Based on recent experience, these attacks can be tackled with a three-pronged strategy
1) Claim the high ground: State that you are a published scholar who is being persecuted by ignorant punks. The cloak of respectability will insulate you and divide the crowd.
2) Assert your right to freedom of speech. You can say "if you don't like this blog, you don't have to read it or you can write your own".
3) Frame it as part of a larger conspiracy. Proclaim that this is not really about you but an attack on the institution as a whole.

It seems to me that we should ignore this letter entirely. Let us focus even more on Savitri. And, whenever the 1993 edition is found to be at variance with the original 1950/51 edition, this blog should continue to discuss it, and try to understand that particular change. There is nothing controversial in doing that at all. In this context, the editorial team members are uninteresting. It is more interesting for us to analyze and educate ourselves about the changes in the revised version than to pin down who is responsible, the nimitta matra, for it.

If people hurl bricks at you
It is at times said that if people hurl bricks at you, use them to build your bath-room. But in the present case I can’t even do that, because what was prepared by Satheesh and promoted by Tusar does not come up to any measure. We’ve here only a hopeless bit, with no proportion, no shape, no contents, no flavour, no taste: it’s a hollow brick. And the ‘hollow’ has the ring in it which but only discloses painfully the path of angry exclamation and condemnation, of despair. Actually, what else can the Hollow Men finally let know us except that this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends, this is how the world ends,—not with a bang but with a whimper.

After reading the post on the Mirror an American friend sent me a quotation from the writings of Dalai Lama: "The very purpose of [the spiritual life] is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? about my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life." And of course that is entirely valid when one is aspiring as an individual to be on the spiritual path of quiescence. The dynamic test lies elsewhere, in the collective involving every kind of interaction; it holds in its ennobling vitality what is right as felt by one with his perceptive faculties that grow more and more with spiritual progress. Of course, the action has to be without the element of anger, spite, attachment, hatred, pride, jealousy. The Aurobindonian path does not tell to belittle anyone or get belittled by anyone. On the other hand, here is an ad hominem attack without specifics; naturally, what is needed is, it should be knocked down with well-founded specifics. This is what we shall attempt in the course of our postings, these dealing with the editing of Savitri. However, in the meanwhile, let me ask as from where did Satheesh and Tusar get for Einstein the appellation “Sir Albert Einstein”. I’d never heard of him as “Sir”; it will surely be enlightening to all of us, Savitri Erans and the Mirrorites, if particulars are furnished. Remember also Einstein’s oft-quoted statement that, apart from the infinity in mathematics, there is no other infinity except the infinity of human stupidity. Our problems most of the time spring up from it.

Another friend wrote back to me the following: “I urge you to come out with your side of the story with all its details, especially the ones that are convincing. It will at least be a record upon which you can fall back in the future. Nobody else is in a position to do it as well as you can. Until then, the benefit of doubt will be given to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, even though they may have been mute witnesses to the whole exercise.”

But I must hurry through to add that it is not the question of pointing one’s fingers at Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. It would be “blow, blow thou winter wind...”

My long association of five decades with Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran was something most invaluable to me. It had been a glorious period, of apprenticeship as well as maturing up, and I cannot be ungrateful to them for what they gave me in the manner of elderly affection and fondness, even honour and dignity.

Amal Kiran had published my first poem, a sonnet, in Mother India in 1952 when I was a college student. At that time the monthly was coming out from Bombay, and it used to make payments to the authors. I was jubilantly surprised to have received money from him, which I promptly sent to the Mother as my first earned offering. He had great confidence in me when for eight years I was working as the de facto editor of his fond Mother India, which I’d to leave because of the controlling management; both Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, particularly the concerned Amal Kiran, tried to sort it out, but nothing worked. But nothing came in the way of our respectful mutuality.

During the 1980s Nirodbaran and I used to read Savitri together Upstairs, in the closed verandah in front of the Darshan Room. When asked, how Sri Aurobindo spoke, or read, or dictated Savitri to him, he told me that his accents were typically British, impeccable, and there was a resonant purity in the voice, calm and well-composed, and stately and rich in so many respects. Nirodbaran used to come to my house at least a couple of times in a month and we used to talk about all kinds of things. He was extremely fond of my grandsons and used to amuse himself with them, himself becoming a child. They had no fear of him, and used to simply call him Nirod-da, and hug him closely and lovingly. But I feel sad again and again when in a visit he found our house locked—he had not informed us in advance that he would be coming. Poor me! he had to go back without meeting us. Next day morning in his room when he was having his breakfast, I apologized for all that; but he rather blamed himself for his ‘inspired’ act. It turned out to be his last visit to us, and therefore the sadness and the remorse.

But all this should not mean that, in matters of Savitri we would not have differences and speak openly about them to each other. There are of course several human aspects also, and it is necessary to recognize them and due note of them taken when we are concerned with the work such as Savitri-editing. This might offend the enthusiastic and respectful admirers of Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, particularly about the image they have about them, they who were very close to Sri Aurobindo. This is quite understandable, but I can assure them that, it won’t offend Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran themselves. This I can assert on the basis of my intimate personal association with them. Surely, they were mature enough to recognize and respect differences without letting them affect personal relationships. We can’t say the same thing about everyone in the Ashram in spite of decades of stay here.

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Let me include here the two comments we have here, concerning this “sly and insidious method” introduced by Satheesh-Tusar. These are as follows:

Auroman Sun 21 Mar 2010
Based on recent experience, these attacks can be tackled with a three-pronged strategy:

a) Claim the high ground: State that you are a published scholar who is being persecuted by ignorant punks. The cloak of respectability will insulate you and divide the crowd.
b) Assert your right to freedom of speech. You can say "if you don't like this blog, you don't have to read it or you can write your own".
c) Frame it as part of a larger conspiracy. Proclaim that this is not really about you but an attack on the institution as a whole.

V Arvind Sun 21 Mar 2010
It seems to me that we should ignore this letter entirely. Let us focus even more on Savitri. And, whenever the 1993 edition is found to be at variance with the original 1950/51 edition, this blog should continue to discuss it, and try to understand that particular change. There is nothing controversial in doing that at all. In this context, the editorial team members are uninteresting. It is more interesting for us to analyze and educate ourselves about the changes in the revised version than to pin down who is responsible, the nimitta matra, for it.

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It is kind of clumsy that, while arriving at its conclusions, the Satheesh-Tusar post should include only the following from any number of my articles and comments:

RY Deshpande on Fri 12 Mar 2010
I’d been suggesting right from the beginning to go by the Savitri-edition that was published during Sri Aurobindo’s time. Part One consisting of the first 3 Books and 24 cantos was out in September 1950 before Sri Aurobindo’s withdrawal on 5 December 1950. The other two parts, Part Two and Part Three with 9 Books and 25 cantos, in a single volume came out in May 1951. This should also mean that the second volume had already gone to the Press much before December 1950. These two volumes should be treated as the authoritative or if you like the ‘sacred’ text of Savitri. Re-examination of various drafts of the Epic belongs to the category of scholarly work and carries another sense with the mental entering into it in a major way. That scholarly approach has a different status, and must be presented for scholarly studies in a systematic organised manner. That has never been done by Hartz and Heehs. Drawing one’s own conclusions and imposing them on others who have no access to the drafts can never be a part of the objective scholarly pursuit; just because one happens to be in ‘possession’ of the manuscripts/drafts does not give one wisdom to arrive at decisions. In fact these decisions amount to appropriation of rights and therefore highly suspect. Enlightened management is expected to be alert about such possibilities, but the whole thing looks just amateurish, and that’s the pity. Some of the aspects of editing were presented by me ten years ago in the introduction to Perspectives of Savitri. But who cares to read them and act upon them? Nirodbaran and Amal Kiran were aware of my views and arguments, but they had kind of lost all interest in this respect, of Savitri-editing. So, we can’t really say that they had their approval for the Revised Edition.

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We shall take other comments as we shall proceed.

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This is an interesting roadsign, but read the date as 1993 when the Revised Edition of Savitri was published. It could also be used for the year 2008, the year of publication of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo brought out by the Columbia University Press.

~ RYD

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If people hurl bricks at you ...

... make lemonade :-)

I take several positives from this:
(a) it's a sort of a badge of honor to be flamed on the Internet
(b) people out there read the Mirror (and by out there, I mean "out there")
(c) you get a chance to throw light on issues
(d) most importantly, people out there read and care about Sri Aurobindo, for it is this care that has overflowed into the misplaced passion displayed above. With point (c), the same passion could find its place.

Another friend wrote back to me the following: “I urge you to come out with your side of the story with all its details, especially the ones that are convincing. It will at least be a record upon which you can fall back in the future. Nobody else is in a position to do it as well as you can. Until then, the benefit of doubt will be given to Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran, even though they may have been mute witnesses to the whole exercise.”

I agree with your friend's thoughts.

Thanks for sharing your memories about Amal Kiran and Nirodbaran. I too have enjoyed and benefited from "tweleve years" and "light and laughter" among
their other writings. I can appreciate your admiration and regard for them. Similarly, I have read Jugal Mukherjee's beautiful little book on Amal Kiran's radiant personality. Yet, even as you, he too does not seem happy about the way Savitri was edited.
I have read somewhere (can't recall where) a beautiful statement: Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's vanmiya deha, his "word-body". Revising it doesn' make sense, especially in the light of the Mother's categoric views on the matter!

Anyway, in this age of communication and internet
we will never lose the original edition. So we needn't have any fear on that account.

And, I eagerly look forward to reading more posts on Savitri from you.

What a beautiful phrase this vāngmiya déha, word body of Sri Aurobindo! I think it was MP Pandit who could speak it that way. In Savitri itself we have the phrase “this breathing Scripture of the Eternal’s joy”, continuing as “a deeper Nature’s self-revealing sign”, and with a “deathless meaning filling her mortal limbs”. The Mother calls it Sri Aurobindo’s Word of Transformation. She also tells that he left his consciousness in it. But now we have intelligent people who say that it can be so only if a “correct” edition is given! The Satheesh-Tusar imbecility can have absolutely no clue of it.

~ RYD

Alok Pandey sends the following for posting as his comment:

You may make lemonades out of lemons thrown at you; you may also build a temple out of stones thrown at you or even simply brush them aside as few inevitable thorns that are bound to come each one's way when you cross the path or engage in the battle of the future. Even death means nothing to one whose life is given to love and serve the Lord.

But what do you do with the stones that are thrown at the Lord Himself? .....practice dignified silence and preach the virtues of inaction! Or take sannyasa and run away leaving the field to all that is hostile and denies the Light ....or wash one's hands and keep them clean of all personal stain and be popular among fools, hailed as the paragon of virtues and kindness? But the very same virtues collapse at the slightest personal grudge, a very convenient virtuosity one must say, a highly preferential one to boot. Or an inversion of values and thereby an adharma, a falsehood and an untruth since it places a wrong stress on things, uses spiritual justifications for personal weakness, ego preferences and cowardice.

And how does one decide what is true and what is false,—by votes, by personal liking, making truth the hand-maid of the common and the vulgar!! By that yardstick MJ's music and MF's art must be the truest form of aesthetics, and any criticism of it a blasphemy. Why not close one's eyes at MF's vulgarity and plunge into a personal silence of nirvana, or whatever else. Sure, but what if MJ stays next door and is part of the family, and so is MF, and every few years you find at your door-steps the figure of a goddess engaged in bestiality. We must love him, even sympathise with him, justify him! Sure, till he paints your own figure disfigured,—right? Then you react and bring the rooftops down as if the whole world is in danger. So much for the professed neutrality and the silence.

What does one do when one feels strongly about something, remain quiet and go about your days as if dumb and mute. Then the Lord of Kurukshetra was quite wrong and Buddha the final word of spiritual awakening. And yet his silence speaks and acts more powerfully than words. The Taliban destroys a statue of Bamiyan Buddha and within weeks a horde of army floods its plains driving out the men who defiled and disfigured the image into the very hills that once carried the mighty figure. Sometimes it is better even for the person to speak and stay the wheels than to stay silent.

There is indeed a silence of the strong and the wise, a silence of the sage and the seer, but there is also the silence of the weak and the cowardly, a silence of the fearful and of ominous death, a silence of the crafty politician and the diplomat, a silence of the hypocrite who whispers different things at different times to different people. There is also the silence of the mithyācāri who feels but would not speak up since he is scared to express, or is full of weakness.

So too, there is a speech born of the golden tongue of sacrifice, descending right from the home of silence itself. This speech, even when it carries the power to awaken or to destroy an entire nation, like the battle cry of Joan of Arc, or drive the Dasyus from their dark den exposing their designs like the word of Rishi Angirasa and Agastya, has not a tinge of hatred or anything low in it. Even in great destruction it sees the hand of God, the architect who pulls down the old tables to build anew. It is full of peace and love and joy even when armed with the flame of truth and the sword of faith and the strength of the gods. Who can say that the lion's roar is less divine than the cuckoo's cry or the rustle of leaves. Sometimes when the whisper of the winds goes ignored, then the gods speak the language of the storm and the thunder. The question is: are we ready at least to listen, or do we simply wait for one blow, and then another, blaming others? A most convenient way to remain blind to the real issues is this one.

The real issue is neither the court cases nor the internet blogs, but the book written by one Mr PH who has stolen the material entrusted to him and misused the trust placed upon him for furthering his personal ambition; and worse still to malign the very center and core of the fount of Life and Love in which he along with many others dwell and breathe. To accept this is to accept anything and everything, for all else derives from it. What value does anyone of us have except for Him? What is the worth of any of us without Him? Who would care if after this, any person or institution is disfigured, criticized, or insulted, since if this can be condoned then all can be condoned. Is this the fall-out of the silence so difficult to see?

Silence and speech, inaction and action, impersonality and personality are not opposites and mutually exclusive. They complement and fulfill each other. Slyness is not in speaking out what one truly believes to be true and feels strongly about it. It is straightforwardness, frankness, fearlessness, a practice of truth. Slyness is rather to speak one thing while think another, to do things such as collecting material on someone's life with diabolic motives, to be ungrateful to the hand that feeds you, to be disloyal and unfaithful, to please men so that they may praise and please you, to deceive with words and to deceive with silence, to steal what is entrusted to you or let it be stolen and turn a blind eye to the thief because he is close to you and you want to please him or keep him happy. All this is slyness or perhaps even something worse.

Still, let those who wish to practice silence, and also blindness, and act as deaf and mute do so, it is their dharma and their sincerity and none can question it. But, also, let those who wish to serve through speech and use it as an instrument of love and service, let them do so. The truth is known by the Divine in the heart and if one is sincere and truthful and honest in whatever one does,—whether in silence or in speech then the Divine who knows all things will surely make one grow towards Him and fill him with joy and closeness and peace and illumination that come from the inner contact with the Divine. All the rest is mere sophistry of the mind that is an expert at the art of self-deception, both through silence and through speech.

Alok is speaking of “dignified silence”. There is another brand of it also, of “vindictive silence”. While one could have a certain elevating nobility, the other is utter shamelessness. As a professional psychologist, may I request Alok to dilate more on these matters? Thanks.

~ RYD

"Self-satisfaction and altruism, enjoyment and indifference are not the essential thing. If the realisation, fulfilment, service of the one Self demands from us an action that seems to others self-service or self-assertion in the egoistic sense or seems egoistic enjoyment and self-indulgence, that action we must do; we must be governed by the guide within rather than by the opinions of men. The influence of the environment works often with great subtlety; we prefer and put on almost unconsciously the garb which will look best in the eye that regards us from outside and we allow a veil to drop over the eye within; we are impelled to drape ourselves in the vow of poverty, or in the garb of service, or in outward proofs of indifference and renunciation and a spotless sainthood because that is what tradition and opinion demand of us and so we can make best an impression on our environment. But all this is vanity and delusion. We may be called upon to assume these things, for that may be the uniform of our service; but equally it may not. The eye of man outside matters nothing; the eye within is all.

We see in the teaching of the Gita how subtle a thing is the freedom from egoism which is demanded. Arjuna is driven to fight by the egoism of strength, the egoism of the Kshatriya; he is turned from the battle by the contrary egoism of weakness, the shrinking, the spirit of disgust, the false pity that overcomes the mind, the nervous being and the senses, – not that divine compassion which strengthens the arm and clarifies the knowledge. But this weakness comes garbed as renunciation, as virtue: “Better the life of the beggar than to taste these blood-stained enjoyments; I desire not the rule of all the earth, no, nor the kingdom of the gods.” How foolish of the Teacher, we might say, not to confirm this mood, to lose this sublime chance of adding one more great soul to the army of Sannyasins, one more shining example before the world of a holy renunciation. But the Guide sees otherwise, the Guide who is not to be deceived by words; “This is weakness and delusion and egoism that speak in thee. Behold the Self, open thy eyes to the knowledge, purify thy soul of egoism.” And afterwards? “Fight, conquer, enjoy a wealthy kingdom.” Or to take another example from ancient Indian tradition. It was egoism, it would seem, that drove Rama, the Avatara, to raise an army and destroy a nation in order to recover his wife from the King of Lanka. But would it have been a lesser egoism to drape himself in indifference and misusing the formal terms of the knowledge to say, “I have no wife, no enemy, no desire; these are illusions of the senses; let me cultivate the Brahman-knowledge and let Ravana do what he will with the daughter of Janaka”? ".

Govind Rajesh has made a deep comment which is as follows:

You are very right about the fact that giving to the author of the Lives credibility would be the greatest foolishness. However, the man has already managed to give himself the greatest credibility possible without us having to do anything. The only way forward is for us to bring that credibility into question by speaking up. Silence and passivity will only mean that greater and greater credibility is bestowed on the man by himself and his fan(-atics) club.

You are also right that every historical leader in history has had to suffer attacks from detractors Unfortunately, it is also equally true that most, if not all, historical figures have been, to one extent or another, disfigured by perverse attacks of detractors. Where the attackers have great credibility these figures have not only been disfigured, they have been DEFINED by their detractors.

Take the examples of Julius Caesar and Judas Iscariot. The former, considered a Vibhuti of the Divine by Sri Aurobindo, was roundly denounced as nothing more than a power-monger and autocrat by several important contemporaries, primary among them Cicero, and scandalized by the likes of Seutonius. Indeed the critical period of the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire is totally colored by the perspectives of Cicero, and Cato and the clique of aristocratic Oligarchs whose power was destroyed by Caesar. As a result, even to this very day, more than 2000 years later, the name of Caesar and the derivative concept of "Caesarism" have remained synonymous with autocratic power, while in truth this is just one very biased perspective on the man and the genius at work behind him. However, since his attackers and detractors have overwhelming historical credibility this is the version that is generally accepted in academic and popular circles.

A more extreme case is that of Judas Iscariot. Even in the New Testament there are clear indications that his "betrayal" of Jesus was done at the express command of his master. There is, in fact, in existence, a gospel of Judas in which the betrayal is portrayed as a faithful execution of Jesus' command. Yet, given the animosity of the other disciples of Jesus and subsequent Church "fathers" and doctrine, Judas' name has become synonymous with worst betrayal of the most traitorous kind. Even I have used his name in the current controversy while, in all truth, drawing comparisons between Judas and PH might be an insult to the historical Judas who was probably obeying his master in betraying him.

Anyway, my point was not to rake up these perennial controversies but simply to demonstrate that attacks originating from sources that have great credibility are not only harmful, but they can also be devastating in their effects over time. In that light, PH's book needs to be seen as something that is not only attempting to alter our view of history, but also as an instrument of a certain Force to alter subsequent history itself in a most damaging sort of way. Without doubt the Divine Force too is there, but here too human instruments need to play their part.

