Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

Experiences

      Quietness, calm and receptivity, creating a happy state, are increasing.

      If you have that experience it is very good — for it is the first step.

      How can one be sure that what one takes to be an experience of calm and of inner contact with the Divine is really so?

      An experience is an unmistakable thing and must be given its proper value. The mind may exaggerate in thinking about it but that does not deprive it of its value.

      How is it that the consciousness loses its activity of experience after a short while every day?

      It is often like that — the period of intense activity is limited to a particular part of the day and for the rest of the time there is a lull.

      When it is possible to sustain an experience of inner silence and fire for long, can one have it continuously? Or is the being ready only for a prolonged experience?

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      Yes, it can have it now from time to time, but an absolutely continuous experience (it would no longer be an experience then, but an established condition) is not likely so soon.

      The consciousness is indrawn and there is an inner fire, but the mind is unable to aspire at the time of the experience.

      Aspiration during the period of experience is not so necessary. It is in the intervals that it should be there.

      I experience Love and Ananda, but they disappear after a while.

      It is so with all spiritual experiences. The ordinary consciousness is not accustomed to hold them.

      A fall in concentration is very upsetting.

      Fall of the concentration happens to everybody — it has not to be taken as if it were something tragic or allowed to be the cause of depression.

      A quiet and even basis means a condition of the sadhana in which there is no tossing about between eager bursts of experience and a depressed inert or half inert condition, but whether in progress or in difficulty there is always a quiet consciousness behind turned in confidence and faith towards the Divine.

      All sorts of experiences are, of course, valuable, but is it not true that unless the being is filled with peace, there is always a chance of falling?

      Yes—if the peace is established, then the falls are only on the surface, and do not affect the inner consciousness.

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      In one's working time, one's self can experience peace and watch quietly, but mechanical thoughts of an obscure type can still keep running. Is it the vital being that is non-cooperative in the sadhana?

      That is for you to observe. There are usually parts of the vital and physical which do not take great interest in the sadhana — until the whole being is converted.

      There is at times a strong concentration at the forehead centre and one feels as if something were flowing down into one from there. And yet one has a feeling of resistance to the pressure of the descending light.

      The feeling of resistance may be the result of the effort at response. When there is the free flow there is neither effort nor resistance.

      If the feeling of resistance may be the result of the effort at response, is it wrong to make an effort to aspire for the light that is pressing to descend?

      No. But when you make the effort you will naturally become conscious of whatever resistance there may be to the effort.

      The Mother's Force, instead of descending through the head, seems to come at times through the forehead. 

      It can come in anywhere but the normal way of descent is through the head.

      What enters the forehead comes usually from above or from around.

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      You have said: "It is through the spine that in the Tantric sadhana the Kundalini rises." Can we have Tantric experiences here?

      One can feel the experiences of any sadhana as a part of this one.

      Was the experience of the Mother's Force inter-fered with by the lower vital's depression because that Force entered this part of the being?

      It may have been —but very often the lower Nature pushes these things across an experience in opposition to the working of the force.

      Is it the Mother who stops a certain line of experiences in order to make the consciousness attend to something else?

      The experiences stop because the consciousness is defective.

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