On Savitri
THEME/S
Sight in the Superconscient
Introduction
We should recognise the insufficiency of 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.1
But if mind fails, what else remains? Again, it has been affirmed that "thought nor word can seize eternal Truth."2 But, then, if thought proves impotent what else is there that can take its place? The answer is: What else? It must be a sight:
Out of our thoughts we must leap up to sight.3
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.4
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.5
Now this Spirit's vision can be had only in the Superconscient. But what is this Superconscient? Well, as regards the total constitution of our being, viz., the Inconscient, the Subconscient, the subliminal Intraconscient, the subliminal Circumconscient, and the Waking State, they do not suffice to give a full account of what we really are. For there is a range of being and consciousness that greatly transcends all these elements of our constitution, something which is super-conscient to all the other provinces of our existence:
1Savitri, p. 161. 2Jbia\, p. 276. 3Ibid. 4Ibid, p. 260.
5Ibid, p. 571.
Out of the inconscient and subliminal
Arisen, we live in mind's uncertain light-
Above us dwells a superconscient god
Hidden in the mystery of his own light.6
So we should see 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 region, 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 supracosmic Absolute.7
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:
... from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it cam sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. 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.8
Now the ascending sight of the sadhaka undergoes a progressive transformation as it mounts the ladder of the four-rung 'Spiritual Mind' series. We describe in a brief outline the nature of 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,
6Ibid., p. 484. 7The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 438.
8The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 938.
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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.9
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 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 pure spiritual being. These planes are in their 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 aparardha or the lower hemisphere of existence. Here are some Savitri verses referring to these supernal planes:
He raised his eyes to unseen spiritual heights.10
A vision lightened on the viewless heights.11
On summit Mind are radiant altitudes
Exposed to the lustre of Infinity,
Outskirts and dependencies of the house of Truth,
Upraised estates of Mind and measureless.12
Sight in the Higher Mind
The Higher Mind is the first plane of spiritual mind-consciousness to which the first ascent out of four 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 in 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
9Savitri, p. 28. l0Ibid, p. 76. 11Ibid, p. 42.
12Ibid, p. 659.
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Wisdom. For, we must not forget, "thought in itself in its origin on the higher levels of consciousness, is a perception,... a powerful but ... secondary result of spiritual vision..."13 Now a few verses form Savitri depicting the sight in the Higher Mind:
There Mind, a splendid sun of vision's rays,
Shaped substance by the glory of its thoughts.14
Idea rotated symphonies of sight.15
The immortal's thoughts displaced our bounded view.16
Illumined by a vision in the thought.17
A cosmic Thought spreads out its vastitudes.18
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:
An empyrean vision saw and knew.19
Whence it shoots the arrows of its sight and will.20
Whose fire bums in the eyes of seer and sage;
A lightning flash of visionary sight.21
There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;
A burning head of vision leads the mind,
Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;
The heart glows an illuminate and seer.22
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,
13The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 945.
14Savitri, p. 327. 15Ibid, p. 301. 16Ibid, p. 529.
17Ibid, p. 176. 18Ibid, p. 659. 19Ibid, p. 25
20Ibid., p. 529. 21Ibid., p. 627. 22Ibid, p. 660.
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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:
Sight's lightnings leaped into the invisible.23
Nothing escaped his vast intuitive sight.24
Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack
Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs.25
Its fiery edge of seeing absolute
Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self...
Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes.26
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;
All Time is one body, Space a single book:
There is the Godhead's universal gaze
And there the boundaries of immortal Mind.27
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."28
Here are some verses from Savitri characterising the sight in the Overmind:
His boundless thought was neighbour to cosmic sight: A universal light was in his eyes.29
... eyes of boundless thought.30
23lbid., p. 31. 24Ibid., p. 96. 25Ibid., p. 660. 26Ibid.
27Ibid., 28The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 950.
29Savitri, p. 79. 30Ibid,, p. 335.
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AH came at once into his single view.31
It enveloped all Nature in a single glance.32
It was sight and thought in one all-seeing Mind.33
Mind was a single innumerable look.34
... the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight.35
A cosmic vision, a spiritual sense
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form.36
Sight of the Overmental Gods
Immobile, seeing the milleniums pass.37
They look on our struggle with impartial eyes.38
The gods who watch the earth with sleepless eyes.39
Unmoved their timeless wide unchanging gaze.40
And look impassive on a suffering world,
Calm they gaze down on the little human scene.41
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. We give below a 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
31Ibid, p. 96. 32Ibid, p. 26. 33Ibid, p. 555. 34Ibid, p. 556.
