--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

99

   1 Integral Yoga


   13 Sri Aurobindo
   7 The Mother
   2 Nolini Kanta Gupta


   32 Letters On Yoga III
   13 Letters On Yoga I
   11 Letters On Yoga II
   8 The Life Divine
   7 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   7 The Mothers Agenda
   5 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   3 Words Of The Mother II
   3 The Integral Yoga
   2 Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   2 Agenda Vol 1

0.05_-_1955, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      No matter where I concentrate, in my heart, above my head, between my eyes, I bang everywhere into an unyielding wall; I no longer know which way to turn, what I must do, say, pray in order to be freed from all this at last. Mother, I know that I am not making all the effort I should, but help me to make this effort, I implore your grace. I need so much to find at last this solid rock upon which to lean, this space of light where finally I may seek refuge. Mother, open the Psychic Being in me, open me to your sole Light which I need so much. Without your grace, I can only turn in circles, hopelessly. O Mother, may I live in you.

0.07_-_1957, #Agenda Vol 1, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      But that does not mean remembering in a mental way. Those who claim to have been this or that baron in the Middle Ages or such and such a person who lived at such and such a place during such and such a time are fantasizing; they are simply victims of their own mental fancies. For what remains of past lives are not beautiful illustrated classics in which you see yourself as a great lord in a castle or a victorious general at the head of his army - all that is fiction. What remains is the memory of the INSTANTS when the Psychic Being emerged from the depths of your being and revealed itself to you, or in other words, the memory of those moments when you were fully conscious. The growth of the consciousness is effected progressively through evolution, and the memory of past lives is generally limited to the critical moments of this evolution, to the great, decisive turning points that have marked some progress in your consciousness.      --      But apart from the things that were around you at that minute, apart from that minute of contact with your psychic being, nothing remains. Once the privileged moment has passed, the Psychic Being sinks back into its inner somnolence and the whole outer life fades into a monotonous gray which leaves no trace. In fact, something of the same phenomenon occurs in the course of your present life: apart from those exceptional moments when you are at the summit of your mental, vital or even physical being, the rest of your existence seems to fade into an uninteresting, dull tonality, and it matters very little whether you have been at this place or some other or whether you have done this thing rather than another. If suddenly you try to look at your life in order to gather its essence - to peer twenty or thirty or forty years behind you - you will see two or three images spontaneously leap before you, and they are the true minutes of your life, but all the rest fades away. A spontaneous choice and a tremendous elimination thus take place in your consciousness.      --      Of course, one's early lives are quite rudimentary and little remains of them, a few scattered memories. But the more you progress in consciousness and the more the Psychic Being consciously associates itself with the outer activities, the more abundant, coherent and precise do the memories become - yet here too the memory that remains is that of the contact with the soul, and sometimes of the things associated with the psychic revelation - not your civil status nor the ever-changing setting. And this explains why these so-called memories of animal lives partake of the highest fantasies; in animals, the divine spark is too deeply buried to come to the surface consciously and be associated with the outer life. One must become a totally conscious being, in all the parts of the being, and be totally united with one's divine origin before one can truly say that one recalls his past lives.

01.04_-_Motives_for_Seeking_the_Divine, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the Psychic Being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.

02.06_-_The_Integral_Yoga_and_Other_Yogas, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   There are a thousand ways of approaching and realising the Divine and each way has its own experiences which have their own truth and stand really on a basis, one in essence but complex in aspects, common to all, but not expressed in the same way by all. There is not much use in discussing these variations; the important thing is to follow one's own way well and thoroughly. In this   Yoga, one can realise the Psychic Being as a portion of the   Divine seated in the heart with the Divine supporting it there

03.03_-_The_Inner_Being_and_the_Outer_Being, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self. This inner self once awake opens in its turn to our true real and eternal self. It opens inwardly to the soul, called in the language of this Yoga the Psychic Being which supports our successive births and at each birth assumes a new mind, life and body. It opens above to the Self or spirit which is unborn and by conscious recovery of it we transcend the changing personality and achieve freedom and full mastery over our nature.

1.02_-_Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      16:But even though the concentration of all the being on the Divine is the character of the Yoga, yet is our being too complex a thing to be taken up easily and at once, as if we were taking up the world in a pair of hands, and set in its entirety to a single task. Man in his effort at self-transcendence has usually to seize on some one spring or some powerful leverage in the complicated machine that his nature is; this spring or lever he touches in preference to others and uses it to set the machine in motion towards the end that he has in view. In his choice it is always Nature itself that should be his guide. But here it must be Nature at her highest and widest in him, not at her lowest or in some limiting movement. In her lower vital activities it is desire that Nature takes as her most powerful leverage; but the distinct character of man is that he is a mental being, not a merely vital creature. As he can use his thinking mind and will to restrain and correct his life impulses, so too he can bring in the action of a still higher luminous mentality aided by the deeper soul in him, the Psychic Being, and supersede by these greater and purer motive-powers the domination of the vital and sensational force that we call desire. He can entirely master or persuade it and offer it up for transformation to its divine Master. This higher mentality and this deeper soul, the psychic element in mall, are the two grappling hooks by which the Divine can lay hold upon his nature.

1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   object:1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - the Psychic Being   subject class:Integral Yoga   --      THE WORKS OF KNOWLEDGE --      the Psychic Being      This then is in its foundations the integral knowledge of the Supreme and Infinite to whom we offer our sacrifice, and this the nature of the sacrifice itself in its triple character, -a sacrifice of works, a sacrifice of love and adoration, a sacrifice of knowledge. For even when we speak of the sacrifice of works by itself, we do not mean the offering only of our outward acts, but of all that is active and dynamic in us; our internal movements no less than our external doings are to be consecrated on the one altar. The inner heart of all work that is made into a sacrifice is a labour of self-discipline and self-perfection by which we can hope to become conscious and luminous with a Light from above poured into all our movements of mind, heart, will, sense, life and body. An increasing light of divine consciousness will make us close in soul and one by identity in our inmost being and spiritual substance with the Master of the world-sacrifice, -- the supreme object of existence proposed by the ancient Vedanta; but also it will tend to make us one in our becoming by resemblance to the Divine in our nature, the mystic sense of the symbol of sacrifice in the sealed speech of the seers of the Veda.   --      For the same reason the ethical solution is insufficient; for an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the mouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and partial control, but it has no power to transform Nature so that she may move in a secure freedom fulfilling the intuitions that proceed from a divine self-knowledge. At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some similar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer supra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual within, ethical in the outside life, this is the ordinary religious solution, but it is a compromise; the spiritualisation of both the inward being and the outward life and not a compromise between life and the spirit is the goal of which we are the seekers. Nor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and everluminous Spirit. It is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim, takes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual or pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it is as far from the divine Truth and its integrality as the puritanic opposite. These are all stumbling solutions of the fallible human mind groping for a transaction between the high spiritual summits and the lower pitch of the ordinary mind-motives and life-motives. Whatever partial truth may be hidden behind them, that truth can only be accepted when it has been raised to the spiritual level, tested in the supreme Truth-Consciousness and extricated from the soil and error of the Ignorance.      In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and command and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the Psychic Being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.      In accordance with the triple character of the sacrifice we may divide works too into a triple order, the works of Knowledge, the works of Love, the works of the Will-in-Life, and see how this more plastic spiritual rule applies to each province and effects the transition from the lower to the higher nature.   --      This then is the true relation between divine and human knowledge; it is not a separation into disparate fields, sacred and profane, that is the heart of the difference, but the character of the consciousness behind the working. All is human knowledge that proceeds from the ordinary mental consciousness interested in the outside or upper layers of things, in process, in phenomena for their own sake or for the sake of some surface utility or mental or vital satisfaction of Desire or of the Intelligence. But the same activity of knowledge can become part of the Yoga if it proceeds from the spiritual or spiritualising consciousness which seeks and finds in all that it surveys or penetrates the presence of the timeless Eternal and the ways of manifestation of Eternal in Time. It is evident that the need of a concentration indispensable for the transition out of the Ignorance may make it necessary for the seeker to gather together his energies and focus them only on that which will help the transition and to leave aside or subordinate for the time all that is not directly turned towards the one object. He may find that this or that pursuit of human knowledge with which he was accustomed to deal by the surface power of the mind still brings him, by reason of this tendency or habit, out of the depths to the surface or down from the heights which he has climbed or is nearing, to lower levels. These activities then may have to be intermitted or put aside until secure in a higher consciousness he is able to turn its powers on all the mental fields; then, subjected to that light or taken up into it, they are turned, by the transformation of his consciousness, into a province of the spiritual and divine. All that cannot be so transformed or refuses to be part of a divine consciousness he will abandon without hesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its emptiness or its incapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental test or principle for these things; he will therefore follow no unalterable rule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to his feeling, insight or experience until the greater Power and Light are there to turn their unerring scrutiny on all that is below and choose or reject their material out of what the human evolution has prepared for the divine labour.      How precisely or by what stages this progression and change will take place must depend on the form, need and powers of the individual nature. In the spiritual domain the essence is always one, but there is yet an infinite variety and, at any rate in the integral Yoga, the rigidity of a strict and precise mental rule is seldom applicable; for, even when they walk in the same direction, no two natures proceed on exactly the same lines, in the same series of steps or with quite identical stages of their progress. It may yet be said that a logical succession of the states of progress would be very much in this order. First, there is a large turning in which all the natural mental activities proper to the individual nature are taken up or referred to a higher standpoint and dedicated by the soul in us, the Psychic Being, the priest of the sacrifice, to the divine service; next, there is an attempt at an ascent of the being and a bringing down of the Light and Power proper to some new height of consciousness gained by its upward effort into the whole action of the knowledge. Here there may be a strong concentration on the inward central change of the consciousness and an abandonment of a large part of the outward-going mental life or else its relegation to a small and subordinate place. At different stages it or parts of it may be taken up again from time to time to see how far the new inner psychic and spiritual consciousness can be brought into its movements, but that compulsion of the temperament or the nature which, in human beings, necessitates one kind of activity or another and makes it seem almost an indispensable portion of the existence, will diminish and eventually no attachment will be left, no lower compulsion or driving force felt anywhere. Only the Divine will matter, the Divine alone will be the one need of the whole being; if there is any compulsion to activity it will be not that of implanted desire or of force of Nature, but the luminous driving of some greater Consciousness-Force which is becoming more and more the sole motive power of the whole existence. On the other hand, it is possible at any period of the inner spiritual progress that one may experience an extension rather than a restriction of the' activities; there may be an opening of new capacities of mental creation and new provinces of knowledge by the miraculous touch of the Yoga-shakti. Aesthetic feeling, the power of artistic creation in one field or many fields together, talent or genius of literary expression, a faculty of metaphysical thinking, any power of eye or ear or hand or mind-power may awaken where none was apparent before. The Divine within may throw these latent riches out from the depths in which they were hidden or a Force from above may pour down its energies to equip the instrumental nature for the activity or the creation of which it is meant to be a channel or a builder. But, whatever may be the method or the course of development chosen by the hidden Master of the Yoga, the common culmination of this stage is the growing consciousness of him above as the mover, decider, shaper of all the movements of the mind and all the activities of knowledge.      There are two signs of the transformation of the seeker's mind of knowledge and works of knowledge from the process of the Ignorance to the process of a liberated consciousness working partly, then wholly in the light of the Spirit. There is first a central change of the consciousness and a growing direct experience, vision, feeling of the Supreme and the cosmic existence, the Divine in itself and the Divine in all things; the mind will be taken up into a growing preoccupation with this first and foremost and will feel itself heightening, widening into a more and more illumined means of expression of the one fundamental knowledge. But also the central Consciousness in its turn will take up more and more the outer mental activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its more authentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised and illumined mind its instrument in these surface fields, its new conquests, as well as in its own deeper spiritual empire. And this will be the second sign, the sign of a certain completion and perfection, that the Divine himself has become the Knower and all the inner movements, including the activities of what was once a purely human mental action, have become his field of knowledge. There will be less and less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galley-slave labour; a Light within will see all that has to be seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create, organise. It will be the inner Knower who will do in the liberated and universalised mind of the individual the works of an all-comprehending knowledge.   --      If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other. The heart with its emotions and incalculable movements is to the eye of his intellect an obscure, uncertain and often a perilous and misleading power which needs to be kept in control by the reason and the mental will and intelligence. And yet there is in the heart or behind it a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call intuition -- for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind -- has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge. According to the ancient teaching the seat of the immanent Divine, the hidden Purusha, is in the mystic heart, -- the secret heart-cave, hrdaye gunayam, as the Upanishads put it, -- and, according to the experience of many Yogins, it is from its depths that there comes the voice or the breath of the inner oracle.      This ambiguity, these opposing appearances of depth and blindness are created by the double character of the human emotive being. For there is in front in men a heart of vital emotion similar to the animal's, if more variously developed; its emotions are governed by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections and all the play of the life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations, -- heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or fierce demands or little greeds and mean pettinesses of an obscure and fallen life-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse. This mixture of the emotive heart and the sensational hungering vital creates in man a false soul of desire; it is this that is the crude and dangerous element which the reason rightly distrusts and feels a need to control, even though the actual control or rather coercion it succeeds in establishing over our raw and insistent vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive. But the true soul of man is not there; it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark of the Divine which supports this obscure mass of our nature and around it grows the Psychic Being, the formed soul or the real Man within us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begin to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.      As in the works of knowledge, so in dealing with the workings of the heart, we are obliged to make a preliminary distinction between two categories of movements, those that are either moved by the true soul or aid towards its liberation and rule in the nature and those that are turned to the satisfaction of the unpurified vital nature. But the distinctions ordinarily laid down in this sense are of little use for the deep or spiritual purpose of Yoga. Thus a division can be made between religious emotions and mundane feelings and it can be laid down as a rule of spiritual life that the religious emotions alone should be cultivated and all worldly feelings and passions must be rejected and fall away from our existence. This in practice would mean the religious life of the saint or devotee, alone with the Divine or linked only to others in a common God-love or at the most pouring out the fountains of a sacred, religious or pietistic love on the world outside. But religious emotion itself is too constantly invaded by the turmoil and obscurity of the vital movements and it is often either crude or narrow or fanatical or mixed with movements that are not signs of the spirit's perfection. It is evident besides that even at the best an intense figure of sainthood clamped in rigid hieratic lines is quite other than the wide ideal of an integral Yoga. A larger psychic and emotional relation with God and the world, more deep and plastic in its essence, more wide and embracing in its movements, more capable of taking up in its sweep the whole of life, is imperative.   --      Altruism, philanthropy, humanitarianism, service are flowers of the mental consciousness and are at best the mind's cold and pale imitation of the spiritual flame of universal Divine Love. Not truly liberative from ego-sense, they widen it at most and give it higher and larger satisfaction; impotent in practice to change mall's vital life and nature, they only modify and palliate its action and daub over its unchanged egoistic essence. Or if they are intensely followed with an entire sincerity of the will, it is by an exaggerated amplification of one side of our nature; in that exaggeration there can be no clue for the full and perfect divine evolution of the many sides of our individualised being towards the universal and transcendent Eternal. Nor can the religio-ethical ideal be a sufficient guide, -- for this is a compromise or compact of mutual concessions for mutual support between a religious urge which seeks to get a closer hold on earth by taking into itself the higher turns of ordinary human nature and an ethical urge which hopes to elevate itself out of its own mental hardness and dryness by some touch of a religious fervour. In making this compact religion lowers itself to the mental level and inherits the inherent imperfections of mind and its inability to convert and transform life. The mind is the sphere of the dualities and, just as it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute Truth but only truths relative or mixed with error, so it is impossible for it to achieve any absolute good; for moral good exists as a counterpart and corrective to evil and has evil always for its shadow, complement, almost its reason for existence. But the spiritual consciousness belongs to a higher than the mental plane and there the dualities cease; for there falsehood confronted with the truth by which it profited through a usurping falsification of it and evil faced by the good of which it was a perversion or a lurid substitute, are obliged to perish for want of sustenance and to cease. The integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes -- the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance.      It is the very nature of the soul or the Psychic Being to turn towards the Divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards divinity and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is false and undivine. Yet the soul is at first but a spark and then a little flame of godhead burning in the midst of a great darkness; for the most part it is veiled in its inner sanctum and to reveal itself it has to call on the mind, the life-force and the physical consciousness and persuade them, as best they can, to express it; ordinarily, it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness with its inner light and modifying with its purifying fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture. Even when there is a formed psychic being, able to express itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a few a smaller portion of the being -- "no bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man" was the image used by the ancient seers -- and it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity and ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the mistaken surenesses of the mind or the arrogance and vehemence of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept the human mental, emotive, sensational life as it is, its relations, its activities, its cherished forms and figures; it has to labour to disengage and increase the divine element in all this relative truth mixed with continual falsifying error, this love turned to the uses of the animal body or the satisfaction of the vital ego, this life of an average manhood shot with rare and pale glimpses of Godhead and the darker luridities of the demon and the brute. Unerring in the essence of its will, it is obliged often under the pressure of its instruments to submit to mistakes of action, wrong placement of feeling, wrong choice of person, errors in the exact form of its will, in the circumstances of its expression of the infallible inner ideal. Yet is there a divination within it which makes it a surer guide than the reason or than even the highest desire, and through apparent errors and stumblings its voice can still lead better than the precise intellect and the considering mental judgment. This voice of the soul is not what we call conscience -- for that is only a mental and often conventional erring substitute; it is a deeper and more seldom heard call; yet to follow it when heard is wisest : even, it is better to wander at the call of one's soul than to go apparently straight with the reason and the outward moral mentor. But It is only when the life turns towards the Divine that the soul can truly come forward and impose its power on the outer members; for, itself a spark of the Divine, to grow in flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very reason of existence.      At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being hidden within and felt only in its rare influences is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the sadhana. Its character is a one-pointed orientation towards the Divine or the Highest, one-pointed and yet plastic in action and movement; it does not create a rigidity of direction like the one-pointed intellect or a bigotry of the regnant idea or impulse like the one-pointed vital force; it is at every moment and with a supple sureness that it points the way to the Truth, automatically distinguishes the right step from the false, extricates the divine or Godward movement from the clinging mixture of the undivine. Its action is like a searchlight showing up all that has to be changed in the nature; it has in it a flame of will insistent on perfection, on an alchemic transmutation of all the inner and outer existence. It sees the divine essence everywhere but rejects the mere mask and the disguising figure. It insists on Truth, on will and strength and mastery, on Joy and Love and Beauty, but on a Truth of abiding Knowledge that surpasses the mere practical momentary truth of the Ignorance, on an inward joy and not on mere vital pleasure, -- for it prefers rather a purifying suffering and sorrow to degrading satisfactions, -- on love winged upward and not tied to the stake of egoistic craving or with its feet sunk in the mire, on beauty restored to its priesthood of interpretation of the Eternal, on strength and will and mastery as instruments not of the ego but of the Spirit. Its will is for the divinisation of life, the expression through it of a higher Truth, its dedication to the Divine and the Eternal.      But the most intimate character of the psychic is its pressure towards the Divine through a sacred love, joy and oneness. It is the divine Love that it seeks most, it is the love of the Divine that is its spur, its goal, its star of Truth shining over the luminous cave of the nascent or the still obscure cradle of the new-born godhead within us. In the first long stage of its growth and immature existence it has leaned on earthly love, affection, tenderness, goodwill, compassion, benevolence, on all beauty and gentleness and fineness and light and strength and courage, on all that can help to refine and purify the grossness and commonness of human nature; but it knows how mixed are these human movements at their best and at their worst how fallen and stamped with the mark of ego and self-deceptive sentimental falsehood and the lower self profiting by the imitation of a soul movement. At once, emerging, it is ready and eager to break all the old ties and imperfect emotional activities and replace them by a greater spiritual Truth of love and oneness. It may still admit the human forms and movements, but on condition that they are turned towards the One alone. It accepts only the ties that are helpful, the heart's reverence for the Guru, the union of the God-seekers, a spiritual compassion for the ignorant human and animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and satisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the Divine everywhere. It plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in the heart's secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism, no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the Divinity within it. It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest; but it calls down also this transcendent Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring Ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Ignorance. It is not attracted or misled by mental imitations or any vital misuse of these great deep-seated Truths of existence; it exposes them with its detecting search-ray and calls down the entire truth of divine Love to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from their insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal to them their abounding share of the intimacy and the oneness and the ascending ecstasy and the descending rapture.      All true truths of Love and of the works of Love the Psychic Being accepts in their place; but its flame mounts always upward and it is eager to push the ascent from lesser to higher degrees of Truth, since it knows that only by the ascent to a highest Truth and the descent of that highest Truth can Love be delivered from the cross and placed upon the throne; for the cross is the sign of the Divine Descent barred and marred by the transversal line of a cosmic deformation which turns life into a state of suffering and misfortune. Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and of life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.

