The lines are from Book 1 Canto 3 “The Yoga of the King: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release”.

The lines read are:

All now seems Nature’s massed machinery;
An endless servitude to material rule
And long determination’s rigid chain,
Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,
Her empire of unconscious deft device
Annul the claim of man’s free human will.

He too is a machine amid machines;
A piston brain pumps out the shapes of thought,
A beating heart cuts out emotion’s modes;
An insentient energy fabricates a soul.

Or the figure of the world reveals the signs
Of a tied Chance repeating her old steps
In circles around Matter’s binding-posts.

A random series of inept events
To which reason lends illusive sense, is here,
Or the empiric Life’s instinctive search,
Or a vast ignorant mind’s colossal work.

But wisdom comes, and vision grows within:
Then Nature’s instrument crowns himself her king;
He feels his witnessing self and conscious power;
His soul steps back and sees the Light supreme.

A Godhead stands behind the brute machine.”

[Savitri: 20-21]

The following lines were read:

“Heavy unchanged weighs still the imperfect world;
The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;
Heavy and long are the years our labour counts
And still the seals are firm upon man’s soul
And weary is the ancient Mother’s heart.

O Truth defended in thy secret sun,
Voice of her mighty musings in shut heavens
On things withdrawn within her luminous depths,
O Wisdom-Splendour, Mother of the universe,
Creatrix, the Eternal’s artist Bride,
Linger not long with thy transmuting hand
Pressed vainly on one golden bar of Time,
As if Time dare not open its heart to God.

O radiant fountain of the world’s delight
World-free and unattainable above,
O Bliss who ever dwellst deep-hid within
While men seek thee outside and never find,
Mystery and Muse with hieratic tongue,
Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.

One moment fill with thy eternity,
Let thy infinity in one body live,
All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,”

[Invocation of the Divine Mother]

The Savitri lines are:

‘As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart.’

[Savitri: 17]

The lines read are:

“Across the awful march no eye can see,
Barring its dreadful route no will can change,
She faced the engines of the universe;
A heart stood in the way of the driving wheels:
Its giant workings paused in front of a mind,
Its stark conventions met the flame of a soul.

A magic leverage suddenly is caughthttps://auromaa.org/
That moves the veiled Ineffable’s timeless will:
A prayer, a master act, a king idea
Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

Then miracle is made the common rule,
One mighty deed can change the course of things;
A lonely thought becomes omnipotent.”

(Savitri:20)

The Savitri lines read are:

As might a soul fly like a hunted bird,
Escaping with tired wings from a world of storms,
And a quiet reach like a remembered breast,
In a haven of safety and splendid soft repose
One could drink life back in streams of honey-fire,
Recover the lost habit of happiness,
Feel her bright nature’s glorious ambience,
And preen joy in her warmth and colour’s rule.

A deep of compassion, a hushed sanctuary,
Her inward help unbarred a gate in heaven;
Love in her was wider than the universe,
The whole world could take refuge in her single heart. [Savitri:17]

[An Hour of Darkness]

Savitri lines:

Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;
Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:
It fears the pure divine intolerance
Of that assault of ether and of fire;
It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,
Almost with hate repels the light it brings;
It trembles at its naked power of Truth
And the might and sweetness of its absolute Voice.

Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,
It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:
Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence
It turns against the saviour hands of Grace;
It meets the sons of God with death and pain.

A glory of lightnings traversing the earth-scene,
Their sun-thoughts fading, darkened by ignorant minds,
Their work betrayed, their good to evil turned,
The cross their payment for the crown they gave,
Only they leave behind a splendid Name.

Death the mask is slain and in its place there emerges the fourfold Being whose glory no vision can describe. It is He who is the One Supreme beyond whom there is none other. It is He who as the Supreme Consciousness and Wisdom initiates creation. It is He who works in the atom and the clod as the intelligent Will. It is He who has built the worlds and determines the movement of the stars. Savitri is now offered a permanent place in the worlds of eternal manifestation where there is neither night nor darkness nor suffering. She can stay here forever with Satyavan. But once again she refuses the offer that leaves earth to its dubious fate. She wants the soul of Satyavan to be her eternal companion upon earth to build perfection here battling against tremendous powers and the stiff resistances and oppositions of earth nature. Her individual victory must be shared by all. Seeing her firm resolve and unshaken determination to save earth and mankind, the Supreme takes away from her even the worlds of shadowless light and meets her in His Highest status where the boon she has asked for earth can be granted. Savitri asks all that would make earth divine and help mankind march towards a divine life. The boons are granted and the ways opened for earth towards a luminous and golden future. The boon of boons, that is to say, of transforming earthly life into life divine is granted and with that Savitri returns to earth holding and guarding the soul of Satyavan as a priceless treasure between her hands.

