Spiritual Experience Beyond the Mind

In his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo states: “God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep.” Until an individual has an actual experience of an inward state of consciousness, or that of the silent mind, or one in which the experience is that of an uninvolved witness, or one experiences the descent of knowledge, or power or ecstatic bliss that goes outside the bounds of the normal human experience, he cannot truly understand what is meant by these descriptive terms.

The matter of spiritual experiences, for those who have not personally experienced them, is one of either belief or disbelief, or one of argument in favor of or against. For those who are locked into the logical, rational, mental mind-set, these experiences are almost impossible to fit into their world-view, and thus, they will declare them as hallucinations, dreams, delusions or any number of other derogatory terms that, more than anything else, define the limits and framework that surruonds the mental consciousness. This same mental consciousness, however, falls silent when it is asked to explain the “first cause” of existence, or any number of other inexplicable things!

The mind is so busy analyzing, categorizing, comparing, contrasting, and formulating that it remains locked into its narrow round of conceptions. Only when the mind falls silent, and the being takes a receptive standpoint, can the individual truly begin to widen the consciousness and experience what lies outside the strictly mental realm.

When the seeker begins to have experiences that fall outside the mind’s realm, he recognises the reality of them; indeed, they are more real, more compelling, than all the mental ideas and arguments he engaged in prior. They are generally so powerfully impactful that the individual treats them as highlights and key experiences of his life, and will remember them and their powerful impact throughout the rest of his lifetime generally.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “What happened to you shows what are the copnditions of that state in which the Divine Power takes the place of the ego and directs the action, making the mind, life and body an instrument. A receptive silence of the mind, an effacement of the mental ego and the reduction of the mental being to the position of a witness, a close contact with the Divine Power and an openness of the being to that one Influence and no other are the conditions for becoming an instrument of the Divine, moved by that and that only.”

“The silence of the mind does not of itself bring in the supramental consciousness; there are many states or planes or levels of consciousness between the human mind and the Supermind. The silence opens the mind and the rest of the being to greater things, sometimes to the cosmic consciousness, sometimes to the experience of the silent Self, sometimes to the presence or power of the Divine, sometimes to a higher consciousness than that of the human mind; the mind’s silence is the most favourable condition (not the only one) for the Divine Power to descend first upon and then into the individual consciousness and there do its work to transform that consciousness, giving it the necessary experiences, altering all its outlook and movements, leading it from stage to stage till it is ready for the last (supramental) change.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1, Calm — Peace — Equality, pp. 16-17