Whether through the opening of the Chakras, or perhaps through other modalities, there is no doubt that new powers of knowing and acting are pressing for expression. We can already conceptualize various expansions of our senses of perception. Some of these are indeed being brought about through technology, such as an ability to see wavelengths not observed by the naked eye, to explore distances in the universe as well as in the microscopic world that are not evident to us with our current senses. However, we can also see changes taking place within the human instrument as more people experience openings to thoughts and emotions being expressed by others, and we begin to understand more completely the ways to optimize what we experience and how we respond to events or circumstances in the world. As we begin to use the knowledge of how neurotransmitters work, how they can aid us in achieving extraordinary feats of physical endurance and performance, how they can alert us to dangers, and how they can help us radiate a sense of well-being and purpose for ourselves and others, we recognise that there are capacities within the human being that have been used unconsciously or subconsciously, but which now can potentially be wielded with a purpose, essentially on demand.
But what of capabilities that have been laughed at, since they are not easy to prove with the means of material science, such as out of body experiences, intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and abilities to potentially move physical objects with mental focus? Science has proven to us that people can use thought to move artificial limbs, to communicate with others by the power of thought, albeit enhanced to a power that can be picked up by sensitive computerized equipment. This implies the power is there, and we simply do not yet know how to focus and intensify its action without the use of external technology. We can see a convergence here where science and spiritual practice may coincide, as the bridge between the two may be the opening of specific chakras and the flow or energy in much greater values through those chakras.
The limitations of the physical body and its processes represent a challenge for humanity as we move towards the next phase of evolution. Breakdowns of the organ systems, nervous system, brain chemistry or cellular activity means we cannot and do not obtain the highest and best performance from the body at all times, and that eventually these breakdowns lead to disease, incapacity and death. We can extend and expand, but eventually the mechanisms themselves have to be brought into focus as the ultimate barriers to be overcome in the expression of powers of consciousness that we cannot yet even remotely comprehend.
Sri Aurobindo notes: “But what would be the result of the emergence of these forces and their liberated and diviner action on the body itself, what their dynamic connection with it and their transforming operation on the still existing animal nature and its animal impulses and gross material procedure? It might be held that the first necessary change would be the liberation of the mind, the life-force, the subtle physical agencies and the physical consciousness into a freer and diviner activity, a many-dimensioned and unlimited operation of their consciousness, a large outbreak of higher powers and the sublimation of the bodily consciousness itself, of its instrumentation, capacity, capability for the manifestation of the soul in the world of Matter. the subtle senses now concealed in us might come forward into a freer action and the material senses themselves become means or channels for the vision of what is now invisible to us or the discovery of things surrounding us but at present unseizable and held back from our knowledge. A firm check might be put on the impulses of the animal nature or they might be purified and subtilised so as to become assets and not liabilities and so transformed as to be parts and processes of a diviner life. But even these changes would still leave a residue of material processes keeping the old way and not amenable to the higher control and, if this could not be changed, the rest of the transformation might itself be checked and incomplete. A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Mind of Light, The Divine Body, pg. 57
Sri Aurobindo Studies 