INNER EXPERIENCES
The sadhak must understand that these experiences are not mere imaginations or
dreams but actual happenings, for
even when, as often occurs, they are formations only of a wrong or misleading or adverse kind, they have still
their power as formations and must be understood before they can be rejected and abolished. Each inner experience
is perfectly real in its own way, although the values of different experiences differ greatly, but it is real with
the reality of the inner self and the inner planes. It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with
the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others
there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare
have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life. Not all of it comes through, and
what comes through takes another form in the physical — though sometimes there is an exact correspondence; but this little is at the basis of our outward
existence. All that we become and do and bear in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. It is
therefore of immense importance for a yoga which aims at the transformation of life to grow conscious of what goes
on within these domains, to be master there and be able to feel, know and deal with the secret forces that determine
our destiny and our internal and external growth or decline.
A passage for the Powers that move our days,
Occult behind this grosser Nature’s walls,
A gossamer marriage-hall of Mind with Form
Is hidden by a tapestry of dreams;
Heaven’s meanings steal through it as through a veil,
Its inner sight sustains this outer scene.