At the end of Canto Two, we saw Savitri realising that in order to find and unite with her soul, ‘The inferior nature born into ignorance … must be pushed aside’. When she concentrates and tries to do that, this is the first thing that she experiences:

At first out of the busy hum of mind
As if from a loud thronged market into a cave
By an inward moment’s magic she had come.

Everyone who has ever looked into themselves and tried to become aware of what is happening within themselves is familiar with ‘the busy hum of mind’ that is going on inside their heads; but when Savitri concentrates in obedience to the command of that Voice from her summits, her mind falls silent and she feels as if she had magically moved out of a crowded noisy ‘market’ into a silent, empty cave. That seems to have happened by ‘an inward moment’s magic’. When we start searching for our soul, we might receive some help of that kind: some peace or silence or some unusual experience might come to us unexpectedly. Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have referred to the ordinary surface mind as a marketplace, a bazaar where many thoughts and voices are constantly coming and going, interacting and exchanging, but now this changes for Savitri.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

We too may have experienced something like this: we get into a deep concentration, but when we emerge from it, nothing seems to have changed; we are just the same as we were before entering into that other state. When Savitri returns to her normal mental state, ‘her self of thought’, she finds herself just as before, ‘a human thing on earth’. Her body is only ‘A lump of Matter’, ‘a house of closed sight’ with no power of inner vision; her mind, like ours, is being ‘compelled to think out ignorance’. She feels the ‘life-force’ of her body being ‘pressed into a camp of works’, forced into ceaseless activity, unable to stop, and experiences that her whole being is limited, restricted, to the ‘material world’, with no contact to any higher or deeper Possibility.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The same Voice from above, dwelling ‘on secret heights’, tells her “You have not undertaken this search, this quest, for yourself alone: you are doing this on behalf of humanity as a whole, ‘For man’, for the human race. You are divine, but you have accepted a human birth, accepted the limitations of the human mind, covering up your divine consciousness with a cloak of ‘mortal ignorance’, because that is the only way to help human beings to develop into ‘the God’ they are carrying within them. ‘Only if God … makes himself the Dwarf with triple stride / Can he help man to grow into the God’. Here is an allusion to a story about one of the ten avatars of Lord Vishnu, in fact the first avatar in a human form, but as a ‘Dwarf’, a small human being, Vamana. Lord Vishnu comes to earth in this form to teach a lesson to an earthly king called Mahabali. Though Mahabali was a very good and benevolent king a little conceit got into his head. To set this right, Vamana, dressed as a Brahmin, approached the king, who was at that time conducting a very elaborate yagna, a sacrificial ritual. For such a function it was customary to receive visitors or guests, and especially Brahmins, to the place of yagna and to grant them any boon that they might ask for. When King Mahabali politely asked Vamana what he would accept as gift, Vamana asked to be granted as much land as he could cover in three strides. The King was surprised: how much land can such a small person cover in only three steps? He said “yes” without any hesitation. Then that little dwarf, who was actually Lord Vishnu in disguise, started to grow in size: with his first step he covered the whole earth; with the second he covered all the heavens and the other worlds. Then he turned to the king and said, “Now where can I put my foot next?” Mahabali realised his mistake and was purified of all his pride. With all humility he bowed before the Lord and pleaded, “Could you once again become that dwarf and put your foot on my head so that I don’t have to go back on my word?” Thus he totally surrendered to the Divine. This is the story of ‘the Dwarf with triple stride’: the Divine disguises himself as a small, helpless, ordinary human being; but what he demands is everything, for in fact it all really belongs to him. This is what Savitri has done too, in fact. She is an emanation or projection of the supreme Divine Mother, but she has taken on the guise of a human being; and now she is being told that in order to fulfil her mission of helping humanity to grow into its true divine Self, she will have to go through the whole process of discovering her soul as a human being.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