A final consideration is the form of the attack.The subtlety and craft of the intelligence at work is truly amazing. At least in the case of the two aforementioned historical instances the attackers were clearly hostile towards their targets. However, in this case the claims of objectivity, in-depth research and OF BEING AN INNERMOST MEMBER AND INTELLECTUAL LEADER OF THE ASHRAM, have made this work a truly awesome weapon, so much so that it has managed to divide the Aurobindonian community itself!! This while there are still in existence those who have had personal, physical contact with the Mother and some even with Sri Aurobindo. Imagine what the effects will be across the rest of the world, even more so with the passage of time that inevitably blurs the truth about events and personalities, progressively opening greater vistas for re-interpretation and controversy.

This book is only the beginning and is perhaps a catalyst that the Divine Mother is using to awaken Her children to strengthen themselves in order to face the coming attacks and the obstacles ahead.

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Re: Of the sly and insidious Method ... let us get down to the specifics
We need not pay much attention to the continuing Satheesh-Tusar imbecility, nor need it surprise us if it should lug along with it a set of other imbecilities. It seems the whole thing is just unstoppable, perhaps because such blogs commercially thrive only on controversies. If there are no contents, if there are no specifics the quickest and the wisest thing to do is to trash them. But when such glorious thrivers try to trash the 1950-51 edition of Savitri itself, the one which practically came out during the time of the author himself, then the matters become serious. In such circumstances it will be wrong to keep ascetically quiet, quiet by simply saying that the Master knows how to take care of such inanities, such absurdities, that he doesn’t need defence from the scrawny, we the poor earthlings. It might even be suggested that it would be better to avoid it lest one is dubbed, as does the usual cliché go, an egoist.

Yet a question can puzzle one, as from where could such nonsensicalities emanate at all. Could it be that these are coming from some disgraceful office or foundation named Satheesh-Tusar Absurdity where people do not look for facts, where people have scant regard for facts? In any case, it definitely appears to be a place where people do not read things or, if at all they do, they show little capacity to understand things. But the funny stuff is, they even pose funnier questions, for instance the one as follows: Shouldn't one's opinions and views on the editing of Savitri be based on the literature published and offered by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram? But, to say the least, this is astounding, astounding definitely in the context of the latest edition of Savitri. If one has gone through the published literature, one wouldn’t look for an answer elsewhere, one wouldn’t be “intrigued” at all, one wouldn’t be asking why “fuss” is being made only with regard to the 1993 edition.

But imagine how preposterous this very question or statement or proposition in its generality can be! certainly in its delocalized context! Shouldn't one's opinions and views be based on the literature published and offered? The underlying assumption is the authenticity of the offered and published literature. Wouldn’t that itself come into question? Look for a moment at the notorious The Lives of Sri Aurobindo with this kind of stipulation in mind. If the Ashram has given permission—we do not know with what sort of stipulations or restrictions or boundary conditions—to use its material and its facilities for a book which misrepresents, nay falsifies, Sri Aurobindo’s work, if the vast amount of unpublished material has been used without explicit permission, then we have to start rethinking about the whole business, of the Ashram giving permission, and the “literature published and offered” by it. And remember the Darshan message for the 21 February 2010 issued by the Ashram. Will the Ashram come out and categorically say that it has nothing to do with the Lives, or else the opposite? make an open statement to either effect? And here is the Absurdity Foundation telling us to keep shut. Add to that the terrible enterprise of the Lives engaged in telling us that Savitri is a “fictional creation”. If it is so, then one really wonders why the intelligent editors should have spent years and years in bringing out this Revised Edition. Does a fiction deserve it, demand it? But we shall see it in more detail separately.

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But let me come to the specifics, to the contents and details and particulars. I shall try to restrict myself mostly to these. However, first let me disclose some of the e-mails I’ve received in the last few days.

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The following statement is proof enough of the ignorance behind the whole matter presented by Satheesh-Tusar: "Is it not only logical that the ‘restoration’ of the Savitri be left to the discretion of the authorities of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and the people that they appoint and trust?"

Was it the Mother's stated intention to bequeath the Savitri as some sort of exclusive inheritance of the "authorities" of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram trust to do with as they please? This person has not bothered to do any research of his own and feels at liberty to attack someone who is really immersed in this issue. I find that there is hardly anything logical or sensible in Mr Satheesh's approach. A bona fide attempt would have been for Satheesh to try and understand the changes that were made and only then arrive at any kind of a conclusion. On the contrary, he makes sweeping assumptions and presents them as some kind of "understanding". For example the following statement:

"I have understood is the most authentic reproduction of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, thanks to the careful and meticulous work of the removal of scores of human errors that had understandably found their way into the earlier publications and editions of the Savitri."

Is this understanding or belief or assumption? If the former, then on what premise does he base his understanding? It is quite plain that this "understanding" is founded solely on the blind belief in the sacrosanct and absolute authority of the great editors of the Ashram. Nothing could be more naive, unthinking and frankly intellectually inert and slothful than taking this kind of an approach. One would have been ok letting Satheesh remain in his little cocoon, but unfortunately he goes further and attacks those who choose to put in more efforts and take the trouble to look and think for themselves rather than turning over all their critical faculties to other all-too-fallible humans in an integral and absolute surrender :-)

In any case, the low and turbid quality of Satheesh's thinking is on spectacular display throughout the letter. Hardly anything rises above fantastic ad hominem thrusts such as "lost credibility", "integrity", and other such fire-and-brimstone accusations.
In line after line there are thoroughly indiscreet examples of loose and shoddy thinking. For example:

"Or should we instead abandon all common sense and pay heed to people such as Mr RYD, who decide to appoint themselves as the sole enlightened scholars and visionaries, and whose motives are evidently questionable?"

Is it common sense to JUST ASSUME that someone is claiming himself as the SOLE enlightened scholar or visionary on a particular topic or a leap of the indignant and wrathful creative imagination? Is it common sense to present someone's motives as "evidently questionable" without having any evidence whatsoever?

If anything the only EVIDENCE this letter presents is that Satheesh has a superb ability to write stuff that has very little COMMON and an overabundance of commonly encountered petty and illogical NON-sense in it.

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It may help to explain why you think 50/51 edition should be considered authoritative, which corrections made later are "acceptable" and which are not, how should the corrections have been published—as a new edition or as "corrigendum", reference and context to the Mother's "morons" comment, the method of research by which changes were made, etc.

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Where did the priesthood reference come from? This is language Debashish uses. Has anyone else said the same?

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But that is not the issue, that of priesthood. The issue is debunking the 1950-51 Savitri as if Sri Aurobindo had nothing to do with it. That is what has to be thrashed.

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This is pretty damning I will admit. By the way, is this true that the other editions that preceded the 1993 edition of Savitri were published during "The Mother's" time?

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I think people would very much like to know the story from your side. Is it true that the Mother had accepted changes made in the 1951? What kind of changes were these and what are those editions? Can you throw some light on it? I would also like to ask you if it is true that statements in defence of a certain official stand were made that “the Mother did not understand Savitri”? The rest of Satheesh’s words should be just ignored, I feel or maybe you can ask him what does he know about the editing part to speak with so much authenticity.

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Apropos of the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations: The question is why do it at all, when a correct translation is available as accepted and known by Her in 1948. Nobody has any right to change posthumously in 1978. What shall we do? This needs definite correction. Prayers and Meditations are truly Mantras.

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... the changing of the words, the editing, is an insidious invasion into the high quality of the original authors. Even the seeming innocuous changes of ALL to EVERY makes more than a subtle difference in the meaning. Here is distinction: EVERY is half-way between EACH and ALL. It sees things or people as singular, but in a group or in general.

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Bearing on this theme, let me now reproduce in the following one specific thread that had appeared on Raman Reddy’s post Sri Aurobindo’s Marriage.

RY Deshpande on Tue 09 Mar 2010 03:38 PM
>> …too much intellectual research in the spiritual field seems to be now more a liability than an asset, considering what has happened to Heehs and Hartz—the latter especially was a good scholar and on the right track until he lost himself in the Gobi desert of the mind. >>

Hartz getting lost in the Gobi desert of the mind… But that was always so when I saw him week after week during the period of editing Savitri more than two decades ago. It is this which makes the Revised Edition suspect. Jugal Mukherjee was highly critical of it. Let it not become fait accompli.

V Arvind on Tue 09 Mar 2010 07:43 PM
Could you elaborate on this point? I was under the impression that it was mainly Amal Kiran, with Nirodbaran's help, who worked on the revised edition of Savitri. Perhaps you could explain exactly how the revision was carried out. Many outsiders like me would really like to know.

RY Deshpande on Thu 11 Mar 2010 06:50 AM
>>Could you elaborate on this point? >>

Later on please. It’s a big subject also, deserving its own post. But if there is something specific, we could think of it. A general discussion can become unavailing if not frustrating.

Let me however give an example or two about what Raman calls Hartz getting lost “in the Gobi desert of the mind.” This is also a big subject, but still one could be quickly indicative-probative.

As I said, I’ve seen week after week the way things were done. On page 17 line 23 we have in the earlier editions of Savitri this phrase: “Ignorance and Death”. This was proposed to be changed to “Ignorance and death”. Jugal Mukherjee maintained that for the “harmony” of the two it should be “Ignorance and Death”. He gave some examples; he had no access to the originals and so he made the observation on the basis of what he had at his disposal. But Hartz marshalled other statistics, as to how many times we have the combinations “I-D’, “i-d”, “I-d”, “i-D” in order to arrive at the ‘habit’ of the poet. Finally the decision was: “Ignorance and death”. The method is purely analytical to judge things that are intuitive-perceptive.

But what baffles me more is the other example, of “will” or “Will”. On p. 174 we had the line “A will that unpersisting failed, worked there”. It has now become: “A Will that unpersisting failed, worked there”. Reason: there are 55 occurrences of “Will” in Savitri and therefore it should also be “Will” in the line on p. 174!

But see now this line: “So now she arraigned the World’s impassive will” on p. 427 of the earlier editions. This has been revised to: “So now she arraigned the world’s impassive will”. Whereas “will” has remained “will”, “World’s” has become “world’s” because, says Hartz, “‘World’s’ looks funny”! Reams of statistics in the form of computer print-out have been doled out for the justification.

The unfortunate thing is, this was passed by "two morons" as the Mother calls them. And of course blindly accepted by the officials!

Akash on Thu 11 Mar 2010 08:20 AM
>>Jugal Mukherjee maintained that for the “harmony” of the two it should be “Ignorance and Death”. He gave some examples; he had no access to the originals and so he made the observation on the basis of what he had at his disposal.>>

Can facsimiles be made available to researchers? Document maintenance and document interpretation likely have different experts, and facsimiles decouple the two fields to get the best of both worlds.

RY Deshpande on Thu 11 Mar 2010 07:39 PM
Yes, they should be made available. But will that happen? I wonder, in the present circumstances. You are also right that document maintenance and document interpretation should be handled by respective experts and authorities.

When about 25 years ago Savitri-revisions were being discussed, I’d given an example of how the Niels Bohr Archives was organised at Copenhagen. That could have been a good model at that time. But my suggestions were pooh-poohed. In retrospect, it seems that the Ashram Archives was established for the exclusive benefit of the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. No wonder, again, it is sealed for others. In that sense, this author could be said to be the founder of the Ashram Archives.

Today’s world is a different world, with the impressive presence of the Internet. If the Ashram management is serious, which I again wonder, these documents should go on the Internet. A team of dedicated workers and volunteers should be organised specifically for this purpose. The greatness of management would lie in it. Will it be shown? If that happens perhaps there won’t be court cases, at least in this regard. I’d written an article presenting some of these ideas related with Savitri, though in a somewhat different manner, and given for publication in the Ashram’s monthly Mother India. I’ve not heard anything about it in spite of a lapse of a few years, and one or two soft queries. It will therefore a vain and frustrating hope if the present article by Raman Reddy will at all be published by this monthly.

V Arvind on Thu 11 Mar 2010 08:36 PM
This seems to be an absurd application of statistics! If a vowel in a word is illegible we don't replace it with the letter "e" simply because "e" is the most frequently occurring vowel in the language! We will look at the rest of the word, and the context, and then decide which letter to put in. If there is still some conflict then frequencies can be used.

In this case with "I" and "D" patterns, if the archiver was serious about applying statistics, he should have taken all correlations into account, i.e. the contexts in which each of them occurs. For that one would have to understand the poem.... Unless he thinks all occurrences of "I" and "D" are independent random variables! Of course, if you read Savitri as a random text then his naive approach would be OK. But as such this kind of analytic approach seems to be school-boy level statistics!

Statistics has recently been used to analyze the Indus-Valley Script, but Savitri is hardly the right place to apply this.

The only rational and sensible solution seems to be this:

If Sri Aurobindo has written something himself, just restore it.

If Sri Aurobindo has dictated something that the scribe has written down, again, just restore it unless there is a spelling mistake. There is no reason to believe that Sri Aurobindo wouldn't have checked it. The scribe has reported how the poet was sensitive to every comma.

If something can be done to restore the original 1951 and 1954 editions (the ones the Mother read from when she did her work with Huta) that would be just enough. Isn't that what the Mother wanted? How can the ashram contemplate otherwise? Research on Savitri can continue, all versions made available at the archives. Research doesn't have to mean revising the poem.

It is hard to digest that someone as gifted as Amal Kiran could have agreed to adopt such naive methods...

RY Deshpande on Fri 12 Mar 2010 05:11 PM
I’d been suggesting right from the beginning to go by the Savitri-edition that was published during Sri Aurobindo’s time. Part One consisting of the first 3 Books and 24 cantos was out in September 1950 before Sri Aurobindo’s withdrawal on 5 December 1950. The other two parts, Part Two and Part Three with 9 Books and 25 cantos, in a single volume came out in May 1951. This should also mean that the second volume had already gone to the Press much before December 1950. These two volumes should be treated as the authoritative or if you like the ‘sacred’ text of Savitri. Re-examination of various drafts of the Epic belongs to the category of scholarly work and carries another sense with the mental entering into it in a major way. That scholarly approach has a different status, and must be presented for scholarly studies in a systematic organised manner. That has never been done by Hartz and Heehs. Drawing one’s own conclusions and imposing them on others who have no access to the drafts can never be a part of the objective scholarly pursuit; just because one happens to be in ‘possession’ of the manuscripts/drafts does not give one wisdom to arrive at decisions. In fact these decisions amount to appropriation of rights and therefore highly suspect. Enlightened management is expected to be alert about such possibilities, but the whole thing looks just amateurish, and that’s the pity. Some of the aspects of editing were presented by me ten years ago in the introduction to Perspectives of Savitri. But who cares to read them and act upon them? Nirodbaran and Amal Kiran were aware of my views and arguments, but they had kind of lost all interest in this respect, of Savitri-editing. So, we can’t really say that they had their approval for the Revised Edition.

V Arvind on Fri 12 Mar 2010 07:27 PM
I entirely agree with your views. There may be some imperfections in the 1951 version, but I think we would all prefer the original version "warts and all" rather than a tainted version produced by mediocre scholarship.

I wonder if the 1951 version be published by the Ashram (or someone else) as the original version. This is the next best solution for the sake of posterity, even if the 1993 version is not withdrawn.

RY Deshpande on Sat 13 Mar 2010 04:42 AM
Thanks to some dedicated souls, 1950-51 Edition of Savitri is available on-line at Sri Aurobindo E-Library. But it is necessary that it should be the main edition on sale as hard copies.

V Arvind on Fri 12 Mar 2010 07:31 PM
Thanks very much for sharing your thoughts on this subject of editing Savitri.

---

Here is the Sri Aurobindo E-Library link which got formed wrongly in the previous comment.

arrogant, pompous and self-styled scholars and “visionaries” such as Mr. RYD himself.

It is a weakness of the Indian mind that any emphatic assertion of an opinion is automatically conflated with an inflated Ego. In India, people are raised to be deferential (to elders, to the authorities - and in this case Ashram Trustees) so any attempt to question conventional wisdom inevitably results in some such derisive response from a member of the audience.

There could be many different reasons, high and low, for disagreeing with someone. On the low side, it could be an inability to restrain oneself from ranting. On the high side, a good poet may be able to perceive defects in a poem which an ordinary reader cannot, just as a civil engineer may quickly isolate defects in building construction which a longtime resident may not even notice.

It is rather disheartening to see an elderly member of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram behave in such an infantile, immature and even ridiculous manner, particularly publicly.

Well, at least RYD is "misbehaving" on a blog and not through a biography like Heehs !

Again, the Indian mind automatically understands the importance of institutional allegiance, which the Western mind (and one Westernized Indian) seems to have difficulty accepting.

A friend sends me the following from Hugh Higgins

I am probably out of touch with the latest discussions or controversies concerning the "correct" or "final" or "real" text of Savitri. From what I recently read in the Savitri Era Open Forum, and in Jitendra Sharma's Supramental Yoga group, tempers can get hot over this issue. If any of you can show me an easy way to procure the "Supplement to the Revised Edition" mentioned later here, or if it is available online, I would appreciate the information. For years I have been puzzled by many of the variations in the texts and after pondering some of these disputes with accusations and counter-accusations this is what I wrote:

The personal element in the dispute here does not touch me because I know none of the participants. I will merely state what seems to me self-evident, that we need a "critical edition" of Savitri prepared by impartial scholars. If the 1993 edition is correct and impartial, well and good, but many of us have serious doubts about many of the variant readings. The only way those doubts can be cleared up is to have a scholarly "critical edition." What that means is this: Every variant reading between the different versions will be thoroughly explained in footnotes. I realize that those who want a mantric sacred text might not like this. I use Savitri daily as a mantric sacred text! So I as much as anyone care about the edition I use being exactly correct according to Sri Aurobindo's latest corrections and wishes. But the only way we can get to that goal is through a thoroughly annotated critical edition, explaining exactly why there are variant readings in every case in which they appear.

I have an edition I purchased in America in 1972. It is thoroughly worn, the pages all separated, the cover weather-beaten. I once carried it with me to a meeting of the New York Sri Aurobindo Center (when there was such a thing) in the rain, refusing to close it while reading walking in the rain, so that it was thoroughly soaked. I offered it to Sri Aurobindo in the rain. I do not regret that, because it is still readable. I felt, "It is more important for me to read these words now than for this copy to be left dry." I knew that Sri Aurobindo could stop the rain if He wanted to.

I have had other later editions, and the one I use now appears to be the latest (the tiny version). In the back of the book is this statement: "A Table of Readings and a Table of Emendations listing the differences between this and previous editions are included in the 'Supplement to the Revised Edition of Savitri.'" Well, that is welcome information but I have never seen that Supplement. I would say it ought to be included in every printed edition of the book. It was not included in the one I purchased just a few years ago. If it is not included, or a new critical edition is not issued, we are left with the latest editors of the text---who no doubt are very well-intentioned---shoving their decisions about the text down our throat with no recourse of our own to decide whether they were right or not. That is not the way things should be.

On page 627 of my early edition we have ". . . In earth's anomalous and tragic field . . . " In the latest edition I find: ". . . In earth's anomalous and magic field." Most of us would indeed prefer the later version, if we prefer magic to tragedy (as I certainly do). What bothers me is that I do not know why there are these two variant readings and why the editors chose the latter. Did Sri Aurobindo write "tragic" first, then later cross it out and write "magic" above it? Or are there two versions scripted by him, one earlier and one later? Or did he dictate one or both versions and the scribe mis-heard what he said, or wrote two different versions of what he heard? Or was there an ink blot on the page so that the word could not be deciphered, and one editor decided it must be "tragic" and another that it must be "magic"? The reader deserves to know what is going on here.

That is what a critical edition would explain, so that "let the reader decide," as Jitendra put it, could become a reality.

These lines in Satheesh's messages are suspect.

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/03/slanderous-personal-attacks-warrant.html

1) Or is it plainly and clearly driven by the series of unfulfilled personal agendas of a few that seem to converge in the same direction of criticism and attacks? [This diversionary tactic of covert power agendas has been repeatedly employed by the Carlson Gang which operates out of the Pacific Coast.]

