The “sunlit path” in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is one of a dynamic inner surrender that lights the way forward, clears the path of psychological thorns, and removes the obstacles that present themselves as blockading the entrance to the domains of the spirit. The happiest are those who see everywhere the Mother’s Grace and hear always the sound of the Lord’s flute behind the clamour of life’s events.

One of the new books introduced in this issue is titled A Journey on the Sunlit Path, and it offers a glimpse of the life of one such man who trod his sunlit path. Known to many primarily as a speaker and lecturer on Sri Aurobindo’s works, Mangesh V Nadkarni (1933–2007) was also a noted scholar and highly respected teacher. The book, a collection of a few short articles by him on Savitri and many fond remembrances from his friends, family, colleagues, and former students, shows how someone who journeys on the sunlit path inspires and draws others along the way of harmony and light. Nadkarni’s stature as teacher, scholar, guide, and one who immersed himself in the study of Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri is hinted at in these few short excerpts from three of the remembrances and from one of his own articles in the book:

MVN [Professor M V Nadkarni] had the knack of making the most abstruse seem simple and elegant.

He was a distinguished scholar, and at a young age had attained great success in his professional sphere, but I know that he didn’t value such success and fame. He valued inner growth, and told me many times that this was more important than anything in life.… He was an authentic person. I have never seen him negative, cynical and pessimistic. As a spiritually alive person, he could never be so.

Dr. Nadkarni referred to himself as the “town crier”, and that is as apt a description of him as any, because he has succeeded in bringing Savitri to the common man. To my mind this is the most significant achievement of this instrument of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. For most of us the first attempt at reading Savitri is difficult.… But after one session with Nadkarniji one came away in love with this epic.

And in Nadkarni’s own words:

While Savitri touches on the world of human affairs, it does something which no other epic has ever attempted on such a grand scale—the revelation of ranges of consciousness. What baffles many a modern reader is the way Sri Aurobindo has forged English into a language capable of expressing the experience of the overmental ranges of consciousness. Outside of the Vedic Sanskrit there never has been spiritual poetry on such a massive scale; its mantric cadence and power are something new … In English at least, Savitri marks a new kind of poetry, what Sri Aurobindo has called “future poetry”, and we need a new science of aesthetics to come to terms with it.

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