Beyond Mental Ideas to Spiritual Experience

The human mind is always at work, trying to figure out what life is all about, where we came from, why we are here, what we are to do, what lies in the future. We have developed a countless number of ideas, philosophies, religious concepts, and we become adherents to those that make sense to our minds. In many cases, we then wield our various ideas, philosophies and religious dogmas against each other and create division, separation and warfare. Much of our thinking is influenced by the vital needs and desires that we experience in our exte
al lives, and through the impact of others in our connected life in society. We come to certain directions, ways of life, value-sets and goals of living that we then try to implement in our lives.

All of this vital and mental review, analysis, and decision-process may impact our exte
al lives, but for the most part, it does not answer the ultimate questions nor respond to our deeper calling. When we begin to move beyond these mental ideas, we begin to acquire experience. Experience guides us ever further, beyond what our mental process can effectuate.

In the Kena Upanishad, the physical power, the vital power and the mental power all felt like they had some kind of ultimate power but each was met with an unknow
Presence that halted and turned away their native powers. Only the mental power was able to recognise that there was indeed some Reality and a Presence beyond that could not be grasped by the powers of body, life or mind.

Many create a mental dichotomy between our active existence and a type of vacuum of space that essentially represents the absence of life or activity. This is however a false dichotomy as it does not ever answer the source of the active existence or how it comes to be within the vast, silent, wide expanse of space. There is both a featureless, non-manifest aspect and a dynamic, active aspect, the latter of which is the creative force that brings about all life and existence. The dynamic aspect is a conscious Presence that can be experienced when an individual moves beyond the mental ideative space within which we tend to enclose ourselves.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Mental theories are of no fundamental importance, for the mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being. What is important is that turn and the call within you.”

“The knowledge that there is a Supreme Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is not merely a negative Nirvana or a static and featureless Absolute, but dynamic, the perception that this Divine Consciousness can be realised not only beyond but here, and the consequent acceptance of a divine life as the aim of Yoga, do not belong to the mind. It is not a question of mental theory — even though mentally this outlook can be as well supported as any other, if not better, — but of experience and, before the experience comes, of the soul’s faith bringing with it the mind’s and the life’s adhesion. One who is in contact with the higher Light and has the experience can follow this way, however difficult it may be for the lower members to follow; one who is touched by it, without having the experience, but having the call, the conviction, the compulsion of the soul’s adherence, can also follow it.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 2, Faith — Aspiration — Surrender, pp. 22-23