2) ..or as I have also learnt drag the SA Ashram authorities to court)

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/03/considering-1950-51-edition-as.html

1) Therefore, if Mr. RYD hopes that his self-appointment to "priesthood" can be achieved by declaring the

2) which our self-appointed priest, visionary, scholar and enlightened soul [Epithets like priest and cult have been used before by one of the editors of SCIY]

>>the Carlson Gang>>

I'll rather say the Carlson Group.

RYD

I'll rather say the Carlson Group.

Or call it Abdul Lateef Group, inspired by the American Jazz Master of 2010 Yusef Abdul Lateef alias William Huddleston.

Satheesh tries hard to be original but let me demonstrate how close his words are to SCIY.

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/03/considering-1950-51-edition-as.html
2) which our self-appointed priest, visionary, scholar and enlightened soul

Now read this

http://www.sciy.org/blog/_archives/2009/1/2/4043740.html

But instead of keeping shut, some “scholars”, “visionaries” and self appointed “custodians” of our Masters' work, prefer to stay in an

See? self-appointed priest, visionary, scholar - the same epithets are being used!

More observations

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/03/slanderous-personal-attacks-warrant.html

And some others still, might even go one step further and opine that the 'look and feel' (brown oxidized paper, colour and quality of ink used, type of binding, etc.,)

Who would know of brown oxidized paper? A curator!

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/04/bijan-ghose-cannot-claim-that-1954.html

Their intention to destroy all that doesn’t suit them in order to satisfy their own personal agendas is more than apparent. And they are willing to even want to destroy the Savitri, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and even Sri Aurobindo’s ideals with the bigotry that they display.

The charge of bigotry has also been levelled on SCIY before.

Let this self-appointed defender of you-know-who, Satheesh, first acknowledge and condemn Peter Heehs first for the disparaging remarks made in the biography against the direct disciples of Sri Aurobindo. Then we can talk about what RYD has written here.

Satheesh and SCIY both use the phrase "SA Ashram".

SCIY

http://www.sciy.org/2009/12/15/technology-in-a-global-world-by-andrew-feenberg/

In the SA ashram politics was( is) completely forbidden. .... I am not aware of anybody from the SA ashram or Auroville doing that

http://www.sciy.org/blog/FADMIN/QuotesOfTheDayNEW/_archives/2009/5/7/4178690.html (Filio's response)

Recently, a member of the SA ashram who I believe is one of the architects of the several court cases against the SA ashram itself posted a draf

http://www.sciy.org/blog/INTROtoSCIY/EDITORTRAINING/_archives/2009/5/4/4174755.html

How can SA Ashram serve SA&TM's Vision and its cherished goal of being the 'Cradle of the New World'?

Satheesh

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/04/bijan-ghose-cannot-claim-that-1954.html

the SA Ashram management are morons and devilish

http://seof.blogspot.com/2010/03/slanderous-personal-attacks-warrant.html

Mr. Hugh Highins be taken seriously by anyone and particularly the SA Ashram management or the editors of the Savitri
Whereas those who trust the editors as well as the SA Ashram management, might find such footnotes clumsy and disturbing,
the SA Ashram, which is the only unquestionable, trustworthy and legitimate publisher of the Savitri,
Mr. RYD should suggest that the SA Ashram management and Mr. Nirodhbaran and Mr. Amal Kiran have knowingly allowed
sarcastic comments that the SA Ashram’s editors shove their decisions down
un-enlightened management of the SA Ashram and editing of the Savitri, and by
who trust the editors as well as the SA Ashram management, might find such footnotes

Sorry Auroman, I don't think we should bring that unavailing discussion being carried out elsewhere to the Mirror. Our focus will be, after clearing the way, on the specifics related with the Savitri-editing. The rest is inconsequential.

RYD

Sorry Auroman, I don't think we should bring that unavailing discussion being carried out elsewhere to the Mirror.

My investigation was sparked by the remarkable similarity in verbiage but now I gladly rest my case. I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct.

The last line is not mine; it is from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. :-)

Our focus will be, after clearing the way, on the specifics related with the Savitri-editing. The rest is inconsequential.

About Savitri, allow me to repeat what Sherlock Holmes said to Dr Watson "Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department" :-). I cannot pretend to do full justice on this topic but I am quite certain that your vigourous engagement will continue to invoke the fury of Sat heehs and his friends.

I cannot pretend to do full justice on this topic but I am quite certain that your vigourous engagement will continue to invoke the fury of Sat heehs and his friends.

It may be helpful to recall what Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilip, in a very different context:

"...Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a collapsing civilisation and, generally speaking, the ass and the flood. All the more reason to tend towards the one thing to be done..."

Enjoyed the last few comments, and keep up the spirit of frolic pirouetting though there is so much of petrified dullness all around,—and thanks. The world is wider than our thoughts, our feelings, our desires and longings, and certainly than our quarrelsome-cantankerous ineptitudes. And remember that “Savitri is the forerunner or first creator of a new race”—Sri Aurobindo to Amal Kiran in 1947—which also applies to the pristine unspoiled Savitri urging us to open ourselves to its greatnesses. This also means that we must immediately dismiss Savitri as a "fictional creation" proclaimed by the Lives. We shall look into this aspect soon.

~ RYD

It may be helpful to recall what Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilip, in a very different context:

"...Outside are earthquakes and Hitlers and a collapsing civilisation and, generally speaking, the ass and the flood. All the more reason to tend towards the one thing to be done..."

Earthquakes may be easier to handle than this ground-shaking tactic of Heehs defenders to launch stealth attacks under the cover of Indian names like Satheesh, Rajesh Rao, Aurosatya Vrata and what not :-). When you dig deeper, you realize it's the same agitprop.

An Editorial Insolence
Recently we had made a fairly extensive selection of passages from the first half of Savitri under the title Posthuman Destinies. The series with about eighty extracts ran over a period of several weeks, from 25 December 2009 to 14 March 2010. The essential purpose behind making this selection was to get an idea about the differences between the modern scientific and technological developments pressing us into postmodernism vis-à-vis the higher spiritual possibilities that can open out for us. But there is a predicament, in fact an impasse. Whereas with the best intentions of liberal thought and enlightenment the human makes a good laudable effort to cross its own limits, the limits which are not purely human, the very nature from which the human has sprung up has all along remained unattended to. On the other hand, the Posthuman Destinies as we see in the selection from Savitri do indicate a possibility of our effort reaching its preeminent realizations in superlative realms of consciousness, these even entering into human life as a significant influence. But the real fulfilment of the human effort and human potential will lie only in the divine Power stepping into this creation and removing the Obstacle that stands in the way of its progress, progress in the modes of immortality shaping the mortal’s lot. In that sense the second half of the remarkable Epic deals with an altogether new element which is characterized by dynamism of the transcendental realities finding their expression here in the terrestrial scheme. While Savitri’s first half can thus be said to be the Prospects of the Human Potential promoted by the avataric Effort, the second is the Divine Will inflowing into the Evolutionary Manifold consequent to elimination of the antagonism towards the divine Manifestation. These two exultantly constitute the Story of Triumph of Knowledge and Power in the greatness of the creative Real-Idea working in the dim and hesitant odds of the mortal world, this mŗtyuloka.

If this is the thematic content of Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri then there is also an understandable expectation that, while doing any kind of editing of the texts that have developed in different ways over a period of long years, we be sensitive to its deeper nuances and fine distinctions, possibly to its occult-yogic contents. Most ideally, of course, it is assumed, and required, that we reach the source from where the original inspiration had come. It is there that the correct and the perfect and the truest Savitri exists, is available; it is indeed there that it was yogically written. It is that Savitri, that uninfringeable Word which has the power to transform this earthly life of ours into the life divine if our souls should aspire for it. The rest could simply be a matter of transmission, transmission down through various grades, and of language also, from the revelatory utterance, or as a phrase in Savitri itself says, “transcendental speech”, parā vāņī, to the “seen word”, paśyanti vāka, the luminous and transformative language of the seer, of the Rishi, of the poet-thinker, kavirmanīşi, finally it entering into the human medium in richness of the symbolic and the metaphorical and the imaginative, with each sense carrying with it the other remaining senses, sight the sound and the contact and the fragrance and the taste, thought and perception and melody all joining together, behind all of them standing the truer sajnāna, it embracing every sense, the comprehending faculty seizing at once the object in its modes of expression. If that is not there, then whatever we do, or we don’t do, is flawed and faulty. It is in that context we must look into the phrase “approved by the Mother” when we are concerned with Savitri-editing; it is in that sense that we have to also understand the Mother, she telling Amal that she would not allow him to change even a comma in Savitri. Yet… Here Nolini Kanta Gupta stood taller than all his contemporaries with a definite intuition behind things, surer and brighter.

But the latest editing of Savitri had taken a totally different turn, it becoming more and more academic-professional, intellectual-cerebral entrenched in its own research methodologies and mannerisms, with the introduction of the purported fashionable modern objective criteria of textual handling for publication, just the thing which should not be for it; it became à la mode which may be appealing to some tastes but not to the ethos of a creation which belongs to another category altogether. With it the contact with the spirit and the soul of Savitri starts growing feebler and tentative, and even dubious. To see some of these aspects, let me first put together the various posts we already have on the Mirror. The valid optimism is that, if read attentively, this might form a good starting point for any meaningful discussion of the issues involved in the handling of Savitri. To begin with, we could look into some of the aspects of textual editing from several drafts.

---

Let me start with the comment from V Arvind on an earlier post. It is as follows. Aswapati’s adventure of consciousness when he mounted burning like a cone of fire is identified by him with Agni’s as described in the Veda. In that connection Arvind recalls Judith Tyberg's wonderful summary of Savitri in her Drama of Integral Self-Realization. Here is the opening paragraph of her essay: “Sri Aurobindo's Savitri is an epic poem of high spiritual challenge in the Yoga or Divine Union or Goal of Self-Realization it presents. Its spiritual conception is so all-embracing, so integral that it gives birth to a power which transforms life on earth to a life of divine activity rather than leading to an escape from life. The epic is a mantric expression of this great Seer-sage's inner findings and conquests, leading to his vision of an age of truth-consciousness and immortality. It portrays in living drama the daring climb within of a king-soul through progressive states of consciousness to Nirvanic heights and beyond to summits never reached before. The poet reveals how at meditation's peaks at one with God, where many cease their search, he becomes aware of a Presence, God's Consciousness, Power and Bliss, which he calls the Divine Mother. He relates how this Creatrix of boundless Love and Wisdom-Splendor comes down to transform Darkness into Light, the Unreal into the Real and Death into Immortality.”

---

With this general background we might see an example of editorial insolence that had entered into the process of revising Savitri.

The following passage appearing on p. 347 is one of the glaring examples to illustrate the way the editing of Savitri had gone. It shows the determined manner in which the ‘revision’ was done. The passage of five lines is about Aswapati’s return to the mortal world after receiving an exceptional boon from the Divine Mother. The Centenary Edition gives the text as follows:

Once more he moved amid material scenes,
Lifted by intimations from the heights
And twixt the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge
Of Nature and wing back to hidden shores.

Aswapati by his long and intense yoga-tapasya climbs the summits of spirituality and reaches the top of the creation where he meets the supreme Goddess who alone, he knows, could change the circumstance of our transience and our suffering, of our mortality, of our life in ignorance that has bound us to death, she alone who could bring to it the transforming felicity of immortality. The course of the evolutionary Fate could be altered only if she incarnates herself here and deals with one who stands as an antagonist against bright and happy manifestation in countless possibilities of the superconscient. A unique boon has now been granted to him. He gets the Word, that things shall be fulfilled in Time; this shall be so,—because she herself shall be taking birth as his radiant daughter. Aswapati returns to the earth, now with a splendid certitude, and attends to his kingly office of governance. Presently, he is no more an apprentice Yogi, no more a “seeker” to tread the hazardous path of a hesitant beginner with its slow and arduous climb; he is a Master, an accomplished Master, a fulfilled, realized, Siddha with the forces of Life under his full command—he who has become Aswapati. All his actions flow in the dynamism of the spirit and the higher intimations that he gets are received not only in a quiescent state, of withdrawal from activity, but also when he is preoccupied with the thousand problems that afflict us here in our daily transactions. Incontingent is his spiritual poise and he remains in it even in these harsh and hectic secular matters. The poetic expression Sri Aurobindo has given to this significant aspect of the greatness of the accomplished Yogi is precise in its connotation, and we have to be pretty alert to its implications.

But from the editors who examined the Savitri-manuscripts in various details we have rather an unfortunate statement about the third line of this passage. While proposing the replacement of “twixt” by “in”, this is what they say:

The last emendation of a handwritten line was necessitated by what the editors consider to be a slip made by the author while revising. All handwritten versions, except the last, of line 491 [p. 347] of Book Three, Canto 4, run as follows: “And in the pauses of the building brain.”

When he copied this line in the ‘final version’, Sri Aurobindo wrote ‘twixt’ instead of ‘in’. This word, although somewhat archaic, is perfectly legitimate, and in fact of fairly frequent occurrence in Savitri. But here it does not make sense. The ‘pauses’ of the brain are what come between, or twixt, its ordinary activities. Sri Aurobindo’s intention surely was that it is in these pauses that, as the sequel says, ‘thoughts’ from hidden shores come in and touch the seeker. Perhaps he meant to alter ‘pauses’ when he substituted ‘twixt’ for ‘in’. At any rate, the unrevised version of the line, as given above, seems to represent Sri Aurobindo’s intentions better than the revised one, and it has therefore been restored to the text.

The editors seem to be too confident to say that “twixt” for “in” was a slip on the part of Sri Aurobindo himself, too sure that it does not make any sense. They also boldly speak of Sri Aurobindo’s intentions, that what is suggested meets them in a better way. The least we can say is, we do not know.

But my students in the Savitri-class know. When coming to this part of the text, I ask them to read these lines in the Centenary Edition a number of times. They immediately catch the sense of “twixt” and tell that Aswapati has now entered into the “business” of created things, and that even in that state he receives the higher intimations. At that point when I tell them that “twixt” has been changed to “in” in the Revised Edition, they at once say, “Oh no. It makes Aswapati ordinary and poor.”

What do we understand from what the editors are saying? “When he copied this line in the ‘final version’, Sri Aurobindo wrote ‘twixt’ instead of ‘in’.” It simply means that he was just copying what he had written earlier and in the process made a slip which changed the earlier “in” to “twixt” and later, throughout, it stuck to him. This line of argument does not give any scope to a creative writer-poet for the new inspiration to flow in in the very process of copying the earlier drafts. This is just inadmissible.

Let us look into some details connected with this “twixt”-“in” as it went through several stages. This “twixt” must have been read out to Sri Aurobindo at least on three or four occasions later. The ledger, the typescript, the proofs of the canto when it was published in the Advent in 1947, the fascicle that had come out again in 1947, and finally when the proofs of the 1950-edition of Part I of Savitri were read out to him. We cannot say that in the entire sequence the same slip kept on occurring at every stage. Further, in the last version that is in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand, the copy-text, as well as in the ledger in which Nirodbaran copied the text, what we have is “twixt”; it is also noticed that this word has been underlined in the ledger and that there is a tick mark in the margin, both in dark ink. I’d insisted to see the earlier texts and this is what had emerged. From the tick mark we can be absolutely certain that a specific reference about “twixt” was made to Sri Aurobindo and that he very consciously retained it as the correct expression. In other words, this was not an accidental departure from the earlier drafts, though these had “in” at least on thirteen occasions. Nor can we say, as is suggested, that Sri Aurobindo was comatose or oblivious while he made this change, or when he heard it a number of times subsequently. It will be terrible and appalling to say so, I mean, it will just be without foundation; it will be rather pejorative. Anyhow, it will be a dreadfully faulty editorial way of doing things, and that is what makes the whole business suspicious.

The most surprising aspect of the unusual episode, however, is that Amal Kiran himself should have gone completely out of his way to justify the ways of Man to God. He calls this “in”-“twixt” as the biggest puzzle in Savitri and sets himself to plead for “in” in place of Sri Aurobindo’s latest “twixt”. The immediate cause that had provoked him to offer a solution to the “biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri” was the comment I had made in an article of mine describing the poetry of Savitri. (Sri Aurobindo Circle 1990, p. 102) The comment was as follows: “Sri Aurobindo as an imager of thought-birds and as an artist of an exceptional merit making these heavenly visitors slip between the pauses of the building brain—when the brain is in the phase of an intense activity symbolic of the duties of the ruler with a concern for his kingdom—is just superb. There is something remarkable here from the point of view of poetic expression achieving through its roundaboutness a very unusual result. Complex in structure but metrically well-poised, the third line in the above passage depicts exactly the whole process by which Aswapati the Yogi is presently seen engrossed in affairs of public life, a typical Aurobindonian integration of the secular and the esoteric.” The roundaboutness mentioned here is not a weakness in any sense but it has a certain charm and shows the alertness with which the author achieved it; the “in” of the earlier thirteen drafts was simply changed to “twixt”, finally bringing out the line “And twixt the pauses of the building brain” with a pyrrhic in the middle balancing two iambs on either side. The complexity of the structure has also a felicitous density, even while the thought-birds skim the fathomless surge of Nature and wing back to hidden shores. Amal Kiran considers “twixt” as “a strange oversight” on part of the author himself and for that reason goes forth to justify the editorial emendation of “in” for “twixt”. The puzzle for him is: How did Sri Aurobindo write it at all, contradicting his own experiences? And then how did he allow it to stand when the text was read out to him on several occasions? Before offering his solution, he first writes: “A highly intelligent friend [Arindam Basu] well conversant with both Sri Aurobindo’s poetry and his yogic teaching, accounts for the fact that none of us reacted against ‘twixt’ for years and years, by remarking: ‘on a first reading (even for many more casual ones) we read the meaning and not quite the words, and so “twixt” was just taken for “in”. Now that it is pointed out one notices it.’ The background of Sri Aurobindo’s uniform teaching,” continues Amal Kiran, “would suffice to render us uncritical. The same explanation may hold for Sri Aurobindo’s own attitude on hearing the passage read out, even if more than once… [Among other alternatives to have a heavier syllable than ‘in’ in the line concerned] Sri Aurobindo may have loosely opted for ‘twixt’… We should be aware of allowing currency to a text which, on a natural interpretation, is out of accord with Sri Aurobindo’s known spiritual teaching no less than with his own poetic choice in an overwhelming majority of versions…”

While concluding his analysis and making a recommendation, Amal Kiran states the following: “The editors of Savitri must certainly not succumb to the temptation to choose readings from earlier versions merely out of personal preference. But neither can a purely mechanical approach to editing be the ideal for a poem which covered many years and took shape in such a complex manner. Among the diverse possibilities of corruptions creeping into the text, slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself form an extremely small category consisting primarily of omitted punctuation. But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching.” Amal Kiran’s article appears in Mother India, November 1990, pp. 745-54. Did Amal really mean what he wrote and advised? Jugal Mukherjee would not subscribe to it. There were several other mute voices also against it.

And there is another strange piece of logic, that we “…read the meaning and not quite the words…”, that so much saturated in the teachings of Sri Aurobindo we are that we become “uncritical”, that it also applies to Sri Aurobindo he doing things “loosely”! So the upshot is: Sri Aurobindo’s eyesight had become weak, he could not hear properly what was read out to him, he had to depend upon a scribe who was not alert enough, he was assisted by a typist who remained mute and quiet, his printer didn’t always remain faithful to the manuscripts sent to him for printing and publication. Well, if such is the background then, all this must entail on our part not to have just a critical but an independent look at the entire composition of the poem, notwithstanding the Mother’s firm retort to Amal Kiran: “Do you think there is anybody in the world who can judge Sri Aurobindo? And how do you know what Sri Aurobindo intended or did not intend? He may have wanted just what he has left behind.” That is logic also.

Indeed, to quote a line from Savitri,

A greater Mind may see a greater Truth.

