘Accustomed to’, very familiar with and used to what is eternal and true; her being remains ‘conscious of its divine founts’, aware of its eternal origin; so it does not ask for relief from pain in the way that our ‘mortal frailty’ does. When we suffer, the weakness of our nature causes us to seek relief in whatever way we can. Savitri will not do that. She is ready to endure everything; she will not patch a ‘bargain or compromise’ with failure; she is determined to succeed in her mission. When you get a tear in your dress, you can patch it with another piece of cloth; if you have a disagreement with someone, you may try to patch it up by agreeing to a bargain or a compromise; but Savitri will not do that.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In her own self she found her high recourse;
She matched with the iron law her sovereign right:
Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.
To stay the wheels of Doom this greatness rose.

How is she going to change Destiny, change the existing rule of things? She finds all the strength that she needs ‘In her own self’. If we want to get things done, sometimes we have to ‘take recourse to’ some higher authority which has more power than we do individually; Savitri does not need to do that because she has all the power and authority she needs within herself: ‘In her own self she found her high recourse’. She matched the ‘iron law’ of death and ignorance that rules the way that things happen on earth, with her own ‘sovereign right’: the soul has the right to rule nature; the conscious soul has the right to rule over circumstances, to change Destiny; that is Savitri’s ‘sovereign right’, the right that a ruler has. ‘Her single will opposed the cosmic rule.’ The cosmic rule says that everything that is born must die. She says, ‘No, it does not have to be like that.’ Alone, as an individual conscious soul, as an embodiment of the Supreme Divine Mother who has come with a great mission to save humanity, she ‘opposed’, stood against that cosmic rule with her own individual will- power. The ‘greatness’ in Savitri rose up ‘To stay the wheels of Doom’: it is as if there is a great machine, running on tracks like a locomotive, a machine of Doom, of death and disaster; Savitri sets her own will in its way, to force those wheels of Doom to stop.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A magic leverage suddenly is caught
That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will:
A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.
Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.

When the flame of the soul can connect with its eternal source, then a prayer, a mighty action, a powerful noble idea, can ‘link man’s strength to a transcendent Force’ which is not bound or limited by anything in the universe; then ‘A magic leverage suddenly is caught’. If you have to move something heavy you will put a lever under it, a strong stick or a rod of iron; you will need a place to stand at some distance, and a ‘fulcrum’ on which the lever can rotate, so that by exerting pressure on the other end of the lever, you will be able to move the stone or the heavy object that you want to shift. A lever may be able to do apparently impossible tasks: ‘A magic leverage suddenly is caught / That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will’. The ‘Ineffable’ is the transcendent Divine beyond time and space and all expression; the will of the Ineffable is ‘timeless’; if the soul-flame in us is able to make a connection with that, if our human will finds that ‘magic leverage’ through a prayer, an action, an idea, suddenly what seemed impossible can be done by a movement of ‘the Ineffable’s timeless will’. Our human strength gets linked to a transcendent Force that comes from beyond the universe, beyond manifestation, and is therefore much more powerful than ‘the cosmic rule’. Then miracles can happen, and even ‘become the common rule’. Then just one deed, one action, can change the whole course of things; one ‘lonely thought’ becomes all-powerful and influences the future.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

This truth broke in in a triumph of fire;
A victory was won for God in man,
The deity revealed its hidden face.

Savitri has come to this point. Here Sri Aurobindo says it in a few words; later on in the book he will describe in detail how ‘this truth’ has come to her. It has broken in on her ‘in a triumph of fire’, a burning, intense, purifying experience and realisation. Sri Aurobindo has written about this line. Somebody asked him about these two ‘in’s together, and he explained that it was done deliberately; we have to read them with a small pause between the two. Since this truth has broken in on Savitri, she is able to win ‘A victory … for God in man’. The ‘deity’, the Godhead that stands behind the brute machinery of material nature, ‘revealed its hidden face’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The great World-Mother now in her arose:
A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn,
Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance,
Pressed back the senseless dire revolving Wheel
And stopped the mute march of Necessity.

At the knock of the Unseen ‘upon her hidden gates’ the great power incarnated in Savitri rises up and makes the connection that moves ‘the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will’: ‘A living choice reversed fate’s cold dead turn’. Fate, Destiny says that Satyavan must die. But the ‘living choice’ of Savitri says ‘No, I do not accept that it has to be like this; it can be different, it should be different’. The spirit is more powerful than circumstances. The presence of the great World-Mother, embodied in Savitri, ‘Affirmed the spirit’s tread on Circumstance’. ‘To affirm’ means ‘to state powerfully and positively’. The spirit is so powerful that it can just crush circumstances beneath its feet. Savitri says ‘I know that the spirit is stronger than Circumstance, stronger than Fate or Destiny. I choose that Satyavan shall live.’ Since Satyavan represents the Soul of Humanity, this is her choice ‘for Earth and Men.’ So the Wheel that we read about earlier, turning round and round without moving forward, is ‘Pressed back’, prevented from following its round. ‘The mute march of Necessity’ is stopped in its tracks. There are strong forces in the universe which say “It has to be like this. You have to accept it; there is nothing you can do about it, there is no way to change it.” The ancient Greeks recognised these forces as four goddesses; one of them was called Ananke, Necessity; those four goddesses are faceless; in heaven when the other gods see them coming, they turn their faces away, they hide, because they do not want those great powers to look at them; even the Overmind gods are subject to Necessity. But Savitri affirms, ‘There is a Power that is stronger than ‘the mute march of Necessity’ and I am carrying it in me.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]