-022_The Opening Sections of the 1936-37 Version of Sri Aurobindo^s Savitri.htm THE OPENING SECTIONS OF THE 1936-37 VERSION OF SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION The story of how Sri Aurobindo disclosed in private to one of his disciples the growing wonder of his Savitri has already been recounted in different ways in three books: Sri Aurobindo - the Poet, Light and Laughter, Our Light and Delight. But parts of it are especially relevant now that the actual text of the disclosed version is being published.1 Soon after I arrived in the Ashram on December 16, 1927 I started to hear snatches of information to the effect that a poetic masterpiece by Sri Aurobindo had b

-004_Sri Aurobindo- Letters on Savitri Editor^s note to the 1951 Edition.htm SRI AUROBINDO - LETTERS ON SAVITRI: EDITOR'S NOTE TO THE 1951 EDITION Sri Aurobindo intended to write a long Introduction to Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol. Together with one Book out of the twelve of his epic - significantly enough the Book of Death - the eagerly awaited Introduction never got written. Nothing that anybody may pen, however acute, can replace it as an expository and illuminative document on the unusual poetic afflatus - unusual both in message and music - that blows through the twenty-five thousand and odd lines of this Legend of the past that is a Symbol of the future. But luckily we have a substant

CHAPTER II THE AGE OF INDIVIDUALISM AND REASON   AN INDIVIDUALISTIC age of human society comes as a result of the corruption and failure of the conventional, as a revolt against the reign of the petrified typal figure. Before it can be born it is necessary that the old truths shall have been lost in the soul and practice of the race and that even the conventions which ape and replace them shall have become devoid of real sense and intelligence: stripped of all practical justification, they exist only mechanically by fixed idea, by the force of custom, by attachment to the form. It is then that men in spite of the natural conservatism of the social mind are compelled at las

CHAPTER VI THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE VIEWS OF LIFE   THE principle of individualism is the liberty of the human being regarded as a separate existence to develop himself and fulfil his life, satisfy his mental tendencies, emotional and vital needs and physical being according to his own desire governed by his reason; it admits no other limit to this right and this liberty except the obligation to respect the same individual liberty and right in others. The balance of this liberty and this obligation is the principle which the individualistic age adopted in its remodeling of society; it adopted in effect a harmony of compromises between rights and duties, liberty and la

INDEX   Absolute, the as contributing value to all things, 162 as the end of religious seeking, 144 behind every movement of life, 122 in German subjectivism, 52 of beauty, 160.—(also see God) Abyssinia, 57 f Aesthetics, 132 Africans, 55, 57 America, Latins of, 55 American poet, 243 Anabaptist, 17 Ananda, the essential principle of delight, no, 152-153, l66 Anarchism: as a rational principle of society, 216, 226 as opposed to communism, 243-244 ignores the infrarational in man, 244 its realisation in spiritualised society, 288  philosophical, 23 spiritual, as nearer

CHAPTER V TRUE AND FALSE SUBJECTIVISM   THE subjective stage of human development is that critical juncture in which, having gone forward from symbols, types, conventions, having turned its gaze superficially on the individual being to discover his truth and right law of action and its relation to the superficial and external truth and law of the universe, our race begins to gaze deeper, to see and feel what is behind the outside and below the surface and therefore to live from within. It is a step towards self-knowledge and towards living in and from the self, away from knowledge of things as the not-self and from the living according to this objective idea of life and th

CHAPTER IX CIVILISATION AND CULTURE   NATURE starts from Matter, develops out of it its hidden Life, releases out of involution in life all the crude material of Mind and, when she is ready, turns Mind upon itself and upon Life and Matter in a great mental effort to understand all three in their phenomena, their obvious action, their secret laws, their normal and abnormal possibilities and powers so that they may be turned to the richest account, used in the best and most harmonious way, elevated to their highest as well as extended to their widest potential aims by the action of that faculty which man alone of terrestrial creatures clearly possesses, the intelligent wil

CHAPTER XXIV THE ADVENT AND PROGRESS OF THE SPIRITUAL AGE   IF A SUBJECTIVE age, the last sector of a social cycle, is to find its outlet and fruition in a spiritualised society and the emergence of mankind on a higher evolutionary level, it is not enough that certain ideas favourable to that turn of human life should take hold of the general mind of the race, permeate the ordinary motives of its thought, art, ethics, political ideals, social effort, or even get well into its inner way of thinking and feeling. It is not enough even that the idea of the kingdom of God on earth, a reign of spirituality, freedom and unity, a real and inner equality and harmony—and not merel

CHAPTER XVII RELIGION AS THE LAW OF LIFE   SINCE the infinite, the absolute and transcendent, the universal, the one is the secret summit of existence and to reach the spiritual consciousness and the Divine the ultimate goal and aim of our being and therefore of the whole development of the individual and the collectivity in all its parts and all its activities, reason cannot be the last and highest guide; culture, as it is understood ordinarily, cannot be the directing light or find out the regulating and harmonising principle of all our life and action. For reason stops short of the Divine and only compromises with the problems of life, and culture in order to attain the Tra

CHAPTER XXI THE SPIRITUAL AIM AND LIFE   A SOCIETY founded upon spirituality will differ in two essential points from the normal human society which begins from and ends with the lower nature. The normal human society starts from the gregarious instinct modified by a diversity and possible antagonism of interests, from an association and clash of egos, from a meeting, combination, conflict of ideas, tendencies and principles; it tries first to patch up an accommodation of converging interests and a treaty of peace between discords, founded on a series of implied contracts, natural or necessary adjustments which become customs of the aggregate life, and to these contracts as