Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
Can there be a conscious contact with the Mother through the psychic before the latter comes fully forward?
Yes, the psychic is always there.
How is the psychic to be brought forward?
It comes forward of itself either through constant love and aspiration or when the mind and vital have been made ready by the descent from above and the working of the Force.
To bring the psychic forward, selfishness and demand (which is the base of the vital feelings) must be got rid of — or at least never accepted.
Get rid of the dissatisfactions, they prevent the permanent psychic opening.
When the psychic being is coming out can it not brush aside vital non-cooperation, depression etc.?
If it has come out entirely, it can.
When the psychic works on the external parts of the being they begin to aspire for the Divine. In my case, its influence seems to be spreading to the lower vital with the result that the latter is making demands on the Divine. Is that the usual movement?
Yes, so long as the psychic ha? not transformed the lower vital.
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You wrote, "The heart is the seat not only of the psychic, but also of the emotional vital which covers it." Does it not mean that the emotional being itself works as a veil to the psychic?
Yes, when it is full of vital movements or accustomed more to a vital than a psychic way of emotion.
When there is a strong working or pressure on the heart-centre, is it some action on the psychic being?
Action does not take place on the psychic being, but on the emotional vital. That may result in the release of the psychic being.
Why is not my psychic being coming out in its fulness after such a long and strenuous sadhana? The absence of love is felt very keenly in my life. The ego and desires arc still persisting.
How do you expect the psychic to be in full activity with these things there and not thoroughly rejected? Moreover if the love comes forward in full what is to prevent the selfish vital taking hold of it and making demand on demand on the Mother which she will certainly refuse to satisfy — as so many have done and afterwards revolted because "the Mother does not love them", otherwise she would do whatever they want?
I promise you that henceforth no part of my nature will be allowed to respond to any desire, demand, right etc. I hope this fulfils your condition for the psychic opening.
The thing has to be done. not merely promised. If you do it, the psychic is bound to come out of itself.
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This is my appeal to the Mother: Either give me the psychic love or death. Let no third thing come to me — a final resolution.
That is altogether the wrong attitude. It is once more the vital coming in — it is not a psychic attitude. If in asking for the psychic love, you take an attitude that is vital not psychic, how do you expect the psychic to come?
Only I do not allow this matter of love to interfere with my peace, silence or self-realisation.
That is better.
Leaving aside the higher station, since yesterday I am trying to concentrate more and more on the Mother in the heart centre, with the attitude: Let me live in her, with her and it is enough.
The attitude is good for awakening the psychic and the inner being generally. But if the higher experience comes, it should not be stopped.
Along with the ascending movement in the spine, there has been a great intensity in the area of the heart. Something from there rises up ardently. Is that the soul?
Something from the psychic at any rate.
Does your answer mean that the psychic has unveiled itself now?
It is trying to open.
What is the matter again with my psychic being? It has not appeared in front for a long time.
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It will come out when the rest is prepared — till then it acts from behind the veil.
During the experience of this morning I was living or rather made to live only inwards. Excepting for the Mother's work, if I spoke even on good subjects some part protested strongly and pressed me to be quiet. Was it the inner being that did it?
The psychic probably.
While looking at the Mother in the evening, something opened to her from within my heart, just like the disclosing and blooming of a flower. Would you kindly enlighten me as to what it was?
The psychic, I suppose.
What is meant by "having a psychic basis"?
The psychic in front and supporting the whole experience.
It seems that the psychic being has begun to work directly on the outer consciousness with love and devotion as its main means.
Yes, certainly that is the working of the psychic.
The pressure from the cardiac centre down to the navel centre is felt deeply and powerfully. It descends and ascends unceasingly.
It means a strong working to connect the psychic and vital closely together.
This morning my consciousness felt an intensely burning
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fire in the heart. Till the evening it continued along with the experiences felt above the head.
It is obviously the psychic.
When I had asked you, "Cannot the psychic-realisation and self-realisation go on simultaneously ?", your reply was that such an action would be rare. Is it really such a difficult process?
I meant that usually one comes first and the other after the first, whichever it be, is sufficiently established. Afterwards they progress together1.
I can see why the mind or the inner being gets veiled by the tamas, but find no reason for the soul or self to be so, especially after a long sadhana.
You forget that the self and the soul were covered for a long time, thousands of lives. So now although they are unveiled, it needs still some tapasya to keep them always so.
Some part of my being appears to be acting as a mediator between my higher nature and the lower, but it is always fluttering. A mediator is supposed to remain detached from both the parties. Has the psychic taken up this role?
I don't know what is this mediator. The only parts that can mediate are the psychic being or else the mental Purusha or mental will. But the psychic does not flutter. If it is either of the other two, you ought to be able to know.
I wrote a prayer in French to the Mother. Her answer was: "Ouvre ton caur et tu me trouveras deja la" ("Open your
1 The development of these two realisations is discussed further in Part VI, Two Fires.
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heart and you will find me already there") What exactly does this signify?
What Mother meant was this, that when there is a certain opening of the heart, you find that there was always the eternal union there (the same that you experience always in the self above).
