In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time,
By a Power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven,
Taken sovereignly into eternal arms,
Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss,
In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force
Hurried into unimaginable depths,
Upborne into immeasurable heights,
It was torn out from its mortality
And underwent a new and bourneless change.

Something tremendous happened to Aswapati in a moment which he experienced as ‘shorter than death, longer than Time’; there is something paradoxical here, a moment that is very short, instantaneous, and yet seems to contain more experience than all Time. In that moment Aswapati is ‘Taken sovereignly’: there is no possibility of resistance to the mastering strength of the ‘eternal arms’ of this Power that is ‘more ruthless than Love’. ‘Ruthless’ means ‘pitiless’; we speak of a ‘ruthless’ tyrant, but love too can be like that, seizing hold of you and not allowing you to resist. This Power is also ‘happier than Heaven’. Aswapati has been caught up by something immensely powerful, but also very beautiful and ecstatic. It feels like being caught up in a cyclone or a tornado: he is ‘Haled’, dragged along, and ‘coerced’, not given any choice: he is forced by ‘stark absolute bliss’: there is nothing else but that bliss and it cannot be resisted. It carries him ‘In a whirlwind circuit’, whirling him around and around as if caught in a tornado; but this is a ‘whirlwind’ of ‘delight and force’. A tremendous energy and strength has seized him and carried him swiftly down ‘into unimaginable depths’ and then up again ‘into immeasurable heights’. All this happened to his body: it was ‘torn out from its mortality’, out of its deathbound state, and experienced ‘a new and bourneless change’: ‘bourneless’ means without any limits or borders.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

As when a timeless Eye annuls the hours
Abolishing the agent and the act,
So now his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure:
His wakened mind became an empty slate
On which the Universal and Sole could write.

Here Sri Aurobindo evokes an experience that we might have in meditation or at some special moment, of an ‘Eye’ looking at us and the world, an ‘Eye’ which is not limited by time, but is beyond time and timeless; when we become aware of that ‘Eye’ it is as if time no longer exists: it ‘annuls the hours’. To ‘annul’ means to cancel out, abolish. There is no movement at all; all action, all sense of being a doer, is also abolished. Aswapati has an experience like that: there is no time, there is no person who is acting, and so ‘his spirit shone out wide, blank, pure’. ‘Blank’ means ‘empty’. He becomes pure spirit, pure existence; his ‘wakened mind’, his mental awareness, has become absolutely quiet, blank, like ‘an empty slate’. When small children are learning to write, we may give them a ‘slate’, a miniature blackboard; when the lesson is finished whatever is written on the slate can easily be wiped off so that the slate is empty. Aswapati’s mind becomes like that: everything that was written there, all the memories and thoughts and knowledge, everything has been wiped away; it has become ‘an empty slate’ on which ‘the Universal and Sole could write’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Eternity’s contact broke the moulds of sense.
A greater Force than the earthly held his limbs,
Huge workings bared his undiscovered sheaths,
Strange energies wrought and screened tremendous hands
Unwound the triple cord of mind and freed
The heavenly wideness of a Godhead’s gaze.`

The contact of the Eternal, the ‘god-touch’ which came with the ‘Descent’, ‘broke the moulds of sense’. We have spoken about this word ‘mould’ several times already: we experience the world through our senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste; these senses are ‘moulds’ for our experience. If the moulds are broken, then completely new experiences become possible. ‘A greater Force than the earthly held his limbs’: our bodies, our limbs,care held and controlled by the earth-Force, the force of Nature;cbut now a greater Force takes hold of Aswapati and starts tocwork on him: ‘Huge workings bared his undiscovered sheaths’. A ‘sheath’ is a cover; we keep a sharp knife in a ‘sheath’ to avoidcbeing cut by the blade. The ancient Indian teachers taughtcthat our body is our most material outer sheath and that wechave more such coverings: a life sheath, a mind sheath, a soulcsheath, a bliss sheath: many layers of subtle bodies. When this ‘greater Force’ takes hold of Aswapati’s body and starts to work, it lays bare those ‘undiscovered sheaths’, the subtler coverings and layers within him that he had been unaware ‘Strange energies wrought’, worked on him, ‘and screened tremendous hands’, powerful invisible hands ‘Unwound the triple cord of mind’. The Vedic rishis spoke about the ‘triple cord of mind’ which keeps us bound to the sacrificial post of matter: the physical mind, the vital mind and the rational mind; Now for Aswapati ‘screened tremendous hands’ come and unwind the ‘triple cord’ so that his whole consciousness is set free and gains ‘The heavenly wideness of a Godhead’s gaze’: now he can see the way that a divine being sees, because he is no longer bound by the ‘triple cord’ of limiting mind.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The little ego’s ring could join no more;
In the enormous spaces of the self
The body now seemed only a wandering shell,
His mind the many-frescoed outer court
Of an imperishable Inhabitant:
His spirit breathed a superhuman air.

