12: Scribbled Notes — Seven Immortal Earths
In the opening pages of Book Eleven of Savitri there is the revelation of “seven immortal earths beneath the triple heaven”. It is something absolutely new.
After vanquishing Death Savitri has cut a shining door into the great Void and entered, following transfigured Death into the Transcendent, the orange-gold Realm of Sacchidananda, Truth-ConsciousnessForce-Bliss. This entry of hers through the Great Void is splendidly unique to her, only hers, never done in the entire spiritual annals where it is by ascent from plane to plane, Loka above Loka, the climbing Ladder of the Worlds, the soaring Cosmic Hierarchy and the Beyond. And what is witnessed here is this:
In an endless figuring of the spirit in things
Planned by the artist who has dreamed the worlds;
Of all the beauty and the marvel here,
Of all Time’s intricate variety
Eternity was the substance and the source;
Not from a plastic mist of Matter made,
They offered the suggestion of their depths
And opened the great series of their powers. ||148.9||
Arisen beneath a triple mystic heaven
The seven immortal earths were seen sublime:
Homes of the blest released from death and sleep
Where grief can never come nor any pang
Arriving from self-lost and seeking worlds
Alter Heaven-nature’s changeless quietude
And mighty posture of eternal calm,
Its pose of ecstasy immutable. ||148.10||
Plains lay that seemed the expanse of God’s wide sleep,
Thought’s wings climbed up towards heaven’s vast repose
Lost in blue deeps of immortality. ||148.11||
The question is, What are these seven immortal earths in Sachchidananda, not at all present in any revelation, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Puraṇas? In Book Two of Savitri we have a detailed Travelogue of Yogi Aswapati, climbing the ascending Ladder of all the fourteen Worlds, Lokas. It is a most exhaustive presentation of the Cosmology, intimately experienced, marking his bright footprints everywhere, leaving behind his Consciousness in them, a secure support, ādhāra, for executive action of the incarnate Mahashakti. But he himself does not encounter these seven immortal earths. They come into view only if one passes through a door cut into the Void. Only Savitri has done this, she and none else.
Apropos of these seven immortal earths we may first gainfully look into Sri Aurobindo’s Record of Yoga, December 1926, pp. 1339-43. [ https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/11 ] Here we see several sets of seven of each, these belonging to the occult and spiritual aspects.
All is created by the Supreme Goddess, the Supreme and Original Mahashakti, all proceeds from her, all lives by her, all lives in her, even as she lives in all. All wisdom and knowledge are her wisdom and knowledge; all power is her power, all will and force her will and force, all action is her action, all movement her movement. All beings are portions of her power of existence. Seven times seven are the planes of the Supreme Goddess, the steps of ascent and descent of the Divine Transcendent and Universal Adyashakti.
Above are the thrice seven supreme planes of Sat-Chit-Ananda, in between are the seven planes of the Divine Truth and Vastness, Mahad Brahma; below are the thrice seven steps of the ascent and descent into this evolutionary world of the earth existence. These three gradations are successively Supermind or Truth-Mind, with its seven suns; Life with its seven Lotuses; Earth with its seven Jewel-Centres. The seven Lotuses are the seven chakras of the Tantric tradition, descending and ascending from Mind (Sahasradala, Ajna, Vishuddha, Anahata) that takes up Life through Life in Force (Manipura, Swadhisthana) down to Life involved in Matter (Muladhara).
All these Life-Centres are in themselves centres of Truth in Life even as the seven Suns, are each a flaming heart of Truth in the luminous Divine-Mind-Existence. The Jewel-Centres of the Earth-Mother are seven incandescent jewel-hearts of Truth in Substance.
To liberate all these powers by the radiant and flaming descent of the suns of the Supermind and the release of the eighth Sun of Truth hidden in the Earth, in the darkness of the Inconscience, in the cavern of Vala and his Panis — this is the first step towards the restoration of the Earth Mother to her own divinity and the earth-existence to its native light and truth and life and bliss of immaculate Ananda.
The Seven Suns
1. The Sun of Creative Origination (from the eternal vastnesses).
2. The double Sun of Light and Power (concentrating the movements emanated from the infinite Wisdom-Will).
3. The Sun of the Word (organising the creation).
4. The Sun of Love, Bliss and Beauty (dynamising the descending harmonies).
5. The Sun of Soul-Power (aspiring, receiving, grasping, assimilating the creation; divided here into the mind and psyche, there unified in Soul-Mind, Brahman).
6. The Sun of Life (dynamically externalising the creation).
7.The Sun of Everlasting Form (stabilising and containing the creation).
These are the seven powers of the Truth-Mind above the body.
The Seven Suns of the Supermind
1. The Sun of Supramental Truth, Knowledge-Power originating the supramental creation.
Descent into the Sahasradala.
2. The Sun of Supramental Light and Will-Power, transmitting the Knowledge Power as dynamic vision and command to create, found and organise the supramental creation. Descent into the Ajna-chakra, the centre between the eyes.
