Intermediate Zone and spiritual wreckage.

[Guest guest]

 

Namaste,

 

Was going through some writings of Aurobindo and found a very interesting and apt piece on what can be called as the intermediate zone in sadhana. This is precisely the area where one would find the maximum amount of spiritual wreckage. Without a strong sense of the funadamentals or a good guru, most spiritual people tend to fall prey to this area of psychological hallucinations. Read below.

 

From Wikipedia:

 

 

Aurobindo asserted that spiritual aspirants may pass through an intermediate zone where experiences of force, inspiration, illumination, light, joy, expansion, power, and freedom from normal limits are possible, which can become associated with personal aspirations, ambitions, notions of spiritual fulfilment and yogic siddhi, and even be falsely interpreted as full spiritual realisation. He asserted that one can pass through this zone and the associated spiritual dangers without harm by perceiving its real nature and seeing through the half-lights and tempting but imperfect and often mixed and misleading experiences. But he taught, those who go astray in it, following false voices and mendacious guidance, may end in a spiritual disaster, or may remain stuck there and adopt some half-truth as the whole truth or become an instrument of lesser powers of these transitional planes, which he stated happens to many sadhaks and yogis.

 

 

This is in fact an intermediary state, a zone of transition between the ordinary consciousness in mind and the true yoga knowledge. One may cross without hurt through it, perceiving at once or at an early stage its real nature and refusing to be detained by its half-lights and tempting but imperfect and often mixed and misleading experiences; one may go astray in it, follow false voices and mendacious guidance, and that ends in a spiritual disaster; or one may take up one’s abode in this intermediate zone, care to go no farther and build there some half-truth which one takes for the whole truth or become the instrument of the powers of these transitional planes, - that is what happens to many sadhaks and yogis.

– Sri Aurobindo, The Riddle of the World, 36-7

 

The pathway of the mystical goal is strewn with human wreckage. Why? Several reasons would be needed to give a complete answer but one of the most important is this: Between the state of ordinary man and the state of the matured mystic there lies a perilous and deceptive psychological region which has been given various names in mystical literature. It has been called the astral plane, the intermediate zone, the hall of illusion, and so on. The early efforts of all aspirants in concentration, meditation, self-conquest, and study, bring them into this region. But once here their egoism becomes stimulated by the subtle forces they have evoked, their emotional nature becomes more sensitive and more fluid, their imaginative power becomes more active and is less restrained. The consequence of failure to negotiate these changes properly is swollen vanity, superstitious credulity, emotions run riot, and imagination gone wild...

– Paul Brunton, Notebooks

 

The mind is the biggest trickster.

 

-Regards

Rajarshi

 

 

 

 

The upsurge (of consciousness) is Bhairava - Shiva Sutra

 

 

 

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