SECTION
TWO
Visions and Symbols
ALL visions have a significance of one kind or
another. This power of vision is very important for the yoga and should not be
rejected although it is not the most important thing – for the most important
thing is the change of the consciousness. All other powers like this of vision
should be developed without attachment as parts and aids of the yoga.
Visions are not indispensable – they are a help, that is all,
when they are of the right kind.
Visions and voices have their place when they are the genuine visions and the
true voices. Naturally, they are not the realisations but only a step on the way
and one has not to get shut up in them or take all as of value.
The visions you describe are those which come in the earliest stages of sadhana.
At this stage most of the things seen are formations of the mental plane and it
is not always possible to put on them a precise significance, for they depend on
the individual mind of the sadhak. At a later stage the power of vision becomes
important for the sadhana, but at first one has to go on without attaching
excessive importance to the details – until the consciousness develops more. The
opening of the consciousness to the Divine Light and Truth and Presence is
always the one important thing in the yoga.
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The frequent seeing of lights such as those he writes of in his
letter is usually a sign that the seer is not limited by his outward surface or
waking consciousness but has a latent capacity (which can be perfected by
training and practice) for entering into the experiences of the inner
consciousness of which most people are unaware but which opens by the practice
of yoga. By this opening one becomes aware of subtle planes of experience and
worlds of existence other than the material. For the spiritual life a still
further opening is required into an inmost consciousness by which one becomes
aware of the Self and Spirit, the Eternal and the Divine.
Visions do not come from the spiritual plane – they come from the subtle
physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic or from the planes above the Mind.
What comes from the spiritual plane are experiences of the Divine, e.g. the
experience of self everywhere, of the Divine in all, etc.
Visions and experiences (especially experiences) are all right;
but you cannot expect every vision to translate itself in a corresponding
physical fact. Some do, the majority don't, others belong to the supraphysical
entirely and indicate realities, possibilities or tendencies that have their
seat there. How far these will influence the life or realise themselves in it or
whether they will do so at all depends upon the nature of the vision, the power
in it, sometimes on the will or the formative power of the seer.
People value visions for one thing because they are one key (there are others)
to contact with the other worlds or with the inner worlds and all that is there
and these are regions of immense riches which far surpass the physical plane as
it is at present. One enters into a larger freer self and a larger more plastic
world; of course individual visions only give a contact, not an actual entrance,
but the power of vision accompanied with the power of other subtle senses
(hearing, touch, etc.) as
it expands does give this entrance. These things have not the effect of a mere imagina-
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tion (as a poet's or artist's, though
that can be strong enough) but if fully followed out bring a constant growth of
the being and the consciousness and its richness of experience and its scope.
People also value the power of vision for a greater reason than that:
it can give a first contact with the Divine in his forms and powers; it can be
the opening of a communion with the Divine, of the hearing of the Voice that
guides, of the Presence as well as the Image in the heart, of many other things
that bring what man seeks through religion or yoga.
Further, vision is of value because it is often a first key to inner
planes of one's own being and one's own consciousness as distinguished from
worlds or planes of the cosmic consciousness. Yoga-experience often begins with
some opening of the third eye in the forehead (the centre of vision in the
brows) or with some kind of beginning and extension of subtle seeing which may
seem unimportant at first but is the vestibule to deeper experience. Even when
it is not that, – for one can go to experience direct, – it can come in
afterwards as a powerful aid to experience; it can be full of indications which
help to self-knowledge or knowledge of things or knowledge of people; it can be
veridical and lead to prevision, premonition and other openings of less
importance but very useful to a yogi. In short, vision is a great instrument
though not absolutely indispensable.
But, as I have suggested, there are visions and visions, just as
there are dreams and dreams, and one has to develop discrimination and a sense
of values and things and know how to understand and make use of these powers.
But that is too big and intricate a matter to be pursued now.