35Ibid, p. 661. 36Ibid, p. 662. 37Ibid, p. 57. 38Ibid.
39Ibid,. p.587. 40lbid, p. 574. 41Ibid, p. 428.
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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 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."42
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."43
The ancient sages of India highly valued this power of internal spiritual vision; for, only this can make man a Rishi, a Kavi, or a Seer, and no longer a mere thinker.
We now quote here certain verses from Savitri which bring out in clear outline the nature of (i) the "seer's sight", (ii) the "spiritual sight", and (iii) the "spirit's sight".
Seer's Sight
My mind transfigures to a rapturous seer.44
A Seer was bom, a shining guest of Time.4S
It looked into the very self of things;
Deceived no more by form he saw the soul.46
Transmitting gave to prophet and to seer
The inspired body of the mystic Truth.47
Through vision looks at the invisible.48
A seer, he has entered the forbidden reakms...
Armed with the golden speech, the diamond eye.49
42The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 19, p. 291.
43Ibid, p. 803. 44Savitri, p. 408. 45Ibid, p. 25.
46Ibid, p. 26. 47Ibid, p. 39. 48Ibid, p. 398.
49Ibid. p. 681.
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It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.50
The carved thought-shrouded doors to swing apart,
Unlocked the avenues of spiritual sight.51
Unsealed was Nature's great spiritual eye.52
His sight, spiritual in embodying orbs,
Could pierce through the grey phosphorescent haze
And scan the secrets of the shifting flux.53
... immediacy of errorless sight.54
... its vision of one same stupendous All.55
A gaze of the Alone from every face.56
Her eyes were turned towards the eternal source.57
Now to the limitless gaze disclosed that sees
Things barred from human thinking's earthly lids.58
Thence gazing with an immeasurable outlook
One with self s inlook... 59
His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,
An outview by no brief horizons out.60
Spirit's Sight
The Unseen's eye that looks at the unseen.61
Hardly the spirit's vision can descry
Dimmed by the imperfection of its means.62
Mystic, ineffable is the Spirit's truth,
Unspoken, caught only by the spirit's eye.63
Who sees life's drama pass with unmoved eyes.64
50Ibid, p. 49. 51Ibid, p. 267. 52Ibid, p. 572. 53Ibid, p. 256-57.
54Ibid, p. 683. 55Ibid., p. 298. 56Ibid, p. 298. 57Ibid, p. 272.
58Ibid, p. 382. 59Ibid, p. 35. 60Ibid, p. 301. 61Ibid, p. 470.
62Ibid, p. 138. 63Ibid, p. 501. 64Ibid, p. 665.
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Vision in the Higher Hemisphere
Beyond the Reach of Sight
The central theme of our essay is the study of the itinerary of the ascent of sight. Following this course we travel from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "cosmic gaze" of the Overmind. But all these belong to what was called by the ancient Indian mystics the "Lower Hemisphere" of our existence. But the reach of the Reality far transcends the borders of this Overmind zone of consciousness.
Now there are unified principles of the Divine, viz., the Existence principle (Sat), the Consciousness-Force principle (Chit-Shakti) and the Bliss principle (Ananda), and finally a fourth principle Supermind (Mahas or Vijnana). These four supernal principles constitute the "Higher Hemisphere" of our being. Now the question is: Can sight travel to this Higher Hemisphere, or it has to stop at the upper border of the Overmind? Already the Rishi of the Isha Upanishad complained that the golden Overmind was blocking his vision from advancing farther upward. In fact, this Overmind links the lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance with the supramental Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness, but at the same time veils from our sight the greater Truth of the Supermind. The Cosmic Vision of this overmental plane of consciousness, proceeding luminously from the truth, constituted the "golden lid covering the face of the truth" (hiraṇmayeṇa pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṃ mukhaṃ) (Isha Upanishad, Verse 15). In order to seize the Truth in its unalloyed and unmitigated glory, we have to make a last supreme ascent in the climb of our spiritual consciousness and break through the shining shield or Overmind into the realm of the supramental Gnosis. But will our power of sight be able to follow the climb of our consciousness into the four-rung zone of the higher hemisphere? Apparently not. Our "mortal" sight which has functioned in different ways on all the levels up to the Overmind abruptly avows its impotence and bows out. Conclusion: All that is above and beyond may be an object of knowledge but surely not of vision. This is apparently supported by the following verses of Savitri:
Veiled by the Ray no mortal eye can bear.65
65Ibid, p. 57.
