The Hour of the Toiling Gods

(follows to "The Hour before the Gods Awake")

The article* on Sri Aurobindo I mention in the previous post  had the strangest story an article could have. Beside that it required a subtle visit to Auroville together with the Master, it acted like the dissolvent for all my doubts and restorer of my peace of mind, moreover it was born in such unusual way deserving to be counted because it shows some of the activities we can entertain with in the mental world, and testifies on the existence of mental beings on such a level, as Mother repeatedly mentioned to Satprem.

One night, as soon as my body fell asleep, I "woke up" on the other side.

I only lost consciousness for a few moments while the body fell asleep, from that moment on, the physical body continued to sleep while I remained awake. At all the effects, I had never fall asleep. I knew exactly who I was, I didn't loose any cognition of my identity. I was as to say, a body of consciousness, my mental faculties were all there, intact in the transition, but now with an additional conscious acquaintance and access to a limitrophe condition of being and space of existence.  The mental world. 

Though not familiar with that condition, I knew already enough for not fearing it, I had grown accustomed to it.

This necessary introduction doesn't make any justice to the speed of the whole process, because within instants, as soon as I was in conscious sleep I unwillingly started to ascend within a blue mental atmosphere charged with a whitish fog everywhere, till I remained suspended in the middle of nowhere. 

I concentrated all my attention around and through that fog but there was anything else but that blue mist.
Then, an inner injunction as a silent voice alerted me to focus better.

I didn't know it could be possible to focus better in that conditions but I did. For a moment there was something as an invisible swirl at the level of my eyes which pierced the fog, then suddenly I saw them. 

It was a circle of beings not far from me.

They were handsome and seemingly entertained in some unknown activity of their own because they were not distracted by my sudden appearance.

They looked all male, with long black hair till the base of the neck, all dressed with a blue robe which left their right arm uncovered as the Buddhist monks, or rather, as the ancient gods in Renaissance paintings or Greek representations. Even the color of their skin was but a whiter shade of blue. 

They looked as gods or higher beings, certainly of a very noble nature, and they seemed at ease levitating in the middle of nowhere.
At first I felt somehow embarrassed to present myself uninvited, and for a brief instant I didn't know what to do.

But a moment later I heard a warm telepathic welcome from all of them at the unisone and the invitation to join the group.

In that fog I had not many options left so I joined that unfamiliar group of six or seven, sitting among them within the circle while discovering I had instantly acquired the faculty to be in telepathic contact with each of them.

In that new condition of perception, I could appreciate that in spite of their physical similarity, inwardly they each had quite a different and exquisite personality.

Their main interest was an object floating in the middle of the circle.
At first sight it looked like a seed of a plant big as a dish, open in two halves.

But soon my attention was attracted by one of them saying something like: "At this point having we said that, we  should also say...(don´t remember the exact words), and while talking, he made a gesture with his right arm uplifted and "taking the mental concept from high", descended the arm toward the seed and with a mudra of his fingers he placed the concept into the seed.

"But then", said another one "if we say this, we should also add... (again don´t remember the exact words, but he does a similar gestures as the previous one, till a number of them expresses their opinion).

At this point it had become clear that these beings were mental beings* and were dealing with thoughts and concepts, they could create coherent lines of thoughts, they seemed having access to a kind of invisible "mental reservoir" of concepts of different kind, dealing with them with an absolute coherence which I could clearly follow, and then put them into the seed.

So at that point the seed itself attracted my attention, and I focused on it better.

What had looked like a seed, looked now a typewritten page, and for a few moments I asked myself how was it possible that amid all such beauty and perfection, things could not be better arranged than presenting a page seemingly written with an old typewriter with some letter out of line!

Me too had an old one with that same regretful defect.

I made an extra effort in order to focus exactly on the sense and meaning of the written page, but then, I could not avoid a sudden and deep surprise!

The written page was exactly an article of mine on certain aspects of the integral yoga (of Sri Aurobindo) which I myself was writing at that moment! And the letters out of line I detected on the page were those of my own typewriter!

That sudden incredible awareness made me literally fall down quite abruptly back into my body again, waking up immediately with a jump.
I ran to my article, the page was still on the roller of the typewriter in all similar, even in the defects of issue!

That morning, while I sat again to my table in front of the typewriter with the intention to conclude the article, my mind went again to that unknown fellows of the mental world, I asked myself if they were invisibly around me.

Till then I believed to be the original and only author of the article, but now it seemed other beings had taken part in writing it!  
                                                           *********************

*I was asked if the article is still available and which was the subject. I don't think it is available anymore nor I own any copy of it anymore, but I remember it faced the argument of death as optional in the development of the supermental consciousness and I advocated for a future immortality.

*For their look and behavior and for the situation in itself, later I found a similar reference from Mother (Mira Alphassa) when she mentioned a bluish being at the back of Satprem (see Agenda), which she identified as a Muse, incidentally Satprem was at that time writing a book on integral yoga.