Our individuality is limited, constricted, by the little ring of the ego. But now for Aswapati the ring has been broken open, so the spirit can flow freely, it is no longer limited or separated. ‘In the enormous spaces of the self’, he was aware of the physical body, but now it seemed only ‘a wandering shell’, a thin outer covering. He perceived his mind as ‘the many- frescoed outer court / Of an imperishable Inhabitant’. ‘Frescos’ are paintings done on walls while the plaster is still wet. In the temple at Thanjavur for example, many ancient frescos have been found on some of the interior walls. To Aswapati now his mind seemed like the outer entrance courtyard of an immense house that belongs to ‘an imperishable Inhabitant’; in that courtyard are walls decorated with many paintings: all the pictures that the mind shows to us, thoughts, ideas, and images. These pictures are on the walls of the outermost courtyard; beyond lives an ‘imperishable Inhabitant’. Now Aswapati’s spirit breathed a much wider and purer atmosphere than the air we are used to here: ‘a superhuman Air’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Immutably coeval with the world,
Circle and end of every hope and toil
Inexorably drawn round thought and act,
The fixed immovable peripheries
Effaced themselves beneath the Incarnate’s tread.

This sentence has several difficult words in it. It is continuing and developing the idea about the fence and the boundaries that were mentioned in the previous one. This sentence is about ‘peripheries’. ‘Peripheries’ are the outer boundaries of a property or estate. Sri Aurobindo says that ‘fixed immovable peripheries’ have been drawn around us which limit our possibilities of thought and action. They are ‘Inexorably drawn round thought and act’: it is done very strictly, no exceptions or concessions are made; those limits to what we can think and what we can do are very strict and very strong. They are the ‘circle and end of every hope and toil’. Whatever our hopes and our efforts to fulfil them, whatever we do, whichever direction we try to go, we cannot cross beyond those limits. They are ‘coeval with the world’: as long as the world has existed, those ‘fixed immovable peripheries’ have been there; and they do not change, they are ‘Immutably coeval with the world’. ‘Coeval with’ means ‘lasting as long as’ or ‘existing at the same time as’; we are all ‘coevals’, because we are all alive at the same time. Those ‘fixed immovable peripheries’ cannot be moved; they have been there since the world began; but for Aswapati now they have suddenly ‘effaced themselves’: they have just vanished. When you ‘efface’ yourself, you withdraw into the background so that nobody notices you. They have effaced themselves ‘beneath the Incarnate’s tread’; ‘the Incarnate’ means the Divine in a human body. Aswapati has now realised his own divinity; when he sets foot on those ‘immovable peripheries’ they efface themselves; they simply disappear. They have been effaced because the Incarnate has set his foot on them. We saw Aswapati going up like a rocket in a powerful movement of aspiration, and then in response there was a transforming ‘Descent’ which seized hold of him, whirled him round and round and dissolved all the limitations of the human nature so that a new self could grow in him. We saw that, as a result, ‘The little ego’s ring could join no more’ and his being became boundless and free. He realised his own divinity, and even the ‘fixed immovable peripheries’ that have existed as long as the world vanish when he sets foot on them. In the next sentence Sri Aurobindo tells us more about these peripheries which limit the spirit in the material world.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The soul and cosmos faced as equal powers.
A boundless being in a measureless Time
Invaded Nature with the infinite;
He saw unpathed, unwalled, his titan scope.

‘The soul and cosmos faced as equal powers’: ‘cosmos’ is the universe. When we say ‘soul’, we think of the individual soul in us which the Upanishad tells us is no bigger than a man’s thumb. But when this great transformation comes about and Aswapati experiences the Spirit’s freedom and greatness, he sees that the ‘soul’ and the universe are ‘equal powers’. We find it hard to imagine, because we feel so small in the face of the universe; but in essence every individual soul is one with the Origin; the immanent Divine in each form in the universe, however tiny, is just as powerful as the universe itself. Now he experiences himself as a ‘boundless being’, with no boundaries, no limits, existing in ‘a measureless Time’, so vast that it cannot be measured in minutes and hours, days and years, not even in aeons and light-years. He feels his ‘boundless being in a measureless Time’ pouring into ‘Nature’, into the limited human nature; his greater self invades it, comes pouring in with all the power of the Infinite, and he is able to see all his limitless possibilities. Your ‘scope’ is what you can envisage, the range of what you could do, what would be possible for you. For Aswapati now there are no paths left, no little tracks that have to be followed, he can go anywhere; and there are no walls to limit him. His scope has become a ‘titan scope’ with an immense superhuman range. All this has come about as the result of his intense aspiration and of the responding ‘Descent’ that has revealed to him the Freedom and Greatness of the Spirit.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]