All is too little that the world can give:
Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time
And cannot fill the spirit’s sacred thirst.

King Aswapati has explored all the universal planes, seen everything, conquered all the levels, but he finds that ‘All is too little that the world can give’. Whatever can be gained or won in the manifested universe is not enough, because ‘Its power and knowledge are the gifts of Time’: they belong to the universe of Space and Time in which everything is changing; achievements last for a certain time and then they are gone. ‘The gifts of Time’ cannot satisfy the ‘sacred thirst’ of the spirit, which longs for the Infinite and the Eternal.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

The labour to know seemed a vain strife of Mind;
All knowledge ended in the Unknowable:
The effort to rule seemed a vain pride of Will;
A trivial achievement scorned by Time,
All power retired into the Omnipotent.

All along his journey Aswapati has been making a tremendous effort: ‘The labour to know’. He has been searching for knowledge, for an experience of Reality. But now his ‘labour to know’ seems like a useless struggle, ‘a vain strife of Mind’ – a worthless effort. He has hunted everywhere, he has grasped or touched ‘all knowledge’; but now ‘all knowledge’ seems to end in the ‘Unknowable’, in what cannot be known. Similarly with ‘the effort to rule’: he is a king, he is supposed to rule, and he has been given power to rule more and more; but the effort needed to rule now ‘seemed a vain pride of Will’: a useless ambition. In fact, all power belongs to the Omnipotent; and Aswapati now feels that all power has ‘retired’, drawn back, ‘into the Omnipotent’. Now it seems to him that being a king and ruling is ‘A trivial achievement scorned by Time’. If you are a ruler, you may be very powerful, but in the end whatever you have won turns out to be small and meaningless, ‘a trivial ‘achievement’, unimportant and without lasting value. ‘Time’ pours scorn on what you have done, because how long will your rule last? In no time you will be gone. Time shows you that your achievements are not worth much.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light.
A silence settled on his striving heart;
Absolved from the voices of the world’s desire,
He turned to the Ineffable’s timeless call.

‘A cave of darkness guards the eternal Light’. This is a spiritual experience that many mystics and seekers have reported: in order to come into contact with the ‘eternal Light’ one has to pass through a state of darkness which has been called “a cloud of unknowing”, a state in which you feel that you know nothing. In Book Seven we shall see that Savitri also passes through this state. Aswapati is now experiencing the ‘cave of darkness’ which ‘guards the eternal Light’ and makes it seem unknowable and unreachable. ‘A silence settled on his striving heart’: all the tremendous energy of aspiration that has carried him on his great journey falls silent. He is ‘Absolved from the voices of the world’s desire’. ‘Absolved’ literally means ‘washed clean’, or ‘made free from’; it is connected with the word ‘dissolved’.  Aswapati has been freed from ‘the voices of the world’s desire’. They cannot attract him any longer because he has felt the ‘timeless call’ of that which is beyond time: the call of ‘the Ineffable’, the supreme Reality which cannot be expressed, cannot be put into words, an eternal indescribable mystery; nevertheless that inexpressible Reality is what is really calling to us on our upward journey. As a result of all that he has experienced in the course of his long quest through all the universal planes Aswapati has become conscious of that ‘timeless call’, and so all other calls, ‘the voices of the world’s desire’, can no longer attract him.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

Across a neutral all-supporting Void
Whose blankness nursed his lone immortal spirit,
Allured towards some recondite Supreme,
Aided, coerced by enigmatic Powers,
Aspiring and half-sinking and upborne,
Invincibly he ascended without pause.

He finds himself crossing ‘a neutral all-supporting Void’: an emptiness which is supporting everything. It is ‘neutral’: it is not for or against; it seems to have no colour or qualities: it is just supporting everything. Its ‘blankness nursed his lone immortal spirit’: that neutral emptiness is blank and featureless, and yet he feels that it is nourishing his ‘immortal spirit’. He is ‘Allured’, attracted, ‘towards some recondite Supreme’. ‘Recondite’ means ‘secret’, ‘hidden’ or ‘difficult to find’. He is being ‘aided’: helped, and even ‘coerced’ or compelled ‘by enigmatic Powers’: mysterious forces. Aswapati is ‘aspiring’: that is always his movement, to long and to strive for the higher and the truer. When he is ‘half-sinking’, something carries him up: he is ‘upborne’. In this way, with the power of his own aspiration and the help and pressure of mysterious powers, ‘Invincibly he ascended without pause’; he goes on moving upwards without a stop.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

All he had been and all towards which he grew
Must now be left behind or else transform
Into a self of That which has no name.

