A forerunner of a greater Truth to come,
Thy soul creator of its freer Law,
Vaunting a Force behind on which it leans,
A Light above which none but thou hast seen,
Thou claimst the first fruits of Truth’s victory.

A ‘forerunner’ is a messenger who runs in front of an army or an important person to announce that he is approaching. Death says that Savitri’s soul is running ahead of the rest of humanity to announce the approach of ‘a greater Truth’ that will come in the future. This is quite an admission from Death, something quite new from him. He says that Savitri’s soul is actually able to create its own Law which is freer and more flexible than those currently ruling the material universe. He also says that Savitri’s soul is ‘Vaunting a Force behind’, on which it is relying, which is supporting it. The usual meaning of the word ‘Vaunting’ is ‘boasting about’, ‘praising’; for example, a champion weight- lifter might ‘vaunt’ his superior strength or achievement. Death says that Savitri is ‘Vaunting’ a greater Force which is supporting her soul from behind the veil, and a higher Light which nobody but herself has seen. On the strength of that Force behind and that unseen Light, he says, Savitri is claiming ‘the first fruits of Truth’s victory’. ‘The first fruits’ are always considered to be special, whether they are harvested from a tree or a field or are the products of some effort or attempt. Death says, “Savitri, in demanding that Satyavan should be brought to life again you are claiming ‘the first fruits’ of a ‘victory’ that can be expected only in the distant future. You are demanding the fruit of that victory now for yourself.” And to strengthen his argument he will question the whole concept of ‘Truth’. He has questioned Love and he has questioned Matter, now he will challenge the idea of ‘Truth’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But what is Truth and who can find her form
Amid the specious images of sense,
Amid the crowding guesses of the mind
And the dark ambiguities of a world
Peopled with the incertitudes of Thought?

But now Death is asking, “Who can find Truth here on earth? What form can Truth take in the material world, amongst ‘the specious images of sense’, ‘the crowding guesses of the mind’, and ‘the dark ambiguities’ of this world?” To understand the world around us, we human beings depend on the information given to us by sense-impressions which are transmitted by the nervous system to the brain and then translated by the mind into images. But Death points out that first of all, the data provided by the senses are ‘specious’, misleading; and the conclusions about them reached by ‘the mind’ are only ‘guesses’ which are not reliable; moreover we live in a world of ‘dark ambiguities’ which cannot be clearly understood. Something that is ambiguous is difficult to interpret because it suggests more than one meaning; its meaning is unclear because it can be interpreted in different ways. This world, he says, is ‘Peopled with the incertitudes of Thought’. The evidence about the world around us that is given to us by the senses cannot be trusted, and the interpretations of that evidence which are provided by the mind and our power of ‘Thought’ are also uncertain and unreliable. In such a world, under such conditions, how can the form, the body of Truth be recognised?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Or is Truth aught but a high starry name
Or a vague and splendid word by which man’s thought
Sanctions and consecrates his nature’s choice,
The heart’s wish donning knowledge as its robe,
The cherished idea elect among the elect,
Thought’s favourite mid the children of half-light
Who high-voiced crowd the playgrounds of the mind
Or people its dormitories in infant sleep?

