Date: September 16, 2025
Venue: Sri Aurobindo Center for Advanced Research (SACAR), Pondicherry
As part of the 4-day workshop titled “Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri – A Whole Universe in Verse” organized by SACAR – Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, Mr. Narendra Murty, Research Associate, BhāratShakti, was invited to present a research paper on September 16, 2025. The programme was a mix of talks, paper presentations by professors and research scholars from across the country, an exhibition of paintings on Savitri and also a cultural event.
Talks on the various aspects were given by eminent speakers and scholars including Mr. Richard Hartz, Dr. Makarand Paranjape, Dr. Alok Pandey, Dr. Soumitra Basu, Mr. Matthijs Cornelissen, Dr. Larry Seidlitz, Dr. Madhumita Dutta and Dr. V Ananda Reddy, the Founder-Director of SACAR.
Mr. Narendra Murty from BhāratShakti presented a paper titled “Man’s Difficult Destiny”. The paper explores man’s difficult destiny and the impediments that stand in the way of his spiritual evolution as expressed in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, Book III, The Book of the Divine Mother, Canto 4: The Vision and the Boon. (Lines 85 to 124).
The selected lines deal with several important ideas such as the various forces that are aligned against man standing against his spiritual evolution, the transitory nature of his life, his fundamental ignorance, his divided nature where the different parts of his being are at war with each other, his bondage to the dualities of life and the tragic end of all his strivings and struggles.
To interpret and illustrate the lines of Savitri, Mr. Murty used several references from the Bhagavad Gita, Greek mythology, Thomas Hobbes, Plotinus, Charles Darwin and George Bernard Shaw to bring richness to the content which was highly appreciated by the listeners.