Savitri is Sri Aurobindo‘s major poetic work, an epic in blank-verse of about 24,000 lines in which a tale from the Mahabharata becomes a symbol of the human soul‘s spiritual quest and destiny.

„The tale of Satyavan and Savitri“, Sri Aurobindo noted, „is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death“. Sri Aurobindo has widened the original legend and turned it into a symbol in which the soul of man, represented by Satyavan, is delivered from the grip of death and ignorance through the love and power of the Divine Mother, incarnated upon earth as Savitri.

Sri Aurobindo worked on this poem for more than thirty years. When a disciple asked why he kept rewriting it, he replied: „That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote it from that level. . . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one‘s own yogic consciousnes and how that could be made creative.“

The Mother considered Savitri to be „the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo‘s vision“ and called it „that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity‘s guide towards its future realisation.“

An extract from a letter on Savitri

The structure of the pentameter blank verse in Savitri is of its own kind and different in plan from the blank verse that has come to be ordinarily used in English poetry. It dispenses with enjambment or uses it very sparingly and only when a special effect is intended; each line must be strong enough to stand by itself, while at the same time it fits harmoniosly into the sentence or paragraph like stone added to stone; the sentence consists usually of one, two, three or four lines, more rarely five or six or seven: a strong close for the line and a strong close for the sentence are almost indispensable except when some kind of inconclusive cadence is desirable; there must be no laxity or diffusiveness in the rhythm or in the metrical flow anywhere,—there must be a flow but not a loose flux. This gives an added importance to what comes at the close of the line and this placing is used very often to give emphasis and prominence to a key phrase or a key idea, especially those which have to be often reiterated in the thought and vision of the poem so as to recall attention to things that are universal or fundamental or otherwise of the first consequence—whether for the immediate subject or in the total plan. It is this use that is served here by the reiteration at the end of the line.

I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the wealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience. When the expression has been found, I have to judge, not by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, but by an intuitive feeling, whether it is entirely the right expression and, if it is not, I have to change and go on changing until I have received the absolutely right inspiration and the right transcription of it and must never be satisfied with any a peu pres or imperfect transcription even if that makes good poetry of one kind or another . . .

Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. Moreover if it is really new in kind, it may employ a new technique, not perhaps absolutely new, but new in some or many of its elements; in that case old rules and canons and standards may be quite inapplicable.... We have to see whether what is essential to poetry is there and how far the new technique justifies itself by new beauty and perfection, and a certain freedom of mind from old conventions is necessary if our judgement is to be valid or rightly objective.
– Sri Aurobindo

Dieses Werk enthält ausgewählte Briefe, die Sri Aurobindo an seine Schüler in Beantwortung ihrer Fragen schrieb. Es vermittelt grundlegende spirituelle Führung für den Suchenden und gibt unentbehrliche Hinweise für das Verständnis und die Ausübung des Integralen Yoga. In der Unmittelbarkeit ihres Stils ist es eine Fundgrube vielfältigster Unterweisung von grösstem praktischem Wert.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Stille
• Frieden
• Gleichmut
• Glaube
• Streben
• Hingabe
• In Schwierigkeit
• Begehren - Nahrung - Sex
• Physisches Bewusstsein
• Unterbewusstsein
• Schlaf und Traum
• Krankheit
• Anhang
• Zu den Briefen Sri Aurobindos Zeittafel
• Glossar