What is Truth after all? Does it really exist? Is it anything more than a ‘name’ – a wonderful ‘high starry name’? Perhaps it is nothing but ‘a vague and splendid word’ which each person uses to label whatever his human ‘thought’ sanctions and accepts; then he says, “This the ‘Truth’.” With that sanction and acceptance our mind is simply consecrating our ‘nature’s choice’. Whether we think something is true or not true depends on what our nature makes us choose. Many psychologists agree that what we find convincing, what we think is true and right, depends on the way that our personal nature has been shaped by our heredity, education, cultural background and our desires, ‘The heart’s wish’, which dresses itself up as true knowledge. We may give all kinds of reasons and justifications for what we have chosen to believe, but we may really have chosen it only because it is our preferred idea, our ‘cherished idea elect among the elect’. An ‘election’ is an opportunity to show our preference for a particular person or policy: ‘the elect’ are the chosen ones who get elected; similarly there are some ideas which human beings have preferred, and probably each of us has our own preferred ‘idea’ which we call ‘the Truth’ and cling to. That is the idea which our Thought has chosen as its ‘favourite’ amongst all the many ‘children of half-light’: all the multitude of ideas born from the ignorant mind of humanity which run and shout on ‘the playgrounds of mind’ or sleep innocently in its ‘dormitories’. A ‘dormitory’ is a place where the pupils of a boarding school spend the night, or a suburb on the outskirts of a city whose residents are out at work all day and return home at night only to Sleep.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Thus man at once is animal and god,
A disparate enigma of God’s make
Unable to free the Godhead’s form within,
A being less than himself, yet something more,
The aspiring animal, the frustrate god
Yet neither beast nor deity but man,
But man tied to the kind earth’s labour strives to exceed
Climbing the stairs of God to higher things.

For example, ‘man’, the human being, is both ‘animal and god’. We have an animal body but also a divine part within Death says that a human being is ‘A disparate enigma’, a puzzle which God has made up of incompatible parts which do not fit harmoniously together, a mysterious ‘enigma’, an inexplicable mystery. And this ‘disparate enigma’ which is a human being is ‘Unable to free the Godhead’s form within’: the imprisoned divinity which he is carrying within him, his soul. All of us are carrying a divine soul within us but at present we are unable to disentangle it from all the other parts of ours. Death says that a human being is ‘A being less than himself, yet something more’. When we act like brutes and animals or worse than animals we are less than our true selves; and yet in every human being there is always something more: the divinity of our true self. Within us we carry ‘disparate’ aspects: ‘The aspiring animal’ which wants to become more than it is, and ‘the frustrate god’, the soul within that is unable to express its full divinity. And, Death says, a human being is ‘neither beast nor deity’, neither an animal nor a god, but just a human being. That is the species, the ‘kind’ which we belong to. He admits that the earth-nature is making great efforts to ‘exceed’, to go beyond and surpass the limitations of the human species which we are currently bound to. The ‘labour’ of the earth-nature is to progress, to go beyond humanity to something higher, trying to climb ‘the stairs of God to higher things’. This statement of Death seems to mark a change in his attitude, acknowledging the possibility of progress, the idea of a spiritual evolution, admitting the idea of at least an aspiration for higher change. But then he continues in his earlier negative tone:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The Woman answered to the mighty Shade,
And as she spoke, mortality disappeared;
Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes,
Light came, a dream of heaven, into her face.

Here Sri Aurobindo speaks of Savitri as ‘The Woman’: she is a human being but he gives her a capital ‘W’. She is a representative of the supreme divine Shakti, and Death is only a shadow, a ‘mighty Shade’. As she answers him, her human aspect, her ‘mortality’ disappears: her ‘Goddess self’ is revealed in her eyes and a beautiful higher light shines in her face. She shows something of her true and higher self. This is what she says:

[Shraddhavan’s Englsish of Savitri, Book 10]

“O Death, thou too art God and yet not He,
But only his own black shadow on his path
As leaving the Night he takes the upward Way
And drags with him its clinging inconscient Force.

Earlier Death was claiming to be the one God, and Savitri reminded him that we human beings are also carrying the divine in us. Now she tells him that, just like us imperfect beings, he too is God, ‘yet not He’, not the Supreme in his highest and truest form. She says “You are God’s ‘black shadow’, the shadow which he casts on his path ‘As leaving the Night he takes the upward Way’, for God too is evolving in the world, and as he climbs upward he drags behind him the ‘clinging inconscient Force’ of his shadow self. He has taken on the appearance of the inconscient, the darkness of death and negativity, and as he is evolving upwards he is carrying with him some of that darkness: that is what you, Death, represent.”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

