In the indeterminate formlessness of Self
Creation took its first mysterious steps,
It made the body’s shape a house of soul
And Matter learned to think and person grew;
She saw Space peopled with the seeds of life
And saw the human creature born in Time.

Savitri is being shown the whole history of universe from the beginning. In the beginning there is only formlessness. Nothing has taken form. Everything is ‘indeterminate’, undefined. There are no distinct features, forms, shapes or movements. That ‘indeterminate formlessness’ is a state of the existence and consciousness of the one Self from which all this universe has emerged. The first mysterious steps of Creation were taken in that ‘indeterminate formlessness’. In it, the creative power of the one Self shaped bodies, forms which soul could live in as if in a house; and because soul could live in material forms, ‘Matter learned to think and person grew’: the living physical form with the power to think became a ‘person’ – a distinct individuality. Savitri saw the Self extending itself as Space, ‘peopled with the seeds of life’, and further along in the evolutionary process, she saw ‘the human creature born in Time’. This is just a short summary of the whole process of evolution up to the human stage. Now Sri Aurobindo will explain that evolutionary process in more detail.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

All was the deed of a blind World-Energy:
Unconscious of her own exploits she worked,
Shaping a universe out of the Inane.

Everything that happened was the work of ‘a blind World- Energy’. This is the form that the creatrix Mother takes in this material universe: we can call her ‘Prakriti’ if we want to use that label. Material energy or force seems to be unconscious, unable to see what she is doing; she seems to be ‘Unconscious of her own exploits’. ‘Exploits’ means ‘achievements’. That blind World-Energy has created all the many different forms of matter, ‘Shaping a universe out of the Inane’, forming out of the emptiness a cosmos, a harmonious whole in which all the parts are interconnected. But it seems as if she is not aware of what she has done. That ‘blind World-Energy’, apparently without conscious awareness, has created a universe full of forms which can house souls.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world,
Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams,
An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts
Leaves the vicegerent mind a seeming king.

Each of us is essentially a ‘conscious soul’ living in this world that is ruled by the Inconscience of Matter; but for a long time, the conscious soul remains ‘Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams’. Sri Aurobindo describes it as an ‘indifferent Master’. The soul is really the Master of the house and has the power to tell the mind and other parts of the individual nature what they must do. But for a long time he seems to be ‘indifferent’, uncaring, allowing Nature to do whatever she wants. The soul is the Master who has to authorise her actions, but he just signs everything she puts in front of him: ‘signing Nature’s acts’. That leaves the mind in charge, as the ‘vicegerent’, ruling instead of the soul. We are familiar with the word ‘vice’ as it is used in expressions such as Vice President, Vice Chancellor, Vice Chairman etc. These are deputies and executives for the actual heads, standing in for them when they are not available. Sometimes the actual Chancellor, of a university for example, or the Chairman of a company, may be more or less ceremonial positions while the Vice Chancellor or Vice Chairman is the actual decision- maker. But the word ‘vicegerent’ is a very unusual word in English. The second part of it comes from the French word ‘gérer’ meaning ‘to manage or organise things’. That is what the mind does in our normal human nature; it should be acting as an instrument of the soul, but the soul just allows the mind to do that work of managing and organising in its place. That leaves the mind as a ‘seeming king’: the mind is our ruler, not really but in appearance.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

In his floating house upon the sea of Time
The regent sits at work and never rests:
He is a puppet of the dance of Time;
He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call
Compels him with the thronging of life’s need
And the babel of the voices of the world.

