Opening Remarks
All does not vanish in the Silence of Nirvana. The consciousness that is experiencing it remains. It is this that is being described.
Something was there
Yet something was there behind the fading scene;
Wherever she turned, at whatsoever she looked,
It was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.
Yet something remained behind the fading scene. Wherever Savitri turned and whatsoever she looked there was this ‘Something’ or ‘Someone’ that was perceived even though hid from mind and sight.
Aloof from Space and Time
The One only real shut itself from Space
And stood aloof from the idea of Time.
The One alone, the sole Real was felt beyond the boundaries of Space, standing aloof from the sense of Time.
Escaped from line and hue
Its truth escaped from shape and line and hue.
The truth of this sole ‘Real’ was apart from form and its shape and lines and hues.
Annulled
All else grew unsubstantial, self-annulled,
This only everlasting seemed and true,
Yet nowhere dwelt, it was outside the hours.
All else grew unsubstantial, as if a annulled by itself. This sole Real alone now seemed everlasting and true. Yet it dwelt nowhere and was outside the flow of Time.
Answered not the sense
This only could justify the labour of sight,
But sight could not define for it a form;
This only could appease the unsatisfied ear
But hearing listened in vain for a missing sound;
This answered not the sense, called not to Mind.
This sole Real could alone justify the sight though the sight itself failed to define Its form. This sole Real alone could appease the ears though the hearing listened in vain for a missing sound. This sole Real did not respond to the call of the senses nor to the efforts of the Mind.
Unknowable
It met her as the uncaught inaudible Voice
That speaks for ever from the Unknowable.
That sole Real remained uncaught by the senses. Its Voice and sound emerging for ever from the Unknowable remained inaudible.
Sole eternity
It met her like an omnipresent point
Pure of dimensions, unfixed, invisible,
The single oneness of its multiplied beat
Accentuating its sole eternity.
This sole Real met her like a point that is omnipresent, beyond the dimensions and yet everywhere. It could not be fixed and remained invisible. It was a single oneness multiplying its beat and accentuating its sole eternity.
Nought’s immensity
It faced her as some vast Nought’s immensity,
An endless No to all that seems to be,
An endless Yes to things ever unconceived
And all that is unimagined and unthought,
An eternal zero or untotalled Aught,
A spaceless and a placeless Infinite.
This sole Real felt like some vast immense Nothingness, negating endlessly all that seemed to be, affirming endlessly what is not yet manifest or even conceived as if nothing was impossible. It felt like an eternal Zero or the infinite All beyond any calculation, a spaceless Infinite that could not be placed anywhere.
Lone Reality
Yet eternity and infinity seemed but words
Vainly affixed by mind’s incompetence
To its stupendous lone reality.
Yet eternity and infinity are but words through which the mind tries to conceive It though they too fail before this stupendous lone Reality.
Closing remarks
Such is the powerful experience of the One Real. It could be experienced either as the cessation of all things or the One behind the all as the sole Reality.