He made a mistake when he stopped the visions that were coming. Vision and
hallucination are not the same thing. The inner vision is an open door on higher
planes of consciousness beyond the physical mind which gives room for a wider
truth and experience to enter and act upon the mind. It is not the only or the
most important door, but it is one which comes readiest to very many if not most
and can be a very powerful help. It does
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not come as easily to intellectuals as it does to men with a strong life-power
or the emotional and the imaginative. It is true that the field of vision, like
every other field of activity of the human mind, is a mixed world and there is
in it not only truth but much half-truth and error. It is also true that for the
rash and unwary to enter into it may bring confusion and misleading inspirations
and false voices, and it is safer to have some sure guidance from those who know
and have spiritual and psychic experience. One must look at this field calmly
and with discrimination, but to shut the gates and reject this or other
supraphysical experiences is to limit oneself and arrest the inner development.
You take a very utilitarian view of spiritual things. Whatever develops in the
sadhana, provided it is genuine, has its place in the total experience and
knowledge. A knowledge of the occult worlds and occult forces and phenomena has
its place also. Visions and voices are only a small part of that vast realm of
occult experience. As for utility, for one who has intelligence and
discrimination, visions etc. have many uses – but very little use for those who
have no discrimination or understanding.
I do not know what you mean by practical sadhana. If one develops the occult
faculty and the occult experience and knowledge, these things can be of great
use, therefore practical. In themselves they are a part of opening of the inner
consciousness and also help to open it further – though they are not
indispensable for that.
What do you mean by progress? The Mother spent many years entering the occult
worlds and learning all that was to be learnt there. All that time she was
making no progress? She sees things always when she goes into trance. Her
capacity is a thing of no value? Because a great number of people don't know how
to use
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their faculties or misuse them or give them excessive value or nourish their ego
by them, does it follow that the faculties themselves have no yogic use or
value?
Even by itself it [the development of the occult faculty] is a progress in the
development of the consciousness though it may not carry with it any
spiritualisation of the nature.
People who have the occult faculty always tend to give too large a place to it.
He [R.M.] discouraged his disciples [from having any dealings with the occult
faculty] because his aim was the realisation of the inner Self and the intuition
– in other words the fullness of the spiritual Mind – visions and voices belong
to the inner occult sense, therefore he did not want them to lay stress on it. I
also discourage some from having any dealing with visions and voices because I
see that they are being misled by false visions and false voices. That does not
mean that visions and voices have no value.
Visions come from all planes and are of all kinds and different values. Some are
of very great value and importance, others are a play of the mind or vital and
are good only for their own special purpose, others are formations of the mind
and vital plane some of which may have truth, while others are false and
misleading, or they may be a sort of artistry of that plane. They can have
considerable importance in the development of the first yogic consciousness,
that of the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical or for an occult
understanding of the universe. Visions which are real can help the spiritual
progress, I mean, those which show us inner realities: one can, for instance,
meet Krishna, speak
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with him and hear his voice in an inner “real” vision, quite as real as anything
on the outer plane. Merely seeing his image is not the same thing, any more than
seeing his picture on the wall is the same thing as meeting him in person. But
the picture on the wall need not be useless for the spiritual life. All one can
say is that one must not attach oneself too much to this gift and what it shows
us, but neither is it necessary to belittle it. It has its value and sometimes a
considerable spiritual utility. But, naturally, it is not supreme – the supreme
thing is the realisation, the contact, the union with the Divine, bhakti, change
of nature, etc.
These lights and visions are not hallucinations. They indicate an opening of the
inner vision whose centre is in the forehead between the eyebrows. Lights are
very often the first thing seen. Lights indicate the action or movement of
subtle forces belonging to the different planes of being – the nature of the
force depending on the colour and shade of the light. The sun is the symbol and
power of the inner or higher Truth; to see it in meditation is a good sign. The
sea is also often symbolic, indicating usually the vital nature, sometimes the
expanse of consciousness in movement. The opening of vision must be allowed to
develop, but too much importance need not be given to the individual visions
unless or until they become evidently symbolic or significant or shed light on
things in the sadhana.
Visions and voices are not meant for creating faith, they are effective only if
one has faith already.
No, it was neither optical illusion nor hallucination nor coincidence nor
auto-suggestion nor any of the other ponderous and vacant polysyllables by which
physical science tries to explain away or rather avoid explaining the
scientifically inexplicable.
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In these matters the scientist is always doing what he is always blaming the
layman for doing when the latter lays down the law on things about which he is
profoundly ignorant without investigation or experiment, without ascertained
knowledge – simply by evolving a theory or a priori idea out of his own mind and
plastering it as a label on the unexplained phenomena.
