As one who meets the face of the Unknown,
A questioner with none to give reply,
Attracted to a problem never solved,
Always uncertain of the ground he trod,
Always drawn on to an inconstant goal
He travelled through a land peopled by doubts
In shifting confines on a quaking base.

Aswapati moves onwards ‘As one who meets the face of the Unknown’, into a realm about which nothing is known; he is full of questions but finds no-one to answer them. He is being drawn farther, ‘Attracted to a problem never solved’: an unsolved problem has a power of attraction, he would like to know the solution, but as yet Aswapati has not found the answer to the riddle of life. Even the ground he is treading on is ‘uncertain’, so that he can never be sure whether it will support his feet or give way beneath him; he cannot feel sure whether he is going in the right direction or not. Something is always drawing him on, luring him to continue farther, but the goal is ‘inconstant’: changing and unclear. ‘Trod’ is the past tense of the verb ‘to tread’ which means ‘to step or walk’ on something. He feels himself to be travelling through a land which seems to be ‘peopled by doubts’, as if all the beings there are doubting and doubtful. Even the ‘confines’ or borders, the limits, if at all this realm has any limits, seem to be shifting and changing, and the ground, the base itself is ‘quaking’, moving and unsteady. There seems to be ‘nothing sure’, nothing to be relied on, in the world that he has entered now.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

There life is the manifest Incalculable,
A movement of unquiet seas, a long
And venturous leap of spirit into Space,
A vexed disturbance in the eternal Calm,
An impulse and passion of the Infinite.

In the realm that he has entered now ‘life is the manifest Incalculable’: nothing can ever be predicted or calculated; there is no hint of what might come next. Life there appears to be ‘A movement of unquiet seas’, restless seas, always in movement, or ‘a long / And venturous leap of spirit into Space’, as if spirit has adventurously plunged into boundless dimensions of time and space and finds no end, no conclusion. This life in the ignorance seems to be ‘A vexed disturbance’ – a troubled, worried, anxious state that has disturbed ‘the eternal Calm’ of the Supreme, some ‘impulse and passion’ or intense drive that has inexplicably emerged in the Infinite.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Unshepherded by the fear that walks through Time,
Undaunted by Fate that dogs and Chance that springs,
She accepts disaster as a common risk;
Careless of suffering, heedless of sin and fall,
She wrestles with danger and discovery
In the unexplored expanses of the soul.

In this realm, Life is ‘Unshepherded’: there is no shepherd to guide and protect her. We live in Time, and often for us it is fear or caution that guides and protects us: the fear that something may be destroyed, or opportunities lost; but for the free Life-Force there is no such restraint: she is ‘Undaunted’, without fear. A person who is dauntless or undaunted has no fear of circumstances, of danger; nothing can make him/ her afraid. Unlike us, Life is not daunted either by ‘Fate that dogs’ or by ‘Chance that springs’. A well-trained dog will always follow at his master’s heel. If somebody or something is ‘dogging’ you, it means that it is always following you closely. We feel dogged by Fate because anything can happen to us at any moment without warning – we never know when disaster may strike. But the Life-Force does not have that fear, and she is not afraid of ‘Chance that springs’. Unexpected things are always happening to us, coming at us from nowhere, unpredictably, like an animal jumping out from behind a bush, upsetting our plans and hopes and intentions; anything can change at any moment. But Life does not fear that unexpected leap of Chance; she accepts the possibility of disaster: for her it is a common everyday risk. She does not care about suffering. She does not care about any sense ‘of sin and fall’, of doom, of something going wrong, of spoiling things. She is always ready to wrestle ‘with danger and discovery / In the unexplored expanses of the soul’, always on the lookout for whatever new experiences and new possibilities may arise.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Amid a tedious crawl of drab desires
She writhed, a worm mid worms in Nature’s mud,
Then, Titan-statured, took all earth for food,
Ambitioned the seas for robe, for crown the stars
And shouting strode from peak to giant peak,
Clamouring for worlds to conquer and to rule.

The poet continues evoking the contrasting extremes of life: sometimes she seems like an earthworm writhing or squirming ‘in Nature’s mud’, in the dirty lower levels of Nature, along with many other worms, stuck in ‘a tedious crawl of drab desires’. ‘Drab’ means dull and boring and colourless – there is nothing noble or glorious or exciting about the state life is in then. But at other times she is huge, with the stature of a giant, a superhuman being, a ‘Titan’. She claims the whole earth for her food, she can devour it all; she wants to wear the seas like a robe. ‘Ambition’ is when you have huge aims, huge ideas, and desires; here Sri Aurobindo uses it as a verb to show the Life-Force driven by vast desires: she wants to wear all the limitless oceans as her robe; she wants to wear all the stars in the universe in her crown. Aswapati sees her like a Titan, striding from one mountain peak to the next ‘Clamouring’ or shouting, demanding more ‘worlds to conquer and to rule’. This is the Titanic aspect of the life power.