‘The cosmic Greatness works’ ‘disguised’ as a human being, and in that human form ‘finds the mystic inaccessible gate’ which is very difficult to reach and enter, and ‘opens the Immortal’s golden door’: the way to the immortal state. Only when that has been done, can human beings follow in the ‘human steps’ that God has taken in the human form.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Inspired by this command of the Voice from above, Savitri is able to exteriorise her consciousness from her body: she ‘surged out of her body’s wall’, our of the barrier of her physical body, to stand a little way outside it, and from there she ‘looked into her subtle being’s depths’, the deeper inner levels of her being. There, she ‘Divined her secret and mysterious soul’: she senses that her ‘soul’ is there deep within the heart of the subtle being, as if in the centre of a closed ‘lotus-bud’. We have met the word ‘to divine’ before: it means ‘to sense the presence of something hidden, such as underground water or metals, not by using any of the outer senses such as touch or sight or hearing, but in a subtle way, more directly and Intuitively.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri,Book 7]

The living portal groaned with sullen hinge:
Heavily reluctant it complained inert
Against the tyranny of the spirit’s touch.

This ‘ebony gate’ marks a borderline between our material being, our physical body, and the subtler levels within; so this ‘dim portal’ must actually be a subtle centre somewhere in our body. Here the poet calls it a ‘living portal’. In response to the pressure of Savitri’s will, it ‘complained’, because it is ‘inert’ and does not want to move. It ‘groaned with sullen hinge’, as if the door has not been opened for a long time and the hinges have become rusty, so that they make a noise. The door is reluctant to open; it does not want to move. Anything that is ‘sullen’ is in a bad mood, unresponsive, unwilling to do what is asked. This living door is complaining about ‘the spirit’s touch’. It feels the pressure of Savitri’s spirit on it, insisting on being allowed to pass through, but that ‘living portal’ experiences her pressure as a ‘tyranny’, an unreasonable authoritarian demand. A ‘tyrant’ is a despot, a dictator, a ruler who does not care about his subjects; since they feel oppressed, they are sullen, rebellious and unwilling to fulfil his commands. The ‘living portal’ to the inner realms seems to feel like that, as if it is asking, “Why are you disturbing me?”

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A formidable voice cried from within:
“Back, creature of earth, lest tortured and torn thou die.”
A dreadful murmur rose like a dim sea;
The Serpent of the threshold hissing rose,
A fatal guardian hood with monstrous coils,
The hounds of darkness growled with jaws agape,
And trolls and gnomes and goblins scowled and stared
And wild beast roarings thrilled the blood with fear
And menace muttered in a dangerous tongue.

Savitri hears a ‘formidable’, powerful and terrifying ‘voice’ calling out from inside the door, telling her, “You are a ‘creature of earth’; you are made of matter. Go away! If you try to enter here you will suffer terribly and die.” That is what this door does: it keeps out all our material parts. You might have noticed that if you begin to approach the inner worlds, you get a warning like that. Something warns you, some fear suggests that it is dangerous to go further: It is dangerous for our material parts, but not necessarily for our spirit. Savitri hears a threatening sound, ‘A dreadful murmur’ rising up ‘like a dim sea’, a ‘sea’ of darkness. This doorway is guarded by a ‘Serpent’. Inner doorways are often guarded by serpents, guardian energies which show themselves in a threatening form in order to protect the secret entries that they are guarding. This one is ‘The Serpent of the threshold’, guarding the entrance to the inner realms. It will not allow anyone to pass without a challenge. It rises up like a gigantic cobra, ‘hissing’, showing that it is ‘fatal’ and can kill. It spreads its ‘hood’ like a cobra and shows its ‘monstrous coils’; it is huge. In addition to the Serpent, this threshold is guarded by fierce hunting dogs, ‘hounds of darkness’ who growl with their ‘jaws agape’: open and threatening to bite. There are also ugly beings of the inner worlds, ‘trolls and gnomes and goblins’ who ‘scowled and stared’, frowning fiercely. ‘Trolls’ are creatures from Nordic mythology: during the day they look like boulders and stones but at night they can move around and if they get hold of you, they may eat you. ‘Gnomes’ are magical beings who live underground and fiercely protect their caves; ‘goblins’ are also mischievous and frightening beings who live in caves. All these beings are normally hostile and unfriendly to humans. Savitri can hear ‘roarings’ as of fierce wild beasts such as lions and tigers; these roars are meant to be frightening, to send chills of fear through the whole body; and she can also hear threats: ‘menace muttered in a dangerous tongue’, trying to convince her that she is in great danger now. Maybe here the word ‘tongue’ is used in the sense of a language. Sometimes we speak about ‘foreign tongues’ meaning ‘foreign languages’. Threats are being made to Savitri in a language that sounds very ‘dangerous’ or conveys danger. This is the kind of warning that can come when we want to enter into the subtle realms within the body.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

