Here on the earth where we must fill our parts,
We know not how shall run the drama’s course;
Our uttered sentences veil in their thought.

We are the characters in their drama; we have to ‘fill our parts’: a ‘part’ in this sense is the same as a ‘role’ in the drama: a part to play, a role to play, a character to play in the drama. We must ‘fill our parts’ and give them life; but we can think of it as ‘fulfilling’: we must give the part that we have to play its full value, by playing it as well as we possibly can. Each of us has been given a part in this drama and we have to play that part as well as possible, but we do not know how the drama is going to end; and all the things that we say or do ‘veil in’ the thoughts of the Two-in-One who are acting out their story and expressing themselves through our thoughts and actions and lives.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, volume 1]

A playmate in the mighty Mother’s game,
One came upon the dubious whirling globe
To hide from her pursuit in force and form.

Sri Aurobindo has often said that this manifestation is a play, a game; the mighty Mother of the Worlds has created this game and the One, the Lord, has joined the game as her playmate. He has come onto our earth, this ‘dubious whirling globe’: our little earth spinning in space, which is ‘dubious’, ‘doubtful’; our earth is full of doubt, we do not know what we are doing here, why we are here, and the outcome of our existence is doubtful: are we going to survive at all, or are we going to blow ourselves up? Is there any purpose in our existence, in our life, or is it just an accident in space? That all seems ‘dubious’, doubtful, to our consciousness. But here Sri Aurobindo is telling us that the ‘transcendent One’ has come here to this ‘dubious whirling globe’ to join in the Mother’s game: ‘To hide from her pursuit in force and form’. Sri Aurobindo says in an aphorism that God and Nature are like a boy and a girl who are in love, and playing hide and seek. They like to hide so that they will be found. They run away so that they will be caught. Perhaps this explains why we find it so difficult to get in touch with the One, with the Lord, as long as we are in our nature being, our human instrumentation. We try to find him and he runs away; but if we forget him, then from time to time he comes and reminds us, ‘You were supposed to be looking for me.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book1]

He is the Maker and the world he made,
He is the vision and he is the Seer;
He is himself the actor and the act,
He is himself the knower and the known,
He is himself the dreamer and the dream.

The One himself is ‘the Maker’, the creator, and also the whole world that he has made. He is the power of vision and also ‘the Seer’, the one who sees. He is ‘the actor’: the one who acts, who does things; and he is also ‘the act’, what is done. He is the consciousness that knows and he is everything that consciousness is aware of, everything that is known. He is ‘the dreamer’ and also the dream that he dreams.

[ Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

There are Two who are One and play in many worlds;
In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met
And light and darkness are their eyes’ interchange;
Our pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace,
Our deeds, our hopes are intimate to their tale;
They are married secretly in our thought and life.

These ‘Two who are One’ are the Master and the Mother: the creative Conscious-Force, and the One, of whom she is the Force. They ‘play in many worlds’, not only the material world. By becoming Two, the One gains the possibility of relationship, of play, of speaking and meeting, and they do this ‘In Knowledge and Ignorance’. Ignorance is the separated state we are in, having forgotten our origin and our essential oneness; but there is also a state in the Knowledge where individual souls are aware of their oneness, aware of who they really are and where they have come from and yet, still, because they are individualised, there is ‘interchange’. The poet says that the play of ‘light and darkness’, the light of Knowledge and the darkness of Ignorance and unconsciousness, which may represent all opposites, ‘are their eyes’ interchange’. They look at each other and communicate through the play of the dualities. This is their play, and we are part of that ‘interchange’: ‘Our pleasure and pain are their wrestle and embrace’. The ‘Two who are One’ are wrestling – a competitive sport which is also an embrace, for the combatants hold each other very close; the ‘pleasure and pain’ which we experience are signs of their ‘wrestle and embrace’; ‘Our deeds, our hopes’, what we do and hope for, are closely related to the story that they play out between them; ‘They are married secretly in our thought and life’: each of us carries both of them ‘in our thought and life’, where they are secretly united.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Thus have they made their play with us for roles:
Author and actor with himself as scene,
He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she.

This is the way that the Two who are One have made their game, and we are the ‘roles’, the characters in ‘their play’, their drama. The One is the author, and the actor who plays all the roles; he himself is the scene where the drama is played out. In the drama he is the conscious Soul; she, his creative Force, is Nature, who provides all the forms and forces, the implementation of the play. This is the way they have made their play, acting and interchanging in this universal masquerade.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

He too wears a diminished godhead here;
He has forsaken his omnipotence,
His calm he has foregone and infinity.
He knows her only, he has forgotten himself;
To her he abandons all to make her great.

