The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Section III:

Analysis of the Process of "Seeing"

It has by now been made sufficiently clear that Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri embodies his visional experiences (and of the Mother's too) in all their depth and height and comprehensiveness. We may venture to call Savitri "A panoramic Vision of the Ascent of Sight". Indeed, it is with a thrill that we discover, mentioned in the body of this great Poem, hundreds of different "sights" with their nature precisely delineated and their respective places and values clearly indicated. To satisfy the curiosity of the readers we mention below only a few representative ones amongst the various "sights" and "eyes", etc., referred to by Sri Aurobindo in his epic Savitri. (Please note that there is no logical or psychological sequential order in the following enumeration: Sri Aurobindo's expressions have been jotted down in the order they have come to the writer's mind.) Here is the brief list:

"ordinary mortal sight", "vision's sight", "visionary sight", "abstract sight", "sightless sight", "an immortal's sight", "transcendent sight", "cosmic sight", "the Supreme's sight", "the supreme sight", "ever-lasting sight", "ever-wakeful sight", "original sight", "originating sight", "closed eyes' sight", "inner sight", "absolute sight", "prophetic sight", "predicting sight", "intuitive sight", "ideal sight", "thinker's sight", "sight of

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thought", "soul's sight", "sight in the heart", "Spirit's sight", "spiritual sight", "eternal sight", "instinct's sight", "mind's sight", "sight of the sage", "dreamer's sight", "eternal eye", "wisdom's eyes", "immortal eyes", "deathless eyes", "Timeless Eye", "the Eye of eternity", "Inner eye", "the third eye", "Spirit's eye", "dull body's eye", "eyes of creative Bliss", "all-seeing Eye above", "unsleeping eye", "God's eye", "gods' eyes", "reason's gaze", "Godhead's gaze", "Omniscient's gaze", "unborn gaze", "immortal gaze", "gaze of life", "seeing will", "seeing mind", "Matter's self-view", "unageing look", etc., etc.

Before we can appreciate in full this aspect of Savitri with its very rich harvest of "sights" and "visions" it would be advisable if we first form a very clear notion about what "sight" really signifies and what can possibly be its multiform levels of manifestation, widely varying in nature and quality, in value and importance, depending on the variability of the eight essential elements involved in any complete act of "seeing". These constitutive elements are:

1.the object to be "seen";

2.the space in which the object is placed;

3.the "light" which makes the object "viewable";

4.the presence or absence of any obstruction or obstacle intervening between the object and the viewer;

5.the optical sense-organ and its accompanying accessories;

6.the physiological-nervous phenomena produced in the visual apparatus of the would-be receiver of the "vision";

7.the sense-action of sight, this being the crucial link between the physico-physiological phenomena involved in

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any act of "seeing" and their subjective transcription in the consciousness of the "viewer"; and lastly

8. the particular nature and quality of the "consciousness", operating in the "viewer", which mysteriously transcribes the objective physico-physiological nervous phenomenon into an "objectum" of subjective sight and vision which is qualitatively absolutely distinct and different from what is mentioned in 6 above.

This eighth element is the most crucial factor in determining what type of sight or vision the viewer would have vis-à-vis the object he is "looking at". The readers are requested to ponder deeply over the process and implication of this last point, for this will have a great bearing on the proper comprehension of the discussion that is going to follow. Be it noted for the moment that although there is always a relationship and correspondence between the objective "objectum" the viewer is seeing and the subjective "objectum", its transcription, which belongs to the private domain of his "consciousness", these two "objecta" are radically different in nature and the objective "objectum" remaining the same in appearance, the subjective "objectum" produced in the field of the consciousness of the viewer may be widely divergent in the case of different persons.

In our unreflective thinking we may glibly assume, almost as an indubitable fact beyond all challenge, that every human being, unless suffering from some defect or disease of the visual organ system, will have the same identical subjective sight or vision of a given object, say a rose, placed before him. But this assumption is entirely invalid and not true to fact at all.

Why we make bold to say so will be made clear in the sequel of this essay.

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