All contraries are aspects of God’s face.
The Many are the innumerable One,
The One carries the multitude in his breast;
He is the Impersonal, inscrutable, sole,
He is the one infinite Person seeing his world;
The Silence bears the Eternal’s great dumb seal,
His light inspires the eternal Word;

She says that ‘All contraries’, all opposites, all things which seem to contradict each other are in fact different ‘aspects of God’s face’. Earlier we read Death’s description of the universe as a great bird with contradictory characteristics. Here Savitri is telling him that these apparent contradictions are not permanently irreconcilable oppositions, for all of them are ‘aspects of God’s face’. She will give examples: God is both ‘The One’ and ‘The Many’, and we, ‘The Many’ are in fact ‘The One’ in his ‘innumerable’, uncountable forms. ‘The One’ is always carrying ‘the multitude’, the ‘Many’ within his oneness, ‘in his breast’. He is ‘Impersonal’ – vast, not confined to a limited personality or form; that impersonality may be mysterious, ‘inscrutable’ to us, and appears to be ‘sole’, alone, uncompanioned; but at the same time, he is ‘the one infinite Person seeing his world’, the supreme individual watching and enjoying his creation. Beyond all form and name lies ‘The Silence’ of the eternal, but that Silence is sanctioning, upholding everything in the Creation. His silent ‘Light’ and consciousness ‘inspires the eternal Word’: the Word of Creation which supports the entire manifestation.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

To man’s righteousness this is his cosmic crime,
Almighty beyond good and evil to dwell
Leaving the good to their fate in a wicked world
And evil to reign in this enormous scene.

It is difficult for us to forgive God for not always acting in accord with our human ideas of ‘righteousness’. He is ‘almighty’, all-powerful, he can do anything he chooses, and yet it often seems as if he abandons good people, leaving them ‘to their fate in a wicked world’, not intervening to save them from danger but on the contrary allowing wrong- doing and evil to flourish. By our moral standards this seems blameworthy, a crime. We cannot understand this. Sri Aurobindo had to write two long chapters in The Life Divine to help us to understand this paradox, this contradiction: if God is ‘good’ how can he allow all this ‘evil’ in the world?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

There is a purpose in each stumble and fall;
Nature’s most careless lolling is a pose
Preparing some forward step, some deep result.

What to us looks like a mistake, a mis-step and a fall happens for a reason; there is a secret purpose behind. ‘To loll’ means ‘to lie about lazily’. Even when Nature seems to be lying around lazily without any special intention, her apparently ‘careless’ pose is ‘Preparing some forward step, some deep result’. For us it is encouraging to remember that ‘each stumble and fall’, each mistake we make, each failure or defeat for which we feel regret and disappointment with ourselves and the world, has a meaning and is ‘Preparing some forward step, some deep result’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A Truth supreme has forced the world to be;
It has wrapped itself in Matter as in a shroud,
A shroud of Death, a shroud of Ignorance.

This world is not a meaningless mistake or accident: ‘A Truth supreme has forced the world to be’. This is Savitri’s assurance to us: the origin of our world is the purposeful intention of a supreme Truth, and that intention will surely be fulfilled, whatever the present appearances may present themselves to be to our limited awareness. But that supreme Truth has deliberately hidden itself from view: ‘It has wrapped itself in Matter as in a shroud’. A ‘shroud’ is a cloth used to cover a dead body. The supreme Truth which is the Origin of our world has put on a covering of Matter, which is subject to Death and Ignorance. These are the conditions which seem to rule our present state, but that is not the whole story – only a temporary appearance. It is a disguise which the supreme Truth puts on in the world, taking these different forms: the form of ‘Matter’, the form of universal ‘Death’ and the form of ‘Ignorance’, of limited consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A demigod animal, came thinking man;
He wallows in mud, yet heavenward soars in thought;
He plays and ponders, laughs and weeps and dreams,
Satisfies his little longings like the beast;
He pores upon life’s book with student eyes.

