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Spiritual Progress Requires Non-Attachment to Specific Spiritual Experiences · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The external being wants to have a stable basis by which it can
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  understand and act in the world. The tools that support the
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  stable basis include habit. Fix Tendencies, instincts,
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  education, memory. And even the way the mental
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  processes work, comparing new impulses of the senses to past
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  memory to create pattern, recognition and fixed lines of
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  action. Psychologists have even
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  concluded that neural pathways are built that through
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  repetition lead, the understanding down well-worn
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  ways of understanding and acting and which tend to solidify the
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  life into predictable responses. These things provide stability,
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  and are one of the conservative mechanisms that ensure that
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  there is an orderly progression in the life that has a basis.
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  That is solid steady and sure the energy required to overcome
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  this inertia of the external being is quite considerable.
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  Yet progress can only occur when an individual is able to pass
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  beyond the limits of the past ways of knowing and acting.
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  The same thing happens with respect to spiritual
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  experiences, the individual wants to continually repeat the
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  experiences once they have made an impression on him and then
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  goes about classifying organizing and remembering those
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  experiences and uses this mental framework to try to recapture
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  the magic of that past event. In a certain way, this may help
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  during a period of consolidation and fixing the experience into
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  the external workings of the Mind, life and body.
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  But to the extent, it remains fixed their, the individual
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  cannot progress to the next new level of understanding and
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  experience. A devotee inquires quote mother,
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  why is it that the same contemplation does not always
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  produce the same sensation in oneself?
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  That is for example, when one looks at the sea or the stars
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  and thinks of ones in significance.
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  Then there is a particular sensation which is produced
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  within. And then at another time when
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  one wants to have the same experience, even if one thinks
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  about It, why doesn't it recur? And quote, the mother notes.
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  Quote one can never have the same experience twice because
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  one is never the same person twice between the first
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  experience on the second. Even if one hour has passed, you
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  are no longer the same man and you can never reproduce
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  identically the same thing. If you take care to become more
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  conscious, more sincere, more concentrated, the experience you
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  have will be different, but it may be deeper and more.
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  Clear, but if you cling to something, you have had and want
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  to reproduce the same thing, you will have nothing at all because
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  you can't have the same thing and you are in a state in which
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  you refuse to have a new experience for you are at
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  Attached to the past one. And usually when one has had an
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  experience which was a revelation, something
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  altogether, important one doesn't want to leave it.
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  One is afraid of not having it any longer.
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  And so, in this movement of clinging onto something when
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  prevents oneself from progressing and puts oneself in
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  conditions in which one can't have the next experience, Well,
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  this has to be understood because it is an absolute Fact.
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  One can never have the same experience twice.
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  There may be similar experiences, very close and
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  particularly some which appear similar, but these experiences,
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  if one is absolutely sincere impartial and like a blank page.
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  You will perceive that there is a difference, sometimes an
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  essential one. Between the two though in
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  appearance, they seem very close but the more ready you are to
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  leave behind all that you have experienced in order to be able
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  to go towards something better and higher.
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  The faster you will go. The more you drag the heavy
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  weight of all the past which you don't want to get rid of the
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  slower. Is your Vance.
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  All the past, should always be simply like a stepping stone or
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  a ladder, something to lead you farther, it should not have any
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  other use except to push you forward and if you can feel this
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  and always turn your back on what is past and look at what
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  you want to do. Then you go much faster, you
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  don't waste time on the way. What makes you lose time, as
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  always this clinging, to what has been to, what is, what
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  seemed to you beautiful and good in.
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  What is past. This must only help you.
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  You must not reject it, but it must help you to go forward.
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  It must simply be something on which you lean to take a step
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  forward. And quote, reference SRI
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  aurobindo, and the mother growing within the psychology of
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  inner development. Chapter 7, growth of
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  Consciousness. Inner experiences Pages, 144 to
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  146,