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(A)
Sensory DISTORTION:
Even to a person with a clear and unclouded sensorium, the senses
can distort the truth. They can carry information that is
phenomenally correct but in reality untrue : e.g. the perception
that the sun goes around the earth, the errors of refraction, the
phenomenon of mirage, the visual impression of movements in
advertisement hoardings(where there has been no actual movement but
successive illumination gives an impression of movement) etc.
In
such cases, the limitations of our senses have to be supplemented by
a clear, discerning, rational intellect, which puts things in their
proper perspective (this rational intellect to date has not been
able to explain satisfactorily how the inverted impressions of
objects received by our visual apparatus become ‘straight’ when
visualized!)
(B)
PERCEPTION OF THE MATERIALLY IMPERCEPTIBLE REALITIES
Sri
Aurobindo writes that ‘Even in the world of Matter there are
existences of which the physical senses are incapable of taking
cognizance’ (The Life Divine, pg. 23). Science acknowledges this and
augments the biological limits of our sensory perception with high
precision instruments like the microscope to visualize objects that
cannot be otherwise perceived by our naked senses. However, the
scientist has an ‘intuitive idea’ that there is something which
needs a microscope to visualize (It is always remarked, ‘the eyes do
not see what the mind does not know!’). The intuitive idea that
precedes and determines the scientific endeavor to visualize
outwardly imperceptible things is of primary importance. Even before
instruments like the microscope was discovered, intuitive scientific
ideas stimulated geniuses to ‘discover’ or ‘speculate’ many
outwardly imperceptible material facts. Thus, the ancient Ayurvedic
physicians in the absence of modern laboratory equipments could
‘discover’ the properties of medicinal herbs – viz. Raulfia
Serpentina, the only pharmacologically correct antischizophrenic
drug till chlorpromazine was discovered in the middle of the 20th
century.
In
more recent times, one of the most spectacular feats has been the
unraveling of the nuclear structure of all the 92 naturally
occurring elements down to the ‘quark’ and even ‘subquark’ level
through sensory dissection of occult nature by two theosophists,
Annie Beasant & CW Leadbeater, years before scientists understood
them, albeit with more precision then the best supercollider
accelerator could do and this endeavor was started in 1895! (A full
description of the phenomenon by Dr. Mahadeva Srinivasan which
appeared in the Hindu Sunday magazine in 1994 and reprinted in
‘Namah’ can be found in our ‘downloads’ section). Justifiably, Sri
Aurobindo comments that the constant sensuous association of the
real with the materially perceptible is itself a hallucination
because there is so much beyond this oversimplified assumption!
(C) PERCEPTION OF IMMATERIAL REALITIES
Our
external sensory apparatus can only perceive those things which have
a foundation in ‘matter’. No doubt this equation persists became
matter is solid, tangible and hence phenomenally ‘real’ but we also
simultaneously live in a world of ideas, ideals, visions,
abstractions, fantasies – things which do not necessarily need
‘matter’ as a starling point though they need the ‘matter’ of our
bodily apparatus for expression. Our sensory apparatus cannot
perceive directly such ‘immaterial’ items, (though indirectly a
person’s body language can sometimes betray one’s thoughts and the
sensory feedback can be matched by the brain for an impressionistic,
not a veridical view).
It
is this limitation of the sensory apparatus to gauge ‘immaterial
realities’ that necessitated ‘an extension of the field of our
consciousness or an unhoped-for increase in our instruments of
knowledge’(The Life Divine,pg 26).
This extension of consciousness first traversed the faculty of
‘Reason’ but as Reason also has its limitations, it had to be
exceeded. This is how the great spiritual tradition of India
discovered faculties for acquiring knowledge that surpass both
‘sensory perception’ and ‘reason’ -- faculties like ‘inspiration’,’
intuition’, ‘revelation’, ‘identity’. These faculties were always
available to humanity in flashes, in glimpses, but too scattered in
time and space for providing enough base-material for building up a
coherent science. Sri Aurobindo will take up the task of organizing
the suprasensory and suprarational faculties in a systematised,
graded way so that there can be a logical extension from the realm
of ‘Mind’ to the realm of ‘Supermind’.
(D) ‘Subtle Senses’
Sri
Aurobindo makes a distinctly important observation that arises from
the experiential spiritual tradition. ‘Not only are there physical
realities which are suprasensible, but, if evidence and experience
are at all a test of truth, there are also senses which are
supraphysical and can not only take cognisance of the realities of
the material world without the aid of the corporeal sense-organs,
but can bring us into contact with other realities, supraphysical
and belonging to another world – included, that is to say, in an
organisation of conscious experiences that are dependent on some
other principle than the gross Matter of which our suns and earths
seem to be made.’ (The Life Divine , pg. 23) These supraphysical
senses or ‘subtle senses’ suksma indriya) are located in an ‘inner’
or ‘subtle’ or ‘subliminal’ being that stands behind our outer being
( the outer being is studied as ‘personality’ in psychology, the
‘inner being’ is known to spiritual traditions. In The Life Divine,
we will later present a detailed structure of the organisation of
the being where the different dimensions of the outer being and the
inner being will be clarified in details.)
The
inner being’s senses are capable of ‘subtle’ experiences’ (suksma
dristi) like inner hearing, inner vision. This is how during
meditation one can ‘hear’ voices, mantras, church bells or have
‘visions’ of gods, angels, fairies (we are talking here of
meditative experience of ‘normal’ , integrated individuals and not
of schizophrenic experiences). In the recent cases of ‘out of body
experience’(OBE) reported by subjects undergoing anesthesia, there
were reports of “visualizing’ ones own surgery from the ‘ceiling’
of the operation theater or ‘hearing’ conversations taking place at
a distance from the hospital. It seems that somehow the subtle
senses can get activated in these states. In fact, ‘parapsychology’
mostly deals with phenomena that can only be explained by the
activation of subtle senses - something which the yogis of India and
the mystics of all spiritual traditions have experientially
perceived throughout the ages. Sri Aurobindo writes, ‘The increasing
evidences, of which only the most obvious and outward are
established under the name of telepathy with its cognate phenomena,
cannot long be resisted except by minds shut up in the brilliant
shell of the past, by intellects limited in spite of their acuteness
through the limitations of their field of experience and inquiry, or
by those who confuse enlightenment and reason with the faithful
repetition of the formulas left to us from a bygone century and the
jealous conservation of dead or dying intellectual dogmas’ (The Life
Divine, pg. 23-24)
He
of course warns that the testimony of the subtle senses have to ‘ be
controlled, scrutinised and arranged by the reason, rightly
translated and rightly related, and their field, laws and processes
determined’ (The Life Divine, pg. 24). Indeed, this is one of the
challenging tasks of the emergent consciousness based yoga
psychology. An experiential psychology that is the need of the hour
should enable an aspirant to identify with the seer-poet’s
realisation:
‘
I am caught no more in the senses’ narrow mesh.
My
soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,
My
body is God’s happy living tool,
My
spirit a vast sun of deathless light.’
(Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, pg. 161)
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