Meeting Sri Aurobindo I

24 December 1999

Now I will start to relate the meetings with the Master especially because there are certain human natures that greatly rejoice to ear  the Master has appeared to someone. I´m one of those for instance, and literally drink any such experience, as those historically known in the circles of integral yoga.


I will briefly resume here a few previous circumstances: I´m sure it was 24th December, probably 1999, I didn´t note down the date but only the experience.

That unforgettable morning a complete thought crossed my mind clearly coming from outside: it said I should be back home because a "friend" would come to see me.

I was used to occasionally ear inner voice, but this one had reached me from the exterior, someone was sending me a message but I could not trace back the sender. 
I had different planes for the day but decided to answer the call, it quite intrigued me because I had recently moved to a different country and none of my friends knew about it, beside, I was living in a quite secluded place in the country side difficult to reach without a guide.

When I reached back home I made some cleaning and had some food and fruits ready just in case, later on I lighted the fire and disposed myself to wait.

Till late in the night none came.
 I had lost every hope and cross legged by the fire-place I resolved to go to sleep, bitterly considering that the next time I could not just trust any other such message.

But a moment before I stood up I seemed to ear someone approaching the entrance door, enter the house and get inside the sitting room.

I was immobile and open mouthed: as  by a command, all my hair stood on end on my head... no doubt it was a Presence... but a presence I could only "perceive", an invisible one.

I could only feel the tremendous impact its sudden appearance  had on the physical things, and concretely the walls of the house: it was such a "massive" presence that the very walls and roof  seemed on the point to explode unable to contain that cyclopic, super-human presence. 

 I was more then worried because the Presence didn´t identify itself nor said a single word, but what seemed worst, now was clearly advancing towards me!..
I closed my eyes and fervently prayed the Divine Mother to intervene, but there was no answer, when I opened them, the Presence was  standing immobile in front of me.
I had no option left. I was literally  petrified in asana on the soil and only could wait the next move.

Then the invisible Presence seemed to bend over me and touch as with a finger my "subtle physical body" on the sacral area, the lowest part of the spine, and suddenly a red-orange torrent of fire streamed out from the base of the spine remounting it.
Immediately the fire divided into two main streams now whitening as thin beams of white light which took  different balanced directions just below the navel, one upward and the other downward and dividing themselves in subsidiary beams of light which orderly circulated around the body leaving a trace, a net of light around the body, with tiny spots which started to reverberate along the beams.
The red-orange flame never ceased to enter and transform into beams of light, it was a constant inflow.

In  that position and with the tiny bulbs shining I thought I had to look like a Christmas tree with its lights on,  half-bitterly considering that I would look even more so because of the snow on top of it, referring to my hair surely whitened for the circumstance. 
I thought: Now only the star on the top most of the tree is missing... and the star arrived!

The two beams of light and their subsidiaries had now reached my head producing a horizontal, circular magnetic  pattern which radiated in waves in the air. 
I felt as never before in my life, a deep sense of well being and a deep unmovable peace.
Of course, at that moment I had lost all prevention  about the Presence, on the contrary, I innerly bowed pleading forgiveness for my previous reaction.
Strangely enough, my rectification seemed to have as answer the retrieving of the Presence.
I felt it was leaving me, retiring and I rushed a few questions with the hope to retain it a little more with me: Who are you?.. Shall I meet you again?.. Why..This?

But the Presence didn´t utter a word to answer my questions, only, just before disappearing, a single thought crossed again my mind proceeding now from the Presence: It is a bliss for the work ahead.
-...Work?..."Which" work?..
But the Presence wasn´t there anymore to answer...

I stood up immediately  and went to the mirror, with a breath of relieve I found no white hair and no trace of tiny bulbs on my face either, even though I could still feel the pulsating bulbs fading away.

But...Work? What that could mean? It was an absolute mystery and so had to remain till a few months later, when finally the mystery was disclosed by the Master himself.

****
This was the first of the cycle of meetings, it was as physical as possible, all the others would happen in different planes, but this one happened while absolutely awake in the physical body, and I certainly recognize that only by direct intervention of the Master I was able to perceive with my subtle body.
(The silence of the Presence seemed intentioned to fire up my subtle perception in those anguishing moments, it was a scaring though necessary situation so to create a direct passage from the physical to the subtle physical, and certainly perfectly controlled by the Master).