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...thought and sight can never know.66
But what That was, no thought or sight could tell.57
Beyond the sight, the last support of form.68
An Omniscient knowing without sight or thought.69
But for sight the situation may not be so hopeless as that. For already the Vedic seers indicated that in the Supermind of the higher hemisphere one does not see the truth "by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye."70
So, can it be that sight itself will undergo a supreme transformation and appear in another essence in the divine world? The following passage from one of Sri Aurobindo's letters leads us to believe that the answer may indeed be a "yes":
The supermind is an entirely different consciousness not only from the spiritualised Mind, but from the planes above spiritualised Mind intervene between it and the supramental plane. Once one passes beyond overmind to supermind, one enters into a consciousness to which the norms of the other planes do not at all apply and in which the same Truth, e.g. Sachchidananda and truth of this universe, is seen in quite a different way and has a different dynamic consequence.71
So there can possibly be a "supramental sight" in the higher hemisphere far beyond the overmental zone which represents the last rung of the lower hemisphere and closes the series in the Ignorance. But before we come to the charactrisation of this supramental sight, it would be better for our appreciation if we dwell a little longer on what the two hemispheres of existence actually signify.
Hemispheres of Existence
Our total being has a higher and a lower hemisphere of functioning, the parārdha and the aparardha of the ancient mystic Wisdom. There is a separation between these two hemispheres, very much acute in practice although unreal in essence.
66Ibid, p. 91. 67 Ibid, p. 308. 68Ibid, p. 320. 69Ibid, p. 81.
70Tke Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 462.
71Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, pp. 240-41.
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In reality, the origin, the continent, the initial and the ultimate truth of all that is easily anywhere in the universe is the triune principle of Sachchidananda: it is a transcendent and infinite and absolute Existence-Consciousness-Bliss which is the very nature of the divine Being.
Thus Sachchidananda is the One with a triple aspect of functioning differently in three statuses.
In the Supreme the three are not three but one. Existence, Consciousness and Bliss are there not only inseparable but so much each other that they are not distinct at all.
In the superior planes of manifestation in the higher hemisphere they become triune; that is to say, although they remain inseparable, one aspect can make itself more prominent and base or lead the others.
In the lower planes below in the lower hemisphere, they become separable and even separate in appearance, though not in their secret reality.
Sachchidanand can be experienced in either of its two aspects, static and dynamic. But the "full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness than the supermind."72
Sachchidananda contains all in a passive transcendent consciousness but becomes, sustains and governs everything by an active constituting consciousness.
The higher hemisphere is the realm of the Spirit's perfect and eternal reign. There it manifests its infinities, the unconcealed glories of its illimitable existence (Sat), its illimitable consciousness and knowledge (Chit), its illimitable force and power (Shakti) and its illimitable beatitude (Ananda).
The creative action of Sachchidananda, of the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute, has its centre in a fourth principle called Supermind (Mahas or Vijnana). Thus Supermind is between the Sachchidananda and the lower creation. It alone contains the self-determining Truth of the Divine Consciousness and is necessary for a Truth-creation.
Supermind is Sachchidananda's "... power of self-awareness and world-awareness, the world being known as within itself and not outside.... [It is] the Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also. Its fundamental character is
72Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 241.
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knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of manifestation is known, because this too is That.73
Thus the Supermind is the divine Gnosis which creates, governs and upholds the worlds. And it is the supramental power that transforms our mind, life and body—not the Sachchidananda consciousness which supports impartially everything.
Mind, Life and Matter which constitute the lower hemisphere of existence are a triple aspect of the higher principles of the upper hemisphere but working here in subjection to the principle of Ignorance, and in apparent self-forgetfulness of the divine One in his play of division and multiplicity.
The lower being begins where a veil falls between Spirit in Supermind and Spirit in Mind, Life and Body. (Note: This whole section" Hemispheres of Existence" is a free adaptation of various passages from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga and Letters on Yoga.)