There is, as I have told you, a whole range or many inexhaustible
ranges of sensory phenomena other than the outward physical which one can become
conscious of, see, hear, feel, smell, touch, mentally contact – to use the new
established Americanism – either in trance or sleep or an inward state miscalled
sleep or simply and easily in the waking state. This faculty of sensing
supraphysical things internally or externalising them, so to speak, so that they
become visible, audible, sensible to the outward eye, ear, even touch, just as
are gross physical objects, this power or gift is not a freak or an abnormality;
it is a universal faculty present in all human beings, but latent in most, in
some rarely or intermittently active, occurring as if by accident in others,
frequent or normally active in a few. But just as anyone can, with some
training, learn science and do things which would have seemed miracles to his
forefathers, so almost anyone, if he wants, can with a little concentration and
training develop the faculty of supraphysical vision. When one starts yoga, this
power is often, though not invariably – for some find it difficult – one of the
first to come out from its latent condition and manifest itself, most often
without any effort, intention or previous knowledge on the part of the sadhak.
It comes more easily with the eyes shut than with the eyes open, but it does
come in both ways. The first sign of its opening in the externalised way is very
often that seeing of “sparkles” or small luminous dots, shapes, etc., which was
your first introduction to the matter; a second is, often enough, most easily,
round luminous objects like a star; seeing of colours is a third initial
experience – but they do not always come in that order. The yogis in India
very often in order to develop the power use the method of trāţak, concentrating the vision on a single point or object –
preferably a luminous object. Your looking at the star was precisely an exercise
in trāţak and had the effect which any
yogi in India
would have told you is
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normal. For all this is not fancy or delusion, it is part of an occult science
which has been practised throughout the historic and prehistoric ages in all
countries and it has always been known to be not merely auto-suggestive or
hallucinatory in its results, but, if one can get the key, veridical and
verifiable. Your scepticism may be natural in a “modern” man plunging into these
things of the past, present and future – natural but not justifiable, because
very obviously inadequate to the facts observed; but once you have seen, the
first thing you should do is to throw all this vapid pseudo-science behind you,
this vain attempt to stick physical explanations on supraphysical things, and
take the only rational course. Develop the power, get more and more experience,
develop the consciousness by which these things come; as the consciousness
develops, you will begin to understand and get the intuition of the
significance. Or if you want their science too, then learn and apply the occult
science which can alone deal with supraphysical phenomena. As for what showed
itself to you, it was not mere curious phenomena, not even merely symbolic
colour, but things that have a considerable importance.
Develop this power of inner sense and all that it brings you. These
first seeings are only an outer fringe – behind lie
whole worlds of experience which fill what seems to the natural man the gap
(your Russell's inner void) between the earth-consciousness and the Eternal and
Infinite.
There is a physical aspect of things and there is an occult supraphysical aspect
– one need not get in the way of the other. All physical things are the
expression of the supraphysical. The existence of a body with physical
instruments and processes does not, as the 19th century wrongly imagined,
disprove the existence of a soul which uses the body even if it is also
conditioned by it. Laws of Nature do not disprove the existence of God. The fact
of a material world to which our instruments are accorded does not disprove the
existence of less material worlds which certain subtler instruments can show to
us.
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Is the Presence of a physical nature or a spiritual fact? And is the physical
sense accustomed or able to see or feel spiritual things – a spiritual Presence,
a non-material Form? To see the Brahman everywhere is not possible unless you
develop the inner vision – to do that you have to concentrate. To see non-
material forms is indeed possible for a few, because they have the gift by
nature, but most can't do it without developing the subtle sight. It is absurd
to expect the Divine to manifest his Presence without your taking any trouble to
see it, you have to concentrate.
It simply means you have a subjective sense of Presence. But must a
subjective sense of things be necessarily a vain imagination? If so, no yoga is
possible. One has to take it as an axiom that subjective things can be as real
as objective things. No doubt there may be and are such things as mental
formations – but, to begin with, mental formations are or can be very powerful
things, producing concrete results; secondly whether what one sees or hears is a
mental formation or a real subjective object can only be determined when one has
sufficient experience in these inward things.
