The Synthesis of Yoga - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

878 The Yoga of Self-Perfection
master and to come into conscious and self-controlled possession
of the inner secrets of our nature. The psychical consciousness
reveals this interaction between the inner and the outer planes,
this world and others, partly by an awareness, which may be very
constant, vast and vivid, of their impacts, suggestions, communications
to our inner thought and conscious being and a capacity
of reaction upon them there, partly also through many kinds of
symbolic, transcriptive or representative images presented to the
different psychical senses. But also there is the possibility of a
more direct, concretely sensible, almost material, sometimes actively
material communication — a complete though temporary
physical materialisation seems to be possible — with the powers,
forces and beings of other worlds and planes. There may even be
a complete breaking of the limits of the physical consciousness
and the material existence.
The awakening of the psychical consciousness liberates in
us the direct use of the mind as a sixth sense, and this power
may be made constant and normal. The physical consciousness
can only communicate with the minds of others or know the
happenings of the world around us through external means and
signs and indications, and it has beyond this limited action only a
vague and haphazard use of the mind’s more direct capacities, a
poor range of occasional presentiments, intuitions and messages.
Our minds are indeed constantly acting and acted upon by the
minds of others through hidden currents of which we are not
aware, but we have no knowledge or control of these agencies.
The psychical consciousness, as it develops, makes us aware of
the great mass of thoughts, feelings, suggestions, will impacts,
influences of all kinds that we are receiving from others or sending
to others or imbibing from and throwing into the general
mind atmosphere around us. As it evolves in power, precision
and clearness, we are able to trace these to their source or feel
immediately their origin and transit to us and direct consciously
and with an intelligent will our own messages. It becomes possible
to be aware, more or less accurately and discerningly, of the
activities of minds whether near to us physically or at a distance,
to understand, feel or identify ourselves with their temperament,