In the present context, of Amal Kiran speaking of slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself, we can well understand why the Mother should have exploded long ago the way she did, in 1954, like “a veritable Mahakali”. It seems that we are not really dealing with the “biggest puzzle in the text of Savitri”, but with something else—ardent disciples becoming wiser than the teacher, not only pointing out his slips but also correcting them. But who can solve this puzzle? Or is it in this way we justify ourselves as a “disparate enigma of God’s make?” Looks to be so. It becomes ingloriously worse when one of them, one of the editors associated with the editing of Savitri, writes a biography of the Yogi-Poet, as we have in The Lives of Sri Aurobindo which declares that Savitri is a “fictional creation”. God may or may not save the king, but he must save us from such minds.

---

~ RYD

What do Mr. Heehs and co. say in the Supplement to the Revised Edition of savitri on p.3, regarding some 800 and odd changes made in the 1st part of Savitri. They also state later that out of the 12 versions of Savitri the last version is chosen as the final text.

1) Fortunately, the documents for almost all the stages have been preserved.

After ten lines of the above statement they say :
2) But uncertainties may arise where a stage is missing. The proofs of most of the journal instalments and fascicles and of the first edition of Part One have not survived.

Now Sri Aurobindo used to correct on the fascicles and the jouranl instalments as and when they came from press. Thus these presumably would be the last versions. Mr. Heehs and Co. now makes a statement that completely baffles personally me at least. Would you readers kindly clarify, if I have understood perfectly from these seemingly totally contradictory statements that snow our minds.

First they assure us that almost all the documents of every stage have been preserved . Next they tell us that the most important stage - namely, the last ones of the stages of the first part are missing. Now my mind boggles as to how then on earth, Heeh's & Co. have made these 800 and odd changes ! By the help of the earlier 11 stages ?

My poor reason truly fails to understand at the rationality and the fallacy of the unreasonable mind of the archivist-cum-historian !

He calls this “in”-“twixt” as the biggest puzzle in Savitri and sets himself to plead for “in” in place of Sri Aurobindo’s latest “twixt”.

It is at least as much puzzling to note that in all the earlier editions (1950, 1954, 1970, and SABCL) the line reads:

"And twixt the pauses of the building brain".

Why did it take 20 years to spot this and realize that it could be a slip, if indeed it was a slip? When the earlier revisions were done was this change considered and rejected?

Given that "twixt" was actually written by Sri Aurobindo in the last version, what seems to me appropriate is to put "in" as alternative reading in a footnote.

But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching.”

Okay, so when Sri Aurobindo wrote "twixt" in that last version he was 78 years old, with failing eyesight (thanks to replying to letters of disciples for over 6 hours daily).

But how old was Amal when he wrote these lines above? In 1993 Amal was close to 90 years old... robust in health and mind, God bless him! But was he more alert and capable in 1993 than Sri Aurobindo was in 1950??

But I have no idea about the appropriate process for editing the works of a writer (after her/his passing).
So many questions arise for me here:

Are there any clearly defined norms for carrying out such a difficult exercise? Was any such procedure followed, or was something ad hoc invented as things went along? The editorial team took 20 years over it,
which means they have followed some procedure and had many discussions. One would like to know what procedure was followed. And what is the procedure followed for editing the works of great writers and scientists across the world?

When it comes to editing the works of a writer, let alone edit someone like Sri Aurobindo who is difficult to intellectually understand given the subject of his writings.

When it comes to editing the works of a writer, let alone edit someone like Sri Aurobindo who is difficult to intellectually understand given the subject of his writings.

Sorry, I left the last sentence above incomplete. I meant to write:

When it comes to editing the works of a great writer, let alone edit someone like Sri Aurobindo who is difficult to intellectually understand given the subject of his writings, one must exercise caution, and when in doubt fall back on the final handwritten version without exception!

[1]Satheesh-Tusar on the Savitri Blogs: Shouldn't one's opinions and views on the editing of Savitri be based on the literature published and offered by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram?

[2]Supplement to the Revised Edition of Savitri: The last emendation of a handwritten line was necessitated by what the editors consider to be a slip made by the author while revising. … When he copied this line in the ‘final version’, Sri Aurobindo wrote ‘twixt’ instead of ‘in’. This word… does not make sense. … Sri Aurobindo’s intention surely was that it is in these pauses that … ‘thoughts’ from hidden shores come in and touch the seeker. Perhaps he meant to alter ‘pauses’ when he substituted ‘twixt’ for ‘in’. At any rate, the unrevised version of the line, as given above, seems to represent Sri Aurobindo’s intentions better than the revised one, and it has therefore been restored to the text.

[3] Amal Kiran’s article in Mother India, November 1990:“The editors of Savitri must certainly not succumb to the temptation to choose readings from earlier versions merely out of personal preference. But neither can a purely mechanical approach to editing be the ideal for a poem which covered many years and took shape in such a complex manner. Among the diverse possibilities of corruptions creeping into the text, slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself form an extremely small category consisting primarily of omitted punctuation. But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching.”

If we go by Satheesh-Tusar’s ham-fisted reasoning, then we must allow to stand, unchallenged, the two ‘slip’-entries listed above, these unquestionably forming a part of literature published and offered by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a preposterous proposition indeed. Add to that also Amal’s Divine prone to human mistakes when he takes a human birth by the ordinary human process! In the context of editing Savitri, if at all it has to be done in a minimal way, all this would amount to making a mess of the whole thing. The upshot is an obvious distinction, in fact in the present circumstances an important distinction, must be made between the Ashram as an institution and the Ashram as a spiritual centre when the founding Guides are not physically present.

~RYD

Among the diverse possibilities of corruptions creeping into the text, slips and oversights by Sri Aurobindo himself form an extremely small category consisting primarily of omitted punctuation.

Amal was talking primarily about omitted punctuation, not word changes.

But rare verbal slips are a possibility the editors must accept when there is very clear evidence for it, particularly from the standpoint of Sri Aurobindo’s consistent yogic teaching.”

Enlighten me please. What do verbal slips have to do with consistency in yogic teaching?

I did some internet search to find out about current practices in bringing out scholarly critical editions. I found an interesting essay by Robert Hirst at this
link: https://wiki.cdlib.org/MTP/tiki-index.php?page=Critical+Edition+Essay

Also see this link: http://www.neh.gov/news/awards/scholarlyEditionsAwards_052006.html

In the essay, Hirst discusses the problems of bringing out a critical edition of Mark Twain's letters from multiple manuscripts, and proposes the electronic critical edition as a solution. I think the idea is to use hypertext links in the E-book to show all alternative readings.

It seems to me that such an E-book would be an ideal solution for a scholarly critical edition of Savitri. The E-book can include all alternative readings. This edition is obviously meant only for the scholar. For the normal devotee would use the 1972 edition.

This way the hard work put in by the editorial team between 1972 to 1993 will not go waste. More importantly, a single electronic edition will contain all the Savitri versions written by Sri Aurobindo.

Perhaps the Ashram would be willing to undertake this project? If the editorial team has kept all records of their work, it should be feasible? This is just a thought for discussion here.

To conclude, let me include an extract from Hirst's essay which shows just what Mark Twain thought about editors! :)

It is abundantly clear that even texts Mark Twain himself saw into print, not to mention those he was unable to supervise, contained errors and distortions which can usually be identified and corrected only through historical research. As early as 1862, Sam Clemens complained in a letter to his brother that "those Enterprise fellows make perfect nonsense of my letters." He went on to explain that "like all d--d fool printers, they can't follow the punctuation as it is in the manuscript. They have, by this means made a mass of senseless, d--d stupidity out of my last letter." The text of this particular letter has been lost, and we therefore do not know what errors Clemens referred to, but it is still obvious what happened. The Enterprise printers, in setting up the manuscript for publication, used their judgment and their time-honored prerogative as typesetters to decide how the text should be punctuated. They applied the newspaper's standard of what was "correct," and in the process, without consulting the author, created a text that differed in some (presumably small) ways from the original text in the manuscript. It is safe to assume that their changes were not made maliciously: the printers thought they were helping the author avoid the embarrassment of appearing in print with "incorrect" punctuation and spelling. In this case, their helpfulness had some unintended consequences.

Although this letter is lost to us until someone finds a copy of the Enterprise in which it appeared, or a copy of a newspaper reprinting that part of the Enterprise, the more common situation with Mark Twain's works is that his manuscript and often other documents, like first printings and proofs, do survive. We know that he complained for the whole of his professional career about typesetters, typists, proofreaders, and editors who altered the text of documents he put before them, and not just when they created "perfect nonsense." But because so many original documents survive, we actually have a better chance of reversing the typesetters' interference than Mark Twain himself did.

Thirty-five years after this (lost) letter to the Enterprise, we find him proof-reading the English version of his last large book, More Tramps Abroad, and complaining to his publisher that the "printers pay no attention to my punctuation," thereby forcing him to spend much "labor & vexation" in "annihilating their ignorant & purposeless punctuation & restoring my own." Despite these complaints, he almost never succeeded in forestalling or in correcting their changes, and More Tramps Abroad was published with the printers' "ignorant & purposeless punctuation" largely intact. But because the manuscript survives, it is possible to do what the author himself could not do, remove the baleful influence of the typesetter and proofreader. One pervasive task of a critical edition for any book or newspaper article published by Mark Twain is to restore the spelling and punctuation of the original manuscript. Even if this seems trivial to us, he said repeatedly and forcefully that it was not so to him.

And twixt the pauses of the building brain
Touched by the thoughts that skim the fathomless surge

There is a nice alliterative effect produced by the two opening dental consonants in the words "twixt" and "Touched" occurring in successive lines. Also, in the opening iamb "And twixt", since the first syllable "And" ends in a dental consonant, we can glide over it leaving most of the duration and stress on "twixt". This produces the alliterative effect...

Does my naive analysis make any poetic sense?

Your analysis is interesting. “twixt” has natural accent and stress and quantity which give a kind of weightiness to the line which is absent in “in”. From a poetic point of view therefore “twixt” is a better choice. The sound value in “in” is poorer than in “twixt”, something that is not desirable in the present context. However, behind "twixt" the considerations are more occult-yogic than poetic, I suppose.

~ RYD

However, behind "twixt" the considerations are more occult-yogic than poetic, I suppose. ~ RYD
Post comment:

Absolutely. Sri Aurobindo has clearly said that he has written nothing for mere poetic effect. That has to be an axiom in any study of Savitri.

The lines towards the close of Part 1 are very interesting. For instance:

Awake beneath the ignorant vault of Night,
He saw the unnumbered people of the stars
And heard the questioning of the unsatisfied flood
And toiled with the form-maker, measuring Mind.


Who are the "people of the stars"? Is Sri Aurobindo referring to a Nordic legend here? I found the following passage in the internet:

Millennia before the rising of the Sun and Moon, the land of the Valar was lit by the Light of the Two Trees. Far across the Sea to the east, Middle-earth lay in darkness, but for the glimmer of starlight. It was into this starlit world that the first Elves awoke, and when they were discovered by Oromë he gave them a name, Eldar, meaning 'People of the Stars'. Soon afterwards the Elves became divided; one group elected to follow Oromë back to Aman, while the rest refused the summons and remained behind. From that time, the name 'Eldar' became attached solely to the Three Kindreds who set out on the Great Journey into the West: the Vanyar, the Noldor and the Teleri.


There is some similarity between the "Night" and the
"Middle-earth" darkness here... Any thoughts?

Tolkien has referred to Eldar and elves in his mythology... But I'm certainly not implying that Sri Aurobindo was inspired by the "Lord of the rings"! :)

Also, there seems to be a more ancient myth in the
Hawaiian islands (polynesia) about the "people of the stars" descending from the "dog star" Sirius.

Anyway, what did Sri Aurobindo mean by "people of the stars" in these lines?

Anyway, what did Sri Aurobindo mean by "people of the stars" in these lines?

It could just mean earthlings. After all, we are the unnumbered (countless) people who are "awake beneath the ignorant vault of the Night". At this point, the vision has ended and he is back to normal. One of the previous lines says "once more he moved amid material scenes". The next line speaks of coming back to the transient world "A wanderer from the occult invisible suns; Accomplishing the fate of transient things,". The last line of the canto also speaks of the return to earth "The Lord of Life resumed his mighty rounds; In the scant field of the ambiguous globe." All this taken together points to earthlings.

In this context, Omar Khayyam called the earth an "inverted bowl"

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to it for help -- for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/K/KhayyamOmar/52Andthatinv.htm

It could just mean earthlings.

That is how I had always understood it, and I somehow put the stars on the "vault of the Night", like a star-studded dark "inverted bowl". But I'm not sure if that is how the sentence correctly parses...

People of the stars—this is an interesting perspective. But let us check the following: “It was into this starlit world that the first Elves awoke, and when they were discovered by Oromë he gave them a name, Eldar, meaning People of the Stars.” I get a feeling that these people are still very ‘vital’ in their nature, the ‘mental’ yet to emerge in any distinctive way.

But Savitri (p. 348) is at a different level altogether. The description of the wanderer from the occult invisible suns accomplishing the fate of transient things belongs to the luminous supernormal. I tried to look into the Record of Yoga and we’ve there breathtaking hints. Let me just quote a few in the following:

“stars in psychic sky—paralokadrishti. [p. 1277]

The Karma of the Siddha Yogin must be like that of the sun and stars, the avalanche and the cyclone, the breeze, moon or flowers, fire and the dust of the earth, either calm and luminous or mighty and violent or gentle, sweet and useful, either lofty or humble at the will of the One Supreme Shakti, impelled and used by Her entirely, and, whatever its outward appearance, always working on a basis of absolute peace, self-surrender and self-knowledge. [P. 1399]

Indra (mental power) filling the actions, master of the peoples, king of their deeds. [P. 147]

In the trikaldrishti knowledge of the past, of past lives, of feelings, thoughts & motives of people in the past is becoming normally active. It has been suggested that Aishwarya should be renounced in the physical siddhi except saundarya; but owing to the persistence of physical asiddhi, tejas in the assimilative process, virulent jalavisrishti, inhibition of kamananda (except in
the form of madira and sukshma sahaituka kamananda), etc, the mental shakti & its anucharas are unwilling to accept this suggestion as anything but a false & premature movement of withdrawal. [P. 197]

An extension of the jnanam Brahma has brought into play a rich action of the telepathic trikaldrishti. Hitherto what was seen were the immediate forces of possibility & actuality in operation outside the living objects which act, pranad ejad, proceeding from elemental or other powers who people the universe; inside the living object were seen the mental states, feelings, impulses, tendencies, thoughts, nervous & physical states, proper to the conscious waking mind; now a fresh element enters with the clear perception of the dominant idea in the superconscious dream-mind (manomaya purusha), which dictates usually the ultimate action. Beyond this is the non-telepathic trikaldrishti which can alone perceive what is the unalterable eventuality actually destined. This perception is contained in the sleep mind of the manomaya purusha, where all beings know the past, present & future. The rest is a matter of range, arrangement & proper action of the knowledge. The perception is now goagram aswapeshasam. [P. 329]

And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him; and he was nigh unto the sea. [637]

At night a splendid fullness of moving in dream vision; [absolute] perfection, colour, reality[,] intensity of scenes, objects, people, living creatures in an ordered succession as if seen by one moving through a new world, the pranic worlds or else the bhuswargas. Afterwards again dream of the ordinary kind, though always with a certain kind of coherence. pp. [1152-53]

The traditions are symbolic, not exact. The system of the Puranas was not created by anybody, but was a development of very ancient traditions infinitely older than the historic culture towhich the name of Puranic has been given. The present Puranas are very late creations with many ancient things imbedded in them and mixed with much of a recent creation.

No, but the traditions they contain are often older than the extant Veda.

I could hardly say. There is much that has survived from old civilisations that have perished, but of course in a changed form. One would have to count their origin perhaps by tens of thousands of years. There are things also that were believed in old times, forgotten and again recovered from the mental planes. It is difficult to disentangle the various materials and say which dates from what time. The theory of the Kalpas has existed in one form or another from times lost in the mist of oblivion.

I composed many things, but they are not extant.

Vyasa is a name under which many different people have been confused together. If you mean Krishna Dwaipayana, he is somewhere in the planes of being which are at the height of what may
be called the mental heavens.

They cannot be numbered. Besides these existed through centuries after centuries in long generations of Rishis.

The seven Rishis are a tradition. The original seven Rishis refer to seven personalities who did not belong to the earth. The seven of tradition have not been on the earth since the Vedic times.

I know nothing about the White Lodge. I should fancy they belong to the lower worlds between the pranic and the mental.

They are certainly not the Vedic Rishis though the name given to one of them is that of a later Rishi of the times of the Upanishads.

Yes.

I do not think it is the same; but I cannot say certainly, for I do not know where Kutthumi is. [pp. 1441-42]

But let us check the following: “It was into this starlit world that the first Elves awoke, and when they were discovered by Oromë he gave them a name, Eldar, meaning People of the Stars.” I get a feeling that these people are still very ‘vital’ in their nature, the ‘mental’ yet to emerge in any distinctive way.

I too feel that the "people of the stars" are a primitive race, predominantly vital. Since the event is supposed to have taken place in some previous cycle to ‘hew the ways of Immortality’, the allusion to a previous race as the "people of the stars" whose king is Aswapati is an interesting possibility.

I've been savouring the last twenty lines of Part 1, thanks to this "in-twixt puzzle". Dwelling on them has been a delightful experience!

Regarding one more line in the same passage:

And toiled with the form-maker, measuring Mind.

Sri Aurobindo has used the phrase "form-maker" several times in the "hymns to the mystic fire" as
"the son of Twashtri the form-maker".

Twashtri is the divine architect. Also, in "measuring Mind", measuring is a verb, right? I thought it was an adjective.

That means this divine "form-maker" is toiling, measuring Mind (perhaps, as he is back in the world of mental beings). That seems to connect up with the "building brain" line too.

Or is the line autobiographic? It could refer to the toil of the fire in the Poet, the form-maker, "carving out" lines, measuring Mind...

Agni is the form-maker, and the Sankhya makes it clear also; in fact there’s the triple fire, the creative fire, Tejas, to build and form things material which had started happening with Akash and which culminate in solid Matter, Prithvi. (Savitri, p. 415) But in the present line “measuring Mind” is grammatically already gets defined and fixed as the “form-maker. This Mind, in my view, cannot be directly linked up with Agni; Mind gives a certain definiteness, even a concreteness, to the Idea and its process is analytic, breaking it up into smaller and smaller bits. The mention of “Mind” in the context of the “people of the stars” could perhaps be viewed as the appearance of the Manomaya, the mental being getting focused. We could immediately link up this with the imminent birth of Savitri in the mortal field presently governed by the Mind as its best faculty. The passage is already taking us to the next Canto, Book, Part of Savitri. But it has also a connection with the awaking of Savitri among the human tribes as we have in the opening line of the new section on p. 6. Here we have a “thousand peoples of the soil and tree”. That becomes amazing—this wonderful architectural unity of Savitri…

Thanks for the detailed reply. I see that "form-maker"
has to refer to the "measuring Mind" in this context. It will be interesting to find out where else Sri Aurobindo has used "form-maker" in this sense. I'll look into it.

Thanks for the quotations from the 'record of yoga'! I'll look into them for connections and hints.

