Today, on April 24, 2019, a book of forty-two annotated selections from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is being offered to all interested. The book has been compiled by Dr Alok Pandey, who’s notes on the approach taken in choosing and annotating the selections are posted today, along with the Table of Contents.
A short video clip with archival footage of The Mother’s Darshan in 1964. Vasanti Rao’s rendering of Upanishadic mantra Asato Ma Sadgamaya is used as a soundtrack.
A weekly sharing on Savitri by Dr Alok Pandey (an audio recording in English).
Photographs of flowers from the Savitri Bhavan gardens, with their spiritual significance. Photography by Suresh Nagamani. Produced at Savitri Bhavan, Auroville, in 2015.
I must tell you that the origin of these beings is prior to that of the gods; they are the first emanations, the first individual beings of the universe; so they cannot be got rid of so easily, by winning one war. As long as they are necessary for the universal evolution they will exist. The day they lose their utility, they will be converted or will disappear.
“…after we have entered the path, he envelops us with his wide and mighty liberating Impersonality or moves near to us with the face and form of a personal Godhead. In and around us we feel a Power that upholds and protects and cherishes; we hear a Voice that guides; a conscious Will greater than ourselves rules us”
Life at this stage of evolution moves around a small circle. It cannot embrace the adventure of the Vast and the Unknown.
About a week after Sri Aurobindo was lodged at Shankar Chetty’s house, a distinguished French thinker and scholar, Paul Richard, came to Pondicherry… “He was sent from France by Mira — she whom we know as the Mother.”[3] She had given him the sketch of a Yogachakra (a mystic symbol) saying that its interpreter was to be found in India and that he who would interpret it was her master and guide in yoga.
‘The Chariot of Jagannath’ is an ideal that Sri Aurobindo envisaged and explained in his early Bengali writings of the same name. It is the symbol of the collective development of Society with the Divine at its centre.
“He came into a realm of early Light
And the regency of a half-risen sun.
Out of its rays our mind’s full orb was born.”
Mental work during the meditation — how is that?
The condition of meditation (Yogic concentration) is mental quietude, there can be no mental “work” during meditation.
Life, even in this littleness, sometimes dreams of love and beauty, but her means are poor and her instruments inadequate to realise them upon earth. Thus man’s life moves on a low pitch and remains tied to smallness and pettiness, with their attendant sorrow and misery.
Death once again counters Savitri with arguments of Nothingness as the ultimate Reality. Savitri answers him by revealing the profound oneness one finds through Love.
The Mother is creative consciousness; wherever she happens to be, wherever she is called upon to be, her very presence moves towards creation, creating a new world and a new dimension of being and consciousness, according to the need of the time and place.
