Volume V, Issue 11-12
Video: Suhas Mehra
Editor’s Note: We present this special video offering on the occasion of Siddhi Diwas, a day also celebrated in Sri Aurobindo Ashram as the foundation day of the Ashram.
Kena Upanishad speaks of the Supreme Sense behind our senses or rather the Sense of our senses, the Sight of our sight and the Hearing of our hearing. Our sense is a shadow of that divine Sense, our sight of the divine Sight, our hearing of the divine Hearing. We may speak of divine Sight as the sense through which the soul sees its seeings. And this divine sight is not limited to physical things, but extends itself to all forms and operations of conscious being.
Sri Aurobindo’s sonnet titled Divine Sight was written in 1939. He had once remarked that he expressed spiritual truth or spiritual experience through his poetry (CWSA, Vol. 27, p. 260). This particular poem perfectly illustrates how a seer-poet expresses all that the soul sees with its divine Sight. The poet through his sukśmadriśti or the subtle soul-sight has attained sākṣāt darśana, the utter and revealing vision of the Truth of everything that he sees. And he now expresses all that through these verses. In other words, the seer-poet’s Art has become Yoga or his Yoga has become Art.
We feature a visualization of this poem.
Divine Sight
Each sight is now immortal with Thy bliss:
My soul through the rapt eyes has come to see;
A veil is rent and they no more can miss
The miracle of Thy world-epiphany.
Into an ecstasy of vision caught
Each natural object is of Thee a part,
A rapture-symbol from Thy substance wrought,
A poem shaped in Beauty’s living heart,
A master-work of colour and design,
A mighty sweetness borne on grandeur’s wings;
A burdened wonder of significant line
Reveals itself in even commonest things.
All forms are Thy dream-dialect of delight,
O Absolute, O vivid Infinite.
~ Sri Aurobindo, CWSA Vol. 2, p. 623