LESEPROBE

Glauben - Streben – Hingabe

Dieser Yoga verlangt, dass man das Leben vollkommen dem Streben nach Entdeckung und Verkörperung der Göttlichen Wahrheit weiht und nichts anderem. Dein Leben zwischen dem Göttlichen und einer äußeren Tätigkeit zu teilen, die nichts mit der Suche nach der Wahrheit zu tun hat, ist nicht zulässig. Die geringste Kleinigkeit dieser Art würde den Erfolg im Yoga unmöglich machen. Du mußt in dich gehen und in eine völlige Weihung an das spirituelle Leben eintreten. Alles Festhalten an mentalen Vorlieben muß von dir abfallen, alles Beharren auf vitalen Zielen und Interessen und Bindungen muß ausgemerzt werden, alles egoistische Anklammern an die Familie, die Freunde, das Vaterland muß verschwinden, wenn du im Yoga erfolgreich sein willst. Was immer an nach außen gewandter Energie oder Tätigkeit benötigt wird, muß der einmal entdeckten Wahrheit entstammen und nicht niederen mentalen oder vitalen Motiven, dem Göttlichen Willen und nicht der persönlichen Wahl oder den Vorlieben des Egos.

Sri Aurobindos letztes essentielles Werk (1948) zu den prinzipiellen Themen seiner yogischen Vision und Prophezeiung – die weitere Evolution des Menschen, die Perfektion des Körpers, der göttliche Körper, Supramental und Menschheit und über den Geist des Lichts. Eine atemberaubende Spannweite ist hier abgesteckt und auf jeder Seite gegenwärtig – von der unbewussten Materie, in der alle Geistpotenz bereits enthalten ist, bis zur gnostischen Ebene des schöpferischen Göttlichen, des Wahrheitsbewusstseins oder Supramentalen. Sri Aurobindo wurde durch die Einführung sportlicher Erziehung im Ashram zu diesen Texten veranlasst. Es charakterisiert ihn, aus diesem Alltag heraus den Schritt in die Ewigkeit zu tun: das zu entwickelnde physische Bewusstsein, bis in die Körperzelle hinein, ist für ihn nichts anderes als ein Schritt in der Eroberung des von Anfang in der Materie involvierten göttlichen Bewusstseins.

This book contains extracts from letters written by Sri Aurobindo to his disciples. In the letters he explains his teaching and method of spiritual practice and addresses some of the difficulties and problems that the disciples were encountering. The extracts are arranged in sections that deal with subjects such as the goal and aim of the Yoga, the planes and parts of the being, the principle and practice of surrender and opening to the influence of the Divine, and the value of work in bringing the results of one's inner progress to the external nature and life.

Over five hundred aphorisms on works, knowledge and devotion, written with startling disregard for conventional morality to emphasise how spiritual matters cannot be judged with the ethical mind. These aphorisms were formulated, said the Mother, "in order to break up the usual conception, to bring one in touch with a deeper truth".

Extract
"There is very little real hypocrisy among men". True, but there is a great deal of diplomacy and still more of self-deceit. The last is of the three varieties, conscious, sub-conscious and half-conscious; but the third is the most dangerous.

———————————————————————–

The Brahmin first ruled by the book and the ritual, the Kshatriya next by the sword and the buckler; now the Vaishya governs us by machinery and the dollar, and the Sudra, the liberated serf, presses in with his doctrine of the kingdom of associated labour. But neither priest, king, merchant nor labourer is the true governor of humanity; the despotism of the tool and the mattock will fail like all the preceding despotisms. Only when egoism dies and God in men governs his own human universality, can this earth support a happy and contented race of beings. – Sri Aurobindo

The writings of Sri Aurobindo collected in this book were originally composed in answer to questions raised by disciples and others interested in the integral Yoga. They touch on problems often raised in relation to spiritual truth and experiences, such as the reason for this creation’s disharmony full of division and ego, the nature of doubt and faith, and the discernment of different planes and movements in the sadhana.

Extract
It is not to be denied, no spiritual experience will deny that this is an unideal and unsatisfactory world, strongly marked with the stamp of inadequacy, suffering, evil.... The problem still remains why all this that yet is should have been necessary – these crude beginnings, this long and stormy passage – why should the heavy and tedious price be demanded, why should evil and suffering ever have been there.

Savitri is Sri Aurobindo‘s major poetic work, an epic in blank-verse of about 24,000 lines in which a tale from the Mahabharata becomes a symbol of the human soul‘s spiritual quest and destiny.

