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Shifting the Standpoint of Awareness Above the Crown of the Head · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Various paths of yoga featuring various objectives in the
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  practice suggest the practitioner concentrate or
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  place their central focus on one area of the body or another to
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  contact and utilize the energies available in the subtle energy
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  center located there. Those who practice devotion are
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  asked to concentrate in the area behind the heart where the
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  psychic being resides. Those who follow the path of
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  knowledge and will generally concentrate in the area of the
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  ajnat chakra known as the third eye in the area between the
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  eyebrows. Each of these practices has a
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  value and potential benefit not just for the practitioner of
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  that specific path, but as a general methodology to open up
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  the capacities locked up in those areas.
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  There are times and circumstances for the seeker to
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  explore opening each area, each energy center, and each
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  opportunity as part of human development and as an element in
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  their growth in the yogic process.
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  In a yoga focused on transformation through the
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  advent of the next power and the evolution of consciousness in
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  the manifestation, the area of focus shifts to the opening of
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  the higher realms beyond the mental level and thus exceeding
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  the limits set by the physical body and it seemingly contained
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  energy set. The practice of shifting the
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  awareness above the crown of the head is in fact not entirely
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  new, as certain practitioners of Tibetan yoga were trained in a
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  technique that consecrated the effort to the guru and the
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  lineage and then visualize the guru above the head with the
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  lineage sequentially seated one above the other.
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  While the explicit purpose of this practice was not to create
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  a permanent link to the next evolutionary stage of
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  consciousness and bring it into action in the being, there is no
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  doubt that the experience of the disciples introduced them to
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  ranges of awareness that were seated above the mind and which
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  provided the experience of wideness of consciousness.
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  They achieved certain states of liberation, although their
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  objective was not to transform life on earth through the advent
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  of that higher range of consciousness, Sriorobindo
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  writes quote. It is the aim of the sadhna that
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  the consciousness should rise out of the body and take its
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  station above, spreading in the wideness everywhere, not limited
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  to the body. Thus liberated, 1 opens to all
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  that is above this station. Above the ordinary mind,
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  receives there all that descends from the heights, observes from
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  there all that is below. Thus it is possible to witness
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  in all freedom and to control all that is below, and to be a
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  recipient or a channel for all that comes down and presses into
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  the body, which it will prepare to be an instrument of a higher
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  manifestation remoulded into a higher consciousness and nature.
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  What is happening in you is that the consciousness is trying to
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  fix itself in this liberation. When one is there in that higher
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  station, one finds the freedom of the self and the vast silence
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  and immutable calm. But this calm has to be brought
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  down also into the body, into all the lower planes, and fix
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  itself there as something standing behind and containing
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  all the movements. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1, column Peace
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  and Equality, page 20.