Extending a Measure of Validity to Reports of Supra-Physical Perceptions and Experiences

Sri Aurobindo makes an important point. Various aspects of reports about subtle senses and supraphysical realities as they impact our external world, have been documented, and in some cases, extensively studied and verified. Once we accept the fact that there is a real and solid basis for these experiences that we can validate, it provides at least circumstantial support to the idea that, by extension, those experiences outside our range of perception also have a similar validity. This is not to say that every report and every experience is absolutely true and correct in every detail. We know that there are errors of reception, errors of transcription and errors of communication that occur as people relate perceptions and experiences that do not have a clear basis for description in our understanding and our language, and until this understanding and power of expression is developed, we are surely going to have some amount of inaccurate or distorted reporting to sift through; however, this is no different than the objects of our physical senses and our ability to understand, transcribe and report those experiences, even though they occur within the normal range of human perception.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “It is true that the glimpse of supraphysical realities acquired by methodical research has been imperfect and is yet ill-affirmed; for the methods used are still crude and defective. But these rediscovered subtle senses have at least been found to be true witnesses to physical facts beyond the range of the corporeal organs. There is no justification, then, for scouting them as false witnesses when they testify to supraphysical facts beyond the domain of the material organisation of consciousness. Like all evidence, like the evidence of the physical senses themselves, their testimony has to be controlled, scrutinised and arranged by the reason, rightly translated and rightly related, and their field, laws and processes determined. But the truth of great ranges of experience whose objects exist in a more subtle substance and are perceived by more subtle instruments than those of gross physical Matter, claims in the end the same validity as the truth of the material universe. The worlds beyond exist: they have their universal rhythm, their grand lines and formations, their self-existent laws and mighty energies, their just and luminous means of knowledge. And here on our physical existence and in our physical body they exercise their influences; here also they organise their means of manifestation and commission their messengers and their witnesses.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.140-141