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   87 Sri Aurobindo
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   87 Sri Aurobindo

1:The inmost is the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Power of the Spirit,

2:Rhythm is the subtle soul of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Recent English Poetry - I,

3:The intellectual ages sing less easily. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Form and the Spirit,

4:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

5:The pure intellect cannot create poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

6:Poetry like everything else in man evolves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

7:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

8:Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Trance of Waiting,

9:The lyric is a moment of heightened soul experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Form and the Spirit,

10:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

11:The lyric which is poetry’s native expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Course of English Poetry - II,

12:In this immoral and imperfect world even sin has sometimes its rewards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Mantra,

13:The stumbling-block of romanticism is falsity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

14:It is the seeing mind that is the master of poetic utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Word and the Spirit,

15:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

16:The one thing that man sees above the intellect is the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Power of the Spirit,

17:The mighty perish in their might;The slain survive the slayer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 7.3.14 - The Tiger and the Deer,

18:The business of poetry is to express the soul of man to himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

19:The supreme greatness cannot come in poetry without the supreme beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Victorian Poets,

20:Rhythm is the most potent, founding element of poetic expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Recent English Poetry - II,

21:Rise with the world in thy bosom,O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry the Ascent,

22:The poet is a magician who hardly knows the secret of his own spell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Word and the Spirit,

23:Poetry is a highly charged power of aesthetic expression of the soul of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

24:Poetry too is an interpreter of truth, but in the forms of an innate beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

25:It is the spirit within and not the mind without that is the fount of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

26:The lyrical impulse is the original and spontaneous creator of the poetic form, ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Form and the Spirit,

27:In all very great drama the true movement and result is psychological. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Course of English Poetry - II,

28:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

29:What the poet sees and feels, not what he opines, is the real substance of his poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Poets of the Dawn - II,

30:The poetic word is a vehicle of the spirit, the chosen medium of the soul’s self-expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Word and the Spirit,

31:The too developed intellect cannot often keep or recover life’s first fine careless rapture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Form and the Spirit,

32:The nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Recent English Poetry - I,

33:Evolution means a bringing out of new powers which lay concealed in the seed or the first form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

34:In the economy of Nature opposite creates itself out of opposite and not only like from like. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

35:The poet’s first concern and his concern always is with living beauty and reality, with life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Breath of Greater Life,

36:Drama is the poet’s vision of some part of the world-act in the life of the human soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Course of English Poetry - II,

37:Poetry and art are born mediators between the immaterial and the concrete, the spirit and life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

38:A poet’s largeness and ease of execution,—succeeds more amply on the inferior levels of his genius. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Poets of the Dawn - II,

39:Poetry is the rhythmic voice of life, but it is one of the inner and not one of the surface voices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Breath of Greater Life,

40:The nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained perfection than life can give. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Recent English Poetry - I,

41:Nature creates perfectly because she creates directly out of life and is not intellectually self-conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Form and the Spirit,

42:What is not real or vital to thought, imagination and feeling cannot be powerfully creative. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

43:Into the Silence, into the Silence,Arise, O Spirit immortal,Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry the Ascent,

44:The nearer we get to the absolute Ananda, the greater becomes our joy in man and the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

45:The expression of the spiritual through the aesthetic sense is the constant sense of Indian art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

46:The life values are only poetic when they have come out heightened and changed into soul values. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

47:Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

48:Mere force of language tacked on to the trick of the metrical beat does not answer the higher description of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Rhythm and Movement,

49:The day when we get back to the ancient worship of delight and beauty, will be our day of salvation ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

50:When the reward is withheld and endlessly lengthens the labour,Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

51:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

52:The enlightening power of the poet’s creation is vision of truth, its moving power is a passion of beauty and delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Breath of Greater Life,

53:Realism is in its essence an attempt to see man and his world as they really are without veils and pretences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

54:The rediscovery of the soul is the last stage of the round described by this age of the intellect and reason. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

55:Personality, force, temperament can do unusual miracles, but the miracle cannot always be turned into a method or a standard. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Recent English Poetry - I,