In a narrow passage, the subconscient’s gate,
She breathed with difficulty and pain and strove
To find the inner self concealed in sense.
Into a dense of subtle Matter packed,
A cavity filled with a blind mass of power,
An opposition of misleading gleams,
A heavy barrier of unseeing sight,
She forced her way through body to the soul.

To reach her soul, which she has sensed inhabiting the physical body, hidden in the depths of the heart, Savitri has to pass through ‘a narrow passage, the subconscient’s gate’. Our normal consciousness is not at all aware of many things that are going on inside our bodies – they lie in a realm that is not usually within the reach of our mind. We call that realm ‘the subconscient’, because it is below the reach of our normal awareness. The body does all the things that it has to do without the mind having to issue any conscious instructions. There is a narrow passage into that subconscient state. Savitri passes through and enters that realm, but finds that it is very painful and difficult to breathe there. What she is trying to do is ‘To find the inner self’, the Divine Presence, which is hidden in the senses – ‘concealed in sense’, in the nerves perhaps. Compared with matter, mind can move freely. But here in the subconscient, Savitri finds her consciousness being ‘packed’, pressed, ‘Into a dense of subtle Matter’; there is also a ‘cavity’, a hole or emptiness, but that ‘cavity’ is ‘filled with a blind mass of power’; and that ‘blind mass of power’ is opposing her. It is trying to prevent her from moving forward to her goal. One way that it does that is by ‘misleading gleams’: small gleams of light may appear here and there, but they are ‘misleading’, deceptive, and do not show any way forward; this subconscient realm also presents a ‘heavy barrier of unseeing sight’ in which nothing can be seen clearly. But in spite of all this opposition, Savitri continues to force her way ‘through body to the soul’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

At last she broke into a form of things,
A start of finiteness, a world of sense:
But all was still confused, nothing self-found.
Soul was not there but only cries of life.

After going through all this for some time, at last Savitri breaks through into a realm where there is some ‘form’, some shape and order: ‘A start of finiteness’. The infinite is formless, unlimited; the finite is limited. In the realm of the finite, there are forms which are more or less fixed. They are not permanent, very far from eternal, but still they last for some time. She arrives at a place where fairly stable forms begin to appear. She has entered into ‘a world of sense’. Even very simple and primitive life forms can sense things. They can sense that there is light in one direction and darkness in another direction, and can respond and move towards what they prefer; or they sense that the water they are in is more salty in one direction and less salty in the other and move towards the conditions that are more favourable to them. This ability to sense the environment is a life-reaction to the touch of things which does not seem to exist in pure matter. The senses are a manifestation of life. But in that world of sensations, ‘all was still confused, nothing self-found’. The entities there did not seem to know where they were or where they should be. No guiding soul had yet emerged: ‘Soul was not there but only cries of life’ – the first blind movements of life just emerging into a primitive form of consciousness.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

So could life’s power shake from it mind’s rule,
Nature renounce the spirit’s government
And the bare elemental energies
Make of the sense a glory of boundless joy,
A splendour of ecstatic anarchy,
A revel mighty and mad of utter bliss.

