But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.

On this journey we do not know where we are going. ‘Whither’ means ‘where to’; there are three words which go together: ‘where’, ‘whence’, meaning ‘from where’, and ‘whither’: ‘to where’. While we are on the journey, none of us knows where we are sailing to through the unknown; nobody knows ‘what secret mission the great Mother gave’: each soul has a secret mission, a task that he alone can do, but for a long time on our journey we do not know what it is.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover
A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house
And make the finite one with Infinity.

Only at a late stage, when we can open up ‘the mystic script’ and read our sealed orders, will we know what our goal is: whether our goal is to merge back into our unknown Origin, as if sailing to ‘a blank port in the Unseen’, or whether the Mother has empowered us with her command: a ‘fiat’ is a command, an order; the word is Latin, and it means ‘Let it be done’; it is similar to the Sanskrit phrase ‘tathastu’. Perhaps the supreme creative power has given us the command to discover ‘a new mind and body in the city of God’; perhaps our goal is a divine life in a divine society here on earth, so that the travelling soul can ‘enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house’. The house is the body. The fully awakened psychic being can make the physical body a shrine for the Immortal, and re-establish its connection with the divine origin, so that ‘the finite’, the distinct individual form in the manifestation, can become ‘one with Infinity’. In the evolutionary process we shall not know the answer until we have reached the point where we can open ‘the mystic script’, read our ‘sealed orders’ and find out what the Mother has commanded us to do.

[Shraddhavans’ English of Savitri, Volume 1]

For the key is hid and by the Inconscient kept;
The secret God beneath the threshold dwells.

God is the key to the paradox and the tale; but God is hidden in ‘the Inconscient’. We remember that Sri Aurobindo wrote that God and Nature are like a boy and girl in love and at play; when the Mother read this aphorism with the children in the Ashram playground, one of them asked an intelligent question: ‘Where does God hide?’ The Mother replied ‘In the Inconscient, and Nature hides there too’. ‘Inconscient’ means ‘without consciousness’. The concept of the Inconscient is very important in Sri Aurobindo’s teaching. If we think of Matter, there seems to be no consciousness there; when we look at the whole process of evolution, our universe seems to have emerged from a state of total unconsciousness, the Inconscient. Sri Aurobindo says in The Life Divine that the Inconscient is infinite and eternal just as the Superconscient is, and everything that is in the Superconscient is also in the Inconscient; but the Inconscient has cut itself off from the memory of its Origin. The evolutionary journey is meant to recover that memory, so that the Creation can become fully conscious again. In our present state of ignorance, of partial consciousness, the secret God within us, who we are meant to become, is living ‘beneath the threshold’, deep down below the threshold of our consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

As one forgetting he searches for himself;
As if he had lost an inner light he seeks:
As a sojourner lingering amid alien scenes
He journeys to a home he knows no more.

It is really as if he has forgotten who he is. That is the state the embodied soul is in, searching for himself, looking all the time for ‘an inner light’ that he seems to have lost. Here in our world, the Spirit is ‘a sojourner lingering amid alien scenes’. A ‘sojourner’ is a temporary visitor, visiting a place that is not his true home. Here he is ‘lingering’, spending time ‘amid alien scenes’, scenes that are foreign to him and quite different from, almost opposite to, his true nature. Here in us, in this world, he is journeying to his own home; but he no longer knows, he has forgotten where that home is.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

This was his compact with his mighty mate,
For love of her and joined to her for ever
To follow the course of Time’s eternity,
Amid magic dramas of her sudden moods
And the surprises of her masked Idea
And the vicissitudes of her vast caprice.