Subjective visions can be as real as objective sight – the only difference is
that one is of real things in material space, while the others are of real
things belonging to other planes down to the subtle physical; even symbolic
visions are real in so far as they are symbols of realities. Even dreams can
have a reality in the subtle domain. Visions are unreal only when these are
merely imaginative mental formations, not representing anything that is true or
was true or is going to be true.
This power of vision is sometimes inborn and habitual even without
any effort of development, sometimes it wakes up of itself and becomes abundant
or needs only a little practice to develop; it is not necessarily a sign of
spiritual attainment, but usually when by practice of yoga one begins to go
inside or live within, the power of subtle vision awakes to a greater or less
extent; but this does not always happen easily, especially if one has been
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habituated to live much in the intellect or in an outward vital consciousness.
I suppose what you are thinking of is “darshan”,
the self-revelation of the Deity to the devotee; but that is different, it is an
unveiling of his presence, temporary or permanent, and may come as a vision or
may come as a close feeling of his presence which is more intimate than sight
and a frequent or constant communication with him; that happens by deepening of
the being into its inner self and growth of consciousness or by growth of the
intensity of bhakti. When the crust of external consciousness is sufficiently
broken by the pressure of increasing and engrossing bhakti, the contact comes.
The visions he has between the eyebrows are not imaginations – they could be so
only if he thought them first and his thoughts took shape, but as they came
independent of his thoughts, they are not visual imagination but vision. This
faculty is a useful one in yoga and it can be allowed to develop; it should not
be discouraged. I do not know what he means by not having śraddhā in them. What he sees now are probably only images of subtle
(sūkşma)
scenes and objects; but, when developed, this can become a power of symbolic,
representative or real vision, showing the truths of things or realities of this
or other worlds or representations of the past, present or future.
If the concentration goes naturally to the centre between the
eyebrows which is the centre of inner mind and its thought, will and vision,
there is no harm in that.
There is no utility in his coming here now. He has first to go
through the process of purification and preparation of the nature and at least
an initial development of the positive yogic consciousness without which his
coming here would be useless.
What was developed in you is a power of true inner vision – this will help you
to enter through it into touch with the Divine;
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you have only to let it develop. Two other things have to develop – the feeling
of the Divine Presence and power and inspiration behind your actions, and the
inner contact with myself and the Mother. Aspire with faith and sincerity and
these will come. I do not wish to give any more precise instructions until I see
what happens in you during your stay here; for although the path is common to
all, each man has his own way of following it.
II
When you see Light, that is vision; when you feel Light entering into you, that
is experience; when Light settles in you and brings illumination and knowledge,
that is a realisation. But ordinarily visions are also called experiences.
Usually the visions precede realisation, in a way they prepare it.
The vision of the higher planes or the idea of what they are can be had long
before the transformation. If that were not possible, how could the
transformation take place – the lower nature cannot change by itself, it changes
by the growing vision, perception, descent of the higher consciousness belonging
to the higher planes? It is through aspiration, through an increasing opening
that these visions and perceptions begin to come – the realisation comes
afterwards.
Yes, it [the higher consciousness] can come down into the mind plane bringing
peace, wideness, the cosmic consciousness, the realisation of the Divine, the
sense of the cosmic forces and other things – without any breaking of the veil
through vision.
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Ordinarily, however, with most people the inner vision comes first.
I said the realisation of the Divine in the mind. If there is to be the total
realisation, the breaking of the veil is indispensable.
Sometimes a vision accompanies an experience and is as it were a visual
rendering of it or accompaniment to it, but the experience itself is a separate
thing.
That does not follow. By going deep a person may see visions, another may fall
in deeper consciousness and see no vision and so on. The result varies with the
nature.
III
Inner vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise and contains a truth in
it. In mental vision the images are invented by the mind and are partly true,
partly a play of possibilities. Or a mental vision like the vital may be only a
suggestion, – that is a formation of some possibility on the mental or vital
plane which presents itself to the sadhak in the hope of being accepted and
helped to realise itself.
The mental visions are meant to bring in the mind the influence of the things
they represent.
Cosmic vision is the seeing of the universal movements – it has
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nothing to do with the psychic necessarily. It can be in the
universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.