„The tale of Satyavan and Savitri“, Sri Aurobindo noted, „is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death“. Sri Aurobindo has widened the original legend and turned it into a symbol in which the soul of man, represented by Satyavan, is delivered from the grip of death and ignorance through the love and power of the Divine Mother, incarnated upon earth as Savitri.

Sri Aurobindo worked on this poem for more than thirty years. When a disciple asked why he kept rewriting it, he replied: „That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote it from that level. . . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one‘s own yogic consciousnes and how that could be made creative.“

The Mother considered Savitri to be „the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo‘s vision“ and called it „that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity‘s guide towards its future realisation.“

An extract from a letter on Savitri

The structure of the pentameter blank verse in Savitri is of its own kind and different in plan from the blank verse that has come to be ordinarily used in English poetry. It dispenses with enjambment or uses it very sparingly and only when a special effect is intended; each line must be strong enough to stand by itself, while at the same time it fits harmoniosly into the sentence or paragraph like stone added to stone; the sentence consists usually of one, two, three or four lines, more rarely five or six or seven: a strong close for the line and a strong close for the sentence are almost indispensable except when some kind of inconclusive cadence is desirable; there must be no laxity or diffusiveness in the rhythm or in the metrical flow anywhere,—there must be a flow but not a loose flux. This gives an added importance to what comes at the close of the line and this placing is used very often to give emphasis and prominence to a key phrase or a key idea, especially those which have to be often reiterated in the thought and vision of the poem so as to recall attention to things that are universal or fundamental or otherwise of the first consequence—whether for the immediate subject or in the total plan. It is this use that is served here by the reiteration at the end of the line.

I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the wealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience. When the expression has been found, I have to judge, not by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, but by an intuitive feeling, whether it is entirely the right expression and, if it is not, I have to change and go on changing until I have received the absolutely right inspiration and the right transcription of it and must never be satisfied with any a peu pres or imperfect transcription even if that makes good poetry of one kind or another . . .

Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. Moreover if it is really new in kind, it may employ a new technique, not perhaps absolutely new, but new in some or many of its elements; in that case old rules and canons and standards may be quite inapplicable.... We have to see whether what is essential to poetry is there and how far the new technique justifies itself by new beauty and perfection, and a certain freedom of mind from old conventions is necessary if our judgement is to be valid or rightly objective.
– Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo's account of his experiences as an undertrial prisoner in Alipore Jail, Calcutta. Arrested for conspiracy in May 1908, Sri Aurobindo spent one full year in jail while the British Government, in a protracted trial, tried to implicate him in various revolutionary activities. Acquitted and released in May 1909, he wrote a series of articles in Bengali in the journal Suprabhat describing his life in prison and the courtroom. Translated by late professor Sisir Kumar Ghosh of Santiniketan, these articles form the main text of this book.

Several briefer pieces are also included in the book: three essays in which Sri Aurobindo discusses the noble character of the young revolutionaries imprisoned with him: a poem, "Invitation", which he wrote in Alipore Jail, and a speech at Uttarpara in which he disclosed for the first time some of the spiritual experiences he had in jail.

Savitri is Sri Aurobindo's major poetic work, an epic in blank-verse of about 24,000 lines in which a tale from the Mahabharata becomes a symbol of the human soul's spiritual quest and destiny.

"The tale of Satyavan and Savitri", Sri Aurobindo noted, "is recited in the Mahabharata as a story of conjugal love conquering death". Sri Aurobindo has widened the original legend and turned it into a symbol in which the soul of man, represented by Satyavan, is delivered from the grip of death and ignorance through the love and power of the Divine Mother, incarnated upon earth as Savitri.

Sri Aurobindo worked on this poem for more than thirty years. When a disciple asked why he kept rewriting it, he replied: "That is very simple. I used Savitri as a means of ascension. I began it on a certain mental level, each time I could reach a higher level I rewrote it from that level. . . In fact Savitri has not been regarded by me as a poem to be written and finished, but as a field of experimentation to see how far poetry could be written from one's own yogic consciousnes and how that could be made creative."

