The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Part Three

Vision in the "Higher Hemisphere"

1. Beyond the Reach of Sight:

The central theme of our essay has been the study of the itinerary of the ascent of sight. Following this course we have travelled from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "cosmic gaze" of the Overmind. But all these belong to what was called by the ancient Indian mystics the "Lower Hemisphere" of our existence. But the reach of the Reality far transcends the borders of this Overmind zone of consciousness.

Now, there are three unified principles of the Divine, viz., the Existence principle (Sat), the Consciousness-Force principle (Chit-Shakti) and the Bliss principle (Ananda), and finally a fourth principle, Supermind (Mahas or Vijnana). These four supernal principles constitute the "Higher Hemisphere" of our being. Now the question is: can sight travel to this Higher Hemisphere, or, it has to stop at the upper border of the Overmind? Already the Rishi of the Isha Upanishad complained that the golden Overmind was blocking his vision from advancing farther upward. In fact, this Overmind links the lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance with the supramental Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness, but at the same time veils from our sight the greater Truth of the Supermind. The cosmic Vision of this overmental plane of consciousness, proceeding luminously from the truth, constitutes the "golden lid covering the face of the truth" (hiranmayena pātrena satyasyāpihitam

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mukham). (Isha Upanishad, 15) In order to seize the truth in its unalloyed and unmitigated Glory, we have to make a last supreme ascent in the climb of our spiritual consciousness and break through the shining shield of Overmind into the realm of the supramental Gnosis. But will our power of sight be able to follow the climb of our consciousness into the four-rung zone of the higher hemispehre? Apparently not. Our "mortal" sight which has functioned in different ways on all the levels up to the Overmind abruptly avows its impotence and bows out. Conclusion: All that is above and beyond may be an object of knowledge bur surely not of vision. This is apparently supported by the following verses of Savitri:

(1)"Veiled by the Ray no mortal eye can bear" (57)

(2)"Thought and sight can never know" (97)

(3)"But what That was no thought or sight could tell"

(308)

(4)"Beyond the sight, the last support of form" (320)

(5)"An Omniscient knowing without thought or sight"

(81)

But for sight the situation may not be so hopeless as that. For already the Vedic seers indicated that in the Supermind of the higher hemisphere one does not see the truth "by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye..." (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 462)

So, can it be that sight itself will undergo a supreme transformation and appear in another essence in the divine world? The following passage from one of Sri Aurobindo's

letters leads us to believe that the answer may indeed be a 'yes':

"The supermind is an entirely different consciousness not only from the spiritualised Mind, but from the planes above spiritualised Mind which intervene between it and the supramental plane. Once one passes beyond overmind to supermind, one enters into a consciousness to which the norms of the other planes do not at all apply and in which the same truth, e.g. Sachchidananda and truth of this universe, is seen in quite a different way and has a different dynamic consequence." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 240-41)

So there can possibly be a "supramental sight" in the higher hemisphere far beyond the overmental zone which represents the last rung of the lower hemisphere and closes the series in the ignorance. But before we come to the characterisation of this supramental sight, it would be better for our. appreciation if we indicate a little more fully what the two hemispheres of existence actually signify.

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