Opening Remarks
This is where our souls finally arrive to rest after the body falls off. Here they must assimilate the past and prepare for the future.
Internatal trance
Immersed in voiceless internatal trance
The beings that once wore forms on earth sat there
In shining chambers of spiritual sleep.
Our soul finally returns to its native psychic world after shedding the robes spun around it by the mind, vital and the physical body. Here it enters into a state of deep spiritual sleep, a trance of stillness between the actions of different lives upon earth.
World’s deep soul
Passed were the pillar-posts of birth and death,
Passed was their little scene of symbol deeds,
Passed were the heavens and hells of their long road;
They had returned into the world’s deep soul.
Passing beyond the pillar posts of birth and also of death, passing beyond the scenes and acts of a given life, passing beyond the vital heavens and hell-like worlds, the soul goes back to the World-Soul. Here death reaches not nor the torment and the struggle of the world.
Pregnant rest
All now was gathered into pregnant rest:
Person and nature suffered a slumber change.
The soul enters a state of rest that is filled with new possibilities. It is now in its own true state and not under the cover and wrappings of nature through which it experiences creation. In its sleep it undergoes this change as the coats and coverings fall off.
Prophetic of new personality
In trance they gathered back their bygone selves,
In a background memory’s foreseeing muse
Prophetic of new personality
Arranged the map of their coming destiny’s course:
Heirs of their past, their future’s discoverers,
Electors of their own self-chosen lot,
They waited for the adventure of new life.
In this state of trance the soul assimilates the essence of experiences of the life it leaves behind. Then it projects itself towards the future intuitively feeling for its future personality and the curve of destiny it must chose to walk upon in its coming life. The soul choses its destiny arranging its future map based on its need for further progress. But this choice is not in a vacuum but depends on the material available with us which it has inherited from the past. Thus choosing from the past energies released in previous lives it must enter the adventure of the future life.
Growing figure of its secret self
A Person persistent through the lapse of worlds,
Although the same for ever in many shapes
By the outward mind unrecognisable,
Assuming names unknown in unknown climes
Imprints through Time upon the earth’s worn page
A growing figure of its secret self,
And learns by experience what the spirit knew,
Till it can see its truth alive and God.
The forms and personality changes but the Person, the soul within does not die. It persists in its journey in other forms and names even though the mind has forgotten and no more recognises the past lives. The purpose of this journey is a constant growth until the divine seed or the soul within us comes to fullness and blossoms through all its countless experiences from life to life. This goes on until it discovers its own truth and God. This discovery of Truth and God is in fact a rediscovery. Our mind has forgotten what the soul always knew in its spiritual state from where it plunged into the darkness of creation for the great adventure of consciousness.
Problem-game of birth
Once more they must face the problem-game of birth,
The soul’s experiment of joy and grief
And thought and impulse lighting the blind act,
And venture on the roads of circumstance,
Through inner movements and external scenes
Travelling to self across the forms of things.
The purpose of our soul assuming different forms and personalities through the process of rebirth is to solve the great enigma of creation. This problem it has set before itself is to manifest the light and truth and consciousness and love and joy of the Divine in a world where its very opposites seem to abound. Once again, the soul must experience its share of joy and grief, venture into fields of ignorance and play with circumstances and outer scenes and inner states and navigate through outer forms to the deep soul or Truth that dwells in all things.
Closing Remarks
This is the logic and process of rebirth. It is to grow in consciousness until the Divine within is manifest outside in all our thoughts and speech and will and acts. For this the soul must pass through a variety of experiences until it is ready to experience the Infinite in finite things and the Eternal in the dance of Time, and to know itself immortal even as it passes through the gates of birth and death.
About Savitri | B1C3-11 Towards Unity with God (pp.31-33)