It does not matter if you do not understand Savitri, read it always. You
will see that every time you read it there will be something new
revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new
experience; things which were not there, things you did not
understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected
vision comes up through the words and the lines. Every time you try to
read and understand, you will see that something is added, something
which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you, the
very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different
light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably.
Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step.
But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers.
You must read it with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind,
without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much,
remain empty, calm and open; then the words, the rhythms, the
vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their
stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making
any effort.
Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If
truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the
help one needs. For one who wishes to follow this path, it is a visible
help, as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and
1. This text is based on a talk of the Mother in French to her young disciple Mona Sarkar, who
noted it down from memory several years later. The Mother later said “I have seen what he
has written and found it correct on the whole.” This is an English translation of that
conversation on Savitri as well as a few others related to it, to give a completer picture. It is
taken from Mona Sarkar’s book Sweet Mother: Luminous Notes, published by the Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust in 2009 and quoted here with grateful acknowledgement to the
Mona-da and the Trustees.
leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however
personal it be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds here its
solution, indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the
Yoga.
*“He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.”* It is a
marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection.
You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *“I am
impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the
beginning, but now I am decided. Still I do not know how far I shall
succeed. I pray for help.”* And you know what it was? It was – before
beginning, I warn you in advance – it was his way of speaking, so full of
humility and divine modesty. He never … *asserted himself.* And the
day he actually began it, he told me, *I have launched myself in a
rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having
started he wrote page after page without intermission, as though it
were a thing already complete up there and he had only to transcribe
it in ink down here on the pages.
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended “en masse” from
the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with his genius only arranged the
lines – in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were
revealed and he has left them intact; he worked hard, untiringly, so
that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And
what a work he has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an
unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple,
such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally
true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come
across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied
the best works – in Greek, Latin, English and of course in French
literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and
the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found
anywhere anything like Savitri. All these literary works seem to me
empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality – apart from a few rare
exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what
Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something
immortal and eternal he has created. I tell you once again, there is
nothing like it in the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of
reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the
inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find
them unique, of the highest classical kind. What he has created is
something man cannot imagine. For everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it
is a quest of the Infinite, of the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration
for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality.
To read Savitri is indeed to practise Yoga, spiritual concentration; one
can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of the
Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if
one follows sincerely what is revealed here in each verse one will
finally reach the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the
infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for
him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a
revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possesses by way of
knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in
such a manner that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin
of sound, which is OM.
My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism,
philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of
creation, of Nature, how the universe has been created, why, for what
purpose, what destiny – all is there. You can find there all the answers
to all your questions. Everything is explained, even the future of man
and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has expressed
them in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who
wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more
easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the lines and one must
rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All the
prophecies, all that is going to happen is presented with a precise and
wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the
Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the
universe is. He has also indicated how he has opened the door of the
Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there to transform it. He
has shown the path, how to liberate oneself from the Ignorance and
climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of
consciousness, how one can scale them, how one can cross the very
barrier of death and attain Immortality. You will find the entire route in
detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether
unknown to man. That is Savitri is, and yet much more. It is truly an
experience – reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possesses, he has
revealed them, as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is
found in the depths of Savitri; but one must have the knowledge to
discover them, – the experience of the planes of consciousness, the
experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of
Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step needed in order
to advance in an integral way in the integral Yoga.
All this is his own experience, and what is most surprising is that it
is also my own experience. It is my sadhana which he has described.
Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the
colours are exactly what I saw and the words, the phrases are also
exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read
Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when he was writing he
used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear him read Savitri; at
night he would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed
something strange, that – day after day, the experiences he read out to
me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word for
word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the
words I had heard, all, all, I heard it, put by him in poetry, into
miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the
previous night which he read out to me the following morning. And it
was not just one day, but for days and days together. And every time I
used to compare what he said with my previous experiences and they
were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told him my
experiences and that he had noted them down afterwards, no, he
knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences he has presented
all along and they were also his experiences. It is, moreover, the
picture of our adventure together into the unknown or rather into the
Supermind.
These are the experiences lived by him, realities, supracosmic
truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy and sorrow in a
physical manner. He has walked in the darkness of inconscience, even
in the neighbourhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition,
and he has emerged from the mud, the world-misery, to breathe the
sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He has traversed
them all, these realms, borne the consequences, suffered and endured
physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like
him. He has accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of
union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in
the history of the world. It is something that has never happened, he is
the first to have traced the path in the Unknown so that we may be
able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the
work easy for us. Savitri is his whole Yoga of transformation and this
Yoga, it is for the first time that we see it appear in the earth
consciousness.
And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and
too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the
mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences
in order to understand and assimilate it. The more one advances on
the path of Yoga, the more one assimilates and better. No, it is
something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry
of tomorrow of which he has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too
subtle, too refined, – it is not in the mind or by the mind, it is in
meditation that Savitri is revealed.
And men have the audacity to compare it and find it inferior in
inspiration to that of a Virgil or a Homer. They do not understand, they
cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is
useless to try to make them understand. It will be known what it is, but
in a distant future. It is only the new race with the new consciousness
which will be able to understand. I assure you that there is nothing
under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of
mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry,
super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers only the number
of lines he has written. No, these human words are not adequate to
describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it.
It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I
do not find them. It is of immense value – spiritual value and all other
values; it is eternal in its subject, infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its
mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come
in contact with it, the higher will you be lifted up. Ah, truly it is
something! It is the most beautiful thing he has left for man, the
highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going
to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This
yet remains to be known.
My child, everyday you are going to read Savitri; read properly,
with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages
and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a
thought. The direct road is through that – the heart. I tell you, if you try
to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the
psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in
a few days. What you cannot do normally, you will do it with the help
of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you
read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your
consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You
know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as though Savitri
were a being, a real Guide. I tell you, whoever wants to practise Yoga,
if he tries sincerely and feels the necessity, he will be able to climb
with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will
be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the
help of a Guru. And he will be able to practise it anywhere. Savitri by
itself will be his guide, for all that he needs he will find in Savitri. If he
remains absolutely quiet when he is faced with a difficulty, or when he
does not know where to turn in order to go forward and how to
overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and these incertitudes
which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary
indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains absolutely
calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if led by the
hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and the essential sincerity,
he will reach the final goal.
Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete,
packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all
human philosophies, all human religions. It is the spiritual path, it is
Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, everything, in its single body. Savitri has an
extraordinary power, it sends out vibrations for him who can receive
them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is
incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo
brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret
that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals
there for us. This is the work before you. It is hard but it is worth the
trouble.
Blessings
The Mother
5-11-1967
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