A fearless will for knowledge dared to erase
The lines of safety Reason draws that bar
Mind’s soar, soul’s dive into the Infinite.

‘A fearless will for knowledge’: is one of the characteristics of Aswapati, and now this fearless will for greater knowledge is courageous enough to wipe out ‘The lines of safety’ which Reason draws for us, which prevent the mind from going off-track at the impulsions of the lower nature, but also bar it from soaring up like an eagle into higher levels of consciousness and prevent the soul from diving into the ocean of the Infinite.

Reason draws lines of safety for us and tells us not to step beyond them; and as long as we are in our present state of development we have to observe those lines of safety. The Mother warns us, ‘Do not give up your reason, otherwise you will become one of those half-crazy people there are already too many of in the world.’ We have to open up to a higher knowledge, but we should keep within the lines of safety which Reason draws; only when that higher knowledge becomes overwhelming, when we have an experience such as Aswapati has had, can we dare to erase those lines of safety so that the mind can soar upward, and the soul can dive into the depths.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A pure perception lent its lucent joy:
Its intimate vision waited not to think;
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance,
It looked into the very self of things;
Deceived no more by form he saw the soul.

The first essential thing, the first gift of the spirit is ‘A pure perception’. Our perception, the way that we see and perceive things, is very mixed. Perceptions come to us mainly through our senses and are then apprehended by our sense mind, which is clouded by many things, things in the environment, subconscious things, things we were taught as children, or by our vital movements: we like this, we do not like that, we are afraid of this or that; so our perception is clouded and dimmed. One gift of the spirit is to clear all that away and give a pure perception which brings a ‘lucent joy’, a joy that is full of light. The ‘intimate vision’ of the pure perception comes from deep and close within, and it does not wait to think “What am I seeing? What was that?” It is spontaneous; it can envelop ‘all Nature in a single glance’; at the same time it can look deep ‘into the very self of things’. So Aswapati is no longer deceived by the forms seen on the outside, the surface of things, the appearances that veil the soul behind: now, with that pure perception, he can see through the veil of appearances to the soul.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

He felt the beating life in other men
Invade him with their happiness and their grief;
Their love, their anger, their unspoken hopes
Entered in currents or in pouring waves
Into the immobile ocean of his calm.

Aswapati could feel ‘the beating life in other men’ invading him, coming into him: their happiness, their sorrows, their love, their anger and the ‘unspoken hopes’ which they have never revealed to anyone; all those feelings enter ‘the immobile ocean of his calm’, either ‘in currents’, thin streams, or ‘in pouring waves’. He perceives them entering his vast calm consciousness and remains undisturbed, unmoved.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

He saw the Perfect in their starry homes
Wearing the glory of a deathless form,
Lain in the arms of the Eternal’s peace,
Rapt in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy.

‘The Perfect’ means ‘perfect beings’, beings of the higher planes who are free from all the imperfections of the material world. Sri Aurobindo says that their homes are ‘starry’, like stars, or full of stars; the stars are symbols of the many truths. Each of those perfect beings is wearing ‘the glory of a deathless form’ an immortal form; since they are unborn they are also deathless, and the forms that they wear are glorious, beautiful, full of light; they are cradled ‘in the arms of the Eternal’s peace’; they are also ‘Rapt’, seized and carried away ‘in the heart-beats of God-ecstasy’; they experience a constant and everlasting peace, but also a throbbing heart of intense delight; they are in a state of rapture: ‘Rapt’. It is worth saying something about this word: there are birds called ‘raptors’, eagles and hawks and falcons, which swoop down from a great height, seize their prey and carry it off; when you experience ‘rapture’ it is as if you have been seized by intense delight, as if a god or some higher being has come down and caught hold of you and carried you out of this world to somewhere else, into a state of unearthly delight; then you are ‘Rapt’: in a trance of delight.

[Shraddhavan’s English of savitri, Book 1]

He lived in the mystic space where thought is born
And will is nursed by an ethereal Power
And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths
Till it grows into the likeness of a god.