Here are just a few verses from Savitri referring to this divine Gnosis, the Supermind:
Now mind is all and its uncertain ray,
Mind is the leader of the body and life,
Mind the thought-driven chariot of the soul-
Mind is not all his tireless climb can reach,
There is a fire on the apex of the worlds,
There is a house of the Eternal's Light,
There is an infinite truth, an absolute power...
There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,
Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.
It has no home on earth, no centre in man,
Yet is the source of all things thought and done,
The fount of the creation and its works.
It is the originer of all truth here.74
There is a world of everlasting Light,
In the realms of the immortal Supermind
Truth who hides here her head in mystery,
Her riddle deemed by reason impossible
In the stark structure of material form,
73Ibid, pp. 242-43.
14Savitri, pp.704-05.
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Unenigmaed lives, unmasked her face and there Is Nature and the common law of things.75
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 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 seems 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 immediate vision and the undiluted possession of the truth and has no need of seeking 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 not diversities making up a constructed unity but a unity constituting its own multitudes.
75Ibid., pp. 661-62.
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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,
Above the stretch and blaze of cosmic Sight.76
A universal vision that unites.77
All was uncovered to his sealless eye.78
Spirit no more is hid from its own view.79
A single and infallible look comes down.80
A wide tower of vision whence all could be seen
And all was centred in a single view.81
He is the vision and he is the seer.82
A kindling rapture joins the seer and seen.83
Sight was a flame-throw from identity.84
This seeing was identical with the seen.85
A plan in the occult eternal Mind
Mapped out to backward and prophetic sight.86
The long flow of its manifesting course
Was held in spirit's single wide regard.87
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.88
76Ibid, p. 661. 77Ibid, p. 325. 78Ibid, p.83. 79Ibid, p. 442.
80Ibid, p. 325. 81Ibid, p. 514. 82Ibid, p. 546. 83Ibid, p. 83.
84Ibid, p. 61. 85Ibid, p. 342. 86Ibid, p. 342 . 87Ibid, p. 299.
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Divine's Self-Vision
The ascending march of sight continues even beyond the supramental gnosis and arrives at the point where the cosmic manifestation has not yet begun and the static Sachchidananda is still absorbed in himself. What is the nature of sight there?
By adapting what Sri Aurobindo has said in his commentary on the Isha Upanishad we may venture to say that we arrive, in the status of non-manifestation, at the light of the supreme superconscient in which even the intuitive knowledge of the truth of things based upon the total and integral vision—so characteristic of the supramental sight—passes into self-luminous self-vision of the one Existent. This status of sight is referred to in the following verses from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:
Inspired by silence and the closed eyes' sight.89
Watched by closed eyes, mute faces of the Unborn.90
All light is but a flash from his closed eyes.91
The eyes with their closed lids that see all things.92
We remember here the significant utterance of the Katha Upanishad: "For all that is bright is but the shadow of His brightness and by His shining all this shines."
(Sri Aurobindo's translation of the Upanishadic verse: tameva bhāntaṃ anubhāti sarvaṃ tasya bhāsā sarvam idam vibhāti.)
Then Sachchidananda 'decides' to initiate manifestation and opens his eyes. How does his gaze look like? Let these verses from Savitri speak:
His gaze was the regard of eternity.93
A diamond purity of eternal sight.94
... the Omniscienet's eyes.95
Sachchidananda becomes the 'sole Seer' (ekarshi, Isha Upanishad); he is the only dṛshtā, "He alone who sees." To cite a telling aphorism of Patanjali: tada drastur svarupe avasthanam, "The Seer dwells then m His own status." His unblinking Eye shines extended in the heavens:
89Ibid, p. 36. 90Ibid, p. 80. 91Ibid, p. 681. 92Ibid, p. 41.