Here ‘He’ is the mind, ‘In his floating house upon the sea of Time’ – the body. Here the sea is not life but Time. The poet calls him ‘The regent’ which means the one who is ruling in place of the real ruler. This regent ‘sits at work and never rests’, but this mind which never rests is just ‘a puppet of the dance of Time’. In Time many forces are dancing. ‘A puppet’ has no life of its own, it only dances when it is controlled by somebody or something else. There are puppets you can put on your hand like a glove, to make them move; there are others that are controlled by strings or moved on a stick. There are skilful puppeteers who can make their puppets do amazing things. This surface mind of ours, which seems to be the ruler of our lives, is actually just a puppet which is being controlled by the many forces that are moving in the ‘dance of Time’. This mind is ‘driven by the hours’. You must have noticed this: there is always something that needs to be done, and at every moment calls coming in: “Do this! Do that! Do this other thing!” All this is driving the mind, compelling the mind. Whether it wants or not, it has to do what it is told to do by these movements of Time. ‘The thronging of life’s need’: a ‘throng’ is a big crowd. Life is full of needs, and like a crowd of people those needs are always pushing you and saying, “Do this, do that!” Life tells you: “This thing needs to be done – now!” The other thing that is always driving the mind is ‘The babel of the voices of the world’. The word ‘babel’ makes us think of a story in the Bible: the Tower of Babel which may have been in the ancient city of Babylon. The Bible story says that all the peoples of the world came together to build a tower so tall that it would reach up to heaven. But perhaps they were being over-ambitions, or apparently it was not yet time for them to reach the divine state, so God made them all speak different languages. They kept on speaking and speaking but they could not understand each other anymore, so they could not complete their tower. This scene has been painted by so many artists: the huge tower and millions of people swarming all over it like ants and not understanding each other. Here the line refers to all the confusing commands and messages that come to us from the world around us which keep compelling the mind to respond to them. ‘Babel’ and ‘babble’ are two different words in English: ‘Babbling’ is what babies do when they begin to speak; they make unclear sounds and they try to make words – babbling. And we also speak about water babbling, making a pleasant sound as if it is speaking or singing, but the words are not clear.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Into the body’s many-storeyed rooms
Endless crowd down the dream-god’s messages.
All is a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir,
There is a tireless running to and fro,
A haste of movement and a ceaseless cry.

The instructions of the mind, ‘the dream-god’s messages’ crowd down endlessly from the brain ‘Into the body’s many-storeyed rooms’. The word ‘storey’ means a level of a building. A block of flats or offices may have many storeys, so that it is ‘many- storeyed’. Our body is like that: it has many different levels and on each level there are many rooms, all the different parts and cells of the body. The ‘messages’ from the ‘dream-god’, the mind consciousness, are always crowing down into all the parts of our body. We are not normally aware of that, but nowadays biologists are telling us that whatever movement happens in your mind affects the cells of your body. The mind’s messages are moving ‘to and fro’ everywhere so that throughout the body there is ‘a hundred-toned murmur and babble and stir’ of many varied voices and movements: here is the word ‘babble’ which we mentioned along with the word ‘babel’ in the previous sentence. These messengers and messages, they are moving quickly around, tirelessly ‘running to and fro’, so that there is a never-ending ‘haste of movement and a ceaseless cry’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The hurried servant senses answer apace
To every knock upon the outer doors,
Bring in time’s visitors, report each call,
Admit the thousand queries and the calls
And the messages of communicating minds
And the heavy business of unnumbered lives
And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.

Our senses are servants of the mind and body, keeping us informed about all the many things that are going on around us, so they are running around in this house of the body. Like servants in a big house, they have to answer ‘apace’ – an old- fashioned word meaning ‘quickly’ – to ‘every knock upon the outer doors’: every sound that we hear; everything that we see or smell, every touch or taste is a message, and the senses carry those messages inside, keeping us informed. Those diligent servants, the senses, report each call and ‘admit’ or allow in the many ‘queries’ and messages from other minds that want to enter. They also report to us about ‘the heavy business of unnumbered lives’: we feel protected and private inside our skin and often do not notice how much we are being affected by the lives around us, not only those in our immediate neighbourhood, but the lives all around the world, the ‘unnumbered lives’, ‘And all the thousandfold commerce of the world’: all the interactions that are going on all the time around us are communicated to us by the senses and affect our bodies and our minds.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;
He mocks life’s steps in strange subconscient dreams,
He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes,
His night with thin-air visions and dim forms
He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes
And only a moment spends in silent Self.

Here again this ‘he’ is the mind. He hardly rests; ‘scant’ means ‘very little’ or ‘not enough’. Even in the ‘tracts’ or realms of sleep, the mind does not get much rest. The mind is mocking or imitating the happenings of the life in ‘strange subconscient dreams’ which reflect or are prompted by things we have seen or experienced during the day. ‘He strays in a subtle realm of symbol scenes’. ‘To stray’ means ‘to wander’, to roam here and there without having any fixed direction or goal or purpose; in sleep the mind sometimes wanders around among symbolic scenes and happenings. The mind fills the hours of our night-time rest with ‘thin-air visions and dim forms’ or ‘slight drifting shapes’ – tenuous and unreal shapes and forms and happenings. During a whole night’s sleep of eight or nine hours, ‘only a moment’ is spent ‘in silent Self’. The Mother has told us that one of the reasons why we have to sleep for such a long time is that the mind can fall silent for just a moment or two and allow the soul to be in contact with its origin. That contact may only last a moment or two, but if it does not happen we wake up feeling a need to go back to sleep again because the purpose of our sleep has not been satisfied.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book, 7]   

This is the little surface of man’s life.
He is this and he is all the universe;
He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;
A whole mysterious world is locked within.