The centre of Aswapati’s consciousness has changed; he is no longer living centred in his body or in this material world but ‘in the mystic space where thought is born’, the inner place and state out of which thought originates; in that same ‘mystic space’, the poet says, ‘an ethereal Power’ nurses, nourishes and strengthens the power of will; ‘ethereal’ is an adjective derived from the word ‘ether’ meaning the very subtlest substance. There are said to be five elements, the elemental forms of substance, symbolically called earth, water, fire, air, and ether; each is subtler and finer than the previous one. Sri Aurobindo tells us that these elements do not correspond to anything that we see here; when we hear the element ‘earth’ mentioned we should not think about the soil in the garden, we should not think about water in our rivers, we should not think about the form of fire that burns and we should not think of the air that we breathe; all these are mixtures; when the ancients spoke about the five elements they were speaking about subtle states of substance underlying what we call matter. Everything we experience in the material world is made up of a mixture of these different elements, and here the element of ‘earth’, meaning the material principle, is predominant. At the other end of the scale, the very subtlest and finest element or state of substance is ‘ether’. Our material scientists believe that they have proved that there is no such thing as ether; they think that they can leave ether out of material physics, that there is no such thing; but long after the physicists had proved that to their own satisfaction, Sri Aurobindo went on referring to ‘ether’, and he mentioned that one day even the physical scientists will come into contact with that element and find out that it really exists after all. There is ‘an ethereal Power’, a Power that belongs to the purest, most refined element, the highest level of substance. As a mother nurses her baby and feeds it on her milk, that ‘ethereal Power’ feeds and nourishes the power of will on the ‘white milk of the Eternal’s strengths’. The will is nourished by that Power and becomes stronger and stronger, until it grows ‘into the likeness of a god’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

In the Witness’s occult rooms with mind-built walls
On hidden interiors, lurking passages
Opened the windows of the inner sight.
He owned the house of undivided Time.

A witness is somebody who sees or watches; when there is an accident or a crime the police want to find witnesses, people who have seen what happened. In the spiritual life we are advised to take the position of the witness: to stand back from all that we are thinking, doing, feeling and saying, to step back into our inner consciousness and watch what we are doing, what thoughts are coming into us, what movements are coming, how we are behaving and why we are behaving like that. It is possible for a part of our mind to separate itself, to step back and to watch, to take the position of the witness; if we cultivate that poise more and more, we can become identified with the inner consciousness which is always watching, the Witness who is always watching what goes on in this world, seeing it and supporting it. Sometimes this is called the ‘purusha’ consciousness, as opposed to the ‘prakriti’, the mechanical aspect of nature. The purusha stands behind and watches, allowing prakriti, nature, to do whatever she is doing. When we say ‘purusha’ it means much more than part of the mind which we can separate and look out from; it is the conscious presence of the Divine dwelling within us and aware of all that we do and experience. The Witness lives in secret ‘occult rooms’; the walls of those rooms are built by mind: the Witness lives behind ‘mind-built walls’. When Aswapati takes the position of the Witness, ‘the windows of the inner sight’ open up, revealing ‘hidden interiors, lurking passages’. ‘Interior’ means ‘inner’ or ‘inside’; an ‘interior designer’ is a person whose profession is to think about the inside of houses, the rooms and furnishings and how they should look. When the ‘windows of the inner sight’ open up in Aswapati’s consciousness he can see ‘hidden interiors’ and ‘lurking passages’. Here is the word ‘lurking’ again: the secret passages deep within are not simply hidden but actively hiding, keeping out of sight. He is able to take possession of the inner house: ‘He owned the house of undivided Time’: he can see the past, the present and the future equally well: past, present and future are equally accessible to his inner sight.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Inaudible to our deaf mortal ears
The wide world-rhythms wove their stupendous chant
To which life strives to fit our rhyme-beats here,
Melting our limits in the illimitable,
Tuning the finite to infinity.

Aswapati also hears something else that we do not hear with our ‘mortal ears’ which are deaf to those subtle sounds: there are wonderful vibrations, ‘wide world-rhythms’ going on; they form a ‘stupendous chant’, a song with many powerful voices and rhythms. Sri Aurobindo says that the life power is striving, trying hard to fit our human rhythms, our ‘rhyme- beats’, to that stupendous chant, trying to attune us to the universal rhythms and keep us in harmony with them; as we become more attuned to that ‘stupendous chant’, our limited beings will melt into the illimitable, our finite lives will be in tune with infinity.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Immortal eyes approached and looked in his,
And beings of many kingdoms neared and spoke:
The ever-living whom we name as dead
Could leave their glory beyond death and birth
To utter the wisdom which exceeds all phrase.