93 Ibid., p.682. 94Ibid, p. 297. 95Ibid, p. 691.
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divivā cakṣur atatam. (Rig Veda,). Here are some relevant Savitri verses:
... a still all-seeing Eye above.96
And intolerant flames the lone all-witnessing Eye.97
... the movement watched by an unsleeping Eye.98
... in the vigil of a deathless gaze.99
And guards the world with its all-seeing gaze.100
An Eye immense regarding all things done.101
The Divine's Cosmic Vision
The Manifestation begins; the worlds are created. The passive Sachchidanda is now in his role of all-watching, all-governing Cosmic Purusha. To quote Sri Aurobindo: "The Brahman consciousness... is not the Absolute withdrawn into itself, but that Absolute in its outlook on the relative; it is the Lord, the Master-Soul, the governing Transcendent and AH."102 He is the samam brahma, "the Brahman with unbounded equal vision" of the Gita: Here are some Savitri verses which strikingly bring out this impartial all-governing vision of the Divine in his dealing with the cosmos:
Heaven's fixed regard beholds him from above.103
Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good.104
All things he sees with calm indifferent gaze.105
He is the one infinite Person seeing his world.106
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.107
A wide unshaken look at Time's unrest.108
Outspread beneath some large indifferent gaze,
Impartial witness to our joy and bale.109
96Ibid, p. 378. 97Ibid, p. 343. 98Ibid, p. 509. 99Ibid, p. 99.
100Ibid, p. 317. 101Ibid, p. 322. 102The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol.
12, p. 198. 103Savitri, p. 336. 104Ibid, p. 283. 105Ibid, p. 646.
106Ibid, p. 656. 107Ibid, p. 482. 108Ibid, p. 36. 109Ibid, p. 5.
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The Vision of the One in the Many
This is a vision every sadhaka on the Integral Path aspires for and seeks to acquire as the sure and secure point d'appui in the ups and downs of his long tortuous journey of Yoga. Indeed, the progressive elevation and enlargement of the divided and limited egoistic sight will lead the sadhaka to a harmonising vision of the One in All and of All in the One. The sadhaka is then able to see that all becoming without exception, irrespective of the plane in which it manifests, is born in the Being of Sachchidananda who himself, of course, transcends all becomings and is always their Lord, Prajāpati. Here is a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga where Sri Aurobindo speaks of the capital importance of this momentous vision of the One in All:
The one secure and all-reconciling truth which is the very foundation of the universe is this that life is the manifestation of an uncreated Self and Spirit, and the key to life's hidden secret is the true relation of this Spirit with its own created existences. There is behind all this life the look of an eternal Being upon its multitudinous becomings; there is around and everywhere in it the envelopment and penetration of a manifestation in time by an unmanifested timeless Eternal.110
Here is a passge from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which pin-points in sublime verse the essential character of this vision:
Feels all the Infinite lodged in finite form
And seen through a quivering ecstasy of light
Discovers the bright face of the Bodiless,
In the truth of a moment, in the moment's soul
Can sip the honey-wine of Eternity.
A Spirit who is no one and innumerable,
The one mystic infinite Person of his world
Multiplies his myriad personality,
On all his bodies seals his divinity's stamp
And sits in each immortal and unique.
The Immobile stands behind each daily act,
A background of the movement and the scene,
Upholding creation on its might and calm
And change on the Immutable's deathless poise.
110The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 106-07.
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The Timeless looks out from the travelling hours;
The Ineffable puts on a robe of speech.111
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:
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.112
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,
111Savitri, p. 662.
112 Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 364.
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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."3
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.
On Form and Sight
The very first point we have to carefully note is that "not only are the properties of form, the most obvious such as colour, light, etc., merely operations of Force, but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force again proves to be self-power of conscious-being in a state of energy and activity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with presentation of its own workings."114
Thus the form is the last derivative of an action of the consciousness. A momentous implication follows from this basic fact. Supposing there is an object with its fundamental essential reality unknown and hidden. Now a subject, a viewer, looking at the object will clothe this with a form which will vary depending on the level of consciousness the seer employs while seeing the object. We cannot
113Savitri, pp. 680-81.
114The Upanishads, SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 195.
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but recall here a very interesting passage of Sri Aurobindo so beautifully formulated:
Of all that we know we know only the outside; even when we imagine that we have intimately seized the innermost thing, we have touched only an inner external. It is still a sheath of the covering, only it is a second or third or even a seventh sheath [and] not the most outward and visible.115
Thus the forms seen by a particular seer may not be the ordinary vision of man:
Forms he descried our mortal eyes see not.116
Aware of forms to which our eyes are closed.117
A sight opened upon the invisible
And sensed the shapes that mortal eyes see not.118
But forms of whatever subtlety and elevation they be need not always remain an inseparable accompaniment of vision; shapes need not bind the sight always:
Into a vision that surpasses forms."9
My vision saw unblinded by her forms.120
Shape the convention bound no more her sight.121
But sight has the inherent tendency to clothe itself with images, images not surely gross and physical in all cases; but however subtle and sublime and elevated these images may be, they stand as a bar to the ungarbed vision of the truth. Hence a point is reached when the vision in its aspiration after the bare body of the truth seeks to distance itself from the pursuit of the imaged sight:
Here vision fled back from the sight alarmed.122
But even if it is not an "imaged form", some form there must be in every act of vision and sight. Indeed, there are, as we have hinted before, forms and forms of an ever ascending order reaching up to the extreme border of manifestation. For forms are manifestations in
115Essays Divine and Human, C WS A, Vol. 12, p. 188. 116Savitri, p. 44.