Savitri now meets Death on the ground where consciousness dips towards earth. The dreams and ideals born in the heavens live only a while before they vanish from earth. Death once again tries to convince Savitri of the futility of it all. He admits now the possibility of some impersonal void that human beings experience as a god but denies it any true power to intervene and change the course of things. He advises that she should quit this dream of a divine life upon earth as it is nothing else but a bondage. Instead, she should seek knowledge that would set her free from this bondage so that she too could escape into the silence of Nirvana. Savitri reveals to him instead the grand plan for earthly life and how this reign of darkness is going to end and this dream of a perfect divine life is bound to be established. Death tries to resist one last time and questions Savitri if she has the power to change things here upon earth. There is a moment of apocalypse and Savitri reveals to Death Her divine Form. Death is unable to bear the pressure and dissolves in Her Light. He abandons his will to capture the soul of man forever in its net. Instead, he is transformed into an instrument of life and light to goad man’s soul upon the path of Truth. With the end of Death, the path is opened for the victory of the human soul here upon earth over ignorance, falsehood, suffering and pain.

A long debate follows on twilight’s ground where light and darkness are locked together. Savitri shows to Death that the world is still in the making and she demands Satyavan so that together they can build a greater world. It is her turn now to show him what he has missed. Savitri reveals to him that he is seeing only one side of earthly love as already corrupted by his poisonous breath. She reveals to him the secret plan of God for earth and man and the beauty and radiance that still kisses humanity and invites it to higher things. Death partly concedes or is rather impressed by her brilliance and grants her the boon of beautiful and strong children in whom she can find joy and who take care of her as she grows old. But he bids her to return alone. Savitri then reminds Death that she loves only Satyavan and therefore if she returns alone his boon will not fructify. Death refuses once again.

Death disdains the gods of the mental and vital worlds calling it all a snare. He discards the ideal as a malady of the mind sown in the human heart by the gods. He disdains love as merely a chemic product of matter, a temporary hallucination of thought and feeling that can never last. Death proclaims himself to be the one and ultimate Truth and his gospel of the futility of human life and love as the only thing that one must know. He proclaims that it is in his being and nowhere else that souls find rest and peace. Savitri stands steadfast in her love for Satyavan and refuses to let love die or accept a lesser fate of transient happiness by turning to another man or even a god. Her will firm as a rock demands from Death Satyavan and Satyavan alone.

Savitri has survived the eternal Night and follows Death further. There are twilight realms where life and death meet. These are realms of the vital and mental worlds through which the soul of man passes in its journey after death. At first, he along with the soul of Satyavan circuits through the vital and mental worlds. Here they are met with shining spaces and lustrous gods. It is the heavens built by the idealistic thought of man. Behind the mask of Night, there lurks the Light. Darkness and Night are a veil that hides our true truth. We are children of Light, we live by the Light and go to the Light. This is a great truth that is revealed here.

Savitri has entered the pit of darkness. This is from where Death draws all its strength. Towering as a being of darkness, Death exhorts Savitri to return back since there is no other god than he. Yet observing Savitri’s courage to enter the dark void, he offers boons as if to placate her will. He restores King Dyumatsena’s sight and his kingdom. Savitri receives the boons but refuses to turn back without bringing back with her the soul of Satyavan. Death now starts twisting the eternal truth and proclaims himself the one true God. He tries to tell her about the transience and futility of all human life and love. He alone is eternal and there is none else. But Savitri has known her soul. She has realised the Divine and knows who she is. She rather throws the challenge back to Death and questions his so-called knowledge which has no true basis to it. Death tries to trick her by throwing the bogey of knowledge that does not sanction love. Savitri calmly replies that true knowledge is a state of oneness and what better means to arrive at it but through love.

Here we see Savitri entering the black pit of inconscience, the very home of Death from where he derives his strength. It is the realm where Death is all-powerful and for a moment it seems that all light is extinguished. Yet this is an appearance, a dark asuric Maya that veils the Light. Savitri rekindles it bringing hope once again reminding Death and the soul of man that Night is not our beginning or end. We come from the Light and to the Light we go. Night, darkness, death are passages of our great journey, steps that lead us towards reclaiming our divinity and immortality. Death tries to frighten and dissuade her, he tries to snatch away her strength and light and hope. But Savitri the fearless yogini advances in her Kali mood awakening gradually in her the power that would win the victory over Death.