The Mother considered Savitri to be "the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo's vision" and called it "that marvellous prophetic poem which will be humanity's guide towards its future realisation."

(The soft cover demy size edition includes letters of Sri Aurobindo on Savitri. The hard cover crown size edition has line numbers.)

Contents: Savitri; Sri Aurobindo's letters on Savitri

Subjects: Poetry, Philosophy, Yoga, Mysticism.

An extract from a letter on Savitri

The structure of the pentameter blank verse in Savitri is of its own kind and different in plan from the blank verse that has come to be ordinarily used in English poetry. It dispenses with enjambment or uses it very sparingly and only when a special effect is intended; each line must be strong enough to stand by itself, while at the same time it fits harmoniosly into the sentence or paragraph like stone added to stone; the sentence consists usually of one, two, three or four lines, more rarely five or six or seven: a strong close for the line and a strong close for the sentence are almost indispensable except when some kind of inconclusive cadence is desirable; there must be no laxity or diffusiveness in the rhythm or in the metrical flow anywhere,—there must be a flow but not a loose flux. This gives an added importance to what comes at the close of the line and this placing is used very often to give emphasis and prominence to a key phrase or a key idea, especially those which have to be often reiterated in the thought and vision of the poem so as to recall attention to things that are universal or fundamental or otherwise of the first consequence—whether for the immediate subject or in the total plan. It is this use that is served here by the reiteration at the end of the line.

I have not anywhere in Savitri written anything for the sake of mere picturesqueness or merely to produce a rhetorical effect; what I am trying to do everywhere in the poem is to express exactly something seen, something felt or experienced; if, for instance, I indulge in the wealth-burdened line or passage, it is not merely for the pleasure of the indulgence, but because there is that burden, or at least what I conceive to be that, in the vision or the experience. When the expression has been found, I have to judge, not by the intellect or by any set poetical rule, but by an intuitive feeling, whether it is entirely the right expression and, if it is not, I have to change and go on changing until I have received the absolutely right inspiration and the right transcription of it and must never be satisfied with any a peu pres or imperfect transcription even if that makes good 
poetry of one kind or another...

Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences. You must not expect appreciation or understanding from the general public or even from many at the first touch as I have pointed out, there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry. Moreover if it is really new in kind, it may employ a new technique, not perhaps absolutely new, but new in some or many of its elements; in that case old rules and canons and standards may be quite inapplicable.... We have to see whether what is essential to poetry is there and how far the new technique justifies itself by new beauty and perfection, and a certain freedom of mind from old conventions is necessary if our judgement is to be valid or rightly objective. – Sri Aurobindo

At the head she stands of birth and toil and fate,
In their slow round the cycles turn to her call;
Alone her hands can change Time's dragon base.
Hers is the mystery the Night conceals;
The spirit's alchemist energy is hers;
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire. 
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she,
A power of silence in the depths of God;
She is the Force, the inevitable Word,
The magnet of our difficult ascent,
The Sun from which we kindle all our suns,
The Light that leans from the unrealised Vasts,
The Joy that beckons from the impossible,
The Might of all that never yet came down.
All nature dumbly calls to her alone
To heal with her feet the aching throb of life
And break the seals on the dim soul of man
And kindle her fire in the closed heart of things.
All here shall be one day her sweetness' home,
All contraries prepare her harmony;
Towards her our knowledge climbs, our passion gropes;
In her miraculous rapture we shall dwell,
Her clasp shall turn to ecstasy our pain.

This book is a compilation of Sri Aurobindo's replies to elementary questions about yoga raised by a disciple during the years 1933 to 1936. It was first published in 1953 and reissued in 1956. In 1991 the text was reproduced as the first part of "Commentaries on Elements of Yoga by the Mother. Elements of Yoga is now being issued independently again in a second edition. Subjects include sincerity, surrender, love, transformation, etc.