Descent experience

In Integral Yoga, after the constant practice of mental silence and concentration of the consciousness above the head, one inevitably experiences what may be called a “descent“, in which there is a palpable feeling of a Power/Force descending from above the head and working its way down the Brahmarandhra (door of Brahman, AKA anterior fontanelle) through the back of the head and down the spine.   With progress, it is this Power that fills the heart and other parts of the lower being and gradually brings about a change of consciousness.

This “descent experience” has no equivalent in other Yogas where the focus is on raising the Kundalini upwards towards the head from the Muladhara at the base of the spine.

Sri Aurobindo on the mechanism of descent

The descent of Peace (Sat), the descent of Force or Power(Chit), the descent of Light, the descent of Ananda, these are the four things that transform the nature.

It is not really the plane that descends, it is the Power and Truth of it that descends into the material and then the veil between the material and it no longer exists.

Whenever there is a descent of the higher consciousness in the Adhar(i.e. support or physical body):

1. Part of it is stored up in the frontal consciousness and remains there.
2. Part of it goes behind and remains as a support to the active part of the being.
3. Part flows out into the universal Nature.
4. Part is absorbed by the inconscient and lost to the individual consciousness and its action.

(Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga, Triple Transformation)

Painting by Dinabandhu Das from the Korsnäs Gard Art Collection. © The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International. Click image for source.

The Mother discusses why the descent of Kundalini is better than it’s rising from the bottom

Satprem: But then what is this consciousness we feel like a force inside us? For instance, sometimes in meditation it rises, then descends; it’s not fixed anywhere. What is this consciousness?

Mother: The Shakti!

Some receive it from above; for others, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once told you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, it’s invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here {gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from there it comes down, down, down, everywhere, to the very bottom, and even below the feet – the subconscient – and lower still, the inconscient.

It’s the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a “veiled” shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isn’t (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because it’s always a great power no matter where it awakens), there’s inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.

(Mother’s Agenda, July 25, 1962)

Another kind of descent of light. The Pentecost by Tiziano Vecellio Titian(1485 - 1576). Click image for source.

Why this descent experience was absent in other Yogas

Sri Aurobindo: I explain this absence of the descent experiences myself by the old yogas having been mainly confined to the psycho-spiritual-occult range of experience – in which the higher experiences come into the still mind or the concentrated heart by a sort of filtration or reflection – the field of this experience being from the Brahmarandhra downward. People went above this only in Samadhi or in a condition of static mukti without any dynamic descent.  All that was dynamic took place in the region of the spiritualised mental and vital-physical consciousness. In this yoga the consciousness (after the lower field has been prepared by a certain amount of psycho-spiritual-occult experience) is drawn upwards above the Brahmarandhra to ranges above belonging to the spiritual consciousness proper and instead of merely receiving from there has to live there and from there change the lower consciousness altogether. For there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Integral Yoga and other paths)

Sri Aurobindo limns the descent experience in his epic poem Savitri

The Power that from her being’s summit reigned,
The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,
Came down and held the centre in her brow
Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits;
There throned on concentration’s native seat
He opens that third mysterious eye in man,
The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen,
When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain
And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice
And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.
It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,
And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word,
Her life sounded with the steps of the world-soul
Moving in harmony with the cosmic Thought.
As glides God’s sun into the mystic cave
Where hides his light from the pursuing gods,
It glided into the lotus of her heart
And woke in it the Force that alters Fate.
It poured into her navel’s lotus depth,
Lodged in the little life-nature’s narrow home,
On the body’s longings grew heaven-rapture’s flower
And made desire a pure celestial flame,
Broke into the cave where coiled World-Energy sleeps
And smote the thousand-hooded serpent Force
That blazing towered and clasped the World-Self above,
Joined Matter’s dumbness to the Spirit’s hush
And filled earth’s acts with the Spirit’s silent power.

(Sri Aurobindo.  Savitri Book X, Chapter IV, p665)

See Also

1. Explaining the Ascent-Descent in Integral Yoga
2. Kundalini in ancient Greek and other non-Indian cultures
3. Various ways in which the Kundalini rises
4. Why does Yoga give you a “high”?
5. The subtle sounds which indicate progress in Yoga
6. The Triple Cord which has to be sundered
7. The Golden Lid or Hiranmaya Patra which has to be ruptured
8. Explaining out-of-body and near-death experiences