In the further course of evolution a new creature has developed: ‘thinking man’, the mental being. Savitri describes him as ‘A demigod animal’, half-divine yet still an ‘animal’. Human beings have animal bodies and appetites, but the developed mind and developing soul make us half-divine. Part of us ‘wallows in mud’ like pigs and hippos, but our power of higher thought soars up towards heaven like a great bird. Even adults love to play, but we also ponder, wondering about the world and ourselves. We laugh, we weep, we dream, we satisfy ‘our little longings’, but we also use our thinking capacity to read ‘life’s book with student eyes’. ‘To pore’ means ‘to look closely and attentively’ at something, to study it with intense concentration and in great detail.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Out of this tangle of intellect and sense,
Out of the narrow scope of finite thought
At last he wakes into spiritual mind;
A high liberty begins and luminous room:
He glimpses eternity, touches the infinite,
He meets the gods in great and sudden hours,
He feels the universe as his larger self,
Makes Space and Time his opportunity
To join the heights and depths of being in light,
In the heart’s cave speaks secretly with God.

Savitri describes human mind as a ‘tangle’, a disorderly confusion ‘of intellect and sense’. But as the inner being develops further, the individual can wake up out of this confusion and out of ‘the narrow scope of finite thought’, the restricted range of normal thinking, into ‘spiritual mind’. Then he experiences the beginning of a higher state, of ‘high liberty’ and ‘luminous room’, of greater possibilities and a higher light of consciousness. Then he ‘glimpses eternity, touches the infinite’. He meets ‘the gods’, the beings of the higher worlds ‘in great and sudden hours’, unexpected experiences far beyond our normal state. His consciousness widens to feel oneness with the whole universe as his own ‘larger self’. Then he recognises that ‘Space and Time’, the fundamental conditions of our existence here, provide the opportunity to make a conscious connection between ‘the heights and depths of being’. He becomes able to communicate intimately with the Divine in the depths of the heart: ‘In the heart’s cave’ he ‘speaks secretly with God’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

But these are touches and high moments lived;
Fragments of Truth supreme have lit his soul
Reflections of the sun in waters still.

Savitri has given a brief description of what can be experienced when a human being wakes up into spiritual mind: he glimpses eternity, touches the infinite, meets the gods, feels the universe as his larger self. But these experiences, she now says, are just momentary ‘touches’: ‘high moments lived’ during which ‘Fragments of Truth supreme have lit his soul’ like ‘Reflections of the sun’ sparkling on the surface of still waters. If the soul is still and calm, the Truth can be reflected in it in fragmented form; but higher possibilities lie beyond this state, as Savitri will now explain.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A few have dared the last supreme ascent
And break through borders of blinding light above,
And feel a breath around of mightier air,
Receive a vaster being’s messages
And bathe in its immense intuitive Ray.

A few souls, like skilled and courageous mountaineers, ‘have dared the last supreme ascent’ and succeeded in breaking ‘through borders of blinding light above’.

In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo writes about ‘The Ascent to Supermind’ and explains that beyond the level which he calls ‘spiritualised mind’, the highest level of consciousness which had been established in humanity at that time, there are four other intermediary steps leading up to the full supramental state. The aspirant to those higher states has to cross frontiers in his ascent, ‘borders of blinding light’. Now Savitri is going to describe those four ascending levels one by one. First of all she speaks of a state of ‘cosmic Thought’. This seems to correspond to the level of consciousness which Sri Aurobindo has called ‘Higher Mind’. Those who achieve this next step upwards in consciousness not only experience a vaster and more powerful Thought power but feel around them ‘a breath … of mightier air’, a more powerful life-force, and are able to receive messages and influences from an even higher level: ‘a vaster being’ which pours down the light of ‘its immense intuitive Ray’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes;
Its smallest parts are here philosophies
Challenging with their detailed immensity,
Each figuring an omniscient scheme of things.