We believe that the Mother is doing the sadhana in all of us, particularly through the heart; but how is it we scarcely feel this? There must be some veil in us.
It is a veil which disappears when the Mother's working as well as her presence is consciously felt at all times.
I experience a strong movement to unify my entire being — inner, outer and lower — around the psychic being. At present I hear only two words, 'Mother' and 'psychic', like the word OM, surging out from the depths of my consciousness. In the external consciousness the tamas is still there. I suppose when the outer being is psychicised the tamas will be changed into peace.
Yes, these experiences open the way towards that psychi-cisation of the being.
Some deeper being is becoming more and more prominent. It has started exerting its pressure on the mechanical and sub-conscienf mind. So the inertia has to remain below. If sometimes it still forces itself up it is fought out. Is it right to say it is the psychic being?
Your description at the end shows that it must be the psychic.
Instead of staying at the heart-centre why does my psychic
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being stay mostly on the Sachchidananda plane above the head? It is from there that it manifests love and joy and governs the human nature.
Probably it joins the central being there.
What is meant by the psychic being joining the central being?
Any part of the being can go upward and meet its source there. The central being is always above; the psychic is its outer part below. If the psychic goes up it may be also to join its source, the central being.
On some other occasions I found the psychic below, but surely it does not become the lower Prakriti (Nature)?
It is not the lower Prakriti in the usual sense. It is the inmost being supporting the lower Prakriti and urging it towards the Higher.
I feel Mothers presence on the head and in the heart simultaneously. At times the consciousness on the head or in the heart descends or ascends into the other and then spreads all over the being.
It is good.
SHAPE AND
Has the soul a form? A sadhak told me he saw his own psychic being as a woman.
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
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such a form. But this seeing is of two kinds — there is the standing characteristic form taken by this being in this life and there are symbolic forms such as when one sees the psychic as a new-born child in the lap of the Mother. If the sadhak in question really saw his psychic in the form of a woman it can only have been a constructed appearance expressing some quality or attitude of the psychic.
You said, "The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form..." With regard to form what is the difference between the soul and the psychic being?
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.
When you say that the psychic being puts out a form, do you imply that it has a subtle-physical form so that one can see it as an embodied personality — just like a human body?
Yes, but it is not limited by the form as the physical consciousness.
After death when the soul returns for a new birth, who moulds the mind, vital and physical?
It is done by Nature under the influence of the soul. In a certain sense it may be said that the soul does it, because what it sees as needed is drawn in as material and shaped.
What is meant by "shaped"? Is a construction made?
Unless material is given form (i.e. shaped) it cannot be used. Construction itself means shaping. You can't construct
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something shapeless.
Is the exterior being also moulded by the soul? Tulsi told me that the inner being is constructed by the soul according to its need for a new manifestation on earth; but the outer is moulded by Nature as it belongs to Nature.
All belongs to Nature — the soul itself acts under the conditions and by the agency of Nature.
What is exactly the difference between an aspect of the Divine known as the self and a portion of the Divine called the soul?
The self feels always its unity with the Divine and is always the same. The soul is a portion of the Divine that comes down into the evolution and evolves a psychic being more and more developed through experiences of successive lives until it is ready for the divine realisation here.
If 'the self feels always its unity with the Divine', does not the soul too feel the same? Of course the psychic being does not till it attains to a certain consciousness by Yoga.
The soul in evolution is only a power for the evolution, it 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.
At present, I find that among the parts of my being — the soul, mind, vital and physical — only the first is in relation with the Divine and has love, faith, equality etc. But what is new in this? Every soul on earth contains these qualities even without practising Yoga.
Every soul is not awake and active; nor is every soul
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turned directly to the Divine before practising Yoga. For a long time it seeks the Divine through men and things much more than directly.
Whatever purity, knowledge and force the soul has, are they of its own nature or does it derive them from the higher consciousness?
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.
PSYCHIC TEARS AND PSYCHIC SORROW
When the Mother was throwing a last glance at us while returning from the Pranam, some tears and a profound feeling came out from my heart.
It is the natural psychic movement of love and bhakti deep down in the being.
Often tears come out as if directly from the heart as a result of joy or love for the Mother. I wonder if today's tears were also of the above category.
Probably they were.
The psychic tears often come up, usually they are few, one can count them. But today they were many, almost like weeping.
There is a psychic sorrow which is not like the vital one — but it may be that the feeling came from the psychic but the vital took it up.
My experience was somewhat disturbing. Could a psychic
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sorrow be like that?
The vital took it up perhaps and gave it a more vehement and turbid expression — otherwise there is nothing disturbing in a psychic sorrow.
I doubt if these were merely the tears of joy, for I could not then have left my head on the Mother's lap for such a long time. I had almost become unconscious of myself when the tears were springing out.
I did not mean that they were tears of joy. There is a psychic sorrow which usually comes when the soul feels how strong is the resistance in the vital and how much the Forces in it rage against the Mother, or when some similar feeling is in or behind the consciousness.
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