56:A perfect rhythm will often even give immortality to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher intensities of style. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Rhythm and Movement,

57:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

58:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

59:The essence of religion is an aspiration and adoration of the soul towards the Divine, the Self, the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Sun of Poetic Truth,

60:The truth which poetry expresses takes two forms, the truth of life and the truth of that which works in life, the truth of the inner spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

61:Revolutions are distracting things, but they are often good for the human soul; for they bring a rapid unrolling of new horizons. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Character of English Poetry - II,

62:This apparent paradox of a development draped in the colours of revolt is a constant psychological feature of all human evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

63:It is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

64:Reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist, while to the poet they are only minor deities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Essence of Poetry,

65:The attempt to diminish the subjective view to the vanishing-point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not to poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

66:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Course of English Poetry - V,

67:The intellect moves naturally between two limits, the abstractions or solving analyses of the reason and the domain of positive and practical reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry New Birth or Decadence?,

68:The poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

69:All my cells thrill swept by a surge of splendour,Soul and body stir with a mighty rapture,Light and still more light like an ocean billows    Over me, round me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry the Descent,

70:For the most part our psychological account of others is only an account of the psychological impressions of them they produce in our own mentality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

71:Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes,Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrowAre but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber, ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

72:They leap out like stars in their brightness,Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters,Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

73:In a chance happening, fate’s whims and the blind workings or dead drive of a brute Nature,In her dire Titan caprice, strength that to death drifts and to doom, hidden a Will labours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 7.3.10 - The Lost Boat,

74:Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal,Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are mastersCalm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

75:Sentiment which is an indulgence of the intelligent observing mind in the aesthesis, the rasa of feeling, passion, emotion, sense thinning them away into a subtle, at the end almost unreal fineness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Breath of Greater Life,

76:Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden.Earth sees not; life’s clamour deafens the ear of the spirit:Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons.Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

77:All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages;Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure;Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams;Evil once ended renews and no issue co ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

78:Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals,Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending,Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine.Earth in the dawn-fire delivered fr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

79:Death, panic and wounds and disaster,Glory of conquest and glory of fall, and the empty hearth-side,Weeping and fortitude, terror and hope and the pang of remembrance,Anguish of hearts, the lives of the warriors, the strength of the nationsThr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry 5.1.01 - Ilion,

80:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Sun of Poetic Truth,

81:It drew from sight and sound spiritual power,Made sense a road to reach the intangible:It thrilled with the supernal influencesThat build the substance of life’s deeper soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

82:A might no human will nor force can gain,A knowledge seated in eternity,A bliss beyond our struggle and our painAre the high pinnacles of our destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

83:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry ,

84:Few poets can keep for a very long time a sustained level of the highest inspiration. The best poetry does not usually come by streams except in poets of a supreme greatness though there may be in others than the greatest long-continued wingings at a considerable height. The very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare. All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states1 is true in principle, but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within half way of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came. Usually the best lines, passages, etc. come like that. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Inspiration and Effort - II,

85:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry Inspiration and Effort - I,

86:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image. No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry ,

87:The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions they have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things, - of this truth too there are many gradations, - which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us, not on one but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal. This is the true, because the highest and essential aim of poetry; but the human mind arrives at it only by a succession of steps, the first of which seems far enough from its object. It begins by stringing its most obvious and external ideas, feelings and sensations of things on a thread of verse in a sufficient language of no very high quality. But even when it gets to a greater adequacy and effectiveness, it is often no more than a vital, an emotional or an intellectual adequacy and effectiveness. There is a strong vital poetry which powerfully appeals to our sensations and our sense of life, like much of Byron or the less inspired mass of the Elizabethan drama; a strong emotional poetry which stirs our feelings and gives us the sense and active image of the passions; a strong intellectual poetry which satisfies our curiosity about life and its mechanism, or deals with its psychological and other "problems", or shapes for us our thoughts in an effective, striking and often quite resistlessly quotable fashion. All this has its pleasures for the mind and the surface soul in us, and it is certainly quite legitimate to enjoy them and to enjoy them strongly and vividly on our way upward; but if we rest content with these only, we shall never get very high up the hill of the Muses. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry ,

