The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

6. Consciousness:

Its Quadridirectional Movement:

There are four different types of "looks" possible for the normal waking consciousness of man: a "downlook", an "inlook", an "outlook" and an "uplook". To understand well the real significances of these rather odd terms, we have to remember that what we habitually know ourselves to be is not all we are: it is no more than "a bubble on the ocean of our total field of existence". At first glance this may come as an assertion altogether unbelievable but still it

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remains a fact that apart from the very insignificant and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of the rest of our being, "the immense more", that lies hidden in apparently inaccessible "reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications." (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 498-99) (italics author's)

Now, through the process of the widening of our consciousness by yogic sadhana it is possible for us to extend our vision into our circumconscient part; by the deepening or inwardization of our consciousness we may very well look into our intraconscient subliminal range of being; and by the heightening of the consciousness we can project our sight into the superconscient region. We may also cast our gaze downward to plunge it into the obscure recesses of our subconscient part. There is a still more submerged region, the Inconscient, which is the dark basis of all earthly manifestation.

The following verses from Savitri refer in brief to the surface, the height, the depth and the wideness of our consciousness:

"But knowledge ends not in these surface powers

That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance

And dare not look into the dangerous depths

Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.

There is a deeper seeing from within

And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,

A greater vision meets us on the heights

In the luminous wideness of the Spirit's gaze." (168)

Let us now proceed to the exploration of the nature of sight in these different hidden zones of our being.

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