3. The Sun of the Supramental Word, embodying the Knowledge-Power, empowered to express and arrange the supramental creation
Descent into the Throat-Centre.
4. The Sun of supramental Love, Beauty and Bliss, releasing the Soul of the Knowledge-Power to vivify and harmonise the supramental creation.
Descent into the Heart-Lotus
5. The Sun of Supramental Force dynamised as a power and source of life to support the supramental creation
Descent into the navel centre
6. The Sun of Life-Radiances (Power-Rays) distributing the dynamis and pouring it into concrete formations.
Descent into the penultimate centre
7. The Sun of supramental Substance-Energy and Form-Energy empowered to embody the supramental life and stabilise the creation.
Descent into the Muladhara.
The Seven Centres of the Life
1. The thousand-petalled Lotus above the head with its base on the brain. Basis or support in Life-Mind for the Supramental; initiative centre of the illumined Mind.
2 The centre between the brows in the middle of the forehead. Will, vision, inner mental formation, active and dynamic Mind.
3 The centre in the throat. Speech, external mind, all external expression and formation.
4 The heart-lotus. Externally, the emotional mind, the vital mental: in the inner heart the psychic centre.
5 The navel centre. The larger vital proper; life-force centre.
6 The centre intermediate between the navel and the Muladhara. The lower vital; it connects all the above centres with the physical.
7 The last centre or Muladhara. Material support of the vital; initiation of the physical.
All below is the subconscient physical.
https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/11/ pp. 1339-43
Seven Descents
The Sun of supramental will and knowledge descends,
The high omnipotence of diamond daze!
The Lion of light with a million rays of truth,
The Bull of hero-strengths with armies of flame,
The White Horse with a moon-halo on his head,
The Eagle of ecstasy with far wafted wings,
The Stag of swift luminous omniscient beam,
The Star-Serpent of stark gigantic might,
The Bison with red horns of Immortality’s Law;
The great august Paramount of seven dawns
Comes crashing the golden cosmos’s massive gate,
Sweeping in his royalty’s blaze the twilight of thought,
Thundering through the throat the impeccable voice,
Pouring in the heart the holocaust of love,
Pressing the fire-feet of the creative gleam,
Flooding with miracles the spines of little life,
Thrilling the vast Name in body’s night of trance;
The Self of Bliss bursts in seven epiphanies.
RY Deshpande, 1962
Yet what are these “seven immortal earths beneath the triple mystic heaven”? While the triple mystic heaven is clearly Sachchidananda there is the least idea or intuition about these seven earths, nowhere else found in the spiritual literature.
However, it can be prudently understood that these seven immortal earths could represent sublime realms of existence, homes of the blessed, free from death, sleep, and suffering. They are described as embodying lustrous divine beauty and felicity, translating terrestrial scenes into their divine counterparts. Even the lowest of these earths retains a heavenly quality, reflecting the divine splendour in material forms.
This understanding of the seven earths is in line with the Vedic and Puraṇic cosmology where existence is structured in a hierarchy of planes or worlds or lokas. These planes correspond to different levels of consciousness and beings. In that tradition the seven worlds (sapta lokas) or seven principles of existence are often described as: Satyaloka, Tapoloka, Janaloka, Swaraloka, Bhuvarloka, Bhurloka; Existence, Consciousness-Force, Knowledge, Mind, Life, Matter.
These “seven immortal earths” are not physical but represent the highest spiritual states or realms that embody the divine qualities of existence, not included in the septet. Yet they are a part of the evolutionary journey of consciousness; each loka or plane in it serves as a step in the ascent from material existence to the supramental and the divine.
In Book Two of Savitri, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds, we have the Aurobindonian Cosmology detailed out in its tremendous completeness. The soul of the Yogi Aswapati is released from Ignorance and his spirit is free from the bondage of the lower Nature, Aparā Prakriti, in Book One. With that foundational readiness he sets himself to explore the thousand dimensions of the universal extensions and ascents, worlds climbing above worlds, the Ladder of Existence in Space and Time reaching the transcendental Vastness. The Travelogue is not just a site-seer’s note-pad script; he has put his footprints in every place he has gone, making it a support, an Ādhāra, for the work of the executive Force. It is a kind of a Pauraṇic account in which are narrated the creation and the various worlds present in it, the higher and the lower worlds, in Space and Time. In that sense, with Book Two, we can as well say that this Savitri is a Purāṇa, the criterion for being a Purāṇa is to narrate the entire cosmology in Space and Time. It is an updated Purāṇa with unparalleled details of Lokas and Lokas, Planes and Planes of Consciousness in the Cosmos. The fourteen Lokas, worlds of the Purāṇas are as follows:
Urdhva Lokas (Upper Worlds): Satyaloka (सत्यलोक), Tapoloka (तपोलोक), Janaloka (जनलोक), Maharloka (महर्लोक), Svarloka (स्वर्लोक), Bhuvarloka (भुवर्लोक), Bhuloka (भूलोक);
Adho Lokas Patalas (Nether Worlds): Ataḷa (अतळ), Vitaḷa (वितळ), Sutaḷa (सुतळ), Taḷātaḷa (तलातळ), Mahātaḷa (महातळ), Rasātaḷa (रसातळ), Pātāḷa (पाताळ).
The Seven Upper Worlds are associated with light, truth, and spiritual evolution. The highest is the realm and the abode of Lord Brahma. It is a world of ultimate truth where souls are freed from the cycle of rebirth. The region of penance is inhabited by enlightened beings and deities known as to be immune to fire. The abode of the pure-minded four sons of Brahma and the advanced spiritual preceptors is here. Ruled by Lord Indra there is then a heavenly paradise for those who do good Karma. It is located between the Sun and the Pole Star. The atmospheric zone, antariksha, between Earth and Sun is inhabited by semi-divine beings and spirits. The physical realm or Earth where humans and other living species reside is called Mrityu Loka.
But nowhere we have seven immortal earths under the triple mystic heaven, the realm of Sachchidananda — Existence (Sat), Consciousness-Force (Chit-Tapas), and Bliss (Ananda). These are the highest principles of creation, forming the foundation of all existence.
The seven immortal earths arise beneath this triple heaven, symbolising the descent of divine principles into manifest creation, progressively embodying the divine truth in forms accessible to evolving beings. These serve as stages in the evolutionary divine manifestation in the journey of the soul. Their presence assures the possibility of transforming earthly existence into a divine life, matter itself becoming a vessel for the supramental consciousness. This vision could be interpreted in the light of Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga, which seeks not an escape from the world but its transformation into a divine reality. Thus these seven immortal earths are not just symbolic; they are entities, they are beings. Could they be the Bhumis corresponding to Bhu, Bhuva, Swaha, Mahas, Jana, Tapa, Satya?
Yes, they represent real planes of existence, inhabited by conscious beings. In Sri Aurobindo’s cosmology, these realms are indeed living realities, each embodying a distinct aspect of the divine manifestation. The suggestion that they might correspond to the Bhumis — the planes of Bhu (Earth), Bhuva (Vital), Swaha (Mental), Mahas (Higher Mind or Truth), Jana (Bliss), Tapa (Consciousness-Force), and Ananda (Pure Bliss) — could be an acceptable profound insight and aligns well with the integral vision of creation.
The Seven Immortal Earths are seven Bhumis, Bhumis in Vedic cosmology often described as levels of existence or consciousness, each progressively subtler and closer to the divine source. Let us explore how the seven immortal earths might correspond to these Bhumis:
1. Bhu (Physical Earth): The material plane, where consciousness is most veiled and bound by the limitations of matter. The first of the immortal earths would represent the divine perfection of this plane, where matter is transformed and illumined by the supramental consciousness.
2. Bhuva (Vital World): The realm of life-energy and emotions. The second earth would embody the divine expression of vitality, free from the distortions of desire and ego, manifesting pure life-force in harmony with the divine will.
3. Swaha (Mental World): The plane of thought and intellect. The third earth would reflect the divine mind, where knowledge is direct, intuitive, and luminous, unclouded by ignorance or duality.
4. Mahas (Higher Mind or Truth): The realm of truth-consciousness, where the divine knowledge begins to manifest in its purity. The fourth earth would be a world of luminous truth, where all forms and movements are expressions of divine wisdom.
5. Jana (Bliss): The plane of divine joy and delight. The fifth earth would be a realm of unalloyed bliss, where all existence is suffused with the ecstasy of divine love and unity.
6. Tapa (Consciousness-Force): The realm of divine will and power. The sixth earth would embody the dynamic aspect of the divine, where consciousness and force are perfectly united in the creative play of the divine.
7. Ananda (Pure Bliss): The highest plane of existence, where all is pure bliss and unity with the divine. The seventh earth would be the ultimate expression of divine felicity, where all distinctions dissolve in the oneness of Sachchidananda.
The seven immortal earths, as living realities, serve as archetypes for the transformation of earthly existence. They represent the divine possibilities inherent in creation, waiting to be realised through the evolutionary ascent of consciousness. In Sri Aurobindo’s vision, the ultimate purpose of creation is the manifestation of the divine in all its aspects, culminating in the supramental transformation of matter.
By associating with these higher planes, humanity can draw their influence into the material world, accelerating the process of transformation and bringing the divine closer to earthly life. The seven immortal earths serve as both the goal and the guiding force of the evolutionary journey. Along with several septets these seven earths highlight the integral nature of creation where every plane of existence is interconnected and contributes to the unfolding of the divine plan.
These seven earths under the mystic triple heaven, these Bhumis is absolutely a new revelation coming from Sri Aurobindo. He alone could give it — because his concern is the Earth where this earthly life has to become the life divine.
19 March 2026
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