The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

10. The Intermediate Sight:

Its Lures and Risks:

We have been speaking about the visional experiences of the inner realm of consciousness but we should not forget

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that this field of vision is a mixed world and there is in it not only truth but much half-truth and error. For the rash and unwary sadhaka to enter into it without sufficient preparation and wise guidance may bring much confusion, misleading inspirations and false lights and voices. Sri Aurobindo has sounded a note of serious warning against these alluring but often dangerously misleading visions and experiences in his writing "The Intermediate Zone" (Letters on Yoga, pp. 1039-46), also in The Life Divine (p. 905). Here is a passage from his The Synthesis of Yoga dealing with the same topic:

"The seeker of spiritual perfection has to pass as quickly as possible, if he cannot altogether avoid, this zone of danger, and the safe rule here is to be attached to none of these things, but to make spiritual progress one's sole real objective, and to put no sure confidence in other things until the mind and life and soul are purified and the light of the spirit and Supermind or at least of the spiritually illumined mind and soul are shed on these inner ranges of experience." (pp. 843-44)

We reproduce below a few of the verses from Savitri which graphically describe the sight in this dark zone of experiences, also indicate how to avoid its lure:

(1)"Whose very gaze was a calamity" (205)

(2)"Alluring lips and eyes" (205)

(3)"fascinating eyes" (214)

(4)"Laughing with the eyes of truth" (207)

(5)"With evil eyes for lamps" (221)

(6)"a look of [deceptive] light" (215)

(7)"Forcing reluctant lids assailed the sight" (214)

(8)"A mob of visions broke across the sight,

A jostled sequence lacking sense and suite" (490)

(9)"Or harboured the demoniac in their gaze." (625)

A few antidotes:

(1)"Casting a javelin regard in front" (211)

(2)"The calm and sovereign eyes of thought" (214)

(3)"Eye could not see but only the soul feel." (211)

(4)"Warned by the spirit's inward eye" (215)

(5)"Then peace returned and the soul's sovereign

gaze" (219)

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