117Ibid, p. 356. 118Ibid, p. 540. 119lbid, p. 32.
120Ibid, p. 401. 121Ibid, p. 695. 122Ibid, p. 604.
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Time and Space of something real, not arbitrary inventions out of nothing. Therefore the essentials of form carry always in them secret values and significances of an unseen reality made visible and sensible. In Sri Aurobindo's words: "Form may be said to be the innate body, the inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not only of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life which we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which only the subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware."123 But still there has to be a limiting finis to this ascending march of vision and therefore of shapes and forms. When one reaches the horizons of manifestation, standing on the dividing line of separation between manifestation and non-manifestation, one seems to discover that sight and form cannot cross the line and one is left with a pure perception alone and if this ends the whole nāmarūpatmakaṃjagat, the world of names and forms, vanishes into nothingness.
Let us pause for a moment at this critical juncture of the ascension and savour instead the beauty of the description given by Sri Aurobindo in his Savitri:
His soul abandoned the blind star-field, Space.
Afar from all that makes the measured world,
Plunging to hidden eternities it withdrew
Back from mind's foaming surface to the Vasts
Voiceless within us in omniscient sleep.
Above the imperfect reach of word and thought,
Beyond the sight, the last support of form,
Lost in deep tracts of superconscient Light.124
A pure perception was the only power
That stood behind her action and her sight.
If that retired, all objects would be extinct,
Her private universe would cease to be.125
Yet something was there behind the fading scene;
Wherever she turned, at whasoever she looked,
It was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.
The One only real shut itself from Space
123The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol.18, pp. 337-38.
124Savitri, p. 320. 125Ibid, p. 546,
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And stood aloof from the idea of Time.
Its truth escaped from shape and line and hue.
All else grew unsubstantial, self-annulled,
This only everlasting seemed and true,
Yet nowhere dwelt, it was outside the hours.
This only could justify the labour of sight,
But sight could not define for it a form.126
Have we them at last reached the end of the ascent of sight which has been the running theme of our essay? Is there indeed no form, no sight in the Transcendent Absolute? Yet it is a fact that Sri Aurobindo speaks at times of "deatless forms", of "forms in the Eternal's gaze," and of "self-bom shapes":
Vision reposed on a safety of deathless forms.127
Formless creator of immortal forms.128
That live for ever in the Eternal's gaze.129
He met the forms that divinise the sight.130
So in puzzlement we ask ourselves the question: Is the Absolute Reality absolutely formless? Can there not be a supreme Form of the supreme Divine? A human eye, it is well understod, cannot ever hope to vision this Form but is there not a divine Eye, divya caksu, to which this supreme Form may reveal itself? Our next section will be devoted to the discusssion of this point.
Vision of the Supreme Form
A very difficult question confronts us: Whether the Divine has an original supraphysical Form and power of form from which all other forms proceed, or is eternally formless.
The normal conception of the Infinite Being is formlessness but can he not be at once Form and the Formless? For the apparent contrdiction does not correspond to a real opposition and incompatibility. For, the Formless is not an utter negation of the power of formation but the condition for the Infinite's free play of formation.
l26Ibid, p. 547. 127Ibid., p. 329. 128Ibid, p. 661.
l29Ibid, p. 109. 130Ibid, p. 235.
