In the previous section, we saw Savitri entering the ‘Inner Countries’, the inner realms of her consciousness: first the subconscient material level, then the domain of the nerves and senses, and then encountering the full force of the vital level of feeling and emotion. She has avoided being carried away by the impulses of these lower levels of nature, and has remained free and tranquil in her central self and consciousness. Now we find her moving into another level, where the Life-force has been brought under the control of the mind.

Then journeying forward through the self’s wide hush
She came into a brilliant ordered Space.
There Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity;
A chain was on her strong insurgent heart.

Moving ‘forward through’ the ‘wide hush’, the silence of her self, Savitri comes to a ‘Space’ which is full of bright light, ‘brilliant’ and ‘ordered’ – in contrast to the forceful disorder of the flood of life-energies she has just experienced. In this new space, Savitri finds the life-principle living ‘parked in an armed tranquillity’. A park is an enclosed garden. This park is peaceful and tranquil, but only because it is protected by armed guards, and there the life-force is not allowed to move freely: the rebelliousness of her ‘strong insurgent heart’ with its wild enthusiastic impulses is being kept on a chain, like a wild animal that has been caught and restrained.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Her will lived closed in adamant walls of law,
Coerced was her force by chains that feigned to adorn,
Imagination was prisoned in a fort,
Her wanton and licentious favourite;

Under the control of reason, Life’s will lives as if in a prison, ‘closed in adamant walls of law’; ‘adamant’ means ’extremely strong’. Her force is ‘Coerced’, kept under control, by ‘chains that feigned to adorn’: these chains may look like beautiful ornaments, but they prevent her from moving freely. Life’s ‘favourite’, the one that she loves best, her best friend or her lover, ‘Imagination’, gets imprisoned in a fortress because he is too undisciplined: he is considered to be ‘wanton and licentious’, frivolous and addicted to sensual pleasures.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Reality’s poise and reason’s symmetry
Were set in its place sentinelled by marshalled facts,
They gave to the soul for throne a bench of Law,
For kingdom a small world of rule and line:
The ages’ wisdom, shrivelled to scholiast lines,
Shrank patterned into a copy-book device.

Life’s beloved friend ‘Imagination’ has been ‘prisoned in a fort’ and replaced by ‘Reality’s poise and reason’s symmetry’: everything is balanced according to the order that the reason gives, and ‘sentinelled’ or guarded by the ‘marshalled facts’ of reality. ‘Marshalled’ means arranged like soldiers, in orderly ranks. These powers of the reason give ‘to the soul for throne a bench of Law’. The soul is the true master of the being, but instead of the throne it deserves, ‘Reality’s poise and reason’s symmetry’ give it ‘a bench of Law’: a judge’s seat. A judge cannot rule as he fancies; his decisions are determined by man-made Laws. The soul’s kingdom becomes ‘a small world of rule and line’. Under this rule of reason dominated by material reality, all the wonderful spiritual or even higher mental discoveries that have been made in the course of human development – the wisdom of the ages – get ‘shrivelled to scholiast lines’. ‘Shrivelling’ is what happens to plants when they do not get enough water; they dry up and become brown and lose all their beauty. A ‘scholiast’ is neither a true scholar nor a sage, but merely a commentator or annotator, a person who is very precise about scholarly things but in a dull and uninspiring way: the wonderful blossoms of wisdom accumulated by humanity in the course of the ages do not find any nourishment in that atmosphere. They just dry up and shrink ‘into a copy-book device’: some wise saying that children are asked to copy when they are learning handwriting.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The Spirit’s almighty freedom was not here:
A schoolman mind had captured life’s large space,
But chose to live in bare and paltry rooms
Parked off from the too vast dangerous universe,
Fearing to lose its soul in the infinite.

When this narrow kind of thinking is dominant, ‘The Spirit’s almighty freedom’ will not be found in it. The realm that Savitri is now exploring is like that. The word ‘schoolman’ – used here as an adjective – suggests something which may happen to schoolmasters if they always have to teach very young children: by habit, they lose the deeper appreciation of the higher ideas they are teaching, so that what they teach becomes narrow and dry and meaningless. In the realm that Sri Aurobindo is describing here, this narrow and limited ‘schoolman mind’ has ‘captured’ the ‘large space’ of life, but it does not know how to take advantage of it. Instead it chooses ‘to live in bare and paltry rooms’: small, mean and poor rooms without any beautiful furniture or decorations. Those rooms are ‘Parked off from the too vast dangerous universe’. We came across the word ‘parked’ at the beginning of this section, when we read that ‘Life dwelt parked in an armed tranquillity’. Parks can be very beautiful places, but they are enclosed spaces. The old rulers used to have extensive deer parks which were very pleasant to ride about in, but the deer were kept there only so that they could be hunted easily; they were not really free. ‘Parked off’ means fenced in, separated, protected, in this case ‘from the too vast dangerous universe’. This happens because the limited ‘schoolman mind’ is afraid to lose its identity ‘in the infinite’, so it makes for itself a small safe place that is very bare and simple, missing the finer and deeper aspects that a wider and more generous view could enjoy.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Even the Idea’s ample sweep was cut
Into a system, chained to fixed pillars of thought
Or riveted to Matter’s solid ground:

