The Psychic Being

7. A Lecture on the Psychic Being

Sri Aurobindo: Do you want me to lecture on the psychic being?

Disciple: Some general hints may be given, if you like.

Sri Aurobindo: Firstly, when the psychic awakens you grow conscious of your own soul, you know your true being. You no longer commit the mistake of identifying yourself with the mental or the vital being, you do not mistake them for the soul.

Secondly, when it is awakened, the psychic being gives the sadhak the true Bhakti 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.

When he began the Yoga he had certain capacities. Of course, he was not half as tall as he thought himself to be. But if he had not exaggerated his capacities he would have been, by this time, farther than he is today.

The vital devotion demands and demands. It imposes its own conditions. It says to God: "You are so great, therefore I worship you; and now satisfy this desire and that condition of mine; make me great; make me a great sadhak, a great Yogin, etc." It does not use this language of course, but that is what is behind it. It assumes many justifying forms and comes to the sadhak in various ways.

The unillumined mind also surrenders to the Truth but it makes its own conditions. It says to the Truth: "Satisfy my judgment and my opinions." It demands that the Truth should cast itself in mental forms. The vital being insists that the Truth should throw itself into its own movement of force. The vital being pulls at the Higher Power; it pulls at the vital being of the Guru. Both the mind and the vital beings have got an arrière pensée — a mental reservation in their surrender.

But the psychic Bhakti is not like that. Because the soul is in contact with the Divinity behind, it is capable of true Bhakti. The psychic being has what is called ahaitukī bhakti, devotion without any motive. It does not make any demands, it makes no 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 beings, and forces them to change. But if it is weak, the mental and the vital 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 into the background.

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?

Sri Aurobindo: The Atman generally means what you imply in English by the word Spirit. It is self-existent, conscious, the ānandamaya Being, the Purusha. The Atman is the same in all; it is that which is behind all the manifestation of Nature.

Disciple: Has it any features?

Sri Aurobindo: It has no features. The only thing that can be said about it is: Sat, Chit, Ananda.

Disciple: Does it indicate the passive or the active state of the Being?

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: Spirit, soul, body. The Spirit corresponds to the Atman, and the soul to the psychic being. It is the Purusha hṛdguhāyām — the soul in the cave of the heart.

Disciple: Is the aṇguṣṭha 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, iśvaraḥ sarvabhūtānām 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 the 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 hard they may try to transform themselves into 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 sadhak 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.?

Sri Aurobindo: If you mean "Everything is One" then it merely comes to the old Adwaitavada of Shankaracharya. Really speaking, it is not a matter for the mind to decide. It is a matter of experience. In a certain experience you find that "All is One" and Shankara is right. But there are other experiences in which the Vishishtadwaita and even the Dwaita finds justification. Mind only cuts, differentiates, analyses, represents. You can't push these questions too far with the mind, otherwise you bring in the old quarrel of the philosophers. You can't say: "It is that", or "It must be like this", or "It can't be anything else"; for, it may be all these things at the same time. You can't approach the Highest with thought and express it in speech. Of course, you can express it, but then you diminish it also.

True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become; that is to say, you have the knowledge because you are That. That is the reason why I insist on the attainment of the Supermind as the condition for the experience of the highest Truth, because the mind cannot really know it. In the Supermind thoughts convey different aspects of the same Truth, — so different, indeed, that the first aspect is the diametrically opposite of the last — and they are all thrown into the One.

If you have the knowledge by identity you can easily get at my thoughts and my meaning. But I find that the same thing spoken to all carries a different meaning to each.

The subject was continued at lunch-time.

Sri Aurobindo: In the letter you can explain to K what the psychic feelings are. They are not the same as what ordinary men experience as sentiments and feelings. For example, the ordinary sentimental pity is not the same as what is called 'psychic compassion'. The latter is a much deeper compassion than pity. So also 'psychic love' is not the same as what generally passes for love. There is an unselfishness in psychic love; it is always free from all demands — it has no vital claims. Even psychic 'unselfishness,' is not the same as the ordinary unselfishness. There is an unselfishness which plays on the surface and shows itself off. It becomes philanthropy— paropakāra. But the psychic counterpart of it sees the need of the other person and just satisfies it.

Lastly, lest he should think that the psychic being is something weak and inert, let him understand that the presiding Deity — the adhiṣṭhātṛ devatā — of the psychic plane is Agni. It is the Divine Fire of aspiration. 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 which intervenes, removes the obstacles in the way and consumes all the impurities of the being.

From Conversations
Recorded by A.B. Purani