In this drop from consciousness to consciousness
Each leaned on the occult Inconscient’s power,
The fountain of its needed Ignorance,
Archmason of the limits by which it lives.

These lines explain the downward process by which the All- conscious becomes the Inconscient. It comes down step by step, one at a time, gradually limiting itself more and more. ‘In this drop from consciousness to consciousness’ each level or plane ‘leaned on the occult Inconscient’s power’. Each level is more unconscious than the one above it. The Inconscient is ‘the fountain of its needed Ignorance’, the source of the unconsciousness that it needs in order to forget and limit itself further; so the Inconscient is also the ‘Archmason’, the master-builder ‘of the limits by which it lives’. Each level has its own limitations.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

A last high world was seen where all worlds meet;
In its summit gleam where Night is not nor Sleep,
The light began of the Trinity supreme.

At the very top of this ladder of planes, Aswapati gets a glimpse of ‘A last high world … where all worlds meet’. It is shining at the very summit of the series of worlds where there is no ‘Night’ and no ‘Sleep’: no darkness of unconsciousness, no forgetfulness, no ignorance; in the ‘summit gleam’ of that world, ‘The light began of the Trinity supreme’: Sat-Chit-Ananda.

In the Life Divine we can read about how the ‘Ineffable’, the Transcendent, expresses himself as Satchidananda and starts the work of creation. Sri Aurobindo tells us that the first level which is projected is the level of Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness that gives rise to all the rest of the manifestation. As Aswapati sees the order of planes from below, he perceives that last high world where all worlds meet and find their fullness as well as their oneness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

A reconciling Wisdom looked on life;
It took the striving undertones of mind
And took the confused refrain of human hopes
And made of them a sweet and happy call;

Aswapati perceives in that Truth-world a ‘reconciling Wisdom’, which looked at life, and took ‘the striving undertones of mind’, all the effort which underlies our thoughts and mental activity, along with ‘the confused refrain of human hopes’, and made them into ‘a sweet and happy call’. A ‘refrain’ is a phrase in a song that is repeated again and again; throughout human life similar ‘hopes’ and wishes get repeated over and over, but in a ‘confused’ and unclear way; but the ‘reconciling Wisdom’ took those ‘striving undertones’ and that ‘confused refrain’ and made them into ‘a sweet and happy call’, a sweet and joyful aspiration and appeal.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

There was no quarrel more of truth with truth;

This is our problem: one truth is always quarrelling with another. There are so many different truths; each of us seems to express a different truth and here they quarrel, but there, in that last high world, there is no quarrelling any longer; there all truths complement each other and make a perfect Whole.

The endless chapter of their differences
Retold in light by an omniscient Scribe
Travelled through difference towards unity,

All the differences between one truth and another, all the quarrelling between truth and truth, seems like an ‘endless chapter’; but when that story is ‘Retold in light’ by ‘an omniscientScribe’ who knows and understands everything, then it is seen that all these quarrelling truths are travelling ‘through difference towards unity’. In evolution some clash and struggle between one truth and another is inevitable. Recently we read in The Life Divine that this quarrelling should become first of all a joyful wrestling of brothers in sport, and finally an embrace. All the terrible clashes that are going on in the world between one set of truths and another should first learn to wrestle in a sportsmanlike way, to learn from each other and become stronger through the wrestling, and finally embrace and discover that they complement and enhance each other.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Volume 1]

Illumining the world’s concrete images
Into significant symbols by its gloss,
It offered to the intuitive exegete
Its reflex of the eternal Mystery.

That ‘map of subtle signs’ casts light, illumines and makes sense of all the ‘concrete images’ that exist here in the material world; in its light they are all seen to be ‘significant symbols’. Whatever we see here seems so ordinary to us: floor, camera, chair, flowers, walls … but each of these things is a symbol with a deeper significance. For Aswapati the images become meaningful by the interpretation which is shown in the map of subtle signs. ‘Gloss’ here means an interpretation or explanation. You may know the word ‘glossary’: a book which includes unfamiliar words may have a ‘glossary’ at the back which explains what they mean. In fact now when I try to explain what the words and lines in Savitri mean, I am giving a ‘gloss’, an explanation for something that is difficult to understand. That is what the ‘map of subtle signs’ does. Those subtle signs are ‘surpassing thought’. Now, as I am giving a gloss on these lines, it is addressed to your minds; but the ‘map of subtle signs’ which Aswapati sees is offered to the intuition: it is ‘offered to the intuitive exegete’. An ‘exegete’ is a person who explains and interprets a difficult text. The map will help an ‘intuitive exegete’ to understand and interpret the ‘concrete images’, the solid symbolic forms of this material world; it shows the connections between these concrete images and ‘the eternal Mystery’, revealing how the physical universe reflects and corresponds to the higher Reality; it gives the key to the code of the universe, so that its ‘concrete images’ can be understood in their true significance. In our ordinary language, the word ‘reflex’ refers to an action which comes automatically in response to another action: if you go to see the doctor he will test your reflexes by giving you a tap below your knee which makes the foot move by an automatic ‘reflex’; but in its origin this word is connected with the word ‘reflection’ and that is the sense in which Sri Aurobindo uses it here, as he does in several other places in the poem: the concrete signs of the material world reflect the eternal Mystery according to a certain code and the ‘map of subtle signs’ makes the system of correspondences clear.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

In this soar from consciousness to consciousness
Each lifted tops to That from which it came,
Origin of all that it had ever been
And home of all that it could still become.