With this pure perception that has come to him as a gift of the spirit, Aswapati can look beyond the veil of matter into the subtle worlds, and he can see the immortal beings who inhabit them. With their beautiful faces and immortal eyes, they come near and look into his eyes. The beings from many inner kingdoms could come near to him and speak with him. Among them were ‘ever-living’ beings who once lived here on earth in human forms but have now left their mortal bodies so that we would think of them as dead. They could leave their glory, whatever high plane they are now living on, ‘beyond death and birth’, to visit him. Aswapati did not go to find them on their high immortal levels: they came and spoke to him, to ‘utter’, to say or express, ‘the wisdom which exceeds all phrase’. A ‘phrase’ is a sequence of words within a sentence. The wisdom which those beings expressed to him was deeper and truer than anything that can be put into words.

This makes me think of the time when Sri Aurobindo was in prison in 1908 to 1909. One of the marvellous things that happened to him there was that the spirit of Swami Vivekananda, who had already left his body, came to him regularly over about two or three weeks. Sri Aurobindo says, ‘He came with a specific purpose and he kept coming till he had made me understand’. What he made Sri Aurobindo understand was the principle of the hierarchy of the planes of existence; and on the basis of what he learned from Swami Vivekananda then, he later developed his own understanding of Supermind. In all these lines Sri Aurobindo is describing things he experienced, and this is an example which we happen to know about because he spoke about it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

There were high encounters, epic colloquies,
And counsels came couched in celestial speech,
And honeyed pleadings breathed from occult lips
To help the heart to yield to rapture’s call,
And sweet temptations stole from beauty’s realms
And sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss.

Here are some examples of the adventures which Aswapati experienced in these days of ‘spiritual romance’: ‘high encounters’, thrilling meetings with great beings, and ‘epic colloquies’: a colloquy is a conversation; it means ‘speaking together’. These conversations were on a very high level: ‘epic’ implies something very noble and full of significance. And ‘counsels came’: advice. These ‘counsels’, these words of advice, were ‘couched in celestial speech’: expressed not in ordinary words, but in a heavenly way. Things were trying to attract him: ‘honeyed pleadings’, very sweet things, ‘breathed from occult lips / ‘To help the heart to yield to rapture’s call’: there is nothing more attractive to us than rapture, extreme delight. ‘Sweet temptations stole from beauty’s realms’: we have come across this word ‘stole’ before, the past tense of the verb ‘to steal’, in the sense of creeping in so silently and secretly that it is impossible to hear or see it coming; those ‘sweet temptations’ crept secretly in from the kingdoms of beauty, along with experiences of intense delight coming suddenly from a higher level, ‘sudden ecstasies from a world of bliss’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

These symbol figures lost their right to live,
All tokens dropped our sense can recognise;
There the heart beat no more at body’s touch,
There the eyes gazed no more on beauty’s shape.

In that realm or state of ‘silent self’ beyond manifestation, all these ‘symbol figures’, these signs and shapes and appearances, whether material or subtle, have no right to exist anymore: all the ‘tokens’ that our senses can recognise fell away. When we touch something we feel ‘Oh, plastic, stone, hair …’: our senses give us these tokens that we can recognise; but in that signless realm the senses no longer find any tokens to recognise and work with. Even the heartbeat stops, there is no awareness of body and the life processes going on; there are no forms for the eyes to enjoy, not even the most subtle and refined forms; his experience has gone beyond all that.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In rare and lucent intervals of hush
Into a signless region he could soar
Packed with the deep contents of formlessness
Where world was into a single being rapt
And all was known by the light of identity
And Spirit was its own self-evidence.

