The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

Sixth Element:

Sense Action:

All of us know that in our normal "seeing" of a physical object, a very complex neurological-electrical process goes on behind our optical, organ, which alone gives rise to the visual sense action. Without this accompanying physiological process, so we believe, no sight is possible. But this too is an erroneous presupposition.

What is true is that all "seeing" arises basically out of a direct knowledge offered by the consciousness but because of our egoistic separative way of functioning we have divided the world into "self" and "not-self", into subject and object, and, then, in order to have the knowledge of the so-separated objects, we take recourse to indirect means like sense-organs and sense-actions. But this arrangement of external device elaborated in terrestrial life-evolution does

not and cannot abrogate the basic fact that the true sense-action is in the mind and not in the optical apparatus. Here is an illuminating passage from Sri Aurobindo's Kena Upanishad:

"Mind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing, etc. on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life... [But] sight and the other senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs in the terrestrial evolution... they are inherent capacities [of Mind] and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate." (SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 195)

If we admit the truth of what Sri Aurobindo's passage indicates, all our objections to the possibility of having suprasensuous supraphysical subtle vision of beings, objects, events, etc., cannot but vanish.

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