Integral Yoga of Transformation

Part Four

How the Psychic Consciousness Develops

There are two domains of consciousness, psychic and superconscient, where we need to look for, if we are in search of true knowledge and integral knowledge. Psychic consciousness is, as we have noted earlier, the inmost consciousness in the individual, and we find that the psychic entity and, its representative, soul personality, which are in profounder depths than the subliminal consciousness, are other than our body, life and mind, and it is they that support our individual life , mind and body. The psychic entity is the deputy of the individual self, jivatman, and it is a spark of the divine fire and divine love which are operations of the principle of Ananda, which is itself the union of Sat and Chit, the two other elements of Sachchidananda. It is the psychic entity which is missioned to work in the inconscience, to develop individual body, life and mind and to turn them to the Divine from which it has itself descended into the inconscience. At the human level of evolution, this psychic entity is found to have succeeded in developing, out of its potentialities, a growing psychic personality or soul-personality or psychic being. While explaining the relation between the psychic entity, psychic being or soul personality and other parts of our developing individuality, Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

There is indeed a soul-personality, representative of this entity, already built up within us, which puts forward a fine psychic element in our natural being: but this finer factor in

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our normal make-up is not yet dominant and has only a limited action. Our soul is not the overt guide and master of our thought and acts; it has to rely on the mental, vital, physical instruments for self-expression and is constantly overpowered by our mind and life-force: but if once it can succeed in remaining in constant communion with its own larger occult reality, — and this can only happen when we go deep into our subliminal parts, — it is no longer dependent, it can become powerful and sovereign, armed with an intrinsic spiritual perception of the truth of things and a spontaneous discernment which separates that truth from the falsehood of the Ignorance and Inconscience, distinguishes the divine and the undivine in the manifestation and so can be the luminous leader of our other parts of nature. It is indeed when this happens that there can be the turning-point towards an integral transformation and an integral knowledge."³⁶

The discovery of the psychic being, its experience and its development is a decisive stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The psychic entity is not an evolute of the Inconscient, although it has descended into the evolutionary process as a spark of the Divine and accompanies the evolution of our being and, with increasing evolution of our being, and with increasing power of guidance and control of the body, life and mind in our being, it, too, evolves and develops as a spark grows and develops as fire. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"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

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is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine."³⁷

According to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic being (also known as Chaitya Purusha or Antaratman or the Purusha in the heart, hrdaya guhyam, or the being which is described in the Upanishads as "no bigger than the size of one's thumb") has a spontaneous aspiration for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into our nature. When the psychic being reaches a point of its evolution where it can impose its aspiration on the mind, vital and body, they too aspire and this is what is felt as the aspiration from the level of the lower being. The seeking of the lower being is necessarily at first intermingled and oppressed by the ordinary consciousness; however by Yogic practice it becomes clear, constant, strong and enduring.

In regard to the contribution of the psychic being in the process of the yogic discipline or the sadhana, Sri Aurobindo has stated in one of his letters as follows:

"The contribution of the psychic being to the sadhana is: (1) love and bhakti, a love not vital, demanding and egoistic but unconditioned and without claims, self-existent; (2) the contact or the presence of the Mother within; (3) the 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

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the psychic brings in everything right thought, right perception, right feeling, right attitude."³⁸

The Mother on the Discovery of the Psychic Being

While describing the need to undertake the discovery of the psychic being, the Mother points out that the discovery reveals the truth of the individual being and that that discovery requires a great determination, a strong will and an untiring perseverance and that each one must, so to say, trace out his or her own path through his or her own difficulties. She points out that the discovery of the psychic being requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as a discovery of new continents. As an aid to this discovery, the Mother has given a few general indications:

"The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born the mental formation that you have been given, the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it a sense of universality, limitless expansion, unbroken continuity. Then you decentralise, extend and widen yourself; you begin to live in all things and in beings; the barriers separating individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, feel in their feelings, live in the life of all. What seemed inert suddenly becomes full of life, stones quicken, plants feel and will and suffer, animals speak in a language more or less inarticulate, but clear and expressive; everything is animated by a marvelous consciousness without time or limit. And this is only one aspect of the psychic

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realisation; there are others, many others. All help you to go beyond the barriers of your egoism, the walls of your external personality, the impotence of your reactions and the incapacity of your will."³⁹

Truth, beauty and goodness are, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, akin to the native character of the psychic consciousness, and therefore, in the early stages we dimly become aware of the psychic consciousness through a certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble; it is the psychic being who responds to and demands increasing growth of truth, beauty and goodness; it is that consciousness which puts pressure on mind and life to accept and formulate truth, beauty and goodness in our thoughts, feelings, conduct, and character; it is this psychic influence that we can most easily recognize as a finer or even a diviner part in us and the most powerful or the slow turning towards some aim at perfection in our nature.

As noted earlier, there are in our composition heterogeneous elements; our heterogeneous compound consists of temporary mental, vital, physical personalities; each has its own distinct nature, its influence, its action on the whole of us; there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members; often it is by our mental reason and will that we are moved to control and harmonize confusions and conflicts; it is in the mental being to which we look up for 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 its instruments of thought and action. But whatever harmony that we can achieve remains imperfect; and we are obliged to go deeper into the inmost truth that lies behind all conflicting elements, and this can be perfectly done, according to Sri

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Aurobindo and the Mother, only if we go within and find our real centre, and even then the harmony in our personality cannot be achieved as long as our psychic personality put forward by the psychic entity is not yet sufficiently developed. As Sri Aurobindo points out, when this personality is strong enough for the inner entity to impose itself through it, then the soul of the psychic entity can come forward and control the nature.

"It is by the coming forward of this true monarch and his taking up of the reigns of government that there can take place a real hormonisation of our being and our life."⁴⁰

Psychic Development and the Role of the Yoga of knowledge, Yoga of Will and Yoga of Divine Love

As pointed out above, the entire process is extremely long and difficult, and major efforts are necessary for the soul's complete emergence from its inmost depths right up to our surface consciousness. A major effort is required to make our surface consciousness sensitive to the spiritual Reality. That major effort assumes gradually the character of disciplined and methodized pursuit of yoga. In a sense, it may be said that every system of yoga is a specialized method by means of which our surface consciousness is so sensitized that our soul can come in direct contact in the surface being with the Spiritual reality. In a sense, it may be said that every system of yoga is sought for by our soul in its attempt to achieve the contact with the spiritual reality in the surface being. The soul may attempt through Jnana yoga, Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga or any other system of yoga, depending upon what element in our composition finds it more appropriate or useful. Through the integral yoga, the soul aims at the contact with the spiritual

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reality for a larger and comprehensive aim. The soul may attempt to achieve the contact with the spiritual reality mainly through the thinking mind as intermediary instrument, as in Jnana yoga; or it can attempt an ordinary approach through the heart and through the emotions, through love and adoration of the All-Beautiful and All-Blissful, the All-Good, as in the Bhakti yoga; it may approach through both these systems of yoga, but whatever can be achieved through these systems of yoga is not enough for the purpose of integral transformation. That integrality demands a larger change, all part of the being and individualization of the mind on its surface, of the heart or life-force on its surface and even of the body on its surface. This larger change can be partly attained by adding to the experiences of the heart and of the thinking mind a consecration of the pragmatic will. It is by combination of all these three approaches that one can create or arrive at a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara or to the Reality which is superconscient and now felt above enveloping and penetrating in our being and nature. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"A combination of all these three approaches, the approach of the mind, the approach of the will, the approach of the heart, creates a spiritual or psychic condition of the surface being and nature in which there is a larger and more complex openness to the psychic light within us and to the spiritual Self or the Ishwara, to the Reality now felt above and enveloping and penetrating us. In the nature there is a more powerful and many-sided change, a spiritual building and self- creation, the appearance of a composite perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual knowledge."⁴¹