She exploded like a veritable Mahakali
Amal writes: “It was 10 April 1954. The day proved one of the most decisive in my inner life. I took to the Mother some suggestions with regard to Savitri. I had written them down. The Mother looked strange and said: “I can answer without even reading your note. I won’t allow you to change even a comma in Savitri.” (Our Light and Delight, p. 23)

And yet…

The Mother disgustingly-sarcastically said: “At most you may write a Publisher’s Note to say: ‘We poor blind ignorant human beings think Sri Aurobindo did not intend certain things to be in the final version. And we are giving our opinion for what it may be worth.’ ”

The Mother exploded like a veritable Mahakali: “Yes, I know. People used to pester him with letters, pointing out grammatical mistakes and other things. He used to make changes just for the sake of peace. He was very polite and did not see people what a nuisance they were. He and I were together and alone… he used to say: ‘what a bother, what a nuisance!’ And once he said: ‘But I had a purpose in putting the thing in this way. I wanted it like this.’ Sri Aurobindo made many concessions out of politeness and wished to be left in peace. When a great being comes down here to work he wants peace and not botheration. Yes, he was polite, and people took advantage of his compassion and misunderstood it and got all sorts of ideas. Sri Aurobindo was polite—but I am not polite at all.” (24-25)

I would not allow you to change even a comma… The matter should have rested there.Surely, Nolini and Jugal would have left it at that place. It cannot be our business to correct Savitri. And then there are corrections and corrections. In any case, editorial changes, revisions, emendations, corrections are just out of the question. If this is one lesson we have to learn from Amal’s handling of Savitri, the purpose will be served. After all, he handled Savitri three times, in 1954, in 1972, and in 1993—and every time he made a mess of it. The Mother did not tell him to see if any corrections were to be made in Savitri; it was Amal who had prepared a list and taken it to her. He should have left it at that.

There is so much or truth in I would not allow you to change even a comma… that Nolini and Jugal would have left things as they were.

~ RYD

PS: What a synchronicity! Amal had taken his note to the Mother on 10 April 1954. Today is 10 April 2010!

I wish to draw attention to something which was left unaddressed in this brouhaha. RYD seems to have hurt the sentiments of people like Satheesh and Aurosatya Vrata by misusing the Mother's quotes to infer that Nirod and Amal were "morons". But there are numerous instances on the Mirror where RYD has also praised both of them (...I mean Amal and Nirod). Consider this article Amal-Kiran fire worshipper by RYD and also this article which shows RYD having dinner with Nirod.

Just as Peter Heehs in his biography LOSA meanders through contradictions, so does RYD on his webzine. What is the solution? We must widen our consciousness and develop reading skills !!

Now dear Auroman, Mother is referring then to whom in this passage in her talk to Satprem on March 13, 1963, Vol. 4,

'It's captivating, Savitri!

I believe it's his Message - all the rest is preparation, while

Savitri is the Message. Unfortunately, there were two morons here who fancied correcting him - while he was alive! (A. especially, he's a poet.) Hence all those Letters on Poetry Sri Aurobindo wrote. I've always refused to read them - I find it outrageous. He was forced to explain a whole "poetic technique" - the very idea! It's just the contrary: it comes down from above, and AFTERWARDS you explain. Like a punch in sawdust: inspiration comes down, and afterwards you explain why it's all arranged as it is - but that just doesn't interest me!

(silence)'.
The whole thing is recorded in French.

They should not have got involved with these Heehs' and Co. and give their permission for the printing of the New Edition without being absolutely sure. They were very old, esp. Nirod-da ...

What is stopping the archival people putting the whole works of Mother and Sri Aurobindo in original on web.

' This was the most unkindest cut of all.'
Does anybody posthumously go to correct Shakespeare or Whitman ? What is the standard practice ? Above all to accept this new tradition in the field of editing from an arrogant t...

>>The Mother: Unfortunately, there were two morons here who fancied correcting him—while he was alive! (A. especially, he's a poet.) >>

Amal Kiran, apropos of the Mother calling him a “moron”, explains his understanding of it in a letter dated 7 May 1988. He writes to a friend of his as follows:

You have touched upon an extremely personal and delicate subject… the Mother having referred to me with the French term imbécile for having written to Sri Aurobindo about Savitri in what is termed as questioning vein. You are also asking me whether I consider the Mother to have made a mistake in using that word.

I may begin by saying that the censure would be more drastic if the word were taken in its English sense. In colloquial French I believe it means something in-between silliness and stupidity. I see that the translator of the Agenda into English has gone one better and employed the label “moron”. A moron is an adult with an intelligence equal to that of an average child of 8-12. to be moronic is to have an in-born defect of mind. It can never be got rid of. Surely, the Mother did not mean this? … Would I say that she made a mistake even if the other sense is to be taken? The matter is rather complex for me. It has always appeared to me that the Divine, by the very fact of assuming a body, through the common human process must be prone at times to make mistakes, at least small ones. But I have also always held that the Divine’s mistakes are still divine. … My “questioning vein” about Savitri was intended to serve as an objective filter to isolate what might be Sri Aurobindo’s oversights, which can certainly accompany on some occasions the incarnate Divine’s insights. … at times there must have been in me an urge, however, faint, to find fault with Savitri in a few rare places in the light (or twilight) of my own aesthetic sense. I am positive the Mother’s imbécile hit out at that lurking imp. … I may add in general that the Mother’s censures at any time are never meant to be ultimate pronouncments…

Personal Letters by Amal Kiran, Life-Poetry-Yoga, Vol. 1, pp. 256-60, (1994)

Apropos of Amal’s mental-verbal gymnastics or argumentative pedagoguishness about imbécile and moron, I wrote the following to a friend who has thorough knowledge of French. “Poor Amal! But may I know what exactly is the connotation of the French imbecile? Is its English rendering as moron correct, is it admissible?” He sent me the following which certainly is interesting in its own way.

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Idiots, Imbeciles, and Morons by Maeve Maddox
In a recent state election Arkansas voters were asked to alter the following constitutional phrasing: “No idiot or insane person shall be entitled to the privileges of an elector.”

Legislators objected that the language was archaic and disrespectful. (Not to mention the fact that the law has never prevented idiots from voting.)

As the current Arkansas state constitution dates from 1874, I decided to find out what the drafters meant by the word “idiot.”

Idiot derives from a Latin word that referred to an ignorant, uneducated person. The word came into English from an Old French word with the same meaning. By 1300 idiot had acquired the meaning of “a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning.”

For a time, idiot was used by doctors to refer to a specific degree of mental retardation:

A person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.

The term came to be regarded as offensive and is no longer used as a medical classification.

Two other words once used alongside idiot as medical classifications are imbecile and moron.

Imbecile derives from a Latin adjective having the sense of “weak” and entered English from an Old French word with the same meaning. For a time it was used to refer to physical weakness. For example “an imbecile person” might be someone unable to walk without crutches. The first recorded use of imbecile as a noun is 1802. Its medical definition was

A person of moderate to severe mental retardation having a mental age of from three to seven years and generally being capable of some degree of communication and performance of simple tasks under supervision.

Moron comes from a Greek word meaning “stupid.” Its meaning in the now disused system of medical classification was:

a feebleminded person or mental defective with a potential mental age of between eight and twelve years who is capable of doing routine work under supervision.

In current English usage all three words are perceived as insults. Apparently idiot is the least offensive of the three since a publishing empire employs the word in its titles with great success.

Link: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/idiots-imbeciles-and-morons/

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Surely, when the Mother used the word imbécile she did not go into the semantics or pedagogical aspects of it. She was not talking in a hard-and-dry professional’s language, a spiritless language. I would rather take both these in the sense that one has not really grown up spiritually to enter into the spirit of Savitri which was her expectation from them who were close to Sri Aurobindo. The least she would expect is, a certain intuitive suppleness, a swiftness of perception that can take one closer to the source of its inspiration, and not get bogged down with technicalities of poetry. It is in that sense that she was unhappy about the whole thing, and she kind of bluntly spoke to that effect. Didn’t she say that Sri Aurobindo was a gentleman, but not she? !!

~ RYD

Imbecile - from French English Harrap's dictionary - 1)imbecile, half-witted 2) Silly, idiotic 3) Idiot, Fool, fat-head.

It is evident that many so-called intellects around both Sri Aurobindo and esp. Mother, looked at the human aspect more and not the Divine. In normal working this did not come in the way much. But when it came to his writings and esp.the Magnum Opus Savitri, where Sri Aurobindo wrote the whole of it again and again as and when he rose in his consciousness, well the human consciousness seriously erred; that is why the reprimand to Amal and Nirod baran. Nirod Baran did not even understand it, it looks like at the end. Besides, he is from Chattogram !
However, all said and done they were sadhaks and devotees, what ever they did in the presence of the Masters though unacceptable from a higher perception, - and we have nothing to comment on.
But, here were people who had no respect of the Masters, have never seen their working, were arrogant , like Peter Heehs & Co., had no knowledge or basic education or training even of proper English, history, archives , and were even materially poor have moved like a bull in China-shop or like talibans in Afghanistan , - the marauders who broke the Bamiyan Buddha.


(Mother reads the concluding lines of "Savitri":)

Night, splendid with the moon dreaming in heaven
In silver peace, possessed her luminous reign.
She brooded through her stillness on a thought
Deep-guarded by her mystic folds of light,
And in her bosom nursed a greater dawn.
(XII.724)

It heralds the Supermind.

But I had a feeling he hadn't completed his revision. When I read this, I felt it wasn't the end, just as when I read the last chapter of the "Yoga of Self-Perfection,"[[The last chapter of the Synthesis of Yoga: "Towards the Supramental Time Vision." ]] I felt it was unfinished. He left it unfinished. And he said so. He said, "No, I will not go down to this mental level any more."
But in Savitri's case ... (I didn't look after it, you know), he had around him Purani, that Chinmayi, and ... (what's his name?) Nirod - they all swarmed around him. So I didn't look after Savitri. I read Savitri two years ago, I had never read it before. And I am so glad! Because I read it at the time I could understand it - and I realized that none of those people had understood ONE BIT of it. Both things at the same time. (silence) - Agenda . vol.4



"Mother, from the fact that Sri Aurobindo sometimes corrected his own things on our pointing out oversights we conclude that passages may be there which needed revision."
At this, the Mother exploded like a veritable Mahakali: "Yes, I know. People used to pester him with letters, pointing out grammatical mistakes and other things. He used to make changes just for the sake of peace. He was very polite and did not let people see what a nuisance they were. But when he and I were together and alone and like this" — here she put her two palms together two or three times to show the intimacy — "he used to say: 'What a bother, what a nuisance!' And once he said: 'But I had a purpose in putting the thing in this way. I wanted it like this.' Sri Aurobindo made many concessions out of politeness and a wish to be left in peace. When a great being comes down here to work he wants peace and not botheration. Yes, he was very polite, and people took advantage of his compassion and misunderstood it and got all sorts of ideas. Sri Aurobindo was polite — but I have made it a point not to be polite. I am not polite at all. The other day Pavitra brought me somebody's idea about Sri Aurobindo's passing. Somebody said Sri Aurobindo had died because of this or that. I told Pavitra: 'Let him think anything — I simply don't care. The truth will remain what it is.'"
I raised the question: "Take the Epilogue to Savitri, Mother. It comes from an early version and is not equal to the rest of the poem. In some places it is almost like a sort of anticlimax as regards the plane of spiritual inspiration."
At this moment Nirod walked in and said: "Sri Aurobindo asked me: 'What remains now to be done in Savitri' I replied: 'The Book of Death and the Epilogue.' He remarked: 'We shall see about them later.'"
The Mother turned to Nirod and said: "That may be his way of saying that nothing more needed to be done. We can't form any conclusions. At most you may write a Publisher's Note to say: 'We poor blind ignorant human beings think Sri Aurobindo did not intend certain things to be the final version. And we are giving our opinion for what it may be worth.'"
Just then a black lizard came and stood at Nirod's feet and looked up at him. The Mother saw it and said: "It seems to have a fascination for your feet. Why? Could it be symbolic?"
Nirod: "That is for you to say." -

Our Lights and Delights - Amal Kiran . p.21.

These people believed that Mother did not know proper English. So in front of Mother, they dare not raise this issue loudly. Even recently in Krishnagar's open court, it is alleged, the Ashram counsel had said that ,' Mother did not understand Savitri.'

>>Srikant on Sat 10 Apr 2010: Even recently in Krishnagar's open court, it is alleged, the Ashram counsel had said that, 'Mother did not understand Savitri.'>>

As this is an “alleged” statement, we will not take any cognizance of it.

~ RYD

Why not ?
There is a letter by Bijan Ghose - the Supreme Court advocate, which is published. He was present in the court when this happened.

There were other hon'ble people of the Ashram present too, Who did not respond.

The presiding officer of the court was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and Mother. Hearing this She walked out of the court.

I have said alleged only because, I was not present in the court.

Alok Pandey sends the following comment:

It is not English that Sri Aurobindo writes. What Sri Aurobindo writes is English.

Rules of grammar are man-made, mind-made to facilitate understanding. There is nothing sacrosanct about them. They have evolved out of a common consensus through study of human speech as it stands at its development today.

As greater experience flows into the human consciousness, as greater possibilities of communication and understanding arise, the speech itself is bound to evolve. Pedagogues are stuck to the past and, rather than admit evolutionary possibility, would instead reduce everything to their fixed formulas.

Sri Aurobindo came to revolutionise the way we look at life and things, the way we act and feel and live. He came to give an evolutionary uplift to everything so that it may become a plastic and suitable vehicle for the new expression, the Truth of Tomorrow.

But instead of evolving new modes of experiencing and expressing with His Help and Grace, humanity tries to fix him to its level of understanding and expression. That He conceded to us humans and our bottomless stupidity is His Grace. That we do not respond to this Grace with faithfulness is our idiocy.

The irony is that the world's fate and ours hangs between the Divine's Infinite and Intelligence and the world's infinite idiocy.

The Divine becomes human to draw us close to Him but man charges Him by that very humanness and takes it upon himself to correct Him rather than change himself. Many are the ways of such self-deception and justification of one's stupidity and the letter giving a detailed explanation of one's actions is just one more case in point. How much better it would be if one admits and says that yes I am / was indeed an idiot who was trying to judge / correct the Divine by my ignorant standards. That would be a leap.

But it is so rare for the self-satisfied intellectuals to surrender that one may take it as almost a universal malady of the human mind that would not let go off its sense of supremacy.

As He once remarked when asked about the kind of disciples He had as His lot: 'As to the disciples, I agree!' There is such a touch of gentle irony in it but also of tremendous Compassion.

However consequent to the PH controversy nothing surprises me anymore. Hasn't it always been the case that men salute self-satisfying human power rather than the One Authentic Power. Hasn't mankind always treated divinity that way?

But surely there is Grace and will pull us through everything.

Very true Alok-ji !
Here below is a portion of the letter that Sri Aurobindo wrote as an answer to Amal, on Amal's stressing the importance about the lexicographer W. H. Fowler, -

Q: Of course a language is not made altogether according to logical rules. Originally, or aboriginally, it came, I suppose, out of the entrails and in spite of all Volapuks and Esperantos natural languages will flourish. But I should like to ask you a few questions suggested by your falling foul of the Fowlers......


"Where the devil have I admitted that "treason" and "poison" are monosyllables or that their use as dissyllables is a poetic licence? Will you please quote the words in which I have made that astounding and imbecile admission? I have said distinctly that they are dissyllabic, — like risen, dozen, maiden, garden, laden and a thousand others which nobody (at least before the world went mad) ever dreamed of taking as monosyllables. ........ But for that to dub maiden a monosyllable and assert that Shakespeare, Shelley and every other poet who scans maiden as a dissyllable was a born fool who did not know the "current" pronunciation or was indulging in a constant poetic licence whenever he used the words garden, maiden, widen, sadden etc. is a long flight of imagination. I say that these words are dissyllables and the poets in so scanning them (not as an occasional licence but normally and every time) are much better authorities than any owl — or fowl — of a dictionary-maker in the universe. Of course the poets use licences in lengthening out words occasionally, but these are exceptions; to explain away their normal use of words as a perpetually repeated licence would be a wild wooden-headedness (5 syllables, please).
........
Language is neither made nor developed in that way — if the English language were so to deprive itself of all beauty by turning vision into vizhn and then into vzhn and all other words into similar horrors, I would hasten to abandon it for Sanskrit or French or Bengali — or even Swahili.
P.S. By the way, one point. Does the Oxford pronounce in cold blood and so many set words that vision, passion (and by logical extension treason, maiden, garden etc.) are mono syllables? Or is it your inference from "realm" and "prism"?If the latter, I would only say, "Beware" of too rigidly logical inferences. If the former, I can only say that Oxford needs some gas from Hitler to save the English mind from its pedants. This quite apart from the currency of vizhns. --- Sri Aurobindo
( SABCL -26 - p.323-4) 20-9-1934

Q: I am sincerely sorry for mistaking you on an important point. But before my argumentative wooden-headedness gives up the ghost under your sledge-hammer it is bursting to cry a Themistoclean "Strike, but hear". ........
...My sin was to have loved logic not wisely but too well where logicality had been obstreperously announced in flaring capitals on the title page and throughout the whole book by a fixed system of spelling and pronunciation. My Othellolike extremity of love plunged me into abysmal errors, but oh the Iagoistic "motiveless malignity" of lexicographers!
--

The Lives of Sri Aurobindo Proclaims that Savitri is a Fictional Creation

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Let us look at the Satheesh-Tusar incongruity or oddity again in another context. We have over there a set of blogs named after Savitri which also merrily advertise the ill-conceived Lives of Sri Aurobindo published by the Columbia University Press. How weird and wacky! unless they base themselves upon the Savitri which this Lives calls a “fictional creation”! unless they promote themselves by upholding the “fictional creation”! So finally money is all that matters, business and not the ideals and deeper convictions that give enduring value to life, that make it worth the grain of the salt! Do they realize at all that there cannot be any more laughable assertion than saying Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is a “fictional creation”, that it has nothing to do with his life? But this is precisely what the author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is trying to thrust down our throats, and this is precisely what the Satheesh-Tusar calculating habit avows, and avows cherishingly. They have forgotten or else ignored what the Mother has spoken of it, of Savitri as the “supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision”. This revelation disclosed by the Mother gets immediately nullified in the Lives by one single mischievous and hurtful phrase, by the spiteful language more aimed at denigration than elucidation of the text, by calling it a “fictional creation”. And the Satheesh-Tusar oddity or incongruity seems to compromise on it, seems to thrive on it by advertising it on the pages. And Sri Aurobindo himself had said that Savitri was his “main work”, and he was occupied with it over long periods of time, and he took it as his own means of ascension, and he had ceaselessly given the last ten years to give to it the form he wanted to give to it, the form of perfect perfection. Nothing of the sort appears to count over there, not a word of protest against this “fictional creation”. The Lives tells us that Savitri is a “fictional creation” and this bunch of blogs named after Savitri keep mum about it! I haven’t heard a single word of protest against it, and yet these blogs advertise the Lives! Who will take them seriously? We are told that Savitri is a “fictional creation”, virtually amounting to saying that the Yogi was occupied with a “fictional creation”! That’s a sad paradox, and we succumb to it! That’s the spell of Lives.

But at the moment our concern is about the editing of Savitri. However, the two are also tied together in the sense that it is the same hand that is present in both, in the early editorial work of Savitri and The Lives of Sri Aurobindo whose author claims himself to be the founder of the Archives where the Savitri drafts are preserved. It is the same hand in both the places, and it is the same odious mind which we see at work in a tireless manner. In relationship to this we might as well say that the Savitri-editing and the Lives are one and the same side of a coin whose other side is the vision and work of the Yogi.

But let us have a deeper look at the question: Is Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri a fictional creation?

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The Lives of Sri Aurobindo now published about two years ago by the Columbia University Press dismisses Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri as a possible source for getting some idea about the yoga-sadhana of Sri Aurobindo. Here is what we have on p. 398:

Because his talks entirely ceased and his correspondence virtually so, there are no first-hand accounts of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana after 1941. One is tempted to mine Savitri to make up for the lack. Sri Aurobindo’s accounts of Aswapathy’s voyage through the worlds of matter, life, and mind before reaching 'the kingdoms of the greater knowledge,' and Savitri’s transit through the 'inner countries' until she reaches the inmost soul certainly are based on his life and the Mother’s experiences; but the poem is a fictional creation, and Sri Aurobindo said explicitly that 'the circumstances of this life have nothing to do with its plot. [ref: 144, Letters on Poetry and Art, p. 276] …

Let us examine this in some detail.

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Let us look into the phrase “fictional creation” being supported by the reference from Letters on Poetry and Art.

