In this slow ascension he must follow her pace
Even from her faint and dim subconscious start:
So only can earth’s last salvation come.
For so only could he know the obscure cause
Of all that holds us back and baffles God
In the jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul.

In order to find the key to a diviner life on earth Aswapati has to trace all the steps, the paces that Life has taken in her ascent ‘Even from her faint and dim subconscious start’: from the very beginning of the emergence of Life in the material world. Aswapati has to follow her whole journey to see where it started and how it has gone wrong. This is the only way, Sri Aurobindo says, in which ‘earth’s last salvation can come’, because in order for earth’s salvation to come, Life as it is, as we experience it here, has to be transformed: it has to become the Life divine. So now Aswapati is trying to find out ‘the obscure cause’, the dark mysterious source of everything that is holding us back from achieving our diviner possibilities, the origin of everything that ‘baffles God / In the jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul’: all that obstructs and hinders the Divine from delivering the human soul from its imprisonment. When we want to make progress, to become better human beings, to help the whole human race to become better and to move further in its evolution, something always seems to be holding us back, preventing us from truly changing, because human nature, the Life-Force in us, is not able to escape from its limitations and old habits. Even though God himself is trying to deliver us, to set our souls free from this prison, something is baffling him, preventing him from doing it. Aswapati wants to know the ‘obscure cause’ of this difficulty; and the only way that he can find that out is to go back to the beginning, trace the beginnings of Life – where did it go wrong?

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

Along swift paths of fall through dangerous gates
He chanced into a grey obscurity
Teeming with instincts from the mindless gulfs
That pushed to wear a form and win a place.

This second section of Canto Four provides an overall introduction, not only to this canto, but also to the next five, in which the poet introduces us to other realms of Life: ‘The Godheads of the Little Life’ (Canto Five), ‘The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life’ (Canto Six), then Aswapati’s ‘Descent into Night’ (Canto Seven), and his exploration of ‘The World of Falsehood, The Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness’ (Canto Eight). It is only after he has reached the very deepest darkest level of the subconscient at the end of Canto Eight and found there ‘the secret key of Nature’s change’ that Aswapati is suddenly projected into ‘The Paradise of the Life-Gods’ (Canto Nine), the blissful worlds which are the native home of Life which he had seen from a distance in Canto Three, and from where he soon moves on into the worlds of Mind. Here, in this section of Canto Four, Sri Aurobindo is giving us an introduction that prepares us to follow Aswapati on that tremendous journey through the Worlds of Life. It is always said that the downward paths to the lower levels of consciousness are very smooth and easy: once you start in that direction you can move very quickly, without any hindrance or obstruction: nothing is trying to stop you. But those paths lead through ‘dangerous gates’. The great Italian poet Dante described the gates of Hell in his epic Il Divina Commedia, saying that above them is written “Abandon hope all you who enter here”. Aswapati passes through those dangerous gates and enters into a ‘grey obscurity’, a dark misty atmosphere which is ‘Teeming with instincts from the mindless gulfs’. If we disturb an ants’ nest, uncountable numbers of insects rush out and teem around in all directions; or in films of the streets of Tokyo or New York we see people teeming everywhere. What Aswapati sees teeming in that ‘grey obscurity’ are not people or ants but ‘instincts’ emerging from underground, ‘from the mindless gulfs’, the deep subconscious levels where no mind is found. Each of these instincts is pushing ‘to wear a form and win a place’, to express itself in the manifestation. The Mother has said that when we look at the sky it looks empty to us: it is blue with clouds here and there and looks quite pretty; but if we could see with subtle eyes, she says, we would become aware that the atmosphere is full of teeming, swarming instincts which are really very ugly, not beautiful at all. Aswapati is able to see those teeming instincts, swarming around like termites.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

There far away from Truth and luminous though
He saw the original seat, the separate birth
Of the dethroned, deformed and suffering Power

In that home of Death and Night, ruled by dumb darkness, ‘far away from Truth and luminous thought’, Aswapati sees ‘the original seat’, the place of ‘the separate birth’ of Life, cut off, separated from her true origin. In her blissful native home Life was a goddess, a great power; but she has been ‘dethroned’, deposed and outcast. There she was a being of beauty and delight and joy; here she has become ‘deformed’, distorted, ugly, and she is ‘suffering’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

An authentic image recognised and signed
Of her outcast force exiled from heaven and hope,
Fallen, glorying in the vileness of her state,
The grovel of a strength once half divine,
The graceless squalor of her beast desires,
The staring visage of her ignorance,
The naked body of her poverty.

‘To flaunt’ means ‘to show off’, ‘to display proudly’. Life has lost her beauty, but she is showing off ‘her animal disgrace’, her distorted undivine appearance. Aswapati sees this ‘authentic image … Of her outcast force exiled from heaven and hope’. This ugly picture has been ‘recognised and signed’, authenticated: “Yes, this is me.” This is the image of Life in her outcast state, ‘exiled from heaven and hope’. This is Life cut off from her blissful divine origin, swallowed up by Matter, able to express herself only in ugly distorted forms. She has been cast out of heaven, sent away: an ‘outcast’ is a person who has been rejected by society. She has been exiled, sent away from the heavens which are her native home; she has been denied all hope. And now it seems as if she glories in that fallen state – parading and flaunting it. She says, “Yes, look at me – this is what I am”. Now she is ‘glorying in the vileness of her state’. ‘Vile’ means ‘perverted’, ‘depraved’, ‘loathsome’, ‘foul’, ‘obscene’ – disgusting and inhuman. Life in her original state was ‘half divine’. Now she is grovelling, crawling in the mud, showing off the ‘graceless squalor of her beast desires’. ‘Squalor’ means ‘filth’, the dirtiness of extreme poverty. That glorious goddess has lost all her grace and become like an animal, rolling in filth, delighting in ‘beast desires’, displaying the ‘staring visage of her ignorance’, the blank face of one without intelligence, and the ‘naked body of her poverty’: she has lost all her divine wealth. She has nothing to cover herself with.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]

There neared no touch redeeming from above:
The upward look was alien to her sight,
Forgotten the fearless godhead of her walk;
Renounced was the glory and felicity,
The adventure in the dangerous fields of Time:
Hardly she availed, wallowing, to bear and live.

In this state, Life does not feel any touch of divinity from above that would ‘redeem’ her, set her free. In fact she does not look upwards at all: ‘The upward look was alien to her sight’, it is not part of her way of seeing things. She has completely forgotten ‘the fearless godhead of her walk’, in her original state. By her immersion in Matter, the Life-goddess has had to renounce, give up ‘the glory and felicity’ – ‘felicity’ means happiness – of her original state, and has also lost the sense of adventure with which she undertook her plunge into ‘the fields of Time’ and the material universe. Now she is a prisoner experiencing all the unconsciousness, the limitations and struggle of the evolutionary process. ‘Wallowing’, submerged in the mud of this squalid and graceless state, Life ‘Hardly … availed … to bear and live’: she could only just manage to endure and stay alive.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 2]