‘He’, the One, also wears ‘a diminished godhead’ here in the material world. As the soul in humanity ‘He has forsaken his omnipotence’, given it up, renounced it; he has also ‘foregone’, abandoned or renounced, ‘His calm … and infinity’. He is identifying entirely with Nature: ‘He knows her only, he has forgotten himself’; here, in the evolution he has given everything to her, in order to ‘make her great’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A supernumerary on her stage,
He speaks no words or hides behind the wings.
He takes birth in her world, waits on her will,
Divines her enigmatic gesture’s sense,
The fluctuating chance turns of her mood,
Works out her meanings she seems not to know
And serves her secret purpose in long Time.

In the theatre, a ‘supernumerary’ is an extra actor, an unimportant and inconspicuous character who does not have to speak; in Nature’s evolutionary drama the soul is like that at first; he does not speak any words, often he is not even on stage, he only ‘hides behind the wings’, which are the hidden side parts of the stage where the actors wait until it is time for them to come forward onto the stage and play their parts. The soul is hiding in the background and nobody knows that he is there. He ‘takes birth in her world’. The soul is born again and again in the world of Nature and does what Nature wills; at the same time he is observing and trying to make sense of what Nature wants and is doing. To ‘divine’ is to sense intuitively or to guess; he tries to find out the meaning of her gestures, which are ‘enigmatic’, mysterious, riddling; and he tries to understand ‘The fluctuating chance turns of her mood’, which changes unpredictably. As the individual conscious being, He tries to work out ‘her meanings she seems not to know’. It is as if Nature is not aware of what she is doing and her meanings and intentions can only be understood through human beings. As the conscious being he is serving and supporting ‘her secret purpose in long Time’: he does what she needs him to do to fulfil her aim for the manifestation.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Or, a courtier in her countless retinue,
Content to be with her and feel her near
He makes the most of the little that she gives
And all she does drapes with his own delight.
A glance can make his whole day wonderful,
A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours.
He leans on her for all he does and is:

Nature is like a powerful empress, surrounded by her ‘countless retinue’, her followers; these are all the individual souls; he is just one among so many, he does not ask for any special privileges; he is ‘content’ simply to be with her, to be one of the many in her retinue, to feel her near. He makes the most of whatever little he receives from her, and whatever she does, he ‘drapes with his own delight’. Delight is the characteristic of the soul, which is always in a state of delight and enjoys and grows by whatever it experiences. So even if she just glances in his direction for a moment, that makes ‘his whole day wonderful’; if she happens to speak to him, ‘A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours’. ‘He leans on her’, relies on her ‘for all he does and is’. For him, everything depends on her, and he receives everything from her with delight.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
And suns in the glory of her passing smile.
In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;
He makes the hours pivot around her will,
Makes all reflect her whims; all is their play:
This whole wide world is only he and she.

‘Largesses’ are the gifts that rulers distribute to their followers and subjects. Her generous gestures are the basis for his feeling of being proud, fortunate, of having a good life; and like a peacock showing off his beautiful tail, he trails and parades his ‘peacock-plumaged joy of life’ and bathes in the sunlight ‘glory of her passing smile’, because he is so proud and happy to be part of her retinue. Happily he serves her: ‘In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs’ and ‘makes the hours pivot around her will’: all the hours of his days turn around what she wants; that is the only thing that is important to him, even if what she wants are just ‘whims’. A ‘whim’ is a casual caprice; for him there does not have to be a reason or a justification for her to want this or that; she chooses, and to him it does not matter why. Everything in the whole universe is their play: lover and beloved, soul and nature, Purusha and Prakriti: ‘This whole wide world is only he and she.’

Sri Aurobindo is showing us the relationship of the Lord and the Mother in their play. How does it come about that the complete identification of the soul with nature lasts so long? It is so powerful that even now when we begin to be conscious we cannot easily break it, because the soul is really in love with nature and there is a deep meaning to it. In some forms of spirituality there is the feeling that this is regrettable and needs to be changed; but throughout this canto, Sri Aurobindo makes us see that it expresses a profound and essential Truth. Worship of the Mother, even disguised or expressed as Prakriti, as Nature, is meaningful and valuable for the growth of the individual consciousness. Of course, Sri Aurobindo tells us that essentially the soul is the Master, and must become the Ruler. Nature will not rule us forever. You may like to take a look at Sri Aurobindo’s poem, ‘The World Game’, which is subtitled ‘The Ishwara to the Ishwari’. As the game reaches its culmination the Two-in-One are no longer Purusha and Prakriti but Ishwara-Ishwari, equal partners, equally powerful aspects of the One.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]