9. 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 contradiction 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. The Divine is formless but by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible shapes of being. (Adaptation of page 337 of The Life Divine.)

As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it in his Essays

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Divine and Human: "Nothing can arise from Nothing. Asat, Nothingness, is a creation of our mind; where it cannot see or conceive, 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 truth is this zero? It is an incalculable Infinite." (p. 197)

But the doubting reader may still raise a valid question here: Granted that the Formless has given rise to all these myriad 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 expressed 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 wrote:

"As for the highest Reality it is no doubt Absolute Existence, but is it only that? Absolute 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?" (Letters on Yoga, p. 83) (italics author's)

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

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reading of a very sublime passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri which describes the austere and heroic attempt of the Mahayogi Aswapathy to have a vision of the Ultimate Form, and its spiritual aftermath.

Aswapathy's soul was passing on "towards the end which ever begins again" (295); it was approaching "to the source of all things human and divine". Far beyond the zone of "nameless Gods", even beyond the Abode of Iswara-Iswari, "the deathless Two-in-One", "a single being in two bodies clasped", who "seated absorbed in deep creative joy... sustained the mobile world", at the fount of all

"...One 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 austere 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." (295)

What did Aswapathy do then and what followed? -

"Mute in the fathomless passion of his will

He outstretched to her his folded hands of prayer.

Then in a sovereign answer to his heart

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A gesture came as of worlds thrown away,

And from her raiment'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 mystic outline of a face." (295-96)

And what was the effect of this vision on Aswapathy? -

"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 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." (296)

"He fell down at her feet unconscious, prone." We may recall in this connection 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 within the burning bush. (Exodus, 3)

But this disability, although universal now, need not remain a permanent trait of all terrestrial being. For as "all life is fixed in an ascending scale" (342) and as "adaman-

tine is the evolving law" (342), 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.

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