First, ‘A cosmic Thought’, a universal mind, ‘spreads out its vastitudes’, its immense spaces. Even the very ‘smallest parts’ of that realm are expressed here on earth in the form of comprehensive philosophical systems which are challenging because of their complexity and ‘detailed immensity’, each of which represents ‘an omniscient scheme of things’, as The Life Divine itself seems to do. Savitri seems to imply that there are other vast philosophies like that, expressing a ‘scheme of things’ based on a total, ‘omniscient’ grasp of all knowledge. That is the first upward step beyond ‘spiritualised mind’, towards what Sri Aurobindo calls ‘Higher Mind’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

In her glorious kingdom of eternal light
All-ruler, ruled by none, the Truth supreme,
Omnipotent, omniscient and alone,
In a golden country keeps her measureless house;
In its corridor she hears the tread that comes
Out of the Unmanifest never to return
Till the Unknown is known and seen by men.

This is the kingdom of Truth, ‘her glorious kingdom of eternal light’, where Truth is the ‘All-ruler’: Truth rules everything as the supreme omnipotent and omniscient power, ruling alone, free and sovereign ‘ruled by none’. There, ‘In a golden country’ Truth ‘keeps her measureless house’, her home that is vast and infinite. Gold is the colour and the substance of the Truth- world. In Truth’s ‘measureless house’ there is a corridor, a passage which connects it to the realm of ‘the Unmanifest’, the transcendent planes beyond the limits of the manifestation where lie all the infinite possibilities of the One. The Supreme Divine Mother, the Goddess of the supreme Truth is able to hear the approach of so far unmanifested possibilities emerging into the manifested world, where they will remain until ‘the Unknown is known and seen by men’. From ‘the Unknown’, ‘the Unmanifest’ new powers and possibilities pass into her Truth-World. She hears their steps coming along the corridor. ‘In its corridor she hears the tread that comes / Out of the Unmanifest’. The things that come through that corridor out of the unmanifest into the realm of Truth will never return ‘Till the Unknown is known and seen by men’: until the Divine Life has been established upon earth. All new powers and possibilities emerging into the manifested world have to pass through that corridor, through the house of Truth, in order to enter into the manifested universe – and perhaps when all ‘the Unknown’ is known and seen by men, when the divine life has manifested on earth, perhaps everything may be drawn back through that corridor into the unmanifest – maybe.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight,
Above the silence of the wordless Thought,
Formless creator of immortal forms,
Nameless, investitured with the name divine,
Transcending Time’s hours, transcending Timelessness,
The Mighty Mother sits in lucent calm
And holds the eternal Child upon her knees
Attending the day when he shall speak to Fate.

In the Truth-realm, the glorious kingdom of eternal light which lies ‘Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight’, beyond Overmind, above even ‘the silence of the wordless Thought’, the realm of the creative Idea, ‘The Mighty Mother sits in lucent calm’, surrounded by calm light. She is the ‘Formless creator of immortal forms’: she is not limited by any form, but she gives birth to all the ideal forms, the ‘immortal forms’ on whic  all subtle and material forms are based. She is ‘Nameless’, unfettered by any of the labels we might put on her. But she is ‘investitured with the name divine’. She accepts any divine name which we give her. We call her ‘The Mighty Mother’, ‘Supreme Shakti’, ‘Ishwari’, ‘Aditi’: we give her all kinds of divine names, but she is not bound by any of them. She transcends all the hours and moments of manifested Time, but she is also unbound by ‘Timelessness’: She can and does enter into Time. She is not limited by timelessness. There in her measureless golden house she sits with ‘the eternal Child upon her knees’. She is ‘Attending the day when he shall speak to Fate’. Here ‘Attending’ means ‘awaiting’: she is waiting for the day when the eternal Child will ‘speak to Fate’ and everything will change.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

There is the image of our future’s hope;
There is the sun for which all darkness waits,
There is the imperishable harmony;
The world’s contradictions climb to her and are one:
There is the Truth of which the world’s truths are shreds,
The Light of which the world’s ignorance is the shade
Till Truth draws back the shade that it has cast,
The Love our hearts call down to heal all strife,
The Bliss for which the world’s derelict sorrows yearn:
Thence comes the glory sometimes seen on earth,
The visits of Godhead to the human soul,
The Beauty and the dream on Nature’s face.

