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The Need for Serious Review of Other-Worldly or Supernormal Experience · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  It is convenient and perhaps comforting to simply deny
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  reality to experiences that people have, rather than to
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  grapple with the implications of those experiences.
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  We stick convenient labels on certain phenomena and believe by
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  doing so we have understood and defined those phenomena.
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  Delusion. Hallucination.
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  Mental illness, drug induced visual or auditory confusion,
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  traumatic triggering of complexes, physical brain
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  damage, confused dream interpretation, PTSD, breakdown
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  of body chemistry, and near death events.
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  There are countless ways we discount experiences that people
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  have. Nonetheless, reports of
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  extraordinary experiences abound worldwide throughout human
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  history, and while some may be explained by the convenient
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  definitions we have invented, many of them stand as
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  inexplicable based on the blinded approach we take to
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  understanding them. They're well documented cases of
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  a sibling or other family member having a distinct experience of
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  being visited in a dream state by a relative at the exact time
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  of death of that individual many thousands of miles away, such as
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  occurred with individuals who took part in World War One in
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  Europe with their relatives elsewhere.
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  Sigmund Freud tried to disentangle the experiences and
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  symbolic meaning of dream sequences of his patients.
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  He was limited, however, by his approach of trying to tie
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  everything back to some kind of past event or experience, rather
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  than determining whether there was some larger or broader
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  explanation for at least some of the experiences recounted to
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  him. CG Jung took the investigation
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  much farther as he explored his own experience along with those
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  of his patients. He eventually concluded that
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  certain images or symbols were part of a collective unconscious
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  that was a repository for archetypes that were experienced
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  by large numbers of people and thus could not be dismissed due
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  to individual trauma, physical damage, or imbalance.
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  In his posthumously published Redbook, he described not only
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  his own experiences, but created extensive drawings depicting
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  some of the forms, beings, and symbolic representations he
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  himself experienced. His family resisted the
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  publication of this work with the fear that it would detract
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  from his legacy. However, it is now quite clear
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  that the Redbook is an important work in Western psychological
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  research and actually enhances the position that CJ Jung has in
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  Western psychology. In some cases, visions or
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  experiences become the basis for a religion or a teaching, and
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  those who return with those experiences and communicate them
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  can become guides, leaders, or spiritual healers or shaman.
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  The Vision Quest is a methodology developed to
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  actually gain a supernormal experience and be able to learn
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  from it. When we recognize that such
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  experiences, whether categorized as misguided or guided, are a
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  common heritage of humanity and are widely spread across all
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  times and societies, we can no longer simply dismiss their
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  occurrence with an attempt to limit or pigeonhole the
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  experience without deeper investigation and insight,
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  Shriorogindo observes. Quote.
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  This has always been put into its most generalized terms.
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  The normal range and character of otherworldly belief and
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  experience in all periods of the past of the race names and forms
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  differ, but the general features have been strikingly similar in
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  all countries and ages. What exact value are we to put
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  upon these persistent beliefs, or upon this mass of supernormal
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  experience? It is not possible for anyone
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  who has had these contacts with any intimacy, and not only by
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  scattered abnormal accidents, to put them aside as mere
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  superstition or hallucination, for they are too insistent,
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  real, effective, organic in their pressure to constantly
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  confirm by their action and results to be so flung aside.
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  An appreciation, an interpretation, a mental
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  organization of this side of our capacity of experience is
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  indispensable. End Quote reference.
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  Shrioro Bindu and the Mother. The Hidden Forces of Life,
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  Chapter 6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, page 139.