The mind which goes wandering and adventuring and spends only a moment in silent Self is our surface mind, which is aware only of the limited surface of our human life. But Mind can also be aware of much more. He can become aware of being the entire universe. The human being is sometimes referred to as ‘the microcosm’, meaning a small representation of the whole manifestation. It is all contained within us. That is why we can have access to all the different levels of it. I think that here when the poet says ‘he’, the reference has changed: it is not just to the mind, but to Man, the mental being: ‘He is this and he is all the universe’. ‘To scale’ means ‘to climb up’: we scale a mountain, and some daring people even try to scale tall buildings. A human being can scale or climb up to the highest levels of ‘the Unseen’, the invisible worlds and his deeper parts, ‘his depths dare the Abyss’. In a physical sense ‘the abyss’ is the deepest part of the ocean; but when Sri Aurobindo writes it like this with a capital A, he means the Abyss of the subtle universe: its very deepest darkest levels. It requires courage to go there. ‘To dare’ means to be willing to do something very difficult or dangerous. For each human being, ‘A whole mysterious world is locked within’: normally we are limited to our surface personality, but locked up within us are mysterious realms that we usually do not contact; we do not know anything about them.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king
Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;
An epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,
He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:

Our true self is living deep within us, but we do not know him. He is the king who should be the ruler of our nature, but he is hidden from us. He is allowing the ‘vicegerent’ or ‘regent’ to rule for him, dealing with the outer nature in place of him. He lives ‘Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms’ hidden deep within us. In the olden days, kings and wealthy people used to cover the bare stone walls of their castles and palaces with ‘tapestries’: cloths woven or embroidered with beautiful pictures. For over 500 years or so, that was the finest form of art in Europe: the art of weaving these beautiful pictures which wealthy people would hang on the walls of their rooms. The tapestries would keep the rooms quiet and warm and the people would be surrounded by all these wonderful pictures. Our soul is living inside us like that: surrounded by splendid pictures and protected from the outside world: nobody even knows that he is there. Sri Aurobindo says that he is ‘An epicure’ – one who enjoys the delights of the senses with a refined aesthetic sense. The soul enjoys ‘the spirit’s unseen joys’: the secret joys and delights of the spirit, – very different from the sensual delights that an outer epicure relishes. ‘He lives on the sweet honey of solitude’. That is how he nourishes himself: on the delight of being alone: ‘solitude’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God.

Then comes this wonderful line, ‘Man in the world’s life works out the dreams of God’. That is what we human beings are doing whether we know it or not; usually we do not know it. But that is what we are here for. That is what these evolving conscious beings are here for. That is what our souls have accepted: to come here and live under the domination of Matter in order to work out ‘the dreams of God’ in the life of the evolving universe. Each of us is a centre of God’s working; and if we consciously become that, then we can be useful and effective instruments for his work – willing servitors of the Divine Consciousness. Otherwise he just does as much as he can with this crude unconscious tool.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn
Lie bound in the subconscient’s cavern pit
And the Beast grovels in his antre den:
Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.

Here some of those dangerous forces are named: ‘The Titan’: the oversized ego; ‘the Fury’: the violent spirit of revenge; and ‘the Djinn’: the powerful vital spirit or ‘genie’, who can be helpful as long as you have him under control, but who may also betray and destroy you; they are all lying, tied or chained up, in the deep ‘cavern pit’ of the subconscient. Our primitive animal nature is also lying there in its den, which is an ‘antre’, a cave. Those dreadful forces may be asleep, drowsing, but they mutter and murmur in their sleep, and those terrible sounds may rise up and reach our more conscious parts.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The dreadful powers held down within his depths
Become his masters or his ministers;
Enormous they invade his bodily house,
Can act in his acts, infest his thought and life.

When these ‘dreadful powers’ which the human being has been keeping suppressed ‘within his depths’ rise up in rebellion and gain control over his consciousness, becoming ‘his masters or his ministers’ – controlling or advising him, or acting on his behalf – with their huge size and power ‘they invade his bodily house’, taking over his body, his physical being, they can make him their instrument or puppet, acting through his actions; and they can ‘infest’ or poison ‘his thought and life’.

[Shradhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Grey forces like a thin miasma creep,
Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,
Discolouring the walls of upper mind
In which he lives his fair and specious life,
And leave behind a stench of sin and death:

Shadowy ‘Grey forces’ flow like a ‘miasma’ or poisonous gas, creeping unnoticed into the being through ‘chinks’ or little cracks in his defensive doors. They leave ugly stains on the walls of the upper mind-rooms where he lives ‘his fair and specious life’. His life may seem pure and beautiful, but it is ‘specious’, which means ‘misleading’ or ‘deceptive’: his life is not as pure as he believes, and the ‘Grey forces’ which creep into his ‘upper mind’ leave there ‘a stench’, a strong bad smell ‘of sin and death’: the odour of corruption.

[Shraddhvan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

All they have touched or seen they make their own,
In Nature’s basement lodge, mind’s passages fill,
Disrupt thought’s links and musing sequences,
Break through the soul’s stillness with a noise and cry
Or they call the inhabitants of the abyss,
Invite the instincts to forbidden joys,
A laughter wake of dread demoniac mirth
And with nether riot and revel shake life’s floor.

Once those powers and beings, rising up from the darkest and most twisted levels of universal nature, have invaded a person, they can possess him, making whatever part of him ‘they have touched or seen … their own’. They install themselves in ‘Nature’s basement’. A ‘basement’ is the lowest underground level of a building; the adverse powers occupy the lowest levels of man’s being and from there move around in his ‘mind’s passages’, cutting into his trains of thought and disturbing them, even breaking into ‘the soul’s stillness’ with ‘a noise and cry’. Or they call in other beings from the dark depths, ‘the inhabitants of the abyss’, as if inviting the lower instincts to indulge in ‘forbidden joys’. It is as if a crowd of evil strangers have invaded his home and are holding a wild party there, with their loud laughter of ‘dread demoniac mirth’, shaking the house to its foundations with their uncontrollable ‘riot and revel’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Impotent to quell his terrible prisoners,
Appalled the householder helpless sits above,
Taken from him his house is his no more.

The householder, the individual soul to whom the body belongs, is helpless, ‘Impotent’. The dark powers and beings which were imprisoned in the depths of his lower nature have broken out and overrun his whole being: he can no longer ‘quell’ them; he has no power to keep them quiet and under control. They have taken possession of ‘his house’, his body and individualised consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Once quelled or wearing specious names and vests
Infernal elements, demon powers are there.
Man’s lower nature hides these awful guests.
Their vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.
An awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.

There are ‘demon powers’ and ‘Infernal elements’ in universal nature: evil forces and hellish beings. They are usually ‘quelled’, kept under control, or disguised and covered up with deceptive ‘names and vests’: labels and clothing. These ‘awful guests’ are hidden in the lower human nature and sometimes their poisonous influence can spread and take possession of the human world: ‘Their vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world’; then they can rise up and overpower the human soul. For example, we can think of terrible periods in human history, such as the time of Hitler’s domination in Europe in the last century or of Pol Pot in Cambodia. We give the names of human leaders to these disastrous periods, but really they were controlled by those ‘Infernal elements’ and ‘demon powers’. Sri Aurobindo continues his description of such terrifying times:

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth;
The terrible Angel smites at every door:
An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
All is the prey of the destroying force;
Creation rocks and tremble top and base.

Then Death spreads through the world; the whole earth becomes his victim. The ‘terrible Angel’ of death knocks at every door – no house is spared; and those hellish elements are enjoying and making fun of all the suffering; they defy Heaven, grinning gleefully as they spread their ‘massacre and torture’. Then it seems as if the whole world is ‘the prey of the destroying force’, the whole Creation rocks as if in an earthquake, and its highest levels as well as its base are shaken.

This evil Nature housed in human hearts,
A foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
Expel the householder, possess the house.

This ‘evil Nature’ which lodges in human hearts is a foreigner, ‘a dangerous guest’; but if anyone allows it into his soul, it can drive the soul out, dislodge the ‘householder’, the owner of the house, and take possession of his ‘house’, his body and his Individuality.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

It imitates the Godhead it denies,
Puts on his figure and assumes his face.
A Manichean creator and destroyer,
This can abolish man, annul his world.

That ‘momentary Evil’s almightiness’ is denying and opposing God, but for a time, it ‘imitates the Godhead it denies’ – looks like him and seems to be the divine ruler, with the power to wipe out the entire human race and destroy the human world. Sri Aurobindo characterises it as ‘A Manichean creator and destroyer’: the adjective ‘Manichean’ refers to an old teaching that the creation is ruled by two equal powers of light and darkness, or good and evil.

But there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.

But Sri Aurobindo gives us the assurance that this power of darkness will not destroy the world. Everything that happens to mankind is being watched by ‘Calm eyes divine’ and there is a ‘guardian power’ that protects; ‘there are Hands that save’: even in the darkest days, the divine purpose will be ensured.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]