The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

12. Sight in the Waking State:

We now come to the waking consciousness, the habitual consciousness of most men, which the subliminal and the subconscient have thrown up on the surface, just a wave of their secret surge.

The normal man's waking consciousness is a limping

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surface consciousness shut up in the body's limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. One is ordinarily aware only of his surface self and quite ignorant of all that functions behind the veil. "And yet what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being," and by far the immensely larger part lies hidden "behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 348)

While dwelling in this normal waking consciousness, a man becomes externalised and gazes outward and rarely if ever inward. No true spiritual life or any higher or deeper realisation becomes possible if one remains fettered to this waking state.

Now what is germane to our main theme of discussion is the interesting fact that every individual human being even in his ordinary waking existence is not composed of one but of many strands of consciousness and each of these strands has the possibility of having a characteristic sight of its own. The intellect, the will, the sense-mind, the desire-self, the heart, even the body-consciousness, all "see" in different ways. All these and other similar parts of the being are "like fields into which forces from the same planes of consciousness in the universal Nature are constantly entering or passing." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 947) Our mind and life and physical consciousness with all their complex sub-levels can each in its own way become aware of all that is there or happening in their corresponding domains and transcribe their awareness in the form of suitable visions. In the words of the Mother:

"... there are many different planes in which you can see. There is a mental seeing, a vital seeing, and there are some visions that are seen in a plane very close to the most material." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 13)

However that may be, we now proceed to select some verses from Savitri characterising the sights of different parts of the waking consciousness of the majority of men, starting with his material body and culminating in Reason, the highest faculty, passing through the different rungs such as "little life", "greater life", "heart", "physical mind", "little mind", "greater mind", "intellect", "thought", etc. Here are a few verses in each case:

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(a) Matter's Sight:

(1)"Out of the inconscient and subliminal

Arisen, we live in mind's uncertain light

And strive to know and master a dubious world

Whose purpose and meaning are hidden from our

sight." (484)

(2)"But this is only Matter's first self-view" (484)

(3)"Limited ... now by the dull body's sight" (372)

(4)"A lump of Matter, a house of closed sight" (488)

(5)"And Matter hides the soul from its own sight"

(702)

(6)"God wrapped his head from sight in Matter's

cowl" (621)

(7)"A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,

Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes" (623)

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(b)Sight in "Little Life":

(1)"Arriving with heavy eyes that hardly see" (139)

(2)"An eyeless Power that sees no more its aim" (133)

(3)"The upward look was alien to her sight" (136)

(4)"Fixed not his inward eye upon himself (143)

(5)"None thought to look beyond the hour's gains"

(145)

(6)"A half-awakened Nescience struggled there

To know by sight and touch the outside of things."

(145)

(7)"He peered across its scanty fringe of sight" (151)

(8)"Time has he none to turn his eyes within

And look for his lost self and his dead soul." (165)

(9)"... it tied the thought to visible things" (148)

(c)Sight in "Greater Life":

(1)"There was an ardour in the gaze of life

That saw heaven blue in the grey air of Night" (493)

(2)"Pale dreams grew real to the dreamer's eyes" (175)

(3)"Tied to some immediate sight and will" (188)

(4)"The magnificent wrappings...

That fold her desirable body out of sight" (189)

(5)"Life's visage hides life's real self from sight" (192)

(6)"Her action imprisons its immortal gaze" (196)

(d)Sight in the Ordinary Heart:

(1)"Our heart's sight is too blind and passionate" (161)

(2)"The seeker's sight receding from his heart" (452)

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(e)Imagination's Sight:

(1)"The dreaming deities look beyond the seen" (601)

(2)"A joy of light, a joy of sudden sight" (38)

(f)Sight in the "Physical Mind":

(1)"That strange observing Power imposed its sight.

It forced on flux a limit and a shape,

It gave its stream a lower narrow bank" (148)

(2)"It had no inward look, no upward gaze" (149)

(g)Sight in "Little Mind":

(1)"All she conceives in hazardous jets of sight" (244)

(2)"Absorbed and cabined in external sight" (245)

(3)"External fact it figures as sole truth,

Wisdom identifies with the earthward look" (246)

(4)"Error discouraged not its confident view" (248)

(5)"Unguided by reason or the seeing soul" (248)

(6)"The eye that looks at the dark half of truth" (192)

(7)"None had the inner look which sees Truth's whole"

(242)

(8)"Displaced the spirit's finer view of things" (242)

(9)"Its morning rays illume our twilight's eyes" (243)

(h)Sight in "Greater Mind":

(1)"A seeking Mind replaced the seeing Soul" (223)

(2)"They erected absolute walls of thought and speech

And made a vacuum to hold the One.

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In their sight they drove towards an empty peak"

(273)

(3)"By an abstract purity of godless sight,

By a percept nude, intolerant of forms,

They brought to Mind what Mind could never reach

And hoped to conquer Truth's supernal base."

(272-273)

(4)"They seized and held by their precisian eye" (266)

(i) Sight of Mental Reason:

Reason is the highest faculty available to normal man. But in the matter of its search and holding of the true truth of things, it suffers from many basic disabilities:

(i)It proceeds with labour from ignorance to truth.

(ii)It starts with appearances and never loses at least a partial dependence on them. It tries to show the truth in the light of the appearances.

(iii)Reason proceeds to conclusion with the crutch of inferences: it can never give us the direct vision of the truth.

(iv)The knowledge offered by the intellect and reason is always a mere "acquisition" and hence there hangs around it even in the best of circumstances a certain shadow of doubt and uncertainty.

(v)The mental reason cannot see the totality at all and hence does not know fully any whole.

(vi)The reason deals not with any thing in itself, its reality or its essence but only with its constituents, processes and properties.

(vii)Reason deals with the finite and is helpless before the infinite.

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All these and other related deficiencies render the sight of mental reason altogether fallible. Here are some illustrative verses from Savitri emphasising the penury of reason's vision:

(1)"... a pensive face and close peering eyes" (249)

(2)"... a rigorous stare in her creative eyes" (250)

(3)"She travels on the roads of erring sight" (252)

(4)"This constant change spells progress to her eyes "

(251)

(5)"Its highest, widest seeing was a half-search" (256)

(6)"Reason cannot tear off that glimmering mask,

Her efforts only make it glimmer more;

In packets she ties up the indivisible" (257)

(7)"... whose confident sight

A bounded prospect took for the far goal." (257)

(8)"... the great truths escape her narrow cast;

Guarded from vision by creation's depths" (626)

Although man the mental being prides himself on the possession of mind, and his "seeing thoughts" fill in "the blanks left by the seeking sense" (268), it remains a patent fact that mind, the intellect and the reason of man cannot grasp "the naked body of the Truth" (517): they are for ever "baffled by her endless garbs" (517). There is always a limit to the capacity of mind's vision.

(j) Limit of Mind's Sight:

(1) "That which moves all is hidden from his gaze"

(517)

(2)"His poring eyes miss the unseen behind" (517)

(3)"Sight retiring behind the walls of thought" (457)

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