When a seeker has an unusual experience, when the consciousness shifts to a different standpoint, when new forms of understanding, inspiration, and response suddenly arise, there can be a feeling of intense disorientation, concern, fear or anxiety. ‘What is happening to me?’ Given the predominant mindset of the modern world, there may be concerned about whether one is having some kind of psychological breakdown, an outbreak of madness of some sort. Family and friends may observe one acting in a new and strange way, and may even suggest psychological help or counseling. Needless to say, there are substantial adjustments necessary.
The Mother, in advance, provides a context for understanding to the spiritual aspirant, so that when, eventually, the shift of consciousness occurs, either temporarily as an experience, or definitively as a positive realisation that is embedded in the being, the individual will have enough assurances and information to understand that this is actually the normal process when a reversal of consciousness takes place, and rather than being a source of anxiety or fear, the experience or realisation should be embraced.
As the seeker becomes acclimatized to the change or shift of consciousness, he is able to build up his interface with the external world from a new viewpoint and is able to make necessary adjustments.
The Mother notes: “You see, one may have to wait for days, months, years, centuries, lives, before this moment comes. But if one intensifies his aspiration, there is a moment when the pressure is so great and the intensity of the question so strong that something turns over in the consciousness, and then this is absolutely what one feels: instead of being here one is there, instead of seeing from outside and seeking to see within, one is inside; and the minute one is within, absolutely everything changes, completely, and all that seemed to him true, natural, normal, real, tangible, all that, immediately, — yes, it seems to him very grotesque, very queer, very unreal, quite absurd; but one has touched something which is supremely true and eternally beautiful, and this one never loses again.”
“Once the reversal has taken place, you can glide into an external consciousness, not lose the ordinary contact with the things of life, but that remains and it never moves. You may, in your dealings with others, fall back a little into their ignorance and blindness, but there is always something there, living, standing up within, which does not move any more, until it manages to penetrate everything, to the point where it is over, where the blindness disappears for ever. And this is an absolutely tangible experience, something more concrete than the most concrete object, more concrete than a blow on your head, something more real than anything whatever.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter IX Reversal of Consciousness: The New Birth, pp. 173-174
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 17 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.