Grip of the Senses, pp. 490-491

Opening Remarks
Savitri now strives to step out of the consciousness held in the grip of senses and the elemental energies.

A difficult narrowness
At first a difficult narrowness was there,
A press of uncertain powers and drifting wills;
For all was there but nothing in its place.

At first she entered a difficult narrow passage, a pressure of forces and contradictory wills was felt. All was there but nothing was in its place. It was a state of chaos and disorder.

Spaces of secret self
At times an opening came, a door was forced;
She crossed through spaces of a secret self
And trod in passages of inner Time.

At times she felt an inner opening as if an inner door was force opened to cross the subjective spaces through passages of an inner Time.

Form of things
At last she broke into a form of things,
A start of finiteness, a world of sense:
But all was still confused, nothing self-found.

Through the pressure of an inner concentration she entered into the domain of form where forms are perceived by creating limits through the operations of the senses. This lack of distinctness, a state of disorganisation, was quite confusing to Savitri as she entered this realm.

Only cries of life
Soul was not there but only cries of life.

There was no soul there but only cries of a primal life.

Thronged and clamorous air
A thronged and clamorous air environed her.

She felt an atmosphere of a crowded places full of incoherent noise.

Horde of sounds
A horde of sounds defied significance,
A dissonant clash of cries and contrary calls;
A mob of visions broke across the sight,
A jostled sequence lacking sense and suite,
Feelings pushed through a packed and burdened heart,
Each forced its separate inconsequent way
But cared for nothing but its ego’s drive.

She felt entering into a space of discordant sounds without any significance filled with cries and contradictory calls. Chaotic visions broke across her field of sight in a jostled sequence without any sense. Feelings without consequence pushed through a packed and burdened heart caring for nothing but the ego’s drive.

Rally without key
A rally without key of common will,
Thought stared at thought and pulled at the taut brain
As if to pluck the reason from its seat
And cast its corpse into life’s wayside drain;
So might forgotten lie in Nature’s mud
Abandoned the slain sentinel of the soul.

Savitri experiences a crowd without any common will, like a market place or a public square with all kinds of thoughts tugging at the brain as if to snatch away her reason and even destroy it by this overwhelming chaotic flow. Were this to happen the human Reason, the sentinel of the soul, might lie as a slain corpse in the lowly state of earth nature.

Revel mad and mighty
So could life’s power shake from it mind’s rule,
Nature renounce the spirit’s government
And the bare elemental energies
Make of the sense a glory of boundless joy,
A splendour of ecstatic anarchy,
A revel mighty and mad of utter bliss.

Were one to be pulled in different directions by contradictory and chaotic wills, one may lose the faculty of reason, and renouncing the spirit’s governance, life may be ruled by elemental energies that titillate the senses revelling in a mad and anarchic state.

Sense’s instinct
This was the sense’s instinct void of soul
Or when the soul sleeps hidden void of power,
But now the vital godhead wakes within
And lifts the life with the Supernal’s touch.

This is the state whence one is driven by the sense’s instincts while the soul sleeps and the gods of life have a free play climbing towards the sky.

If mind is cast away
But how shall come the glory and the flame
If mind is cast away into the abyss?

Though mind has to be transcended, it is not by casting it away that one can transcend it. Mind is the instrument for the ascension as well as a channel for the glory and flame of God to descend into earth nature. One does not ascend to the realms of the Spirit by casting away the mind. Rather this only brings a state of madness when one is ruled by the vital enjoyments and the pleasure of the senses.

The body without the mind
For body without mind has not the light,
The rapture of spirit sense, the joy of life;
All then becomes subconscient, tenebrous,
Inconscience puts its seal on Nature’s page
Or else a mad disorder whirls the brain
Posting along a ravaged nature’s roads,
A chaos of disordered impulses
In which no light can come, no joy, no peace.

The body without the mind has not the light of reason nor can it experience the rapture of the spirit sense and the true joy of life that comes through the higher discernment. Without the mind all becomes subconscient and shadowy and dark. Then Inconscience starts ruling upon our nature or else we enter a state of madness and disorder whereby nature enters a degraded state with chaotic disordered impulses in which no light or joy or peace can come.

This state now threatened
This state now threatened, this she pushed from her.

This subconscient state now threatened Savitri but she pushed it aside with great force and strength of will.

She was free
As if in a long endless tossing street
One driven mid a trampling hurrying crowd
Hour after hour she trod without release
Holding by her will the senseless meute at bay;
Out of the dreadful press she dragged her will
And fixed her thought upon the saviour Name;
Then all grew still and empty; she was free.

She moved as if tossed about in an endless street mid a trampling hurrying crowd. She held on to her will keeping the mutiny of the senses at bay, fixing her thought upon the saviour Name of the God till all grew still and empty and she was free.

A large deliverance
A large deliverance came, a vast calm space.

Savitri was thus delivered from the grip of the senses and entered a calm vast inner space.

Blank tranquility
Awhile she moved through a blank tranquillity
Of naked Light from an invisible sun,
A void that was a bodiless happiness,
A blissful vacuum of nameless peace.

She moved through a blank tranquil luminous state though the Source of this state was not known. She felt a void filled with bodiless happiness and a blissful vacuum of nameless peace.

Closing Remarks
Savitri is released from the hard grip of the senses and feels a tranquil joy and peace.