Exploring Hidden Domains

Part of the Mother's work consisted in the exploration and

mastering of the hidden domains of consciousness.

There are very few people who know that there exists in the universe an infinite number of gradations and that each one of these gradations has its own reality, its own life, its own law, its own determinism....

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An integral knowledge demands an exploration, an unveiling of all the possible domains of consciousness and experience. For there are subjective domains of our being which lie behind the obvious surface; these have to be fathomed and whatever is ascertained must be admitted within the scope of the total reality.

An inner range of spiritual experience is one very great domain of human consciousness; it has to be entered into up to its deepest depths and its vastest reaches. The supraphysical is as real as the physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. The knowledge of the supraphysical has been associated with mysticism and occultism....

Sri Aurobindo

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There was that occultist who later gave me lessons in occultism for two years. His wife was a wonderful clairvoyant and had an absolutely remarkable capacity — precisely — of transmitting forces. They lived in Tlemcen. I was in Paris. I used to correspond with them. I had not yet met them at all. And then, one day, she sent me in a letter petals of the pomegranate flower, "Divine's Love".¹... telling me that these petals were bringing me her protection and force.

Now, at that time I used to wear my watch on a chain.... And there was also a small eighteenth century magnifying-glass.... And it had two lenses, you see, like all reading-glasses;... and it was hanging from my chain. Now, between the two glasses I put these petals and I used to carry this about with me always... you see, I trusted this lady and knew she had power. I wanted to keep this with me, and I always felt a kind of energy, warmth, confidence, force which came from that thing.... I did not think about it, you see, but I felt it like that.

And then, one day, suddenly I felt quite depleted, as though a support that was there had gone. Something very unpleasant. I said, "It is strange; what has happened? Nothing really unpleasant has happened to me. Why do I feel like this, so empty, emptied of energy?" And in the evening, when I took off my watch and chain, I noticed that one of the small glasses had come off and all the petals were gone. There was not one petal left. Then I really knew that they carried a considerable charge of power, for I had felt the difference without even knowing the reason.... So it was after this that I saw how one could use flowers by charging them with forces.

¹ The spiritual significance later given by the Mother.

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Madame X... was an occultist of great powers, a remarkable clairvoyant, and she had mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in succession. That is, she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, and then again put that subtler body into trance, exteriorise herself from it, and so on twelve times successively, to the extreme limit of the world of forms.

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This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls "states of consciousness", but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge.... And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds.

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When I used to go out in the evenings — towards the end of the afternoon I used to go for a walk with Monsieur X to see the countryside, go walking in the mountains, the neighbouring villages — I used to lock my door; it was a habit with me, I always locked my door.

Madame X would rarely go out... because she was in a trance most of the time and liked to stay at home. But when I returned from the walk and opened my door — which was locked, and therefore nobody could have entered — I would always find a kind of little garland of flowers on my pillow. They were flowers which grew in the garden, they are called Belles de Nuit.... She always used to put some behind her ears, for they have a lovely smell, oh! delightfully beautiful. And so, she used to take a walk in the alley between these big bushes which were quite high, and she gathered flowers, and — when I came back, these flowers were in my room!... She never told me how she did it, but she certainly did not go in there. Once she said to me, "Were there no flowers in your room?" — "Ah! yes, indeed," I said. And that was all. Then I knew it was she who had put them there.

A Garden in Tlemcen

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.. .the Mother being in Algiers appeared to a circle of friends sitting in Paris and took up a pencil and wrote a few words on a paper. Having satisfied herself that it was possible she did not develop it any further. That was at a time when she was practising occultism with Theon in Algiers.

Sri Aurobindo

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.. .everybody practises occultism without knowing that he does.

.. .when you think, you are practising occultism.... When you are thinking of someone, some part of you is automatically in contact with this person, and if to your thought is added a will that this person may be like this or like that or do this or that or understand this or that — whatever it may be — well, you are practising occultism, only you don't know it....

There are people who do this with power, and when they have a strong thought it manifests and is realised.

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We have subtle senses; even as we have a physical body, we have other more subtle bodies which also have senses, and much more refined senses, much more precise and much more powerful than our physical senses....

Now, there are people who have the good luck to be born with a spontaneous development, with inner senses.... If these people meet in good time someone who can help them in a methodical development, they can become very interesting instruments for the study and discovery of this occult world.

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I had a Danish friend, a painter.... He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him "go out".... And to go out of one's body means to pass gradually through all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically.

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I knew someone in France who used to come to me every evening in order that I might show him some unknown region and take him for a ramble in the vital or mental world, and actually I used to take him there. At times there were others also, at times this person was alone. I showed him how to go out of the body, how to get back into it, how to keep the consciousness, etc., I showed him many places telling him "There you must take this precaution, here you must do such and such a thing." And this continued for a long time.

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At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration.... So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it.

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Mother,

Have you practised all type of yogas, whether Indian or others?

All the methods which came to me I have tried them to find out what they could give and there is a state of consciousness in which one masters all these things when it is necessary.

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Mother,

When you wrote last time "to find out what they could give ", does that mean, whether they could help us in the supreme realisation?

Yes, to know to what extent each of these methods could help on the way.

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Occultism is in its essence man's effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and potentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical limits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour to establish communication with worlds and entities belonging to the supraphysical heights, depths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise this communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his will to make himself sovereign over Nature's powers and forces.

Sri Aurobindo

...one must go into the depths or the heights of creation which have never been manifested upon earth, and become conscious of that, and manifest it on earth. Sri Aurobindo called it the Supermind. I simply say these are states of being which were never yet conscious in man.... One must get identified with them, then bring them into the outer consciousness, and manifest them in action.

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True occultism... is a spiritual power which must be acquired by long discipline; and finally, it is given to you only by a divine grace.

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