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

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:The inmost is the infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Power of the Spirit,

2:Rhythm is the subtle soul of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I,

3:The intellectual ages sing less easily. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit,

4:Sight is the essential poetic gift. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

5:The pure intellect cannot create poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

6:Poetry like everything else in man evolves. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

7:All great poetic utterance is discovery. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

8:Space is a stillness of God building his earthly abode. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Trance of Waiting,

9:The lyric is a moment of heightened soul experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit,

10:Vision is the characteristic power of the poet. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

11:The lyric which is poetry’s native expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - II,

12:In this immoral and imperfect world even sin has sometimes its rewards. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Mantra,

13:The stumbling-block of romanticism is falsity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

14:It is the seeing mind that is the master of poetic utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Word and the Spirit,

15:Sheer objectivity brings us down from art to photography. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

16:The one thing that man sees above the intellect is the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Power of the Spirit,

17:The mighty perish in their might; The slain survive the slayer. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Tiger and the Deer,

18:The business of poetry is to express the soul of man to himself. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

19:The supreme greatness cannot come in poetry without the supreme beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Victorian Poets,

20:Rhythm is the most potent, founding element of poetic expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - II,

21:Rise with the world in thy bosom, O Word gathered into the heart of the Ineffable. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ascent,

22:The poet is a magician who hardly knows the secret of his own spell. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Word and the Spirit,

23:Poetry is a highly charged power of aesthetic expression of the soul of man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

24:Poetry too is an interpreter of truth, but in the forms of an innate beauty. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

25:It is the spirit within and not the mind without that is the fount of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

26:The lyrical impulse is the original and spontaneous creator of the poetic form, ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit,

27:In all very great drama the true movement and result is psychological. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - II,

28:The native power of poetry is in its sight, not in its intellectual thought-matter. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

29:What the poet sees and feels, not what he opines, is the real substance of his poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Poets of the Dawn - II,

30:The poetic word is a vehicle of the spirit, the chosen medium of the soul’s self-expression. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Word and the Spirit,

31:The too developed intellect cannot often keep or recover life’s first fine careless rapture. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit,

32:The nature of poetry is to soar on the wings of the inspiration to the highest intensities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I,

33:Evolution means a bringing out of new powers which lay concealed in the seed or the first form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

34:In the economy of Nature opposite creates itself out of opposite and not only like from like. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

35:The poet’s first concern and his concern always is with living beauty and reality, with life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Breath of Greater Life,

36:Drama is the poet’s vision of some part of the world-act in the life of the human soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - II,

37:Poetry and art are born mediators between the immaterial and the concrete, the spirit and life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

38:A poet’s largeness and ease of execution,—succeeds more amply on the inferior levels of his genius. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Poets of the Dawn - II,

39:Poetry is the rhythmic voice of life, but it is one of the inner and not one of the surface voices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Breath of Greater Life,

40:The nature of art is to strive after a nobler beauty and more sustained perfection than life can give. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I,

41:Nature creates perfectly because she creates directly out of life and is not intellectually self-conscious. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Form and the Spirit,

42:What is not real or vital to thought, imagination and feeling cannot be powerfully creative. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

43:Into the Silence, into the Silence, Arise, O Spirit immortal, Away from the turning Wheel, breaking the magical Circle. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ascent,

44:The nearer we get to the absolute Ananda, the greater becomes our joy in man and the universe. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

45:The expression of the spiritual through the aesthetic sense is the constant sense of Indian art. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

46:The life values are only poetic when they have come out heightened and changed into soul values. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

47:Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

48:Mere force of language tacked on to the trick of the metrical beat does not answer the higher description of poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Rhythm and Movement,

49:The day when we get back to the ancient worship of delight and beauty, will be our day of salvation ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Soul of Poetic Delight and Beauty,

50:When the reward is withheld and endlessly lengthens the labour, Weary of fruitless toil grows the transient heart of the mortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

51:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

52:The enlightening power of the poet’s creation is vision of truth, its moving power is a passion of beauty and delight. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Breath of Greater Life,

53:Realism is in its essence an attempt to see man and his world as they really are without veils and pretences. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

54:The rediscovery of the soul is the last stage of the round described by this age of the intellect and reason. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

55:Personality, force, temperament can do unusual miracles, but the miracle cannot always be turned into a method or a standard. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Recent English Poetry - I,

56:A perfect rhythm will often even give immortality to work which is slight in vision and very far from the higher intensities of style. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Rhythm and Movement,

57:If the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

58:Realistic art does not and cannot give us a scientifically accurate presentation of life, because Art is not and cannot be Science. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

59:The essence of religion is an aspiration and adoration of the soul towards the Divine, the Self, the Supreme, the Eternal, the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,

60:The truth which poetry expresses takes two forms, the truth of life and the truth of that which works in life, the truth of the inner spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

61:Revolutions are distracting things, but they are often good for the human soul; for they bring a rapid unrolling of new horizons. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Character of English Poetry - II,

62:This apparent paradox of a development draped in the colours of revolt is a constant psychological feature of all human evolution. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - I,

63:It is not sufficient for poetry to attain high intensities of word and rhythm; it must have, to fill them, an answering intensity of vision. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

64:Reason and taste, two powers of the intelligence, are rightly the supreme gods of the prose stylist, while to the poet they are only minor deities. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Essence of Poetry,

65:The attempt to diminish the subjective view to the vanishing-point so as to get an accurate presentation is proper to science, not to poetry. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

66:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V,

67:The intellect moves naturally between two limits, the abstractions or solving analyses of the reason and the domain of positive and practical reality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, New Birth or Decadence?,

68:The poet really creates out of himself and not out of what he sees outwardly: that outward seeing only serves to excite the inner vision to its work. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

69:All my cells thrill swept by a surge of splendour, Soul and body stir with a mighty rapture, Light and still more light like an ocean billows     Over me, round me. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Descent,

70:For the most part our psychological account of others is only an account of the psychological impressions of them they produce in our own mentality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Movement of Modern Literature - II,

71:Busy the gods are always, Thrasymachus son of Aretes, Weaving Fate on their looms, and yesterday, now and tomorrow Are but the stands they have made with Space and Time for their timber, ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

72:They leap out like stars in their brightness, Lights that we think our own, yet they are but tokens and counters, Signs of the Forces that flow through us serving a Power that is secret. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

73:In a chance happening, fate’s whims and the blind workings or dead drive of a brute Nature, In her dire Titan caprice, strength that to death drifts and to doom, hidden a Will labours. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Lost Boat,

74:Something they forge there sitting unknown in the silence eternal, Whether of evil or good it is they who shall choose who are masters Calm, unopposed; they are gods and they work out their iron caprices. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

75:Sentiment which is an indulgence of the intelligent observing mind in the aesthesis, the rasa of feeling, passion, emotion, sense thinning them away into a subtle, at the end almost unreal fineness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Breath of Greater Life,

76:Weight of the event and its surface we bear, but the meaning is hidden. Earth sees not; life’s clamour deafens the ear of the spirit: Man knows not; least knows the messenger chosen for the summons. Only he listens to the voice of his thoughts, his ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

77:All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages; Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure; Goal seems there none for the ball that is chased throughout Time by the Fate-teams; Evil once ended renews and no issue co ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

78:Dawn in her journey eternal compelling the labour of mortals, Dawn the beginner of things with the night for their rest or their ending, Pallid and bright-lipped arrived from the mists and the chill of the Euxine. Earth in the dawn-fire delivered fr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

79:Death, panic and wounds and disaster, Glory of conquest and glory of fall, and the empty hearth-side, Weeping and fortitude, terror and hope and the pang of remembrance, Anguish of hearts, the lives of the warriors, the strength of the nations Thr ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Ilion,

80:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Ascent towards Supermind Inter-Relation The brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without the aid of a greater power, intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,

