For those who are anchored in their outer external awareness of the world and of themselves, there is no understanding or acceptance of the reality of inner occult states of awareness. Thus, they deny the reality of the inner experiences, until perhaps they happen to have a near death experience, or an out of body experience of their own, and recognise that there are depths and realms within that they were simply not attending to. They treat dreams as something random and generally meaningless as well.
Even if one is receptive to these inner states of awareness, they may come simply as a feeling or perhaps as a vivid dream of some sort. Some dreams come with such a sense of reality and significance that people intuitively feel like they are sending a message to the outer consciousness, and this has brought about the craft of dream interpretation, which has developed for thousands of years across the entire world. Joseph interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh in Egypt is an early documented example of the power and need for understanding dreams. Oracles, shaman and occultists have filled this role in other times and places. Freud and Jung developed the modern Western approach to understanding the psychology of the dream state and interpreting the symbols that appear there.
What we recognise from this, is that the inner imagery, the symbolic representation of some inward state of awareness, is a means by which the inner psychology tries to establish a link and relationship to the outer external being. To the extent that the link is rudimentary, we try to interpret what the meaning is.
The question arises: what if we could link up the external consciousness and awareness of the being with these inner states of consciousness and experience and thereby begin to understand directly and carry the significance back with us into our waking state. Those who practice various forms of occultism or mysticism attempt to do this very thing. C.G. Jung in his Red Book documented his own extensive explorations in this process with drawings, paintings and symbolic representations that came to him. At some point, it becomes clear that the various parts of the being are represented with imagery that appears as a house with many rooms, while the subconscient levels are frequently represented as a huge library with books or scrolls that contain the information encoded at that level, each one of which able to be opened, and ‘read’ and thereby release the encapsulated knowledge, information or experience to the seeker who goes there and is conscious enough to bring back that information in what may appear to be a conscious dream, a waking dream-like experience, a trance state or an intense visualisation.
The Mother observes: “As when one goes on the discovery of one’s inner being, of all the different parts of one’s being, one very often has the feeling that one is entering deep into a hall or room, and according to the colour, the atmosphere, the things it contains, one has a very clear perception of the part of the being one is visiting. And then, one can go from one room to another, open doors and go into deeper and deeper rooms each of which has its own character. And often, these inner visits can be made during the night. Then it takes a still more concrete form, like a dream, and one feels that he is entering a house, and that this house is very familiar to him. And according to the time, the periods, it is internally different, and sometimes it may be in a state of very great disorder, very great confusion, where everything is mixed up; sometimes there are even broken things; it is quite a chaos. At other times these things are organised, put in their place; it is as though one had arranged the household, one cleans up, puts it in order, and is always the same house. This house is the image, a kind of objective image, of your inner being. And in accordance with what you see there or do there, you have a symbolic representation of your psychological work. It is very useful for concretising. It depends on people.”
Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Exercises for Growth and Mastery, Visualization for Discovering One’s Being, pp. 131-134
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 16 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.