The next part of Savitri we shall discuss is as follows:

At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:

On the lap of earth's original somnolence
Inert, released into forgetfulness,
Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind's verge,
Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.
In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms
She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,
Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.
Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,
And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom
And recognised the close and lingering ache,
Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,
But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.
The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:
Heavy, unwilling were life's servitors
Like workers with no wages of delight;
Sullen, the torch of sense refused to burn;
The unassisted brain found not its past.
Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.
But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.
At the summons of her body's voiceless call
Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.
Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,
Illumined swiftly were life's darkened rooms,
And memory's casements opened on the hours
And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.

MEANINGS OF SOME DIFFICULT WORDS.

Grieved = Feel the grief.

Somnolence = a very sleepy state in the early morning.

Repose = to rest, to get relieved from the stress and anxiety.

Tranquil = Characterized by absence of emotional agitation, Free from disturbance, Calm,

Serene.

Sullen = broodingly baleful, angry, and quite.

Obtuse = Slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity, Dull, Blunt, Insensitive.

Cleft = A split or indentation in something, A long narrow opening.

Ebbing = A gradual decline (in size or strength or power or number), Flow back or recede.
In the last post we discussed how Savitri is calm and quite in spite of the foreknowledge of the
doom of death She is facing, and how courageous She is when we learnt that “No cry broke from
he lips, no call for aid” and also the continued adoration of The Divine Mother by Sri Aurobindo.
Now, Sri Aurobindo explains the waking up of Savitri as a flash back for a while.

At first life grieved not in her burdened breast:

On the lap of earth's original somnolence
Inert, released into forgetfulness,
Prone it reposed, unconscious on mind's verge,
Obtuse and tranquil like the stone and star.

Savitri has descended to win the immortality for the life. Also, She bears all the lives, as we have
seen in the last post. But, in the early hours, when one is usually sleepy just after waking up, that
is in a state of “somnolence” the life in her “grieved not”. It was still inert, forgetful, and restful.
On the boundaries of the mind, that is superficially, her life is still unconscious. It is still
insensitive like a stone. Calm and serene like a star. Savitri does not feel the grief openly though
She is carrying a huge load on her breast, the load of impending doom.

This often happens in everyone’s life. One simple example is examinations! When we used to
face exams, in spite of the pressure, and huge load, we used to remain calm, in the early minutes
of the exam, because, the pressure builds up gradually, and also the confidence of preparation
used to negate the fear. But as the time passed, we even used to forget, to check the time!

In a deep cleft of silence twixt two realms

She lay remote from grief, unsawn by care,
Nothing recalling of the sorrow here.

In such a state of somnolence, like a “deep cleft of silence” between sleep and awareness, She
did not feel any grief, any doom of death, and She is untouched by care, and away from all the
sorrows and miseries of the world.

Once again consider the example of exams. You are confident if your preparation is good. You
are some what frightened if your preparation is not good. That is you have some sort of
foreknowledge that how you are going to perform. But in the minutes before the question paper
is distributed, you would neither be confident nor frightened. You will not feel anything about
the result. Some sort of inert and neutral mentality dominates. Savitri too here is in such a state.
Though She has a foreknowledge, She does not feels the grief in these early hours of this day.

Then a slow faint remembrance shadowlike moved,

And sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom
And recognised the close and lingering ache,

Now, “a slow faint” memory appears, which is moving like a shadow. This is the memory of
this destined day. When Savitri decided to marry Satyavan, Narada discloses the fact that
Satyavan is destined to die exactly after one year of married life. This is the day of such a
destiny. And what Sri Aurobindo now says here is very human and natural. With the appearance
of this memory, Savitri “sighing she laid her hand upon her bosom”. Any person, when such a
memory appears, naturally moves his hands over his chest, with a deep sigh. So did Savitri, and
when She did so, She “recognised the close and lingering ache,”.
What sort of pain?

Deep, quiet, old, made natural to its place,

But knew not why it was there nor whence it came.

This pain is not superficial, it is deep. It is not a physical pain which makes one to cry. It is a
quite and old pain, which is “made natural to its place”. It’s place is the heart of Savitri and as
this pain is lingering in Her heart since long, it is familiar with Her. But, in these early hours, in
this state of somnolence, Savitri did not know “why it was there nor whence it came”. Because:

The Power that kindles mind was still withdrawn:

Heavy, unwilling were life's servitors
Like workers with no wages of delight;
Sullen, the torch of sense refused to burn;
The unassisted brain found not its past.