If the reason could be dislodged, the life-power could ‘shake from it mind’s rule’ and go its own way uncontrolled by any higher light. ‘Nature’ could ‘renounce’, throw away, ‘the spirit’s government’. The spirit is governing ‘Nature’ through the controlling reason; if reason could be dislodged and killed, then the senses would be free to enjoy themselves in a ‘splendour of ecstatic anarchy’ – without any restriction or control. This is what they want. ‘Anarchy’ is a state where there is no ruler; they feel that if they can get free of ‘the spirit’s government’, they will be able to enjoy ‘A revel mighty and mad of utter bliss.’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

But how shall come the glory and the flame
If mind is cast away into the abyss?
For body without mind has not the light,
The rapture of spirit sense, the joy of life;
All then becomes subconscient, tenebrous,
Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page
Or else a mad disorder whirls the brain
Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads,
A chaos of disordered impulses
In which no light can come, no joy, no peace.

The senses have the ‘instinct’ to get rid of the control of the mind, the reason, so that they can be free to enjoy ‘utter bliss’. But, as Sri Aurobindo points out, ‘how shall come the glory and the flame / If mind is cast away into the abyss?’ ‘Body without mind’ does not have ‘the light’ of consciousness with which to experience ‘The rapture of spirit sense, the joy of life’. It does not have the delight of the ‘spirit sense’. It does not have ‘the joy of life’. ‘If mind is cast away’, everything becomes ‘subconscient, tenebrous’. There is no more capacity to enjoy anything. ‘Tenebrous’ means ‘shadowy’. In that case, ‘Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page’, sealing everything up so that nothing can be experienced at all. Or else the poor brain just gets carried away in ‘a mad disorder’, ‘Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads’. Nowadays we send letters by airmail or even e-mail, but there was a time when they had to be carried by a messenger on horseback or in a horse-drawn carriage. To get the letters delivered as quickly as possible the horses were driven very quickly; that is called ‘Posting’: travelling as fast as possible. In the process the roads would get rutted and spoiled, especially in rainy weather. When ‘a mad disorder whirls the brain’, the individual nature gets ‘ravaged’, seriously damaged by a ‘chaos of disordered impulses’ all pushing their own way through it uncontrolled. In that state, ‘no light can come’, no consciousness, no awareness, ‘no joy, no peace’. It is truly a terrible state.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will
And fixed her thought upon the saviour Name;
Then all grew still and empty; she was free.
A large deliverance came, a vast calm space.

Finally she is able to drag ‘her will’ ‘Out of the dreadful press’ and to concentrate on ‘the saviour Name’. Sri Aurobindo does not tell us what that ‘saviour Name’ was. It may be different for different people: it is the name we use when we sincerely turn to the sovereign Power, the ultimate Truth. When Savitri concentrates on the Name which for her has that saving power, then everything calms down: ‘all grew still and empty’. The pressing rushing crowd vanishes and Savitri experiences a wonderful feeling of freedom and ‘large deliverance’. She senses around her ‘a vast calm space’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Into the stillness of her silent self,
Into the whiteness of its muse of Space
A spate, a torrent of the speed of Life
Broke like a wind-lashed driven mob of waves
Racing on a pale floor of summer sand;
It drowned its banks, a mountain of climbing waves.

‘Into the stillness’ of Savitri’s ‘silent self’, ‘Into the whiteness’, the purity and peace of her sense of calm and blissful inner ‘Space’, this flood of Life-Force rushes like ‘A spate, a torrent’, as if a dam had broken and suddenly into a peaceful landscape came pouring a powerful rush of water, sweeping everything before it. I have seen this happen once in the desert: snow had melted on some distant hills, and where everything had been quiet and peaceful, a huge flood came rushing down through a dry valley, breaking the banks and bursting out on every side. This torrent of Life-Force ‘Broke like a wind-lashed driven mob of waves’. Here we have the word ‘mob’ again, this time to evoke an uncontrolled rush of waves being driven by the wind to go faster and faster. This flood is racing swiftly along over a dry bed of peaceful smooth, ‘summer sand’ and breaking down the banks, like ‘a mountain of climbing waves’. If a dam breaks or is opened without warning, a tremendous rush of water will suddenly burst out, and that is very Dangerous.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A deaf force calling to a status dumb,
A thousand voices in a muted Vast,
It claimed the heart’s support for its clutch at joy,
For its need to act the witness Soul’s consent,
For its lust of power her neutral being’s seal.