[Shraddhavan’s Englsh of Savitri, Book 2]

Then, wantonly enamoured of Sorrow’s face,
She plunged into the anguish of the depths
And, wallowing, clung to her own misery.

Then, in contrast, for no particular reason, Life falls in love with the face of Sorrow; ‘wantonly’ means ‘wilfully’, ‘without cause or reason’. In love with grief, she plunges into ‘the anguish’, the intense suffering, of the lower levels of consciousness, and there, ‘wallowing’, she clings ‘to her own misery’. ‘Wallowing’ is what hippopotamuses or pigs do: they find a nice muddy place and roll in it, enjoying the cool sticky dirty mud. If we observe ourselves, we may notice that there is something in us which enjoys sorrow and anguish and misery and feeling sorry for ourselves. When we feel very upset and distressed about something, our rational mind might tell us that there is in fact no reason to be so unhappy about it; but there is something in us which really enjoys feeling upset and unhappy and insists on wallowing in the mud of the lower nature.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Amid her swift untold variety
Something remained dissatisfied, ever the same
And in the new saw only a face of the old,
For every hour repeated all the rest
And every change prolonged the same unease.

All this ‘swift untold variety’ of the ever-changing moods of life leaves some part of her dissatisfied. New things, feelings and experiences seem only to be another face of the old ones, because every hour is repeating all that has already happened and every change just prolongs, extends, ‘the same unease’, the same restlessness and lack of satisfaction. Recognising this state in yourself can be the starting point for taking up the spiritual life, for when you start feeling like this, it is an indication that your inner being is getting ready to look for a higher and truer kind of enjoyment. But if dissatisfaction gets cultivated for its own sake then it can become a very negative habit.

[ Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

A spirit of her self and aim unsure,
Tired soon of too much joy and happiness,
She needs the spur of pleasure and of pain
And the native taste of suffering and unrest:
She strains for an end that never can she win.

In the Ignorance the Life-Force too is ignorant. She does not know who she is, she does not know what her aim is. She gets ‘Tired soon of too much joy and happiness’. In order to move on she needs ‘the spur of pleasure and of pain’. Horsemen wear spurs on their boots to drive their horse to move faster. The word ‘spur’ is also used in a psychological sense for some impulsion that drives people to action. Life in the ignorance needs the contrast and alternation ‘of pleasure and of pain’ as a spur, and needs the inborn taste of ‘suffering and unrest’: she is always straining, making an effort to reach some ‘end’, some goal, which she is unable to gain or achieve. It seems as if it is impossible for the Life-Force ever to achieve the satisfaction she is longing for.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Chance she has chosen and danger for playfellows;
Fate’s dreadful swing she has taken for cradle and seat.

This is because she has chosen ‘Chance’ and ‘danger’ as her playmates and companions. Fate or destiny has a ‘dreadful swing’ which carries her up to the heights and then back down to the depths. The Life-Force has chosen that dreadful swing as ‘her cradle’, where she is nursed and nourished, and as the ‘seat’ from which she rules. This is how Aswapati perceives life as it is for us in our ignorant state – both attractive and perilous. But the poet tells us that this is not the whole truth of Life:

[Shraddhavan’s  English of Savitri, Book 2]

Yet pure and bright from the Timeless was her birth,
A lost world-rapture lingers in her eyes,
Her moods are faces of the Infinite:
Beauty and happiness are her native right,
And endless Bliss is her eternal home.

Here Sri Aurobindo is affirming that in its origin and essence, Life is a divine power that has been born ‘pure and bright from the Timeless’. Even here in the Ignorance there is a light in her eyes, the light of a ‘world-rapture’, a cosmic delight which seems to have been lost in the material universe. Her many moods reflect something ‘of the Infinite’, of the Supreme, and her very nature or birthright, ‘her native right’, is ‘Beauty and happiness’. The ‘eternal home’ which she is always searching and yearning for yet never finding is actually the endless bliss, the Ananda of the Supreme. What we humans experience as Life is a distortion of its true divine nature. In the next section Aswapati will be shown the heavenly world which is the origin of Life.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]