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The Divine is formless but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible shapes of being.131
As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it in his Essays Divine and Human: "Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, nothingness, is a creation of our mind; where it cannot see or conveive, where its object is something beyond its grasp, too much beyond to give even the sense of a vague intangible, then it cries out 'Here there is nothing.' Out of its own incapacity it has created the conception of a Zero. But what in turth is this zero? It is an incalculable Infinite."132
But the doubting reader may still raise a valid question here: Granted that the Formless has given rise to all these myraid forms, but does it follow from that that the Formless itself has a form of its own? In answer to the misgivings on this score expreseed by one of his disciples Sri Aurobindo once remarked that even if the Formless logically precedes Form, yet it is not illogical to assume that in the Formless itself Form is inherent and already existent in a mystic latency; also it would be equally logical to assume that there is an eternal Form of Krishna, a spirit body. Sri Aurobindo further worte:
As for the highest Reality it is no doubt Absolute Existence, but is it only that? Abslute Existence as an abstraction may exclude everything else from itself and amount to a sort of very positive zero; but Absolute Existence as a reality who shall define and say what is or is not in its inconceivable depths, its illimitable Mystery?133
However, leaving aside all metaphysical debate and any misplaced zeal to score a point, which is not after all the purpose of the present essay, let us proceed to the attentive reading of a very sublime passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which describes the austere and heroic attempt of the Mahayogi Aswapati to have a vision of the Ultimate Form and its spiritual afterfmath.
Aswapati's soul was passing on "towards the end which ever begins again."134 It was approaching "the source of all things human and divine." Far beyond the zone of "nameless Gods", even beyond the Abode of Ishwara-Ishwari, "the deathless Two-in-One", "a single
131 Adaptation from The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, p. 337.
132Essays Divine and Human, CWSA, Vol. 12, p. 188.
133Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 83.
134Savitri, p. 295.
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being in two bodies clasped", who "seated absorbed in deep creative joy" sustained "the mobile world", at the fount of all stood
Who brought them forth from the Unknowable.
Ever disguised she awaits the seeking spirit;
Watcher on the supreme unreachable peaks,
Guide of the traveller of the unseen paths,
She guards the austee approach to the Alone....
Above them all she stands supporting all,
The sole omnipotent Goddess ever-veiled
Of whom the world is the inscrutable mask;
The ages are the footfalls of her tread,
Their happenings the figure of her thoughts,
And all creation is her endless act.135
What did Aswapati do then and what followed?
Mute in the fathomless passion of his will
He outstrtched to her his folded hands of prayer.
Then in a sovereign answer to his heart
A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,
And from her raimment's lustrous mystery raised
One arm half-parted the eternal veil.
A light appeared still and imperishable.
Attracted to the large and luminous depths
Of the ravishing enigma of her eyes,
He saw the mustic outline of a face.136
And what was the effect of this vision on Aswapti?
Overwhelmed by her implacable light and bliss,
An atom of her illimitable self
Mastered by the honey and lightning of her power,
Tossed towards the shores of her ocean ecstasy,
Drunk with a deep golden spiritual wine,
He cast from the rent stillness of his soul
A cry of adoration and desire
And the surrender of his boundless mind
And the self-giving of his silent heart.
He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone.137
135Ibid, p. 295. l36lbid, pp. 295-96. 137Ibid, p. 296.
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"He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone." We may recall in this conection the stem warning uttered by the supreme Lord to Moses, so that the latter might not try to go near Him and 'see' Him in his original Form. For no consciousness lodged in any material embodiment can ever succeed in doing so. So Moses 'heard' the Lord from beyond the burning bush. {Exodus, 3)
But this inability, although universal now, need not remain a permanent trait of all terrestial being. For "all life is fixrd in an ascending scale"138 and as "adamantine is the evolving Law"139 in the march of the progressive evolution of consciousness, the instrumental transformation also is bound to follow ushering in its wake the development of a New Sight, the divine sight which will be capable of seizing the supreme Form. And this thought and high hope on our part leads us to our next and final Section.
Sight: Its Future Apotheosis
We have at last come to the end of our essay. Although the survey has been rather brief given the scope and importance of the subject, we have been, we hope, able to cover the entire ground, albeit in bare outline. But the question is: Does the 'sight' too end its itineary here? Or, who knows, has it any further evolutionary prospect?
As Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is a Yoga of Integral Transformation, it is understood that it is not merely the inner consciousness which has to undergo divine transformation; even the outer physical system of man, including all its forms and functions, has to submit itself to the unrelenting process of supramental transformation. Sri Aurobindo affirms in one of his last prose writings, The Divine Body, published in 1949 as follows:
These and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an instrument immeasurably superior to what we can now imagine as possible. There could be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the utmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders of supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure Existence, consciousness bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression
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and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit.140
Of course, it is the consciousness within that has first to change; for, our means and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily be according to the nature of our consciousness and "it is the consciousness that must radically change if we are to command and not only be occasionally visited by that higher power of knowledge."141
Be that as it may, we can very well visualise that in the overall transformation of the physical system the sense of sight will not be faulted and excepted: this too will have the privilege of undergoing a supremely divine transfiguration.