This ‘force’ is ‘deaf’. It will not hear or listen to anybody or anything; and it is calling out to a static self which does not respond. Using many voices in the silent vastness of that dumb state it is making its claims: it demands ‘the heart’s support for its clutch at joy’: that powerful Life-Force wants to grasp joy, and it wants Savitri’s heart to accept and support that demand. It also claims ‘the witness Soul’s consent’ for ‘its need to act’: it is demanding the consent of the soul for its dynamic drive: it should be allowed to act freely and do whatever it wants; and it is claiming from Savitri’s ‘neutral being’ a seal of approval for its uncontrolled and unlimited ‘lust of power‘.

What we have been reading about so far are the psychological experiences which come to Savitri as she begins to enter ‘the Inner Countries’ and penetrates into the subconscious areas of her being. We have read about three different stages. First as she forces her way into the subtle substance of the body, she feels oppressed by its density, swarming with small elemental entities. Then she is able to break through into the slightly less dense and more conscious realm of sensations, where she encounters the pure sensual instincts which feel that if they are free from the control of mind they will have ‘bliss’ – that was the crowd which was driving her along with it along that packed street; and when that has been overcome, next approaches this gigantic uncontrolled Life- Force demanding the support of the heart, the soul and the spirit for its drive to enjoy, to do whatever it wants, which is much more powerful than the urge of the senses for freedom. It is also looking for delight, for ecstasy, and demanding the sanction of the being for its free flow of emotion.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Out of the nether unseen deeps it tore
Its lure and magic of disordered bliss,
Into earth-light poured its maze of tangled charm
And heady draught of Nature’s primitive joy
And the fire and mystery of forbidden delight
Drunk from the world-libido’s bottomless well,
And the honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death,
But dreamed a vintage of glory of life’s gods,
And felt as celestial rapture’s golden sting.

The Life-Force is always in search of delight in many different forms. It is calling to the higher levels of existence, but it also tears out of the lower ‘unseen deeps’, ‘Its lure’, or power of attraction, and its ‘magic of disordered bliss’. In the lower levels, the ‘bliss’ is ‘disordered’, chaotic, not the calm delight of the higher consciousness. It seizes these things from below and pours them out into the ‘earth-light’ in a ‘maze of tangled charm’. A ‘maze’ is a labyrinth, a very complicated puzzle that you can walk into and wander around in, but then it is very difficult to find your way out, because the paths are ‘tangled’: intertwining and interconnected, so that you cannot keep track of them and get lost in their entanglement. Life is like that: a labyrinth, a ‘maze’ which amazes us with its ‘tangled charm’, its enchanting complex confusions. Life also brings up from the depths and pours out into the ‘earth-light’ its ‘heady draught of Nature’s primitive joy’. A ‘heady draught’ is a drink that intoxicates you: it makes your head swirl round and round. ‘Nature’s primitive joy’ must mean a joy that belongs to the early stages of evolution, such as the predator’s joy in catching and devouring its prey. It also brings ‘the fire and mystery of forbidden delight’, the intensity and allure of experiences that we feel that we should not be delighting in. This ‘draught’ is ‘Drunk from the world-libido’s bottomless well’; ‘libido’ is a technical term used by psychologists for the sexual urge, the sensual pleasure-loving part of us. It offers the ‘honey-sweet poison-wine of lust and death’ which attracts us by its sweetness but is poisonous; ‘lust’ is the intense desire for sexual possession and enjoyment which can be destructive and deathly, although we may be deluded into feeling that it is ‘a vintage of glory’, an exceptionally fine wine with a refined and wonderful flavour, fit for the gods. Its taste is experienced as the ‘golden sting’ of ‘celestial rapture’. We may think that this ‘honey-sweet poison-wine’ is ‘a vintage of glory’ coming from the ‘gods’ of life, and experience its effect as a heavenly rapture but it has a ‘sting’ in its tail that can be fatal.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri,Book 7]

