Here was not futile effort’s broken heart:
Exempt from the ordeal and the test,
Empty of opposition and of pain,
It was a world that could not fear nor grieve.
It had no grace of error or defeat,
It had no room for fault, no power to fail.

Here, very subtly, Sri Aurobindo shows us that the imperfection of our world is an opportunity. In that world of subtle matter there is no possibility of experiencing the heartbreak of finding that all your efforts have failed, have been in vain, ‘futile’, useless. That world is ‘Exempt from the ordeal and the test’; when you are ‘exempt’ from taxes, you do not have to pay them, or you may be exempt from having to serve in the army. In that world there are no painful tests or ordeals. Pain and opposition simply do not exist there. There is no possibility of experiencing fear or grief, or even of making a mistake: ‘It had no grace of error or defeat’. Sri Aurobindo is pointing out that the possibility which our world offers of making mistakes, being defeated, experiencing imperfection and failure, is a grace because such experiences help us to grow in many ways. But this ‘grace’ does not exist in that world, because there everything is perfect and there is ‘no room for fault’, no room for any mistake, and ‘no power to fail’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

In their narrow and exclusive absolutes
The finite’s ranked supremacies throned abide;
It dreams not ever of what might have been;
Only in boundaries can this absolute live.

In that world there is a hierarchy of supreme powers sitting on thrones in ordered ranks; but they are powers of the ‘finite’ – what is limited and defined. In their perfection they are in a way ‘absolutes’ – absolute powers, but their absoluteness and perfection are ‘narrow and exclusive’, supreme only because of what they exclude. Because that world does not allow any possibility of failure, defeat or error, it never dreams of ‘what might have been’. We think of what might have been as an opportunity that is lost and gone forever, but Sri Aurobindo has written about ‘might-have-beens’, saying that they ‘are not entirely dead rejected things, but can return through the power of the Idea and effect future determinations and can fulfil themselves at last in the inner reality of their idea though, it may well be, in other forms and circumstances.’1 But that world does not allow any dreams of what might have been. It can only live within the ‘fine boundaries’ of its own beautiful and perfect creations.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

The spirit stood back effaced behind its frame.
Admired for the bright finality of its lines
A blue horizon limited the soul;
Thought moved in luminous facilities,
The outer ideal’s shallows its swim-range:
Life in its boundaries lingered satisfied
With the small happiness of the body’s acts.

In that world, subtle matter is the dominant power just as gross matter is the dominant power in our world. The other powers of thought and life, soul and spirit move there under the rule of that power. Spirit is standing back, ‘effaced’ or overshadowed: it can hardly be seen behind the perfect beauty of its frame. Subtle matter is the ‘frame’ which should adorn and display spirit, but the ‘frame’ is so marvellous that spirit can hardly be seen. Soul is limited by the beautiful ‘blue horizon’ of that world, which is ‘Admired for the bright finality of its lines’: it is one of the ‘fine boundaries’ confining that world. ‘Thought’ there can move only ‘in luminous facilities’: thought is luminous; it brings light; ‘facilities’ implies easy thoughts, rather than profound questioning ones. Something that is ‘facile’ is too easy and superficial. There thought cannot ‘swim’ very far; it stays away from the depths, in the shallow waters of the outer ideal, the ideal of perfect form. ‘Life’ lingers there lazily, not moving dynamically forward, because it is ‘satisfied’ with the ‘small happiness of the body’s acts’, the limited delight that comes from the action of those perfect bodies. But that is not the way that life is meant to be.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri: Book 2]

Assigned as Force to a bound corner-Mind,
Attached to the safe paucity of her room,
She did her little works and played and slept
And thought not of a greater work undone.

Life is ‘Assigned’, given the mission to serve as ‘Force’ or power to ‘Mind’, to the faculty of thought and will. In this limited subtle-physical realm ‘Mind’ is tied up in a small corner, so the Life-Force is also limited. There she is ‘Attached to the safe paucity of her room’. ‘Paucity’ means smallness. She likes that small space she is given, and feels safe and happy there in her little corner. There she does her small tasks and plays and sleeps, and never thinks of any greater work that could be done.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Forgetful of her violent vast desires,
Forgetful of the heights to which she rose,
Her walk was fixed within a radiant groove.
The beautiful body of a soul at ease,
Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves,
Childlike she swung in her gold cradle of joy.

In the next cantos, Sri Aurobindo will show us what an immense power the Life-Force is, but in this realm she has forgotten all about ‘her violent vast desires’; she has forgotten ‘the heights to which she rose’ – later he will tell us that she can reach almost to the Supreme. But here in this beautiful subtle physical world she can only move along ‘a radiant groove’, a fixed track. In the years before CDs and Mp3 players were invented, people used to play music recorded on gramophone records,  plastic disks on which the sound was scored in grooves. We would put the disk on the gramophone, a machine which contained an engine to turn the disk around and around and an arm where a special needle could be inserted. We put the needle on the outermost edge of the groove, and the record would be turned round by the machine so that the needle gradually moved towards the centre of the disk; the sounds it made were amplified through a speaker, so that the music it played as it went could be heard. The needle was fixed into that groove and was not supposed to jump out of it – otherwise the disk would be scratched and spoiled. Like that needle, the Life-power in that world has to move in a fixed groove: it is radiant, beautiful, shining, but it is still ‘fixed’. In that world the powerful Life-Force takes the form of ‘The beautiful body of a soul at ease’, relaxed, content, happy ‘Like one who laughs in sweet and sunlit groves’. The sun is always shining, the birds are always singing, the flowers are always in bloom and there she is like a child swinging in ‘her gold cradle of joy’.

[ Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Our spirit tires of being’s surfaces,
Transcended is the splendour of the form;
It turns to hidden powers and deeper states.
So now he looked beyond for greater light.

Aswapati represents the aspiring will and effort which leads us from the mortal planes, the earthly planes, to the immortal levels. Sri Aurobindo is showing him embarked upon a great journey of spiritual search to the higher planes. Leaving the earth, he has entered the neighbouring realm of subtle physical matter with all its physical perfection and beauty. But that is still a world of forms and surfaces. Our spirit gets tired of surfaces because it wants to go beyond even the most perfect and splendid manifestations of ‘form’. It starts looking for ‘hidden powers and deeper states’ of being. Having fully experienced the beauties and perfections of the Kingdom of Subtle Matter and understood its limitations, Aswapati now looks beyond, seeking a ‘greater light’ of consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

His soul’s peak-climb abandoning in its rear
This brilliant courtyard of the House of Days.
He left that fine material Paradise.
His destiny lay beyond in larger Space.

His soul has set off to climb towards the peaks, the mountain tops, the summits of being; so now he leaves behind ‘This brilliant courtyard of the House of Days’ which is like a shining space in front of the entrance to the house of Time. He moves on: ‘He left that fine material Paradise’. The word ‘Paradise’ has its origin in a Persian word which means ‘a garden’, ‘an enclosed and cultivated space’: a paradise is always limited, and a ‘material Paradise’ is especially limited. ‘His destiny lay beyond in larger Space’. So Aswapati will move next into the much vaster and more complex worlds of Life.

[Shraddhavans English of Savitri, Book 2]