CWTVKS Volume 2

2) Experiences

Flight of Time

It is a healthy sign that you sense the flight of time—months pass, as weeks and days do, like hours with great rapidity. That shows, there is no dullness, no tedium, no tamas allowed to be effective before the illumined faith in you, through which the supreme Influence to which you are open has its way, does its work, and carries the day in spite of the protests of mind and body clinging still to the old rut in part.

July 1938

Meditation

Of the many experiences (you have had) felt in the body (out of the ordinary, in your words) there is one which could be made part of a constant experience in meditation. It is the feeling that you have become very very small. I do not enlarge upon its significance here: if you simply direct your attention to the stomach when you are in that state, you can vitally feel the result, and learn for yourself something of the way of the Power at work. When you sit and begin your meditation, it takes some time for your wandering mind to settle itself or keep itself aloof, to allow your being to feel the presence of the movement from top to bottom. Then when the calm is settled on the body, you can just reflect this past experience of yours, or sink from above downwards to the heart, to the bottom or simply stand behind and call upon the Calm and Strength above to pour down into you, allow the flow without interruption; if you cannot do so, simply keep quiet and watch and remember this idea; it is enough.

There must be a tense atmosphere for you to get this particular experience. You can get it by all of you, four or five, sitting together in prayer for half an hour during nights...

I have never come across a perfect man. Your complaint of weakness is a sign of aspiring strength. But we cannot afford to spend time and life's energy over it; we have simply to call upon the Higher Force to deal with the thing. Of course it requires a longer preparation. It comes at the right time. Until then a persevering zeal is necessary, and not a kind of dullness or patience indifferent to the Ideal. To keep the fire burning is our part. The work and process are Hers.

3 March 1932

The heaviness on the eyelids is common. It is not sleep. It is kind of self-forgetfulness that attends a successful initial attempt at the withdrawal of the consciousness inwards. If there is fear or anything disquieting, then it has to be avoided. Otherwise, even sleep in this condition is good.

16 March 1933

Your experiences in meditation must, of course, ‘strengthen the faith'. But the special significance of these visions is the expansion of the personal consciousness into a wider realm.

11 February 1937

Vacant Mind

To get at the vacant mind is the same as to get at the akasa, etherial space, by climbing and reaching the heights of a mountain.

It means that the illusion of the distance space as sky causes the ignorant human mind to make the attempt to find it, while in fact the vacant space is everywhere whatever direction one turns to.

When the analogy is applied to the vacant mind, one can realise that there is an indefinable vacant space in and behind the mind. This seeming vacancy makes it possible to distinguish one thought from another. If one can seize the intervening space between one thought and another by a persistent vigilance, that is one way to succeed in the effort by repeated practice. Or, to know and feel and seize the vacancy behind the mind, behind the thought-movement, and fall back upon it every time a thought crosses the mind, is perhaps more helpful and less difficult with many people.

Really speaking, this first view of vacancy is the negative side of the erect canvas of mind on which thoughts are drawn and move about. But positively, it is a substantial poise of the being to which the vacant mind sooner or later turns or must turn to find its true basis. The positive side of the seeming vacancy of mind is characterised by a Silence which is the antithesis of the noisy mind; it is immobile, the obverse side of the mobile thought-movement, it is peaceful, breathing the spirit of Cosmic harmony, quite the reverse of the chaos in the surface agitation of the rigmarole of mind made up of thought, sensations and feelings.

The disadvantage of the vacant mind even when one succeeds in the attempt is that something is ever watchful and ready to occupy the vacancy. If that something happens to be some idea or image or feeling, rising from one's own desires and passions, supported too gladly by their original home of the dark forces, say the vital world, then the whole tapasya and its fruit becomes a welcome prey to the adverse forces and beings. To avert such an eventuality, something positive behind the aspiration for the ‘vacant mind’ must be ready to fill the emptiness. ‘The pure flame in the heart, the aspiration towards the highest step must be constant.'

Visions

I may reiterate that a very short time for prayer on getting up from bed and when going to it is sufficient to you for the present. Whatever light, form or image you see, you must watch and observe and keep it as a possible gain without getting overjoyed or excited and wait till the time comes when in your gradual growth, as one of the results of your daily prayer, you can get the knowledge of the value and significance and full meaning of the visions and other experiences you get and may continue to get in different kinds or with varying intensity. In no case are you to dismiss them summarily as ‘allurements’ because you find it so printed in some book.

18 July 1934

Dreams

Some dreams are true, because one gets into the dreamland with a truth-consciousness and gets back to the waking consciousness state without much mixture of untruths, without the dream experience getting much distorted.

Some are not true, because one gets into a state of sleep and dreams things or happenings which are gross reproductions of his own personal feelings and prejudices and preferences partly known to him in the waking state, or totally unknown to him, but lying latent in his being—imprisoned as it were in the material and vital parts of the being for an opportunity for the free play in dreams, when man has no conscious control.

There are other factors that determine the character of dreams. When one grows in experience he can and must be able to separate the grain from the chaff. But this must necessarily take time. I think you can apply to particular dreams what I have stated in general terms in the above few lines and need not always attach great importance to any and every dream. You understand!

24 October 1934

In dreams and visions, if one develops the habit of retaining his consciousness, he is already on the way to overcoming obstacles and positive obstructions of the hostile forces covering the inner being (i.e. the psychic being, the soul) in darkness and allurements leading it away from its direct communion with the Divine. The most important element in a dream or a vision is its educative value to the developing consciousness of the aspirant. That does not mean there is no other meaning attached to it. Let me explain your vision for instance, so that it may derive as a powerful suggestion and stimulant to you to maintain the right attitude towards dreams etc. and to pursue the subtle lines of introspective or intuitive thought that fetch us the key to interpretation of every experience. Each one has got to evolve a system, a very subtle mechanism of inner knowledge best fitted and peculiar to his individuality. Others shall not and cannot completely explain one's personal experiences...

Communion with the Divine is the immediate and not remote Ideal, is the foundation upon which the superstructure of a grand spiritual life with fuller and richer details of supraphysicarexperiences can be constructed. And this communion whether with the Divine or with its Powers and Personalities on the higher planes or on the earth plane here is possible in a clear and growing consciousness at once filled with calm and blown up as it were by an aspiring flame. Therefore it can bear repetition to state that consciousness is the most important factor. It will grow as calm settles upon the entire being including the physical body. Until then Faith (which is a Divine influence) acts as its effective substitute:

sraddhamayo'yam purusah yo yacchraddhah sa eva sah.

28 November 1930

The feeling (and after-effect) on the day following, reveals the welcome or unwelcome character of a dream.

13 May 1936