The Hour before the Gods Awake

Slowly the sun set and the shadows of the night grew darker, and with the night, the restoring sleep to put a parenthesis to my doubts.  At least,  that was what I expected.

The night before, I had seen Sri Aurobindo and he did show to me a great vision, and the most rational part of my mind was corroded by the doubt it had only been a powerful hallucination. 

As soon as the body fell  asleep I  found myself in the subtle body experiencing as  fast moving, as moving through space at incredible speed.

The travel ended up in India, I immediately recognized the light of  the indian noons, I was  physically in India several times before and nothing could have me wrong on that point.

 Moreover, I knew with certainty I was in Auroville, though  nothing could avail such foreknowledge. 

My subtle body had just appeared in a room at the back of a man sitting at a table by the window. 

 I was at a time uncomfortable to violate his privacy while quickly thinking why I was there at all.  The next moment, Sri Aurobindo appeared at my side.

I was extremely delighted and surprised to see the beloved Master so soon again, and opened my mouth to welcome him  but he put one finger on his lips  while silently signaling the man.

Feeling authorized to investigate I moved at a side and over the shoulder of the man.  Must have been south-European. He was reading.

In approaching him I immediately perceived an unpleasant psychological atmosphere surrounding the man, a suffocating aura that made me almost sick in spite of being in my subtle body. I immediately realized how harmful could be for the defenseless mind of a child being in touch with that invisible, though poisonous aura. 

I telepathically learnt he was analyzing an article on Sri Aurobindo, and somehow his aura appeared overcharged with a great self-esteem, he made ostentation of a high mental appreciation of the Master -and- of himself as unerring interpreter of the Master's  thoughts. 

He actually had a quite inquisitive reading of the article, searching for incriminating sentences to condemn.  He was visibly not interested at all in the ideas there presented but only interested in what could be wrong and heretic in his opinion. 

It clearly appeared a more than erroneous approach because  it spread all around him that insufferable mental atmosphere.

Ironically, even if he appeared quite bent to intellectually recognize a high value to the teaching of the Master, he had no perception at all of the presence of the Master at his back, and in no moment did he show any degree of awareness of our presence, he continued instead undisturbed in his activity.

I turned my eyes toward the Master to assure myself my perception were correct and I was concentrating on the things he wanted to call my attention on: silently reassured on it  I leaned over the shoulder of the man in order to see what he was reading, and...oh surprise!

He was reading the same article  I had written months before!
I had quite a lot to be surprised with!

I had literally my mouth open but no sound coming out of it, too many questions crowding on my lips at the same time.

I turned again and stood silently observing the Master in his beautiful eyes waiting for a clarifying answer, but he kept his gaze into mine without uttering a single word, only, he made a single gesture with one of his hand as to say: "This is what you have here". 

At the next moment we departed and I woke up in my body again in Europe.

My article had been published in a new age magazine which I sent to a dear friend in Auroville. I had to suppose he gave the magazine to read at  the questioning european man.

If I wanted to solve my doubts about the Vision, now with this subtle visit to Auroville the Master himself was giving me a good chance to verify it.

I had only one thing to do: get physically to Auroville and ask the friend of mine if such and such a man had had any chance to read my article, and if he was in Auroville, try to see him. If that man did not exist then I could quite forget all the story and put at the same time a final point to my spiritual researches as evidently useless and harmful to my mental welfare, but if the man existed, I was  one of the protagonists of the most incredible story I ever imagined to mix with.

So I did.
I took a plane and went to Auroville decided to shed some light on the subject.

Having familiarity with my friend, I informed him of the visits of the Master, told him about the vision of Savitri and how much it had affected my mental tranquillity with the suspect I was growing insane, and I finished relating the experience in my subtle body in Auroville with the Master, confiding him my extreme need of discovering if the experience had been authentic or it was just pure imagination.

Then my friend asked me to describe the man reading the article.

"Oh, yes", said him with a large smile after attentively listening to my scrupulous description of the individual, "You described X. In fact, X has been here as a guest, and I perfectly remember to give him the magazine with the precise purpose  he could read your article, which was written in his own language.  He is now at Y... (and said the name of a community in Auroville).

I felt immediately released by the heavy doubts which had been constantly drilling my mind during the last months, and a wide peace installed in their turn. I was not crazy after all or suffered from hallucinations, I could continue to trust my spiritual experiences and now I had a surprising task ahead.  

Back in Europe, I was confronted with some facts of which I could not negate the evidence anymore: if the last experience with Sri Aurobindo in Auroville was authentic, and it was because the man existed, then all the other meetings with the Master had been authentic, as they all happened during the same period at the watermill. 

 Beside the first one, which had been quite a physical meeting, all the remaining happened while I was in my subtle body, and as a consequence, my perception of the subtle body was correct and authentic too, though difficult to prove objectively. 

And If the experiences with the Master were true, then also what he showed me (the future of the earth) had to be considered true and meaningful, as well as what Sri Aurobindo told me in that occasion.

In fact, a moment before to show me the images of the future earth, he told me: "I wish you do something for me".

And were exactly these words I had the most urgent need to verify: really the Master wanted me to do something for Him? I would not imagine I could be of any help, how could a perfect unknown render a service of such a kind when there were more famous commenters or disciples in the Ashram or in Auroville that would have been more easily trusted on. Why then expressly me?

But no alternative remained but to accept the facts as they were. 
So that truly the Master had invested me with a requirement.
He had established a personal relation with me!

The gladness melted my heart any time I thought of it, and yet he left me without saying exactly what he expected me to do for him, I guess I had  space to decide.

He left me some clue: the article I wrote had been a recurrent item in different experiences, I had nowadays a tendency to write, so possibly it could be related with his request.

The very experience in the subtle body in Auroville at the side of  the Master  had alerted me on how my writings could be received by certain people in the occurrence I would make them public. If I was going to write about the Vision I had not to wait always a warm and indiscriminate welcome.

(follows with "The Hour of the Toiling Gods".)

Clarifying the Vision: Conscious Sleep

The experience of conscious sleep has been told a difficult task, and certainly one has to agree with that.
I went in it almost spontaneously and without great efforts, and being myself an observer I realized that were not for certain given conditions it would have been almost impossible to achieve.
In fact I realized that whenever that conditions changed, the capacity to experience
conscious sleep changed automatically.
To start with, before experiencing conscious sleep I had resided some three years in a natural environment. A convinced macrobiotic, my diet was basically vegetarian and used water from a local spring, I was active and often took sun bathes, exposing the body to the action of the elements, earth included under the form of clay.
This promoted a process of constant regeneration which I felt as an almost inexhaustible physical energy, a conspicuous peace of mind and emotions, and even my sleep changed, I could sleep four or five hours and feel completely restored, waking up with an extremely clear mind and a calm strength of the body.
Due to a fortuitous accident to an eye I applied Aloe Vera and I would quite often end by rubbing my body with the remaining pulp of the plant and even eating it.
I discovered that eating the pulp of the plant increased my clearness during sleep,
it had an evident influence in promoting lucid dreams, as I had become somehow more conscious during sleep, at wake could easily recall in full details any dream I had.
Farther researches in Ayurveda and elsewhere corroborated my assumption that the plant could have a beneficial influence on the brain and in all its conscious or subconscious activities, and I wonder if it could be beneficial in such cases as Alzheimer.
Obviously one doesn´t need to repeat exactly the described conditions, but whenever I tasted meat, had alcohol or increased the use of industrial food, it proportionally increased a certain dumbness of mind before sleeping and at wake, coming to the conclusion that the use of such substances may be a serious obstacle in the way of experiencing conscious sleep or the sensibility to the subconscious activity during sleep. In fact I could remember not only the dreams but that there had been spaces among them or a complete absence of any subconscious activity, a condition in which I was purposelessly conscious.
I was quite intrigued by those episodes in which tough sleeping, I suddenly become conscious during sleep, so I decided to investigate though I had not any method for it.
I concluded I should be more careful to the process of sleep itself and how it happens, I used to observe the process of the mind while I was falling asleep.
I observed that between the vigil and the sleep there was a third condition, a kind of
 no-man´s land among them, it lasted only few brief moments before falling totally unconscious.
Subsequently I tried to be more aware of that third condition, trying to remain conscious of the process and somehow colonizing it, increasing the time I was conscious in that third position.
Invariably I would shift in dumb consciousness, but in a memorable occasion I clearly noticed that my whole consciousness had shifted through the process without any loss,
my physical body felt asleep, but instead of falling into dumbness I found myself perfectly conscious.
At first I had not a clear control over it, some night I would just fall unconscious and/or with sudden and short episodes of consciousness.
Knowing the positive influence on the brain of the affirmations, before sleeping I mentally repeated myself that I wanted to be conscious of the whole process, and I noticed that the combined affirmations and my conscience directed on and through the third condition, effectively produced a result because some time later I had no need anymore of such practices, shifting instead effortlessly through the whole process and while the physical body would fall asleep, I would found myself perfectly awake, not without surprise at first, but later I got used and it become just another ordinary activity.
This condition did not at all influenced the routinary restoring process of sleep of the physical body, nor had influence either on the subconscious activity in form of dreams, I was standing in between as a third power, a third condition: a mental being perfectly conscious in its mental body.
I consider that especially gifted individuals or having a peculiar strength of mind may easier succeed in experiencing conscious sleep, but for the average people is probably needed a purifying diet, reasonable activity and exposure to the elements.

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.