Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
12. Experiences of the Inner and the Cosmic Consciousness
I mean what happened to X and others like Y, Z and others. Higher experiences hurt nobody – the question is what is meant by higher? Y for instance thought his experiences to be the highest Truth itself – I told him they were all imaginations but only with the result that he became furious with me. There are imitation higher experiences when the mind or vital catches hold of an idea or suggestion and turns it into a feeling, and while there is a rush of forces, a feeling of exultation and power etc. All sorts of “imperatives” come, visions, perhaps “voices”. There is nothing more dangerous than these voices – when I hear from somebody that he has a “voice”, I always feel uneasy, though there can be genuine and helpful voices, and feel inclined to say “No voices please,– silence, silence and a clear discriminating brain”. I have hinted about this region of imitation experiences, false inspirations, false voices into which hundreds of yogins enter and some never get out of it in my letter about the intermediate zone. If a man has a strong clear head and a certain 
kind of spiritual scepticism, he can go through and does – but people without discrimination like Y or Z get lost. Especially ego enters in and makes them so attached to their splendid (?) condition that they absolutely refuse to come out. Now a retirement into seclusion gives free scope for this kind of action, as it makes one live entirely in one’s own subjective being without any control except what one’s own native discernment can bring in – and if that is not strong? Ego is of course the strong support of these subjective falsehoods, but there are other supports also. Work and mixing with others – with the contact of the objective that that brings – is not an absolute defence against these things, but it is a defence and serves as a check and as a kind of corrective balance. I notice that those who enter into this region of the intermediate zone usually make for retirement and seclusion and insist on it. These are the reasons why I prefer usually that sadhaks should not take to an absolute retirement but keep a certain poise between silence and action, the inner and the outer together.