This letter is dated 10 November 1936 and was addressed to Amal Kiran in response to his query. The way it is printed in the Centenary Edition is as follows: “Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother. This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in the far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to ‘hew the ways of Immortality’.” —1936 (p. 729)

When the 1954 University-edition of Savitri was prepared, Amal had made an error in reading “This incarnation” as “The narrative” and a correction was pasted before the book was released. (p. 823) The Mother was terribly upset with Amal and even remarked to the effect that he was too sure of himself.

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From the letter as printed in the Centenary Edition (p. 729) one gets the impression that it is a single letter, dated 1936. But actually it has two dates. These go as follows:

Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother.
3 November 1936

This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in the far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of Immortality”.
10 November 1936

The full correspondence between Amal Kiran and Sri Aurobindo, as presented in the Lives’ ref 144, Letters on Poetry and Art, p. 276, can be put as follows:

Amal: What a flight!—nobody can describe so marvellously our Mother. Isn’t Savitri she and she only?

Sri Aurobindo: Savitri is represented in the poem as an incarnation of the Divine Mother.
3 November 1936

Amal: If Savitri is represented as an incarnation of the Divine Mother, Aswapati must be meant to represent Théon.

Sri Aurobindo: What has Théon to do with it?

Amal: If Aswapati is he, I’ll learn about his role from the poem—but couldn’t you say something about him in direct reference to Mother and yourself?

Sri Aurobindo: This incarnation is supposed to have taken place in the far past times when the whole thing had to be opened, so as to “hew the ways of Immortality”. Théon and the circumstances of this life have nothing to do with it.
10 November 1936

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The fallaciousness of the argument that Savitri is a “fictional creation” comes out in several respects. The first important point is, Sri Aurobindo’s statement here pertains to one of the earliest drafts of Savitri belonging to the 1930s. What validity could it have to the sadhana of the 1940s about which our author is opining, that remains unstated. In fact, broadly speaking, it has none when the sadhana was moving on the wings of the Eagle of Fire—“His march now soared into an eagle’s flight.” On the other hand, the Lives is comparing this draft of the epic with a short composition—Is this the End—written on 3 June 1945 to draw a gloomy picture of the sadhana, and that too ignoring other compositions of the same period. Actually the first question is, can one say that Is this the End is a gloomy poem? Highlighting such a gloom is a rhetorical device, a technique to tell that it is not so, that if it is there it has got to be removed, which precisely is what the last two stanzas of the poem are doing. Also, one just fails to understand the sense of history of one who claims himself to be a historian, he mixing up two different periods of time. After 1938 with the establishment of the Mind of Light in his physical, the physical’s mind opening to the supramental Light and Force, Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga for the collective took a decisive positive upward turn, and things had started happening in rapid succession; it is to this period that the definitive composition of Savitri belongs. That indeed makes Savitri an extremely rich source to get a peep into the yogic attainments of the Yogi during the last twelve years or so.

The second point is of a slightly different nature. While our author dismisses Savitri as a possible source to get material about Sri Aurobindo’s life of the period, Amal himself wanted to learn from the poem about the role of Théon. This means that it was always considered not as a “fictional creation” but as a ‘mine’ for the biographical material. Otherwise there was no sense in Amal asking that question.

---

Now let us look into the following from the Lives: “Sri Aurobindo said explicitly that ‘the circumstances of this life have nothing to do with’ its plot.” What does than mean? “this life” refers to whose life? Is it Théon’s life or Sri Aurobindo’s life? Amal was talking about Théon and Sri Aurobindo had bluntly asked him what Théon had to do with it. A clarification was sought about Théon “in direct reference to Mother and yourself.”

Therefore the answer was vis-à-vis Théon, that Théon had nothing to do with it. This also implies the validity of the plot in the context of learning about the life of the concerned. How does it then become a “fictional creation”?

To base one’s argument to suit one’s motivations or intentions is hardly the method of objective research. But it is precisely with such kind of arguments and reasons that The Lives of Sri Aurobindo is plague-ridden. It is also amazing that intelligent supporters of the biography should fall prey to these illogicalities and absurdities.

To a large extent the same applies to the ‘corrections’ in Savitri that have been introduced in the 1993 edition, the same early hand operating here also.

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Before we close this inept Satheesh-Tusar’s RYD’s sly and insidious Method…, next time we’ll try to get a general idea about the editing of Savitri itself. This will be followed in several instalments with a few details of the Savitri-editing that culminated in the 1993 edition. We shall rename this “insidious” chapter as Chapter One: The Music from the Black Piano in the book entitled My Association with the Work of Editing Savitri.

The entire project may take quite a while, but perhaps it is also necessary that it be done. That will be the presentation of things as I had witnessed things during the period, as I had seen them unfold week after week. It therefore goes without saying that this will be an individual’s account which can differ from the account of those who also witnessed and saw things unfold, in fact those who were more actively concerned with it. In the process of presenting my story it is likely that I may have to speak about the members who were engaged in the “painful and difficult” work of editing Savitri. My remarks or observations against some individuals might appear unsavoury, or might even hurt certain feelings; but the intention will be to be truthful to the noble and upright spirit of Savitri which, surely, the giants like Amal and Nirod will fully understand and approve. Whatever is said is said in the context of Savitri and it will be wrong to draw other conclusions from it. We should also recognize that we’re not Praxitelian statues of perfection in static marble, but humans in living flesh and blood with all the foibles and weaknesses and prejudices and inadequacies and deficiencies, with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies, as much as the noble and the beautiful that is also with us. To ignore the former will be to be unrealistic; to get subdued by the latter will be to abdicate our sense of responsibility. We’ve to see the best and proceed with it, unmindful of action-reaction from different quarters. And of course who will say that he is not putting his best? …

~ RYD

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Savitri is a fictional creation .

Fiction – a feigned or false story : a falsehood : a romance : the novel, story-telling as a branch of literature. ( Chambers)
Fiction – Feigning, invention ; thing feigned or imagined, invented statement or narrative: esp. novels. ( Oxford)

Thus a ‘fictional creation’ would mean at best,’ imagined, invented narrative, esp. novels; and at worst it would mean a false creation.

The poet himself says it is – ‘ A Legend and a Symbol ‘.
Legend – A story of a saint’s life : a traditional story : a body of tradition : ( Chambers)
Symbol – An emblem : that which by custom or convention represents something else :

Thus, Savitri is a traditional story of Satyavan and Savitri and is recounted in Mahabharat. However, it is an emblem representing some thing else.
Mother says to Mona-da and Huta-ben that it is Sri Aurobindo and Her story. It is also the story of the creation; the story of the conquest of Love over Death.

Savitri thus is not by any stretch of imagination a false story. It is not even an imagined , invented narrative, esp. novels. Anybody who says that it is a fictional creation certainly knows – floccinaucinihilipilification !

People who say so, are like Dennis the Menace, without of course the innocence of Dennis :
Dennis – Mother, that shopkeeper at the end of the street pays me for doing work for him.
Mother – You doing work for him ! What work do you do ?!
Dennis – Keep away from his shop .

We all sincerely feel that Mr. Heehs and co. should, ‘Keep away from anything concerning Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.’ Let them be paid for it !

The author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo tries to prove that Savitri is a “fictional creation” and concludes that it is not dependable for the purposes of writing a biography. In support of his argument, of “fictional creation”, he cites as a reference a letter from Sri Aurobindo written in 1936. But this is simply anachronistic, and misleading, when Savitri had started taking its final shape only a few years later, its major and definitive composition belonging to the period 1942-50. But there is another aspect also of it. To maintain that Savitri is a “fictional creation”, the author quotes the letter which was perhaps not published in full when permission to use the copyright material was sought. This permission was given in 2004—the exact date and contents we don’t know—when “ref 144, Letters on Poetry and Art, p. 276”, quoted on p. 398 of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo, might not have been from a published work—Letters on Poetry and Art was released in 2004. Before one can ask the question ‘how can this be?’ it is necessary to check the exact dates, pertaining to the copyright permission and the publication of Letters on Poetry and Art. It looks that the permission was already given, prior to the appearance of Letters on Poetry and Art in print. This should imply the authorization of unpublished documents. There is an element of conjecture and it is desirable that the situation be cleared. Possibly, to substantiate the claim Savitri as a “fictional creation”, the author of the Lives was using the unpublished archival material at that point of time. But could he? It will be most appropriate if an independent scrutiny can be made to check the facts stated here and throw light on the issue involved.

~ RYD

An Open Dialogue on The Lives of Sri Aurobindo
Apropos of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo which declares that Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is a “fictional creation”, I’d received an invitation from Rich Carlson of the sciy for a dialogue on the book; at the sciy we were colleagues at one time. The intention of holding a dialogue was to see if it could address the valid issues that had caused a vertical split in the international IY Community. The idea was first to understand its nature and then possibly offer proposals to remove the regretful misunderstanding. Rich’s e-mail had come to me on 19 April 2009 (in India 20 April) and I waited purposely for two days to respond—first to gauge to what extent he was serious about the matter, and then to figure out the way in which the dialogue could be held, in case it was going to be held. In the meanwhile, Rich sent me another e-mail seeking my concurrence. Rich wanted to conduct the dialogue just between me and himself, “who are now on polarized sides of the ordeal.” The hope was “to see if this matter will end in resolution or rupture.”

On 22 April 2009 Rich sent me a sharp reminder. My reply was as follows: “I did get your earlier e-mail and was in the process of responding to it. Believe me, I thought it appropriate first to formulate terms and conditions for the intended dialogue which are ready in a draft form; I would have sent these to you in a day or two. But this e-mail settles the issue.”

But Rich regretted his haste and wished again to start the process. He wrote back: “It is a good thing to formulate the terms and conditions for an intended dialog. I had wished to do that myself.” He also felt that there is a lot at stake here and it would be in the spirit of the yoga to continue, no matter what the differences are.

My proposal to examine the The Lives of Sri Aurobindo was to go through it paragraph by paragraph, and page by page, and discuss it exhaustively, in several respects. I also mentioned that it would be preferable if the dialogue is carried out on the Mirror of Tomorrow when we can have inputs from alert and competent readers who are serious about the matter. I wrote to this effect: I think a chapter by chapter dialog on the book would be worthwhile, something certainly better than allowing courts to decide the issue.

Rich wrote back on 24 April 2009, saying that he meant it to be a private conversation on the issue in an attempt to arrive at a resolution. He was not in favour of an open dialogue which would rather cause further rupture in the world-wide IY Community. The matter was closed at that.

Today it is exactly one year when the idea of a possible dialogue was mooted. It is unfortunate that it didn’t materialise. The positions have now got so much hardened—witness for instance AV Today August 2009, some interviews on the subject—that perhaps only a miracle might work out a miracle.

As there is really nothing confidential in these frank exchanges made in a liberal spirit, on this anniversary of the proposal I'm putting them on the Mirror of Tomorrow. If Rich wishes, he can put his version on the sciy or related sites.

~ RYD

Editorial Gawkishness in Savitri-Editing
Let us get some general idea about the manner in which the composition of Savitri had proceeded. We could also look into some more factual details which are indeed revealing in many respects. The first available draft of Savitri, dated 8/9 August 1916, is a short narrative just with 1637 lines, but it is obvious that the poet meant it only to be a broad framework to be subsequently developed in several respects. The Yogi in him also recognised that the Savitri-legend has in its contents and connotations all that which can hold the marvellous theme of evolutionary spirituality leading to the divine manifestation in this creation upon earth. Eventually Part One of Savitri consisting of the first three books came out in September 1950, prior to Sri Aurobindo’s passing away on 5 December 1950. This first edition of Savitri’s Part I has in it a total number of 11,674 lines; these have become 11,683 lines in the 1993 edition. The total number of lines in Savitri is as follows: 23,812 (1950-51); 23,837 (1993); 1993 has 25 additional lines compared with the 1950-51 edition, 9 coming from Part I and 16 from Parts II and III. (These numbers will have to be checked again.) Part I which was mostly written by Sri Aurobindo himself in his own hand had, in 1944, about 9000 lines; but as the revision by dictation proceeded, it grew to 11,674 lines in the printed text of 1950. These changes kept on happening in the fair copy made by Nirodbaran, in the typescripts, proofs, and the printed versions which had come out either in the Ashram periodicals or as fascicles. The very first line of the epic in the twenty-first version appears as follows:

It was the hour before the gods awake.

While it continued to be there in that form afterwards also, a change was made in a later draft in which “gods” became “Gods”. Was that another inspiration, or was Sri Aurobindo simply taking care of details with a kind of focused attention? But perhaps elevation of “gods” to “Gods” has far beyond literary or religio-philosophical considerations a transcendental dimension when the yogic elements that were entering into the scheme of things had started asserting themselves in a distinct and definite manner.

In addition to a few examples we already had about the manner in which the latest edition of Savitri was prepared, let us take just two more instances. All these bring out clearly the editorial gawkishness that has entered into the proudly proclaimed 1993-Savitri. As I’ve already stated, later we shall go into some of the details of the working of this editorial handling or conduct.

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It is a fact that Savitri went back and forth through many stages of composition. Understandably, this entailed what we might call a few possible slips or mistakes or inadvertencies creeping into the printed version. There could be copying mistakes, typing, proofreading mistakes, or else mistakes due to wrong hearing of words, or using a wrong homophonic, or wrong positioning of newly dictated lines. Without a doubt, the editorial task becomes a very daunting task, particularly at this late stage so far away in time, and so much in the physical absence of the poet himself. With a qualified or nuanced sense there is a certain justification also in the archival statement that “an author is not responsible for every point, indeed not even for every word that is printed as his.” (Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Vol. 5:2, December 1981, p. 191) This assertion is rather bold, also rather queer, and definitely objectionable, particularly from the point of view of the manner in which it is stated. Too many hands had without a doubt entered into the entire matter each, quite unconsciously but always with a sense of devotion to the Master, and faithfulness to the text, and the commitment of an aspirant, contributing innocuously its share of departures from the original. Sure enough, this is a tricky-problematic situation; nay, it is a situation which can lead to the dangerous statement, that “the author is not responsible for every word that is printed as his”. This statement also appears to be motivated. We must be cautious while accepting its implications.

It is stated that even at the advanced stage of proofreading Sri Aurobindo “made extensive alterations and added new lines and passages.” This can be discerned from the differences “between the typescripts and the printed texts” as we have presently. But then we are also told that the “only major gap… is the proofs of the early printed versions of a substantial portion of the poem” and that “Sri Aurobindo’s proof-revision was light.” (Mother India, pp. 83-91, 2004) As “revision was neither extensive nor complex” it may be said, “the consequences of not being able to see the proofs themselves are quite minimal”. Therefore the editorial discernment is: Absence of the final proofs need not be considered of much consequence. But if objectivity is the sole criterion then all this becomes pretty dubious and self-contradictory, especially when the claim is “we want an authentic edition of Savitri”.

Just take an example pertaining to the 1948-fascicle with a revised passage which is as follows:

He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes are his, the old rounds of thought;
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a hedge planned to defend his life…

“Sri Aurobindo further revised these lines in the proofs of the first edition. These proofs, unfortunately, were not preserved; so what was printed in that edition is the only evidence of his last revision of Part One. The passage was printed in 1950 as follows:

He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible…(Savitri, pp. 165-66)

Amal Kiran commented in 1954 on the fourth line: ‘Limping line—one foot missing. It is impossible to scan it as a pentameter as it stands: He has/ máde a/ thíck and/ nárrow/ ing hédge/. Three consecutive trochees in the middle are too jerky and inadmissible. The natural scanning is: He has made/ a thick/ and nár/ row wing hédge/. But this gives a four-foot line. Look up the original.’ We have seen Sri Aurobindo’s statement that a trochee, if it is not the first foot of a line, needs to be supported ‘by a strong syllable just preceding it’. But…this supposedly iambic line consists mainly of trochees, with only one iamb at the end…Did Sri Aurobindo, in the final revision in 1950, forget momentarily the subtle laws of metrical movement which he had expounded so lucidly in his prose writings and embodied with a spontaneous and unfailing mastery in so many thousands of lines of Savitri? If this irregularity had created a forceful effect of some kind, it might have been justified… But in the passage of our ‘common average kind’, nothing out of the ordinary seems called for… To avoid supposing an unaccountable lapse in Sri Aurobindo’s metrical skill, we may infer that he actually dictated:

He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge…

By making explicit the implied ‘into’, the line becomes readable as pentametric according to the natural rhythm of the words.” (On the New Edition of Savitri, Part Two, pp. 60-63, 2000)

Thanks heaven, here Sri Aurobindo is absolved from a metrical lapse, the blame going to the scribe or the typist or the printer!! The whole argument is plausible and is perfectly rational; it has a good point of cogency also, but it seems too perfect to be true, too ingenious. It is by a sort of tour de force that a case for editorial emendation has been made, something repugnant to the objective spirit with which such a work should be done. We’ve already seen Sri Aurobindo himself being apportioned the guilt for not taking care of his own philosophy! Indeed, what we witness here is sheer enthusiasm to make Sri Aurobindo match up with our notions of professional skill and perfection! In any case this simply is arrogant professionalism and must be dismissed. This line has definitely been modified by Amal and the editors.

But, more importantly, the archival statement about an author not being responsible for every word that is printed needs to be seen more carefully; in fact it is a dangerous statement. It should have been worded differently. It casts aspersions on every text that comes out from a printing house. The archival intention is perhaps only to bring into discussion the contextual aspects of the composition of Savitri involving the scribe, the typist, the composer with the revisions taking place at every stage; it cannot have any other validity or acceptability in an absolute sense. Otherwise, we shall simply prove ourselves to be like Newton’s famous contemporary Richard Bentley, the classical scholar. He was five when Paradise Lost was published in 1667. Later Bentley rewrote the poem entirely to his taste, thinking that it was the printer who had made all those hundred blunders in it. But, eventually, what he rewrote also carried in it an awkward “gawkishness”. As an example let us take his last two lines of the epic:

Then hand in hand, with social steps their way
Through Eden took, with Heav’nly Comfort cheer’d.

But the task of Savitri-editing is a serious task. It becomes treacherous also in view of the complexity of going through pages and pages of the provisional drafts, with revision and new dictation being carried out almost at every stage.

---

Here is a second example, but it is of a slightly different kind. This pertains to the line “An hour comes when fail all Nature's means.” (Savitri, p. 11) This line in the Revised Edition reads as follows: “An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means.” The obvious question is, how has the line undergone such a change, though perhaps not of a very crucial kind, interesting yet it is from a certain point of view.

In fact, there is an editorial problem here, though of a minor nature, whether it should be “An hour comes…” or “An hour arrives…” As far as the sense is concerned there is really not much to choose between “comes” and “arrives”. From the point of view of poetic technique we have: An hour/ arrives/ when fail/ all Nat/ ure’s means—four beautiful iambs with spondee as the fourth foot; An ho/ ur comes/ when fail/ all Nat/ ure’s means—this is also acceptable, with ‘hour’ taken with two syllables, not an uncommon thing in Savitri; with this ‘ho /ur’ the first line—It was the hour before the Gods awake—would become iamb-iamb-anapaest-iamb-iamb, which could also pass without any technical objection. In many places Sri Aurobindo scans ‘inspires’ or ‘desires’ with three syllables, trisyllabic though generally they are disyllabic; so too could be taken ‘hour’ as ‘ho/ ur’. As far as rhythm is concerned, it is a matter of one’s taste and association, one’s predilections also; nor can there be any strict formula everywhere for the same poet; it could depend upon the situation. Then, while in the ‘arrival’-line there is a strong ‘r’-alliterative effect, in the ‘comes’-line the additional ‘m’-alliteration brings a kind of self-closing poetic result. Nor is this line that kind of a classical mantra in which nothing can be changed, the exact word in the exact position. There is neither the inevitability of ‘arrives’ nor of ‘comes’.