What do you mean here by psychic vision? Inner vision means the
vision with the inner seeing as opposed to outer vision, the external sight with
the surface mind in the surface eyes. Psychic, in the language of this yoga, is
confined to the soul, the psychic being – it is not as in the ordinary language
in which if you see a ghost it is called a “psychic vision”; we speak of the
inner vision or the subtle sight – not the psychic vision.
Vision in trance is vision no less than vision in the waking state. It is only
the condition of the recipient consciousness that varies – in one the waking
consciousness shares in the vision, in the other it is excluded for the sake of
greater facility and range in the inner experience. But in both it is the inner
vision that sees.
The inner vision can see objects, but it can see instead the vibration of the
forces which act through the object.
Visions are of all kinds – some are merely suggestions of what wants to be or is
trying to be, some indicate some approach of the thing or movement towards it,
some indicate that the thing is being done.
Nothing has to be done to develop the images seen in the vision. They develop of
themselves by the growing practice of seeing, – what was faint becomes clear,
what was incomplete becomes complete. One cannot say in a general way that they
are real
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or unreal. Some are formations of the mind, some are images
that come to the sight of themselves, some are images of real things that show
themselves directly to the sight – others are true pictures, not merely images.
This realm (whose centre is between the eyebrows) is the realm of inner thought,
will, vision – the motor-car indicates a rapid progress in this part of the
consciousness. The motor-car is a symbolic image, these images do not refer to
anything physical.
These things take place in the inner mind or inner vital and usually
there is a truth behind them, but the form in which they come into the mind may
be imperfect – i.e. the meaning may be something not perfectly revealed in the
words.
These are not mental images. There is an inner vision that opens when one does
sadhana and all sorts of images rise before it or pass. Their coming does not
depend upon your thought or will; it is real and automatic. Just as your
physical eyes see things in the physical world, so the inner eyes see things and
images that belong to the other worlds and subtle images of things of this
physical world also.
Things inside can be seen as distinctly as outward things whether in an image by
the subtle vision or in their essence by a still more subtle and powerful way of
seeing; but all these things have to develop in order to get their full power
and intensity.
Subtle images can be images of all things in all worlds.
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Everything not physical is seen by an inner vision.
The seeing of colours is the beginning of inner vision, what is called sūkşmadŗşţi. Afterwards this vision opens and one begins to see
figures and scenes and people. It is good that the seeing began with an image of
the Mother.
When the inner vision opens, there can come before it all that ever was or is
now in the world, even it can open to things that will be hereafter – so there
is nothing impossible in seeing thus the figures and the things of the past.
When one tries to meditate, the first obstacle in the beginning
is sleep. When you get over this obstacle, there comes a condition in which,
with the eyes closed, you begin to see things, people, scenes of all kinds. This
is not a bad thing, it is a good sign and means that you are making progress in
the yoga. There is, besides the outer physical sight which sees external
objects, an inner sight in us which can see things yet unseen and unknown,
things at a distance, things belonging to another place or time or to other
worlds; it is the inner sight which is opening in you. It is the working of the
Mother's force which is opening it in you, and you should not try to stop it.
Remember the Mother always, call on her and aspire to feel her presence and her
power working in you; but you do not need, for that, to reject this or other
developments that may come in you by her working hereafter. It is only desire,
egoism, restlessness and other wrong movements that have to be rejected.
This gazing on a flame or a bright spot is the traditional means
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used by yogis for concentration or for awakening of the inner consciousness and
vision. You seem to have gone by the gazing into a kind of surface (not deep)
trance, which is indeed one of its first results, and begun to see things
probably on the vital plane. I do not know what were the “dreadful objects” you
saw but that dreadfulness is the character of many things first seen on that
plane, especially when crossing its threshold by such means. You should not
employ these means, I think, for they are quite unnecessary and besides, they
may lead to a passive concentration in which one is open to all sorts of things
and cannot choose the right ones.