1.06_-_Psychic_Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   In her small but great book on Education, The Mother has stated the' following:   "the Psychic Being is a great discovery which requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents. A few simple words of advice may be useful to one who has resolved to undertake it.   "The first and perhaps the most important point is that the mind is incapable of judging spiritual things. All those who have written on this subject have said so; but very few are those who have put it into practice. And yet, in order to proceed on the path, it is absolutely indispensable to abstain from all mental opinion and reaction.   --   The child should be taught that whenever there is an inner uneasiness, he should not pass it off and try to forget it, but should attend to it and try to find out by an inner observation the cause of the uneasiness so that it may be removed by some methods, inner or outer.   When the Psychic Being begins to be discovered, we find that it burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of the ignorant mind, life and body. As Sri Aurobindo points out:   "The veiled psychic is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature... It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic... It is the individual soul, caitya purusa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience... It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature... If the secret psychic person can come forward into the front... the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence."2

1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      IT IS therefore through the sacrifice of love, works and knowledge with the Psychic Being as the leader and priest of the sacrifice that life itself can be transformed into its own true spiritual figure. If the sacrifice of knowledge rightly done is easily the largest and purest offering we can bring to the Highest, the sacrifice of love is not less demanded of us for our spiritual perfection; it is even more intense and rich in its singleness and can be made not less vast and pure. This pure wideness is brought into the intensity of the sacrifice of love when into all our activities there is poured the spirit and power of a divine infinite joy and the whole atmosphere of our life is suffused with an engrossing adoration of the One who is the All and the Highest. For then does the sacrifice of love attain its utter perfection when, offered to the divine All, it becomes integral, catholic and boundless, and when, uplifted to the Supreme, it ceases to be the weak, superficial and transient movement men call love and becomes a pure and grand and deep uniting Ananda.      --      All the difficulty in dealing spiritually with the works of Life arises because the Will-in-Life for its purposes in the Ignorance has created a false soul of desire and substituted it for that spark of the Divine which is the true psyche. All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated and vitiated by this soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, selfdenial, are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire. If the curse of disquiet and disharmony and perversion is to be lifted from Life, the true soul, the Psychic Being, must be given its leading place and there must be a dissolution of the false soul of desire and ego. But this does not mean that life itself must be coerced and denied its native line of fulfilment; for behind this outer life soul of desire there is in us an inner and true vital being which has not to be dissolved but brought out into prominence and released to its true working as a power of the   Divine Nature. The prominence of this true vital being under the lead of the true inmost soul within us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects will even remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character. The Divine Life-Power too will be a will for growth, a force of self-affirmation, but affirmation of the Divine within us, not of the little temporary personality on the surface, - growth into the true divine Individual, the central being, the secret imperishable Person who can emerge only by   --   The light it sheds illuminates the other parts of the nature which, for want of any better guidance than their own confused and groping powers, have been wandering in the rounds of the Ignorance; it gives to mind the intrinsic feeling of the thoughts and perceptions, to life the infallible sense of the movements that are misled or misleading and those that are well-inspired; something like a quiet oracle from within discloses the causes of our stumblings, warns in time against their repetition, extracts from experience and intuition the law, not rigid but plastic, of a just direction for our acts, a right stepping, an accurate impulse. A will is created that becomes more in consonance with evolving Truth rather than with the circling and dilatory mazes of a seeking Error. A determined orientation towards the greater Light to be, a soul-instinct, a psychic tact and insight into the true substance, motion and intention of things, coming always nearer and nearer to a spiritual vision, to a knowledge by inner contact, inner sight and even identity, begin to replace the superficial keenness of mental judgment and the eager graspings of the life-force. The works of Life right themselves, escape from confusion, substitute for the artificial or legal order imposed by the intellect and for the arbitrary rule of desire the guidance of the soul's inner insight, enter into the profound paths of the   Spirit. Above all, the Psychic Being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.      --      All must be taken to a spiritual height and placed upon a spiritual basis; the presence of an inner spiritual change and an outer transformation must be enforced upon the whole of life and not merely on a part of life; all must be accepted that is helpful towards this change or admits it, all must be rejected that is incapable or inapt or refuses to submit itself to the transforming movement. There must be no attachment to any form of things or of life, any object, any activity; all must be renounced if need be, all must be admitted that the Divine chooses as its material for the divine life. But what accepts or rejects must be neither mind nor open or camouflaged vital will of desire nor ethical sense, but the insistence of the Psychic Being, the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga, the vision of the higher Self or Spirit, the illumined guidance of the Master. The way of the spirit is not a mental way; a mental rule or mental consciousness cannot be its determinant or its leader.

1.1.01_-_Seeking_the_Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher   Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the Psychic Being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty - there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method      --      That involves something which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, - but the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent, not limited by his aspects, - wonderful and ineffable, not existing by them, but they existing because of him. It follows that if he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously, transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the sake of one aspect or another of him. The only thing needed for that is, first, to arrive at a point when the Psychic Being feels this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature towards that supreme magnet.      --      The remedy can only come from the parts of the being that are already turned towards the Light. To call in the light of the divine consciousness, bring the Psychic Being to the front and kindle a flame of aspiration which will awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on fire the vital being, is the way out. It is usually a psychic awakening or a series of strong experiences by which the sadhak comes out of this intermediary no man's land of the quiescent vital (few can avoid altogether this passage through a neutral vital indifference) into the full dynamic course of the spiritual movement.

1.1.02_-_Sachchidananda, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   Good heavens! what a magnificent muddle [in the correspondent's response to the preceding letter]! The Jivatman is on the supramental plane and the Jiva is the psychic? It is the consciousness with a clear individual "I" that disposes variously the centralising stress on one part or another of the being and yet the quality of this "I" is determined by the part with which it identifies itself - therefore it must be a pure conscious I? All that has no basis whatever and does not hang together. I never said that the Jivatman belongs to the supramental plane or is situated there. The word Jiva in its ordinary sense is the living creature, but in its philosophic sense it is often used as a short way of speaking of the Jivatman, the individual being. Neither can it be said that the Psychic Being is the Jiva. Nor is it the fact that it is the consciousness with a clear individual "I" that disposes variously the centralising stress on one part or another of the being. Consciousness has no need of a clear individual   "I" to dispose the stress, - it can do that of itself; wherever the stress is put the "I" attaches itself to that, so that one thinks of oneself as a mental being or physical being or whatever it may be. The consciousness in me can be utterly free of any sense of an individual "I" and yet dispose its stress in this way or the other way - it may go down into the physical and work there in the physical nature keeping all the rest behind or above for the time or it may go up into the overhead level and stand above mind, life and body seeing them as instrumental lower forms of itself; or it may not see them at all but rather immerge

1.1.04_-_The_Self_or_Atman, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The Atman, the Soul and the Psychic Being   The Atman is one in all, is not born, does not evolve or change.      The soul is something that comes from the Divine into the evolution and as the Psychic Being it evolves and assumes

1.17_-_The_Divine_Soul, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      class:the Psychic Being

1.2.01_-_The_Call_and_the_Capacity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   What you write [about the urge of the soul] is quite accurate about the true soul, the Psychic Being. But people mean different things when they speak of the soul. Sometimes it is what I have called in the Arya the desire soul, - that is the vital with its mixed aspirations, desires, hungers of all kinds good and bad, its emotions, finer and grosser, or sensational urges crossed by the mind's idealisings and psychic stresses. But sometimes it is also the mind and vital under the stress of a psychic urge. The psychic so long as it is veiled must express itself through the mind and vital and its aspirations are mixed and coloured there by the vital and mental stuff. Thus the veiled psychic urge may express itself in the mind by a hunger in the thought for the knowledge of the Divine, what the Europeans call the intellectual love of God.      --   Obviously it happens because something is ready somewhere,   - if you like, the Psychic Being waiting for its chance and taking some opportunity in mind, vital or heart to knock open a window somewhere.

1.2.02_-_Qualities_Needed_for_Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The further method is, - (1) To concentrate in the heart and aspire and (2) to call to the divine Mother to enter there and purify the mind and vital and unveil the Psychic Being so that her constant guidance and presence in it may be felt always and (3) to concentrate in the quiet mind and (in the head) open oneself first to the divine force and light which is always above the mind and call to it to descend into the body and the whole being - either of these or both, according to the capacity of the sadhaka.

1.2.03_-_Purity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   49    consciousness everything is pure, in the ignorance everything is subject to impurity, not the body only or part of the body, but mind and vital and all. Only the self and the Psychic Being remain always pure.

1.2.04_-_Sincerity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      That is why we insist so much on sincerity in the Yoga - and that means to have all the being consciously turned towards the one Truth, the one Divine. But that for human nature is one of the most difficult of tasks, much more difficult than a rigid asceticism or a fervent piety. Religion itself does not give this complete harmonised sincerity - it is only the Psychic Being and the one-souled spiritual aspiration that can give it.

1.2.05_-_Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   You are finding it still difficult to bear the interval periods when all is quiet and nothing being done on the surface. But such interval periods come to all and cannot be avoided. You must not cherish the suggestion that it is because of your want of aspiration or any other unfitness that it is so and, if you had the constant ardent aspiration, then there would be no such periods and there would be an uninterrupted stream of experiences. It is not so. Even if the aspiration were there, the interval periods would come. If even in them one can aspire, so much the better   - but the main thing is to meet them with quietude and not become restless, depressed or despondent. A constant fire can be there only when a certain stage has been reached, that is when one is always inside consciously living in the Psychic Being, but for that all this preparation of the mind, vital, physical is necessary. For this fire belongs to the psychic and one cannot command it always merely by the mind's effort. The psychic has to be fully liberated and that is what the Force is working to make fully possible.      --      If the Psychic Being comes to the front, then conversion becomes easy or may come instantaneously or the conversion may bring the Psychic Being to the front. Here again there is no rule.

1.2.07_-_Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   When the Psychic Being and the heart and the thinking mind have surrendered, the rest is a matter of time and process - and there is no reason for disturbance. The central and effective surrender has been made.      --   *   No surrender to the Psychic Being is demanded, the surrender is to the Divine. One approaches the Divine through faith; concrete experience comes as a result of sadhana. One cannot demand a direct experience without doing anything to prepare the consciousness for it. If one feels the call, one follows it - if there is no call, then there is no need to seek the Divine. Faith is sufficient to start with - the idea that one must first understand and realise before one can seek is a mental error and if it were true would make all sadhana impossible - realisation can come      --      The other way is that of the Psychic Being, the consciousness opening to the Divine, not only opening the psychic and bringing it forward, but opening the mind, the vital and the physical, receiving the Light, perceiving what is to be done, feeling and      --   *   It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one's own endeavour. That is only possible when the Psychic Being is in front and influencing the whole action   (and even then vigilance and a constant assent are necessary) or else, later on in the ultimate stages of the Yoga when a direct or almost direct supramental force is taking up the consciousness; but this stage is very far away as yet. Under other conditions this attitude is likely to lead to stagnation and inertia. (See The

1.2.08_-_Faith, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It is a state which comes when the Psychic Being is awake and prominent. It is for that reason that I asked you to cleave to the psychic way and not go back to that of vital desire. I have not said that your psychic being was "in front" in such a way as to be proof against all attack. What I said was that it was becoming awake and active, giving you the right attitude and helping you towards the change of your nature. I certainly did not mean a moral but a spiritual change. Freedom from ego is not a moral but a spiritual change - a moral man may be chock full of ego, an ego increased by his sense of goodness and rectitude. Freedom from ego is spiritually valuable because then one can be centred, no longer in one's personal self, but in the   Divine, and that too is the condition of bhakti.

1.2.10_-_Opening, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   A Fire in the heart is usually the psychic fire and that should rather grow and be fed by the tendency or aspiration to the personal sadhana. The main principle of the personal sadhana is the surrender, the aspiration to the Divine touch, presence, control in the heart - the opening of the Psychic Being from within and its coming in front to govern and change mind, vital, physical consciousness. There are two openings that are necessary, one from above, the other from within. The one from above which can come by the impersonal Path or by the personal and impersonal together, seems to have come to you. Your feeling about the Personal probably comes from the push from within for the psychic to emerge fully. It is this aspiration therefore that should be the beginning of the personal path and a reliance on the Inner Power to guide and do what is needed.

1.23_-_The_Double_Soul_in_Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   9:In the view of old philosophies pleasure and pain are inseparable like intellectual truth and falsehood and power and incapacity and birth and death; therefore the only possible escape from them would be a total indifference, a blank response to the excitations of the world-self. But a subtler psychological knowledge shows us that this view which is based on the surface facts of existence only, does not really exhaust the possibilities of the problem. It is possible by bringing the real soul to the surface to replace the egoistic standards of pleasure and pain by an equal, an all-embracing personal-impersonal delight. The lover of Nature does this when he takes joy in all the things of Nature universally without admitting repulsion or fear or mere liking and disliking, perceiving beauty in that which seems to others mean and insignificant, bare and savage, terrible and repellent. The artist and the poet do it when they seek the rasa of the universal from the aesthetic emotion or from the physical line or from the mental form of beauty or from the inner sense and power alike of that from which the ordinary man turns away and of that to which he is attached by a sense of pleasure. The seeker of knowledge, the God-lover who finds the object of his love everywhere, the spiritual man, the intellectual, the sensuous, the aesthetic all do this in their own fashion and must do it if they would find embracingly the Knowledge, the Beauty, the Joy or the Divinity which they seek. It is only in the parts where the little ego is usually too strong for us, it is only in our emotional or physical joy and suffering, our pleasure and pain of life, before which the desire-soul in us is utterly weak and cowardly, that the application of the divine principle becomes supremely difficult and seems to many impossible or even monstrous and repellent. Here the ignorance of the ego shrinks from the principle of impersonality which it yet applies without too much difficulty in Science, in Art and even in a certain kind of imperfect spiritual living because there the rule of impersonality does not attack those desires cherished by the surface soul and those values of desire fixed by the surface mind in which our outward life is most vitally interested. In the freer and higher movements there is demanded of us only a limited and specialised equality and impersonality proper to a particular field of consciousness and activity while the egoistic basis of our practical life remains to us; in the lower movements the whole foundation of our life has to be changed in order to make room for impersonality, and this the desire-soul finds impossible.   10:The true soul secret in us - subliminal, we have said, but the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil, - this veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence, it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul, caitya purus.a, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching and profiting by their development and experience. These other person-powers in man, these beings of his being, are also veiled in their true entity, but they put forward temporary personalities which compose our outer individuality and whose combined superficial action and appearance of status we call ourselves: this inmost entity also, taking form in us as the psychic Person, puts forward a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops from life to life; for this is the traveller between birth and death and between death and birth, our nature parts are only its manifold and changing vesture. the Psychic Being can at first exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, since it is these parts of Nature that have to be developed as its instruments of self-expression, and it is long confined by their evolution. Missioned to lead man in the Ignorance towards the light of the Divine Consciousness, it takes the essence of all experience in the Ignorance to form a nucleus of soul-growth in the nature; the rest it turns into material for the future growth of the instruments which it has to use until they are ready to be a luminous instrumentation of the Divine. It is this secret psychic entity which is the true original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. On the contrary, where the psychic personality is weak, crude or ill-developed, the finer parts and movements in us are lacking or poor in character and power, even though the mind may be forceful and brilliant, the heart of vital emotions hard and strong and masterful, the life-force dominant and successful, the bodily existence rich and fortunate and an apparent lord and victor. It is then the outer desire-soul, the pseudo-psychic entity, that reigns and we mistake its misinterpretations of psychic suggestion and aspiration, its ideas and ideals, its desires and yearnings for true soul-stuff and wealth of spiritual experience.7 If the secret psychic Person can come forward into the front and, replacing the desire-soul, govern overtly and entirely and not only partially and from behind the veil this outer nature of mind, life and body, then these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory, the ascent into spiritual existence.   11:But it might seem then that by bringing this psychic entity, this true soul in us, into the front and giving it there the lead and rule we shall gain all the fulfilment of our natural being that we can seek for and open also the gates of the kingdom of the Spirit. And it might well be reasoned that there is no need for any intervention of a superior Truth-Consciousness or principle of Supermind to help us to attain to the divine status or the divine perfection. Yet, although the psychic transformation is one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence, it is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. In the first place, since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and transcendence. By itself the Psychic Being at a certain stage might be content to create a formation of truth, good and beauty and make that its station; at a farther stage it might become passively subject to the worldself, a mirror of the universal existence, consciousness, power, delight, but not their full participant or possessor. Although more nearly and thrillingly united to the cosmic consciousness in knowledge, emotion and even appreciation through the senses, it might become purely recipient and passive, remote from mastery and action in the world; or, one with the static self behind the cosmos, but separate inwardly from the world-movement, losing its individuality in its Source, it might return to that Source and have neither the will nor the power any further for that which was its ultimate mission here, to lead the nature also towards its divine realisation. For the Psychic Being came into Nature from the Self, the Divine, and it can turn back from Nature to the silent Divine through the silence of the Self and a supreme spiritual immobility. Again, an eternal portion of the Divine,8 this part is by the law of the Infinite inseparable from its Divine Whole, this part is indeed itself that Whole, except in its frontal appearance, its frontal separative self-experience; it may awaken to that reality and plunge into it to the apparent extinction or at least the merging of the individual existence. A small nucleus here in the mass of our ignorant Nature, so that it is described in the Upanishad as no bigger than a man's thumb, it can by the spiritual influx enlarge itself and embrace the whole world with the heart and mind in an intimate communion or oneness. Or it may become aware of its eternal Companion and elect to live for ever in His presence, in an imperishable union and oneness as the eternal lover with the eternal Beloved, which of all spiritual experiences is the most intense in beauty and rapture. All these are great and splendid achievements of our spiritual self-finding, but they are not necessarily the last end and entire consummation; more is possible.   12:For these are achievements of the spiritual mind in man; they are movements of that mind passing beyond itself, but on its own plane, into the splendours of the Spirit. Mind, even at its highest stages far beyond our present mentality, acts yet in its nature by division; it takes the aspects of the Eternal and treats each aspect as if it were the whole truth of the Eternal Being and can find in each its own perfect fulfilment. Even it erects them into opposites and creates a whole range of these opposites, the Silence of the Divine and the divine Dynamis, the immobile Brahman aloof from existence, without qualities, and the active Brahman with qualities, Lord of existence, Being and Becoming, the Divine Person and an impersonal pure Existence; it can then cut itself away from the one and plunge itself into the other as the sole abiding Truth of existence. It can regard the Person as the sole Reality or the Impersonal as alone true; it can regard the Lover as only a means of expression of eternal Love or love as only the self-expression of the Lover; it can see beings as only personal powers of an impersonal Existence or impersonal existence as only a state of the one Being, the Infinite Person. Its spiritual achievement, its road of passage towards the supreme aim will follow these dividing lines. But beyond this movement of spiritual Mind is the higher experience of the supermind Truth-Consciousness; there these opposites disappear and these partialities are relinquished in the rich totality of a supreme and integral realisation of eternal Being. It is this that is the aim we have conceived, the consummation of our existence here by an ascent to the supramental Truth-Consciousness and its descent into our nature. The psychic transformation after rising into the spiritual change has then to be completed, integralised, exceeded and uplifted by a supramental transformation which lifts it to the summit of the ascending endeavour.   13:Even as between the other divided and opposed terms of manifested Being, so also a supramental consciousness-energy could alone establish a perfect harmony between these two terms - apparently opposite only because of the Ignorance - of spirit status and world dynamism in our embodied existence. In the Ignorance Nature centres the order of her psychological movements, not around the secret spiritual self, but around its substitute, the ego-principle: a certain ego-centrism is the basis on which we bind together our experiences and relations in the midst of the complex contacts, contradictions, dualities, incoherences of the world in which we live; this ego-centrism is our rock of safety against the cosmic and the infinite, our defence. But in our spiritual change we have to forego this defence; ego has to vanish, the person finds itself dissolved into a vast impersonality, and in this impersonality there is at first no key to an ordered dynamism of action. A very usual result is that one is divided into two parts of being, the spiritual within, the natural without; in one there is the divine realisation seated in a perfect inner freedom, but the natural part goes on with the old action of Nature, continues by a mechanical movement of past energies her already transmitted impulse. Even, if there is an entire dissolution of the limited person and the old ego-centric order, the outer nature may become the field of an apparent incoherence, although all within is luminous with the Self. Thus we become outwardly inert and inactive, moved by circumstance or forces but not self-mobile,9 even though the consciousness is enlightened within, or as a child though within is a plenary self-knowledge,10 or as one inconsequent in thought and impulse though within is an utter calm and serenity,11 or as the wild and disordered soul though inwardly there is the purity and poise of the Spirit.12 Or if there is an ordered dynamism in the outward nature, it may be a continuation of superficial ego-action witnessed but not accepted by the inner being, or a mental dynamism that cannot be perfectly expressive of the inner spiritual realisation; for there is no equipollence between action of mind and status of spirit. Even at the best where there is an intuitive guidance of Light from within, the nature of its expression in dynamism of action must be marked with the imperfections of mind, life and body, a King with incapable ministers, a Knowledge expressed in the values of the Ignorance. Only the descent of the Supermind with its perfect unity of Truth-Knowledge and Truth-Will can establish in the outer as in the inner existence the harmony of the Spirit; for it alone can turn the values of the Ignorance entirely into the values of the Knowledge.   14:In the fulfilment of our psychic being as in the consummation of our parts of mind and life, it is the relating of it to its divine source, to its correspondent truth in the Supreme Reality, that is the indispensable movement; and, here too as there, it is by the power of the Supermind that it can be done with an integral completeness, an intimacy that becomes an authentic identity; for it is the Supermind which links the higher and the lower hemispheres of the One Existence. In Supermind is the integrating Light, the consummating Force, the wide entry into the supreme Ananda: the Psychic Being uplifted by that Light and Force can unite itself with the original Delight of existence from which it came: overcoming the dualities of pain and pleasure, delivering from all fear and shrinking the mind, life and body, it can recast the contacts of existence in the world into terms of the Divine Ananda.

