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Beyond Mental Ideas to Spiritual Experience · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The human mind is always at work trying to figure out what life
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  is all about, where we came from, why we are here, what we
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  are to do, what lies in the future.
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  We have developed a countless number of ideas, philosophies,
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  religious concepts, and we become adherents to those that
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  make sense to our minds. In many cases, we then wield our
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  various ideas, philosophies and religious dogmas against each
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  other and create division, separation and warfare.
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  Much of our thinking is influenced by the vital needs
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  and desires that we experience in our external lives and
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  through the impact of others in our connected life in society,
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  we come to certain directions, ways of life, value sets and
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  goals of living that we then try to implement in our lives.
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  All of this vital and mental review, analysis, and decision
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  process may impact our external lives, but for the most part, it
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  does not answer the ultimate questions nor respond to our
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  deeper calling. When we begin to move beyond
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  these mental ideas, we begin to acquire experience.
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  Experience guides US ever further beyond what our mental
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  process can effectuate. In the Cana Upanishad, the
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  physical power, the vital power, and the mental power all felt
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  like they had some kind of ultimate power, but each was met
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  with an unknown presence that halted and turned away their
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  native powers. Only the mental power was able
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  to recognize that there was indeed some reality and a
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  presence beyond that could not be grasped by the powers of
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  body, life, or mind. Many create a mental dichotomy
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  between our active existence and a type of vacuum of space that
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  essentially represents the absence of life or activity.
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  This is however a false dichotomy as it does not ever
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  answer the source of the active existence or how it comes to be.
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  Within the vast silent wide expanse of space there is both a
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  featureless non manifest aspect and a dynamic active aspect, the
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  latter of which is the creative force that brings about all life
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  and existence. The dynamic aspect is a
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  conscious presence that can be experienced when an individual
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  moves beyond the mental ideative space within which we tend to
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  enclose ourselves, Srioro Bindo writes.
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  Quote Mental theories are of no fundamental importance for the
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  mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn
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  of the being. What is important is that turn
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  and the call within you, the knowledge that there is a
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  supreme existence, consciousness and bliss, which is not merely a
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  negative Nirvana or a static and featureless absolute, but
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  dynamic. The perception that this divine
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  consciousness can be realized not only beyond, but here, and
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  the consequent acceptance of a divine life as the aim of yoga
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  do not belong to the mind. It is not a question of mental
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  theory, even though mentally this outlook can be as well
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  supported as any other, if not better, but of experience, and
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  before the experience comes of the soul's faith, bringing with
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  it the minds and the life's adhesion.
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  One who is in contact with the higher light and has the
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  experience can follow this way, however difficult it may be for
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  the lower members to follow. One who is touched by it without
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  having the experience but having the call, the conviction, the
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  compulsion of the soul's adherence can also follow it.
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  End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo, Faces
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  of Yoga, Chapter 2, Faith, Aspiration and Surrender, pages
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  22 to 23.