The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

13. Sight in the Superconscient:

(A) Introduction:

We have just now referred to the insufficiency of the normal mind of man to be an instrument for the discovery of the Truth:

"Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light

Catching at little fragments of the truth..." (161)

But if mind fails, what else remains? Again, it has been affirmed that "thought nor word can seize eternal Truth". (276) But, then, if thought proves its impotence, what else can take its place? The answer is: What else? It must be a sight:

"Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight..." (276) Yes, it has to be a sight but surely not the sight of mind: it must be a far greater sight:

"His being stretched beyond the sight of thought."

(260)

So we have to advance farther into the domains of the spirit, acquire the Spirit's sight and become a Kavi, Rishi, or Seer:

"The veil is torn, the thinker is no more:

Only the spirit sees and all is known." (571)

Now this Spirit's vision can be had only in the Superconscient. But what is this superconscient? Well, all that we have said so far in this essay as regards the total constitution of our being, viz., the Inconscient, the Subconscient, the subliminal Intraconscient, the subliminal Circumconscient,

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and the Waking State, does not suffice to give a full account of what we really are. For there is a range of being and consciousness far transcending all these elements of our constitution, which is super-conscient to all the other provinces of our existence:

"Out of the inconscient and the subliminal

Arisen, we live in mind's uncertain light...

Above us dwells a superconscient god

Hidden in the mystery of his own light..." (484)

So we now proceed to the delineation of the nature of sight in those superconscient regions of our being.

If and when we pierce the veil of our limiting mind-consciousness and enter into the superconscient field, we find there various worlds of cosmic existence: there are too, be it noted, various corresponding planes of our subjective consciousness. Here is a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga which throws light on the point we have been discussing:

"... they are as if a ladder plunging down into Matter and perhaps below it, rising up into the heights of the Spirit, even perhaps to the point at which existence escapes out of cosmic being into ranges of a supra-cosmic Absolute..." (p. 438)

It is worth quoting in this connection a passage from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine which makes clear to us the constitution of the superconscient realm:

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"... from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfillment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis." (p. 938)

Now the ascending sight of the sadhaka undergoes a progressive transformation as it mounts the ladder of the four-rung "spiritual Mind" series. We now intend to describe in brief outline the nature of the sight in each of the four levels represented by (i) the Higher Mind, (ii) the Illumined Mind, (iii) the Intuitive Mind, and (iv) the Overmind. But before that let us enjoy the rasa of a significant passage from Savitri:

"A vision came of higher realms than ours,

A consciousness of brighter fields and skies,

Of beings less circumscribed than brief-lived men

And subtler bodies than these passing frames,

Objects too fine for our material grasp,

Acts vibrant with a superhuman light..." (28)

(B) Sight in the Spiritual Mind Planes:

To recapitulate: once we cross the confines of the normal mind of man, we meet on our ascending climb a series of

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hierarchised luminous planes of consciousness serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind of non-spiritual humanity and the native heights of our spiritual being. These planes are in the ascending order:

(i) the Higher Mind; (ii) the Illumined Mind; (iii) the Intuitive Mind; (iv) the Overmind; and finally (v) the Supermind or Gnosis, this last being the plane of absolute and everlasting Light, that transcends altogether the aparārdha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes:

(1)"He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights" (76)

(2)"A vision lightened on the viewless heights" (42)

(3)"On summit Mind are radiant altitudes

Exposed to the luster of Infinity,

Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,

Upraised estates of Mind and measureless." (659)

(B.l) Sight in the Higher Mind:

The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness to which the ascent out of our normal mentality takes us. This is a mind of automatic and spontaneous knowledge, knowledge assuming the nature of Truth-Thought. Its most characteristic movement is a mass-ideation, a totality of truth-seeing at a single view. The relation of idea with idea, of truth with truth is not established by logic but emerges already self-seen in the integral whole. Thought in the 'Higher Mind' is not an acquired knowledge but a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom. For, we must not forget, "thought in itself, in its

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origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception, ... a powerful but ... secondary result of spiritual vision..." (The Life Divine, p. 945)

Now a few Savitri verses depicting the sight in the Higher Mind:

(1)"There Mind, a splendid sun of vision's rays,

Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts"

(327)

(2)"Ideal rotated symphonies of sight" (301)

(3)"The immortal's thoughts displaced our bounded

view" (529)

(4)"Illumined by a vision in the thought" (176)

(5)"A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes" (659)

(B.2) Sight in the Illumined Mind:

Beyond the plane of the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought lies the plane of the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, which works primarily by spiritual vision and not by thought: thought is here only a subordinate and secondary movement expressive of sight.

Now some illustrative verses from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri'.