This book comprised of one single canto cryptically titled Canto Three seems a natural extension of Cantos One and Two of Book One from an earlier draft. However, Savitri was extensively expanded, especially the yoga of Aswapati and Savitri. Hence this canto kept getting pushed back further and further but the title remained unchanged.

Savitri is prepared to confront the riddle of man’s life. She is ready and armed to meet death. She knows the fated day and hence goes with Satyavan into the forest to keep a vigil. The fated moment nears and the god Death arrives as an ominous formless shadow and snatches the soul of Satyavan from his body. There is a description of the process of physical death. But Satyavan has made a grand act of surrender to Savitri even as he slips into the dark trance of death. This free and glad surrender of his being was the first act that he had done when he saw Savitri. This is the last rite at the moment of death. Savitri now follows the steps of Death into his dark lair. 

Realisation of the impersonal Brahman is not enough for the transformation and the complete conquest over death and fate that Savitri seeks. It sets the soul entirely free and if it wills the soul can through this state merge into the Nirvana of the Beyond and be done with birth and death and care. But Savitri goes beyond to reach to the still greater transcendence, the Supreme One who is there behind life and nature and each and every element. Savitri now enters that cosmic Being and the Transcendent Supreme who alone has the Power to redeem this fallen life. Having arrived at the state of Nothingness she becomes everything. Thus equipped she is now armed with the knowledge and the power to face the forces of fixed fate and take on the challenge of inconscient death that pulls down everything back into the abyss.

Savitri is now living in a blissful inner state, conscious of her soul and by its puissance uplifting everything that surrounds her. This is the first psycho-spiritual transformation that she has undergone. But for her mission more is needed. She must reclaim her universality and transcendence. She must enter the last secret. She must dwell in the supramental world as in her natural home. Not only the soul but also the nature must be free and discover its Godlike stature. The great Shadow, the Inconscient that lies at the back of all things, comes to deviate her from the missioned path. It is the voice of Night that is chased away by the voice of Light. Now she must completely rid herself of every trace of the ego so that the Supermind could find a place in a vast and infinite consciousness. Savitri listens and absorbed in a witness state, enters the sheer stillness and impersonality of the Absolute, the state of Nothingness, the Nirvana that annuls everything. She becomes one with infinity and eternity.

At last, she arrives at the doorsteps of the heart’s mystic cave where the soul is hidden surrounded by a wall of mystic fire. A deep humility is her state as she stands upon the threshold waiting to cross and enter the temple of divinity within, crossing the door of fire. This fire guards this seed of divinity in us so that it remains safe and untouched from the outer world’s corrupting influences. Even though something of the soul flows out into our outer life, even though something of it identifies with the outer cover of man, yet inwardly it remains untouched, itself alone. This must be first uncovered and made to conquer nature so that all our mental, vital and even physical movements can be directed and governed by the soul. This is the crucial first step towards the conquest over death. It is to discover one’s immortal soul and to let it govern our nature rather than leave the ego to govern it. Savitri enters this sanctum sanctorum where the inner divinity resides and fuses with her soul. What follows is a tremendous experience. All her subtle centres, the chakras as they are called, open up under the influence of the soul and their energies pour upon her. Each centre opens and gives to her nature a new uplift. All begin to refine and soar upwards under the influence of the psychic being. The Kundalini Shakti is now fully awake and aroused from her sleep in matter and prepares her for the mighty work she has come down to accomplish. Wonderful though this state is, yet it is an individual victory. She has come for the world and hence her journey cannot stop here. She must discover the last secret.

We see here the human side of Savitri. Yet this human love carries a sweetness that comes from the joy of perfect giving and receiving in love. Savitri experiences this joy of togetherness. But she also knows the doom that is closing in upon them. Only a brief-lived happiness is given to her. We see here Savitri experiencing the human states we go through until we eventually accept that we shall always remain pawns in destiny’s hands. Savitri experiences in her human persona the ordeal and the joy and the grief whose shadow looms large upon her future days. The Avatar must start the path from where man is and lead him to where he can reach. He comes to build the bridge.

In this canto, Narad the divine sage comes to Aswapati’s palace as Savitri returns from her quest. The fate of Savitri and Satyavan is at once revealed before his subtle vision. After some hesitation, he reveals to Savitri’s mother, the queen, that Satyavan has only one more year to live. The queen is disturbed by the decree of fate and asks Savitri to return and reverse her choice. But Savitri prefers to stand by the choice she has made in a moment of the soul, even if it seems to be erroneous to the pragmatic mind, rather than follow the dictates of the practical reason. She remains firm upon her choice leaving the queen quite helpless before the fast-approaching gloom that draws upon her dearest daughter’s fate.

