The science of Self-knowledge is available to anyone willing to open their soul to the guiding Grace of the Eternal Light / Divine Love -- the only Light that can be shed upon the Path, since nothing that is not of the Eternal can guide you. One who truly lives in (spiritual) humility and sacrifice of one's lower nature attains union with the Divine Being and oneness with the Supreme Divine Nature.
Finding the way to God/Divine Love-Bliss is painfully hard because one has to go beyond one's own being (the things of the world cannot enter the soul).
From the Christian tradition, in Saint John of the Cross' words - on the importance of spiritual humility and sacrifice:
Before this Divine fire of love is introduced into the substance of the soul, and is united with it, by means of a purity and purgation that is perfect and complete, this flame is wounding the soul, and destroying and consuming in it the imperfections of its evil habits; and this is the operation of the Holy Spirit, (same as 'Kundalini Shakti') wherein he prepares it for Divine union and the transformation of its substance in God through love. + In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul...is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God himself, and has all that God Himself has.
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Genuine saints / ascended mystics world over learned from first-hand experience the importance of spiritual humility and sacrifice of their 'lower nature'. We know that on this Path through the transcendent Light and Sound, we will open our inner senses and Seeing to a variety of visionary and auditory experiences - some of which could be the product of the surface mind's dive into the (hidden to the 'rational' mind) subconscious mind's constructs, but not always.
Sri Aurobindo delved into the topic of spiritual experiences deeply, and because I know exactly what he's talking about, I endorse his view-perspective one hundred percent.
I didn't say that those experiences are always of no value, but they are so mixed and confused that if one runs after them without any discrimination at all they end by either leading astray, sometimes tragically astray, or by bringing one into confused nowhere. +
Then there are experiences that help lead towards the realisation of things spiritual or divine or bring openings or progressions in the sadhana or are supports on the way - experiences of a symbolic character, visions, contacts of one kind or another with the Divine or with the workings of higher Truth, things like the waking of Kundalini, the opening of the Chakras, messages, intuitions, openings of the inner powers, etc.
The one thing one has to be careful about is to see that they are genuine and sincere and that depends on one's own sincerity - for if one is not sincere; if one is more concerned with the ego or being a big yogi or becoming superman than with meeting the Divine or getting the Divine consciousness which enables one to live in or with the Divine, then a flood of pseudo or mixtures comes in, one is led into the mazes of the intermediate zone or spins in the groves of one's own formations. There is the Truth of the whole matter. +
Experience is a word that covers almost all the happenings in yoga; only when something gets settled, then it is no longer an experience but part of the siddhi; e.g. peace when it comes and goes is an experience - when it is settled and goes no more it is siddhi.
Realisation is different - it is when something for which you are aspiring becomes real to you; e.g.you have the idea of the Divine in all, but it is only an idea, a belief; when you feel or see the Divine in all, it becomes a realisation.
Every kind of realisation - infinite self, cosmic consciousness, the Mother's Presence, Light, Force, Ananda, Knowledge, Sachichidananda realisation, the different layers of consciousness up to the Supermind. All these can come in silence which remains but ceases to be blank.
Experiences one's own or others' if one comes to know them, should not be talked about or made a matter of gossip. It is only if there can be some spiritual profit to others and even then if they are experiences of the past that one can speak of them. Otherwise it becomes like news of Abyssinia or Spain, something common and trivial for the vital mass-mind to chew or gobble. YES!
Last, but not least, Aurobindo's statement on the importance of many types of 'transformative' experiences:
The Divine is in his essence infinite and his manifestation too is multitudinously infinite. If that is so, it is not likely that our true integral perfection in being and in nature can come by one kind of realisation alone; it must combine many different strands of divine experience. It cannot be reached by the exclusive pursuit of a single line of identity that is raised to its absolute; it must harmonise many aspects of the infinite. An Integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.
Source: intyoga.online.fr/exp_real.htm
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Additional information on how to reach the Ultimate Consummation of the ascended Soul with the Divine - Gita style, in Sri Aurobindo's words from: auromere.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/states-of-self-realisation-defind-in-the-gita/
The argument of the Gita resolves itself into three great steps by which action rises out of the human into the divine plane leaving the bondage of the lower for the liberty of a higher law. First, by the renunciation of desire and a perfected equality works have to be done as a sacrifice by a man as the doer, a sacrifice to a deity who is the supreme and only Self though by him not yet realised in his own being. This is the initial step. Secondly, not only the desire of the fruit, but the claim to be the doer of works has to be renounced in the realisation of the Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by which all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To him love and adoration and the sacrifice of works have to be offered; the whole being has to be surrendered to Him and the whole consciousness raised up to dwell in this divine consciousness so that the human soul may share in His divine transcendence of Nature and of His works and act in a perfect spiritual liberty.
The first step is Karmayoga, the selfless sacrifice of works, and here Gita's insistence is on action.
The second is jnanayoga, the self-realisation and knowledge of the true nature of the self in the world; and here the insistence is on knowledge; but the sacrifice of works continues and the path of Works becomes one with but does not disappear into the of Knowledge.
The last step is Bhaktiyoga, adoration and seeking of the supreme Self as the Divine Being, and here the insistence is on devotion, but the knowledge is not subordinated, only raised, vitalised and fulfilled, and still the sacrifice of works continues; the double path becomes the triune way of knowledge, works, and devotion. All the fruit of the sacrifice, the one fruit still placed before the seeker, is attained, union with the divine Being and oneness with the supreme divine nature.
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