There in the Truth-World exists an image, an appearance, of everything that we can hope for in the future, all the blessed things we might aspire for and dream or imagine awaiting us in the future. The sun which illumines that world is the best and most auspicious form of the sun, which will illumine us with the truth; that is ‘the sun for which all darkness’ is waiting and longing. ‘There is the imperishable harmony’: this is the outstanding characteristic of the supramental Truth, that it reconciles and harmonises everything that here seems contradictory, in opposition, irreconcilable. There, everything is in a state of ‘imperishable harmony’, harmony which cannot be disturbed or destroyed. All the opposing tendencies of the world, ‘The world’s contradictions’ are climbing up to the Mighty Mother and in the light of her Truth they are all reconciled and recognise their oneness; there they are no longer experienced as contradictions, but as complementary aspects of the ‘Truth of which the world’s truths are shreds’. ‘Shreds’ are fine scraps or parings; we shred carrots to make a salad or halva. In our world we have only fragmentary shreds of the truth. We cling on to our favourite ones and claim that this one or another is the one true truth; but these are all minute shreds of the one supreme Truth which is the origin of everything, the Truth which governs the harmony of the Truth-World. There is the Truth-Light which is veiled from us by the ignorance of our world. It will remain hidden from us until the Truth itself ‘draws back the shade that it has cast’ – perhaps to save us from being dazzled or blinded by a Light too strong for us to bear. There too, in that highest world, is the Love which our hearts are longing for, the supreme Love which will ‘heal all strife’, curing all conflict and quarrelling and clash, and ‘The Bliss for which the world’s derelict sorrows yearn’. ‘Derelict’ means ‘forsaken’, ‘abandoned’, ‘neglected’. That is how our sorrows feel: they need the blissful touch of the divine Mother. ‘Thence’, from that glorious Truth-realm, comes ‘the glory sometimes seen on earth’. If we have some glimpse of heavenly glory, it must have come to us from that world, as a Grace, a Blessing, when the Godhead, the Lord visits ‘the human soul’. He is coming from that world of Bliss and Truth. Whatever Beauty we may perceive in our world has its origin in that realm, as well as ‘the dream on Nature’s face’, as if Nature is dreaming of even higher more perfect Beauty.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

There in a world of everlasting Light,
In the realms of the immortal Supermind
Truth who hides here her head in mystery,
Her riddle deemed by reason impossible
In the stark structure of material form,
Unenigmaed lives, unmasked her face and there
Is Nature and the common law of things.

Savitri says that in our world, which is dominated by ‘the stark structure of material form’, the goddess of Truth ‘hides … her head in mystery’. She is veiled from our perception by an ‘enigma’, a puzzle which our reason seems unable to decipher. But there, ‘In the realms of the immortal Supermind’, which is ‘a world of everlasting Light’, she lives ‘Unenigmaed’. There, in that realm, the Truth is clear: There is nothing puzzling and bewildering and mysterious about it at all. Her face is ‘unmasked’; there, she is ‘Nature’ and all that natural and normal: ‘the common law of things’. Our world is governed by material nature, earth nature, the Mother of life and the Mother of mind; there the supreme divine Truth is the Mighty Mother, ruler of all things.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

The Timeless looks out from the travelling hours;
The Ineffable puts on a robe of speech
Where all its words are woven like magic threads
Moving with beauty, inspiring with their gleam,
And every thought takes up its destined place
Recorded in the memory of the world.

