OPENING SPEECH FOR THE SRI AUROBINDO RESEARCH ACADEMY 24 APRIL 1978 In everything connected with Sri Aurobindo, as this Academy most evidently is, we have to think of the new Truth of the spiritual consciousness, which he has brought to the world - the all-creative and all-transforming Supermind. The Supermind, by the very nature of its comprehensiveness, takes the whole of life into its scope. The new Truth which it represents must, therefore, mean a host of fresh insights waiting for us in all the fields of human activity -philosophy, sociology, history, science, art and even business. Everywhere by its influence

POETRY OF THE THOUGHT-MIND AND "OVERHEAD POETRY" MILTON'S PARADISE LOST AND SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI Milton knew himself to be for "an audience fit, though few." It is impossible for many to address him in their minds as he makes Eve address Adam: O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, My glory, my perfection!1 But in a poetic sense Milton can be likened to Adam and regarded as our glory and perfection if we interpret from the standpoint of poetic psychology the phrase: O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose. For, Milton is the first English poet to fashion the language of p

INDEX A absolute Self 99 adesh 212 A.E., AE 33,197,367 Aeschylus 205 Agni 298 ahan 303 Akash 174 Amal Kiran first article about Savitri 1 first contact with Savitri 50,316 lines of poetry 262 Sri Aurobindo - the Poet 316 The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo 1,55,321 Ananda 176,209,247 Anne, Countess of Winchelsea 119 Aquinas, Thomas 207 Arberry,A.G. 70 Ariosto 187 Aristotle 207 Arnold/Edwin 217 aśva 302 Aurobindonian Age 39,48 art 216 blank verse 219 consciousness 208 effect 68 God-glimpse 209 integration of secular and esoteric 353

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON SAVITRI (WITH ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO SRINVANTU, AUGUST 1986) (A few of us have been trying to read and study Savitri in a group. We requested Amal Kiran (K. D. Sethna) to kindly give us a guide-line, so that our understanding as well as enjoyment of Savitri might be enhanced and enriched. We put some specific questions which would show him the trend of our mind. Given below are the first two of them along with his answers. - Ed. Srinvantu) Q. One may approach Savitri (1) with a devotee's attitude as the spiritual autobiography of the Master, (2) as a book or storehouse of spiritual wisdom comparable to the V

APROPOS OF SAVITRI When I was preparing Savitri for our International University Centre's one-volume edition in 19541 was very careful about the collection of Sri Aurobindo's letters to me, which was to accompany it at the end. I made several alterations in the arrangement - some actually at the page-proof stage. Not unexpectedly the Press felt bothered, but it did not put any hitch in my way. The Mother was kept in touch with all the goings-on. Once I seemed to overstep the limit. After a letter of 1936 had been printed I made a new reading of two words from Sri Aurobindo's manuscript. The letter as it stood in print read: "Savitri is represented in the poem as

-002_Compiler^s Note.htm COMPILER'S NOTE Amal Kiran, (K.D. Sethna), still with us in his 106th year, is acknowledged to be one of the greatest authorities on Sri Aurobindo's revelatory epic poem Savitri: a legend and a symbol. Yet although he has been a prolific author, with 52 published books on a wide range of topics, he has never dedicated an entire book to the poem with which he had such a special relationship. His writings on it have appeared over more than 50 years in various books and journals. The intention behind this compilation is to make easily available to the general interested reader everything written by Amal Kiran on Sri Aurobindo's epic and published by him during his lon

SOME COMMENTS ON SAVITRI1 (I) The opening passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - the block of the first 78 lines from It was the hour before the Gods awake [p. 1] to All can be done if the God-touch is there [p. 3] is often regarded as the most difficult, the most obscure in the whole epic. Its obscurity lies precisely in its description of an obscurity, a darkness, a night which covers the world. What is the nature of the tenebrous phenomenon pictured in lines 2-4 of the passage in relation to the 1st? - Across the path of the divine Event The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone In her unlit temple

A SUGGESTION ABOUT A WORD IN SAVITRI AN AMERICAN DISCIPLE'S LETTER TO MOTHER INDIA February 13,1972 Dear Mr. Sethna, A follower of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, I have been a reader of Mother India since 1953 and have gained much from it. T have been an admirer of your writings in particular. An engineer in the fields of computer design and communications, I have degrees in philosophy and physics. With the introduction out of the way, I would like to call your attention to a seeming error in Savitri. It occurs in the original two volume edition, and in the 1954 University edition. Perhaps it has been c

-013_Sri Aurobindo^s Savitri and Dante^s Divina Commedia.htm SRI AUROBINDO'S SAVITRI AND DANTE'S DIVINA COMMEDIA TWO LETTERS 1 The thesis you have passed on to me cannot stand as it is. Although the research is excellent its foundation is rather unfortunate and needs some modification. If left without a shift in perspective, it will blur the truth of the matter. The author conceives Sri Aurobindo as modelling Savitri upon Dante's Divine Comedy, following its theme and making extensions of it in the light of his own spiritual experience. It is even suggested that he is presenting Dante, filled out and expanded, to the modern world. And his own poetic performa

-010_Poetry in Sri Aurobindo^s Vision Lights from Passages in Savitri.htm POETRY IN SRI AUROBINDO'S VISION1 LIGHTS FROM PASSAGES IN SAVITRI We have said a good deal about Sri Aurobindo the Poet. And we have looked upon Savitri as the peak - or rather the many-peaked Himalaya - of Aurobindonian poetry. Also, in dealing with the supreme altitude as well as the inferior heights we have given glimpses of the Poet's view of the poetic phenomenon both in its essence and in its progression. It may not be amiss to dwell at a little more length on some of the fundamentals involved. The easiest way to do so would be to string together or else paraphrase a number of passages from