What then is fate? Is it a tribunal of justice distributing decrees of reward and punishment meted out to the human soul to keep its feet steady in the right direction? Or is it some mysterious fiat of an arbitrary Creator who enjoys our suffering and pain so that we can turn to Him in supplication? Or is it an evolutionary mechanism devised for the human soul to grow through experience and learn through failure and fall? What is the necessity of suffering and pain in the grand scheme of things? Above all, who chooses our fate, — some gods who weave it for us or our soul that must go through certain experiences and hence chooses its curve of destiny based upon its intrinsic need? And what about the great ones, the shining seers, the Avatars who also suffer when they take a human body? These and many other questions, in fact, all possible questions that man has conceived or has not yet conceived have been raised by Sri Aurobindo through the Queen, mother of Savitri, in this canto.

In this canto, Narad the divine sage comes to Aswapati’s palace as Savitri returns from her quest. The fate of Savitri and Satyavan is at once revealed before his subtle vision. After some hesitation, he reveals to Savitri’s mother, the queen, that even though Satyavan is a jewel amongst men, he is ill-fated. His father, a blind king in exile, has lost his kingdom, and Satyavan himself has only one more year to live. While Aswapati, the seer king knows that even what seems adverse to our ignorant eyes serves a divine Good in the cosmic scheme, the queen is disturbed by the decree of fate. She asks Savitri to return and reverse her choice. But Savitri insists.

Here they meet and recognise each other looking through their soul. Though they seem to have met for the first time now, yet they have together enacted the great drama of life in different forms and names, wearing different guises. This soul recognition holds within itself the key to the future. So do Satyavan and Savitri meet in a moment of the soul. They are wedded before the Sun of Truth in the forest itself. Their soul, the Truth embedded within it, the Divine within, is their witness. No other ceremony is needed. Nature has set the stage for this heavenly betrothal. Savitri now hastens back home after the choice has been made to share this joy of meeting with her father.

Savitri has gone in search of her ideal partner and mate in this great game of life. In the course of her journey, she has met mighty kings and brilliant sages. She has come across hero warriors and world-shunning recluse ascetics. These are the highest possibilities that we see manifest in our humanity. But now coming across the forest verge she meets Satyavan. Here she finds the ideal type of humanity who can be a partner in her game divine.

Responding to the one-pointed aspiration of Aswapati to bring down here a greater diviner world, the Divine Mother appears on the threshold of his subtle yogic vision and envelops him. Overwhelmed by Her vision his entire being is thrilled. His very body and cells are touched and awake to the superconscient Delight. The Divine Mother has heard his cry and has come in response to his call. At first, She dissuades Aswapati from asking this boon of boons. Earth is not ready and man may not be able to bear the impact of the power of Truth once released upon earth. Aswapati persists in his aspiration seeking the divine Mother’s direct intervention and advent to prepare the earth and sow in it the seeds of Light and Truth and Immortality. Finally, the Divine Mother consents to come. She has granted Aswapati that She Herself will come down assuming a human form and change the law of doom into a law of everlasting Truth and Love.

The touch of the Divine Mother brings about a last and mighty transformation annihilating all resistances hiding in the subconscient parts. His very body and nerves begin to undergo a change as of the last remnants of the ego are gone. Infinity opens its doors upon him and the original Superconscient Power begins to pour its radiance and splendour upon his being. He discovers the secret Oneness that begins to widen into innumerable multitudes centred around the One Self. These are the worlds of Truth where there is no division or separation. He is led into this new Life based on Unity and diversity. Here all is consciously linked to all in a matrix of spiritual oneness. All here is centred around Truth and Light and Peace and Harmony and Bliss of the Divine Mother. It is a marvellous creation, the original plan or blueprint of creation before it fell into ignorance and error and division and pain. Aswapati now aspires to bring down this greater higher divine world into our ignorance so that the earth may be transformed by it.