In the Truth-World which Savitri is describing now, all apparent contradictions and opposites are reconciled and co-exist. For example, ‘The Timeless’, the transcendent being unlimited by Time, looks out through the movement of ‘the travelling hours’; ‘The Ineffable’, the supreme Reality beyond all description and expression, ‘puts on a robe of speech’ to express something of himself in words and thoughts. The words of that ‘robe of speech’ ‘are woven like magic threads’ and move the hearer with their beauty, and the light, ‘the gleam’ which they spread is inspiring. ‘Every thought’ which expresses some aspect of ‘The Ineffable’ ‘takes up its destined place’ and is ‘Recorded in the memory of the world’ as a permanent and everlasting Truth.

These are some of the qualities of the Supramental world: the reconciliation or harmonisation of qualities which seem to the mind to be opposites, such as Immobility and Movement, Change and Changelessness, Timelessness and Time, Ineffability and perfect Expression. Another characteristic quality of that world is that there everything is perfectly pure and in its place.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Each being there is a member of the Self,
A portion of the million-thoughted All,
A claimant to the timeless Unity,
The many’s sweetness, the joy of difference
Edged with the intimacy of the One.

Every individual being in that Truth-World is ‘a member of the Self’, part of the body of the one Self of all, and at the same time a ‘portion of the million-thoughted All’ participating in the limitless universal play, as well as a ‘claimant to the timeless Unity’: the timeless oneness of the Supreme. In its consciousness each being unites the sweetness and delight of being many, with the joy of a sense of difference which is ‘Edged’, given a special flavour and intensity, by the simultaneous enjoyment of ‘the intimacy of the One’. The supramental beings can enjoy all these three different poises simultaneously.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

O Death, if thou couldst touch the Truth supreme
Thou wouldst grow suddenly wise and cease to be.
If our souls could see and love and clasp God’s Truth,
Its infinite radiance would seize our hearts,
Our being in God’s image be remade
And earthly life become the life divine.”

“If you could touch the supreme Truth you would ‘grow suddenly wise’. You would be illuminated with wisdom and you would ‘cease to be’: you would no longer be Death. And for us human beings, ‘If our souls could see and love and clasp’, embrace, ‘God’s Truth’, its ‘infinite radiance’ would seize hold of our hearts and would transform our being into ‘God’s image’, so that ‘earthly life’ would ‘become the life divine’.” Progressively, in the course of evolution that is what is happening: we are growing more and more into the truth of ourselves, and our world is growing closer and closer to the Divine Life upon Earth.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

O human claimant to immortality,
Reveal thy power, lay bare thy spirit’s force,
Then will I give back to thee Satyavan.
Or if the Mighty Mother is with thee,
Show me her face that I may worship her;
Let deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death,
An imperishable Force touching brute things
Transform earth’s death into immortal life.

Death tells Savitri, “You are a human being, subject to death and ignorance, and yet you are claiming the right to immortality. So reveal your power, show the source of your spirit’s strength: then I will give Satyavan back to you. ‘Or if the mighty Mother’, the supreme truth, is with you, show me: ‘Show me her face that I may worship her’. Let her ‘deathless eyes look into the eyes of Death’. She must have the ‘imperishable Force’ that is immune to death. It is up to her to touch all these ‘brute things’ here on earth and to transform the process of dissolution that now rules on earth ‘into immortal life’.” Again Death is challenging Savitri: “Can you do it?”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]

Then can thy dead return to thee and live.
The prostrate earth perhaps shall lift her gaze
And feel near her the secret body of God
And love and joy overtake fleeing Time.”

Death says that only the Mighty Mother’s power can transform ‘earth’s death into immortal life’ and only then can Satyavan return to Savitri ‘and live’. Perhaps then this ‘prostrate earth’, this matter which lies at the very foundations of the universe, too can look upwards and ‘feel near her the secret body of God’, the concrete substantial presence of God; also perhaps then ‘love and joy can overtake fleeing Time’ and overcome the process of material dissolution: Time keeps moving on but maybe ‘love and joy’ can catch up with it, if the Mighty Mother intervenes.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 10]