The cycles of the infinity of desire
And the mystique that made an unrealised world
Wider than the known and closer than the unknown
In which hunt for ever the hounds of mind and life,
Tempted a deep dissatisfied urge within
To long for the unfulfilled and ever far
And make this life upon a limiting earth
A climb towards summits vanishing in the void,
A search for the glory of the impossible.

This is an aspect of the unsatisfied ‘hungry cry’ of life. Desire is infinite, and repeats itself in cycles, circling repetitive movements that are endless and can never be satisfied. That ‘infinity of desire’, combines with the ‘mystique’, the mysterious and magical power that has created ‘an unrealised world’, a subtle world which seems always just out of reach, a world that is ‘Wider than the known and closer than the unknown’ meaning that ‘mind and life’ are forever running after something, trying to catch something, like ‘hounds’, hunting dogs. That ever-unsatisfied hunt tempts or attracts some ‘deep dissatisfied urge within’, on the inner levels ‘To long for the unfulfilled and ever far’: it arouses a yearning to ‘make this life upon a limiting earth’ into ‘A climb towards summits vanishing in the void’: heights that rise up so high that their tops cannot be seen, they seem to dissolve into emptiness, ‘vanishing in the void’. In human beings these vital movements lead us to aspire and search for ‘the glory of the impossible’

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A trenchant blade that shore the nets of doubt,
Its sword of discernment seemed almost divine.
Yet all that knowledge was a borrowed sun’s;
The forms that came were not heaven’s native births:
An inner voice could speak the unreal’s Word;
Its puissance dangerous and absolute
Could mingle poison with the wine of God.

Under the influence of the vital urge, the mind develops a ‘trenchant blade’ – a very sharp edge that can cut through ‘the nets of doubt’ and give an absolute conviction – just when we should be most sceptical and discriminating. ‘Its sword of discernment seemed almost divine’: the power of true discernment can tell the difference between what is true and what is false; but what the mind develops under the influence of the vital urges is not the true divine discernment, but only an imitation of it. The poet tells us that the impressive effect of divine knowledge that the life-urge brings to the mind is only ‘a borrowed sun’s’: ‘The forms that came were not heaven’s native births’: they do not really come from the higher levels of consciousness, but are born elsewhere. This ‘inner voice’ might not be telling the Truth, it might instead be speaking ‘the unreal’s Word’ and be very misleading. When that deceptive voice imitates the divine ‘ictus of infallibility’ it becomes extremely dangerous. It may seem very powerful, even ‘absolute’, but that power can ‘mingle poison with the wine of God’: under the misleading influence of vital enthusiasm and ardour, we may believe that we are drinking ‘the wine of God’, and not realise that our consciousness is being poisoned. That is unfortunately the problem with these very strong, convincing life-impulses.

In spiritual life we need to develop discernment, to distinguish what comes from the soul or from above, and what is coming from other sources. When the Mother was asked “How can we tell?” she said that we must learn to discern the difference in quality: if a suggestion is coming from the life-force, it is very strong and urgent; it insists that no doubt is possible and demands that you follow it. The voice of the soul on the other hand is always very quiet and undemanding and just gently points things out – so quietly that the enthusiastic vital being may not pay any attention to it. We need to learn to notice this difference. If the life-urge gets hold of our mind and our reason and makes us feel absolutely sure about something, then we should pause a moment and ask, “Am I really so sure? If I listen very quietly, what does my soul say?” That is difficult when we are being carried along by the powerful flood of life-impulses. The most important thing to learn is to be able to recognise the different voices; the vital voices are very clever at imitating the divine voices.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

On these high shining backs falsehood could ride;
Truth lay with delight in error’s passionate arms
Gliding downstream in a blithe gilded barge:
She edged her ray with a magnificent lie.

