Earth’s Journey Around the Sun, p. 349

Opening remarks
This beautiful passage describes vividly the seasons and their significance as stages of earth’s preparation for the change and also the seasons of life. Outwardly it is a description of the seasons following the conception but inwardly it is a description of the earth preparing to receive the Divine. The earth moves around the sun in a circumambulating around it. Though the two never touch each other except through the rays descending below and the winds carrying the aspiration of the earth upwards as far as they can. This meeting of the earth and the sun this way is symbolic of the meeting of matter and the all-illumining Spirit. It is through this meeting that new possibilities begin to emerge out of earth. It is called as evolution but in essence it is a manifestation that takes place, a manifestation of the divine possibilities hidden within earth. The meeting is symbolic of the inner meeting and outpouring of the Light and Truth of the Divine upon creation leading to the emergence of new forms embodying higher terms and scales of consciousness.

Journey of the sun
A maenad of the cycles of desire
Around a Light she must not dare to touch,
Hastening towards a far-off unknown goal
Earth followed the endless journey of the Sun.

The journey of the earth around the Sun is symbolic of the journey of man through birth and death and rebirth goaded by desire through which he slowly progresses. Each change of season leads her one more step towards the goal that ever remains unseen and elusive to her eyes. This journey of the earth is as if guided by the Light of the Sun who remains far and yet invariably reaches out, permeates and percolates into each element, each grain of sand till all is slowly uplifted and evolves towards the skies. This is symbolic of the journey of man guided by the Divine who yet remains hidden to our sight.

Swing of the void
A mind but half-awake in the swing of the void
On the bosom of Inconscience dreamed out life
And bore this finite world of thought and deed
Across the immobile trance of the Infinite.

Sri Aurobindo compares the journey of the earth moving in an immense space as if held by a vast Nothingness to some Cosmic Mind turning in a void bringing out the possibilities of life and thought and act out of the Inconscience that stretches around it.

Jewelled wheel
A vast immutable silence with her ran:
Prisoner of speed upon a jewelled wheel,
She communed with the mystic heart in Space.

The symbol made clear the Master Poet now uses it powerfully as he describes the earth running along the banks of Silence carrying the silence itself around her. The days and night are the spokes of the star-studded field compared as a jewelled wheel. The pace of her journey and its orbit is not in her control and yet there is within her a being who communes with the mystic heart of Space, or the Divine Immanent in creation.

Measured rhythm
Amid the ambiguous stillness of the stars
She moved towards some undisclosed event
And her rhythm measured the long whirl of Time.

Thus she moves through the still stars though they themselves are in perpetual motion indicating the ever-shifting, ever-changing flow and flux of Time. She does not yet know the rand culmination of her journey, the final event that is yet not disclosed to her. Her movements are measured out by processes and dance of Time.

Ceaseless motion
In ceaseless motion round the purple rim
Day after day sped by like coloured spokes,
And through a glamour of shifting hues of air
The seasons drew in linked significant dance
The symbol pageant of the changing year.

Her motion, the perpetual dance of particles in matter and of nature in general is ceaseless through the drift of time creating the day and night and the changing seasons. These seasons themselves are linked together symbolically.

The burning languor
Across the burning languor of the soil
Paced Summer with his pomp of violent noons
And stamped his tyranny of torrid light
And the blue seal of a great burnished sky.

There is the tired heat of the summer indicative of strong effort that wakes us up to the glory of the skies. The light storms into our being and the skies inviting call us to the great and tremendous adventure of life.

Closing Remarks
The earth is the symbol of matter and life based upon matter. And yet hidden within it are countless possibilities that will manifest through the progression of time and he change of seasons brought about by her journey around the sun.