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.
  

SUBTLE PERCEPTION

 During the period I´m relating, a process  opened up on unexpected horizons.
 I started to notice  that a subtler perception was occasionally superposing itself to my current sensory perception, I found it worth to mention it to leave its constancy for the researcher.

As always in these cases, at first I  kept such experiences under observation for a time, till a number of them could give me the idea of a process of its own.

Those episodes of subtle perception seemed to have their root in conscious sleep. This is what I want to enhance.
While in conscious sleep  -with my mental body totally awake- I clearly  perceived myself -as a mental body- absolutely independent from the physical, and even from the subconscious.

 In that condition a new kind of perception arose, a perception which passed into myself with independence from the physical senses.
In conscious sleep and in the mental world, the mental body perceived everything in a more refined way, as it disposed of a "body of perception" with subtler senses, leading to a direct and irrevocable perception.

Now seemed that this kind of perception, those kind of subtler senses, were bubbling into the normal waking-perception too,  random appearing at any time.
Those subtler perceptions had start bubbling into the waking consciousness much as months before the mental body consciousness had start bubbling into the unconsciousness of sleep. They seemed two similar processes, at least, their mode was similar.

 On one such occasion I got early morning in the street, there were an intense  smell of fresh roses, looking around for someone carrying roses I realized I could actually -see- the perfume, like a vaporous cloud floating in the air, which disappeared around the corner.
I followed the cloud smelling it to the corner, but just there, in the large plaza it had melted away.
But not the experience, now I realized  the body was enveloped within an "olfactory sphere", which roughly took from the chest till the sexual organs, with the navel as its center.
Every physical organ and biological process, even the most remote one, had there a terminal point, an "olfactory extension" of it.
 Each biological smell  was conveyed there by kind of "subtle tubes" orderly aligned within the sphere with hundred of others, and all together summed up to my own corporeal smell.
I crossed toward the park with the hope of meeting a dog to see how he reacted to my olfactory sphere now that I could see it, but didn´t see any
dog around or even men, and little after the experience faded away and I was back to my "normal" (?) perception.

(As always in these cases, the experience came along with a certain  direct knowledge, in fact I could easily understand bigger tubes corresponding to the bone-process, or the blood-process, I even smell both of them, but due to my over-olfactory sensitivity of the moment I  felt almost disgusted by their intensity.
 There were other tubes much thinner which produced  subtler, more refined essences, that knowledge told me that some of them related to the conditions and processes at molecular level).
 ( I consider it an objective experience since is not reasonable that only my body is enveloped by such a sphere, so everybody has such an "olfactory sphere" and if the practitioner could detect it and have a trained subtle perception of it, it could be developed as an healing science).


While in conscious sleep, I started to admit that those subtler senses were not really generated within the mental body but as they were, released by the soul.
It was more than a mental conviction but the fact that sometimes I experienced through them kind of -sacredness of perception- which kept me in touch with a deeper being provided of an holy understanding of the deepest roots of things. At some point the connection mental body-soul increased in closeness.

I had read enough (mainly from Sri Aurobindo and Agni Yoga) to be convinced that the soul had its own organs of perception, I started now  to experienced subtler replica for each physical sense, all administered by a central being whose perception exceeded its own subtler senses, a world of silent and certain intuition,  verily a body of intuition, as elusive as the subconscious appeared to be while in conscious sleep.

Healing & Death in the Subtle World, a true experience

One of the most remarkable experiences of service I ever had while in conscious sleep, was the trespassing of the veil of death with my subtle body. I am sure the experience was assisted by some Being but, as often happened, at that moment I was not aware of beings and/or mechanisms of attunement: simply, after put the  physical body to sleep, I was again conscious in my mental body in a strange place, as a subtler counterpart of Earth, and I was in the counterpart of a physical place existing somewhere on earth, though night time there, my sight could pierce through the darkness because of some kind of light which faintly glowed from the objects, from the rocks and the sea, and from the sky, not the sun-light, but their own light.

But even there was nighttime, so at first I could not properly understand where I was and much less what I was doing there nor why I was there, I trusted the Presences which were so active with me during that period of teaching.

It was a group of tiny rocky islands, and I was on one of them, at my right at a distance there was a  small group of glowing beings together with a few which were less luminous but which I identified as humans because of their triune flame in the middle of their breast. The whole group was enveloped in a faintly light which enlightened the surrounding.

I was still unable to understand, then a voice coming from the group telepathically suggested me "an airplane had landed there".

It was impossible even for a small airplane to land there, so I understood the voice was fairly referring to a tragic accident, and suddenly my understanding opened on the meaning and reality of what I was seeing.

Then I noticed the blond woman close to me.

I could perceive the whole of her psychological atmosphere, her whole being was open to my perception, and I could not avoid to feel an intense human concern on her grievous situation.

She was sitting all alone on a rock by the sea, staring intensely at the bottom, which was visible thanks to its own light, undoubtedly a wonderful spectacle to observe.