(1)"An empyrean vision saw and knew" (25)

(2)"Whence it shoots the arrows of his sight and will"

(529)

(3)"Whose fire bums in the eyes of seer and sage;

A lightning flash of visionary sight" (627)

(4)"There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;

A burning head of vision leads the mind,

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Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;

The heart glows, an illuminate and seer" (660)

(B.3) Sight in the Intuitive Mind:

Next in the order of ascension is the Intuitive Mind whose characteristic power is an intimate and exact truth-perception which arises out of a revealing encounter between the subject and the object, carrying in it as its natural consequence a truth-sight and truth-conception. Thought in the Intuitive Mind is revelatory in character.

Here are some verses from Savitri indicating how sight functions in this Intuitive Mind plane:

(1)"Sight's lightnings leapt into the invisible" (31)

(2)"Nothing escaped his vast intuitive sight" (96)

(3)"Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack

Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs" (660)

(4)"Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,...

Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes..."

(660)

(B.4) Sight in the Overmind:

Beyond the plane of the Intuitive Mind is a superconscient cosmic Mind which possesses a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge. In the wide cosmic perception of the Overmind,

"Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

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All Time is one body, Space a single book:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind..." (660)

In the Overmind "all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge..." {The Life Divine, p. 950)

Here are some verses from Savitri characterising the sight in the Overmind:

(1)"His boundless thought was neighbour to cosmic

sight:

A universal light was in his eyes" (79)

(2)"... eyes of boundless thoughts" (335)

(3)"All came at once in his single view" (96)

(4)"It enveloped all Nature in a single glance" (26)

(5)"It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind"

(555)

(6)"Mind was a single immeasurable look" (556)

(7)"The stretch and blaze of cosmic sight" (661)

(8)"A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense

Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form" (662)

Sight of the Overmental Gods:

(1)"Immobile, seeing the milleniums pass" (57)

(2)"They look on our struggle with impartial eyes" (57)

(3)"The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes"

(587)

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(4)"Unmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze"

(574)

(5)"And look impassive on a suffering world,

Calm they gaze down on the little human scene"

(428)

(B.5) Spiritual Sight:

We have been discussing the nature of sight and vision in the superconscient Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and Overmind levels of consciousness. Now all these sights are called "spiritual sights". Here a vague question may perhaps trouble the mind of some readers: Why are we taking care to term the cognitions in the superconscient planes as "sights" and not purely and simply as "knowledge"? The question needs some clarifying answer at this point. Sri Aurobindo himself has discussed this specific point at many places in The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, Letters on Yoga, also in Vol. 17 of his Collected Works. We give below the summary of his observations:

A mental figure or conception is not what is called a "realisation" or a "seeing". It is no better than an indirect knowledge, paroksa. What is needed is a direct vision of the truth without the need of observation of the object, reasoning, evidence, imagination, memory or any other of the usual faculties of intellect. Now the spiritual vision, drsti, is a sort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to it as do things physically seen to the physical eye. "It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality,... and conception gives place to a

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knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 291) (italics author's)

This sight or drsti is to the spirit what the eyes are to the physical mind and, Sri Aurobindo emphasises, "one has the sense of having passed through a subtly analogous process." (Ibid., p. 803)

The ancient sages of India highly valued this power of internal spiritual vision; for only this can make a man a Rishi or a Kavi, a Seer, and no longer a mere thinker.

We quote here certain verses from Savitri which bring out in clear outline the nature of the (i) "Seer's sight", (ii) "spiritual sight", and the (iii) "Spirit's sight".

Seer's Sight:

(1)"My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer" (408)

(2)"A Seer was bom, a shining guest of Time" (25)

(3)"It looked into the very self of things;

Deceived no more by form he saw the soul." (26)

(4)"Transmitting gave to prophet and to seer

The inspired body of the mystic truth." (39)

(5)"... a mystic seer

Through vision looks at the invisible" (398)

(6)"A seer, he has entered the forbidden realms...

Armed with the golden speech, the diamond eye"

(681)

Spiritual Sight:

(1) "It needs the power of a spiritual gaze" (49)

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(2) "... forced

The carved thought-shrouded doors to swing apart,

Unlocked the avenues of spiritual sight" (683)

(3)"Unsealed was Nature's great spiritual eye" (382)

(4)"His sight, spiritual in embodying orbs,

Could pierce through the grey phosphorescent haze

And scan the secrets of the shifting flux" (138)

(5)"...immediacy of errorless sight" (267)

(6)"Its vision of some stupendous All" (298)

(7)"A gaze of the Alone from every face" (35)

(8)"Her eyes were turned towards the eternal source"

(501)

(9)"Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees

Things barred from human thinking's earthly lids"

(572)

(10)"Thence gazing with an immeasurable outlook

One with self's inlook..." (298)

(11)"His knowledge an in view caught unfathomable,

An outview by no brief horizons cut" (301)

Spirit's Sight:

(1)"The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen" (665)

(2)"... the spirit's vision can descry

[not] dimmed by the imperfection of its means"

(256, 257)

(3)"Mystic, ineffable is the Spirit's truth,

Unspoken, caught only by the spirit's eye." (272)

(4)"... the silent Being within

Who sees life's drama pass with unmoved eyes"

(470)

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