1.4.01_-_The_Divine_Grace_and_Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   "The ordinary action of the Divine is a constant intervention within the actual law of things" - that may or may not be but is not usually called the Divine Grace. The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition - though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the Psychic Being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.

2.04_-_The_Divine_and_the_Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Divine in his self-workings the aspect of a just limitation of an omniscient power by the free will of that Power itself so that the surface energy shall be in exact correspondence with the work that it has to do, with its attempt, its allotted success or its destined because necessary failure, with the balance of the sum of forces in which it is a part and with the larger result of which its own results are an indivisible portion. Behind this limitation of power is the All-Power and in the limitation that All-Power is at work; but it is through the sum of many limited workings that the indivisible Omnipotence executes infallibly and sovereignly its purposes. This power to limit its force and to work through that self-limitation, by what we call labour, struggle, difficulty, by what seems to us a series of failures or half-baulked successes and through them to achieve its secret intention, is not therefore a sign, proof or reality of weakness, but a sign, proof, reality - the greatest possible - of an absolute omnipotence.   As to suffering, which is so great a stumbling-block to our understanding of the universe, it is evidently a consequence of the limitation of consciousness, the restriction of force which prevents us from mastering or assimilating the touch of what is to us other-force: the result of this incapacity and disharmony is that the delight of the touch cannot be seized and it affects our sense with a reaction of discomfort or pain, a defect or excess, a discord resultant in inner or outer injury, born of division between our power of being and the power of being that meets us. Behind in our self and spirit is the All-Delight of the universal being which takes its account of the contact, a delight first in the enduring and then in the conquest of the suffering and finally in its transmutation that shall come hereafter; for pain and suffering are a perverse and contrary term of the delight of existence and they can turn into their opposite, even into the original AllDelight, Ananda. This All-Delight is not present in the universal alone, but it is here secret in ourselves, as we discover when we go back from our outward consciousness into the Self within us; the Psychic Being in us takes its account even of its most perverse or contrary as well as its more benign experiences and grows by the

2.05_-_Aspects_of_Sadhana, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      5. How does the Psychic Being open? How to understand the psychic and vital beings in the Adhara?   1

2.1.01_-_The_Parts_of_the_Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The remedy can only come from the parts of the being that are already turned towards the Light. To call in the light of the   Divine Consciousness from above, to bring the Psychic Being to the front and kindle a flame of aspiration which will awaken spiritually the outer mind and set on fire the vital being, is the way out.

2.1.02_-_Classification_of_the_Parts_of_the_Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Different Categories in Different Systems   1. The soul and the Psychic Being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. the Psychic Being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (the Psychic Being is the soul developing in the evolution.)   2. The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is according to the Sankhya System - the Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti - Prakriti is the force of Nature which one feels as doing all the actions, when one gets rid of the sense of the ego as doer. Then there is the realisation of these two entities. This is quite different from the Psychic Being. It is felt in the mind, vital, physical - most easily in the mind where the mental being (Purusha) is seated and controls the others (manomayah. purus.ah. pran.a-sarra-neta).

2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga    our inner Person. For by this entry into the depths the inner being, no longer quite veiled, no longer obliged to exercise a fragmentary influence on its outer instrumental consciousness, is able to formulate itself more luminously in our life in the physical universe.   In its essence the inner being's knowledge has the same elements as the outer mind's surface knowledge, but there is between them the difference between a half blindness and a greater clarity of consciousness and vision due to a more direct and powerful instrumentation and a better arrangement of the elements of knowledge. Knowledge by identity, on the surface a vague inherent sense of our self-existence and a partial identification with our inner movements, can here deepen and enlarge itself from that indistinct essential perception and limited sensation to a clear and direct intrinsic awareness of the whole entity within: we can enter into possession of our whole conscious mental being and life being and arrive at a close intimacy of direct penetrating and enveloping contact with the total movements of our mental and vital energy; we meet clearly and closely and are - but more freely and understandingly - all the becomings of ourself, the whole self-expression of the Purusha on the present levels of our nature. But also there is or can be along with this intimacy of knowledge a detached observation of the actions of the nature by the Purusha and a great possibility, through this double status of knowledge, of a complete control and understanding. All the movements of the surface being can be seen with a complete detachment, but also with a direct sight in the consciousness by which the self-delusions and mistakes of self of the outer consciousness can be dispelled; there is a keener mental vision, a clearer and more accurate mental feeling of our subjective becoming, a vision which at once knows, commands and controls the whole nature. If the psychic and mental parts in us are strong, the vital comes under mastery and direction to an extent hardly possible to the surface mentality; even the body and the physical energies can be taken up by the inner mind and will and turned into a more plastic instrumentation of the soul, the Psychic Being. On the other hand, if the mental and

2.14_-_The_Origin_and_Remedy_of_Falsehood,_Error,_Wrong_and_Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   What then is this spiritual or psychic witness or what is to it the value of the sense of good and evil? It may be maintained that the one use of the sense of sin and evil is that the embodied being may become aware of the nature of this world of inconscience and ignorance, awake to a knowledge of its evil and suffering and the relative nature of its good and happiness and turn away from it to that which is absolute. Or else its spiritual use may be to purify the nature by the pursuit of good and the negation of evil until it is ready to perceive the supreme good and turn from the world towards God, or, as in the Buddhistic ethical insistence, it may serve to prepare the dissolution of the ignorant ego-complex and the escape from personality and suffering. But also it may be that this awakening is a spiritual necessity of the evolution itself, a step towards the growth of the being out of the   Ignorance into the truth of the divine unity and the evolution of a divine consciousness and a divine being. For much more than the mind or life which can turn either to good or to evil, it is the soul-personality, the Psychic Being, which insists on the distinction, though in a larger sense than the mere moral difference. It is the soul in us which turns always towards Truth,   Good and Beauty, because it is by these things that it itself grows in stature; the rest, their opposites, are a necessary part of experience, but have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being. The fundamental psychic entity in us has the delight of life and all experience as part of the progressive manifestation of the spirit, but the very principle of its delight of life is to gather

2.18_-_The_Evolutionary_Process_-_Ascent_and_Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   But where is the limit of effectuation in the evolutionary being's self-becoming by self-exceeding? In mind itself there are grades of the series and each grade again is a series in itself; there are successive elevations which we may conveniently call planes and sub-planes of the mental consciousness and the mental being. The development of our mental self is largely an ascent of this stair; we can take our stand on any one of them, while yet maintaining a dependence on the lower stages and a power of occasional ascension to higher levels or of a response to influences from our being's superior strata. At present we still normally take our first secure stand on the lowest sub-plane of the intelligence, which we may call the physical-mental, because it depends for its evidence of fact and sense of reality on the physical brain, the physical sense-mind, the physical sense-organs; there we are the physical man who attaches most importance to objective things and to his outer life, has little intensity of the subjective or inner existence and subordinates whatever he has of it to the greater claims of exterior reality. The physical man has a vital part, but it is mainly made up of the smaller instinctive and impulsive formations of life-consciousness emerging from the subconscient, along with a customary crowd or round of sensations, desires, hopes, feelings, satisfactions which are dependent on external things and external contacts and concerned with the practical, the immediately realisable and possible, the habitual, the common and average. He has a mental part, but this too is customary, traditional, practical, objective, and respects what belongs to the domain of mind mostly for its utility for the support, comfort, use, satisfaction and entertainment of his physical and sensational existence. For the physical mind takes its stand on matter and the material world, on the body and the bodily life, on sense-experience and on a normal practical mentality and its experience. All that is not of this order, the physical mind builds up as a restricted superstructure dependent upon the external sense-mentality. Even so, it regards these higher contents of life as either helpful adjuncts or a superfluous but pleasant luxury of imaginations, feelings and thought-abstractions, not as inner realities; or, even if it receives them as realities, it does not feel them concretely and substantially in their own proper substance, subtler than the physical substance and its grosser concreteness, - it treats them as a subjective, less substantial extension from physical realities. It is inevitable that the human being should thus take his first stand on Matter and give the external fact and external existence its due importance; for this is Nature's first provision for our existence, on which she insists greatly: the physical man is emphasised in us and is multiplied abundantly in the world by her as her force for conservation of the secure, if somewhat inert, material basis on which she can maintain herself while she attempts her higher human developments; but in this mental formation there is no power for progress or only for a material progress. It is our first mental status, but the mental being cannot remain always at this lowest rung of the human evolutionary ladder.   Above physical mind and deeper within than physical sensation, there is what we may call an intelligence of the life-mind, dynamic, vital, nervous, more open, though still obscurely, to the psychic, capable of a first soul-formation, though only of an obscurer life-soul, - not the Psychic Being, but a frontal formation of the vital Purusha. This life-soul concretely senses and contacts the things of the life-world, and tries to realise them here; it attaches immense importance to the satisfaction and fulfilment of the life-being, the life-force, the vital nature: it looks on physical existence as a field for the life-impulses' selffulfilment, for the play of ambition, power, strong character, love, passion, adventure, for the individual, the collective, the general human seeking and hazard and venture, for all kinds of life-experiment and new life-experience, and but for this saving element, this greater power, interest, significance, the physical existence would have for it no value. This life mentality is supported by our secret subliminal vital being and is in veiled contact with a life-world to which it can easily open and so feel the unseen dynamic forces and realities behind the material universe. There is an inner life-mind which does not need for its perceptions the evidence of the physical senses, is not limited by them; for on this level our inner life and the inner life of the world become real to us independent of the body and of the symbols of the physical world which alone we call natural phenomena, as if Nature had no greater phenomena and no greater realities than those of gross Matter. The vital man, moulded consciously or unconsciously by these influences, is the man of desire and sensation, the man of force and action, the man of passion and emotion, the kinetic individual: he may and does lay great stress on the material existence, but he gives it, even when most preoccupied with its present actualities, a push for life-experience, for force of realisation, for life-extension, for life-power, for lifeaffirmation and life-expansion which is Nature's first impetus towards enlargement of the being; at a highest intensity of this life impetus, he becomes the breaker of bonds, the seeker of new horizons, the disturber of the past and present in the interest of the future. He has a mental life which is often enslaved to the vital force and its desires and passions, and it is these he seeks to satisfy through the mind: but when he interests himself strongly in mental things, he can become the mental adventurer, the opener of the way to new mind-formations or the fighter for an idea, the sensitive type of artist, the dynamic poet of life or the prophet or champion of a cause. The vital mind is kinetic and therefore a great force in the working of evolutionary Nature.   Above this level of vital mentality and yet more inly extended, is a mind-plane of pure thought and intelligence to which the things of the mental world are the most important realities; those who are under its influence, the philosopher, thinker, scientist, intellectual creator, the man of the idea, the man of the written or spoken word, the idealist and dreamer are the present mental being at his highest attained summit. This mental man has his life-part, his life of passions and desires and ambitions and life-hopes of all kinds and his lower sensational and physical existence, and this lower part can often equibalance or weigh down his nobler mental element so that, although it is the highest portion of him, it does not become dominant and formative in his whole nature: but this is not typical of him in his greatest development, for there the vital and physical are controlled and subjected by the thinking will and intelligence. The mental man cannot transform his nature, but he can control and harmonise it and lay on it the law of a mental ideal, impose a balance or a sublimating and refining influence, and give a high consistency to the multipersonal confusion and conflict or the summary patchwork of our divided and half-constructed being. He can be the observer and governor of his own mind and life, can consciously develop them and become to that extent a self-creator.

2.2.01_-_The_Outer_Being_and_the_Inner_Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   and confusing it with the inner being.   The Inner Being and the Psychic Being   I did not mean by the inner being the psychic or inmost being.   It is the Psychic Being that feels love, bhakti and union with the      --   should become conscious in these inner regions, for if they are   not awake, then the Psychic Being has no proper and sufficient   instrumentation for its activities; it has then only the outer mind,   --      the Psychic Being is described in the Upanishads as no bigger   than the size of one's thumb! That of course is a symbolic image.

2.2.02_-_The_True_Being_and_the_True_Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   does not nor the ordinary mental, vital or physical personality.   the Psychic Being is the central being for the purposes of the   evolution - it grows and develops; but there is a central being   above of which the mind is not aware which presides unseen over   the existence and of which the Psychic Being is the representative   in the manifested nature. It is what is called the Jivatman.

2.2.03_-_The_Psychic_Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   object:2.2.03 - the Psychic Being   class:chapter   --      the Psychic Being   The Psychic and the Divine   They [the Psychic Being and the Divine Presence in the heart] are quite different things. the Psychic Being is one's own individual soul-being. It is not the Divine, though it has come from the   Divine and develops towards the Divine.   --   The psychic is not, by definition,1 that part [of the being] which is in direct touch with the supramental plane, - although, once   1 Someone had asked what the Psychic Being was, whether it could be defined as that    part of the being which is always in direct touch with the supramental. I replied that it could not be so defined. For the Psychic Being in animals or in most human beings is not in direct touch with the supramental - therefore it cannot be so described, by definition.      But once the connection between the supramental and the human consciousness is made, it is the Psychic Being that gives the readiest response - more ready than the mind, the vital or the physical. It may be added that it is also a purer response; the mind, vital and physical can allow other things to mix with their reception of the supramental influence and spoil its truth. The psychic is pure in its response and allows no such mixture.      --      the Psychic Being      --      It grows in the consciousness by Godward experience, gaining strength every time there is a higher movement in us, and, finally, by the accumulation of these deeper and higher movements there is developed a psychic individuality, - that which we call usually the Psychic Being. It is always this psychic being that is the real, though often the secret cause of man's turning to the spiritual life and his greatest help in it. It is therefore that which we have to bring from behind to the front in the   Yoga.   --      More often than not in ordinary parlance no clear distinction is made between mind and soul and often there is an even more serious confusion, for the vital being of desire - the false soul or desire-soul - is intended by the words "soul" and "psychic" and not the true soul, the Psychic Being. the Psychic Being is quite different from the mind or vital; it stands behind them where they meet in the heart. Its central place is there, but behind the heart rather than in the heart; for what men call usually the heart is the seat of emotion, and human emotions are mentalvital impulses, not ordinarily psychic in their nature. This mostly secret power behind, other than the mind and the life-force, is the true soul, the Psychic Being in us. The power of the psychic, however, can act upon the mind and vital and body, purifying thought and perception and emotion (which then becomes psychic feeling) and sensation and action and everything else in us and preparing them to be divine movements.      --      the Psychic Being may be described in Indian language as the Purusha in the heart or the caitya purus.a;2 but the inner or secret heart must be understood, hr.daye guhayam, not the outer vital-emotional centre. It is the true psychic entity (distinguished from the vital desire-mind) - the psyche - spoken of on the page of the Arya to which you make reference.      --   *   The psychic is the spark of the Divine involved here in the individual existence. It grows and evolves in the form of the Psychic Being - so obviously it cannot have already the powers of the   Divine. Only its presence makes it possible for the individual to open to the Divine and grow towards the Divine Consciousness and when it acts it is always in the sense of the Light and the   --      the Psychic Being      --      The psychic is a spark come from the Divine which is there in all things and as the individual evolves it grows in him and manifests as the Psychic Being, the soul seeking always for the   Divine and the Truth and answering to the Divine and the Truth whenever and wherever it meets it.   --   Letters on Yoga - I    contains everything in potentiality; but that can only be worked out by the Psychic Being. It is quite different from the condition of the self.      --   *   the Psychic Being is concealed in the depths behind the heartcentre.      --      the Psychic Being      --   *   The bindu of which you speak is not the Psychic Being, but the soul or spark of the Divine which supports each existence; the Psychic Being is usually seen in form as a Purusha. the Psychic Being is the soul or spark of the Divine developing a form of itself in the evolution which travels from life to life. The Jivatma and the soul are the same, but in two different statuses. The Jivatma is the Ansha of the Divine standing above the consciousness as the individual self and unchanged by the evolution - the soul is the same descended into the evolution and developing its consciousness from life to life until in the opening of knowledge the Psychic Being realises its oneness with the self above.      --      Atma is not the same as psychic - Atma is the self which is one in all, calm, wide, ever at peace, always free. the Psychic Being is the soul within that experiences life and develops with evolving mind and life and body. The psychic does not suffer like the vital or body, it has not pain or anguish or despair; but it has a psychic sorrow which is different from these things. It has a kind of quiet sweet sadness of yearning which it feels when things go against the Divine, when the obscurity and obstacles are too heavy, when the mind, vital and physical follow after other things, when evil and falsehood and darkness seem to be too strong for the Light. It does not despair, but feels that these things ought not to be and the psychic yearning for it to be otherwise becomes so intense that it is felt as if something akin to sadness.      --      the Psychic Being      --   The Psychic or Soul and Traditional Indian Systems   It appears the Maharshi at the time supposed that by the Psychic Being I meant the enlightened ego! But people do not understand what I mean by the Psychic Being, because the word psychic has been used in English to mean anything of the inner mental, inner vital or inner physical or anything abnormal or occult or even the more subtle movements of the outer being, all in a jumble - also occult phenomena are often called psychic. The distinction between these different parts of the being is unknown. Even in India the old knowledge of the Upanishads in which they are distinguished has been lost. The Jivatman, psychic being (purus.o antaratma), the manomaya purus.a, the pran.amaya purus.a are all confused together.      *   The antaratman is the soul, the portion of the Divine that is at the inmost basis of the evolving individual and supports the mind and life and body which are the instrumental parts of nature through which it tries to grow from the material Inconscience towards the divine Light and Immortality which are its proper being. The limitations of its instruments impose upon it an acceptance of the lower movements and a compromise between soul and nature which retard this movement even while it gets its means of advance from that interchange. the Psychic Being is the soul-form or soul-personality developing through this evolution and passing from life to life till all is ready for the higher evolution beyond the Ignorance.      *   the Psychic Being is the Soul, the Purusha in the secret heart      the Psychic Being      --   *   the Psychic Being in the old systems was spoken of as the   Purusha in the heart (the secret heart - hr.daye guhayam) which corresponds very well to what we define as the Psychic Being behind the heart centre. It was also this that went out from the body at death and persisted - which again corresponds to our teaching that it is this which goes out and returns, linking new life to former life. Also we say that the psychic is the divine portion within us - so too the Purusha in the heart is described as Ishwara of the individual nature in some places.      --      the Psychic Being      --      Spiritual individuality is rather a vague term and might be variously interpreted. I have written about the Psychic Being that the psychic is the soul or spark of the Divine Fire supporting the individual evolution on the earth and the Psychic Being is the soul-consciousness developing itself or rather its manifestation from life to life with the mind, vital and body as its instruments until all is ready for the union with the Divine. I don't know that   I can add anything to that.   --   The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental nervous physical composite - it is the manomayah. purus.ah. pran.a-sarra-neta, the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha,   - for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishad because the Psychic Being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the manomaya purus.a is the leader of the life and body, - of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister, the manomaya, itself being a mild constitutional king; it is the manomaya to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishad gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only - for in the animal it would be rather the      --      the Psychic Being evolves, so it is not the immutable.      the Psychic Being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. It is that spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the mind, vital and physical as the Psychic Being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. These things are not in the Gita, but we cannot limit our knowledge by the points in the Gita.      The Soul and the Psychic Being   A distinction4 has to be made between the soul in its essence and the Psychic Being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine - none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being supported by such a soul essence but without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it.      There is indeed an inner being composed of the inner mental, inner vital, inner physical, - but that is not the Psychic Being.      --      the Psychic Being      --      the Psychic Being is veiled by the surface movements and expresses itself as best it can through the three outer instruments which are more governed by the outer forces than by the inner being or the psychic entity. But that does not mean that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the body in the same way as the mind or vital - but the body is not this gross physical body only, but the subtle body also. When the gross body falls away, the vital and mental sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these too dissolve.      --   *   A distinction has to be made between the soul in its essence and the Psychic Being. Behind each and all there is the soul which is the spark of the Divine - none could exist without that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it. Still, one cannot make general statements that no aboriginal has a soul or there is no display of soul anywhere.      The inner being is composed of the inner mental, inner vital, inner physical, - but that is not the Psychic Being. The psychic is the inmost being and quite distinct from these. The word psychic is indeed used in English to indicate anything that is other or deeper than the external mind, life and body, anything occult or supraphysical, but that is a use which brings confusion and error and we entirely discard it when we speak or write about Yoga.      --      the Psychic Being is veiled by the surface movements and expresses itself as best it can through these outer instruments which are more governed by the outer forces than by the inner influences of the psychic. But that does not mean that they are   5 There are cases in which there is a rapid rebirth of the exterior being with a continuation of the old personality and even the memory of its past life, but this is exceptional and happens usually when there is a frustration by premature death and a strong will in the vital to continue its unfinished experience.   --      the Psychic Being      --   There is the divine spark from the beginning, the soul, in all things, but it takes a long time and a long evolution for it to arrive at a conscious expression and form of manifested being   - what we call the Psychic Being.      --      There is mental, vital, physical consciousness - different from the psychic. the Psychic Being and consciousness are not identical.      When the soul or "spark of the Divine Fire" begins to develop a psychic individuality, that psychic individuality is called the Psychic Being.      --   *   The soul is always pure, but the knowledge and force in it are involved and come out only as the Psychic Being evolves and grows stronger.      *   the Psychic Being is the soul evolving in the course of birth and rebirth and the soul is a portion of the Divine - but with the soul there is always the veiled Divine.      *   the Psychic Being is the developing soul consciousness manifested for the created being as it evolves. At first, the soul is something essential behind the veil, not developed in front. In      the Psychic Being      --   *   The difference [between one psychic being and another] is one of evolution. the Psychic Being is more developed in some, but the soul-principle is the same in all.      --      The Form of the Psychic Being   Formed souls enter only into formed organisms - in the protoplasm etc. it is only the spark of the Divine that is there, not the formed soul.   --   *   As there is in us a mind which one does not see in form but is aware of and as there is at the same time a mental being which one can see in form, so there is a soul and a psychic being. The soul is the same always, the Psychic Being is what it develops in the evolution.      *   The soul is not limited by any form, but the Psychic Being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and subtle physical Purushas do - that is to say, one can see or another person can see one's psychic being in such and such a form. But      --   *   Yes, the Psychic Being has a form. But that does not appear from the photo [of a person]; for the psychic has not always or usually a form closely resembling that of the physical body, it is sometimes even quite different. When looking at the photo [with   Yogic vision] what is seen is not a form, but something of the consciousness that either is expressed in the body or comes through somehow; one perceives or feels it there through the photo.      the Psychic Being and the Intuitive Consciousness   No, the intuitive self is quite different [from the psychic], or rather the intuitive consciousness - that is somewhere above the mind. The psychic stands behind the being - a simple and sincere devotion to the Divine, single-hearted, an immediate sense of what is right and helps towards the Truth and the   --      the Psychic Being and the External Being   What you experience is the first condition of the Yogic consciousness and self-knowledge. The ordinary mind knows itself only as an ego with all the movements of the nature in a jumble and, identifying itself with these movements, thinks "I am doing this, feeling that, thinking, in joy or in sorrow etc." The first beginning of real self-knowledge is when you feel yourself separate from the nature in you and its movements and then you see that there are many parts of your being, many personalities each acting on its own behalf and in its own way. The two different      the Psychic Being      121    beings you feel are - one, the Psychic Being which draws you towards the Mother the other the external being mostly vital which draws you outward and downwards towards the play of the lower nature. There is also in you behind the mind the being who observes, the witness Purusha, who can stand detached from the play of the nature, observing it and able to choose.      It has to put itself always on the side of the Psychic Being and assent to and support its movements and to reject the downward and outward movement of the lower nature, which has to be subjected to the psychic and changed by its influence.      --   *   These things, love, compassion, kindness, bhakti, Ananda are the nature of the Psychic Being, because the Psychic Being is formed from the Divine Consciousness, it is the divine part within you. But the lower parts are not yet accustomed to obey or value the influence and control of the psychic for in men the vital and physical are accustomed to act for themselves and do not care for what the soul wants. When they do care and obey the psychic, that is their conversion - they begin to put on themselves the psychic or divine nature.      --      the Psychic Being      --      the Psychic Being or Soul and the Vital or Life   The soul and the life are two quite different powers. The soul is a spark of the Divine Spirit which supports the individual nature; mind, life, body are the instruments for the manifestation of the nature. In most men the soul is hidden and covered over by the action of the external nature; they mistake the vital being for the soul, because it is the vital which animates and moves the body.   --   *   the Psychic Being is not the fulfiller of desires - it is the spark of the Divine in all things manifested here that grows into the      --      the Psychic Being and the Ego   There is individuality in the Psychic Being but not egoism.      --   *   It is the psychic inmost being that replaces the ego. It is through love and surrender to the Divine that the Psychic Being becomes strong and manifest, so that it can replace the ego.      --   *   What you describe [lying calmly in a realm of peace, joy and oneness] is what we mean by the Psychic Being in its own plane of existence, for the psychic plane is like that. The psychic stands behind the rest of the being supporting it with its own purity, truth and joy.