81:It drew from sight and sound spiritual power, Made sense a road to reach the intangible: It thrilled with the supernal influences That build the substance of life’s deeper soul. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Paradise of the Life-Gods Building of the Soul For the most part we are much too busy living and thinking to have leisure to be silent and see. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Poetic Vision and the Mantra,

82:A might no human will nor force can gain, A knowledge seated in eternity, A bliss beyond our struggle and our pain Are the high pinnacles of our destiny. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems: Evolution - II Man's destiny The Mantra is born through the heart and shaped or massed by the thinking mind into a chariot of that godhead of the Eternal of whom the truth seen is a face or a form. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Ideal Spirit of Poetry,

83:The colossal labour Sri Aurobindo put forth to build this unique structure reminds me of one of those majestic ancient temples like Konarak or of a Gothic architecture like Notre Dame before which you stand and stare in speechless ecstasy, your soul takes a flight beyond time and space. As it is, Savitri is, I suppose, the example par excellence of the future poetry he speaks of in his book The Future Poetry. Generation after generation will drink in its soul’s nectar from this perennial source. ~ Nirodbaran,

84:The Mantra in other words is a direct and most heightened, an intensest and most divinely burdened rhythmic word which embodies an intuitive and revelatory inspiration and ensouls the mind with the sight and the presence of the very self, the inmost reality of things and with its truth and with the divine soul-forms of it, the Godheads which are born from the living Truth. Or, let us say, it is a supreme rhythmic language which seizes hold upon all that is finite and brings into each the light and voice of its own infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,

85:Few poets can keep for a very long time a sustained level of the highest inspiration. The best poetry does not usually come by streams except in poets of a supreme greatness though there may be in others than the greatest long-continued wingings at a considerable height. The very best comes by intermittent drops, though sometimes three or four gleaming drops at a time. Even in the greatest poets, even in those with the most opulent flow of riches like Shakespeare, the very best is comparatively rare. All statements are subject to qualification. What Lawrence states1 is true in principle, but in practice most poets have to sustain the inspiration by industry. Milton in his later days used to write every day fifty lines; Virgil nine which he corrected and recorrected till it was within half way of what he wanted. In other words he used to write under any conditions and pull at his inspiration till it came. Usually the best lines, passages, etc. come like that.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - II,

86:Inspiration is always a very uncertain thing; it comes when it chooses, stops suddenly before it has finished its work, refuses to descend when it is called. This is a well-known affliction, perhaps of all artists, but certainly of poets. There are some who can command it at will; those who, I think, are more full of an abundant poetic energy than careful for perfection; others who oblige it to come whenever they put pen to paper but with these the inspiration is either not of a high order or quite unequal in its levels. Again there are some who try to give it a habit of coming by always writing at the same time; Virgil with his nine lines first written, then perfected every morning, Milton with his fifty epic lines a day, are said to have succeeded in regularising their inspiration. It is, I suppose, the same principle which makes Gurus in India prescribe for their disciples a meditation at the same fixed hour every day. It succeeds partially of course, for some entirely, but not for everybody. For myself, when the inspiration did not come with a rush or in a stream,-for then there is no difficulty,-I had only one way, to allow a certain kind of incubation in which a large form of the thing to be done threw itself on the mind and then wait for the white heat in which the entire transcription could rapidly take place. But I think each poet has his own way of working and finds his own issue out of inspiration's incertitudes.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, Inspiration and Effort - I,