The Lord has made an agreement, a ‘compact’ with ‘his mighty mate’, his Conscious-Force, the Mother who has created everything. He has promised that ‘For love of her and joined to her for ever’ he will ‘follow the course of Time’s eternity’, the eternal flow and recurrence of Time; he will follow the whole course of this manifestation in Time along with her; he will stay with her forever in this mighty adventure they have undertaken together. He will ‘follow the course of Time’s eternity’ surrounded by all that she offers him: ‘Amid magic dramas of her sudden moods / And the surprises of her masked Idea / And the vicissitudes of her vast caprice’. Her moods are ever-changing, but all part of the ‘magic dramas’ she is always playing and inventing; ‘her masked Idea’ is the original creative Idea which has given rise to the entire creation; that remains unchanged, but as it gets worked out in time and space there are all kind of surprises, unexpected things happen; and there are ‘the vicissitudes of her vast caprice’: ‘vicissitudes’ are unexpected changes, the ups and downs of life that happen apparently by chance, according to the ‘vast caprice’ of the creative force working in nature. We discussed this word ‘caprice’ earlier: it means a sudden change of idea or decision for no apparent reason; Nature seems to do that from time to time. The transcendent One, inhabiting the individual souls of the many, is experiencing and exploring himself in all these things in the play of time and space.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Two seem his goals, yet ever are they one
And gaze at each other over bourneless Time;
Spirit and Matter are their end and source.

The Soul in Nature seems to have two goals, two different things that he is moving towards; but these two goals are really one and the same. Although they seem to be separated in the manifestation, they are always gazing at each other ‘over bourneless Time’. ‘Bourneless’ means without borders and limits; there is no end to the eternity of Time. Spirit and Matter seem to be the two opposed aims of existence, but really they are always one – ‘yet ever are they one’. We can say ‘Spirit and Matter’ or we can say ‘Soul and Nature’. From one point of view, Spirit seems to be where we are going, our goal, our end; from another, it is the beginning. If we look at it in another way, Matter is the beginning and the end of everything. These seem to be contradictory goals, but Sri Aurobindo tells us that ‘ever are they one’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A seeker of hidden meanings in life’s forms,
Of the great Mother’s wide uncharted will
And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways
He is the explorer and the mariner
On a secret inner ocean without bourne:
He is the adventurer and cosmologist
Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.

The Divine, individualised as the soul in each of his creatures, is ‘A seeker’. He is seeking ‘hidden meanings’ in all the forms of life. He is ‘the explorer and the mariner’ trying to discover what the Mother wants: what is ‘the great Mother’s wide uncharted will’? With this word ‘uncharted’ Sri Aurobindo introduces the idea of a map; a ‘chart’ is a map, particularly the kind of map used by sailors, by ‘mariners’; ‘uncharted’ territory is an area which has never been mapped. The individual conscious being is exploring ‘the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways’, the mystery of the ways in which the Mother acts in the material world, which often seems to us to be ‘rude’, brutal and rough. The soul, the immanent Divine, is an explorer and a ‘mariner’, a sailor, exploring the ‘secret inner ocean without bourne’, the limitless inner ocean of consciousness. He is ‘the adventurer’ exploring the unknown, and the ‘cosmologist’. A ‘cosmologist’ studies the universe, trying to understand its history and how it works. The conscious being is discovering and trying to understand the manifested universe and the geography of ‘a magic earth’. From here onwards up to the end of the canto Sri Aurobindo will be following and developing this image of the immanent Divine as an explorer and a sailor.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A limit, a farness never wholly reached,
An unattained perfection calls to him
From distant boundaries in the Unseen:
A long beginning only has been made

On his journey, the conscious being sees something like a limit, a distant horizon; but as he travels towards it, it recedes: it is never fully reached, there is always something further on. There is also the sense of an always greater perfection; ‘An unattained perfection calls to him’; however perfectly we manage to do something, there is always the possibility of doing it better; real perfection, perfect perfection is always eluding us, always calling us further. That ‘unattained perfection’ calls to him ‘from distant boundaries in the Unseen’, from what is invisible, what is beyond the horizon, so that wherever he is on his journey, there is always the feeling that only a beginning has been made; however long he has been travelling it is only a beginning, he still has far to go.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]