This is the choice he must make. He has been and become so much, this individual who embodies all our energies of aspiration, tapasya and spiritual endeavour; but now he feels that he has to leave behind everything that he has been and everything that he was attempting to become; or else everything that he has been and everything that he has been aspiring for and growing towards must ‘transform’: it must all accept to change itself or be changed ‘into a self’, a portion or part of ‘That which has no name’: the Reality beyond all names.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

Alone and fronting an intangible Force
Which offered nothing to the grasp of Thought,
His spirit faced the adventure of the Inane.
Abandoned by the worlds of Form he strove.

There he is on this great height: he is all alone, and he is confronting ‘an intangible Force’: an energy, a strength, a Force, which cannot be touched. This formless energy and strength also cannot be grasped by ‘Thought’: that Force ‘offered nothing to the grasp of Thought’. ‘His spirit’ is facing‘the adventure of the Inane’. ‘Inane’ is usually a negative word, meaning senseless, stupid, foolish or without value or significance. Here Sri Aurobindo is using it with a capital ‘I’ to refer to a Reality which appears empty and meaningless because it offers nothing that Thought can grasp, understand or define. Aswapati’s great spirit is facing a new kind of adventure: the adventure of apparent Meaninglessness. This is a great challenge to him. He can no longer rely on any kind of support from ‘the worlds of Form’ for he has already left them behind. Sri Aurobindo says, ‘he strove’, indicating that Aswapati is facing a struggle as he feels ‘Abandoned by the worlds of Form’. There are no more forms, no more limits, nothing that the senses or Thought can grasp at all; a great formless mystery confronts him as the bare Reality.

Q: Why does ‘Thought’ have a capital letter here?

It is not absolutely consistent throughout Savitri for various reasons, but usually when a word is given a capital letter, as ‘Thought’ and ‘Inane’ are here, it suggests a universal application. We can have a thought, we can have thoughts, but there is a plane or a movement, a universal power of Thought; that is what Sri Aurobindo is referring to here. This ‘Inane’ is apparently something whose significance lies beyond all understanding, something vast, limitless, beyond all words and names and forms, beyond the reach of Thought.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

The Demiurges lost their names and forms,
The great schemed worlds that they had planned and wrought
Passed, taken and abolished one by one.

The term ‘Demiurges’ comes from philosophies which state that two equal powers — of good and evil — are constantly competing for control of the universe. ‘Demi’ means ‘half’; an ‘urge’ is an energy or a force. In the world views which see the universe as a permanent duality ruled by two equal forces, each of them is a ‘demiurge’. Beyond the demiurges there is a Supreme Urge. Perhaps here Sri Aurobindo is referring to what the Mother called ‘the formateurs’, the creative gods, the cosmic powers delegated by the Supreme to plan and shape these ‘great schemed worlds’: all the different planes and worlds of the manifestations. These ‘Demiurges’ are forms and representations of the Supreme, and in the state which Aswapati is experiencing now, they lose ‘their names and forms’ in the ‘Unknowable’; all the great worlds that they have ‘planned’ and created are also dissolved, and pass away. Aswapati sees them being ‘taken and abolished one by one’, as if a black hole of ‘Nothingness’ is swallowing them up. All the universal planes that he has been exploring now disappear ‘one by one’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, B00k 3]

Only a formless Form of self was left,
A tenuous ghost of something that had been,
The last experience of a lapsing wave
Before it sinks into a bourneless sea,—
As if it kept even on the brink of Nought
Its bare feeling of the ocean whence it came.

This describes Aswapati’s experience of himself: he no longer has any distinct form. Sri Aurobindo says ‘Only a formless Form of self was left’. He often uses such contradictory phrases to help us to go beyond our ordinary conceptions: how can a form be formless? How can something that is formless have a form? He is conveying to us Aswapati’s feeling that he still exists in some way but that there is no longer any form expressing his existence. He seems to be only a ‘tenuous ghost’: a thin remnant of something that has ceased to exist. ‘Tenuous’ means very, very fine and thin, like a wisp of mist. Aswapati feels like a disintegrating remnant of his past self, a ‘ghost’ of something that once existed but does not exist any longer. Sri Aurobindo compares this state to the ‘last experience’ of a ‘wave’ as it melts back into the ‘ocean’. A wave is a form that is projected from the ocean as a whole; but then it melts back into the ocean and loses its form. Aswapati is feeling something like that: ‘The last experience of a lapsing wave’ as it falls back and merges into the ocean: ‘Before it sinks into a bourneless sea’, a sea without limits. It is as if that wave, ‘even on the brink’ – on the very edge – of Non-existence, has kept some ‘bare feeling of the ocean’, the ocean that it came from: ‘whence’ means ‘from where.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

A Vastness brooded free from sense of Space,
An Everlastingness cut off from Time;
A strange sublime inalterable Peace
Silent rejected from it world and soul.

