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The Expanded Field of Consciousness Beyond the External Awareness · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Consider that we remove ourselves from active
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  participation in the external world and its activities for
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  some 30% of our lifetimes while we are asleep.
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  Sleep provides the physical body, life, mind complex with
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  the opportunity to undertake basic maintenance, repair the
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  body, soothe the life energies and refresh the brain function.
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  What happens to our consciousness during sleep?
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  Consider further that we are constantly receiving and sending
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  out electrical signals, impulses and vibrational patterns that we
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  are not consciously attending to, but which nevertheless
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  create their own effects within us and on the world around us.
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  Reflect on the fact that there are experiences we have at
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  various times when our external consciousness is withdrawn, such
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  as experiential dreams where we are meeting individuals, going
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  to places and taking actions that are not based in our waking
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  lives or in near death experiences or in out of body
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  experiences, including phenomena such as astral travel.
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  It becomes clear that our consciousness is functioning on
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  other planes and in other circumstances during the times
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  it is not actively participating in the external world of our
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  waking state. Many have reported seeing and
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  meeting teachers and gurus and receiving profound insights
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  while their physical being was asleep.
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  They return from these experiences with inner growth,
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  new levels of knowledge, and used the sleep state as a field
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  for progress in their yogic endeavor.
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  We also know that we process things on multiple different
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  levels at the same time. People who are questioned about
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  events under the technique of hypnosis are able to describe
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  specific details that their waking processing did not grasp.
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  We filter out much of what occurs to make our waking lives
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  more efficient, but it is nevertheless received and stored
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  at a subliminal level and available under the right
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  circumstances to be brought to conscious awareness.
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  Yogis shift their awareness through a state of yogic trance
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  such that it is said that day for the ordinary man is night
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  for the Yogi and day for the Yogi is night for the ordinary
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  man. This indicates that there are
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  other states of awareness available to human beings than
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  that of the surface waking consciousness.
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  Sri Aurobindo writes quote It is a mistake to think that we live
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  physically only with the outer mind and life.
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  We are all the time living and acting on other planes of
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  consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them and
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  what we do and feel and think there.
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  The forces we gather, the results we prepare, have an
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  incalculable importance and effect unknown to us upon our
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  outer life. Not all of it comes through, and
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  what comes through takes another form in the physical, though
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  sometimes there is an exact correspondence.
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  But this little is at the basis of our outward existence.
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  All that we become and do and bear in the physical life is
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  prepared behind the veil within us.
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  It is therefore of immense importance for a yoga which aims
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  at the transformation of life to grow conscious of what goes on
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  within these domains, to be master there and be able to
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  feel, know and deal with the secret forces that determine our
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  destiny and our internal and external growth or decline.
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  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The
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  Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter 2, Hidden Forces within page 29.