 I didn´t recognize it was the Master till a later occasion when, while looking at him, again I felt the same powerful and almost unbearable radiation of his body of glory.
Possibly I should say "overmental body", the fact remains it was a glorious body emitting such powerful radiation which deeply acted upon  my very atomic structure, and even then, I realized the Master was lowering the rate of his radiation for my own safety.

I report this experience for the purpose of study, the acupuncture and whomever has some easiness with a chart of acupuncture may depict quite well how the beams of light were circling around the body, as they perfectly resembled meridians of light. The interesting thing is that the whole structure of light has a starting point, the base of the spine. It seems the charts of acupuncture reflects a rather static vision of this circulating energy, and do not underline the circuit as ending around the head with a magnetic radiance, the magnetism of that light was quite an outstanding feature.
It created an authentic, subtle, magnetic field around the body.

Saving the distances, a similar magnetic field I found later around Sri Aurobindo himself, only, exceedingly more powerful.
From this and other experiences I got convinced that the Master can´t thoroughly manifest himself physically simply because we couldn´t bear the intensity of the vision and literally evaporate in a cloud of atoms.
  

The Subtle Body

Mother and Sri Aurobindo spoke quite clearly of the subtle body and subtle world.
But in order to avoid it remain an intellectual knowledge one needs to prove it to himself.
After all it is not about learning but -being- that transformation and knowledge.
So we don´t have any other option then discover it of first hand.
It also means not being afraid to investigate the eventual value of any other useful information.
I found myself a lot of help in the teaching of the Agni Yoga, based almost in its totality on teaching released on subtler levels, with words as "the Subtle Realm" and "the Fiery Realm", which, to a no-discriminating mind may immediately recall its resonance with the "subtle world" and "supermental world" of Sri Aurobindo.
The reason why it ought to be so are evident but is not of our momentary concern, as we are talking of the subtle body.
When I started to experience "conscious sleep", it was evident a number of things.
The first was that the physical body was sleeping.
The second, was that the subconscious as well was dreaming.
If I wanted to, I could see it as a lower mental appendix of my consciousness, attached to me, but with a certain degree of reciprocal independence.
I was not affected at all for the dreams the subconscious was dreaming, I could see them as on a screen if I wanted to see them, but I could just ignore my subconscious and continue with my experiences.
So, I left behind physical body and subconscious.
Then, I found myself as a nucleus of consciousness, a mental being.
I had all the mental faculties of normal wake consciousness  plus this condition of lack of physicality.
But it was not only -who- I was, but also -where- I was.
It was certainly a space, but not a physical space, rather a mental space, without true objects and dimensions but certain basic blue hues everywhere which was not a flat thing but a "space". It was "things" in its potentiality, they weren't there, but at any moment that space would open on something one has to know or remain just as an unseen possibility.
I would not see any subtle envelope of this mental body/mental being which I was, and yet, in some occasion, if the circumstance needed it, a subtle replica of my physical body would be formed, otherwise, the tendency was getting back to formless mental substance.
That subtle body was not a temporary invention, but had a complete reciprocity with the physical body.
Something like you can fold out and unfold at request, but not of an -essential- presence: to be just that nucleus of consciousness was pretty enough for whatever.
It also gained somehow, as it seemed to share some kind of superior intuition, and even subtler senses, which infallibly told the truth of anything happening there.
I normally did not see either a "body of light", or a "nervous body", or any subtle envelope for the circulating prana and the chakras, though this too, would appear in some concrete occasion, otherwise its presence would remain occult.

***

As a consequence of my own perception, (then having value only for me), had I to make parallelism with the descriptions in the integral yoga, I would say that the mental body or mental being of this yoga, was without doubt my own experience of being that formless consciousness.
The "subtle physical" of the integral yoga, would specifically refer to that subtle replica of my physical body and even that "body of light", which would or not appear as necessary, but the word -subtle body- would not refer to something in itself but -the totality- of these more subtle parts.
So that a -subtle body- in itself do not exist, but refers to that larger compendium.
At least, those my own conclusions.