Objective Versus Subjective Knowledge in the Realms of Psychic Experience

Perhaps one of the biggest hurdles the Western mind needs to overcome in addressing the subtle powers of consciousness that either already are, or will be, coming forward as the next phase of evolution continues to work itself out, is the conflict between the drumbeat of “objectivity” as the watchword of science and reliable observation, and the need for an inner, necessarily subjective, exploration of consciousness and its actions which are not independently ‘verifiable’ and ‘reproducible’ along the lines that science believes is the only accurate way to understand and measure phenomena.

This dogma of ‘objectivity’ however has been shaken by the development of quantum mechanics and the principles that indicate that the fact of observation impacts the results. Thus, the observer, the ‘outer observer’, is every much a part of the observation and thus, cannot escape that subjective influence on the results.

It must also be recognised that even “objective” results are subject to skewing by the way results data is plotted and analyzed. Sometimes results wind up confirming preconceived ideas or biases of the researcher due to the way the study is conducted or the data is compiled. We see scientific studies being challenged and even withdrawn despite the emphasis on ‘objectivity’.

If we cannot apply the mental rules that work in the external physical world to our analysis of inner experience and consciousness, we still need to be able to distinguish between experiences and powers that are actually occurring and those that, either intentionally or unintentionally, are false, misleading or outright deceptive.

In The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo notes the various ways of ‘knowing’ and obtaining of knowledge, and those that rely on the external model of separation of ‘knower’ from the object of knowledge and the process of knowing, in other words, the ‘objective’ formation of knowing, are less complete and accurate than the development of ‘knowledge by identity’ through a merging of the field of consciousness of knower, object and process of knowing.

The question arises how to distinguish, then, whether the knowledge so obtained, through identity, is real and reliable, or not. The first point to be made is that for someone experiencing this oneness of consciousness, there is absolutely no question of its veracity. The second point is that as more and more people have such experiences, these experiences can be correlated to verify how closely they align with one another. While this cannot be the ultimate arbiter of truth or falsehood of the experience, it is clear that if a particular formation tends to reoccur many times for different people not connected to one another in any direct way, that it lends credence to the validity.

For example, a researcher into near-death experience in the UK, Dr. Peter Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth investigated over 300 near death experiences which they recounted in the book The Truth in the Light, They wound up reviewing over 2000 letters describing the near-death experience of different individuals and found that high percentages recounted very similar occurrences and reactions, some correlating over 72 percent of the time..

Sri Aurobindo briefly describes some of the most common experiences people have related as they begin to move into ‘inner space’. One of these has been described numerous times as what is commonly known as the ‘akashic record’. Some people describe it as a “library” with all manner of information, others as a series of scrolls that are stacked up. These are clearly transcriptions of what is taking place in the experience that we try to make sense of with our external minds. Some people simply see visual representations of people and events which they bring back with them, some relating to the past, some to the present or future. In some cases, they actually wind up recognising people in the future they have seen during their visit to the ‘akashic record’.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “A completer opening of the psychical consciousness leads us far beyond this faculty of vision by images and admits us not indeed to a new time consciousness, but to many ways of the triple time knowledge. The subliminal or psychic self can bring back or project itself into past states of consciousness and experience and anticipate or even, though this is less common, strongly project itself into future states of consciousness and experience. It does this by a temporary entering into or identification of its being or its power of experiencing knowledge with either permanences or representations of the past and the future that are maintained in an eternal time consciousness behind our mentality or thrown up by the eternity of supermind into an indivisible continuity of time vision. Or it may receive the impress of these things and construct a transcriptive experience of them in the subtle ether of psychical being. Or it may call up the past subconscious memory where it is always latent and give it in itself a living form and a kind of renewed memorative existence, and equally it may call up from the depths of latency, where it is already shaped in the being, and similarly form to itself and experience the future. It may by a kind of psychical thought vision or soul intuition — not the same thing as the subtler and less concrete thought vision of the luminous intuitive intelligence — foresee or foreknow the future or flash this soul intuition into the past that has gone behind the veil and recover it for present knowledge. It can develop a symbolic seeing which conveys the past and the future through a vision of the powers and significances that belong to supraphysical planes but are powerful for creation in the material universe. It can feel the intention of the Divine, the mind of the gods, all things and their signs and indices that descend upon the soul and determine the complex movement of forces. It can feel too the movement of forces that represent or respond to the pressure — as it can perceive the presence and the action — of the beings of the mental, vital and other worlds who concern themselves with our lives. It can gather on all hands all kinds of indications of happenings in past, present and future time. It can receive before its sight the etheric writing, akasa-lipi, that keeps the record of all things past, transcribes all that is in process in the present, writes out the future.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XIX Occult Powers of the Subliminal, pp. 145-146