On Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

OPENING SPEECH FOR THE

SRI AUROBINDO RESEARCH ACADEMY

24 APRIL 1978

In everything connected with Sri Aurobindo, as this Academy most evidently is, we have to think of the new Truth of the spiritual consciousness, which he has brought to the world - the all-creative and all-transforming Supermind.

The Supermind, by the very nature of its comprehensiveness, takes the whole of life into its scope. The new Truth which it represents must, therefore, mean a host of fresh insights waiting for us in all the fields of human activity -philosophy, sociology, history, science, art and even business. Everywhere by its influence we should be able to discover novel aspects which would change the views and interpretations hitherto prevalent.

Sri Aurobindo should lead us not only to look more energetically for the verities of life but also to look in a way not done so far, look again and again - with an ever more penetrating eye. What he should bring about is not merely a search for things: he should bring about a re-search, a new quest, a fresh exploration, a movement along unexpected lines. In this sense of the word the Sri Aurobindo Research Academy has to function.

However, for this sense to be fully operative we must go beyond mental means of questing and exploring. The quest and exploration have to be by the mind but not from the mind exclusively. We must aim to draw upon sources deep within,

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founts far above, and make the mind their instrument. Then alone will the Academy research basically in the Aurobindonian spirit.

In the hope of its fulfilling such an ideal I declare it open today. And in doing so I cannot do better than quote some lines from Savitri, that epic of supreme research, which might take for a subtitle the name of one of Balzac's novels: La Recherche de I'absolu. The mood at our opening ceremony, at which I was honoured with the job of cutting the ribbon at the Academy's door, should be inspired by what Aswapati, the father of the poem's heroine, experienced:

Awakened to new unearthly closenesses,

The touch replied to subtle infinities

And with a silver cry of opening gates

Sight's lightnings leaped into the invisible.[p. 31]

(Aspects of Sri Aurobindo, 2000, pp. 194-95)

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