Savitri

 SECTION B

      'THE BOOK OF THE TRAVELLER

OF THE WORLDS'

In 1936, Sri Aurobindo wrote to one of his correspondents: "There was no climbing of planes there in the first version... I had no idea of what the supramental World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme."³⁷ Taking up the poem later, Sri Aurobindo worked into it the Divina Commedia of the occult worlds with an elaborate and vivid particularity. The revisions came one upon another, and at one stage Sri Aurobindo wrote: ".. .the 'Worlds' have fallen into a state of manuscript chaos, corrections upon corrections, additions upon additions, rearrangements on rearrangements out of which perhaps some cosmic beauty will emerge!"³⁸ Eight years later, in 1946, Sri Aurobindo acknowledged that, "Savitri has grown to an enormous length...The small passage about Aswapati and the other worlds has been replaced by a new Book, the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, in fourteen cantos with many thousand lines."³⁹ Actually, however, there are now fifteen cantos, and in these is described with a singular vividness Aswapati's spiritual ascent as a typical representative of the race to win the possibility of discovery and possession of all the planes of consciousness.

      I

'The World Stair'

 As Aswapati, tearing from his last terrestrial moorings, plunges into the occult unknown universe of moods, energies, world-shapes and freedom-formulas, he experiences the throb of direct contact with the cosmic play of passion and motion and "self-creation without end or pause". Contradictions merge and mix and cease in a harmony,

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"plots of pain and dramas of delight" spin themselves round; all imaginative leaps and fanciful freaks find their realisation there. The ultimate clue of the Word only is missing,

      The integer of the Spirit's perfect sum...

      The absolute index to the Absolute.⁴⁰

Anon Aswapati catches sight of the immense "high-curved world-pile", reared against the base of matter's plinth, and rising "towards breadths immeasurable". The descending stair from the summits of the Spirit to matter's abysses is balanced by this other,

      .. .single stair to being's goal.

      A summary of the stages of the spirit,

      Its copy of the cosmic hierarchies

      Refashioned in our secret air of self

      A subtle pattern of the universe.

      It is within, below, without, above.⁴¹

In the occult world, as in the material cosmos, the centre is everywhere, the circumference is nowhere; the fully awakened soul is all the worlds that are, the centre and the circumference as well! The budget of mankind's present discontents and failures is no permanent writ. There is this "ladder of delivering ascent" offering an escape from the abyss into the far plateaus of the Spirit. Man is not abandoned forever to his present fate. The assurance is given that

This faint and fluid sketch of soul called man

Shall stand out on the background of long Time

A glowing epitome of eternity,.. .⁴²

      A Seer (the inner Guide) "inspires our ascent", as he now responds to the call of Aswapati too, who bears "the burden of the world's desire". And so Aswapati flies past world after world, and still mounts higher and higher,

      ...towards an indiscernible end

      On the bare summit of created things.⁴³

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