The Intermediate Zone refers mainly to the Vital worlds where the soul in its upwards journey can be trapped mistaking the vital for the psychic and the spiritual. It is an inevitable passage for almost everyone since it is near impossible to take a leap right from the external life limited within the ego boundaries and governed by ignorance to straight away penetrate into the soul or climb high enough to breathe the Spirit’s air. Generally it manifests in the form of certain feelings and suggestions that aggrandize and flatter the ego and give one an illusion of being very knowledgeable, a great sadhaka, a yogi etc. These suggestions may be accompanied by a flurry of visions and voices of various forms of gods and goddesses in the vital, or extraordinary states of joy that create excitement rather than the calm and tranquil felicity that accompanies true experiences. Even calm may be imitated in these realms but this calm is more of the nature of inertia leading slowly towards the precipice of depression and even doom. These and other such experiences arise mainly when the sadhana or the yoga is undertaken for satisfying some ambition such as being a great yogi or else for the lure of experiences and yogic siddhis or powers that would make one special and superior.
The indication that the calling is genuine is that one pursues the path because of the love and lure of the divine for the sake of the Divine or for progress towards perfection or for breaking free from the circle of Ignorance and find the True, the Real, the One who alone IS. All these indicate a valid call for the yoga. Or one may very simply want more and more bhakti, true devotion and faith, peace and equanimity or to simply serve the Divine regardless of anything one may get from Him. Best of course is simply to give oneself for the joy of giving to the Divine. Basically the genuine call is the call of the soul that wants to realise its own highest Self, the Divine Self as if inevitably. It is as naturally drawn towards the Divine as the flower to the sun or the river to the sea. On the other hand it is when the ego desires to be aggrandized by the touch of the Spirit or divine and comes hiding behind the garb of yoga that there is danger. If this central point is right then there is nothing to worry since the aim itself will serve as a corrective compass. The greatest safety of course is to rely on the Mother’s Force, develop the practice of offering all inner and outer movements to Her, calling Her Name as often as one can. Faith in the Divine Mother, calling Her Name, relying upon Her as the chief support of the sadhana is the greatest safety on the Path. It is only those who pursue the yoga for egoistic ends and depend upon their own efforts out of a misguided egoism that is unwilling to surrender to the Divine who get into serious difficulties. Others will mostly pass through this without being trapped for life. The remembrance of the Goal itself will keep pushing them through everything and serve as a reminder that short of union with the Divine everything else is at worst an imitative spirituality, at best a half way home of the Spirit.
However there are few things that cannot be imitated and one of them, the mainstay of this yoga is the experience of the Mother’s Force descending from Above under which the whole body or the head experiences a divine thrill.
Another way to avoid the confusion is to find and identify with the psychic being which then serves as a luminous guide to discriminate between the truth and its appearances.
Love
Alok da
