So-Called ‘Spiritual’ Experiences and True Spiritual Development

We tend to associate experiences of various unusual powers as either evidence of high mental development or perhaps spiritual development. Most of what gets mooted about, however, may be seen as experiences of entering into various occult vital planes and bringing back the experience from those realms into the waking or the dream state of the individual. This does not actually require that the individual be someone with either extraordinary mental capacities or spiritual opening. These experiences may be what are known commonly as ‘psychic’ experiences (not to be confused with the use of the term by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to describe the soul-essence or true being other than the external ego-personality) and may involve things like telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, out of body travel, psychic crime solving, powers of hypnosis, as well as things like ‘psychic readings’ and ‘past life regressions’. Some of these may be real powers that manifest for individuals, while some of it may be either fantasy or even fraud intended to provide an income stream or fame to the individual, and it is obviously not easy to sort all of this vital energy out properly. Military units in various countries have in fact invested heavily in developing teams who could undertake remote seeing, or other powers that might give them an advantage over their enemies, and others are researching things like entering into an individual’s dream state and influencing their waking existence. They can come about in any individual, sometimes without warning, and may represent a “born capacity” or a “developed capacity” to enter these realms and bring back experiences or transcriptions from there. Obviously none of this is actual pertinent to the growth of the spiritual personality.

The Mother observes: “Usually people mean by ‘experience’ either altogether extravagant phenomena, levitation and things like that, or else sensational visions: being able to see the future or seeing at a distance or maybe ordinary things like being able to tell where a lost object can be found or all kinds of little tricks like that. This is what people call ‘experiences’.”

“Well, usually, people have have these faculties are not well educated, but for some reason they are born with a gift, as some are born musicians, others painters, and others scientists. These are born clairvoyants, and so it may be, when they are in need they use this faculty to earn their living, and they spoil it completely. If they happen to be in comfortable circumstances and do not need to earn their living, then they become famous among their friends. In any case, this is always an opportunity for a certain kind of commercialism. There are very few who can have these gifts without using them either to make a name for themselves or to earn money. But these gifts are not of a very high level. One can have them without having a very spiritual life. They do not depend at all on an inner spiritual height. One should not mistake them for signs of progress.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter VII Growth of Consciousness, Inner Experiences, pp. 129-132