The poet returns to his image of the life-impulses as beautiful winged horses, and he warns us that ‘falsehood’ may be riding them, not Truth. In that flood of life-forces Truth may be carried away by them too. He gives us a picture of Truth as a beautiful queen, gliding down a river in a lovely ‘gilded barge’, a pleasure-boat, with her lover; they are allowing themselves to be carried ‘downstream’ by the current, away from the goal, perhaps to some dangerous rapids where the boat will be destroyed, for she has surrendered to the ‘passionate arms’ of error, and so the lovely light of Truth gets distorted by ‘a magnificent lie’: it may look very imposing and glorious, but it is still a lie, a falsehood. This passage is reminiscent of some lines in Shakespeare’s tragic play Antony and Cleopatra, where he describes Queen Cleopatra sailing on the Nile in a beautiful golden barge with her lover Antony.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Or they enter the valley of the wandering Gleam
Whence, captives or victims of the specious Ray,
Souls trapped in that region never can escape.

Those vital horses may carry us into ‘the valley of the wandering Gleam’, which is very closely connected with the ‘dangerous intermediate zone’. A ‘Gleam’ is a soft light, but this is a ‘wandering Gleam’: not a steady light but a shifting unreliable one. You cannot take your bearings according to that wandering illusive light. If you follow it, you are in danger of getting completely lost. The poet warns us that in that valley the soul can be captured by or become a victim of ‘the specious Ray’ – a light which looks very beautiful, but is misleading, deceptive. Once a soul has become ‘trapped in that region’ it can never escape. That unreal, illusory world can be very attractive. I have known people who got trapped there. I hope that one day, by the Lord’s Grace, they will be rescued. People may begin to have inner experiences and perhaps they have some ambition or they are not very clear and discriminating in their minds. They follow that ‘wandering Gleam’, that ‘specious Ray’, and imagine that they are having wonderful spiritual experiences, but actually they are just lost. It is very painful to see and to know that this can happen.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Yet some uncaught, unslain, can warily pass
Carrying Truth’s image in the sheltered heart,
Pluck Knowledge out of error’s screening grip,
Break paths through the blind walls of little self,
Then travel on to reach a greater life.

Nevertheless, some souls can pass through this dangerous zone without getting trapped or destroyed. They ‘can warily pass’, if they take great care and are aware of the dangers, if they are ‘Carrying Truth’s image’ carefully protected in their heart. In that case they can even win some true ‘Knowledge’ from the ‘screening grip’ of error, of falsehood. They may be able to ‘Break paths through the blind walls of little self’. One reason for getting ‘trapped’ in that place is the blindness and selfishness of the ‘little self’, but if they are carrying an image of the Truth treasured in the heart they can break a way through that ignorant littleness, and be able to ‘travel on to reach a greater life’, enriched by the Knowledge they have won while passing through that ‘dangerous intermediate zone’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

All now was still, the soil shone dry and pure.
Through it all she moved not, plunged not in the vain waves.
Out of the vastness of the silent self
Life’s clamour fled; her spirit was mute and free.

The gigantic dragon-torrent of life-energies has come and gone, and everything is peaceful again around Savitri. ‘The soil shone dry and pure’, as if there had never been such a tremendous flood. Through this whole experience she has not moved; she did not allow herself to be carried away by it, she did not plunge into ‘the vain waves’, those illusory impulses. All that tremendous disturbance of ‘Life’s clamour’ has passed through ‘the vastness of the silent self’ and fled away. Again ‘her spirit was mute and free’. There is no danger any more. Everything has becomes peaceful, because Savitri has been able to hold her ground and remain firm, observing but not carried away by the powerful flood of vital force which wanted to engulf her.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]