Going in the other direction, upwards, ‘In this soar from consciousness to consciousness’, each plane, each kingdom raises its tops, its highest peaks, its skies, towards the level above it, ‘from which it came’ in the downward journey; the level above it is the ‘Origin of all that it had ever been’ as well as the ‘home of all that it could still become’.

In these few sentences Sri Aurobindo gives us the secret of the evolutionary manifestation in a wonderful picture that we can remember and grasp. How can the conscious soul plunge into the total inconscience that was there before Matter as we know it even existed? It has to forget: at each downward step of the involutionary process it has to forget a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. In the process, the planes of consciousness get manifested. In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo explains that there could not be any world as we experience it, unless the soul had accepted the adventure of ignorance, forgetting its Origin, who it is and where it has come from; so when it begins to emerge from the Inconscient it looks up towards the next step, it does not see the very highest level which is really its Origin, it just looks up to the next level. When Aswapati sees that golden ladder of planes, he sees that each plane, each step of the ladder, is looking up towards the next higher level, from which it came into existence, which was the ‘Origin of all that it had ever been’ and is the ‘home of all that it could still become’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

The Inconscient found its heart of consciousness,
The idea and feeling groping in Ignorance
At last clutched passionately the body of Truth,
The music born in Matter’s silences
Plucked nude out of the Ineffable’s fathomlessness
The meaning it had held but could not voice;

Within the ‘Inconscient’, in the core of what seems absolutely unconscious, there lies a secret ‘heart of consciousness’: in the light of that highest Truth-world, the ‘Inconscient’ finds ‘its heart of consciousness’. In the Truth-world all the mental activity and all the sensations and feelings that here are ‘groping in Ignorance’, fumbling around to find something real and meaningful, are at last able to catch hold of and cling to ‘the body of Truth’ they have been blindly seeking. Then the poet speaks about ‘music’, ‘the music born in Matter’s silences’. He seems to be saying that in the silences of Matter there is a hidden harmony, a kind of music; in that last high world the hidden harmony in Matter is able to find the ‘meaning’ which it had been holding within itself without being able to express it; it seizes that meaning ‘nude’, without covering of any kind, out of the ‘fathomlessness’ of the ‘Ineffable’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

It grouped the golden links that they had lost
And showed to them their divine unity,
Saving from the error of divided self
The deep spiritual cry in all that is.

The ‘reconciling Wisdom’ gathers the lost ‘golden links’ that connect the ‘soul’s faint scattered utterances’, brings them together and shows them ‘their divine unity’; in this way it saves ‘The deep spiritual cry in all that is’ from ‘the error of divided self’. In the Ignorance we make the error of seeing everything as separate, divided; we do not see the connecting oneness; we see separate appearances, and think that there are separate souls and selves; but in fact they are all one and their ‘utterances’ are all expressions of one ‘deep spiritual cry’ in everything that exists.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

Across the unfolding of the seas of self
Appeared the deathless countries of the One.

As Aswapati looks across all these levels of the unfolding of the self, all these planes of manifestation, through the ‘gates of the Alone’, he sees ‘the deathless countries of the One’. All this can only be seen by identity, in the way that we see and experience ourself; it is by extending the sense of self, unfolding and widening the sense of self that these countries can be seen.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A many-miracled Consciousness unrolled
Vast aim and process and unfettered norms,
A larger Nature’s great familiar roads.

The ‘unfolding of the seas of self’ is the work of the ‘many- miracled Consciousness’ of the One, which is unrolling all this in space and time, revealing ‘Vast aim and process and unfettered norms’. There is an aim and a purpose in this ‘unfolding of the seas of self’; it is not just an accident or an illusion, and it is not just a play, not just for fun: there is a ‘Vast aim’, a purpose, a direction; there is a ‘process’; and there are ‘unfettered norms’. ‘Norms’ are standards which define what ought to be ‘normal’; these ‘norms’ are ‘unfettered’, free and unbound; ‘fetters’ are metal rings used to bind the hands and feet of slaves and prisoners; the norms which shape and rule ‘the deathless countries of the One’ are ‘unfettered’; they have a vast scope, a vast range of movement. These are the ‘great familiar roads’ of ‘A larger Nature’: not our limited material nature, but the Nature which rules and shapes the higher realms.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]

A voyager upon uncharted routes
Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,
Adventuring across enormous realms,
He broke into another Space and Time.

‘A voyager’ is a traveller, a person who is making a journey. Aswapati is a voyager, and he is travelling ‘upon uncharted routes’ that have never been mapped; nobody has ever explored those lands and made maps of them, they are ‘uncharted’. He faces the ‘danger of the Unknown’. When you set off into ‘uncharted’ territory you do not know what you will meet there, what you will have to face; those dangers are ‘viewless’, they cannot be seen in advance. He is setting off, ‘Adventuring across enormous realms’; ‘realms’ are kingdoms, countries. In order to explore those realms, he has to move into completely new dimensions, different from the space and time which we experience: ‘He broke into another Space and Time’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 1]