87:The poet-seer sees differently, thinks in another way, voices himself in quite another manner than the philosopher or the prophet. The prophet announces the Truth as the Word, the Law or the command of the Eternal, he is the giver of the message; the poet shows us Truth in its power of beauty, in its symbol or image, or reveals it to us in the workings of Nature or in the workings of life, and when he has done that, his whole work is done; he need not be its explicit spokesman or its official messenger. The philosopher's business is to discriminate Truth and put its parts and aspects into intellectual relation with each other; the poet's is to seize and embody aspects of Truth in their living relations, or rather - for that is too philosophical a language - to see her features and, excited by the vision, create in the beauty of her image.    No doubt, the prophet may have in him a poet who breaks out often into speech and surrounds with the vivid atmosphere of life the directness of his message; he may follow up his injunction "Take no thought for the morrow," by a revealing image of the beauty of the truth he enounces, in the life of Nature, in the figure of the lily, or link it to human life by apologue and parable. The philosopher may bring in the aid of colour and image to give some relief and hue to his dry light of reason and water his arid path of abstractions with some healing dew of poetry. But these are ornaments and not the substance of his work; and if the philosopher makes his thought substance of poetry, he ceases to be a philosophic thinker and becomes a poet-seer of Truth. Thus the more rigid metaphysicians are perhaps right in denying to Nietzsche the name of philosopher; for Nietzsche does not think, but always sees, turbidly or clearly, rightly or distortedly, but with the eye of the seer rather than with the brain of the thinker. On the other hand we may get great poetry which is full of a prophetic enthusiasm of utterance or is largely or even wholly philosophic in its matter; but this prophetic poetry gives us no direct message, only a mass of sublime inspirations of thought and image, and this philosophic poetry is poetry and lives as poetry only in so far as it departs from the method, the expression, the way of seeing proper to the philosophic mind. It must be vision pouring itself into thought-images and not thought trying to observe truth and distinguish its province and bounds and fences.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,

88:The modern distinction is that the poet appeals to the imagination and not to the intellect. But there are many kinds of imagination; the objective imagination which visualises strongly the outward aspects of life and things; the subjective imagination which visualises strongly the mental and emotional impressions they have the power to start in the mind; the imagination which deals in the play of mental fictions and to which we give the name of poetic fancy; the aesthetic imagination which delights in the beauty of words and images for their own sake and sees no farther. All these have their place in poetry, but they only give the poet his materials, they are only the first instruments in the creation of poetic style. The essential poetic imagination does not stop short with even the most subtle reproductions of things external or internal, with the richest or delicatest play of fancy or with the most beautiful colouring of word or image. It is creative, not of either the actual or the fictitious, but of the more and the most real; it sees the spiritual truth of things, - of this truth too there are many gradations, - which may take either the actual or the ideal for its starting-point. The aim of poetry, as of all true art, is neither a photographic or otherwise realistic imitation of Nature, nor a romantic furbishing and painting or idealistic improvement of her image, but an interpretation by the images she herself affords us, not on one but on many planes of her creation, of that which she conceals from us, but is ready, when rightly approached, to reveal.    This is the true, because the highest and essential aim of poetry; but the human mind arrives at it only by a succession of steps, the first of which seems far enough from its object. It begins by stringing its most obvious and external ideas, feelings and sensations of things on a thread of verse in a sufficient language of no very high quality. But even when it gets to a greater adequacy and effectiveness, it is often no more than a vital, an emotional or an intellectual adequacy and effectiveness. There is a strong vital poetry which powerfully appeals to our sensations and our sense of life, like much of Byron or the less inspired mass of the Elizabethan drama; a strong emotional poetry which stirs our feelings and gives us the sense and active image of the passions; a strong intellectual poetry which satisfies our curiosity about life and its mechanism, or deals with its psychological and other "problems", or shapes for us our thoughts in an effective, striking and often quite resistlessly quotable fashion. All this has its pleasures for the mind and the surface soul in us, and it is certainly quite legitimate to enjoy them and to enjoy them strongly and vividly on our way upward; but if we rest content with these only, we shall never get very high up the hill of the Muses.    ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry,