The Idea, with a capital I, is one of the most creative functions of higher mind, being able to form wide-visioned ideas, high concepts, which can then perhaps be realised. Normally, it has an ‘ample sweep’ – a very wide scope and range, in which thought can form ideas and concepts in a very large, free way; but in the zone which Savitri is now exploring the Idea is ‘cut / Into a system’; it can no longer roam freely but has to fit into a fixed system. Like the Life-force, it too is ‘chained’ and restricted ‘to fixed pillars of thought’, or even ‘riveted to Matter’s solid ground’. A rivet is used to fasten two pieces of metal together so that they are firmly fixed and cannot be separated. The mind’s faculty of conceiving vast creative ideas is here restricted and ‘riveted’ to the solid and reliable base of Matter, dominated and held firmly in place by physical facts.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Or else the soul was lost in its own heights:
Obeying the Ideal’s high-browed law
Thought based a throne on unsubstantial air
Disdaining earth’s flat triviality:
It barred reality out to live in its dreams.

Either the thought is ’riveted to’ Matter and firmly focussed on physical facts, or else, in individual cases, the soul may lose sight of material reality and get lost in its own higher levels; in that case the thought may be ruled only by high Ideals and disregard material facts altogether, despising them as boring and trivial, unimportant, basing itself on ‘unsubstantial air’, and barring reality out ‘to live in its dreams’. This is another kind of mental limitation, in which there is no interest in down-to-earth facts because lovely golden dreams are much more interesting. People used to believe that the earth was flat; their thought was not wide enough to see it as a sphere surrounded by space; but ‘flat’ can also mean ‘boring’. ‘Trivial’ means ‘small and insignificant’, unimportant, without much value. For those dreamers, the realities of life on earth seem trivial and boring. They do not want to know about them; they disdain them. If you disdain something, you turn your nose up at it, thinking you are so superior that it is not worth your attention.

[Shraddhavn’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A chastened epithet in the prose of life,
She must fill with colour just her sanctioned space,
Not break out of the cabin of the idea
Nor trespass into rhythms too high or vast.

We are reading poetry in which Sri Aurobindo uses many ‘epithets’: descriptive words, adjectives. But there is another kind of literature which is not poetry but ‘prose’. The Life Divine, and many of Sri Aurobindo’s other books, are written in ‘prose’. Some people believe that when writing prose not too many epithets should be used, and if they are used they should be ‘chastened’: not too colourful, imaginative, surprising or evocative – that may be acceptable in poetry, but ‘prose’ should be more restrained and serious. Here Sri Aurobindo says that under the control of the reasoning mind Life is supposed to be like an adjective which is well chosen, pure, not too colourful or noticeable. She has to fill ‘just her sanctioned space’, the small space that she is allowed, with only a little bit of discreet colour. She should not ‘break out of the cabin’ or small house ‘of the idea’ that is being expressed; and she should not ‘trespass’ beyond the bounds of prose into the realms of poetry. To ‘trespass’ means ‘to go somewhere where you are not supposed to go’. Life should not burst out ‘into rhythms too high or vast’. In poetry, powerful, evocative rhythms are appreciated; but at one time, it was thought that they should be avoided in prose. Sri Aurobindo did not care about that at all even when he was at university. In a letter to his father he mentioned that in writing an important essay he had ‘indulged in his Oriental tastes to the top of their bent’. He thought that he might get criticised for it, but in fact his tutor appreciated his unchastened prose, full of evocative words and powerful rhythms.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

A temperate vigilant spirit governed life:
Its acts were tools of the considering thought,
Too cold to take fire and set the world ablaze,
Or the careful reason’s diplomatic moves
Testing the means to a prefigured end,
Or at the highest pitch some calm Will’s plan
Or a strategy of some High Command within
To conquer the secret treasures of the gods
Or win for a masked king some glorious world,
Not a reflex of the spontaneous self,
An index of the being and its moods,
A winging of conscious spirit, a sacrament
Of life’s communion with the still Supreme
Or its pure movement on the Eternal’s road.

