Source: http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2011/9/18/4896522.html
This is apropos of Amal Kiran’s handling of the single-volume edition of Savitri that came out in 1954, the University Edition. We shall see separately the number of changes that have been made by him in this with respect to the original 1950-51 edition. But it should also be noted that several of these changes have been discarded later and the earlier readings restored. For instance, the very title “Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol” which was changed to “Savitri (Followed by the Author’s Letters on the Poem)” had been in the next edition restored to the original, “Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol”; similarly, commas which were added at a few places in the 1954 have now disappeared, thus going back to the original edition. While we should have a detailed list of all such differences, it is felt that, for the immediate context, these few illustrations should be pretty sufficient. These themselves make Amal Kiran’s editing of the 1954 edition somewhat untrustworthy. The Mother was categorical, that she would not allow Amal Kiran to change even a comma in Savitri. But he did change. Did the Mother “approve” these changes? Did she go into all the details, entry by entry, and satisfy herself with the proposed variations? Certainly, this did not happen. She had kind of left it to Amal Kiran, that he would not go by his own ideas and notions of things, that his literary measures and his standards of understanding of the spiritual philosophy would not be the right way of approaching Savitri in this manner, that a ‘better sense’ would prevail upon him, something of the quality Nolini Kanta Gupta had, that if it is the Master’s ‘mistake’ it is the Master’s ‘mistake’ and we are not there to correct it. The Mother meant Amal Kiran to look at the whole issue in that spirit. After all, it was Amal Kiran who had gone to the Mother with a list of proposed ‘corrections’; it is not that she had asked him if Savitri needed to be ‘corrected’ anywhere. And in that respect she was definite about her stand. In any case, would the Mother “approve” changes in what was “approved” by Sri Aurobindo himself, the 1950-51 edition of Savitri? Impossible. But the weird, the amusing part of it is, Amal Kiran did change them again later, in the Centenary Edition and the Revised Edition which had his “approval”. For instance, “earth’s” of the 1950 became “earth’s,” in 1954 and 1972 which was reverted to “earth’s” in 1993. (Book Two Canto One, line 7) However, let us have a look at the note Amal Kiran has left behind for study. While describing some ways of the Mother’s working in his Our Light and Delight, he writes what is given in the following. (pp. 22-27) On the whole, regarding this aspect, the Mother was critical of Amal Kiran and she did say so on a couple of occasions later also. But, perhaps, everything about the Mother’s unhappiness in the matter gets summed in this: “Just then a black lizard came and stood at Nirod’s feet and looked up at him. The Mother saw it and said: ‘it seems to have a fascination for your feet. Why? Could it be symbolic?’ ” ~ RYD
… there is also the ancient right of the Guru to test the faith of the disciple by—as it is said in Indian parlance—dubbing the sun moon and the moon sun. Whatever word falls from the Guru’s lips has to be accepted by the disciple without question. Every command of his has to be carried out and every statement taken as God’s truth. Thus alone can the disciple open himself thoroughly to the Divine Power streaming through the Guru and put away the gross physical consciousness which is the main obstacle to the growth of the inner being. I do not know whether the Mother ever exercised the right of faith-test in the strict sense. She was too modern to go in for traditional methods. I have found her always ready to be corrected even when she had previously made a sweeping declaration. But the correction proposed by the sadhak had also to come with an approach proper from the spiritual standpoint. If there was uppishness on the part of the sadhak she ignored the offered idea—not because the uppishness offended any egoistic sense in her but simply because it arose from such a sense in the sadhak. I once pointed out to her what I regarded as a mistake in a geographical detail in a statement she had made for publication, but she refused to accept my correction and said I was not being compelled to reproduce in print the interview with Chamanlal in which the detail had occurred. I realized later that I had made an elaborate, schoolmasterish and rather showy approach and had been scorned on account of it. At another time she wrote to me that mistakes should always be admitted and set right and herself made some changes I had proposed in a writing of hers on Auroville.
