Towards the Soul, p. 522

Opening Remarks
Savitri presses her consciousness inwardly in search of the soul.

Onward she passed
Onward she passed seeking the soul’s mystic cave.

Savitri pressed further in search of the soul’s mystic cave in an inward space.

Night of God
At first she stepped into a night of God.

There is a night of God whence all our so-called mental knowledge built upon bricks of senses is taken away along with all the pride of the mind. It is the first condition for the discovery of our soul and is sometimes referred to as the night of God.

The light was quenched
The light was quenched that helps the labouring world,
The power that struggles and stumbles in our life;
This inefficient mind gave up its thoughts,
The striving heart its unavailing hopes.

The light of mind the power of the vital that has so far helped the world loses its lustre and strength. So does the heart gives up our vain hopes. And strivings.

All knowledge failed
All knowledge failed and the Idea’s forms
And Wisdom screened in awe her lowly head
Feeling a Truth too great for thought or speech,
Formless, ineffable, for ever the same.

The first step in search of the soul is to know that the mind cannot understand spiritual things. One sees its limitations and eventual failure to rescue mankind. Ideas and ideologies failed and even Wisdom born from an illumined mind humbled before a Truth too great for thought and speech, a truth that could not be cast into form, it was ineffable and unchanging.

Holy Ignorance
An innocent and holy Ignorance
Adored like one who worships formless God
The unseen Light she could not claim nor own.

As one enters the sanctuary of God where the soul dwells, one knows that one knows nothing, is nothing, can do nothing without the Divine. The heart was full of adoration and worship towards the Divine one had not yet known and faith in the unseen Light one could not claim nor own.

Purity of emptiness
In a simple purity of emptiness
Her mind knelt down before the unknowable.

Her mind was filled with the purity of emptiness as it kneeled down before the unknowable.

All was abolished
All was abolished save her naked self
And the prostrate yearning of her surrendered heart:
There was no strength in her, no pride of force;
The lofty burning of desire had sunk
Ashamed, a vanity of separate self,
The hope of spiritual greatness fled,
Salvation she asked not nor a heavenly crown:
Humility seemed now too proud a state.

Nothing was left that one could say as one’s own except the sense of self and the prostrate yearning of her surrendered heart. There was no more anything one could call as one’s own strength or have any pride in one’s abilities and capacities. One could see that nothing belongs to oneself and with that awareness the desire self-asserting its own separate existence seemed a vanity of which one could only be ashamed. Even the hope of spiritual greatness too fled which the ego claimed as a prize of discovering the soul. Neither salvation, nor a heavenly crown could be claimed and even humility seemed a warped pride before that Light and Glory.

God alone was all
Her self was nothing, God alone was all,
Yet God she knew not but only knew he was.

There was nothing of the old ego-self that she could claim as her self. Only God existed evident to the eye of faith even though yet unseen and unknown.

World was a deep darkness
A sacred darkness brooded now within,
The world was a deep darkness great and nude.

Empty of all except her sacred yearning for God, all else appeared a sacred void and the world itself a darkness great and nude.

The great void
This void held more than all the teeming worlds,
This blank felt more than all that Time has borne,
This dark knew dumbly, immensely the Unknown.

This void was teeming with possibilities waiting to be born. The blank state was full of the silence of things that had not yet manifested in Time. This darkness was filled with a silent knowledge that somehow knew the immensity of the unknown God.

Formless, voiceless, infinite
But all was formless, voiceless, infinite.

Yet all remained still formless, voiceless, infinite as if waiting to be born.

Closing Remarks
The state of Savitri described here is what one experiences when one is approaching the doors of the soul.