2.22_-_Rebirth_and_Other_Worlds;_Karma,_the_Soul_and_Immortality, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Even at his lowest normality the human individual is still a soul acting through a distinct mental being, however ill-formed his mind may be, however limited and dwarfed, however engrossed and encased in the physical and vital consciousness and unable or unwilling to detach itself from its lower formations. Yet we may suppose that there is a downward attachment so strong as to compel the being to hasten at once to a resumption of the physical life because his natural formation is not really fit for anything else or at home on any higher plane. Or, again, the lifeexperience might be so brief and incomplete as to compel the soul to an immediate rebirth for its continuance. Other needs, influences or causes there may be in the complexity of Natureprocess, such as a strong will of earthly desire pressing for fulfilment, which would enforce an immediate transmigration of the same persistent form of personality into a new body. But still the alternative process of a reincarnation, a rebirth of the Person not only into a new body but into a new formation of the personality, would be the normal line taken by the psychic entity once it had reached the human stage of its evolutionary cycle.   For the soul personality, as it develops, must get sufficient power over its own nature-formation and a sufficient selfexpressive mental and vital individuality to persist without the support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life: it would be sufficiently evolved to subsist in the subtle body which we know to be the characteristic case or sheath and the proper subtle-physical support of the inner being. It is the soul-person, the Psychic Being, that survives and carries mind and life with it on its journey, and it is in the subtle body that it passes out of its material lodging; both then must be sufficiently developed for the transit. But a transference to planes of mind existence or life existence implies also a mind and life sufficiently formed and developed to pass without disintegration and exist for a time on these higher levels. If these conditions were satisfied, a sufficiently developed psychic personality and subtle body and a sufficiently developed mental and vital personality, survival of the soul-person without an immediate new-birth would be secured and the pull of the other worlds would become operative. But this by itself would mean a return to earth with the same mental and vital personality and there would be no free evolution in the new birth. There must be an individuation of the psychic person itself sufficient for it not to depend on its past mind and life formations any more than on its past body, but to shed them too in time and proceed to a new formation for new experience. For this discarding of the old and preparation of new forms the soul must dwell for some time between two births somewhere else than on the entirely material plane in which we now move; for here there would be no abiding place for a disembodied spirit. A brief stay might indeed be possible if there are subtle envelopes of the earth-existence which belong to earth but are of a vital or mental character: but even then there would be no reason for the soul to linger there for a long period, unless it is still burdened with an overpowering attachment to the earth-life.   A survival of the material body by the personality implies a supraphysical existence, and this can only be in some plane of being proper to the evolutionary stage of the consciousness or, if there is no evolution, in a temporary second home of the spirit which would be its natural place of sojourn between life and life, - unless indeed it is its original world from which it does not return into material Nature.   --   But there are also the true vital worlds, - original constructions, organised developments, native habitats of the universal life-principle, the cosmic vital Anima, acting in its own field and in its own nature. On his internatal journey he may be held there for a period by force of the predominantly vital character of the influences which have shaped his earthly existence, - for these influences are native to the vital world and their hold on him would detain him for a while in their proper province: he may be kept in the grasp of that which held him in its grasp even in the physical being. Any residence of the soul in annexes or in its own constructions could be only a transitional stage of the consciousness in its passage from the physical to the supraphysical state; it must pass from these structures into the true worlds of supraphysical Nature. It may enter at once into the worlds of other-life, or it may remain first, as a transitional stage, in some region of subtle-physical experience whose surroundings may seem to it a prolongation of the circumstances of physical life, but in freer conditions proper to a subtler medium and in some kind of happy perfection of mind or life or a finer bodily existence. Beyond these subtle-physical planes of experience and the life-worlds there are also mental or spiritual-mental planes to which the soul seems to have an internatal access and into which it may pursue its internatal journey; but it is not likely to live consciously there if there has not been a sufficient mental or soul development in this life. For these levels must normally be the highest the evolving being can internatally inhabit, since one who has not gone beyond the mental rung in the ladder of being would not be able to ascend to any supramental or overmental state; or if he had so developed as to overleap the mental level and could attain so far, it might not be possible for him to return so long as the physical evolution has not developed here an organisation of an overmental or supramental life in Matter.   But, even so, the mental worlds are not likely to be the last normal stage of the after-death passage; for man is not entirely mental: it is the soul, the Psychic Being, and not the mind, that is the traveller between death and birth, and the mental being is only a predominant element in the figure of its self-expression.   There must then be a final resort to a plane of pure psychic existence in which the soul would await rebirth; there it could assimilate the energies of its past experience and life and prepare its future. Ordinarily, the normally developed human being, who has risen to a sufficient power of mentality, might be expected to pass successively through all these planes, subtle-physical, vital and mental, on his way to his psychic habitation. At each stage he would exhaust and get rid of the fractions of formed personality structure, temporary and superficial, that belonged to the past life; he would cast off his mind sheath and life sheath as he had already cast off his body sheath: but the essence of the personality and its mental, vital and physical experiences would remain in latent memory or as a dynamic potency for the future.   --   But we have first to observe that a law or chain of Karma is only an outward machinery and cannot be elevated to a greater position as the sole and absolute determinant of the life-workings of the cosmos, unless the cosmos is itself entirely mechanical in its character. It is indeed held by many that all is Law and Process and there is no conscious Being or Will in or behind the cosmos; if so, here is a Law and Process that satisfies our human reason and our mental standards of right and justice and it has the beauty and truth of a perfect symmetry and a mathematical accuracy of working. But all is not Law and Process, there is also Being and Consciousness; there is not only a machinery but a Spirit in things, not only Nature and law of cosmos but a cosmic Spirit, not only a process of mind and life and body but a soul in the natural creature. If it were not so, there could be no rebirth of a soul and no field for a law of Karma. But if the fundamental truth of our being is spiritual and not mechanical, it must be ourself, our soul that fundamentally determines its own evolution, and the law of Karma can only be one of the processes it uses for that purpose: our Spirit, our Self must be greater than its Karma. There is Law, but there is also spiritual freedom. Law and Process are one side of our existence and their reign is over our outer mind, life and body, for these are mostly subject to the mechanism of Nature. But even here their mechanical power is absolute only over body and matter; for Law becomes more complex and less rigid, Process more plastic and less mechanical when there comes in the phenomenon of life, and yet more is this so when mind intervenes with its subtlety; an inner freedom already begins to intervene and, the more we go within, the soul's power of choice is increasingly felt: for Prakriti is the field of law and process, but the soul, the Purusha, is the giver of the sanction, anumanta, and even if ordinarily it chooses to remain a witness and concede an automatic sanction, it can be, if it wills, the master of its nature, Ishwara.   It is not conceivable that the spirit within is an automaton in the hands of Karma, a slave in this life of its past actions; the truth must be less rigid and more plastic. If a certain amount of results of past Karma is formulated in the present life, it must be with the consent of the Psychic Being which presides over the new formation of its earth-experience and assents not merely to an outward compulsory process, but to a secret Will and Guidance. That secret Will is not mechanical, but spiritual; the guidance comes from an Intelligence which may use mechanical processes but is not their subject. Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it intervenes as an automatic outcome of past lives or as a free selection of results and a continuity or as a new development, whatever is a means of creation of the future, that will be formulated: for the principle is not the working out of a mechanism of Law, but the development of the nature through cosmic experience so that eventually it may grow out of the Ignorance. There must therefore be two elements, Karma as an instrument, but also the secret Consciousness and Will within working through the mind, life and body as the user. Fate, whether purely mechanical or created by ourselves, a chain of our own manufacture, is only one factor of existence; Being and its consciousness and its will are a still more important factor.   In Indian astrology which considers all life circumstances to be Karma, mostly predetermined or indicated in the graph of the stars, there is still provision made for the energy and force of the being which can change or cancel part or much of what is so written or even all but the most imperative and powerful bindings of Karma. This is a reasonable account of the balance: but there is also to be added to the computation the fact that destiny is not simple but complex; the destiny which binds our physical being, binds it so long or in so far as a greater law does not intervene. Action belongs to the physical part of us, it is the physical outcome of our being; but behind our surface is a freer life power, a freer mind power which has another energy and can create another destiny and bring it in to modify the primary plan, and when the soul and self emerges, when we become consciously spiritual beings, that change can cancel or wholly remodel the graph of our physical fate. Karma, then, - or at least any mechanical law of Karma, - cannot be accepted as the sole determinant of circumstances and the whole machinery of rebirth and of our future evolution.   --   In any case the reactions of Nature are not in essence meant as reward or punishment; that is not their fundamental value, which is rather an inherent value of natural relations and, in so far as it affects the spiritual evolution, a value of the lessons of experience in the soul's cosmic training. If we touch fire, it burns, but there is no principle of punishment in this relation of cause and effect, it is a lesson of relation and a lesson of experience; so in all Nature's dealings with us there is a relation of things and there is a corresponding lesson of experience. The action of the cosmic Energy is complex and the same Forces may act in different ways according to circumstances, to the need of the being, to the intention of the Cosmic Power in its action; our life is affected not only by its own energies but by the energies of others and by universal Forces, and all this vast interplay cannot be determined in its results solely by the one factor of an all-governing moral law and its exclusive attention to the merits and demerits, the sins and virtues of individual human beings. Nor can good fortune and evil fortune, pleasure and pain, happiness and misery and suffering be taken as if they existed merely as incentives and deterrents to the natural being in its choice of good and evil. It is for experience, for growth of the individual being that the soul enters into rebirth; joy and grief, pain and suffering, fortune and misfortune are parts of that experience, means of that growth: even, the soul may of itself accept or choose poverty, misfortune and suffering as helpful to its growth, stimulants of a rapid development, and reject riches and prosperity and success as dangerous and conducive to a relaxation of its spiritual effort. Happiness and success bringing happiness are, no doubt, a legitimate demand of humanity; it is an attempt of life and matter to catch a pale reflection or a gross image of felicity: but a superficial happiness and material success, however desirable to our vital nature, are not the main object of our existence; if that had been the intention, life would have been otherwise arranged in the cosmic ordinance of things.   All the secret of the circumstances of rebirth centres around the one capital need of the soul, the need of growth, the need of experience; that governs the line of its evolution and all the rest is accessory. Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its machinery or a divine Legislator and Judge at its centre. It is seen by us first as a great automatic movement of energy of Nature, and in it emerges a self-developing movement of consciousness, a movement therefore of Spirit working out its own being in the motion of energy of Nature. In this motion takes place the cycle of rebirth, and in that cycle the soul, the Psychic Being, prepares for itself, - or the Divine Wisdom or the cosmic Consciousness-Force prepares for it and through its action, - whatever is needed for the next step in its evolution, the next formation of personality, the coming nexus of necessary experiences constantly provided and organised out of the continuous flux of past, present and future energies for each new birth, for each new step of the spirit backward or forward or else still in a circle, but always a step in the growth of the being towards its destined self-unfolding in Nature.   This brings us to another element of the ordinary conception of rebirth which is not acceptable, since it is an obvious error of the physical mind, - the idea of the soul itself as a limited personality which survives unchanged from one birth to another.   --   In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation, builds a new personal quantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it passes from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time, but the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only the essential elements of the past quantum, of which some will but some may not be used in the next incarnation. The essential form of the past personality may remain as one element among many, one personality among many personalities of the same Person, but in the background, in the subliminal behind the veil of the surface mind and life and body, contributing from there whatever is needed of itself to the new formation; but it will not itself be the whole formation or build anew the old unchanged type of nature. It may even be that the new quantum or structure of being will exhibit a quite contrary character and temperament, quite other capacities, other very different tendencies; for latent potentials may be ready to emerge, or something already in action but inchoate may have been held back in the last life which needed to be worked out but was kept over for a later and more suitable combination of the possibilities of the nature. All the past is indeed there, with its accelerated impetus and potentialities for the formation of the future, but all of it is not ostensibly present and active. The greater the variety of formations that have existed in the past and can be utilised, the more rich and multitudinous the accumulated buildings of experience, the more their essential result of capacity for knowledge, power, action, character, manifold response to the universe can be brought forward and harmonised in the new birth, the more numerous the veiled personalities mental, vital, subtle-physical that combine to enrich the new personality on the surface, the greater and more opulent will be that personality and the nearer to the possible transition out of the completed mental stage of evolution to something beyond it. Such a complexity and gathering up of many personalities in one person can be a sign of a very advanced stage of the individual's evolution when there is a strong central being that holds all together and works towards harmonisation and integration of the whole many-sided movement of the nature. But this opulent taking up of the past would not be a repetition of personality; it would be a new formation and large consummation. It is not as a machinery for the persistent renewal or prolongation of an unchanging personality that rebirth exists, but as a means for the evolution of the spiritual being in Nature.   It becomes at once evident that in this plan of rebirth the false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives disappears altogether. If indeed rebirth were governed by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral, - supposing that that is the intention in the dispensation of Karma and it is not what it looks like in this presentation of it, a mechanical law of recompense and retribution without any reformatory meaning or purpose, - then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him. Even, since life seems often to teach the opposite lesson, - for he sees the good suffer for their goodness and the wicked prosper by their wickedness, - he is rather likely to conclude in this perverse sense, because he has not the memory of an assured and constant result of experience which would show him that the suffering of the good man was due to his past wickedness and the prosperity of the sinner due to the splendour of his past virtues, so that virtue is the best policy in the long run for any reasonable and prudent soul entering into this dispensation of Nature. It might be said that the Psychic Being within remembers; but such a secret memory would seem to have little effect or value on the surface. Or it may be said that it realises what has happened and learns its lesson when it reviews and assimilates its experiences after issuing from the body: but this intermittent memory does not very apparently help in the next birth; for most of us persist in sin and error and show no tangible signs of having profited by the teaching of our past experience.   But if a constant development of being by a developing cosmic experience is the meaning and the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method, then any persistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and a serious obstacle: it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament, character, preoccupations, and a tremendous burden hampering the free development of the new personality and its formulation of new experience. A clear and detailed memory of past loves, hatreds, rancours, attachments, connections would be equally a stupendous inconvenience; for it would bind the reborn being to a useless repetition or a compulsory continuation of his surface past and stand heavily in the way of his bringing out new possibilities from the depths of the spirit. If, indeed, a mental learning of things were the heart of the matter, if that were the process of our development, memory would have a great importance: but what happens is a growth of the soul personality and a growth of the nature by an assimilation into our substance of being, a creative and effective absorption of the essential results of past energies; in this process conscious memory is of no importance. As the tree grows by a subconscient or inconscient assimilation of action of sun and rain and wind and absorption of earth-elements, so the being grows by a subliminal or intraconscient assimilation and absorption of its results of past becoming and an output of potentialities of future becoming. The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic Wisdom and serves, not disserves its evolutionary purpose.