This is how Aswapati perceives the Unknowable Reality: as a ‘Vastness’ that is brooding. It is as if in a kind of trance, there is no movement even of consciousness, there is no ‘sense of Space’. That ‘Vastness’ is also an ‘Everlastingness’, but there is nothing like the movement of time in it; it is ‘cut off from Time’. There is a ‘Peace’, a ‘strange sublime inalterable Peace’: nothing can change that ‘Peace’; it is ‘sublime’ – on a very, very high level. That ‘Peace’ is silently rejecting ‘from it world and soul’: in it, neither world nor individual soul can continue to exist. It is rejecting those things; its everlasting vastness, silence and peace will swallow up and dissolve all separate existence.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

A pure existence safe from thought and mood,
A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss,
It dwelt aloof in its bare infinite,
One and unique, unutterably sole.

The sages who had this experience said that this sole Reality is ‘a pure existence’ which is also ‘a consciousness’: ‘A consciousness of unshared immortal bliss’ – ananda. They gave the name ‘Sat-Chit-Ananda’ to that Unknowableness: Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. It is a ‘pure existence’ which is remote and protected from any kind of movement or thought or action, ‘a consciousness’ that is aware of eternal ‘immortal bliss’ – which is not shared with any other existence because there is no other existence. It is dwelling, living, ‘aloof’ from this universe, far away from anything that we know about, ‘in its bare infinite’, without any features or qualities. It is ‘One and unique, unutterably sole’: alone in a way beyond anything that we can express. We say that it is ineffable, ‘unutterable’, because it cannot be expressed in any way.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]

A Being formless, featureless and mute
That knew itself by its own timeless self,
Aware for ever in its motionless depths,
Uncreating, uncreated and unborn,
The One by whom all live, who lives by none,
An immeasurable luminous secrecy
Guarded by the veils of the Unmanifest,
Above the changing cosmic interlude
Abode supreme, immutably the same,
A silent Cause occult, impenetrable,—
Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone.

This One is ‘A Being’, ‘a pure existence’, that has no form, that is ‘featureless’, without any features or quality; that is ‘mute’, silent; that knows ‘itself by its own timeless self’; that is always conscious, ‘aware for ever’ in its own deep innerness, in its ‘motionless depths’. This Unknowable Reality seems to be ‘uncreating’: it is not dynamic, it is not creating; and it is ‘uncreated and unborn’. This is ‘The One by whom all live’: whatever lives, lives by and because of this One. It does not depend on anything or anyone in order to exist: it is ‘The One by whom all live, who lives by none’. It is an ‘immeasurable luminous secrecy’: there seems to be no boundary or limit to it; it is a ‘secrecy’: it keeps its mystery, although it is full of light: ‘luminous’. It is ‘Guarded by the veils of the Unmanifest’: it is protected from us, veiled from our knowing, because it is not manifested – there is no way in which we can become aware of ‘the Unmanifest’. It remains ‘supreme’, above this ‘changing cosmic interlude’. In the universe, the cosmos, everything is in constant movement and always changing; but now Aswapati feels that this universe is just an ‘interlude’: something that plays in between for a short time. Above the ‘interlude’ of the universe is that One everlasting Reality which is ‘supreme, immutably the same’ and does not move or change. It seems to be ‘A silent Cause’ of everything, but itself is hidden, ‘impenetrable’: we cannot penetrate or enter into it in any way; it is ‘Infinite, eternal, unthinkable, alone’.

We could say that this is a description of God as understood in many religions. It is an evocation of an important spiritual experience which I think Sri Aurobindo would call ‘the featureless Brahman, the Unknowable beyond existence’. This experience is overwhelming in its totality when it comes, and it has been the goal of many yogas and spiritual paths over the centuries. It is so powerful and convincing that those who experienced it often felt that this ‘Unknowableness’ was the ultimate Reality, and so did not aspire for anything further. But as we shall see when we read the next canto, Sri Aurobindo tells us that out of this eternal unthinkable state something else can emerge.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 3]