I did not quite understand from your letter what is the nature of these sights
and objects that pass like a cinema film before you. If they are things seen by
the inner vision, then there is no need to drive them away – one has only to let
them pass. When one does sadhana an inner mind which is within us awakes and
sees by an inner vision images of all things in this world and other worlds –
this power of vision has its use, though one has not to be attached to it; one
can let them pass with a quiet mind, neither fixing on them nor driving them
away. It is the thoughts of the outer mind that have to be refused, the
suggestions and ideas that end by disturbing the sadhana. There are also a
number of thoughts of all kinds that have no interest, but which the mind was
accustomed to allow to come as a habit, mechanically, – these sometimes come up
when one tries to be quiet. They must be allowed to pass away without attending
to them until they run down and the mind becomes still; to struggle with them
and try to stop them is no use, there must be only a quiet rejection. On the
other hand if thoughts come up from within, from the psychic, thoughts of the
Mother, of divine love and joy, perceptions of truth etc., these of course must
be permitted, as they help to make the psychic active.
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Dreams or visions on the vital plane are usually either:
(1) symbolic vital visions;
(2) actual occurrences on the vital plane;
(3) formations of the vital mind, either of the dreamer or of someone
else with whom he contacts in sleep or of powers or beings of that plane. No
great reliance can be put on this kind of experience, even the first having only
a relative or suggestive value, while the second and third are often quite
misleading.
These are visions of the vital world and the vital planes and one sees hundreds
of them there.... All the parts of the consciousness are like fields into which
forces from the same planes of consciousness in the universal Nature are
constantly entering or passing. The best thing is to observe without getting
affected in either way and without attaching too much importance – for these are
minor experiences and one's own concentration must call the major ones.
As you were concentrating your attention on the electric light, it may have been
the god of electricity you saw, Vaidyuta
Agni. There is no reason why he should have many faces – the many-headed
or many-armed figures belong usually to the vital plane – and it may not have
been in his vital form that he was manifesting. As for the colours, colours are
symbols of forces and Agni need not be pure red – the
principle of Fire can manifest all the colours and the pure white fire is that
which contains in itself all the colours.
The gods in the overmental plane have not many heads and arms – this is a
vital symbolism, it is not necessary in other planes. This figure may have
belonged to the subtle physical plane.
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The world you see is in some subtle physical plane where men see the gods
according to their own idea and images of them.
It is the vital plane – probably the vital physical. It is mostly there that the
beings of the vital world appear with animal heads or features. A human figure
with a dog's face means a very coarse and material sexual energy. Of course, all
such energies can be transformed and cease to be sexual – turned into material
strength of some kind, just as the seminal force can be turned by brahmacarya into ojas.
It depends on the nature of the symbolic vision whether it is merely
representative, presenting to the inner vision and nature (even though the outer
mind has not the understanding, the inner can receive its effect) the thing
symbolised in its figure or whether it is dynamic. The Sun symbol, for instance,
is usually dynamic. Again, among the dynamic symbols some may bring simply the
influence of the thing symbolised, some indicate what is being done but not yet
finished, some a formative experience that visits the consciousness, some a
prophecy of something that may or will or is soon about to happen. There are
others that are not merely symbols but present actualities seen by the vision in
a symbolic figure.
When the colours begin to take definite shapes in the visions, it is a sign of
some dynamic work of formation in the consciousness: a square, for instance,
means that some kind of creation is in process in some field of the being; the
square indicates that the creation is to be complete in itself; while the
rectangle indicates something partial and preliminary. The waves of colour mean
a dynamic rush of forces and the star in such a context indicates the promise of
the new being that is to be formed.
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The blue colour must here be the Krishna light, so it is a creation under the
stress of Krishna consciousness. All these are symbols of what is going on in
the inner being, in the consciousness behind and the results well up from time
to time in the external or surface consciousness in such feeling as the
awareness of a softening and opening which you had, devotion, joy, peace,
Ananda, etc. When the opening is complete, there is likely to be a more direct
consciousness of the working that is going on behind, till it is no longer
behind but in the front of the nature.
When you see a square, that is a symbol of complete creation; when you see a
buffalo rushing upon you and missing and feel you have escaped a great danger,
that is a transcription. Something actually happened of which the buffalo's
ineffectual rush was your mind's transcription – the rush of some hostile force
represented by the buffalo.
All that can be seen with closed eyes can be seen with open eyes also; it is
sufficient that the inner sight should extend to the subtle physical
consciousness for that to happen.
