The Unknowable (SVH 27) Book 3 Canto 1

This is a summary of Book Three, Canto I, of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri.

Aswapati stands at the doors of the Unknowable. The Unknowable cannot be known by the Mind. It can be known if It so chooses to reveal Itself to us. One has to wait with endless patience, wait upon the Grace at the peaks of creation. Aswapati feels the wonderful Presence of the Transcendent Divine but it is not possible to behold His splendour nor hold it for long. Touched and uplifted by the direct Rays of the Sun, bathed in the Supramental vibrations natural at these summits he finds himself entering into the higher hemisphere of existence. Here he must leave aside all mental constructs and conceptions, all the imperfect means that nature has so far evolved to manifest certain truths but very imperfectly so. The world as we know and experience it is a distortion of Truth. It is not what it is meant to be. This illusion is not an unreality but a distortion of the Reality. It is this that Aswapati is impelled to set right. But one cannot enter into this realm of Truth without shedding all the scales of distortion and limitations. Only truth can remain in this realm, not even its representations. All must be left behind, either to end in the Stillness profound and Ineffable or to be newly made in the mould of Truth. But at first, Aswapati has the experience of the Silent Purusha, Ekamewadwitiyam, the One Infinite who is the occult cause of creation and yet is beyond it. He is Self-born and uncreated yet is the source of all things.