8. On Form and Sight:

The very first point we have to note carefully is "that not only are the properties of form, even 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 presentations of its own workings." (SABCL, Vol. 12, p. 195)

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 X with its fundamental essential reality unknown and hidden. Now a subject, a viewer, looking at the object X will clothe this X with a form which will vary depending on the level of consciousness the seer employs while seeing the object. We cannot but recall here a very interesting passage of Sri

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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." (Essays Divine and Human, pp. 197-98)

Thus the forms seen by a particular seer may not be the ordinary vision of man:

(1)"Forms he descried our mortal eyes see not" (44)

(2)"Aware of forms to which our eyes are closed"

(356)

(3)"A sight opened upon the invisible

And sensed the shapes that mortal eyes see not"

(540)

But forms of whatever subtlety and elevation need not always remain an inseparable accompaniment of vision; shapes need not bind the sight always:

(1)"Into a vision that surpasses forms" (32)

(2)"My vision saw unbounded by her forms" (401)

(3)"Shape the convention bound no more her sight"

(695)

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:

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"Here vision fled back from the sight alarmed..." (604)

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 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." (The Life Divine, pp. 337-38)

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 nāmarupātmakam jagat, the world of names and forms, will vanish 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:

(1) "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" (320)

(2)"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" (546)

(3)"Yet something was there behind the fading scene;

Wherever she turned, at whatsoever she looked,

It was perceived, yet hid from mind and sight.

The One only real shut itself from Space

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" (547)

Have we then 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 "deathless forms", of "forms in the Eternal's gaze" and of "self-born shapes":

(1)"Vision reposed on a safety of deathess forms"

(329)

(2)"Formless Creator and immortal forms" (681)

(3)"... self-bom shapes

That live for ever in the Eternal's gaze." (109)

(4)"He met the forms that divinise the sight'' (235)

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 understood, 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 discussion of this point.

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