The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

3. Supramental Sight:

Knowledge by identity between the subject and the object, between the seer and the seen, is the basic attribute of the supramental gnosis but this supramental knowledge or experience by identity carries in it as a secondary part of itself a supramental vision. This vision can come even

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before there is any identity, as a sort of emanation of light from this secret underlying unity. This vision may at times be detached from the identity as a separate power. The truth or the thing known is then felt as an object subjectively seen in the self.

The supramental eye can see a hundred converging and diverging motions in one glance. It can envelope in its harmonising vision all that seem to our fragmenting mind nothing but clash and opposition and the collision and strife of numberless contending truths and forces.

Truth to the supramental sight is at the same time single and infinite and the complexities of its play in time and space bring out with an abundant facility the rich significances of the Eternal's many-sided oneness.

The supramental gnosis starts from the truth and shows the appearances in the light of the truth. It sees the thing in itself first, penetrates to its original and eternal essence and nature, and places its processes and properties only as a self-expression of this fundamental nature. Thus the supramental vision would see not merely the thing but all its truths, forces and powers and all the eternities within it.

The supramental gnosis has the direct contact, the im-iwediate vision and the undiluted possession of the truth and has no need of seeking or any kind of procedure. The conclusion, if any, would be seen at once in its own right, by its own self-sufficient witness. All the so-called evidence would be seen too at once, along with it, in the same comprehensive figure, not at all as its "evidence" but as its inseparable "wings of circumstance".

The supramental gnosis dwells in the unity and knows by it all the very various diversities. These diversities are to it

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not diversities making up a constructed unity but a unity constituting its own multitudes.

The supramental gnosis lives in the infinite and views finite things only in their relation to the infinite and in the sense of the infinite and never as something divorced and different from the infinite.

Finally the supramental gnosis dominates time in one view and links past, present and future in a single continuous map of knowledge and in an unpartitioned time-vision. (Note: This introductory section on "supramental sight" is adapted from various passages of Sri Aurobindo's writings.)

Now, as usual, we quote below some illustrative verses from Savitri showing the character of supramental sight:

(1)"Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight'' (661)

(2)"A universal vision that unites" (325)

" (3) "All was uncovered to his sealless eye." (83)

(4)"Spirit no more is hid from its own view" (298)

(5)"A single and infallible look comes down" (27)

(6)"A wide tower of vision whence all could be seen

And all was centred in a single view" (514)

(7)"He is the vision and he is the seer" (61)

(8)"A kindling rapture joins the seer and seen" (112)

(9)"Sight was a flame-throw from identity" (301)

(10)"This seeing was identical with the seen" (546)

(11)"A plan in the occult eternal Mind

Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight"

(342)

(12)"The long flow of its manifesting course,

Was held in spirit's single wide regard." (299)

(13) "Bare in that Light Time toiled, his unseen works

Detected, the broad-flung far-seeing schemes

Unfinished which his aeoned flight unrolls

Were mapped already in that world-wide look"

(442)

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