2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   But this psychic influence or action does not come up to the surface quite pure or does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us and follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and turn it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body. After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture. A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application, a wrong formation, an erroneous result of what is in itself pure stuff and action of our spiritual being; a formation of consciousness is accordingly made which is a mixture of the psychic influence and its intimations jumbled with mental ideas and opinions, vital desires and urges, habitual physical tendencies. There coalesce too with the obscured soul-influence the ignorant though well-intentioned efforts of these external parts towards a higher direction; a mental ideation of a very mixed character, often obscure even in its idealism, sometimes even disastrously mistaken, a fervour and passion of the emotional being throwing up its spray and foam of feelings, sentiments, sentimentalisms, a dynamic enthusiasm of the life-parts, eager responses of the physical, the thrills and excitements of nerve and body, - all these influences coalesce in a composite formation which is frequently taken as the soul and its mixed and confused action for the soul-stir, for a psychic development and action or a realised inner influence. The psychic entity is itself free from stain or mixture, but what comes up from it is not protected by that immunity; therefore this confusion becomes possible.   Moreover, the Psychic Being, the soul personality in us, does not emerge full-grown and luminous; it evolves, passes through a slow development and formation; its figure of being may be at first indistinct and may afterwards remain for a long time weak and undeveloped, not impure but imperfect: for it rests its formation, its dynamic self-building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully, against the resistance of the Ignorance and Inconscience, put forth in the evolution upon the surface. Its appearance is the sign of a soulemergence in Nature, and if that emergence is as yet small and defective, the psychic personality also will be stunted or feeble.   It is too, by the obscurity of our consciousness, separated from its inner reality, in imperfect communication with its own source in the depths of the being; for the road is as yet ill-built, easily obstructed, the wires often cut or crowded with communications of another kind and proceeding from another origin: its power to impress what it receives upon the outer instruments is also imperfect; in its penury it has for most things to rely on these instruments and it forms its push to expression and action on their data and not solely on the unerring perceptions of the psychic entity. In these conditions it cannot prevent the true psychic light from being diminished or distorted in the mind into a mere idea or opinion, the psychic feeling in the heart into a fallible emotion or mere sentiment, the psychic will to action in the lifeparts into a blind vital enthusiasm or a fervid excitement: it even accepts these mistranslations for want of something better and tries to fulfil itself through them. For it is part of the work of the soul to influence mind and heart and vital being and turn their ideas, feelings, enthusiasms, dynamisms in the direction of what is divine and luminous; but this has to be done at first imperfectly, slowly and with a mixture. As the psychic personality grows stronger, it begins to increase its communion with the psychic entity behind it and improve its communications with the surface: it can transmit its intimations to the mind and heart and life with a greater purity and force; for it is more able to exercise a strong control and react against false mixtures; now more and more it makes itself distinctly felt as a power in the nature. But even so this evolution would be slow and long if left solely to the difficult automatic action of the evolutionary Energy; it is only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul and feels a need to bring it to the front and make it the master of his life and action that a quicker conscious method of evolution intervenes and a psychic transformation becomes possible.   This slow development can be aided by the mind's clear perception and insistence on something within that survives the death of the body and an effort to know its nature. But at first this knowledge is impeded by the fact that there are many elements in us, many formations which present themselves as soul elements and can be mistaken for the psyche. In the early Greek and some other traditions about the after-life, the descriptions given show very clearly that what was then mistaken for the soul was a subconscious formation, a subphysical impressionmould or shadow-form of the being or else a wraith or ghost of the personality. This ghost, which is mistakenly called the spirit, is sometimes a vital formation reproducing the man's characteristics, his surface life-mannerisms, sometimes a subtle-physical prolongation of the surface form of the mind-shell: at best it is a sheath of the life personality which still remains in the front for some time after the departure from the body. Apart from these confusions born of an after-death contact with discarded phantasms or remnants of the sheaths of the personality, the difficulty is due to our ignorance of the subliminal parts of our nature and the form and powers of the conscious being or Purusha which preside over their action; owing to this inexperience we can easily mistake something of the inner mind or vital self for the psyche. For as Being is one yet multiple, so also the same law prevails in ourselves and our members; the spirit, the Purusha is one but it adapts itself to the formations of Nature.   Over each grade of our being a power of the Spirit presides; we have within us and discover when we go deep enough inwards a mind-self, a life-self, a physical self; there is a being of mind, a mental Purusha, expressing something of itself on our surface in the thoughts, perceptions, activities of our mind nature, a being of life which expresses something of itself in the impulses, feelings, sensations, desires, external life activities of our vital nature, a physical being, a being of the body which expresses something of itself in the instincts, habits, formulated activities of our physical nature. These beings or part selves of the self in us are powers of the Spirit and therefore not limited by their temporary expression, for what is thus formulated is only a fragment of its possibilities; but the expression creates a temporary mental, vital or physical personality which grows and develops even as the Psychic Being or soul personality grows and develops within us. Each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of us; but on our surface all these influences and all this action, as they come up, mingle and create an aggregate surface being which is a composite, an amalgam of them all, an outer persistent and yet shifting and mobile formation for the purposes of this life and its limited experience.   But this aggregate is, because of its composition, a heterogeneous compound, not a single harmonious and homogeneous whole. This is the reason why there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members which our mental reason and will are moved to control and harmonise and have often much difficulty in creating out of their confusion or conflict some kind of order and guidance; even so, ordinarily, we drift too much or are driven by the stream of our nature and act from whatever in it comes uppermost at the time and seizes the instruments of thought and action, - even our seemingly deliberate choice is more of an automatism than we imagine; our co-ordination of our multifarious elements and of our consequent thoughts, feelings, impulses, actions by the reason and will is incomplete and a half-measure. In animal being Nature acts by her own mental and vital intuitions; she works out an order by the compulsion of habit and instinct which the animal implicitly obeys, so that the shiftings of its consciousness do not matter. But man cannot altogether act in the same way without forfeiting his prerogative of manhood; he cannot leave his being to be a chaos of instincts and impulses regulated by the automatism of Nature: mind has become conscious in him and is therefore self-compelled to make some attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being. He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that direction is only partial; for not only a disparate consortium of habitual motive-forces but also newly emergent vital and physical tendencies and impulses, not always calculable or controllable, and many incoherent and inharmonious mental elements use his reason and will, enter into and determine his self-building, his nature-development, his life action. Man is in his self a unique Person, but he is also in his manifestation of self a multiperson; he will never succeed in being master of himself until the Person imposes itself on his multipersonality and governs it: but this can only be imperfectly done by the surface mental will and reason; it can be perfectly done only if he goes within and finds whatever central being is by its predominant influence at the head of all his expression and action. In inmost truth it is his soul that is this central being, but in outer fact it is often one or other of the part beings in him that rules, and this representative of the soul, this deputy self he can mistake for the inmost soul principle.

2.3.01_-_Aspiration_and_Surrender_to_the_Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The best way is to live in the Psychic Being, for that is always surrendered to the Mother and can lead the others in the right way. For control one has to centralise somewhere - some do it in the mind or above the mind, others do it in the heart and through the heart in the psychic centre.      --   *   Now that you are here, try to enter into the higher ways of the sadhana. Withdraw from the vital and its demands and desires, make the inner heart and the Psychic Being your centre and seek union with the Mother's consciousness through self-giving and   22 August 1933 surrender.

2.3.01_-_Concentration_and_Meditation, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      This is what is called in this Yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mentalvital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this Yoga the spiritual transformation. If one begins with this movement, then the Power from above has in its descent to open all the centres (including the lowest centre) and to bring out the Psychic Being; for until that is done there is likely to be much difficulty and struggle of the lower consciousness obstructing, mixing with or even refusing the Divine Action from above. If the Psychic Being is once active this struggle and these difficulties can be greatly minimised.

2.3.02_-_Opening,_Sincerity_and_the_Mother's_Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Truth for you is to feel the Divine in you, open to the   Mother and work for the Divine till you are aware of her in all your actions. The physical presence here is not enough; there must be this consciousness of the divine presence in your heart and the divine guidance in your acts. This the Psychic Being can easily, swiftly, deeply feel if it is fully awake; once the psychic has felt it, it can spread to the mental and vital also.      --      When the Psychic Being comes in the front.      --      The infant in the Mother's arms is the symbol of the Psychic Being. The soul in direct touch with the divine Truth is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature (manas, pran.a, anna of the Taittiriya Upanishad); one may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason, power and all kinds of experiences in the vital, even physical siddhis, but if the true soul-power behind and the psychic nature do not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this Yoga, the Psychic Being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. If the soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then the Yoga can be done; otherwise (by the mere power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible. It is this new birth, this awakening of the psychic consciousness, that the Mother is offering in the vision.      --   What is the conscious way to bring the psychic to the front?   Does awakening of the Psychic Being mean its coming to the front?

2.3.03_-_Integral_Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Because the soul, the Psychic Being uses the mind and the vital as well as the body as instruments for growth and experience it is itself looked at as if it were some amalgam or some subtle substratum of mind and life. But in Yoga if we accept all this chaotic mass as soul-stuff or soul-movement we shall enter into a confusion without an issue. All that belongs only to the coverings of the soul; the soul itself is an inner divinity greater than mind

2.3.03_-_The_Mother's_Presence, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   In the evening meditation, there was an intense movement of surrender from the heart. I had the feeling of Mother's presence immediately in front of me and aspiration rose up from below. There was a willing and loving surrender from the heart, from the entire being, as if for fulfilment. I suppose the Psychic Being came to the front.         You had the psychic condition there and that means a coming of the influence of the Psychic Being to the front.      --   Union with the Mother   You write Ytidn nA ;AmAr psychic being jAeg.3 But your psychic being is already awakened, if it were not, you would not have these experiences. The inner being which you feel in union with the Mother is the Psychic Being. As you probably have not quite understood what I wrote to you, it might be better if you show   Nolini my letter and ask him to explain to you the difference between the three layers (r) of the being about which I have spoken in the letter -

2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher Nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the Psychic Being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.      That is the fundamental rationale of the Sadhana. It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart centre and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them. For the heart opens to the Psychic Being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the Psychic Being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the Siddhi. The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the Sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being   - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of Knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them   --   *   Nothing is impossible if the nature of the Psychic Being is awake and leading you with the Mother's consciousness and force be19 October 1935 hind it and working in you.      --      Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the Psychic Being to the direct guidance of the   Mother's light and power. If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping-stone to a truer

2.3.05_-_Sadhana_through_Work_for_the_Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      the Psychic Being can offer the act while the nature is passive to the Force (the ego being expunged or having withdrawn) and feels the Mother's Force doing the act and her Presence in it.      --      Your unwillingness to come to the Pranam because that would interrupt some subjective experience is altogether out of place. No experience in formal meditation, not a hundred experiences together can be worth the touch of the Mother in the Pranam. If you had the Psychic Being in front in the physical or even in the heart and the vital, you would feel that at once.

2.3.06_-_The_Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Psychic Mind   When the mind is turned towards the Divine and the Truth and feels and responds to that only or mainly, it can be called a psychic mind - it is something formed by the influence of the Psychic Being on the mental plane.

2.3.07_-_The_Mother_in_Visions,_Dreams_and_Experiences, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      What you felt was an opening of the Psychic Being in your heart and the perceptions that came to you were perfectly true. The reaction you speak of does often come after an experience. But if the depression can be avoided, emptiness does not matter. Up to a certain stage the nature needs after an experience a quiescent period to assimilate experience. One has then not to be depressed but to remain quiet waiting and aspiring for more experience, more opening, a more continuous flow of the truth.

2.3.07_-_The_Vital_Being_and_Vital_Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      the Psychic Being stands behind all the others; its force is the true soul-power. But if it comes to the front, it can suffuse all the rest; mind, vital, the physical consciousness can take its stamp and be transformed by its influence. When the nature is properly developed, there is a psychic in the mental, a psychic in the vital, a psychic in the physical. It is when that is there and strong, that we can say of someone that he evidently has a soul. But there are some in whom this element is so lacking that we have to use faith in order to believe that they have a soul at all. The centre of the Psychic Being is behind the centre of the emotional being; it is the emotional that is nearest dynamically to the psychic and

2.3.08_-_The_Mother's_Help_in_Difficulties, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   It is an obsession from the subconscient physical bringing back habitual thoughts, "I can't call rightly - I have no real aspiration" etc.; the depression, the memory etc. are from the same source. It is no use indulging in these ideas. If you cannot call the Mother in what you think the right way, call her in any way   - if you can't call her, think of her with the will to be rid of these things. Don't worry yourself with the idea whether you have true aspiration or not - the Psychic Being wants and that is sufficient. The rest is the Divine Grace, on which one must steadfastly rely - one's own merit, virtue or capacity is not the thing that brings the realisation.

3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Nature. Even the "belching volcano, crashing thunderstorm and whirling typhoon" are in themselves grandiose and beautiful things and only harmful or horrible to a consciousness unable to meet or deal with them or make a pact with the spirits of the   Wind and Fire. You are assuming that the manifestation from the Inconscient must be what it is now and here and that no other kind of world of Matter was possible, but the harmony of material Nature in itself shows that it need not necessarily be a discordant, evil, furiously perturbed and painful creation - the Psychic Being, if allowed to manifest from the first in Life and lead the evolution instead of being relegated behind the veil, would have been the principle of a harmonious outflowering; everyone who has felt the psychic at work within him, freed from the vital intervention, can at once see that this would be its effect because of its unerring perception, true choice, harmonic action.

4.02_-_Difficulties, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   *   The only way out of your difficulty is to find the Psychic Being and to live entirely in its consciousness.

4.1.1.03_-_Three_Realisations_for_the_Soul, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      For the soul there are three realisations - (1) the realisation of the Psychic Being and consciousness as the divine element in the evolution, (2) the realisation of the cosmic Self which is one in all, (3) the realisation of the supreme Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being   (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine.

4.1.1.04_-_Foundations_of_the_Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      There are two main things to be secured as the foundations of sadhana - the opening of the Psychic Being and the realisation of the Self above. For the opening of the Psychic Being, concentration on the Mother and self-offering to her are the direct way. The growth of Bhakti which you feel is the first sign of the psychic development. A sense of the Mother's presence or force or the remembrance of her supporting and strengthening you is the next sign. Eventually, the soul within begins to be active in aspiration and psychic perception guiding the mind to the right thoughts, the vital to the right movements and feelings, showing and rejecting all that has to be put away and turning the whole being in all its movements to the Divine alone. For the self-realisation, peace and silence of the mind are the first condition. Afterwards one begins to feel release, freedom, wideness, to live in a consciousness silent, tranquil, untouched by any or all things, existing everywhere and in all, one with or united with the Divine. Other experiences come on the way, or may come, such as the opening of the inner vision, the sense of the Force working within and various movements and phenomena of the working etc. One may also be conscious of ascents of the consciousness and descents of Force, Peace,   Bliss or Light from above.   --      Your first experience was that of the opening of the psychic; you became aware of the Psychic Being and its aspirations and experiences and of the external being in front, as two separate parts of your consciousness. You were not able to keep this experience because the vital was not purified and pulled you out into the ordinary external consciousness. Afterwards, you got back into the psychic and were at the same time able to see your ordinary vital nature, to become aware of its defects and to work by the power of the psychic for its purification. I wrote to you at the beginning that this was the right way; for if the psychic is awake and in front, it becomes easy to remain conscious of the things that have to be changed in the external nature and it is comparatively easy too to change them. But if the psychic gets veiled and retires into the background, the outer nature left to itself finds it difficult to remain conscious of its own wrong movements and even with great effort cannot succeed in getting rid of them. You can see yourself, as in the matter of the food, that with the psychic active and awake the right attitude comes naturally and whatever difficulty there was soon diminishes or even disappears.

4.1.1.05_-_The_Central_Process_of_the_Yoga, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   Silence to come is by a descent from above. In fact, in reality though not always in appearance, that is how they always come;   - not in appearance always, because the sadhak is not always conscious of the process; he feels the peace settling in him or at least manifesting, but he has not been conscious how and whence it came. Yet it is the truth that all that belongs to the higher consciousness comes from above, not only the spiritual peace and silence, but the Light, the Power, the Knowledge, the higher seeing and thought, the Ananda come from above. It is also possible that up to a certain point they may come from within, but this is because the Psychic Being is open to them directly and they come first there and then reveal themselves in the rest of the being from the psychic or by its coming into the front. A disclosure from within or a descent from above are the two sovereign ways of the Yoga-siddhi. An effort of the external surface mind or emotions, a tapasya of some kind may seem to build up something of these things, but the results are usually uncertain and fragmentary compared to the result of the two radical ways. That is why in this Yoga we insist always on an "opening" - an opening inwards of the inner mind, vital, physical to the inmost part of us, the psychic, and an opening upwards to what is above the mind - as indispensable for the fruits of the sadhana.      --   The real Self is not anywhere on the surface but deep within and above. Within is the soul supporting an inner mind, inner vital, inner physical in which there is a capacity for universal wideness and with it for the things now asked for, - direct contact with the Truth of self and things, taste of a universal bliss, liberation from the imprisoned smallness and sufferings of the gross physical body. Even in Europe the existence of something behind the surface is now very frequently admitted, but its nature is mistaken and it is called subconscient or subliminal, while really it is very conscious in its own way and not subliminal but only behind the veil. It is, according to our psychology, connected with the small outer personality by certain centres of consciousness of which we become aware by Yoga. Only a little of the inner being escapes through these centres into the outer life, but that little is the best part of ourselves and responsible for our art, poetry, philosophy, ideals, religious aspirations, efforts at knowledge and perfection. But the inner centres are, for the most part, closed or asleep - to open them and make them awake and active is one aim of Yoga. As they open, the powers and possibilities of the inner being also are aroused in us; we awake first to a larger consciousness and then to a cosmic consciousness; we are no longer little separate personalities with limited lives but centres of a universal action and in direct contact with cosmic forces. Moreover, instead of being unwilling playthings of the latter, as is the surface person, we can become to a certain extent conscious and masters of the play of nature   - how far this goes depending on the development of the inner being and its opening upward to the higher spiritual levels. At the same time the opening of the heart centre releases the Psychic Being which proceeds to make us aware of the Divine within us and of the higher Truth above us.      --      It can bring down too a higher and yet higher force and range of the higher Nature until, if that be the aim of the sadhana, it becomes possible to bring down the supramental force and existence. All this is prepared, assisted, farthered by the work of the Psychic Being in the heart centre; the more it is open, in front, active, the quicker, safer, easier the working of the Force can be. The more love and bhakti and surrender grow in the heart, the more rapid and perfect becomes the evolution of the sadhana. For the descent and transformation imply at the same time an increasing contact and union with the Divine.      That is the fundamental rationale of the sadhana. It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart centre and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them. For the heart opens to the Psychic Being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the Psychic Being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi. The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being   - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed

4.1.2.02_-_The_Three_Transformations, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      the Psychic Being stands behind the heart supporting the mind, life and body. In the psychic transformation there are three main elements: (1) the opening of the occult inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, so that one becomes aware of all that lies behind the surface mind, life and body; (2) the opening of the Psychic Being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine; (3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth - this last may be called the psycho-spiritual part of the change. It is quite possible for the psychic transformation to take one beyond the individual into the cosmic. Even the occult opening establishes a connection with the cosmic mind, cosmic vital, cosmic physical. The psychic realises the contact with all existence, the oneness of the Self, the universal love and other realisations which lead to the cosmic consciousness.

4.1.2.03_-_Preparation_for_the_Supramental_Change, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   class:chapter   Get the Psychic Being in front and keep it there, putting its power on the mind, vital and physical - so that it shall communicate to them its force of single-minded aspiration, trust, faith, surrender, direct and immediate detection of whatever is wrong in the nature and turned towards ego and error, away from Light and Truth.

4.14_-_The_Power_of_the_Instruments, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Another necessary element is a faith in the heart, a belief in and will to the universal good, an openness to the universal Ananda. The pure psychic being is of the essence of Ananda, it comes from the delight-soul in the universe; but the superficial heart of emotion is overborne by the conflicting appearances of the world and suffers many reactions of grief, fear, depression, passion, shortlived and partial joy. An equal heart is needed for perfection, but not only a passive equality; there must be the sense of a divine power making for good behind all experiences, a faith and will which can turn the poisons of the world to nectar, see the happier spiritual intention behind adversity, the mystery of love behind suffering, the flower of divine strength and joy in the seed of pain. This faith, kalyana-sraddha, is needed in order that the heart and the whole overt psychic being may respond to the secret divine Ananda and change itself into this true original essence. This faith and will must be accompanied by and open into an illimitable widest arid intensest capacity for love. For the main business of the heart, its true function is love. It is our destined instrument of complete union and oneness; for to see oneness in the world by the understanding is not enough unless we also feel it with the heart and in the Psychic Being, and this means delight in the One and in all existences in the world in him, a love of God and all beings. The heart's faith and will in good are founded on a perception of the one Divine immanent in all things and leading the world. The universal love has to be founded on the heart's sight and psychical and emotional sense of the one Divine, the one Self in all existence. All four elements will then form a unity and even the Rudra power to do battle for the right and the good proceed on the basis of a power of universal love. This is the highest and the most characteristic perfection of the heart, prema-samarthya.