What a difference is made in result between the right approach and the wrong I knew when the University Centre edition of Savitri was to be published practically under my editorship. Perhaps her action had also a tinge of the other movement. I noted the whole incident in my diary soon after its occurrence.
It was April 10, 1954. The day proved one of the most decisive in my inner life. I took to the Mother some suggestions with regard to Savitri. I had written them down. The Mother looked strange and said: “I can answer without even reading your note. I won’t allow you to change even a comma in Savitri.”
I knew she was striking out at something which in the past had led me to make some “editorial” adjustments in three letters of Sri Aurobindo in Mother India. There had been three related questions about the Mother, to each of which he had simply answered “Yes”. I put the questions together, followed by only one “Yes”. I realised afterwards that a needed affirmative emphasis had been watered down by a misguided sense of economical elegance. Later, when the second volume of the first edition of Savitri was under preparation, a sadhak had stressed to the Mother the danger of sending the proofs to me. The Mother seems even to have passed an order against sending them. But Prithwisingh and Nirod made urgent representations to her, saying that it would be a great mistake not to let me see the proofs, for I had made very appropriate suggestions in the past, which had been found correct when the typed copy had been compared with the original manuscript. So the Mother cancelled her order but left, of course, the final decision in the hands of Nolini and Nirod. In fact, I, being in Bombay at that period, had no power over what the press would print since whatever I might propose would have to pass under their eyes. The press was not dealing directly with me.
When the proof-reading was finished, Nolini wrote to me thanking me for the important and valuable work I had done. Now, before the new single-volume edition of Savitri was started, I made another long list of suggestions, many of which came to be accepted. The proofs of the new edition were passing through my hands as I was in the Ashram at the time, and suggestions again were being made by me.
“Mother,” I said, “I am not wanting you to sanction the changing of commas and such things. All I want is that in some sort of Publisher’s Note we should say that certain passages in Parts II and III did not receive final revision: otherwise critics will think that they are what Sri Aurobindo intended them finally to be.”
The Mother exclaimed: “Do you think there is anybody in the world who can judge Sri Aurobindo? And how do you know what Sri Aurobindo intended or did not intend? He may have wanted just what he has left behind. How can you say that he did not give the final revision? How can you I judge?”
I said: “It is not only my own opinion. Nirod agrees with me, and I think Nolini also.”
“It is presumptuous for anyone to have such an opinion. Who can enter into Sri Aurobindo’s consciousness? It is a consciousness beyond everything and what it has decided how can any one know?”
“Mother, from the fact that Sri Aurobindo sometimes corrected his own things on our pointing out oversights we conclude that passages may be there which needed revision.”
At this, the Mother exploded like a veritable Mahakali: “Yes, 1 know. People used to pester him with letters, pointing out grammatical mistakes and other things. He used to make changes just for the sake of peace. He was very polite and did not let people see what a nuisance they were. But when he and I were together and alone and like this”—here she put her two palms together two or three times to show the intimacy—“he used to say: ‘What a bother, what a nuisance! And once he said: ‘But I had a purpose in putting the thing in this way. I wanted it like this.’ Sri Aurobindo made many concessions out of politeness and a wish to be left in peace. When a great being comes down here to work he wants peace and not botheration. Yes, he was very polite, and people took advantage of his compassion and misunderstood it and got all sorts of ideas. Sri Aurobindo was polite—but I have made it a point not to be polite. I am not polite at all. The other day Pavitra brought me somebody’s idea about Sri Aurobindo’s passing. Somebody said Sri Aurobindo had died because of this or that. I told Pavitra: ‘Let him think anything—I simply don’t care. The truth will remain what it is.’ “
I raised the question: “Take the Epilogue to Savitri, Mother. It comes from an early version and is not equal to the rest of the poem. In some places it is almost like a sort of anticlimax as regards the plane of spiritual inspiration.”
