The Ascent of Sight in Sri Aurobindo's Savitri

7. The Vision of the Universal Spirit:

This vision does not limit itself to that of the One in the All; it extends itself to cover the integral perception of the All as the One. This universe in its entirety is the very Supreme Self figured in cosmic existence. The vision of the universal Purusha offers the Sadhaka a concrete living sight, in vivid images, of the visible greatness of the invisible Divine. The Sadhaka can then see the whole world related and unified in the very Body of the Divine. The soul admitted to this awe-inspiring vision beholds all things in one view, not with a divided, partial, and therefore bewildered seeing of the mental consciousness but with the all-embracing and therefore all-reconciling courageous vision of the heroic spirit. For the happy consequence of this vision of the Universal Spirit we may read with interest the following passage from Sri Aurobindo's Essays on the Gita:

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"It is this vision that ... liberates, justifies, explains all that is and was and shall be. Once seen and held it lays the shining axe of God at the root of all doubts and perplexities and annihilates all denials and oppositions. It is the vision that reconciles and unifies. If the soul can arrive at unity with the Godhead in this vision, ... all even that is terrible in the world loses its terror." (p. 364)

Now let us take a joyous dip into some verses of Savitri wherein Sri Aurobindo is describing how the Divine intimately manifests himself through all that is in the cosmos:

"The universe writing its tremendous sense

In the inexhaustible meaning of a word.

In him the architect of the visible world,

At once the art and artist of his works,

Spirit and seer and thinker of things seen,

Virât, who lights his camp-fires in the suns

And the star-entangled ether is his hold,

Expressed himself with Matter for his speech

Objects are his letters, forces are his words,

Events are the crowded history of his life,

And sea and land are the pages of his tale,

Matter is his means and his spiritual sign...

His is the dumb will of atom and of clod;

A Will that without sense or motive acts,

An intelligence needing not to think or plan,

The world creates itself invincibly;

For its body is the body of the Lord

And in its heart stands Virât, King of kings." (680-81)

We now propose to enter the "forbidden land", for we are daring to speak about the vision of the Supreme Form of the supreme Divine. But does the Divine have any form? Is he not arupa or "formless" as the monistic Vedantin would affirm?

But before attempting to discuss these tricky questions it will be better if we first clearly bring out the nature of the evolving relationship between "form" and "sight"; for, that will incidentally throw some light on the question of whether the Supreme possesses a Supreme Form of his own and, if yes, whether this Form can at all be the object of any sight whatsoever.

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