Now what will be the results of this supramentalisation of sight? Sri Aurobindo has dealt with this question quite in detail in the chapter . entitled The Supramental Sense in his book The Synthesis of Yoga. What follows below is an abridged adapatation of his observations.
The lifting of the level of consciousness from the mind to the supermind and the consequent transformation of the being from the state of the mental to that of the supramental Purusha must bring with it a transformation of all the parts of the nature and all its activities. "There is accordingly a change, a profound transformation in the physical sense, a supramentalising of the physical sight, hearing, touch, etc." that will reveal to us "a quite different view, not merely of life and its meaning, but even of the material world and all its forms and aspects."
The supramental eye will get a new and transfigured vision: its sight will acquire "an extraordinary totality and an immediate and embracing precision in which the whole and every detail [will] stand out at once in the complete harmony and vividness of the significance meant by Nature in the object."
In the supramental seeing one will feel as if "it were the sight of the supreme divine Poet and Artist in which we were participating and there were given to us the full seeig of his truth and intention in his design of the universe and of each thing in the universe."
There will be an unlimited intensity which will make all that is seen "a revelation of the glory of quality and idea and form and colour." The very physical eye will seem them "to carry in itself a spirit and a
140The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol.16, p. 40.
141The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 473.
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consciousness which sees not only the physical aspect of object but the soul of quality in it, the vibration of energy, the light and force and spiritual substance of which it is made."
In this vision of the supramental eye there will always be the revelation of "the soul of the thing seen and of the universal Spirit that is expressing itself in this objective form of its own conscious being."
There will be at the same time a subtle change which will make the sight see in a sort of fourth dimension. The material object will become to this sight something different from what we see, "not a separate object on the background or in the environment of the rest of Nature, but an indivisible part... an expression of the unity of all that we see."
To the supramentalised seeing the material world and material object will cease to be material: they will be seen as spirit itself in a form of itself and a conscious extension. "The whole is a unity—the oneness unaffected by any multitudinousness of objects and details— held in and by the consciousness in a spiritual space and all substance there is conscious substance."142
Such will be the apotheosis of sight when it gets supramentalised in course of its future evolution. Now hireare some verse from Savitri embodying the vision of the future glory of our Eye.
... the secret sight man's blindness missed.
Has opened its view past Time...143
See with the large eye of infinity.144
... a vision which had scanned immortal things.145
The Supreme's gaze looked out through human eyes.146
... the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time.147
The immense regard of Immortality.148
Earth's seeing widen into the infinite.149
And form her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze.150
142The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 21, pp. 836-38.
143Savitri, p. 683. 144bid, p. 696. l45Ibid, p. 723.
146Ibid, p. 31. l47Ibid, p. 72. 148Ibid, p. 320.
149Ibid, p. 344. 150Ibid, p. 346.
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The superconscient beam shall touch men's eyes.151
And a soul's thoughts looked out from earthbom eyes.152
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes.153
Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight.154
Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,
Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown.155
Yet shall they look up as to peaks of God.156
His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves.157
The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes.158
The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze.159
Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity.160
And all earth look into the eyes of God.161
So the journey ends. And we are infinitely grateful to Maha-Rishi Maha-Kavi Sri Aurobindo for affording us the favour of walking in his luminous footsteps and following the long march of the ascent of sight from the "sightless sight" of the Inconscient up to the "closed eyes' sight" of the supreme Superconscient—surely not in living experience as in the case of Maha-Yogi Sri Aurobindo himself but as a meditative intellectual-cum-imaginative exercise. And that is surely no mean gain for us the ordinary mortals with our "clipped outlook" on things.
Jayatu Sri Aurobindah—Victory to Sri Aurobindo.
JUGAL KlSHORE MUKHERJEE
151Ibid, p. 451. 152 Ibid, p. 485. 153 Ibid, p. 526.
154Ibid, p. 370. 155Ibid, p. 537. 156Ibid, p.704.
l60Ibid, p. 279. l58Ibid, p. 450.
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