1. The vision was seen through the physical eyes but by the subtle physical
consciousness; in other words, there was an imposition of one consciousness upon
another. After a certain stage of development, this capacity of living in the
ordinary physical consciousness and yet having superadded to it another and more
subtle sense, vision, experience becomes quite normal. A little concentration is
enough to bring it; or, even, it happens automatically without any
concentration.
As the flower was a subtle physical object, not entirely material in
the ordinary sense of the word (though quite substantial and material in its own
plane, not an illusion), a camera would
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not be able to detect it – except in the case of one of those abnormal
interventions by which a subtle form has been thrown upon the material plate.
It could be sensed in a dark room, though not so easily, and it would
not then have so vivid an appearance – unless you are able to bring out
something of the light of the subtle physical plane to surround it and give it
its natural medium.
If seen with the eyes shut, it would be no longer a subtle physical
form, but an object or formation of the vital, mental or other plane – unless,
indeed, the inner consciousness had progressed so far as to be able to project
itself into the physical planes; but this is a rare and, in most cases, a late
development.
2. It is not, usually, the object that vanishes; it is the
consciousness that changes. Owing to lack of sustained capacity or lack of
training, one is not able to keep the subtle physical vision which is what was
really seeing the object. This subtle physical vision comes easiest in the
moment between light sleep and waking – either when one just comes out of the
sleep or when one is just going into it. But one can train oneself to have it
when one is quite wide awake.
At first when one begins to see, it is quite usual for the more
ill-defined and imprecise figures to last longer while those which are
successful, complete, precise in detail and outline are apt to be quite
momentary and disappear in an instant. It is only when the subtle vision is well
developed that the precise and full seeing lasts for a long time. This results
from the difficulty of keeping what is still an abnormal consciousness and also,
in this case, from the difficulty of keeping the two momentarily superimposed
consciousnesses together.
3. There are all kinds in the experiences of each plane – symbolic
forms, figures of suggestion, thought-figures, desire-formations or
will-formations, constructions of all kinds, things real and lasting in the
plane to which they belong and things fictitious and misleading. The
haphazardness belongs to the consciousness that sees with its limited and
imperfect way of cognizing the other worlds, not to the phenomena themselves.
Each plane is a world or a conglomeration or series of worlds, each organized in
its own way, but organized, not haphazard;
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only, of course, the subtler planes are more plastic and less rigid in their
organisation than the material plane.
The power of occult seeing is there in everyone, mostly latent, often near the
surface sometimes but much more rarely already on the surface. If one practises trātak, it is
pretty certain to come out sooner or later, – though some have a difficulty and
with them it takes time; those in whom it comes out at once have had all the
time this power of occult vision near the surface and it emerges at the first
direct pressure.
The rays which you saw the trees giving out are there always, only
they are veiled to the ordinary material vision. I said the blue and gold
together indicated the combined presence of Krishna and Durga-Mahakali; but gold
and yellow have different significances. Yellow in the indication of forces
signifies the thinking mind, buddhi,
and the pink (modified here into a light vermilion) is a psychic colour; the
combination probably meant the psychic in the mental.
In interpreting these phenomena you must remember that all depends on
the order of things which the colours indicate in any particular case. There is
an order of significances in which they indicate various psychological
dynamisms, e.g., faith, love, protection, etc. There is another order of
significances in which they indicate the aura or the activity of divine beings,
Krishna, Mahakali, Radha or else of other superhuman
beings; there is another in which they indicate the aura around objects or
living persons – and that does not exhaust the list of possibilities. A certain
knowledge, experiences, growing intuition are necessary to perceive in each case
the true significance. Observation and exact description are also very
necessary; for sometimes people say, for instance, yellow when they mean gold or
vice versa; there are besides different possible meanings for different shades
of the same colour. Again, if you see colour near or round a person or by
looking at him or her, it does not necessarily indicate that person's aura; it
may be something else near him or around him. In some cases it may have nothing
to do with the person or
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object you look at, which may serve merely the purpose of a background or a
point of concentration – as when you see colours on a wall or by looking at a
bright object.
The seeing of the body (at least one's own) in its internal parts is a yogic
power developed by the Raja and Hathayogins – I
suppose it could be extended to the body of others. There is also the sense of
subtle smells and I have noticed that sometimes one smell persists.
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