10. 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 itinerary 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. As Sri Aurobindo has affirmed in one of his last prose writings, "The Divine Body", published in 1949:

"...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 the supermind proper itself where it

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begins to shadow out, develop, delineate expressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure Existence, consciousness and bliss... The transformation of the physical being might follow this incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of this higher greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit." (The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings, 1989, p. 40)

Of course, it is the consciousness within which 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." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 473)

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 adaptation 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 will be according-

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ly a profound transformation in the physical senses, "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 seeing 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 then "to carry in itself a spirit and a consciousness which sees not only the physical aspect of the 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 now see, not a separate object on the back-

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ground 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 objects 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."

Such will be the apotheosis of sight when it gets supramentalised in course of its future evolution. Now here are some verses from Savitri embodying the vision of the future glory of our Eye:

(1)"... the secret sight man's blindness missed

Has opened its view past Time ..." (683)

(2)"See with the large eye of infinity" (696)

(3)"A vision which had scanned immortal things" (723)

(4)"The Supreme's gaze looked out through human

eyes" (31)

(5)"... the eyes of the Timeless... look out from Time"

(72)

(6)"The immense regard of immortality" (320)

(7)"Earth's seeing [shall] widen into the infinite." (344)

(8)"And from her eyes the Eternal's bliss shall gaze"

(346)

(9)"The superconscient's beam shall touch men's eyes"

(451)

(10) "And a soul's thoughts looked out from earth-bom

eyes" (485)

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(11)"Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes" (526)

(12)"Can fill those orbs with an immortal's sight" (370)

(13)"Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,

Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown"

(537)

(14)"Yet shall they look up as to peaks of God" (704)

(15)"His regard crossing infinity's mystic waves" (706)

(16)"The Spirit's eyes shall look through Nature's eyes"

(707)

(17)"The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze"

(709)

(18)"Time's sunflowers gaze at gold Eternity" (279)

(19)"And all earth look into the eyes of God" (450)

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 Mahayogi 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 Aurobindo" - "Victory to Sri Aurobindo"!

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