At this moment Nirod walked in and said: “Sri Aurobindo asked me: ‘What remains now to be done in Savitri?’ I replied: ‘The Book of Death and the Epilogue.’ He remarked: ‘We shall see about them later.’”
The Mother turned to Nirod and said: “That may be his way of saying that nothing more needed to be done. We can’t form any conclusions. At most you may write a Publisher’s Note to say: ‘We poor blind ignorant human beings think Sri Aurobindo did not intend certain things to be the final version. And we are giving our opinion for what it may be worth.’ “
Just then a black lizard came and stood at Nirod’s feet and looked up at him. The Mother saw it and said: “it seems to have a fascination for your feet. Why? Could it be symbolic?”
Nirod: “That is for you to say.”
The Mother’s whole outburst made me wonder about my discussions through the years with Sri Aurobindo over Savitri, the innumerable comments I used to make and he used to welcome and consider patiently. Was he lust being polite with me? It hurt very much to think that. It also seemed impossible, non-factual. But I tried to open my being to the Mother and to accept wholly what she had said. I thanked her for the new outlook she had given me, and bowed down to her. She smiled and blessed me. She had made in me a wide opening. I opened out into a sense of Sri Aurobindo’s vastness and divineness. Something in the physical mind seemed broken, to make room for the higher and wider Consciousness.
Later, the physical mind attempted a strong comeback and I passed through a whole afternoon of severe conflict. Should I accept the Mother’s statement without reservation? May it not be that Sri Aurobindo’s discussions with me on Savitri were an exception to his practice of being merely polite? But to insist on an exception and to refuse to accept the opposite showed only the resistance of ego, of amour propre, the intellect’s pride and vanity. I felt I must reject all these self-regarding attitudes and truly grant that Sri Aurobindo might have been nothing more than polite and compassionate in considering all my suggestions to him. Then my ego would be thrown out and my physical mind become clear and grow receptive to the vast divine Consciousness of both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I chose to take without any question her words, however contrary they might appear to my own sense of factuality. Moreover, I said to myself: “Your heart will not go anywhere else in search of a Guru. All your hope and help are in this Ashram. Whatever the pain, submit. You have no alternative. But at the end you will surely find light and delight as the Mother’s gift through every move of hers.”
Now for the first time, even in my most outer awareness, I realised what she and Sri Aurobindo truly were. The whole poise of physical being experienced a change. A new life began, and I knew then that a fundamental obstacle—intellectual self-esteem—had essentially disappeared.
What is of extreme interest to note is the sequel to the whole incident. Some time afterwards, when I was putting together the letters which Sri Aurobindo had written to me on Savitri to serve as a supplement in the last part of the volume, I spoke to the Mother of an introductory note to them. She consented to listen to what I had a mind to write. In that note most of the points which I had previously put to her but which she had rejected came in again, amidst some other matters. She approved of all of them unconditionally. And when I proposed that this note might go as a footnote in small print she expressed her wish that it should go as a real introduction in its own right.
I learned how the state of mind in which we approach the Mother and the attitude we bring to any situation related to her determines the consequences.
A second lesson was that the Mother’s actions, no matter how bewildering, are directed always towards the flowering of our true soul.
Another danger to guard against is leaping to conclusions about the Mother’s decisions by taking the face-value of any chain of events. …
Here is an interesting bit from Our Light and Delight: (p. 213)
Perhaps the master-stroke of the Master occurred when Savitri was first appearing canto by canto in small fascicules. After all the pages of a certain canto were ready for printing, the Press sent up again to Sri Aurobindo the proof of one page, asking whether a particular comma was quite in place. Sri Aurobindo, instead of just replying “Yes” or “No”, added a dozen or more new lines! The additional verses upset the arrangement of the fascicule and much had to be redone.
Soon after the one-volume edition was out, the Mother said to our small group upstairs:
Savitri is occult knowledge and spiritual experience. Some part of it can be understood mentally—but much of it needs the same knowledge and experience for understanding it. Nobody here except myself can explain Savitri. One day I hope to explain it in its true sense.
