In her comment dated 12 January 2007 Kim writes: “I like so much the idea of approaching Savitri from the heart, reading it with a blank mind, and learning it by heart as well. I notice that when I memorize a particular passage, the mantric qualities of the writing connect to the psychic center and through the memorization, I am able to carry that connection all through the day, reciting favorite lines sometimes many times over. It's uplifting somehow…”
That indeed makes Savitri an upāsanā grantha, a Book for Spiritual Practices for making spiritual progress. In fact, that it is, that Savitri is an upāsanā grantha par excellence, and everything is available in it. And yet, perhaps, we have to also discover the road to Savitri by the mind. Of course, that discovery cannot be by the process of flat and dull mentalisation, abstract nor diagnostic, by a linear process of thinking, or the Cartesian thinking. This mentalisation may have its own value no doubt, and also may have its own pleasure, but as upāsanā book it certainly can be—and why not? Indeed in it we have both the domains available—the deepening inner mental and the ascending spiritual. This upāsanā pursuit has its own positive reward also and it need not be, should not be, shunned or disdained, ridiculed in the least.
Naturally, I was heartened when, apropos of this discussion Ron made his encouraging observation on 13 January 2007. He wrote: “I certainly don't think so [that it is all mentalisation]. In my opinion your Savitri series is a real contribution to SCIY; they certainly have given me new insights into Savitri's profound depth. Personally, I hope you'll continue posting them.” He further adds: “I see Sonia Dyne's article as posing a ‘both/and’ rather than an ‘either/or’ choice between a ‘mental’ or ‘multi-media’ mantric/music/art approach to studying Savitri. As she says in her article, ‘It has been claimed that multi-sensory experience, which at best should include mental insight, leads to an intuitive grasp of reality that is more profound (because wider in scope) and less articulate, in the intellectual sense.’ Doesn't the integral approach include even apparent mutual exclusivites?” It does. Kim gets back to the issue on 14 January 2007 and says: “Perhaps there is benefit in both approaches—the mental and the heart/by heart. Perhaps this is the integration we seek, where both approaches can be seen as one, interdependent, the mind—the heart, the very being—all mutually beneficial. I very much value your detailed Savitri postings and am learning so much from them. I appreciate that you are open to questioning every approach as well.”
Indeed, to quote the Mother:
If truly one knows how to meditate upon Savitri, one will receive all the help one needs. In our own little way, one way of meditating upon Savitri is by studying it carefully, by what the Indian yogic prescriptions say, “manan”, by putting full mental focus on the object, concentrating on it, by cogitation, meditation, musing, rumination, deliberation, reflection; if it can become identification, samyama, then one is actually doing yoga with it. Surely, the effort has some value and sense, has certain pertinence as far as our endeavour to enter into the world of Savitri is concerned. All our faculties, our will and thought and feeling, our spirit and soul must awake to the sun that Savitri is.
And, in fact, any one of these can be a way to live in Savitri. The rest will come from Savitri itself. I heard of a person who could not see but when Savitri was given to him, he ‘saw’ that it was all written in gold. I also recall an occasion what a learned person said in his talk after my presentation in a conference. I had quoted Savitri and soon he said, rather obliquely, that the Mother never liked Savitri being discussed, that Savitri is not to be discussed at all. But what does that mean? In plain words, it simply means: “keep shut.” But I just responded, by saying: “I don’t know.” Can there be any bar on any method? Not at all; there cannot be any bar. How can there be? Isn’t she the Sun from which we can kindle all our suns?
About approaching Savitri, the Mother says that “the direct road is by the heart.” She told this to young Mona Sarkar in one of his meetings with her. I am posting this talk of the Mother on Savitri separately. It has the power to settle everything for us. She prefaced it by saying: "I shall give you something special; be prepared." The talk begins as follows: “It does not matter if you do not understand it—Savitri, read it always. You will see that every time you read it, there will be something new experience; things which were not here, 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 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.” And she says: “Always your experience is enriched, it is revelation at each step…”
Perhaps there is always something special she gives to each individual to be in Savitri. Her demand is: “Be prepared.” There is always something special she gives to each individual. Let us receive it.
There are many aspects of Savitri and there are many ways of looking at Savitri. The most important is of course its affirmation of the Spirit in things, Spirit as the dynamic Truth shaping in its expansive and expanding luminous freedom the destiny of this creation. This also implies that, to enter into Savitri, we have to make an extensive, a many-sided preparation as far as our instrumental faculties are concerned, our senses and our tools, our gadgets and devices, our machinery of cognition, both occult and spiritual; we have to also make progress leading to wideness of consciousness, including possibly the yogic-spiritual. While Savitri itself can become a means for that progress, there is needed the right kind of effort from our side.
We must be prepared to undertake the hardship of its discipline by keeping ready all the involved aspects of our personality—with the mind capable of receiving intimations of gleaming knowledge, and the heart responding to the ardencies of life-movements in their thousand moods of magnificence and dignity, and the will steady in its intent, steady like a bright flame of sacrifice burning upward to heaven. What is it here that cannot be pressed into service for the fullness of realisation that Savitri offers? Indeed, nothing there is that cannot be transformed by Savitri. But, fundamentally, there has to be in us a “call” to live in Savitri who shall give us the Truth and the things of the Truth. With it alone can begin our yogic life, our life in Savitri, of making Savitri as our Book of Yoga. The call has to come, when the answer is already present.
In the meanwhile, however, we can live in Savitri’s presence in several ways. In Savitri there is spiritual philosophy put in the revealing language of a poet, its expression carrying the inspired and inevitable Word. We have in it mysticism, occult knowledge, religion, metaphysics, arts, sciences, literature, history of man and history of the earth, all that is noble and living, that can impart to our perception the sense of infinity which can give meaning to our daily occupations. Any one of these can become our foundational engagement. In fact, it has thus already opened out an altogether new world of creative action for us. Based on Savitri we already have Sunil Bhattacharya’s music, and Huta Hindocha’s paintings under the direct guidance of the Mother. These are examples of the new art that is to come in its wake, and there will be many more creations to bring Savitri itself closer to us.
We thus envisage the coming of new schools of thought, choreography, poetry, criticism, comparative research and studies, fiction, songs, oratorical dissertations, discourses, recitations and readings, all welling up from this inexhaustible fountain of creativity. The poem has also been translated into several languages, mostly in verse-form, but also at times as prose renderings. Maybe some of these are rudimentary attempts, and much will have to be done to achieve some minimum aesthetic satisfaction that is to be expected from a work connected with it. Nonetheless, these attempts do demonstrate the possibilities that have sprung up from Savitri’s world of delight. If around the stone-still statue of Buddha, in Ellora, there is the calm of infinity that nothing can disturb, we shall expect a crystalline stream of sweetness and joy rushing from the marble face of Savitri; halo’d by the moon of beauty, or carved in the heart of amethyst, she shall prove to be “the Sun from which we kindle all our suns.” If only, Satyavan-like, our “mind transfigures to a rapturous seer”!
RYD 