4.16_-_The_Divine_Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      What we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest self, with God and Nature. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle. This may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection of our present intelligence and the ethical and the Psychic Being or else, aware of the greater self in us it may impersonalise, universalise, spiritualise its self-conscious existence and the action of its nature and arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection of the spiritualised mental energy of its being. It is possible again for the Purusha to stand back entirely and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal action of the mind to exhaust itself, run down, spend its remaining impetus of habitual action and fall into silence. Or else this silence may be imposed on the mental energy by rejection of its action and a constant command to quietude. The soul may through the confirmation of this quietude and mental silence pass into some ineffable tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the activities of Nature. But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives from and is a limited, inferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something in the supermind. But neither of these movements can be successfully executed by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help, intervention and guidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara, the Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind and it is on the supramental plane that the individual arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and the supreme and universal Para prakriti.

4.2.1.01_-_The_Importance_of_the_Psychic_Change, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      the Psychic Being and Its Role in Sadhana   The Importance of the Psychic Change   --   *   The soul, the Psychic Being, is in direct touch with the divine   Truth, but it is hidden in man by the mind, the vital being and the physical nature (manas, pran.a, anna of the Taittiriya   Upanishad). One may practise Yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind does not manifest, if the psychic nature does not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done. In this Yoga, the Psychic Being is that which opens the rest of the nature to the true supramental light and finally to the supreme Ananda. Mind can open by itself to its own higher reaches; it can still itself and widen into the Impersonal; it may too spiritualise itself in some kind of static liberation or Nirvana; but the supramental cannot find a sufficient base in spiritualised mind alone. If the inmost soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this Yoga can be done; otherwise (by the sole power of the mind or any other part) it is impossible. If there is a refusal of the psychic new birth, a refusal to become the child new born from the Mother, owing to attachment to intellectual knowledge or mental ideas or to some vital desire, then there will be a failure in the sadhana.      *   It seems to me that you must know by this time about the Psychic Being - that it is behind the veil and its consciousness also; only a little comes out into the mind and vital and physical. When that consciousness is not concealed, when you are aware of your soul (the Psychic Being), when its feelings and aspirations are yours, then you have got the consciousness of the Psychic Being. The feelings and aspirations of the Psychic Being are all turned towards truth and right consciousness and the Divine; it is the only part that cannot be touched by the hostile forces and their suggestions.      --   *   That [feeling the Mother's Presence, Love, Joy, Beauty] is one part of the psychic experience - the other is a complete selfgiving, absence of demand, a prominence of the Psychic Being by which all that is false, wrong, egoistic, contrary to the Divine   Truth, Divine Will, Divine Purity and Light is shown, falls away, cannot prevail in the nature. With all that the increase of the psychic qualities, gratitude, obedience, unselfishness, fidelity to the true perception, true impulse etc. that comes from the Mother or leads to the Mother. When this side grows, then the other,      the Psychic Being and Its Role in Sadhana

4.2.1.02_-_The_Role_of_the_Psychic_in_Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The contribution of the Psychic Being to the sadhana is: (1) love and bhakti, a love not vital, demanding and egoistic but without conditions or claims, self-existent; (2) the contact or the presence of the Mother within; (3) an unerring guidance from within;   (4) a quieting and purification of the mind, vital and physical consciousness by their subjection to the psychic influence and guidance; (5) the opening up of all this lower consciousness to the higher spiritual consciousness above for its descent into a nature prepared to receive it with a complete receptivity and right attitude - for the psychic brings in everything right thought, right perception, right feeling, right attitude.   --   *   the Psychic Being not only helps openly, when it is strong and in front, but can govern the mind and vital and physical nature, give it the clear intimation of what is true and false, divine or undivine, right or wrong and repel all invasion of the hostile forces.      --   *   That is the special work of the Psychic Being, to receive the true things from above and to send away the false things from below.

4.2.1.03_-_The_Psychic_Deep_Within, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   the Psychic Being is in the heart centre in the middle of the chest   (not in the physical heart, for all the centres are in the middle of the body), but it is deep behind. When one is going away from the vital into the psychic, it is felt as if one is going deep deep down till one reaches that central place of the psychic.   --   *   If it was something in the heart, it must be the Psychic Being which is often felt as if deep down somewhere or rising out of a depth. If one goes to it, it is felt often as if one were going into a deep well.

4.2.1.05_-_The_Psychic_Awakening, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      the Psychic Being is always there, but is not felt because it is covered up by the mind and vital; when it is no longer covered up, it is then said to be awake. When it is awake, it begins to take hold of the rest of the being, to influence it and change it so that all may become the true expression of the inner soul. It is this change that is called the inner conversion. There can be no conversion without the awakening of the Psychic Being.      --   *   Let the sweetness and the happy feeling increase, for they are the strongest sign of the soul, the Psychic Being awake and in touch with us. Let not mistakes of thought or speech or action disturb you - put them away from you as something superficial which the Power and Light will deal with and remove. Keep to the one central thing - your soul and these higher realities it brings with it.

4.2.1.06_-_Living_in_the_Psychic, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The important thing is to keep what you have and let it grow, to live always in the Psychic Being, your true being. The psychic will then in due time awaken and turn to the Divine all the rest of the nature, so that even the outer being will feel itself in touch with the Divine and moved by the Divine in all it is and feels and does.      --   *   It [the Psychic Being] has to be surrendered consciously and with more and more knowledge. The psychic aspires to the Divine or answers to things divine, it is surrendered in principle, but it has to develop its surrender in detail carrying with it the surrender of all the being.

4.2.2.02_-_Conditions_for_the_Psychic_Opening, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It is good that you go back from this struggle towards the quiet foundation that helps the opening. All this struggling and confusion and harassing self-depreciation is the old wrong way of proceeding; it is mental and vital and cannot succeed; it is in the quiet mind that the opening must come. Then the Psychic Being, the soul in you, begins to come forward. The soul knows and sees the Truth; the mind and vital do not - until they are enlightened by the soul's knowledge.      *   Then only can the Psychic Being fully open when the sadhaka has got rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother.      If there is any kind of egoistic turn or insincerity of motive, if the Yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards satisfying any vital desire with the help of the Yogic force, then the psychic cannot open, or opens only partially or only at times and shuts again because it is veiled by the vital activities; the psychic fire fails in the strangling vital smoke. Also, if the mind takes the leading part in the Yoga and puts the inner soul into the background, or, if the bhakti or other movements of the sadhana take more of a vital than of a psychic form, there is the same inability. Purity, simple sincerity and the capacity of an unegoistic unmixed self-offering without pretension or demand are the conditions of an entire opening of the Psychic Being.

4.2.2.03_-_An_Experience_of_Psychic_Opening, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It means a modification of the substance of the consciousness especially in the vital emotional part, and such a modification prolonged or repeated till it became permanent would mean a great step in what I call the psychic transformation of the being. It is just these modifications in the inner substance that make transformation possible. Farther, it was a modification that made a beginning of knowledge possible - for by knowledge we mean in Yoga not thought or ideas about spiritual things but psychic understanding from within and spiritual illumination from above. Therefore the first result was this feeling "that there was no ignominy in not understanding it, that the true understanding would come only when one realised that one was completely impotent". This was itself a beginning of true understanding, a psychic understanding, something felt within which sheds a light or brings up a spiritual truth that mere thinking would not have given, also a truth that is effective bringing both the enlightenment and solace you needed - for what the Psychic Being brings with it always is light and happiness, an inner understanding and relief and solace.

4.2.2.05_-_"Opening"_and_"Coming_in_Front", #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      In using the expression "opening of the psychic" I was thinking not of an ordinary psychic opening producing some amount of psychic (as opposed to vital) love and bhakti, but of what is called the coming in front of the psychic. When that happens one is aware of the Psychic Being with its simple spontaneous self-giving and feels its increasing direct control (not merely a veiled or half-veiled influence) over mind, vital and physical.

4.2.3.01_-_The_Meaning_of_"Coming_to_the_Front", #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      What is meant by [the psychic's] coming to the front is simply this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls - when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the Psychic Being except where it is very much developed has only a small and partial, concealed and mixed or diluted influence on the life of most men. By coming forward is meant that it comes from behind the veil, its presence is felt clearly in the waking daily consciousness, its influence fills, dominates, transforms the mind and vital and their movements, even the physical. One is aware of one's soul, feels the psychic to be one's true being, the mind and the rest begin to be only instruments of the inmost within us.      --   *   Awakening [of the Psychic Being] is a different thing [from its coming to the front], it means the conscious action of the psychic from behind. When it comes to the front it invades the mind and vital and body and psychicises their movements. It comes best by aspiration and an unquestioning and entire turning and surrender to the Mother. But also it sometimes comes of itself when the Adhar is ready.      *   That is what we speak of as the Psychic Being coming in front - to psychicise the whole consciousness, i.e. make it subject to the psychic truth and full of the psychic nature. At the same time the ordinary vital being has to disappear and be changed into the true vital.      *   The soul in itself contains all possible strength, but most of it is held behind the veil and it is what comes forward in the nature that makes the difference. In some people the psychic element is strong and in others weak; in some people the mind is the strongest part and governs, in others the vital is the strongest part and leads or drives. But by sadhana the Psychic Being can be more and more brought forward till it is dominant and governs the rest. If it were already governing, then the struggles and difficulties of the mind and vital would not at all be serious; for each man in the light of the psychic would see and feel the truth and more and more follow it.

4.2.3.02_-_Signs_of_the_Psychic's_Coming_Forward, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It is the Psychic Being in you that has come forward - and when the Psychic Being comes forward all is happiness, the right attitude, the right vision of things. Of course in one sense it is the same I that puts forward different parts of itself. But when these different parts are all under the control of the psychic and turned by it towards the reception of the higher consciousness, then there begins the harmonisation of all the parts and their progressive recasting into moulds of the higher consciousness growing in peace, light, force, love, knowledge, Ananda which is what we call the transformation.      --      the Psychic Being in you is open always to the Divine Power, and when it comes in front, your spiritual capacity awakens and you are fully within the protection and can be moved by the Mother's force. The other parts are divided and can be carried away by the wrong movements of the ordinary nature. Especially if you trust your physical mind and mistake its ideas and suggestions for the true inspiration, you are liable to fall into serious errors both in your attitude and your choice of action and may lose the results of the protection and of the Force. Aspire to live always in your psychic being and to be open to the Mother; let the psychic part in you dominate the instruments, mind, life and body. Then the habit of the true intuition and the true impulse to action will come and you will be able to live in conscious communion, to feel her presence and be moved only by her Force. This is your true way in the Yoga.      --   *   It is your psychic being which came in front, probably, or else it is the true vital being in you which was able to come in front because you took the psychic attitude. When the Psychic Being comes in front, then there is an automatic perception of the true and untrue, the divine and the undivine, the spiritual right and wrong of things and the false vital and mental movements and attacks are immediately exposed and fall away and can do nothing; gradually the vital and physical as well as the mind get full of this psychic light and truth and sound feeling and purity and such violent attacks as you have are impossible. When the true vital being comes forward, it is something wide and strong and calm, an unmoved and powerful warrior for the Divine and the Truth repelling all enemies, bringing in a true strength and force and opening the vital to the greater Consciousness above.      --      The only grain of truth is that the Yoga is very usually a series of ups and downs till you get to a certain height. But there is a quite different reason for that - not the vagaries of the soul. On the contrary when the Psychic Being gets in front and becomes master, there comes in a fundamentally smooth action and although there are difficulties and undulations of movement, these are no longer of an abrupt or dramatic character.

4.2.3.03_-_The_Psychic_and_the_Relation_with_the_Divine, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It is only when the Psychic Being grows and comes forward and governs the mind and vital and physical and changes them that this veil of personal ideas, desires and habits can fall - then the direct relation and nearness grows in the being till the whole consciousness is united with the Divine. When you go deep into the psychic, then you begin to feel the Mother near - when the mind or vital is under the influence of the psychic this sense grows in them also. That is the way in which it must come.      *   The realisation of the Psychic Being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection of the insistences of the separating and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego.

4.2.3.04_-_Means_of_Bringing_Forward_the_Psychic, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Aspiration constant and sincere and the will to turn to the Divine alone are the best means of bringing forward the Psychic Being.      *   There is no approved method of bringing forward the Psychic Being. It depends on the aspiration, the growth of faith and devotion, the diminution of the hold of the mental and vital ego and their movements - at a certain point in this development the screen between the psychic and the rest of the nature thins and begins to break, the psychic becomes more and more visible and active and finally takes over charge. Sometimes it may come suddenly, but there is no rule for that.      --      It is not necessary to make an effort to bring your psychic being to the front; all that is necessary is a steady and quiet aspiration; if that is there always, all that is necessary to prepare for the result will be done by degrees and the Psychic Being will come fully to the front when all is ready and it is time. It happens usually that much in the mental, vital and physical has to be prepared before it can happen. This preparation cannot fail to be hastened by your stay here.

4.2.3.04_-_The_Psychic_Fire_and_Some_Inner_Visions, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The fire you saw was the fire of the Psychic Being, the fire of aspiration and tapasya, burning under the earth, that is to say, in the subconscient. It opens the earth, the physical consciousness to the Divine Light. Moonlight may symbolise the spiritual consciousness and the room your own personal being or individual physical consciousness. With these clues it will be easy for you to understand the significance of your experience.      --      The perfumes you felt were true perfumes but not of the physical world. This body of flesh and blood is not the whole of ourselves; there is unseen by the eyes a subtle body also and one becomes aware of it when the inner consciousness opens. It was from deep within there that the perfumes came, perfumes of purity, of love and surrender (rose) etc. It is there deep within that the Psychic Being dwells and it is there that you are trying to go when the inward-going impulse or pressure comes; it is why you felt more and more peaceful, because you were going deeper and deeper into the psychic from which these fragrances came.      --      the Psychic Being is often seen or felt within in the form of a child, - it is perhaps that that you are feeling within you; it is calling for a complete sincerity, but sincerity is used here in the sense of opening to nothing but the divine influences and impulses. It does not mean that you have committed any fault, but only that the psychic in you wants you to be completely under its sole government, so that all in you may be for the   Divine only. The feeling of sorrow is probably a response of the vital in you to this demand - thinking that it must have erred; but such a feeling of sorrow is not necessary. The vital can quietly wait for the psychic working to do all that is needed in due time.

4.2.3.05_-_Obstacles_to_the_Psychic's_Emergence, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   the Psychic Being emerges slowly in most men, even after taking up sadhana. There is so much in the mind and vital that has to change and readjust itself before the psychic can be entirely free. One has to wait till the necessary process has gone far enough before it can burst its agelong veil and come in front to control the nature. It is true that nothing can give so much inner happiness and joy - though peace can come by the mental and vital liberation or through the growth of a strong samata in the being.      *   It is the action of the Psychic Being, not the being itself, that gets mixed with the mental, vital and physical distortions because it has to use them to express what little of the true psychic feeling gets through the veil. It is by the heart's aspiration to the Divine that the Psychic Being gets free from these disabilities.      --   *   That is of course the difficulty, even when one sees what is to be done and wishes to do it. One forgets at the moment when the control is needed. The habit of remembering and applying one's knowledge at the right moment comes only by a great patience and perseverance which refuses to be discouraged by frequent failure. Only if the Psychic Being is in front, then it reminds the mind and the thing can be more quickly done. It was your physical ill-health combined with the difficulty of the physical consciousness (which is always a thing of habits and repeats and clings to the old habits even when the mind wants to get rid of them) that prevented the emergence of the psychic from completing itself. With the disappearance of ill-health the difficulty may be more successfully tackled and achieved. As for the long period of seven years without the spiritual success there is nothing unusual in that - the old Yogins used to say that one must be ready for 12 years of preparation before the old nature will be sufficiently modified to allow of the spiritual opening.

4.2.4.01_-_The_Psychic_Touch_or_Influence, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   The soft feeling [in the head and below] must be that of the Psychic Being spreading itself through the higher centres. Faithfulness is one of the first characteristics of the Psychic Being.

4.2.4.03_-_The_Psychic_Fire, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The psychic fire is the fire of aspiration, purification and tapasya which comes from the Psychic Being. It is not the Psychic Being, but a power of the Psychic Being.      *   the Psychic Being is a Purusha, not a flame - the psychic fire is not the being, it is something proper to it.      *   It [a flame in the heart as big as a man's thumb] is the psychic fire kindled in the heart. the Psychic Being in the heart is described by the Upanishads as of the size of a thumb, aṅgus.t.ha-matrah. purus.o'ntaratma - it may manifest first as this psychic flame.      --   *   The central fire is in the Psychic Being, but it can be lit in all the parts of the being.

4.2.4.08_-_Psychic_Sorrow, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   It is the soul, the Psychic Being in you, behind the heart, that is awake and wants to concentrate the mind on the Divine. It is the nature of the mind to go out to other things, but now when it does that, there is the unease in the heart, the psychic sorrow because the heart feels at once that this is wrong and the head also aches because of the resistance to the Divine Force at work.

4.2.4.09_-_Psychic_Tears_or_Weeping, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      It is the sign of an aspiration and devotion in the soul which is trying to come to the surface. If the Psychic Being can come to the surface and a harmony be established in the nature, all of it being turned towards the Divine, this kind of expression will cease.      *   The weeping that comes to you comes from the Psychic Being - it is the tears of psychic yearning and aspiration. At a particular stage it so comes to many and is a very good sign. The other feelings and tendencies are also from the same source. They show that the psychic is exercising a strong influence and preparing, as we say, to come in front. Accept the movement and let it fulfil itself.      *   A weeping that comes with the feeling you speak of is the sign of a psychic sorrow - for it translates as an aspiration of the Psychic Being. But depression and hopelessness ought not to come. You should rather cling to the faith that since there is a true aspiration in you - and of that there can be no doubt - it is sure to be fulfilled, whatever the difficulties of the external nature. You must recover in that faith the inner peace and quietude while at the same time keeping the clear insight into what has to be done and the steady aspiration for the inner and outer change.

4.2.5.01_-_Psychisation_and_Spiritualisation, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   I have read your account of your sadhana. There is nothing to say, I think, - for it is all right - except that the most important thing for you is to develop the psychic fire in the heart and the aspiration for the Psychic Being to come forward as the leader of the sadhana. When the psychic does so, it will show you the   "undetected ego-knots" of which you speak and loosen them or burn them in the psychic fire. This psychic development and the psychic change of mind, vital and physical consciousness is of the utmost importance because it makes safe and easy the descent of the higher consciousness and the spiritual transformation without which the supramental must always remain far distant. Powers etc. have their place, but a very minor one so long as this is not done.

4.2.5.02_-_The_Psychic_and_the_Higher_Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   When the concentration is at the top of the head, it means that the mental being is joining the higher consciousness there and there is not much resistance or none. The other place indicates the joining is of the Psychic Being to the higher consciousness, hence the greater silence, as the psychic is more central than the mental being; but also there is the attempt to join through the psychic the rest of the lower consciousness to the higher and there there is a resistance. The mental joining does not affect the vital and physical, so they remain quiet or can do so for the present - the psychic joining puts on them a pressure to which the first reaction is the sense of fatigue and the last might be a turmoil. But the psychic joining if effectual is much more powerful for the change of the whole being.

4.2.5.03_-_The_Psychic_and_Spiritual_Movements, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      The two feelings are both of them right - they indicate the two necessities of the sadhana. One is to go inward and open fully the connection between the Psychic Being and the outer nature.      --      What is lacking is the full opening of the Psychic Being behind the heart - for that could liberate the heart from the dark force and make possible a cleaning of the rest by a quiet and steady rather than a vehement working attended by chaotic action and struggle. When there is an opening in the spiritual mind but not a sufficient psychic change, there is or can be this kind of vehement force-action and resistance; when the psychic opens, then it acts on the whole nature, mind, vital, physical, governing them from within, to transform themselves and become ready for the complete spiritual opening and spiritual consciousness.

