In Savitri there is a striking phrase, “the sense-formed ear” given to us in the context of what Aswapati listens to in an unusual situation. His daughter Savitri has grown up into ripened maidenhood and it is his duty, his noble dharmic responsibility as the ancient custom would see, that without any delay he arrange for her marriage. But then he has a pretty serious problem also; no heroic or Aryan prince comes forward to claim her hand in marriage and such a situation causes him considerable worry. Savitri’s radiant personality puts them all off. However, Aswapati is a Yogi and can perceive subtle movements, can hear subtle sounds coming from cosmic fields…

But what does the sense-formed ear mean? If mind or Manas is the primary sense behind all the senses, it follows that the sense organs must have had their origin somewhere there in it: it is the sight that produces the eye, it is the sound that develops the ear and not the other way round, and behind sight and sound is the mind sense. Occult-spiritually, such indeed is the truer deeper mechanism by which our faculties get formed. There is an action of the sense-mind, explains Sri Aurobindo in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad, which is superior to the particular action of the senses and is aware of things even without imaging them in forms of sight, sound, contact, but which also as a subordinate operation does image itself in these forms. Sight and the other senses are not mere results of the development of our physical organs in the terrestrial evolution. Mind, subconscious in all Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to apply its inherent capacities such as sight or hearing on the physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they are inherent capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. It is an action of the functioning of the Sanjnana, the essential sense which in itself can operate without bodily organs. This sense is the original capacity of consciousness to feel in itself all that consciousness has formed and to feel it in all the essential properties and operations of that which has form, whether represented materially by vibration of sound or images of light or any other physical symbol. It is at the root of the presence of our cognitive faculties which also, drawing from the material world, provides the cognitive instruments. Thus the ear becomes a product of this double action; the other organs also ditto; when we recognise this sense behind the senses to be the pre-eminent cause, the originator of our physical faculties, we essentially get the sense-formed ear…   more »