The Influence of Unseen, Unperceived Beings and Forces in Our World

When we can once appreciate and accept the fact that forces, unseen by us, unperceived by our senses, can, and do, act upon us, pushing us to act in certain ways, pressing on us to move in certain directions, it is but a small step to recognize that there are beings who inhabit these unseen and unperceived regions and that they have their own goals, objectives, agendas which they carry out, but in their own sphere, and in their action upon the physical world.

As we develop ever more precise ways to capture and measure unseen forces, we begin to understand more clearly that we do not live, isolated in our physical world, apart from the spiritual, mental, vital and subtle physical forces that together make up the action of our external lives. We did not know, until fairly recently, that activity of the sun in the form of solar flares, could be disruptive to our lives, our ability to communicate, our gps signals and the very framework of modern life in its technology. Now we understand that these solar events can have a massive impact on our world.

We did not appreciate, until recently, that various disease states were transmitted by unseen organisms that have a life of their own, that can enter into our vital and physical bodies and create conditions under which we suffer. Now we understand that viruses and bacteria and mold spores, fungus and other unseen, yet nevertheless present organisms, can dramatically impact our lives and our health, and disrupt the society in dramatic ways in the form of pandemics and other upheavals caused by widespread disease and the impacts it creates in the world.

We did not understand, until fairly recently in human existence, that an unseen force we call electricity could be harnessed to power our modern industrial and technological development. We did not understand, until fairly recently that other unseen forces, such as the force of gravity, controlled much of our ability to live and act. We did not understand the ability of plants to capture solar radiation and convert it into material forms which could provide food sustenance to our bodies.

We now understand that there is a spectrum of wavelengths of which we can only perceive a small portion, but nevertheless the unseen, unperceived portions still impact us.

We are beginning to recognise that other things, which we could not explain through any perceptible cause, have their origin in a vital, mental or spiritual realm that co-exists with us, albeit at a different vibrational level, and that to some degree, these beings and forms inhabiting those realms can influence, and project their action, into our world; in fact, our world is an amalgam of physical, vital, mental and spiritual forces interwoven tightly with one another, impacting one another and together creating what we know of as our existence.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “If we scrutinise the intimations of supraphysical world-realities which we receive in our inner experience and compare with it the account of such intimations that has continued to come down to us from the beginnings of human knowledge, and if we attempt an interpretation and a summarised order, we shall find that what this inner experience most intimately conveys to us is the existence and action upon us of larger planes of being and consciousness than the purely material plane, with its restricted existence and action, of which we are aware in our narrow terrestrial formula. These domains of larger being are not altogether remote and separate from our own being and consciousness; for, though they subsist in themselves and have their own play and process and formulations of existence and experience, yet at the same time they penetrate and envelop the physical plane with their invisible presence and influences, and their powers seem to be here in the material world itself behind its action and objects. There are two main orders of experience in our contact with them; one is purely subjective, though in its subjectivity sufficiently vivid and palpable, the other is more objective. In the subjective order, we find that what shapes itself to us as a life-intention, life-impulse, life-formulation here, already exists in a larger, more subtle, more plastic range of possibilities, and these pre-existent forces and formulations are pressing upon us to realise themselves in the physical world also; but only a part succeeds in getting through and even that emerges partially in a form and circumstance more proper to the system of terrestrial law and sequence. This precipitation takes place, normally, without our knowledge; we are not aware of the action of these powers, forces and influences upon us, but take them as formations of our own life and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them and strives not to be mastered: but when we go inwards away from the restricted surface consciousness and develop a subtler sense and deeper awareness, we begin to get an intimation of the origin of these movements and are able to watch their action and process, to accept or reject or modify, to allow them passage and use of our mind and will and our life and members or refuse it. In the same way we become aware of larger domains of mind, a play, experience, formation of a greater plasticity, a teeming profusion of all possible mental formulations, and we feel their contacts with us and their powers and influences acting upon our parts of mind in the same occult manner as those others that act upon our parts of life. This kind of experience is, primarily, of a purely subjective character, a pressure of ideas, suggestions, emotional formations, impulsions to sensation, action, dynamic experience. However large a part of this pressure may be traced to our own subliminal self or to the siege of universal Mind-forces or Life-forces belonging to our own world, there is an element which bears the stamp of another origin, an insistent supraterrestrial character.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.136-137