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Psychic Being, Experience of Witness Purusha or static Consciousness, and Process of Psychic Transformation

In order to arrive at the widest totality and profound completeness, one has to shift the centre of consciousness from the surface to the inner being both in its static and dynamic positions. The outer nature has to undergo change of poise, and there must grow up within oneself or there must manifest a consciousness more and more open to the deeper and the higher being. As a result, the outer nature, and not only the inner nature alone, arrives at conversion of the consciousness, and increasing transformation of nature, both psychic and spiritual, will become effected. It is true that at a certain stage, particularly, when one can stand back from the activities of Prakriti, it becomes possible to realize one's inner being as a silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. In this state, one may not arrive at a discovery of the psychic being or psychic entity in their fullness, but one may be led to a spiritual realization and liberation. In that state, a certain mastery over the body, life and mind can be achieved, but that mastery is not transformation; the change led by them cannot be sufficient. In order to arrive at process of transformation, one has to get back, beyond mind being, life being, body being, and still move deeply inward to the psychic entity inmost and profoundest within us, —or else to open to the superconscient and spiritual domains at the highest levels. For the penetration into the luminous crypt of the soul, one has to get through all the intervening vital stuff to the psychic stuff within us, however long, tedious or difficult may be the process. The methods of Jnana yoga, Karma yoga and Bhakti yoga are indeed, useful aids to this difficult passage, but, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, "the strongest, most central

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way is to found all such or other methods on self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara."⁴²

The most important aim to be pursued would be not only the discovery of psychic entity and the development of psychic personality to its full stature, but also to allow the psychic consciousness to guide and rule our nature and to arrive at harmonization of all parts of the being and modulate them in the psychic key. Here, too, there are stages of growth and development. First of all, the crust of our outer nature begins to crack, as the walls between the psychic depths and surface consciousness begin to break down. The inner light gets to the surface consciousness, and one begins to feel increasingly the presence of the inner fire in the heart. As a result, the substance of the nature and the stuff of consciousness refine to greater subtlety and purity, and the deeper psychic experiences become possible. It is then that the soul begins to unveil itself and the psychic personality reaches its full stature. At this stage, as Sri Aurobindo points out, the soul, the psychic entity manifests itself as a central being which upholds mind, life and body and supports all the other powers and functions of the Spirit; the soul takes up its greater function as a guide and ruler of the nature. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and comer of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted

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up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions,

self deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, tuned to the right responses, delivered from the darkness and stubbornness of the tamasic inertia, the turbidities and turbulences and impurities of the rajasic passion and restless unharmonised kinetism, the enlightened rigidities and satwa limitations or poised balancements of constructed equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance."⁴³

Process of Psychic Transformation and Influx of Spiritual Experiences

This is the level of higher degrees of psychicisation, and when this is accompanied and followed by a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience there comes about not only a psychic but, more widely speaking, a psycho-spiritual transformation in many directions. The psychic experiences relate to the discovery of psychic being and psychic entity and effects it produces towards the psychic transformation of nature and towards the free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experiences. The distinguishing feature of spiritual experiences is related to the discovery of Brahman, Purusha and Ishwara at different levels of the superconscient that lie beyond the mind. These experiences include those of the Self,

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of Ishwara and the Divine Shakti of cosmic consciousness and of direct touch with cosmic forces and with occult movements of universal Nature. As a result of a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, one receives illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of dynamic action and the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the divine force working in the will and the conduct. When the psychic experiences and the spiritual experiences combine, there comes into play soul's power of unerring inherent consciousness, its vision, in touch on things which is superior to any mental cognition. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"...there is there, native to the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immediate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the Divine, — a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feeling, a direct intuition of right will and right action, a power to rule and to create an order of the being not by the gropings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature.'⁴⁴

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