4.2.5.04_-_The_Psychic_Consciousness_and_the_Descent_from_Above, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   As I have written often, there are two transformations in this   Yoga. The first is when the Psychic Being comes forward and controls and changes the nature. This is what has happened in you with great rapidity; it must complete itself, but that it will do naturally. The second is the descent of the Mother's consciousness from above the head and its transformation of the whole being and nature. This also is now preparing in you. It is the reason of the pressure, the silence in the heart etc. What you experienced this time when you went above was the wideness of the higher being in that higher consciousness above with the   Light coming down through it. That wideness and that light will afterwards come down into you and your consciousness will be changed into the light and wideness and all that is in them.   --   *   The concentration in the heart which is intended to bring out the Psychic Being and the calling down of the descent from above are two sides of the same thing and are complementary and can go naturally together.      *   Certainly the concentration in the heart is very necessary for the full transformation. When peace is established in the heart, it is possible for the Psychic Being to come forward and rule the mind, life and body. The descent from above prepares the being, but unless the psychic acts fully it cannot change by itself the outer being, though one can have a settled inner peace, freedom, light, not disturbed by the outer movements, but the outer movements will remain. It is only the combined action of the psychic and the spiritual power that can change it.      *   It is by meditation, by concentration, by the constant turning or call [that aspiration and openness may be cultivated] - secondly, by the keeping of the mind and vital still for the descent of the Presence, peace, light, Ananda and for the Psychic Being to emerge. When the Psychic Being is in front, the descent constant, then the constant feeling of the Divine in you and of yourself in the Divine becomes more easy to have.

4.2.5.05_-_The_Psychic_and_the_Supermind, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   To merge the consciousness in the Divine and to keep the Psychic Being controlling and changing all the nature and keeping it turned to the Divine till the whole being can live in the Divine is the transformation we seek. There is farther the supramentalisation, but this only carries the transformation to its own highest and largest possibilities - it does not alter its essential nature.

4.3.1.02_-_The_True_Self_Within, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   self is felt to be calm, self-existent and free and wide or infinite. It   is then possible for the Psychic Being to effect in that freedom the   full transformation of the nature. All your former experiences

4.4.2.05_-_Ascent_and_the_Psychic_Being, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   object:4.4.2.05 - Ascent and the Psychic Being   class:chapter   --   *   the Psychic Being and other parts can go up to join the higher consciousness there. It is part of the movement of ascent. Naturally the psychic wants a deeper union than can be had so long as it is veiled by the old ignorant nature; it wants the higher consciousness to come down and occupy and transform it so that complete union may be possible.      The Shakti going up from the Muladhara must be the Shakti of the physical nature. It wants transformation also, I suppose, but it has not the quiet and luminous but ardent aspiration of the Psychic Being - its aspiration is more troubled and tinged with unease.      *   In your experience the ascent was into the regions of the calm and silent Self above; when you came down you went into the depths of the Psychic Being and found there the same calm and wideness. This experience is of great importance for it means that the way to both these is now open to you - and these two

4.4.4.05_-_The_Descent_of_Force_or_Power, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   preparation is to work on the mind and vital and physical nature   in such a way that the soul, the Psychic Being can have a chance   of manifesting itself and influencing the rest of the nature; for

4.4.5.02_-_Descent_and_Psychic_Experiences, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   open to it. The experience of faith, love or aspiration come from   the Psychic Being. It is when the Psychic Being is in front and   governs all the nature and the Higher Consciousness descends   --   *   It is only by peace and light coming down there [into the subconscious] and by the rule of the Psychic Being over the physical   that the subconscious parts of the being can be changed entirely.

5.03_-_The_Divine_Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth    serviceable for the psychological purposes of the inhabitant, less blindly material in their responses, more conscious of the act and aim of the inner movements and powers which use them and which they are wrongly supposed by the material man in us to generate and to use. The brain would be a channel of communication of the form of the thoughts and a battery of their insistence on the body and the outside world where they could then become effective directly, communicating themselves without physical means from mind to mind, producing with a similar directness effects on the thoughts, actions and lives of others or even upon material things. The heart would equally be a direct communicant and medium of interchange for the feelings and emotions thrown outward upon the world by the forces of the psychic centre. Heart could reply directly to heart, the life-force come to the help of other lives and answer their call in spite of strangeness and distance, many beings without any external communication thrill with the message and meet in the secret light from one divine centre. The will might control the organs that deal with food, safeguard automatically the health, eliminate greed and desire, substitute subtler processes or draw in strength and substance from the universal life-force so that the body could maintain for a long time its own strength and substance without loss or waste, remaining thus with no need of sustenance by material aliments, and yet continue a strenuous action with no fatigue or pause for sleep or repose. The soul's will or the mind's could act from higher sources upon the sex centre and the sex organs so as to check firmly or even banish the grosser sexual impulse or stimulus and instead of serving an animal excitation or crude drive or desire turn their use to the storing, production and direction towards brain and heart and life-force of the essential energy, ojas, of which this region is the factory so as to support the works of the mind and soul and spirit and the higher life-powers and limit the expenditure of the energy on lower things. The soul, the Psychic Being, could more easily fill all with the light and turn the very matter of the body to higher uses for its own greater purpose.

5.1.01_-_Terminology, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The Soul, the Divine, the Gods, the Asuras   The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean on the other hand specifically the Psychic Being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material world and which upholds      --      There is no essential difference anywhere, for all is fundamentally the essential Divine; the difference is in the manifestation. Practically, we may say that the Jivatman is one of the divine Many and dependent on the One; the Atman is the One supporting the Many. the Psychic Being does not merge in the   Jivatman, it becomes united with it so that there is no difference between the central being supporting the manifestation from above and the same being supporting the manifestation from within it, because the Psychic Being has become fully aware of the play of the Divine through it. What is called merging takes place in the Divine Consciousness when the Jivatman feels itself so one with the Divine that there is nothing else.

5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   The psychic does not give up the mental and other sheaths   (apart from the physical) immediately at death. It is said that it takes three years on the whole to get clear away from the zone of communicability with the earth - though there may be cases of slower or quicker passage. The psychic world does not communicate with earth - at any rate not in that way. And the ghost or spirit who turns up at seances is not the Psychic Being.

5.4.02_-_Occult_Powers_or_Siddhis, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   *   Ordinarily, all the more inward and all the abnormal psychological experiences are called psychic. I use the word psychic for the soul as distinguished from the mind and vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which rise from or directly touch the Psychic Being; where mind and vital predominate, the experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). "Spiritual" has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the   Divine above are spiritual. There are others that could not be so sharply classified and set off against each other.   --      The governing factors for us must be the spirit and the Psychic Being united with the Divine - the occult laws and      --   Letters on Yoga - I    there, a faculty or a psychic habit of the nature - I use the word psychic in the popular sense, it has nothing to do with what I call the Psychic Being. If she practises Yoga and is able to make some considerable progress, then it would be possible for her to bar the door to these visitors. At the same time I might say that this power need not be a mere source of trouble; it can be helpful even: for it can give one who has acquired mastery over his own nature the knowledge of the thoughts and feelings around her and she can then help, guide, change what has to be changed in their minds so that they can become more effective for the divine work. I shall await what further you have to tell me about X's experiences before saying anything further about her entry into the field of Yoga.

7.01_-_The_Soul_(the_Psychic), #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      It is not the Psychic Being that suffers for personal reasons, it is the mind, the vital and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man. This is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established. He in whom the contact has been well established is always happy.      the Psychic Being works with perseverance and ardour for the union to be made an accomplished fact, but it never complains and knows how to wait for the hour of realisation to come.      --      The best way to get rid of the rule of the ego is to find the Psychic Being, instrument of the Divine in human beings.

Agenda_Vol_2, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   synonymous with the psychic realization? Because in one Conversation you connect the two things:   the reversal of consciousness and the discovery of the Psychic Being.   It's the result of this discovery. In fact, it's the result of union with the Psychic Being.   Another detail. In several places, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the 'circumconscient' or 'environmental   --   you even physically - from contagious diseases, for instance, and even from accidents. I experienced it   when I was living at Val-de-Grace. It was the year I resolved to attain union with the Psychic Being and   I was concentrated on this from morning to night and night to morning. Every day I spent some time in

Agenda_Vol_3, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   In fact, they were not surrendered in the way a psychic being can be, because they had no psychic   in them. the Psychic Being is the result of that descent. Only human beings have it. And that's what   makes humanity so superior to the gods. Théon insisted greatly on this: throughout his story, humans   --   They were all emanations, right from the beginning. So we have to say: 'With the PRESENT incarnation.'"   126I.e., with the Psychic Being or soul IN MAN, the direct incarnation of the Supreme in man: "This has come with   humankind."   --   It's something that grows....   It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the Psychic Being - the   part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings.   --   incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Théon called the "psychic   being." And when the Psychic Being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any   rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme - the jiva is the Supreme in   --   So, when you're told "become conscious of your psychic being," it's for the being formed by   external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the Psychic Being. Then the psychic takes charge   of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide.... Well, when I was a little child, this "person" (which   --   presence; there was something else behind, but that's a rather special case. And what happened to me   happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the Psychic Being guides your   life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstances - it's truly wonderful!... I have seen - not   --   Not with words, because there was nothing mental about it, but simply with a kind of tension - the   tension you feel when the door to the Psychic Being is shut and you push, push, push to get to the other   167Mother's cheek is swollen from an abscessed tooth.... Note that Satprem had assumed that "I never thought this would   --   Naturally, at the beginning you remember very, very little. As you advance, you remember more - I am   referring to the experience of the Psychic Being.   Of course, I am not speaking of what the universal Mother can know, that's quite another category!   I am speaking of the experience of the Psychic Being, the purely terrestrial experience. Well, very few   things seem... in fact, none of them seem alien or unknown to me. The human state of mind, ah yes!   --   goes peck-peck! And then cheep! Out comes the chick, just like that. It's the same thing exactly for the   contact with the Psychic Being. For months on end, sometimes years, you may be sitting before a closed   door, push, push, pushing, and feeling, feeling the pressure (it hurts!), and there's nothing, no results.   --   resolved to do it (I had already been working for a very long time, of course; Madame Théon had told   me about my mission on earth and all that, so you can imagine - I am talking about the Psychic Being   belonging to this present creation, this formation - Mother touches her body)... anyway, it was New

Agenda_Vol_4, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   asks Satprem to scrap. The subject was Nirvana, which one was to reach - or so the notation said - by   withdrawing all one's energies into the Psychic Being or soul.)   None of that is true! In the first place, we should say that each realm has an energy of its own. But what

Agenda_Vol_6, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   world and was able to materialize - those beings don't have a psychic being. The gods don't have in   themselves the divine spark which is the heart of the Psychic Being, since only ON THE EARTH (I am   not even referring to the material universe), only on the earth was there the Descent of divine Love that   was the origin of the divine Presence in the heart of Matter. And naturally, as they don't have a psychic   being, they don't know, they have no knowledge of the Psychic Being. Some of those beings even   decided to take on a physical body in order to experience the Psychic Being - not many.   They generally did it only partially, through an "emanation," not through a complete descent. It is   --   And, certainly, Narada was among those who used to come here.... After all, it was fun! He would   play a lot with circumstances. But he didn't have the knowledge of the Psychic Being and that must   have prevented him from recognizing the Psychic Being when he found himself in its presence.   But all those things cannot be explained: they are personal experiences. This knowledge isn't   --   soul.   Yes, to be in contact with the soul, that is to say, with the Psychic Being, you must carry in yourself a   psychic being, and only men - the men of evolution, those issued from the terrestrial creation - possess

Agenda_Vol_7, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   No, it has made me understand something, but it's something very (how can I put it?), very   intimate.... When Sri Aurobindo left, I knew I had to cut the link with the Psychic Being, otherwise I   would have gone with him; and as I had promised him I would stay on and do the work, I had to do   --   same to me - any words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In   the body, That becomes clothed in the Psychic Being. the Psychic Being is a being which is   progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking   about the Psychic Being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly   independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death?   --   back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have   studied the question, it's only the Psychic Being in the process of being formed that retains the memory   of its former existences. But it retains the memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY   --   the higher beings70 have of life; but that's something else). The memories I speak of are memories of   the Psychic Being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense   of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an   "acting consciousness." But the memories of the Psychic Being aren't mentalized, that is, if for instance   at the time of the recollection you weren't paying attention to the way you were dressed or the

Agenda_Vol_8, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   experience, too, of leaving (not the soul! It's entirely independent, always and in everyone), of leaving   the Psychic Being, the individual psychic being. When I went away from here in 1915, I left my psychic   being here deliberately. I left it here, I didn't take it with me. So the body can live without psychic   --   they have a soul, but their soul isn't in their body - lots of people. And they go on living quite well.   It's more difficult to live without the Psychic Being, on the other hand. the Psychic Being, of course,   is the clothing - the individualized clothing - between the eternal soul and the transitory body; and   --   I've had many such memories (but that one was interesting), a great many, so that I know precisely   the nature of the things that stay on and are part of the development of the Psychic Being.   There was another experience I had a little later (a little later, around eighteen or nineteen), in which   --   July 19, 1967   (Following the last conversation on the Psychic Being.)   These last few days I've had a series of experiences on this very subject, very interesting experiences....

Agenda_Vol_9, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   That happened the last few nights: it suddenly remembered the time (some twenty years ago, for   instance) when those experiences were experiences of the vital, the mind, the Psychic Being and above.   It was the way of being there (gesture above), but the body was left out: it was in a different way, in its   --   hold them together. While if you have united your consciousness to the psychic consciousness, when   you die you will remain conscious of your psychic being, and the Psychic Being will return to the   psychic world which is a world of bliss, joy, peace, tranquillity, and growing knowledge.... But if you   --   how it took place, but it was the day before yesterday, and the fact I noted was the presence of the   psychic being - that the Psychic Being hasn't gone at all. I said [on August 28], "The vital and the mind   have gone," but the Psychic Being hasn't.   I think it was in relation to someone I saw (I don't remember), and I noticed that a very great power   was there; and the PHYSICAL being, the body, was conscious of the presence of the Psychic Being,   which was constantly there, behind. It hasn't gone. Conscious.   --   concentrated on that person - it was the same thing: the Force, the Presence, with the same Pressure on   the person. And then, it was the Psychic Being which said, "But I haven't gone, I've remained here!"   With its full consciousness, you understand. It's the intermediaries [i.e., the mind and the vital] that   --   consciousness), and for example, the habit of keeping my eyes closed has increased, and it doesn't   hamper the Psychic Being in any way. It goes on with its action, its relationship.   It may be (I am not saying anything because there's nothing very... nothing definite, at any rate),   there may be a new relationship or new intermediary being built between the Psychic Being and the   material, the physical. It seems to be something now developing.   We'll see.   But the Force that expresses itself, does it express itself directly or through the Psychic Being -   this descending Force?   the Psychic Being is perfectly transparent, it doesn't cause any change.   It must depend on the case, yes, on the kind of action: on people, circumstances. Because the   --   circumstances. When the action is general, it seems to be direct. But I am not absolutely sure. And the   presence of the Psychic Being makes itself felt only in the case of certain people.   It strikes me as a kind of beacon - a beacon projecting the Light - and at the same time, a sort of   --   call "opacity," a sort of concretization of the body's existence comes back.   You understand, the Psychic Being's direct contact with the bodily substance, without intermediary,   gives the sensation... (is it "sensation"? I don't know; it's neither sensation nor perception), it's a sort of   --   body?"   the Psychic Being?   The physical being.   --   That's it, that's right! (Laughing) She divided herself up: communist, a communist death!   Yes, that's it. the Psychic Being went away peacefully, the mind scattered. Yes, because it was her,   but it was... I can't say a "person" (there's no person), but it was inside. It was inside, it wasn't like

