The God-Touch And other lights from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri
The book draws mainly from the teachings of the Author's master Sri Aurobindo.A write-up on Sri Aurobindo follows. Sri Aurobindo (Aurobindo Ghose) (Bengali: Sri Ã”robindo) (15 August 1872 5 December 1950) was an Indian nationalist and freedom fighter, major Indian English poet, philosopher, and yogi.He joined the movement for India's freedom from British rule and for a duration (1905 10), became one of its most important leaders,before turning to developing his own vision and philosophy of human progress and spiritual evolution. The central theme of Sri Aurobindo's vision is the evolution of life into a "life divine". In his own words: "Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature's process". The principal writings of Sri Aurobindo include, in prose, The Life Divine, considered his single great work of metaphysics,The Synthesis of Yoga, Secrets of the Vedas, Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, Renaissance in India and other essays, Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, The Future Poetry, Thoughts and Aphorisms and several volumes of letters. In poetry, his principal work is Savitri - a Legend and a Symbol in blank verse. --WikipediaThe book under review is another of the many valuable compilations made by Dr A. S. Dalal from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. But for the first time here is a compilation from the poetical works of Sri Aurobindo, and that too from his magnum opus Savitri. Those who love Savitri should certainly be delighted to go through this book. Savitri is no ordinary poem; it is Sri Aurobindo s new concept of poetry written from his Overmind aesthesis. According to Raymond Piper, who is quoted in the book s Foreword, the epic is perhaps the most powerful artistic work in the world for expanding man s mind towards the absolute . Rightly has he called Savitri the most comprehensive, integrated, beautiful and perfect cosmic poem ever composed . The poem describes all Time s huge curve rising from the viewless abysm of the Inconscient into the equally viewless summit of the Superconscient Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme (Savitri, 98). To comprehend such a work of almost 24,000 lines of high poetry, poetically as well as thematically, may prove not only difficult but almost impossible for the general reader. The title of the compilation and the passages selected therein follow, more or less, in line with the theme of Savitri. The title touches on two cardinal aspects of Sri Aurobindo s Integral Yoga. In his explanation of the mystery of terrestrial creation Sri Aurobindo puts forward the cardinal fact of a spiritual evolution as the meaning of our existence here . To him the truth of evolution lies in the evolution of consciousness. Evolution carries with it in its intrinsic sense, in the idea at its root the necessity of a previous involution...all that evolves already existed involved, passive or otherwise active, but in either case concealed from us in the shell of material Nature. --Dr A. K. Ganguli retired as Professor of English, Delhi University