And yet there is a peculiar problem. The whole passage we are discussing was written by Sri Aurobindo first around 1945, written on a tiny chit-pad sheet. On it our line in his hand is ‘An hour arrives when fail all Nature's means.” But there were revisions by dictation around it and when the scribe made a fair copy of the text he put—inadvertently we might suppose, probably being carried away by the sense of the sentence—‘comes’ instead of ‘arrives’. Obviously, ‘comes’ continued to be there through all the subsequent stages of composition, including a number of times the line with ‘comes’ having read out to Sri Aurobindo. Nirodbaran’s fair copy, that is, the ledger, as well as several earlier manuscripts, had ‘comes’; Nolini’s type-sheets, proofs from the press on three or four occasions—all of them were read out to Sri Aurobindo and he never felt uneasy with his ‘arrives’ having been “changed” to ‘comes’ by somebody else. It should also be noted that, in a few cases, there are differences between what was sent to the press and what came out of it; obviously the proofs had on them Sri Aurobindo’s revisions by dictation, but unfortunately those proofs have not survived. Which could make room for one to argue that Sri Aurobindo, at that stage, could have re-dictated the line as follows: “An hour approaches when fail all Nature's means” with the third foot as an anapaest, the line scanning as iamb-iamb-anapaest-spondee-iamb; but this dictated change was not carried out by the press, again, something which is quite conceivable. However, it must be admitted that in ‘approaches’ we do not have the naturalness of ‘comes’ or ‘arrives’.

One way of looking at the situation, as vehemently suggested by the upholders of the ‘arrives’, the editors of the blemished Revised Edition, is as follows. In their general remarks they write: “…an accident produced a reading that was not noticeably wrong and even found its way into the printed text. This raises the question: when Sri Aurobindo let a variant introduced by someone else remain intact, is it the same as if he had written it himself? If we want an authentic edition of Savitri in which each word is Sri Aurobindo’s own, it would seem that in such a case the word found in his manuscript should be restored in place of the word that was inadvertently substituted for it by another person.” That is a very rational argument no doubt, and sounds indisputable. But then there could also be another way of looking at things. If the author has allowed to stand something, can we really object to him in that respect? If he has passed something—“passed unnoticed and remained in the published version,” as the editors put it—can we overrule him and change the text? If Sri Aurobindo keeps something, though not his, who are we to dismiss it? Can that which Sri Aurobindo retained be said to be not ‘authentic’ or less ‘authentic’? In this case, it is not that ‘comes’ did not exist earlier; it did. Perhaps there should be some other way to resolve the issue. Is there any, particularly when the editors tell us that they have “refrained from undue tampering”? But then this is also an admission that due tampering has occurred in the course of editing Savitri.

At the moment we are analysing the situation arising out of ‘comes’ / ‘arrives’ without really knowing how the said passage developed in the process of its composition. If it had remained intact all through, except for the inadvertent change of ‘arrives’ to ‘comes’ while making a fair copy of the manuscript, then perhaps one could have conceded the restoration of the author’s hand-written word, “arrives” . But around it, if there are new dictations or changes due to dictation, then the case becomes weak. We have absolutely no knowledge of it, and there is reason to say that the whole revision has been done in a kind of hush-hush manner. That makes it highly suspect, highly vulnerable, even if there is plenty of scholarship and hard work behind it. We have argued about some of these aspects in Editing Savitri—a Brief Discussion but a more detailed look into it is essential. This can happen only if there is access to the archival documents. Until then one can only point out uncertainties in the revised text and leave the matters at that.

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I’ll wind up this discussion in the next instalment when a broad summary of the points made here will be presented. This should also clear the way for looking into the details of editing Savitri as it had proceeded during the 10-12 years prior to the publication of the Revised Edition in 1993.

~ RYD

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Right inspiration takes care of right poetic technique
The line “He has made a thick and narrowing hedge” (Savitri, p. 166) has been altered to “He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge” in the 1993 Revised Edition. We‘ve already seen that there are three consecutive trochees right in the middle of the earlier line: |made' a|thick' and|nar'row|. But the editors of the Revised Edition say that this is simply inadmissible,—because it amounts to faulty poetic technique entering into Savitri-composition. It is therefore necessary that it be rectified. The logic is, even if it is coming from Sri Aurobindo, it cannot stand the demands of correct poetry. The line ought to be corrected.

But what is the fault? The argument is these trochees make the movement jerky. They quote Sri Aurobindo: A trochee, if it is not the first foot of a line, needs to be supported by a strong syllable just preceding it. But in spite of this lack of a strong foot Sri Aurobindo has by a master-stroke given something which is most wonderful. The trochees that can make the movement jerky have been pressed into use to provide a smooth liquidity in the flow. Here the three trochees fit in so well into the movement that it gets spoilt by the addition of a “strong syllable” now coming from “into”. In fact, the altered line looks rather artificial, a graft with odious surroundings. In any case, we’ve no business to correct Sri Aurobindo’s compositions. The original three-trochee line has the same natural spontaneous inspired unusualness as in the case of another line where we’ve only the falling feet. The example is from p. 379: “Threaded through clamorous marts and sentinel towers.” It can be easily scanned as follows:

Thread'ed through | clam'or ous | marts' and | sen'ti nel | tow'ers |

dactyl-dactyl-trochee-dactyl-trochee—all falling feet. We’ll have to hunt out if there are at all similar examples elsewhere in literature.

V Arvind tries another scansion for the line, with ‘towers’ taken as a single stressed syllable; that would give the following feet for the line: trochee-iamb-anapaest-iamb-anapaest— Thread'ed | through clam' |orous marts' | and sen' | tinel towrs'|

But I suppose that would take away the natural spontaneous inspired unusualness of the line,—not that it was meant to be unusual. Possibly I’d have taken ‘tower’ to be monosyllabic in another situation, but the plural ‘towers’ does not easily allow that to happen here; the alliterative ‘s’-insistence in the line—with so many other alliterative consonant-sounds—insists that we pay due attention to this ‘s’, as well as the ending ‘rs’. I’m fascinated by the idea of all the falling feet in the line for which there’s no parallel elsewhere. In the hands of a Master we’ve a marvellous play of these varying feet, that our common notions of poetry-reading get traumatized. The only way is, to let oneself go into the dynamism of the rhythm which comes from some far-off infinity and swings back into another far-off infinity. It comes, stirs the layers of our sleeping perceptions, persuades us to go along with it if only in the silence of the Word we could participate in the activity of the Word. Sri Aurobindo himself had written to Amal that, to put it slightly differently, the reader has to be pretty alert to the sounds of words in Savitri.

If the inspiration is the right one, then I have not to bother about the technique then or afterwards, for there comes through the perfect line with the perfect rhythm inextricably intertwined or rather fused into an inseparable and single unity; if there is anything wrong with the expression that carries with it an imperfection in the rhythm, if there is a flaw in the rhythm, the expression also does not carry its full weight, is not absolutely inevitable.

(1936)

Do our editors realize that by calling the said line metrically defective they are actually saying that it lacks the right inspiration. How preposterous! The fact is, all that is needed is “usually taken care of by the inspiration itself”.

~ RYD

The only way is, to let oneself go into the dynamism of the rhythm which comes from some far-off infinity and swings back into another far-off infinity. It comes, stirs the layers of our sleeping perceptions, persuades us to go along with it if only in the silence of the Word we could participate in the activity of the Word. Sri Aurobindo himself had written to Amal that, to put it slightly differently, the reader has to be pretty alert to the sounds of words in Savitri.

I know what you mean. But I would like to learn more to appreciate better and enjoy the lines more. Yet, I don't want to give my mind a free play in reading Savitri -- I'm afraid I'll lose a more precious contact with it...

My efforts at scansion are a beginner's efforts at learning about different feet and meters.

My efforts at scansion are a beginner's efforts at learning about different feet and meters.

You may want to try Derek Attridge's two books Poetic Rhythm and Meter and Meaning.. He offers an intuitive feel with a number of examples.

Fenton's Intro to English Poetry may also be useful

-- Another beginner

That's interesting. My first meeting with Nirod was on 16 August 1952, when I'd taken a bunch of my poems for him to have a look at them; he was courteous and encouraging. In the course of the talk he suggested, at my request, The Metres of English Poetry by Enid Hamer, first published on 24 April 1930. I managed to get a second-hand copy from a second-hand bookstall at Kalbadevi Rd Bombay-2 of the time. I find it well-written with a large number of illustrations, describing various genres of poetry and compositions. Maybe Vikram could try in a second-hand bookstall in Chennai. This book was very popular among the Ashram poets of the time, and of course they had the direct guidance from Sri Aurobindo himself. John Chadwick (named as Arjava by Sri Aurobindo, a poet and philosopher; the Master had great appreciation for his poetry, and also the metrical skill he had at his command) was a master and Nirod had his lessons from him.

RYD

Thanks, Auroman and RYD.

Coincidentally, I've borrowed Derek Attridge's really nice book on Meter and Meaning from the British Council Library in Chennai. It is very well written.
I'll look for Enid Hammer's book as well.

I've started on this learning project a bit late in life though...

By the way, Arvind is my first name.

I first read Arjava's poems after reading Dilip's book "Sri Aurobindon came to me" which quotes him often.
I found his poems powerful, but often a little sad.

What you say might be true, that there is a touch of sadness in Arjava. Or is it that, that is the kind of impression we get because of his grave and serious business with things? There is a powerful occult also in him. The classical mystic-occult-spiritual in its denseness can easily make us believe that it is not so much the psychic that comes out prominently in him, the psychic with the lyrical and the swift and the sweet, even the dreamy, to tell us the joy he has in the overhead. Let me just quote something quickly from him:

Gold are the wings of the eagle
Who bringeth Beauty nigh.

Or his most celebrated and mantric:

Each man is wildered myriadly by outside and surface tone
Engirdling soul with clamour, by this fragmentary mood,
This patter of Time’s marring steps across the solitude
Of Truth’s abidingness, Self-Blissful and Alone.

The last two lines are exceptionally beautiful and powerful. I’ve a whole project of presenting Arjava on the Mirror but I don’t know when it is going to happen—in fact an entire project dealing with the activities that went on in the Department of Poetry that was run by Sri Aurobindo in the 1930s. Let’s see if it can start soon.

~ RYD

Inspiration brings technique—the descent of the Word
From the smooth and easily flowing line with three trochees in between—He has| made' a| thick' and| nar'row| ing hedge'|—we moved to another rare example with all the five falling feet:

Thread'ed through | clam'or ous | marts' and | sen'ti nel | tow'ers |.

There is something beautiful in this falling line from the point of view of inspiration, as well as the poetic technique if we may say so. And that something, beautiful and captivating, comes from something that is attractively magical,—the magical “clamorous”. Remove this magical “clamorous”, and the entire magic is robbed! The line gets flattened. It may remain technically perfect in its pentametric structure,—

Thread'ed | through marts' | and sen'| ti nel | tow'ers |,

but the poetry is gone. It sounds kind of loud, a bit rhetorical also. But the inspiration that brought the magical “clamorous” brings along with it also the apt expressive technique. It will be topsy-turvy logic to go by the notions of the metrical schemes rather than the rhythmic movement which comes with the inspiration itself—it is the rhythmic movement that precedes the technique, it is the rhythmic movement that gives rise or creates its own technique. I think this is the most fundamental element with the poetry of the kind we have in Savitri, and this must be always recognized. In this regard Amal is definitely misled by the editors of the Revised Edition of Savitri. It is a pity that he succumbed to it, particularly when Sri Aurobindo himself had written to him the following in 1936:

The things I lay most stress on then are whether each line in itself is the inevitable thing not only as a whole but in each word; whether there is the right distribution of sentence lengths (an immensely important thing in this kind of blank verse); whether the lines are in their right place, for all the lines may be perfect, but they may not combine perfectly together—bridges may be needed, alterations of position so as to create the right development and perspective etc., etc. Pauses hardly exist in this kind of blank verse; variations of rhythm as between the lines, of caesura, of the distribution of long and short, clipped and open syllables, manifold constructions of vowel and consonant sounds, alliteration, assonances, etc., distribution into one line, two line, three or four or five line, many line sentences, care to make each line tell by itself in its own mass and force and at the same time form a harmonious whole sentence—these are the important things. But all that is usually taken care of by the inspiration itself, for as I know and have the habit of the technique, the inspiration provides what I want according to standing orders. If there is a defect I appeal to headquarters, till a proper version comes along or the defect is removed by a word or phrase substitute that flashes—with the necessary sound and sense. These things are not done by thinking or seeking for the right thing—the two agents are sight and call. Also feeling—the solar plexus has to be satisfied and, until it is, revision after revision has to continue. I may add that the technique does not go by any set mental rule—for the object is not perfect technical elegance according to precept but sound-significance filling out the word-significance. If that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for the rule.

So in Savitri when the proper version comes, it comes with the necessary sound and sense. It comes not by thinking or seeking for the right thing but through the agency of the two agents that are sight and call; in them inspired poetry finds its fulfilling utterance. To tamper with it is to desecrate the precious and the noble and the elevating, and the perfect. This is perhaps what the Mother meant when she told Amal in 1954 that she would not allow him to change even a comma in Savitri. Yet it happened. But this is precisely what we are going to look into, that it happened not because she allowed it—did she allow it?—but because we didn’t see what she meant.

About inspiration shaping its technique, let us take at random one more example. You open your copy of Savitri, and you are on p. 543 with the line

Or fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.

If we scan it as follows

|Or fall' |sil'ent| in the sil'| ence of| the Unseen'|

then we’ve iamb-trochee-anapaest-pyrrhic-anapaest as five feet in the line. But the second and third could be dactyl-iamb— |sil'ent in| the sil'| ence—but, without a doubt, the trochee-anapaest—|sil'ent| in the sil'|ence—has a better rhythmic flow and connectedness, and the emphasis which “silence” gets has a more powerful sense: I’d prefer |sil'ent| in the sil'| ence. There is yet another possibility in the last two feet: sil'|ence of| the Unseen'|,—pyrrhic-anapaest,—or else sil'| ence of the| Unseen'|,—tribrach-iamb combination. Three short syllables forming a foot—tribrach—is quite admissible and, though rare, has here a nice charm of its own, both in rhythm and in sense. In the first, “Unseen”, with "the" before it, sort of gets diluted in contrast to the pointed focus on the single “Unseen” in the second. My reading of the line will be therefore as follows:

|Or fall'| sil'ent| in the sil'| ence of the| Unseen'|.

A small voice-separation of the “Unseen” from the preceding makes “Unseen” prominent, important—and that is what it should be. But I wouldn’t insist too much on this.

Essentially, in these examples the point is, rhythm giving rise to metrical feet and not so much the other way round. It is in the manner of the birth of the Avatar whose body is prepared in a thousand years. That will be the way the original rhythm will try to find its movement here, the original word with its sense and sound expressing the utterance through our language. We try to go from metrical feet to rhythm; in the case of a yogi-poet who is in contact with the source of inspiration and is in the dynamism of the rhythm, things come from above down below. To judge him by applying our criteria is therefore putting things upside down, and it is that which constitutes our fault.

Indeed, wisdom would lie in leaving the text as it is, although we might strongly feel that in the first edition of Savitri there are plenty of blemishes and mistakes and imperfections. But who are we to judge them, these textual “blemishes”? That is what the Mother meant when she told Amal that she would not allow him to change even a comma. Amal should have discerned her suggestive hint; instead, he started arguing with her, started justifying the ways of man to God. The ultimate result is on the basis of the ways of man, an outcome which is bound to be faulty and imperfect and unsatisfactory. And now here are experts who bring scanning machines and computer programs—was he PS who had prepared the first Concordance of Savitri in 1984 and who had made some of these early attempts?—and big lenses to examine Savitri manuscripts and type sheets and faded pieces of papers, and a whole set of documents to ‘revise’ Savitri which Amal and Nirod may approve but which never would Nolini and Jugal.

~ RYD

|Or fall'| sil'ent| in the sil'| ence of the| Unseen'|.

I read this really thought provoking post only today. The quote from Sri Aurobindo says it all:

I may add that the technique does not go by any set mental rule—for the object is not perfect technical elegance according to precept but sound-significance filling out the word-significance. If that can be done by breaking rules, well, so much the worse for the rule.

What exactly do you mean by a small voice separation?

I thought the beat is provided by the stress syllables, and the flow (fall or rise) is dictated by the unstressed syllables. Also, each foot is supposed to have the same duration. Am I right?

I should add that I don't apply these rules when I
read Savitri; I figure out the stress syllables and read the line out a few times to intuitively decide on the feet.

Apropos our discussion, I came across this poem of Coleridge titled "Metrical Feet". I am inflicting my scansion upon you... the price that you must pay for my efforts to get this poem!

Tro'chee| trips' from| long' to| short'|;
From long'| to long'| in sol'|emn sort'|
Slow' spon'|dee stalks'|; strong' foot'!| yet ill able|
E'ver to| come' up with| Dac'tyl tri"syll'able.|
Iam'|bics march'| from short'| to long;| --
With a leap'| and a bound'| the swift an'|apests throng'|;
One syll'able| long', with| one short' at| each side'|,
Amphi'bra|chys hastes' with| a state'ly| stride'|; --
First' and last'| be'ing long',| mid'dle short'|, Am'phima'cer|
Strikes' his thun'|der'ing hoofs'| like' a proud'| high'-bred Rac'er.|

In this context let us compare:

He has| made' a| thick' and| narr'ow|ing hedge'|

with:

He has made'| in'to| a thick'| and narr'|owing hedge'|

The second reading has two "swift" anapaests and three "solemn" iambs, following Coleridge's description.

I think that the first reading conveys a more restricted movement which fits better with the sense of the line....

Sorry, read "marching" Iambs! The spondees are solemn!

Sorry, read "marching" Iambs! The spondees are solemn!

First I thought of responding to your set of queries here itself directly, but now I’m having other thoughts about this matter. I think in the current post “RYD’s sly and insidious Method...” there are a number of technical discussions dealing with inspiration and technique in poetry, and these could be gainfully carried out without further reference to the current post: this significant thread itself can become an independent post. I’m proposing to pick up all these comments from here and make from them an independent article with the respective authorship kept intact. This new post made from the compilation will give us full scope and freedom to go into many directions of poetry. Let me see how early I can do it.

~ RYD

So in Savitri when the proper version comes, it comes with the necessary sound and sense. It comes not by thinking or seeking for the right thing but through the agency of the two agents that are sight and call; in them inspired poetry finds its fulfilling utterance. To tamper with it is to desecrate the precious and the noble and the elevating, and the perfect. This is perhaps what the Mother meant when she told Amal in 1954 that she would not allow him to change even a comma in Savitri. Yet it happened. But this is precisely what we are going to look into, that it happened not because she allowed it—did she allow it?—but because we didn’t see what she meant.


What is the copyright position on Savitri? Is it possible to get a copyright release for the SABCL edition or earlier editions?

Also, when the Ashram releases copyright, who can exercise any check on any publisher from making editorial changes?

These are some questions and issues that arise. I think the only way to preserve the original is to make electronically available all handwritten versions of Savitri. In fact, it should be possible to prepare an E-book will all versions from 1950 to 1993. This would be the best way of saving Savitri for posterity. New publishers will bring new editorial teams with their own prejudices...

I am jumping in a little late in the discussion. Apropos of the line
"He has made a thick and narrowing hedge",
I find myself scanning the first foot to be an anapaest. Upon reading Amal's scan I find that mine is identical to his. I believe that his point
"The natural scanning is: He has made/ a thick/ and nár/ row wing hédge/. But this gives a four-foot line." cannot be dismissed easily and summarily. Not for a moment am I suggesting that we ought to introduce an "into". I have not seen the manuscripts and this is a high voltage area so I won't comment on that but Amal's comment is certainly valid as far as the scansion.