Though Savitri is feeling such a pain in her heart, still she is unable to explain it because Her
mind is not yet active, as the Natural Power that enlightens the mind and renders it the ability to
think, analyze, and understand is still withheld. Also the “life’s servitors”, the senses are still
“Heavy”, “unwilling”, and “Sullen”, like some workers or labors who do not get delightful
wages. Here Sri Aurobindo calls the senses as “Servitors of Life”. But normally, we are the
servitors of the senses. But Savitri is not a human totally. So for Savitri, senses are the servitors
of the life. Here Sri Aurobindo emphasizes the need for the control over the senses.

Only a vague earth-nature held the frame.

Savitri’s outward or bodily frame was held by “a vague earth-nature”, not the Divine Nature.

Here another interpretation by Sri A B Purani, for the line so far, in his book “Savitri: An
Approach and A Study”, goes as follows:

The poet quickly traces through the growth of Savitri from childhood to young age and her
becoming familiar with great human problems with a constant and intense experience of pain in
her heart.
SAAS: Page 134

The pain Savitri experiences is equated to the great human problems. As Savitri bears all lives,
She bears these problems too. But so far in Her life, She was not aware of it. Now She feels her
own pain, the doom of death, as the pain of the entire humanity. Now She recognizes this burden
on Her, due to the appearance of “faint remembrance”. Because, so far Her mind was not fully
developed and senses were not fully awake to recognize it. Now, the time has come.

Therefore:

But now she stirred, her life shared the cosmic load.

Now, Savitri realizes that the pain, the load She feels is “the cosmic load”, the load of the whole
universe. That is now She is fully awake. And as a result of this:
At the summons of her body's voiceless call
Her strong far-winging spirit travelled back,
Back to the yoke of ignorance and fate,
Back to the labour and stress of mortal days,
Lighting a pathway through strange symbol dreams
Across the ebbing of the seas of sleep.

As Savitri wakes up, that is realizes the universal load on Her, Her Spirit which is strong and
which was “far-winging” (=stayed away from Her) so far during the night, travels back to Her,
as a response to Her waking up, that is “her body’s voiceless call”. It seems here that Her Spirit
had travelled to Her Native and now as She is fully awake it is returning to Her, to these “mortal
days” driven by “ignorance and fate” with “labour and stress” as experiences to have. While
Her Spirit travels back to Her, it enlightens “a pathway”, to the native of Savitri, through
“strange symbol dreams”, “Across the ebbing seas of sleep”. When one wakes from sleep, itself
is a symbol of evolution or progress.

Now, when Her Spirit travels back:

Her house of Nature felt an unseen sway,

Illumined swiftly were life's darkened rooms,
And memory's casements opened on the hours
And the tired feet of thought approached her doors.

Savitri carries the whole world in Her. As Her Spirit travels back, “Her house of Nature felt an
unseen sway”. Savitri feels a new pulsation of enlightening from an unseen source. Or in other
words, the whole Nature feels the same pulsation. All the life which was darkened by the doom
of death is now illumined by the Light of Her Spirit. All the memories were fully open
concurrently and the thinking abilities, which were retired, now “approached her door”.

These two paragraphs are once again a symbol. They symbolize the spiritual progress and the
effect of realization of one’s spirit.

We all are dwelling in the sea of ignorance. We do not know who we are? Why are we here?
What are we doing and why are we doing the same? Or what should we do actually? We carry
out our activities blindly or they are driven intense material desires. We have encircled ourselves
in the unending cycles of materialism. Because, we do not know who we are! We do not know or
have not realized our spirit, our psychic.

But once when one realizes it or even gets a glimpse of it, the whole aspect of the life changes.
Therefore, he realizes the ultimate aim of life, to be one with The Divine. For such men, their
true Spirit travels back and the seas of ignorance and inconscience recede and all the aspects of
light are illumined with light. Therefore, let us conclude this discussion, with the following
prayer:
AxÉiÉÉãqÉÉ xÉSè aÉqÉrÉÉ |
iÉqÉxÉÉãqÉÉ erÉÉãÌiÉaÉïqÉrÉÉ |
qÉëÑirÉÉãqÉÉï AqÉëÑiÉçÇaÉqÉrÉÉ ||

May we march . . . .
Towards knowledge from ignorance,
Towards Light from darkness,
Towards Immortality from mortality.