She was ( had been till recently) young, beautiful, had an accommodate existence, life was smiling to her with the promise of a next marriage with the man she loved, she imagined a long happy life, children and many dreams and beautiful expectations to fulfil. She had never give a thought to death, at least not her death, and now Death was suddenly there, unexpectedly.

But she could not accept it. She was blocked there. She could not go farther and join the group waiting for her.

That happy and plentiful life had been suddenly severed, and that had been too much for her.

In a few steps I was by her side and said: Excuse me, which is your name?
She got up turned to me and kindly answered: C. (her name).

(Now, I don't know what she could see of me but I guess she was seeing the same that I could see, and I could see how our figures differed:  she was a beautiful tall lady, evidently North-American, and I looked as a shorter Mediterranean man, it all looked as I was pretending some advance).

In a tone of concern and conspiracy I  whispered:  C. do you think they have spaghetti here?...

The idea of a Mediterranean man only worried about spaghetti in such a circumstance must have seemed terribly hilarious to her, because she started laughing and could not stop anymore. I had the impression she could die again but this time of laughing.

But something had happen.
The block had gone.
I saw  things fast changing.

We both got enclosed within the light of the beings, they were actually waiting for her, I understood they were guides of that world, concerned with recently died people, now I could better observe the differences among them.

We started a flight all together at vertiginous speed across a red luminous space in which at a certain moment one of the group left us, the male recently dead.

We continued at that speed till that  red space abruptly ended. On the other side, a huge dark universe without light in it, only, very far away at enormous distance, at the very end of that dark extension, it glowed the promise of a white light.

A vehicle was waiting the group.
It looked like as a space ship of modest dimensions of more rounded shapes than the man-made ones.
Beautiful in its gender.

C. and the other human, together with their guides took place within the ship, but I was said I was not allowed inside  but could instead accommodate myself in one of the cabins on the fuselage.

I did and the cabin was sealed.

The flight was as astonishingly fast as silent. Sealed in the cabin, I was perfectly aware of the incredible experience I was living and of the fact that I had not the smallest idea of how to be safely back again in my body, I wanted to believe the wisdom which had done all that surely had a solution for me too.

The journey abruptly ended on a dark moon, a small planet without atmosphere, no sounds, no stars in the sky. There was something like a building, I had the clear perception that it was a hall, a receiving place for souls in transit, I suddenly was aware of the presence of a larger number of people inside the hall. 

My impression was right, because I saw C. and the other human were transferred inside the building.

While C. was entering the hall I felt a warm current of love from her reaching my heart, she was thinking of me, thanking me and sending me her last farewell.

Then my attention started to become clouded, I soon lost consciousness of the subtle world, the next, I awoke in my physical body.

Mind, Vision and Ayurveda

Unlike in Occident, mind is considered in Ayurveda an instrument of perception equalled to the senses, so in the vedic system there are six senses and not five as in Occident.
This basic difference is of extraordinary meaning in yoga and self discovery, and was observed by ancient doctors which were themselves yoga practitioners, so that anyway their conclusions are worth a look for any yoga practitioner, especially when reaches the need of a thoroughly understanding of its own mind in order to produce the integration of the instruments of search, integration so wisely envisioned by that ancient realizers.

Later experience with subtle perception would proof the vedic doctors where in the right.
In fact, after the mental ego discovers its limits, and only then, a ray of the inner soul may reach that mind and transform it for its purpose.
In the course of time, which depends only on the opening to that soul at work, all bodily functions are reset, and mind too.
All the super-senses to appear will appear in the mind, because are not productions and transformations of the body but the <natural senses of the soul> of which the physical senses are but a gross reproduction, and they will start to be there while the progressive manifestation of the soul takes place.
Invariably a visionary nature has to depend on such processes, as the Vision is the result of a certain tuning of the mental faculties.
Naturally, a mind which hasn´t realized that inner alchemy, is absolutely unable to understand what a mind infused by its own soul is. And that is the limit of the teaching, as at a certain point there came the need for self-experience. Mere mental knowledge of the process which opens the mind to its inner soul is not equal to effective experience of it, luckily enough, this field is totally free from any unfit mental irruptions.
When things proceed smoothly, to all this transformations which happen at mental level, there is an unperceived progressive establishment, in the heart area, of the soul.
Of course, I´m not theorising or teaching anything, I´m simply offering the result of objective observations, as I just said teaching has its limits.
This is when you get out of theory and you start to need effective experience, then you are in a good position to appreciate my observations.
Somehow we need to know the experiences of other people in this field so to mirror our own experiences, but it is not indispensable, it helps.
Of course, as it seems I have to re-state it again time by time, there is not any personal will in releasing the results of my observations (which I was indipendently keeping for my own purpose of study) but it was as a consequence of a direct request from Sri Aurobindo himself.
I do not have even idea of how they should benefit a reader, I simply answer to that request and do not overcharge my head with speculations.
So if you like you take them if not, just leave them, but they remain objective observations which I lay at His feet.