Let me first pick up Vikas’s: He has made/ a thick/ and nár/ row wing hédge/ which is certainly a valid, in fact a natural scansion. It looks natural when the line is read without any other context. But that would make the line a four-footer, a limping line which also would mean limping inspiration. Assuming that this is what we have, the question raised is: should this be corrected? But the metrical correction would also mean correcting the inspiration, correcting Sri Aurobindo’s inspiration. This is what the Revised Edition does, ceremoniously or unceremoniously I do not know. Let me, however, re-emphasise that this line is not present anywhere in the manuscripts or typescripts. It occurred for the first time in the 1950-edition of Savitri. The difference is seen between the typescript sent to the press and what came out in print from it. This and the next line were added by dictation when the proofs were read out to Sri Aurobindo. Unfortunately, those proofs have not survived. We also do not know to what extent the whole passage had undergone a change. I’ve no knowledge about it and only the Archives records could throw some light on it. But let us read the passage at it exists:

He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible…

While reading all the lines together we surely feel the previous line (His old familiar interests and desires) is somewhat overflowing into the line we are discussing (He has made a thick and narrowing hedge). This could possibly have the effect of making the first foot “He has” stand on its own feet, making it an acceptable iamb. While moving forward the rhythm is kind of looking back when it arrives at "He has". The rest is just to clean up our arguments. A combination of iamb-trochee-trochee-trochee-iamb makes here a perfect line, I suppose. In any case, we have no business to supply “into” to correct things which is what the Revised Edition is doing.

~ RYD

This is an interesting reading of the lines. Making |He has'| into an Iamb does provide a stress syllable to support the following trochee |made' a|.

But somehow I am not comfortable with "His old familiar interests and desires he has"... If line began with "The old familiar..." or we had "...the desires he has" then there would be no ambiguity here.

I prefer the simpler reading:

|He has|made' a|thick' and|narr'ow|ing hedge|

On second thoughts, my lack of comfort is because I'm already used to to parsing the sentence as "He has made..." rather than "...desires he has...".

But is there really a metrical problem with the simpler reading of Pyrrhic-trochee-trochee-trochee-iamb?

"He is satisfied with his common average kind;
Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,
His old familiar interests and desires
He has made a thick and narrowing hedge
Defending his small life from the Invisible…".

Surely, the lines have to be read in the context of the preceding and following lines especially since the meter and substance can suggest a different scan and therefore a different read. The previous line does flow into the one we are discussing and especially if you consider it (the previous line) as enjambed then one finds oneself naturally in the rhythm of three successive trochees preceded and followed by an iamb and the "into" can be dispensed with. Rendering this in prose we would read it as
"His old familiar interests and desires he has
Made a thick and narrowing hedge".
But let me hasten to add that I am hardly comfortable with this reading because one anticipates a pause, or to put in poetic terms, a caesura in the discussed line. One would expect a comma or a semi-colon after "He has". We do not see that in the line.
Leaving aside the enjambment, if there was a caesura somewhere in the line, it would make for a strong case for 3 successive trochees, otherwise one risks the sound inevitably falling and following into the natural iambic pattern so native to the English language.
That being said your reluctance to any emendation is understandably impelled by your love, reverence and adoration for, and utter humility before the supreme Mantra of Sri Aurobindo. Therefore any attempt to change what Sri Aurobindo wrote ought to be eschewed even aborted. This is the line of approach. The aim and sole intent is to not taint the Divine Word with the human.
The archives presumably has the same aim and intent, but believes that a few lines have been omitted and seeks to restore them from the manuscripts.

Rhythm is one side of the coin and sense is the other. If we abridge the line(s) to:

His desire he has made a hedge

To me this connotes that the thing-in-itself (desire) has turned into this other thing (boundary) - sort of by being so, or naturally, or unknowingly, without the "he" having actively done something. Rather it is a psychological comment on the "he" - that he is limited and that limitation has naturally arisen around him by his state of being (desire). But at the same time, there is a "he" involved in the process, perhaps hinting that the "he" has two levels - one involved and limited, the other less limited but also less engaged (perhaps setting the stage for this less limited portion to become more engaged later on).

His desire he has made into a hedge

To me this connotes a deliberate, knowing, effort-full transformation of one thing into another by the "he". I.e., the "he" has acted in a self-aware manner to limit himself.

His desire has become a hedge

This connotes that the "he" is simply not involved in the self-limitation, that "he" is limited and that's it.

I was trying to get some analogies to this construct, but it is rather difficult since there is the physical and the psychological function coming together. For example, "his clay he has made into a brick" works for physical transformation, but "his clay he has made a brick" or "his clay has become a brick" don't work.

Something like this, perhaps?

"his garden he has made a haven for birds"
"his garden he has made into a haven for birds"
"his garden has become a haven for birds"

I’m going to pick up this entire set of deep and noteworthy comments on a separate post that will appear shortly.

~ RYD

In the passage containing the "narrowing hedge" line,
already discussed here, a few lines later we have the
interesting line:

Fenced off the greatnesses of hidden God.

Since this line matches the "hedge" line in sense, it is interesting to scan it and compare. One way is:

Fenced' off| the great'|nesses| of hid'|den God'|.

This has three iambs and a pyrrhic in the middle.

But how about the following scansion?

Fenced' off| the great|nesses of| hid'den| God.|

There is a tribrach in the middle, pretty much like the "Unseen" line discussed here, and there are three trochaic feet, where the last one has a "strong ending" with a missing weak syllable! I found this reading nicer as it puts a greater emphasis on "God",
just like the effect your scansion has on "Unseen".

Please comment...

Just revisiting this very interesting point you raised two weeks ago:

Thread'ed through | clam'or ous | marts' and | sen'ti nel | tow'ers |


dactyl-dactyl-trochee-dactyl-trochee—all falling feet. We’ll have to hunt out if there are at all similar examples elsewhere in literature.

I couldn't find anything that can be called a line of dactylic-trochaic pentameter in the internet.

However, I chanced upon Sri Aurobindo's scansion of
Swinburne's lines in the letters. Here is one. It is trochee-trochee-dactyle-trochee-trochee.

Āll thě | nīght slěep | cāme nŏt ŭ|pōn mў | ēyelĭd |

Also, isn't it the case that Sri Aurobindo's Ilion is dactylic hexameter, and the lines are mostly all dactylic-trochaic? Here is one line which I found already scanned in K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar's essay:

One' and un|armed' in the | car' was the | dri'ver; | grey' was he, | shrunk'en|

It is dactyl-dactyl-dactyl-trochee-dactyl-trochee.

If we drop the third trochee we get the "threaded through" line scansion!

Transferred to Inspiration and Technique in Savitri. Please follow it there. This section is closed for further comments.

~ RYD

The biographical in Savitri
The Lives of Sri Aurobindo declares Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri as a “fictional creation” and hence of no use from the point of view of it being a source-book for the biographical material. And those bazaar blogs named after Savitri least murmur or protest about it; instead, what is witnessed is the Satheesh-Tusar rubbish spreading into the possible, in fact desirable, reassessment of the Revised Edition of Savitri. But, at the moment, let us restrict ourselves only to the aspect of Savitri as a Yogi’s spiritual biography. We shall take a few illustrative details pertaining to this aspect, essentially belonging to the early part of his yoga-tapasya.

---

To begin with, here are two conventional details prtaining to the biography. The first one is related to 1879 when, as a 7-year boy, Sri Aurobindo was taken to England. There he stayed for the next fourteen years and grew entirely in the British way. He, along with his two brothers, was put by their father in charge of Reverend William Drewett who was instructed to bring them up with British habits and British manners, without any teaching of religion, without any contact with the Indian tradition. Earlier the Drewetts stayed in a two-storey house at 84 Shakespeare St in the neighbourhood of Manchester. “Mean and clumsy were the buildings, or pretentious and aimed at false elegance. Miles of bricks, with hardly a bit of green here and there”—that was the typical landscape. The typical British meat and fish made up the normal food during the entire period. When Sri Aurobindo was just around ten, he had his early education at home with the Drewetts, learning Latin, history, French, geography, arithmetic. …

And here is just a touch of the active national life Sri Aurobindo was leading during his Calcutta days, 1905-10. In July 1907 police in Calcutta were hunting for documents regarding the editorship of Bande Mataram. They were bent upon prosecuting its editor whom they took none else but Sri Aurobindo himself. A squad of 30 policeman invaded the Bande Mataram-office and took away a heap of papers. But they were disappointed not to find any evidence to implicate Sri Aurobindo. Later, on 23 February 1940 during his talks with the disciples Sri Aurobindo disclosed that there was evidence about his editorship of the Bande Mataram, “but it was erased by the knife.” The police had a warrant for Sri Aurobindo’s arrest but they would not use it until they had proofs with them. On 16 August 1907 a detective went to the Bande Mataram office and told the manager that he had a warrant to arrest Sri Aurobindo. That night Sri Aurobindo was dining at the home of Byomkesh Chakravarty who was his barrister friend. The strategy was for Sri Aurobindo to surrender and accordingly he went to the local police station. But he was released on payment of two sureties. On 18 August Sri Aurobindo at once became a celebrity. On 24 August Rabindranath Tagore hailed him in glowing terms and said:

Rabindranath, O Aurobindo, bows to thee!
O friend, my country’s friend, O voice incarnate, free,
Of India’s soul!

Sri Aurobindo was the Principal of National College, but because of his nationalist political activities and involvements it was feared that the institution would suffer; he decided to resign from it. A send-off was given to him on 23 August 1907 when, after a wonderful feast, he addressed the students briefly:

The only piece of advice that I can give you now is—carry on the work, the mission, for which this college was created. I have no doubt that all of you have realised by this time what this mission means. When we established this college and left other occupations, other chances of life, to devote our lives to this institution, we did so because we hoped to see in it the foundation, the nucleus of a nation, of the new India which is to begin its career after this night of sorrow and trouble, on that day of glory and greatness when India will work for the world. What we want here is not merely to give you a little information, not merely to open to you careers for earning a livelihood, but to build up sons for the Motherland to work and to suffer for her. That is why we started this college and that is the work to which I want you to devote yourselves in future. What has been insufficiently and imperfectly begun by us, it is for you to complete and lead to perfection. When I come back I wish to see some of you becoming rich, rich not for yourselves but that you may enrich the Mother with your riches. I wish to see some of you becoming great, great not for your own sakes, not that you may satisfy your own vanity, but great for her, to make India great, to enable her to stand up with head erect among the nations of the earth, as she did in days of yore when the world looked up to her for light. Even those who will remain poor and obscure, I want to see their very poverty and obscurity devoted to the Motherland. There are times in a nation's history when Providence places before it one work, one aim, to which everything else, however high and noble in itself, has to be sacrificed. Such a time has now arrived for our M9therland when nothing is dearer than her service, when everything else is to be directed to that end. If you will study, study for her sake; train yourselves body and mind and soul for her service. You will earn your living that you may live for her sake. You will go abroad to foreign lands that you may bring back knowledge with which you may do service to her. Work that she may prosper. Suffer that she may rejoice. All is contained in that one single advice. My last word to you is that if you have sympathy for me, I hope to see it not merely as a personal feeling, but as a sympathy with what I am working for. I want to see this sympathy translated into work so that when in future I shall look upon your career of glorious activity, I may have the pride of remembering that I did something to prepare and begin it. What we want here is to build up sons for the Motherland to work and suffer for her. Work, that she may prosper. Suffer, that she may rejoice.

By no stretch of imagination one can imagine that such descriptions would enter into the epic mode of Savitri. Its soul is different and its utterance belongs to another world of spiritual reality. This also means that the most important and fruitful representation of Savitri as a biographical work has the aspect occult-yogic exposé. Its swabhāva, its personality is that of poetry with its own idiom and phrase and symbolism and expressive myth and association of sense and sound and sight. It needs another eye and another ear and another gift of mind to discern what it brings to us in its abundant abundances. This also means that certain ‘factual’ details get portrayed in another subtle and sensitive-perceptive manner which demands the development of intuitive faculty in us. When that is absent the whole exercise becomes a hash and the result is dismissing it as a “fictional creation”. Nothing can be more insensitive than considering Savitri to be so. Nothing can be more ridiculous than harbouring the notion such as does the weird-creepy author of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo who claims himself to be a historian!

In the following we’ll just take the opening part of Aswapati’s yoga-tapasya and try to relate it with some well-known ‘facts’ of Sri Aurobindo’s life. It is the beginning of his Adhyatma Yoga which roughly parallels with the period 1905-10 of his hectic political life, aśwa standing for the horse or the life energy in the service of the higher spiritual work, and patī its lord. The appropriateness of the correspondence is striking. This beginning of Adhyatma Yoga of Aswapati appears in the very opening canto of Savitri presenting him as one who brough down to earth’s dumb need the radiant power of the divine Shakti or Consciousness-Force, Book I Canto III, pp. 22-45.

---

We’re told right in the beginning about who Aswapati is, the Incarnate himself who took the mortal birth for the divine work to be carried out in the mortal world, mŗtyuloka, “a thinker and toiler” working here as the Avatar:

His was a spirit that stooped from larger spheres
Into our province of ephemeral sight…
His birth held up a symbol and a sign;
His human self like a translucent cloak
Covered the All-Wise who leads the unseeing world.
Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time
And paying here God's debt to earth and man
A greater sonship was his divine right.
Although consenting to mortal ignorance,
His knowledge shared the Light ineffable.
A strength of the original Permanence
Entangled in the moment and its flow,
He kept the vision of the Vasts behind:
A power was in him from the Unknowable…
His days were a long growth to the Supreme…
His soul lived as eternity's delegate,
His mind was like a fire assailing heaven,
His will a hunter in the trails of light.
An ocean impulse lifted every breath;
Each action left the footprints of a god,
Each moment was a beat of puissant wings.
The little plot of our mortality
Touched by this tenant from the heights became
A playground of the living Infinite.
This bodily appearance is not all.

So Aswapati comes as the Protagonist, as the thinker and toiler, a colonist from immortality, son of divine right, archivist, treasurer of superhuman dreams; his is a skyward being rising like the divine Agni towards heaven, “a spirit that is a flame of God”, he is eternity’s delegate. There cannot be any more vivid description about Aswapati’s Avatarhood than this. It is up to intelligent people to recognize it or not, but certainly it is not intelligence to say that it all a “fictional creation”.

His thought stretches into infinitude:
All in him turns to spirit vastnesses.
His soul breaks out to join the Oversoul…
Then is revealed in man the overt Divine.

All this had happened in great succession to Sri Aurobindo before his coming to Pondicherry in 1910. The following two statements mark the events that had taken place in 1908. Sri Aurobindo sat with Lele in Baroda for three days around 1 January after the Surat Congress. At that time he had the realisation of the Passive Brahman or, what he calls, the Silent Mind. Within months he had the second major realization of the Active Brahman, the two take years and years, if not several lives, of spiritual practices. It was on 5 May 1908 that Sri Aurobindo was arrested for the alleged act of sedition and kept as an undertrial prisoner in the Alipore Jail. Not too long after he being there, he had the realization of the divine Presence everywhere, vāsudeva idi sarvam. Savitri describes it as follows:

A static Oneness and dynamic Power
Descend in him, the integral Godhead's seals;
His soul and body take that splendid stamp…
His soul breaks out to join the Oversoul.

It was the spirit of Vivekananda that visited him in the Jail for about two weeks and pointed out at golden star far above in the sky. A search for something or someone never found, until at last is reached the giant point, he broke into the infinity of God. Aswapati escaped into supernature's arc of living light. In fact he has become the son of Force, sahas sputro agnih. When the Mother first met Sri Aurobindo, this is what she saw in him. Here was born a Seer, a shining Guest of Time. His march now soared into an eagle's flight.

An aspirant to supernal Timelessness:
Freedom and empire called to him from on high;
Above mind's twilight and life's star-led night
There gleamed the dawn of a spiritual day.

If these are realizations of the profound Adhyatma Yoga, then we should also remember that Sri Aurobindo had already received its foundational principles in the Alipore Jail, the Saptachatusthya which later became a part of the Yoga of Self-Perfection, this Self-perfection including the awaking of the supramental senses, and the knowledge of the three divisions of times, the past, the present, and the future, trīkāladŗśti. Let us skip some parts and quickly proceed with the Savitri-text to see some of these aspects.

The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;
They were his life's pattern and his privilege.
A pure perception lent its lucent joy…
In beings it knew what lurked to them unknown;
It seized the idea in mind, the wish in the heart…
He felt the beating life in other men…
He heard the inspired sound of his own thoughts
Re-echoed in the vault of other minds;
The world's thought-streams travelled into his ken;
His inner self grew near to others' selves
And bore a kinship's weight, a common tie,
Yet stood untouched, king of itself, alone…
A vision came of higher realms than ours,
A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,
Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men
And subtler bodies than these passing frames,
Objects too fine for our material grasp,
Acts vibrant with a superhuman light
And movements pushed by a superconscient force,
And joys that never flowed through mortal limbs,
And lovelier scenes than earth's and happier lives.
A consciousness of beauty and of bliss,
A knowledge which became what it perceived,
Replaced the separated sense and heart
And drew all Nature into its embrace.
The mind leaned out to meet the hidden worlds.
Air glowed and teemed with marvellous shapes and hues,
In the nostrils quivered celestial fragrances,
On the tongue lingered the honey of paradise.
A channel of universal harmony,
Hearing was a stream of magic audience,
A bed for occult sounds earth cannot hear.
Out of a covert tract of slumber self
The voice came of a truth submerged, unknown
That flows beneath the cosmic surfaces,
Only mid an omniscient silence heard,
Held by intuitive heart and secret sense.

A pure perception has brought to Aswapati the gifts of the inner senses, behind which is the primary sense, manas. The five elemental states of ether-air-fire-water-earth, Akash-Vayu-Agni-Apas-Prithvi have also brough the corresponding subtle organs of perception, ear-eye-nose-tongue-touch or shabda-sparsha-rupa-rasa-gandha. From the causal into the subtle physical have now these instruments of cognition entered into him. And all this before the pre-Pondicherry period. The realization reaches a high Upanishadic peak:

Across a void retreating sky he glimpsed
Through a last glimmer and drift of vanishing stars
The superconscient realms of motionless peace
Where judgment ceases and the word is mute
And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.
There came not form or any mounting voice;
There only were Silence and the Absolute.
Out of that stillness mind new-born arose
And woke to truths once inexpressible,
And forms appeared, dumbly significant,
A seeing thought, a self-revealing voice.
He knew the source from which his spirit came:
Movement was married to the immobile Vast;
He plunged his roots into the Infinite,
He based his life upon Eternity.

Soon

Strong periods of illumination came:
Lightnings of glory after glory burned,
Experience was a tale of blaze and fire,
Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,
Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen;
Splendours of insight filled the blank of thought,
Knowledge spoke to the inconscient stillnesses,
Rivers poured down of bliss and luminous force,
Visits of beauty, storm-sweeps of delight
Rained from the all-powerful Mystery above.
Thence stooped the eagles of Omniscience…
An inspired Knowledge sat enthroned within…

In the wake of this inspired knowledge also came inspiration with her lightning feet, and the inexpressible Truth revealed the silent soul. The Nescience is rent and the closed Beyond bared. Inspiration even plundered the Unknowable's vast estate. With her came immortal words to mortal men. Oceans of being met his voyaging soul.

A glimpse was caught of things for ever unknown:
The letters stood out of the unmoving Word:
In the immutable nameless Origin
Was seen emerging as from fathomless seas
The trail of the Ideas that made the world,
And, sown in the black earth of Nature's trance,
The seed of the Spirit's blind and huge desire
From which the tree of cosmos was conceived
And spread its magic arms through a dream of space.
Immense realities took on a shape…
As if a torch held by a power of God,
The radiant world of the everlasting Truth
Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night
Above the golden Overmind's shimmering ridge…
The universe was not now this senseless whirl
Borne round inert on an immense machine…
He saw the labour of a godhead's birth.

It was during this period that Sri Aurobindo got the knowledge of the Vedic Goddesses, Ila, Mahi, and Saraswati, the powers of Revelation, Intuition and Inspiration. “The three, Ila, Mahi or Bharati and Saraswati are associated together in a constant formula in those hymns of invocation in which the gods are called by Agni to the sacrifice.”

~ RYD