Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana before Coming to Pondicherry in 1910
Early Experiences

Signs of Yogic Opening [2]

I remember, when I first began to see inwardly (and outwardly also with the open eye), a scientific friend of mine began to talk of after-images — “these are only after-images!” I asked him whether after-images remained before the eye for two minutes at a time — he said, “no”, to his knowledge only for a few seconds; I also asked him whether one could get after-images of things not around one or even not existing upon this earth since they had other shapes, another character, other hues, contours and a very different dynamism, life-movements and values — he could not reply in the affirmative. That is how these so-called scientific explanations break down as soon as you pull them out of their cloudland of mental theory and face them with the actual phenomena they pretend to decipher.

19 February 1932