89:It does not matter if you do not understand it - Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, something new will be revealed to you. Each time you will get a new glimpse, each time a new experience; things which were not there, things you did not understand arise and suddenly become clear. Always an unexpected vision comes up through the words and lines. Every time you try to read and understand, you will see that something is added, something which was hidden behind is revealed clearly and vividly. I tell you the very verses you have read once before, will appear to you in a different light each time you re-read them. This is what happens invariably. Always your experience is enriched, it is a revelation at each step. But you must not read it as you read other books or newspapers. You must read with an empty head, a blank and vacant mind, without there being any other thought; you must concentrate much, remain empty, calm and open; then the words, rhythms, vibrations will penetrate directly to this white page, will put their stamp upon the brain, will explain themselves without your making any effort. Savitri alone is sufficient to make you climb to the highest peaks. If truly one knows how to meditate on Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. For him who wishes to follow this path, it is a concrete help as though the Lord himself were taking you by the hand and leading you to the destined goal. And then, every question, however personal it may be, has its answer here, every difficulty finds its solution herein; indeed there is everything that is necessary for doing the Yoga. *He has crammed the whole universe in a single book.* It is a marvellous work, magnificent and of an incomparable perfection. You know, before writing Savitri Sri Aurobindo said to me, *I am impelled to launch on a new adventure; I was hesitant in the beginning, but now I am decided. Still, I do not know how far I shall succeed. I pray for help.* And you know what it was? It was - before beginning, I warn you in advance - it was His way of speaking, so full of divine humility and modesty. He never... *asserted Himself*. And the day He actually began it, He told me: *I have launched myself in a rudderless boat upon the vastness of the Infinite.* And once having started, He wrote page after page without intermission, as though it were a thing already complete up there and He had only to transcribe it in ink down here on these pages. In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything. It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM. My child, yes, everything is there: mysticism, occultism, philosophy, the history of evolution, the history of man, of the gods, of creation, of Nature. How the universe was created, why, for what purpose, what destiny - all is there. You can find all the answers to all your questions there. Everything is explained, even the future of man and of the evolution, all that nobody yet knows. He has described it all in beautiful and clear words so that spiritual adventurers who wish to solve the mysteries of the world may understand it more easily. But this mystery is well hidden behind the words and lines and one must rise to the required level of true consciousness to discover it. All prophesies, all that is going to come is presented with the precise and wonderful clarity. Sri Aurobindo gives you here the key to find the Truth, to discover the Consciousness, to solve the problem of what the universe is. He has also indicated how to open the door of the Inconscience so that the light may penetrate there and transform it. He has shown the path, the way to liberate oneself from the ignorance and climb up to the superconscience; each stage, each plane of consciousness, how they can be scaled, how one can cross even the barrier of death and attain immortality. You will find the whole journey in detail, and as you go forward you can discover things altogether unknown to man. That is Savitri and much more yet. It is a real experience - reading Savitri. All the secrets that man possessed, He has revealed, - as well as all that awaits him in the future; all this is found in the depth of Savitri. But one must have the knowledge to discover it all, the experience of the planes of consciousness, the experience of the Supermind, even the experience of the conquest of Death. He has noted all the stages, marked each step in order to advance integrally in the integral Yoga. All this is His own experience, and what is most surprising is that it is my own experience also. It is my sadhana which He has worked out. Each object, each event, each realisation, all the descriptions, even the colours are exactly what I saw and the words, phrases are also exactly what I heard. And all this before having read the book. I read Savitri many times afterwards, but earlier, when He was writing He used to read it to me. Every morning I used to hear Him read Savitri. During the night He would write and in the morning read it to me. And I observed something curious, that day after day the experiences He read out to me in the morning were those I had had the previous night, word by word. Yes, all the descriptions, the colours, the pictures I had seen, the words I had heard, all, all, I heard it all, put by Him into poetry, into miraculous poetry. Yes, they were exactly my experiences of the previous night which He read out to me the following morning. And it was not just one day by chance, but for days and days together. And every time I used to compare what He said with my previous experiences and they were always the same. I repeat, it was not that I had told Him my experiences and that He had noted them down afterwards, no, He knew already what I had seen. It is my experiences He has presented at length