Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume III - Part 4
It is evident from what you write that the true consciousness is growing in you and that when it is there all is right – for what you describe in this morning’s letter is the true psychic consciousness come up in some fullness. This fullness was not 
there before, so that is a very encouraging progress. But its remaining seems to depend on the concentration on the Mother. When there is the concentration on the Mother, then the progress can be smooth and continuous; when there is a failure of the concentration, you come into the outward physical mind and at once there is a conflict between the growing quietude and the inner psychic fire and the physical consciousness. The quietude seeks to hold and control the physical consciousness and the fire to burn out the wrong activities and imperfections, but the consciousness finds the pressure hard to bear; it feels dull and troubled by the heat. For when the fire has won, all is cool; when it has to burn the resistances, then there is heat, it becomes a fire of tapasya. This seems to be the explanation of these alternating conditions. It is important therefore to keep the concentration and remain fixed in the Mother; nothing else for the time has any importance comparatively with that.
As for the experience at the Pranam it was the other thing, the descent of the higher consciousness (the Mother’s consciousness) from above, with its light, peace and wideness. When the individual consciousness is enveloped in that, rests in it, then you feel that you are lying in the Mother’s lap. As the psychic consciousness grows from within, it becomes more and more possible for this to descend from above.