This is not happening for Aswapati all the time. It is happening rarely, occasionally, from time to time, ‘In rare and lucent intervals of hush’. An interval is a space or a rest between two periods of action. There are ‘intervals of hush’, periods of silence. They are ‘rare’ and ‘lucent’: full of light. In those intervals Aswapati’s consciousness could ‘soar’, flying very, very high, like a powerful bird, ‘Into a signless region’, a place where there are no signs. There are no signs at all, but it is not empty. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have told us that sometimes when the seeker enters this ‘signless region’ the mind is so stunned by its inability to recognise any of its usual reference points that it feels as if it has entered an emptiness, a void, ‘shunya’ as the Buddhists say; but in fact this region is not empty: this is where everything has come from, this region is ‘packed’, it is crammed, it is absolutely full of all ‘the deep contents of formlessness’, all the infinite potentialities, just a few of which get expressed in the unfolding manifestation. There all that we experience here as world is seized, ‘rapt’, drawn ‘into a single being’. We came across this word ‘rapt’ earlier, and said that it suggests being seized and carried away. There are birds called ‘raptors’ that swoop down and seize their prey and carry it off; similarly a higher consciousness can sometimes come and seize you and carry you away into a state of ‘rapture’. When Aswapati reaches this ‘signless region’ he feels that the whole created world has been seized and drawn back into one single being. In that single being, everything is known by ‘the light of identity’, in the way that we know our essential selves. Sri Aurobindo tells us that if we want to reach these higher levels of consciousness we have to extend, enlarge, our sense of self. We have to widen and heighten it until we can know things directly in the same way that we know ourselves, through knowledge by identity. This is what Aswapati is experiencing now; and in that state nothing needed to be proved because ‘Spirit was its own self-evidence’, the spirit experienced everything directly, by identity, as itself.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

There all the truths unite in a single Truth,
And all ideas rejoin Reality.

Here in the manifestation, the one ‘single Truth’ has expressed itself in many, many different forms and there are clashes and conflicts between different truths; but there they are all gathered back again and unite in a single Truth. All the many, many ideas that are expressed independently in the manifestation come back together into the one Reality which is the origin of them all.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The voice that only by speech can move the mind
Became a silent knowledge in the soul;
The strength that only in action feels its truth
Was lodged now in a mute omnipotent peace

Our thoughts very often come to us as a voice in the mind, in the form of words, of speech; that is often the way that we think, or come to know things; but in the state that Aswapati is now in, the voice of knowledge, which normally can only move the mind through speech, through words, becomes instead ‘a silent knowledge in the soul’. Sri Aurobindo told us earlier that knowledge does not need words to embody Idea; the knowledge is simply there, embodied in the soul. In thesame way, the energy that normally wants to express itself in action, ‘The strength that only in action feels its truth’, now becomes ‘lodged’, housed and held firmly in a ‘mute’, silent, all-powerful peace.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Thought lay down in a mighty voicelessness;
The toiling Thinker widened and grew still,
Wisdom transcendent touched his quivering heart:
His soul could sail beyond thought’s luminous bar;
Mind screened no more the shoreless infinite.

The result of all this experience is that the power of Thought lies down ‘in a mighty voicelessness’: a powerful state of silence; the active mind, ‘the toiling Thinker’, grew wider and stopped moving, became quiet: it ‘widened and grew still’. Then the very highest wisdom, ‘Wisdom transcendent’, touched his heart, ‘his quivering heart’. His soul is no longer involved in the cosmic movement of Nature: ‘His soul stood free’ as we read earlier; and because it is free, it could now ‘sail beyond thought’s luminous bar’. Two words here, ‘sail’ and ‘bar’, convey an image: in the days of sailing boats it was very important to have sheltered harbours with a strong enclosing wall jutting out into the sea to protect the boats inside from the strong winds and waves of the ocean; that harbour wall is called the ‘bar’; When a ship sails out of the harbour, it crosses ‘beyond the bar’, it is no longer protected inside the sheltered harbour. As long as we remain centred in mind we are in a protected harbour which shelters us from the fiercest forces of the universe; Aswapati’s soul is now strong and free, it can sail beyond the ‘luminous bar’ of thought, out into the vastness, the openness. Mind brings us some light, but it is still a bar, a limit; for Aswapati now Mind no longer ‘screened … the shoreless infinite.’ His soul could move out beyond the bar of limiting mind into the open shoreless expanse, the unlimited ocean of Infinity.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Out of that stillness mind new-born arose
And woke to truths once inexpressible,
And forms appeared, dumbly significant,
A seeing thought, a self-revealing voice.

This stillness and absoluteness is not permanent for Aswapati. It is like a wonderful bath of silence; after some time the mind emerges out of that stillness again, ‘new-born’, and wakes up to an awareness of truths that it could never have expressed before; it perceives new forms or sees forms in a new way: the forms themselves are ‘dumbly significant’, full of meaning although they do not speak; mind wakes up to ‘A seeing thought’ that has a power of vision, and to the awareness of a voice which reveals itself, which gives knowledge. A new kind of mind emerges from the Silence and Absoluteness which he experienced as ‘An aspect of the unknown Reality’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]