Evening_Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga      Sri Aurobindo: He must first of all remain completely detached in the vital being and in the mind. The illness is the result of the working of the forces of Nature. He must use his will to reject the illness and one’s will must be used as a representative of the Divine Will. When the Divine Will descends into the Adhara then it works no longer indirectly through the Sadhak’s will but directly and removes the illness. When the Psychic Being awakens then it is able to perceive the influence of the disease even before it enters the body. Not only does one perceive it, but one knows which organ is going to be attacked and one can keep off the attack with the help of the Higher Power.      --      Sri Aurobindo: Yes, yoga means growing more and more conscious. Even the movement of the subliminal self must be felt and experienced. The centre of vision — and will — is between the eye-brows. The centre of the Psychic Being is in the heart — not in the emotional being but behind it. The vital being is centred in the navel.      All this is not the real Soul,— it is nature. The Soul is deeper within. The direct method of the Supramental yoga would be to know the subliminal or the Psychic Being and open it to the Higher Power. But it is a drastic method, and if the Adhar is not pure then it would lead to a mixture of Truth and falsehood, of what comes from Above and what comes from below, and such a state is dangerous in certain cases. You need not take up that method but this preparatory practice which is regarded as very high in other yogas. It is really the first essential step in the Supramental yoga.      --      A photo was taken and shown to Sri Aurobindo. It made a favourable impression and he found that the Psychic Being could open — though he found (on reading the photograph) that there was hardly any development of the mental being and the physical being was too weak for this Yoga. He saw him seven days later and told him that he could not give this Yoga to him:      --      “But what is his Super-ego? I don’t know. Sometimes it seems what I call the subliminal self, and sometimes the Psychic Being. It may be something like the Over-soul.”      --      Even when the union of the psychic takes place between the two, the other parts, the mental, the vital and the physical of one may clash with that of the other and the gain of the Psychic Being may be spoiled by this disharmony. But if the Psychic Being dominates in both then these difficulties may slowly clear up. The spiritual relation between man and woman is the most difficult to achieve. The man seeking the higher divine life, the seeker after divine Consciousness and the Truth,— who is Purusha,— if he meets the woman of the right type, the woman who is his Shakti. — then his spiritual life, the life which he is to manifest, is enriched and becomes full. In this case also there is the psychic union between the two.      --      “I am not inclined to lecture on the Psychic Being.”      --      Sri Aurobindo: Do you want me to lecture on the Psychic Being?      --      Secondly, when it is awakened, the Psychic Being gives the Sadhaka the true Bhakti, devotion, for God or for the Guru. That devotion is quite different from mental and vital devotion.      In the mind one may have admiration for the intellectual ideas of someone, or one may have mental appreciation for some great intellect. But if it is merely mental, it does not carry matters very far, it is not sufficient by itself. It does not open the whole of the inner being; it only establishes a mental contact. Of course, there is no harm in having that. When K came here he had that mental admiration for what I have written in the Arya. One can get something from that kind of mental contact, but it is not what one can get by being in relation with the Psychic Being. I do not, for a moment, want to suggest that there was no truth in his Bhakti, but there was much mixture in it and even what was mental and vital was very much exaggerated.      --      But the psychic Bhakti is not like that. Because the soul is in connection with the Divinity behind, it is capable of true Bhakti. the Psychic Being has what is called ahaitukī bhaktí. Devotion without any motive. It does not make any demands, it makes on reservations in its surrender.      the Psychic Being knows how to obey the Truth in the right way. It can give itself up fully to God or to the Guru; and because it gives itself up truly it receives also truly.      When the Psychic Being comes to the surface it feels sad when the mental, or the vital being, is making a fool of itself. That sadness is purity offended. When the mind is playing its own game, or when the vital being is carried away by its impulses, it is the Psychic Being which says: “I do not want these things; what am I here for, after all? I am here for the Truth and not for these things,” Psychic sadness is again different from mental dissatisfaction or vital sadness or physical depression.      If the Psychic Being is strong it makes itself felt in the mental and the vital being, and forces them to change. But if it is weak, the mental and the vital parts take advantage of its sadness and use it even to their own advantage. A weak psychic being is often an affliction.      Take the case of X. He has a well-developed intellectual being, but his vital is often quite different in its character. At times the Psychic Being in his case used to force itself to the surface and throw everything into disorder. In Y’s case it was the vital being that dictated to the Psychic Being. To the protests of the Psychic Being the vital says: “yes, yes, what you say is all right, but I am also right and what I do is right and necessary.”      When the Psychic Being is weak it casts only an influence occasionally and then retires behind.      Disciple: But you said just now that the Psychic Being knows everything and is in communication with the Truth, then why should it be weak? Why can it not force the other parts of nature to obey it?      Sri Aurobindo: If the Psychic Being is not fully awake, it does not come to the surface. It is very much behind in most people, and when it cannot come fully to the surface I call it “weak,” not that the Psychic Being itself is weak. It has got everything in it, but when it can’t bring it forward it is called weak.      Disciple: Is the Psychic Being the same as what is called Atman — the Self?      --      Sri Aurobindo: Generally it is used to imply the passive state, but sometimes it is used for both. the Psychic Being is not the same as the Atman. It is what corresponds to the European idea of “Soul”. The Western occultists recognise, at least they used to recognise, three things: 1. Spirit, 2. Soul, 3. Body. The Spirit corresponds to the Atman, and the Soul to the Psychic Being. It is the Purushta hṛdaye guhāyām, “the Soul in the cave of the heart”.      Disciple: Is the “angustha mātraḥ puruṣaḥ”, spoken of in the Upanishad the same as the Psychic Being?      Sri Aurobindo: It may be. I think the Psychic Being was meant by the phrase, “īśvaraḥ sarvabhūtānāṃ hṛddeśe” the Lord seated in the heart of creatures.      Disciple: Is not the Psychic Being the direct portion of the Divine here? If so, is it the same as the Jiva?      Sri Aurobindo: The Jiva is something more than the Psychic Being. the Psychic Being is behind the heart; while the Jiva is high above, connected with the Central Being. It is that which on every level of consciousness becomes the Purusha, the Prakriti and the personalities of Nature. the Psychic Being, one may say, is the Soul-personality. the Psychic Being most purely reflects the Divine in the lower triplicity of mind, life and body. There are four higher levels: Sat, Chit, Ananda and Vijnana; they are in Knowledge while below in the three levels — mind, life and body — there is a mixture of Ignorance and knowledge. the Psychic Being is behind these three — mind, life and body; it is most open to the higher Truth; that is why it is indispensable for the manifestation of the Divine.      the Psychic Being alone can open itself completely to the Truth. This is so because the movements of the lower parts — mind, life and body — are full of defects, errors and mixtures and, however sincere they may be and however they may try to transform themselves into the movements of the Truth, they cannot do it unless the Psychic Being comes to their help. Of course, these lower parts have their own sincerity.      When the Psychic Being awakens it becomes easy for the Sadhaka to distinguish from within between truth and falsehood, and also to throw out from the nature any wrong movement.      You may write to K one more point: the Psychic Being refuses to be deceived by appearances. It is not carried away by falsehood. It refuses to be depressed by falsehood, nor does it exaggerate the Truth of what it sees. For example, even if everybody in the world around says: “There is no God”, the Psychic Being refuses to believe it. It only says: “I know and also, I know because I feel.”      As I said, the Psychic Being is behind the emotional being in the heart, and when it is awakened it throws out the dross from the emotional being and makes it free from sentimentalism and the lower play of vital emotions. But that is not the dryness of the mind, nor the exaggeration of the vital feelings, it gives the just touch to each emotion.      Disciple: Could one say that in the planes of consciousness above the mind all is the same — the Psychic Being and the Atman etc.?      --      Lastly, lest he should think that the Psychic Being is something weak and inert let him understand that the presiding Deity — the adhiṣṭhātrḯ devátā — of the psychic plane is Agni, Fire. It is the Divine Fire of aspirations When the Psychic Being is awakened the God of the plane is also awakened. And even if the whole being is impure it is this Agni — Fire — which intervenes, removes the obstacles in the way and consumes all the impurities of the being.      --      There is something in us that takes the joy of life. I don’t mean the vital joy. Normally, it is a certain inner happiness,— you can’t really call it happiness,— it is a certain inner joy and well-being kept up by the Psychic Being. When that gets affected then there is psychic depression.      --      Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it can easily last. That is not the question. Even in the case of persons, whose external life shows no sign that promises a change, that is, in the most unexpected cases also changes may come. In such cases, judging merely by the external life, you can’t say that there was nothing in the man that wanted to change. The question is not what the mind and other parts demand, but what the inner being demands. Many times it happens that the Psychic Being is covered up completely by some obstruction and then suddenly a blow is given which at once removes the obstacle.      --      Sri Aurobindo: Did you refer to the dictionary to find out whether “Chaitya Purusha” can mean “the Psychic Being”, “the Soul”?      --      Sri Aurobindo: I wanted to know if the word has a fixed connotation. If it has not, then one can use the word “Chaitya Purusha” for the “Psychic being”. It has the advantage of carrying both the functions of the Psychic Being: it is the direct portion of the Divine in the human and it is also the being that is behind the Chitta.      --      A strong mental being is also very necessary. Otherwise, when the experiences come the man turns upside down. In India, our mental development — I mean the outer man’s development — is not at all proportionate. There is the Psychic Being ready in many cases, there is the aspiration for spiritual life and faith also. But mind, reason, intelligence — the dynamic mind — are very crude. That is why I hesitate sometimes to give the yoga.      --      Disciple: I mean by it the consent of the Psychic Being.      Sri Aurobindo: the Psychic Being is behind the mental, vital, etc., while what I call the Central Being is generally something above the whole being which presses on the nature and gets the thing done. It is that which drives the man to yoga. All the rest is merely an excuse — circumstances, intellectual ideas and such other things are mere excuses. In my own case I started with the idea of freeing India and then I entered deep into yoga, I found that something already had arisen and I went straight and all right; otherwise I would have deviated from the path.      --      In the ideal case one is ready to admit one’s own defects and be on guard to watch with spiritual humility. But all these things make the Higher Power’s working very difficult in the lower nature. Therefore we insist so much on sincerity in this yoga. It is the Psychic Being which has no such pretensions because it knows and can surrender to the Divine. It is therefore that in our yoga the awakening of the Psychic Being is so important. That alone gives one the psychic tact which steers clear of all difficulties.      --      Sri Aurobindo: There are two things: the body and the soul. The body is an ordinary formation and I suppose you know what science says about the composition of Matter. It is all a play of atoms and they can be resolved into electrons and the electrons are formations of certain forces in the physical world. Then you come to the vital body. That is a formation from the vital world and then you have the mental body which is again a formation from the mental world. Similarly, the Psychic Being is also formed. I leave side other minor divisions of the being. This is only a rough outline. If you want to go into details, the physical alone has five planes and so on in other parts. Then you come to the Soul. Ordinarily the Soul is not understood as the Jiva. “Soul” does not denote the essential personality which is eternally one with the Divine and is always in the presence of God. So also “Soul” does not mean Atman, the Self, because for this Self there is no evolution. What is generally understood by the Soul is the psychic and mental individualisation which persists even after the dissolution of the physical body and the vital sheath.      --      Shrinking is nervous in its nature, and pity is in the heart. It is an emotion. It has more to do with the Psychic Being. Pity of the Jains is more intellectual than that of other classes. They have no objection to cruelty if it does not take that particular form which by custom and Sanskara they are made to abhor.      --      Disciple: What is the relation between the inner mental, vital and inner physical beings and the Psychic Being?      Sri Aurobindo: The mental, vital and physical beings are the instruments of expression of the Psychic Being. You can say that they are formulations of the Psychic Being here for manifestation in earth-evolution. It is the Psychic Being which supports the mental, the vital and the physical beings here. It stands behind them. the Psychic Being is what the Europeans call the “Soul” — it is the “true person” in man. It is the innermost being in the lower nature, it is the direct representative of the Divine in the lower nature. It is generally supposed to be behind the heart. It is behind the emotional activity which is its surface manifestation. Ordinary emotional activity is not psychic in its nature. True psychic emotion is very deep, it is pure spiritual emotion. the Psychic Being open directly to the Higher Truth and it is that which can receive it here.      Disciple: Is it that the Psychic Being governs man’s mental vital and physical being?      --      Disciple: You said when speaking about X that he had broken the veil between the inner mental and the Psychic Being. What did you exactly mean by it? Is there such a veil?      --      Disciple: Is the activity of the Psychic Being mainly in the inner mental,, the inner vital being or is it subconscious?      --      Disciple: What has the Psychic Being to do with the Supermind?      Sri Aurobindo: the Psychic Being is not the Supermind. For instance, one can, by breaking the veil, somehow get into the subliminal or the Psychic Being, but one cannot get to the Supermind like that. the Psychic Being opens to the Higher Truth, but it is not That, it receives the Truth. the Psychic Being is what is “behind” the mental and the vital and the physical being, but not “above”.      --      Disciple: Is the Psychic Being the entity that survives death? What is meant by kāraṇa śarīra?      Sri Aurobindo: It is not the Psychic Being which presides over reincarnation, but the Jiva, the Central Being, which according to its need gathers the material from Nature. The kāraṇa śarīra generally means the Supramental body.      --      Disciple: What do We mean when we say that the Psychic Being in a man has: come to the front or when we say that it has become strong?      Sri Aurobindo: When we say that the Psychic Being has come to the surface we mean that it has begun to exert its influence on the other members of a man’s nature — It becomes first an active influence and ultimately is the influence in the being. And the result of influence is to turn the whole nature towards the Truth. In proportion as it increases its control and influence, its formations and personalities in a man, we say that his psychic being is more developed.      Generally, there are certain external signs by which you can find out that the Psychic Being of a man is more developed. For instance, such a man has greater purity, delicacy in life in dealing with people and refinement of taste. One can hear, also, the voice of the soul which generally comes from the Psychic Being. But it should not be confounded with the voice that is heard in the mind. The psychic voice is true and it has something more imperative in it than the mental voice.      Disciple: Has the Psychic Being its own activity and field apart from its working through the mind, the vital and the body?      --      Sri Aurobindo: Generally, man catches glimpses of the soul and by degrees the soul comes to the surface till the whole being is controlled by it. But there is no fixed rule; the whole of the Psychic Being can come to the surface all at once.      --      Sri Aurobindo: It is very difficult to say; but, I supose, it depends upon how far the Psychic Being withdraws from the movement. If the Psychic Being can reject completely and cut itself away from this vital personality that has brought about this fall, in that case the vital personality would be left to its own fate. It may either disintegrate or go into animal births and sink lower or be incorporated in the Asuric plane. But it would not be any longer a part of himself. Then the Psychic Being would have to build the vital and the physical being for itself and it may take several livs8 If he were not possessed as he is, and if he could live like a normal man in this life what he has done before might serve as a basis for his future evolution. But now he has to regain what he has lost. But supposing that the Psychic Being is not able to throw away this personality in him, then he may go on repeating the double movement and one can’t say to what it may lead.      --      But the Psychic Being may in a future life be able to recover the lost ground by rebuilding the vital and the physical which would be better than they are now.      --      Disciple: Is there any relation between the aesthetic being and the Psychic Being?      Sri Aurobindo: There is a sense of beauty in the aesthetic being and also there is a sense of beauty in the Psychic Being. Beyond that there is no necessary relation between the two.      The aesthetic being belongs to the vital plane. If the man is not merely a master of form and line the aesthetic being sees that the beauty of form expresses something. The aesthetic being sees the beauty of form and line and sees also the beauty of something that is expressed, while the Psychic Being sees the charm of the soul.      the Psychic Being has no beauty as it is ordinarily understood. It is rather “charm”,— an inner beauty, beauty of the soul. But it need not necessarily have beauty of form,— though it may also have that. A man who may have a fine soul may not be beautiful.      --      Disciple: Can a person appreciate psychic beauty without having the Psychic Being evolved in him?      Sri Aurobindo: What do you mean? There is the Psychic Being in everybody.      Disciple: But if the Psychic Being is not strong?      --      But the ordinary man can hardly be said to have a soul or the Psychic Being. The soul is there but it is covered up and very much behind.      --      Sri Aurobindo: Then why do you call it sleep? It may be the Psychic Being, or the inner being watching what is happening. Sometimes one goes into deeper state and remembers nothing in his outer consciousness, though many things may be going on within. What is called dreamless sleep is really a sleep in which dreams are passing on, only one does not know. Sometimes one discusses problems in such a condition, gets the ecstasy of union, etc. One may also go into other worlds with one part of this being and meet other forms etc. This is of course the first condition and a kind of a beginning of Samadhi. From what you describe it may be an inner being’s experience and not psychic. Even then, no doubt that your face is beaming with Ananda, seeing which I thought you went within.      --      Disciple: What is the connection between the causal body and the Psychic Being?      Sri Aurobindo: the Psychic Being is what is called Chaitya Purusha in the heart, while the Causal body is at present Superconscious. They are not the same.      --      Sri Aurobindo: From what Brunton (Paul) has written it does not seem so. He speaks of the “voice in the heart” that would mean the Psychic Being.      --      Disciple: Is not our choice decided by the Psychic Being in us?      --      Sri Aurobindo: It is the experience of the Psychic Being. So, you had the psychic experience.      --      In the dynamic liberation, it depends upon where and how you experience the unity. If it is in the mind you feel your mind as one with the Cosmic Mind; in that case your own mind does not exist. If you feel the unity in the vital, then your vital being becomes a part of the cosmic vital, one with cosmic life. You can experience the Unity on the physical plane; then you feel your body as a speck of Universal Matter. Or, the identity can be above the Mind, by breaking open the lid that divides the Mind from the Infinite. Just as there is a wall that separates the Psychic Being from the outer nature, so also there is a wall above the head. You break the wall or, what is called the lid, and you feel yourself as the Infinite, and your individual self in the Infinite. That opening can be either vertical or horizontal. This realization makes dynamic liberation possible,— not merely a liberation of Laya.      --      Disciple: Can one say that the Psychic Being always wants transformation? There are people who believe that the Psychic Being in evolution would and must want transformation. Only the Atman — the spirit — can merge into laya in the infinite. Can not the developed psychic being turn to Laya-merging into the infinite?      --      Sri Aurobindo: The saints live in the Psychic Being, that is, in the Purusha in the heart but the spiritual man might live above the head. I never felt like a saint myself — though Maurice Magre calls me “a philosopher and a saint.” Krishna, for instance, was not a saint. A spiritual man may not always behave like a saint, he may have many other things in him like Rishi Durvasa.      --      Disciple: You said that the Psychic Being also is a personality.      Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the Psychic Being also is a Psychic Purusha.      Disciple: Does the Psychic Being develop from birth to birth?      Sri Aurobindo: It is not the Psychic Being itself that develops, but it guides the evolution of the individual being by increasing the psychic element in the nature of the individual. It is these personalities in nature that are bound.      --      Disciple: Then it seems that the function of the Psychic Being is the same as that of Vedic Agni who is the God of Fire, who is the leader of the journey.      --      When Hitler began he was not like that. He was considered an amusing crank and nobody took any notice of him. But his latest photograph shows him like a criminal, he seems to be going down the darkness very fast. It is the vital possession that gives him his size and greatness. Without this possession he would be a crudely amiable person with some mental hobbies and eccentricities. This possession becomes possible because the Psychic Being in him is undeveloped. There is nothing in his being that can resist the vital force.      --      Sri Aurobindo: It depends on the strength of the Psychic Being. It may be overclouded by the vital and the physical element. Of course, when it is merely physical then there is no adoration and love in it. Psychic relation is not generally found.      --      Sri Aurobindo: The value of Name and Kirtan depends upon awakening of the Psychic Being and its influence over other parts of nature.      --      Sri Aurobindo: If it touches the Psychic Being it has.      --      Sri Aurobindo: Very often it ends in awakening the vital instead of the Psychic Being.

Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1, #unset, #Stephen Covey, #unset   What does that mean. Sir?   SRI AUROBINDO: It is the experience of the Psychic Being. So you had the psychic experience.   DR. MANILAL: But unfortunately I couldn't recognise it. (Laughter)   --   seemed to be quite distinctly outside me.   SRI AUROBINDO: Then why do you call it sleep? It may be the Psychic Being or   the inner being watching what was happening. Sometimes one goes into a   --      but he said something like: "the Psychic Being is what is called the Chaitya   Pumsha in the heart; the causal body is part of the Superconscious." Then   the talk turned on the Atman or Self and the Psychic Being. Sri Aurobindo   said they are not the same. Ramana Maharshi was brought in by Satyendra   who said that the Maharshi had realised the Self and that Brunton had written of the Maharshi's hearing of the Voice in the heart. Sri Aurobindo remarked that the Voice in the heart would refer to the Psychic Being and then   it would decidedly not be the Atman realisation. At this point the Mother   --   SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, in the sense that if you go against the essential Divine in   you and drive out the Psychic Being, the nature is left without any divine   support.   --   any nature when they enter into Laya; they drop it.   SATYENDRA: Cannot the human soul, the Psychic Being, escape?   SRI AUROBINDO: As I say, if you want to escape, you may. To accept transformation or to escape is your own affair, but if you accept my idea of the   --   without the dualities.   SATYENDRA: Does the Psychic Being always want transformaation? It is Doraiswamy's question. He says, "Yes, because the Psychic Being is in the evolution, while the spirit can merge in Laya."   SRI AUROBINDO: the Psychic Being wants transformation if it is developed   and in front. But it can also take any spiritual turn and not necessarily that   towards transformation.   NIRODBARAN: What sort of transformation? Transformation of the Psychic Being itself or of the lower nature in general?   SATYENDRA: Of the Psychic Being itself.   SRI AUROBINDO: Many Yogis have had that. All saints had the psychic transformation: they have the pure Bhakta nature. But many spiritual men have   --      SRI AUROBINDO: Well, the Psychic Being means the Purusha in the heart, not   in the spirit. I never feel like a saint myself, though Maurice Magre calls me   --   sense. It is both dynamic and static, Saguna and Nirguna, the Nirguna supporting the Saguna.   PURANI:You have said that the Psychic Being is also a personality.   SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, there is the psychic Purusha.   PURANI: Does the Psychic Being develop from birth to birth?   SRI AUROBINDO: It is not the Psychic Being itself that develops. But it guides   the evolution of the individual by increasing the psychic element in the nature of the individual.   PURANI: If the Psychic Being is a spark of the Divine, then its function is the   same as that of the Vedic Agni as "the leader of the journey".   --   NIRODBARAN: What is the upshot then?   SRI AUROBINDO: It all depends on the Psychic Being. If the Psychic Being is   touched and wakens and throws its influence on the other parts, then the   --   CHAMPAKLAL: Then mechanical repetition has no effect.   SRI AUROBINDO: If somehow it touches the Psychic Being, yes.   NIRODBARAN: In Kirtan, people easily go into Dasha (a kind of trance).

Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   etc.   If the soul or the Psychic Being took an entirely new mind, vital and   body, then the law of Karma would not be binding in the next life. It is not a   --   SRI AUROBINDO: His inner being has rejected sex altogether.   NIRODBARAN: A has asked if the inner being means the Psychic Being.   SRI AUROBINDO: It also means the inner physical, the inner vital and the

The_Coming_Race_Contents, #The Coming Race, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga      XXXVIII. the Psychic BeingSome Mysteries 148      XXXIX. The Past Lives and the Psychic Being 157      --   too has many degrees and it is expressed on many levels.   But the core of aspiration is in the Psychic Being, it is there   at its purest, for there is its origin and source. Prayers   --   immortality. Such formations, though not themselves   the Psychic Being, have a psychic quality, are indepen-   dent beings, possess their own life and seek their   --   The matter is not so simple. I have told you often   that the Psychic Being is the result of an evolution, that   is to say, it is the expression of the divine consciousness   --   raises Matter and develops it so that it may return to the   Divine. the Psychic Being is formed progressively by   the divine centre through many lives or incarnations.   --   Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, a being of involu-   tion who incarnates in the Psychic Being. These over-   mental entities are termed gods or divinities by men.   --   higher worlds the Higher Mind, the Overmind and   other domains do not have the Psychic Being. Naturally,   the beings of the vital worlds have not got it either.   --      the Psychic Being SOME MYSTERIES   Does the Psychic Being progress always?      --   pendent conscious person who has his own will and acti-   vity. As I say, the Psychic Being is originally like a spark   from the divine consciousness: it grows into a conscious   --      the Psychic Being SOME MYSTERIES 149      --      the Psychic Being SOME MYSTERIES 15!      --      the Psychic Being SOME MYSTERIES 153      --   looking up towards something higher, in that case, the   thing appears to the Psychic Being as a luminous vibration   which beckons it. It is the answer to its will. It shows the   --      the Psychic Being SOME MYSTERIES 155      --      I did not say quite like that. the Psychic Being is not   stupid. What happens may be described in this way:   for example, suppose the Psychic Being has had the expe-   rience of the life of a writer. The function of the writer is   --      PAST LIVES AND the Psychic Being      --      PAST LIVES AND the Psychic Being 159

The_Riddle_of_this_World, #unknown, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga   meet here many difficulties and much danger; only those who follow   scrupulously a strict guidance or have the Psychic Being prominent in   their nature pass easily as if on a sure and clearly marked road across   --   Another thing. It is not the personality, the character that is of the   first importance in rebirth - it is the Psychic Being who stands behind   the evolution of the nature and evolves with it. The psychic when it