The touch of the Divine Mother brings about a last and mighty transformation annihilating all resistances hiding in the subconscient parts. His very body and nerves begin to undergo a change as of the last remnants of the ego are gone. Infinity opens its doors upon him and the original Superconscient Power begins to pour its radiance and splendour upon his being. He discovers the secret Oneness that begins to widen into innumerable multitudes centred around the One Self. These are the worlds of Truth where there is no division or separation. He is led into this new Life based on Unity and diversity. Here all is consciously linked to all in a matrix of spiritual oneness. All here is centred around Truth and Light and Peace and Harmony and Bliss of the Divine Mother. It is a marvellous creation, the original plan or blueprint of creation before it fell into ignorance and error and division and pain. Aswapati now aspires to bring down this greater higher divine world into our ignorance so that the earth may be transformed by it.

Is this still and silent Self the end of our search? Is this state that cancels nature and world and receives the soul in the bosom of a vast Nihil the last and final step of this great tremendous journey? Is dissolution into the One Reality that transcends the individual and the cosmos, what is called Moksha, the goal of human existence? Aswapati now stands between this state hanging between the eternal Yes that has sanctioned creation’s paradox profound and the eternal No that cancels it. His will is for the redemption of creation. Even as he thus waits, he experiences the nearness of the wonderful Presence of the Divine Mother who takes into Herself world and nature and soul. She is the key to resolving the enigma of the Night and the paradox of creation. It is Her alchemist touch that can transform all things. It is She whom he has come seeking all the way. It is She alone who can change this earthly life into a life Divine thereby freeing earth and man from the clutch of falsehood and ignorance and darkness and death. This marvellous Presence fills Aswapati with rapture and ecstasy. Now all other longings have ceased within his heart and there is only one cry left. His being now grown boundless and wide aspires for the entire race. Only one seeking is left now and it is to fill this earth with Her Presence and Power to heal and help man advance towards its highest destiny. Darkness must vanish completely from earth. All must be filled with Her Beauty and Glory and Peace and Harmony and Bliss.

Aswapati stands at the doors of the Unknowable. The Unknowable cannot be known by the Mind. It can be known if It so chooses to reveal Itself to us. One has to wait with endless patience, wait upon the Grace at the peaks of creation. Aswapati feels the wonderful Presence of the Transcendent Divine but it is not possible to behold His splendour nor hold it for long. Touched and uplifted by the direct Rays of the Sun, bathed in the Supramental vibrations natural at these summits he finds himself entering into the higher hemisphere of existence. Here he must leave aside all mental constructs and conceptions, all the imperfect means that nature has so far evolved to manifest certain truths but very imperfectly so. The world as we know and experience it is a distortion of Truth. It is not what it is meant to be. This illusion is not an unreality but a distortion of the Reality. It is this that Aswapati is impelled to set right. But one cannot enter into this realm of Truth without shedding all the scales of distortion and limitations. Only truth can remain in this realm, not even its representations. All must be left behind, either to end in the Stillness profound and Ineffable or to be newly made in the mould of Truth. But at first, Aswapati has the experience of the Silent Purusha, Ekamewadwitiyam, the One Infinite who is the occult cause of creation and yet is beyond it. He is Self-born and uncreated yet is the source of all things.

Aswapati now stands in the kingdom of the little life. He has explored its boundaries and energies and the influence it brings upon earthly life. Now he casts his yogic vision to discover the godheads, the powers and aspects of the cosmic forces that work from behind and the purpose they serve in the grand scheme of things. Life starts its journey upon earth in a small insignificant way. It struggles to survive as if its existence is only to feed death. It lives surrounded by darkness and shuts itself to Light and all that is greater and high. This is a first infant step that life takes in its stupendous journey, a step that seems to be stuck in the mud and mire of earth nature and yet whose far end is the Life Divine.

Aswapati has seen the origin of Life which is a Breath of Consciousness from the high peaks of Divine Glory and Power. Its Force has entered into Earth to uplift and save matter from the state of inertia and unconsciousness. But to do so it must first accept the conditions and limits imposed by Matter. Thus life becomes something limited, limited in joy, limited in power, limited in consciousness. This limited life, small in its scope, a symbol of littleness and incapacity here upon earth, is being described here through revealing forms that hold its force and their limited play.

Life is a mystery, more so because it is full of contradictory movements. Now it climbs towards heavenly heights, now it races towards hell. Now it is seized with a frenzy to achieve the Ultimate, now it lies low in the obscure mud of despair and self-pity. Here in this Canto Sri Aurobindo gives us a comprehensive picture of life, not merely life as we ordinarily experience it, but life in all its ranges and possibilities. After all Sri Aurobindo’s main work is the transformation of earthly life into Life Divine. But it is only possible if there is a divine possibility in life. It is this which is being described as the Glory of Life. But it is equally important to see how and why it fell from that possibility as it entered the world of matter.