and they were His experiences also. It is, moreover, the picture of Our joint adventure into the unknown or rather into the Supermind. These are experiences lived by Him, realities, supracosmic truths. He experienced all these as one experiences joy or sorrow, physically. He walked in the darkness of inconscience, even in the neighborhood of death, endured the sufferings of perdition, and emerged from the mud, the world-misery to breathe the sovereign plenitude and enter the supreme Ananda. He crossed all these realms, went through the consequences, suffered and endured physically what one cannot imagine. Nobody till today has suffered like Him. He accepted suffering to transform suffering into the joy of union with the Supreme. It is something unique and incomparable in the history of the world. It is something that has never happened before, He is the first to have traced the path in the Unknown, so that we may be able to walk with certitude towards the Supermind. He has made the work easy for us. Savitri is His whole Yoga of transformation, and this Yoga appears now for the first time in the earth-consciousness. And I think that man is not yet ready to receive it. It is too high and too vast for him. He cannot understand it, grasp it, for it is not by the mind that one can understand Savitri. One needs spiritual experiences in order to understand and assimilate it. The farther one advances on the path of Yoga, the more does one assimilate and the better. No, it is something which will be appreciated only in the future, it is the poetry of tomorrow of which He has spoken in The Future Poetry. It is too subtle, too refined, - it is not in the mind or through the mind, it is in meditation that Savitri is revealed. And men have the audacity to compare it with the work of Virgil or Homer and to find it inferior. They do not understand, they cannot understand. What do they know? Nothing at all. And it is useless to try to make them understand. Men will know what it is, but in a distant future. It is only the new race with a new consciousness which will be able to understand. I assure you there is nothing under the blue sky to compare with Savitri. It is the mystery of mysteries. It is a *super-epic,* it is super-literature, super-poetry, super-vision, it is a super-work even if one considers the number of lines He has written. No, these human words are not adequate to describe Savitri. Yes, one needs superlatives, hyperboles to describe it. It is a hyper-epic. No, words express nothing of what Savitri is, at least I do not find them. It is of immense value - spiritual value and all other values; it is eternal in its subject, and infinite in its appeal, miraculous in its mode and power of execution; it is a unique thing, the more you come into contact with it, the higher will you be uplifted. Ah, truly it is something! It is the most beautiful thing He has left for man, the highest possible. What is it? When will man know it? When is he going to lead a life of truth? When is he going to accept this in his life? This yet remains to be seen. My child, every day you are going to read Savitri; read properly, with the right attitude, concentrating a little before opening the pages and trying to keep the mind as empty as possible, absolutely without a thought. The direct road is through the heart. I tell you, if you try to really concentrate with this aspiration you can light the flame, the psychic flame, the flame of purification in a very short time, perhaps in a few days. What you cannot do normally, you can do with the help of Savitri. Try and you will see how very different it is, how new, if you read with this attitude, with this something at the back of your consciousness; as though it were an offering to Sri Aurobindo. You know it is charged, fully charged with consciousness; as if Savitri were a being, a real guide. I tell you, whoever, wanting to practice Yoga, tries sincerely and feels the necessity for it, will be able to climb with the help of Savitri to the highest rung of the ladder of Yoga, will be able to find the secret that Savitri represents. And this without the help of a Guru. And he will be able to practice it anywhere. For him Savitri alone will be the guide, for all that he needs he will find Savitri. If he remains very quiet when before a difficulty, or when he does not know where to turn to go forward and how to overcome obstacles, for all these hesitations and incertitudes which overwhelm us at every moment, he will have the necessary indications, and the necessary concrete help. If he remains very calm, open, if he aspires sincerely, always he will be as if lead by the hand. If he has faith, the will to give himself and essential sincerity he will reach the final goal. Indeed, Savitri is something concrete, living, it is all replete, packed with consciousness, it is the supreme knowledge above all human philosophies and religions. It is the spiritual path, it is Yoga, Tapasya, Sadhana, in its single body. Savitri has an extraordinary power, it gives out vibrations for him who can receive them, the true vibrations of each stage of consciousness. It is incomparable, it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth. My child, one must try to find the secret that Savitri represents, the prophetic message Sri Aurobindo reveals there for us. This is the work before you, it is hard but it is worth the trouble. - 5 November 1967 ~ The Mother, Sweet Mother, The Mother to Mona Sarkar, [T0],

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

0

   10 Integral Yoga


   5 Sri Aurobindo
   3 The Mother
   2 Satprem
   2 Nirodbaran
   2 A B Purani


   2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Letters On Poetry And Art
   2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo