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We travel with the King through a place of greater levels of universal thought than our little mind can receive from. Some additional writings of Sri Aurobindo and Mother tell us what our mind is and exactly what “our” thoughts are. This part of Canto XI is a general description that introduces the planes of consciousness where the universal thoughts are. The great Thinker has regained his privilege of shadowless sight and has entered the Immortal’s air, and he drinks again his pure and mighty source.

The great Yogi-King is at the end of his journey through the little mind. Sri Aurobindo shows us how reason, the last and greatest process of our little mind, cannot see the whole Truth. “For nothing is known while aught remains concealed; the Truth is known only when all is seen.” He shows what happens can when science, which is based on reasoning thought and observation of material things, can no longer rely on the thinking processes of the little mind. He speaks of the destruction that occurs when man uses only reason to control others by the mis-use of dangerous scientific discoveries.

The Traveller has come to the third and greatest of the functions of our mind at the level of the mind which is limited to the information given to it by our senses. It is Reason, a mental process which we have always valued very highly. Sri Aurobindo shows us Reason’s limitations. For a world seen, Reason weaves a world conceived. Reason tries to harmonize all life by controlling it with thought, but the real source of harmony is beyond the senses. If we use only reason to define our world, we end up in a reality where there is no place for soul or spirit because Reason can not experience things which are not brought to it by the senses.

The Traveller experiences the mental planes which are open to man. He follows the work of the Divine Shakti, the great Puissance, as she creates mind’s evolution in life in matter. He experiences two different ways that our surface mind functions. The first one shows the ways of thought which want to keep everything the same. This type of thought moves around and around in the same time-worn grooves. The second mode of thought is unstable, passionate and irrational. The burning vision of desire moves these thoughts to flame to the heights and sink to the depths and to waste life energy in pursuit of unreal dreams.

Even the highest paradise of life energies is not enough to hold the Traveller. Nothing can hold him until he reaches the Highest. He moves into the first, lowest plane of Mind where the development of Mind in our life in a body first begins. Throughout the worlds of Mind, Sri Aurobindo speaks of Mind’s development in terms of increasing light and decreasing darkness. First the Traveller meets a silver-grey expanse where dim and shifting rays divide Life’s energies from Mind’s poise. He travels on in the Physical Mind which receives only from the erring senses and admits only the physical, objective, the actual. Rays of light continue to come and Mind evolves slowly but surely.

The Traveller has reached the highest world of the life force, where Life can manifest her highest hopes and capacities. After the work of his long purifying journey through Night, he has purified his being to the point where he can experience Life’s highest. In our world, life ends in death. In this world, life is carried by Immortality. The wounded limbs of the Travellr’s warrior nature are healed in the arms of pure, stainless Energies which do not fear their own bliss. His physical body can experience the supreme demand for bliss. He bore the rapture that the Gods sustain, and immortal pleasure cleansed him in its waves and turned his strength into undying power. These are Sri Aurobindo’s own experiences, which he writes about all through his diary, The Record of Yoga.

The great yogi king is nearing the end of his journey in the inconscient. He has followed life back to her first plunge into the inconscient to bring spirit into matter, so he can learn the reason for her failure. Now he presses into the deepest pit and the darkest core of this infernal realm. He will see the secret key of Nature’s change when he finally enters into the abysmal secrey and stands on the last locked floor of the subconscient. Falsehood will give back to truth her tortured shape. All things made by time’s torn heart will be healed. Matter and spirit will become one.

The Traveller is in the World of Falsehood where the giant sons of Darkness sit as in a studio of creative Death and plan the tragic drama of the earth. These are the subtle and enormous powers which fill Nature with evil and claim God’s approval for their acts.The dark Adventurers, terrible agencies allowed by the Spirit, oppose the eternal Will and load the dice of Doom with wizard lies. This too the Traveller of the Worlds must dare. None can reach heaven who has not passed through Hell.

The soul of the great Yogi-King has awakened, and he mastered the tides of Nature and met naked Hell with his bare spirit. Now he can see the hidden heart of Night. He is in deep levels of the Inconscience where a Nature denies the eternal Truth and hopes to abolish God. He sees an immense negation of spiritual things and great evil beings who have no inner spirit. It is a place where Heaven’s face becomes a mask and snare of Hell. A monstrous birth prepared its cosmic form in Nature’s titan embryo, Ignorance. A seeking mind replaced the seeing Soul. Sri Aurobindo describes how the dire antagonist Energy, hostile to the true Mother-force, sees the One grow in the heart of time and sees the Immortal shine through the human mould. She does her best to slay the soul. This is the tragedy of the inner death when forfeited is the divine element and only a mind and body live to die.

The Traveller Yogi King is descending into dark and inconscient states which come to spiritual seekers on their way to Light and consciousness. These states also come to people in the world as the whole creation progresses towards Light and Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo describes the spiritual seeker’s darkness before the dawn many times and in many ways in Savitri, beginning in Book One, Canto One with The Symbol Dawn. The Traveller is still in the world of Life’s deformation into evil worship and sinful lust. To have power, to be master, is the sole virtue and good. All were deceived or served their own deceit. Then the King moved down to a world where nothing was left, not even an evil face, and he was faced with an eternity of pain and emptiness. The King’s actions as he moves down, ever down, teach us how we should deal with such situations when they come to us.