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SECTION TEN
INNER SIGHT AND INNER VISION
Opening of the Inner Sight
WHEN one tries to meditate, the first obstacle in the beginning is sleep. When you get
over this obstacle, there comes a condition in which, with the eyes closed, you
begin to see things,
people, scenes of all kinds. This is not a bad thing,
it is a good sign and means that you are making
progress in the Yoga. There is, besides the outer
physical sight which sees external objects, an inner
sight in us which can see things yet unseen and
unknown, things at a distance, things belonging to another place or time or to
other worlds; it is
the inner sight which is opening in you. It is the
working of the Mother’s force which is opening it
in you, and you should not try to stop it. Remember the Mother always, call on her and aspire to
feel her presence and her power working in you; but you do not need, for that, to reject this or other
developments that may come in you by her working
hereafter. It is only desire, egoism, restlessness and
other wrong movements that have to be rejected.
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Inner Vision and Mental Vision
INNER vision is vivid like actual sight, always precise
and contains a truth in it. In mental vision the
images are invented by the mind and are partly
true, partly a play of possibilities. Or a mental
vision like the vital may be only a suggestion,—
that is a formation of some possibility on the mental
or vital plane which presents itself to the sadhak in
the hope of being accepted and helped to realise itself.
20-7-1934
Inner Vision and Vibration of Forces
THE inner vision can see objects, but it can see
instead the vibration of the forces which act through
the object.
11-6-1933
Mental Visions
THE mental visions are meant to bring in the mind
the influence of the things they represent.
19-7-1934
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Cosmic Vision, Inner Vision and Psychic Vision
COSMIC vision is the seeing of the universal movements —it has nothing to do with the psychic
necessarily. It can be in the universal mind, the universal vital, the universal physical or anywhere.
What do you mean here by psychic vision? Inner
vision means the vision with the inner seeing as
opposed to outer vision, the external sight with
the surface mind in the surface eyes. Psychic, in
the language of this Yoga, is confined to the soul,
the psychic being—it is not as in the ordinary
language in which if you see a ghost it is called
a "psychic vision"; we speak of the inner vision or
the subtle sight—not the psychic vision.
22-3-1933
Power of Inner Vision—Presence and Contact
WHAT was developed in you is a power of true
inner vision—this will help you to enter through it into touch with the Divine; you have only to let it develop. Two other things have to develop—
the feeling of the Divine Presence and power and
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inspiration behind your actions, and the inner
contact with myself and the Mother. Aspire with
faith and sincerity and these will come. I do not
wish to give any more precise instructions until I see what happens in you
during your stay here;
for although the path is common to all, each man
has his own way of following it.
16-7-1934
Development of Vision-images
NOTHING has to be done to develop the images
seen in the vision. They develop of themselves by
the growing practice of seeing,—what was faint
becomes clear, what was incomplete becomes
complete. One cannot say in a general way that
they are real or unreal. Some are formations of
the mind, some are images that come to the sight
of themselves, some are images of real things that
show themselves directly to the sights—others are
true pictures, not merely images.
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Subtle Physical Vision
1. THE vision was seen through the physical eyes but by the subtle physical consciousness; in
other words, there was an imposition of one consciousness upon another. After a certain stage of
development, this capacity of living in the ordinary
physical consciousness and yet having superadded
to it another and more subtle sense, vision,
experience becomes quite normal. A little concentration is enough to bring it; or, even, it happens
automatically without any concentration. As the flower was a subtle physical object, not
entirely material in the ordinary sense of the word (though quite substantial and material in its own
plane, not an illusion), a camera would not be
able to detect it—except in the case of one of those
abnormal interventions by which a subtle form has been thrown upon the material plate. It could be sensed in a dark room, though not so
easily, and it would not then have so vivid an appearance—unless you are able to
bring out something of the light of the subtle physical plane to
surround it and give it its natural medium. If seen with the eyes shut, it would be no longer
a subtle physical form, but an object or formation
of the vital, mental or other plane—unless, indeed, the inner consciousness had progressed so far as
to be able to project itself into the physical planes; but
this is a rare and, in most cases, a late development.
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2. It is not, usually, the object that vanishes; it is the consciousness that changes. Owing to lack
of sustained capacity or lack of training, one is
not able to keep the subtle physical vision which is
what was really seeing the object. This subtle
physical vision comes easiest in the moment between
light sleep and waking—either when one just comes
out of the sleep or when one is just going into it.
But one can train oneself, to have it when one is
quite wide awake. At first when one begins to see, it is quite usual
for the more ill-defined and imprecise figures to
last longer while those which are successful, complete,
precise in detail and outline are apt to be quite
momentary and disappear in an instant. It is only
when the subtle vision is well developed that the precise and full seeing, lasts for a long time. This
results from the difficulty of keeping what is
still an abnormal consciousness and also, in this
case, from the difficulty of keeping the two momentarily superimposed consciousnesses together.
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3. There are all kinds in the experiences of each plane—symbolic forms, figures of suggestion, thought-figures, desire-formations or will-formations,
constructions of all kinds, things real and lasting
in the plane to which they belong and things fictitious and misleading. The haphazardness belongs
to the consciousness that sees with its limited and
imperfect way of cognizing the other worlds, not to
the phenomena themselves. Each plane is a world
or a conglomeration or series of worlds, each organized in its own way, but
organized, not haphazard; only, of course, the subtler planes are more
plastic and less rigid in their organisation than the
material plane.
Tratak
THIS gazing on a flame or a bright spot is the
traditional means used by Yogis for concentration
or for awakening of the inner consciousness and
vision. You seem to have gone by the gazing into
a kind of surface (not deep) trance, which is indeed
one of its first results, and begun to see things
probably on the vital plane. I do not know what
were the "dreadful objects" you saw but that
dreadfulness is the character of many things first
seen on that plane, especially when crossing its
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threshold by such means. You should not employ these means, I think, for they are quite unnecessary and besides, they may lead to a passive concentration in which one is open to all sorts of things and
cannot choose the right ones.
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