Isha Upanishad - Super school - Auroville - Isha Upanishad 402

But you are all students of Super school, Super school has one speciality, we try to understand not only thoughts that is only the first step, we also try to understand by experience. So, to be a student of Super school you should have one special qualification either already possessed, or to be possessed but in any case you should have it in due course. To study the statements of the Upanishads by experience, or atleast strive to experience. Experience is of various kinds, there is experience such as the experience of sugar by putting it on the tongue is called sense experience, you have the senses and the sense comes into contact with the object and you have the sense experience. But then there is a deeper experience not by the sense organs but directly by the mind, very few people have developed this capacity to sense by the mind directly without using the sense organs. At present they are called extra-sensory, beyond the senses but they have sensuous experience, there have been examples where people are blind-folded and they are asked to sit on the scooter and run through the town, and they run, without hurting anybody,− no accident. It is because the sense of sight is caught directly by the mind. There is a deeper sensation in the mind itself.

You know all of us have this kind of sense experience, every night when we have dreams, by what senses do you see these dreams? Your eyes are closed and yet you see all beautiful things, or various kinds of scenes. You talk, you hear, you feel, sense, what is that capacity in you by which you do all this; it is the mind, directly sensing. So this is the second type of experience.

The third is still a deeper experience. It is called intuitive experience. Intuitive experience requires three stages, first, you have contemplation or meditation, both are forms of concentration, you concentrate the power of consciousness. Every one of us possesses consciousness. We are all equal in the possession of consciousness. But different people have made use of consciousness differently, so if you concentrate properly than consciousness gives you experience. First of all, concentration takes place then comes what is called drishti, you have the vision. Just as in dreams, you see but for getting dreams you have to go into a kind of sleep, you become unconscious to some extent. In the case of this spiritual experience you go deep but you do not lose consciousness. In the depth of consciousness without going into sleep you experience drishti, you have visions. You hear in the intensity of your being, you hear something, in the intensity of your concentration you can see, you have visions and then you go beyond it. Visions and auditions, smells of various kinds are not the only experiences there are deeper experiences; where the subject and the object become one. In your visions you are still the other, subject that observes the object, the vision. But here the subject and the object become one. So, intuition is the power in which the subject and the object become one.

The Upanishads invites you on a long journey, when you read Upanishads you have a program. The least is that you try to understand by your intellectual thought − it's the first stage, and then you concentrate upon what is stated and then you try to have inner experience. And ultimately you arrive at illumination, the true knowledge, this is the end. It may take years and years. But if you start now, you will be able to complete it before many years pass, if you start late in life, you can count how many years it will take from that time onwards. That is why young students should start at a young age. You start listening then gradually you ripen and when you have passed through various stages of ripening and then ultimately at the end of many years you experience.