Perhaps we can say that this realm expresses a more sattwic state of Life than the rajasic dynamism of the powerful flood of life energies and impulses that Savitri experienced earlier. Now Life is no longer focused on disordered sensations, nor is it reckless and uncontrolled; it is no longer allowed its full free reign but held tightly under the control of mind, ruled by a ‘temperate vigilant spirit’, moderate, reasonable and watchful. Its actions have become ‘tools of the considering thought’. But that makes life ‘Too cold to take fire and set the world ablaze’. All the ardour and enthusiasm of the free Life-force have been lost. Now under the government of that ‘temperate vigilant spirit’, its acts have become carefully thought-out ‘diplomatic moves’. Here, like a diplomat, reason has to test  or try out ‘the means to a prefigured end’. Reason always has a predetermined purpose and finds out the best way to achieve it. At best, the poet says, ‘at the highest pitch’, such considered actions might be part of ‘some calm Will’s plan’ that has been decided on with a high aim and aspiration in view, or ‘a strategy of some High Command within’. ‘Strategy’ is the art of directing an army to achieve particular aims. In this case, some highest part of the being is directing the life-actions towards a chosen aim. Its purpose might be ‘To conquer the secret treasures of the gods’, or to ‘win for a masked king some glorious world’, and for that to be achieved there needs to be control of the vital urges and a careful, considered plan of self-discipline. But whatever the motivation may be, it means that the action of the Life- force is not a ‘reflex’ or reflection and expression ‘of the spontaneous self’. Our psychic being, our soul, expresses itself spontaneously if it is allowed to: there is always something fresh and young about its action. I have seen and loved this quality in some of my dear elder brothers and sisters in the Ashram, who had lived with the Mother for many years: even in their eighties, they were still spontaneous and childlike, free and simple, because they were living directly from the soul, so that their behaviour was ‘An index of the being and its moods’. An ‘index’ is an indication. Governed by the soul, the outer actions correspond to the feelings of the true inner being. But the carefully thought-out actions of the Life-force are not like that, not a ‘winging of conscious spirit’. If the life-being is under the control of limiting mind, it cannot ‘wing’: it cannot fly freely the way that the conscious spirit does; so its actions are not ‘a sacrament’. ‘A sacrament’ is a sacred ritual. All the actions of life should really be a consecrated expression of communion with the Divine: ‘A sacrament / Of life’s communion with the still Supreme’, or ‘its pure movement on the Eternal’s road’ – expressing the life’s movement towards the Eternal. That is what Life can be at its best, directed by the soul’s spontaneous will and aspiration.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

Even meditation mused on a narrow seat;
And worship turned to an exclusive God,
To the Universal in a chapel prayed
Whose doors were shut against the universe;
Or kneeled to the bodiless Impersonal
A mind shut to the cry and fire of love:
A rational religion dried the heart.
It planned a smooth life’s acts with ethics’ rule
Or offered a cold and flameless sacrifice.

When small ideals limit the soul, even the activities that are meant to turn the being towards the divine become restricted and ineffective: ‘meditation’ cannot explore freely because it is fixed and limited to ‘a narrow seat’. The impulse to ‘Worship’ originates in a spontaneous soul- movement, but the limiting mind may direct that soul- impulse towards ‘an exclusive God’. In that case, people may pray to ‘the Universal’, the vast universal Spirit, but choose to do so in a tiny ‘chapel’, a very small and simple church, where they keep the doors closed ‘against the universe’. Or the mind worships the idea of a formless impersonal god; this is supposed to be a very pure kind of religion, because the worshipper does not imagine a form or label the deity with a name, but here Sri Aurobindo says that in this case the mind might be completely ‘shut to the cry and fire of love’: the intensity and richness of bhakti, of devotion to a personalised image of the Divine. The mind may prefer to follow a ‘rational religion’ which dries up the heart and lacks any deep emotional element. It may plan ‘a smooth life’s acts’, an orderly life ruled by ‘ethics’, limited human ideas of what is good and virtuous, right and correct. Some effort may be made and offered as a sacrifice, but if the mind is too dominant there will be no fire intense enough to carry it to the higher powers because the offering is ‘cold and flameless’.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]

The sacred Book lay on its sanctified desk
Wrapped in interpretation’s silken strings:
A credo sealed up its spiritual sense.

Then what tends to happen is that we have our ‘sacred Book’, our Shastra or revealed scripture which we believe contains the truth, and we keep it lying on its holy desk, wrapped and tied up with decorative ‘silken strings’; but the living truth it contains has been formulated into a ‘credo’, an interpretation which has become a creed, a dogma which we think that everyone has to accept, so that its true ‘spiritual sense’ and living power are sealed up and no longer accessible.

This is a danger in the explanations that I am giving about the revelatory lines of Savitri. In these classes some of the most obvious surface meanings of the lines are explained, the classes are filmed and the films are shared, and now the explanations are even being published in book form, so there is a danger that in future people may say “But Shraddhavan has said ….” instead of making the effort to find out for themselves the deeper spiritual meaning and power that these mantric words and lines convey to their own inner understanding. I am aware of that danger and I hope that all of you are aware of it too, and that you will use whatever insights you can gain from these explanations as stepping stones to your own deeper understanding of Savitri, because whatever we can bring out in this class is really very superficial; it is only meant to encourage and enable you to go deeper and become more receptive to the full transforming significance that Sri Aurobindo has infused into this glorious poem.

This applies to any scripture, Koran or Bhagavad Gita or Bible or whatever. If it has been interpreted so much and so often that we no longer feel that we need to read it, because we are absolutely sure what it contains, then it is tied up in the ‘silken strings’ of interpretation. My father, who was a Protestant clergyman, admired a Christian preacher of the early sixteenth century called John Robinson, one of the Pilgrim Fathers who went to America. He always used to remind his followers: “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his Word.” He was referring to the New Testament, the story of Jesus, his life and teachings; but whatever the scripture, if we read with aspiration and receptivity the Lord can always reveal new light and truth to us through its words. This is surely true of the mantric words of Savitri, which will always go on revealing new light and truth to us if we remain open and receptive as we read it.

[Shraddhavan’s English of Savitri, Book 7]