My introduction to Savitri began nearly fifty-two years ago when I received my first copy of Savitri. As a young man I attended the talks of A.B. Purani during his visit to the U.S. Purani was one of Sri Aurobindo's earliest disciples yet he treated me as a younger brother with tenderness and love and opened me to an appreciation and initial understanding of the Overhead poetry of Savitri, Vedic references and more. I also had the blessing of meeting Arabinda Basu around the same time who was chosen by Mother to help an aspiring soul to come closer to Her and was instrumental in opening Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus and the path of Integral Yoga to me. I remember receiving my first copy from a dear friend, Madanlal Himatsingka, and at the same time receiving a copy of The Odyssey by Nikos Kazantzakis, an epic of some 33,000 lines, translated into English from the Greek. I marveled at the beauty of his imagery, the seemingly infinite ways he could describe the sun and the power of his story telling in verse. Yet, after reading Savitri I never had a desire to pick up the Odyssey again, for Savitri was the Word of Truth, the Light of Lights, written from planes far above our minds so that even the most brilliant could not grasp its Truth. Though certain passages are comprehensible to an awakened, calm and purified mental consciousness, most of Savitri has descended from planes far above the limited mind and must be taken deep within to allow an understanding to dawn. Savitri came to me as revelation, entering deep into a region of the heart where as Sri Aurobindo writes in Book VII, The Book of Yoga, But since she knows the toil of mind and life
As a mother feels and shares her children's lives, She puts forth a small portion of herself,
A being no bigger than the thumb of man
Into a hidden region of the heart
To face the pang and to forget the bliss,
To share the suffering and endure earth's wounds And labour mid the labour of the stars. --126.4-- So, with little understanding at first I plunged myself into reading Savitri and through a supreme blessing from the Mother, I was given permission by Her to read Savitri in Auroville each week in a small Meditation Room at the Center called "Peace", where the Matrimandir was to be built and in the Nursery of the Matrimandir Gardens for ten years, Today much of Savitri is still incomprehensible mentally for how can one understand what one has not experienced? If you will read Savitri each day it will change your life and you will awaken to the bright future of a transformed earth, this blue planet on which the Life Divine will manifest and death be vanquished through the power of love. This book is intended for those who wish to enter Savitri but have been daunted by its formidable size (the longest poem written in English) or some of its Books and Cantos. In this volume you will find hundreds of quotations on joy, Bliss, delight, felicity, gladness and happiness. Each word has descended into Sri Aurobindo from the planes in which he alone had access as the Avatar and Seer-poet of all ages. The words are not interchangeable nor can we say that one is greater in meaning than another.