Sleep? Highways of Knowledge

The building of the global window is not theoretic matter.
This very night you may experiment with what I say.
Your aim is to be conscious all along the day, but, what happen with the night?
Are we really meant to sleep always at the same manner?..
I tell you what I discovered, and you can discover too.
Before sleeping we retract from surrounding reality, but before landing in total unconsciousness, there is a lapse of time, it is a very little time, in which our consciousness remains in between vigil and sleep.
Normally we do not notice that as many reasons may intervene, tiredness, wrong diet, habits etc.
But that point, it is a world in itself, it is a huge door through which the ancient oracles crossed for learning, or predictions, or visions.
I have crossed that door. So I know it is there. It has nothing to do with dreams.
I´m not saying I went very far in discover this dimension, since the peculiar level of attention which is needed was quite unusual, as I had to "remain conscious" in that half consciousness so to extend that moment (in between vigil and sleep) farther in time.
But often, the action of "being conscious" would interfere with  that half-consciousness and made me awake totally again.
I had to learn to be "unwillingly conscious" in that space.
I´m still learning I mean. I already said that, I´m an apprentice.

But that one is not the only option we have at that moment, it can be also the door to conscious sleep. Here intended -exactly- in the terms described in the integral yoga of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, and not lucid dreams, or astral projections or whatever.
In effect, we may say one can choose between three options at that moment:

1) one can extend the "half-conscious bridge" and penetrate into that region I described: one at that moment is not sleeping nor awake either, it is a suspension of functions, even the physical body do not really sleep but only half sleep.

2)Through that same bridge, one takes another direction, which is towards conscious sleep. So the physical body fall definitely asleep, and one fully retro cede from surrounding (physical) reality, but as we where conscious in that -middle land-
we do not fall into -unconscious- sleep but in -conscious- sleep.

3) To fall asleep totally unconscious.

What I´m calling here conscious sleep, it is in reality self-consciousness of the mental body while the physical is sleeping and the subconscious is dreaming.
As well,it is a door to mental world or dimension, but this world is not the same that one may accede in the "oracular sleep" (just to give it a name), they are quite different and even the mode of consciousness is totally different: in oracular sleeping one is strangely conscious/unconscious, instead, in conscious sleep one is not only conscious but -extremely- conscious.
So much so as to perceive ( see actually) our unconscious zone producing dreams and knowing (seeing) that it is not -us- but only an appendix of that consciousness, which roots seems to deepen into ancestral animal memories and functions.
(I could see a mental lower appendix attached to my consciousness, much as the lowest part of a spinal medula, and possibly it was exactly that but seeing it from a different, peculiar perspective: from within out. But I could freely detach myself from the unconscious part and remain in my full self-consciousness of me as a mental body).

But we should come back on it all afterwards.
The global window I mentioned at the beginning, is the window through which we look at reality. But is perception of reality -only- when we are conscious in daily activity, or is it a process extended in time -without interruption-?
If your experiments with sleep bring some result in the sense I exposed, no doubt you are talented for the Yoga of the Vision.
.....................................
Kit Chi on 17th Nov. 2013 wrote: I actually tried to experience what you said, and it was indeed as you said, that I was conscious of my physical sleeping and the subconscious dreaming, and I could choose to just watch the dream scape of my subconscious, or go experience something else.

Kit Chi, born in Hong Kong, is to me an example of how an independent mind, well centered and spiritually receptive may understand and actually experiment with integral yoga. She also informed me of a couple of visions she had of Mother and Sri Aurobindo little time after she learnt of the existence of the Masters. In the post "Awakening, a collective issue" (14/08/12), you may have a glimpse on her spiritual life.

on the Master of Wisdom and the Apprentice visionary

                                                            (fig.1)

Additional comments: to "The Master of Wisdom and the Apprentice visionary".

(The reason why I leave those information is not to let you know
what happened to me, but what may happen to you, and know how it happens and to what is related).

Characteristics of the Fire entering from the Sacral Area.

It first entered the most lower point in the subtle physical body corresponding to the base of the spine as a single stream of rushing fire red-orange but immediately subdivided into two(polarized) main streams which farther subdivided each into two and those subdivided again while converting itself in thin streams of white light which orderly started to cross all over the body.

An atlas of acupuncture gives perfectly the idea, as it was exactly that, the streams of white light proceeded in a very ordered way along the members of the body.
I had seen atlas of acupuncture before, but I never thought the circulating energy had the entrance door from the sacral. (There where a few differences from an atlas, but it is the closest association I know).

It had a direct connection with the meridians of acupuncture even in the detail that some specific points along the lines started the reverberate till the body was orderly crossed by lines of light and points reverberating all along the lines.

These lines of light were directing toward the head into two main streams anterior and posterior which converged around the head as two differently polarized groups of beams which had there, each on a side of the head (quite similarly to fig 1), the final end of the circuit. The points played softly on  magnetic patterns which produced circles of light-energy which rhythmically expanded farther into the ambiance.
At that moment I was sitting in padmasana.
I almost felt the points of light reverberating over my skin, especially that of my face,  it seemed as I had little butterflies gently swinging their wings on my skin. But the process was evidently taking place originally at a subtler level, on an electronic body which enveloped the physical body with a net of light.
I was perfectly awake and in no moment lost consciousness, all along the process the red-orange light never ceased to feed the whole structure.