The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

7. Sight in the Inconscient:

The Inconscient is at the basis of this material world, where the Divine has, as it were, hidden himself in what seem to be his opposites, Non-Being, Insentience and Non-delight. This Inconscient seems to have created the material universe by its inconscient Energy, but this is only an appearance. For in the Inconscient there is an involved Consciousness with endless possibilities, a concealed and self-imprisoned Divine, imprisoned in Matter but with every potentiality held in its secret depths. (Letters on Yoga, p. 26)

While referring to this Inconscient Sri Aurobindo has used many striking expressions. Here are just a few of them: "eyeless waste"; "eyeless depths"; "battlefields of the Abyss"; "A leaden Nescience"; "viewless vast"; "eyeless muse"; "closed eyes of vanished memory"; "fixed regardless eyes"; "dead and staring eyes"; "blinded eyes"; etc.

Here are some representative verses from Savitri depicting the Inconscient:

(1)"An Eye unseen in the unseeing vast" (168)

(2)' 'To its own sight unrecognisable'' (331)

(3)"... the Inconscient's depths

That veil themselves from their own regard" (449)

(4)"A cavity filled with a blind mass of power" (489)

(5)"A heavy barrier of unseeing sight" (489)

(6)"Truth stares and does her works with bandaged

eyes" (494)

(7)"In the uncaring trance it groped for sight" (129)

(8)"God hid himself from his own view" (222)

(9)"His being from its own vision disappeared" (218)

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