The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9

THE PSYCHIC BEING

The psychic is like an electric wire that connects the generator with the lamp; the lamp being the body, the visible form. Its function is likewise, that is to say, if the psychic were not there in Matter, it could have no direct contact with the Divine. It is because of the psychic presence that there can be a direct contact between Matter and the Divine. And every human being can be told : "You carry the Divine within you, you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him." It is a direct, special, transmuting infusion into the most inconscient and obscure Matter to awaken it once more step by step to the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence and finally the Divine Himself.

It is a thing characteristic of earthly creatures. It is a speciality of the earth. But only in the human being does the psychic become more conscious, more formed and also more independent; it is there individualised. It is the presence of the psychic that makes of man an exceptional being, so much so that beings of other domains in the Universe, those, for example,

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belonging to what Sri Aurobindo calls the Over-mind, the demi-gods and even the gods are very eager to take a physical body upon earth so that they can have the experience of the psychic. These beings possess certainly many qualities which men have not, but they lack this direct Divine Presence which is quite exceptional, which is a fact of the earth and is found nowhere else. All these inhabitants of the higher worlds, of Higher Mind and Overmind and other regions do not possess a psychic being.

Naturally, the beings of the vital world do not have it either. They do not regret it, they do not want it. In their origin, of course, they descended directly from the Divine, but that was only in their origin and it is so long ago. Now they have no direct contact with the Divine within them, they do not have the psychic being. If they had converted themselves under these conditions nothing would have remained of them. Because they are made wholly of the opposite movement. They are entirely made of self-assertion, despotic power, alienation from the origin and the utmost disdain for all that is pure and beautiful and noble. Those only, very rare, among them who wish to be converted do one thing immediately take a physical body. But

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others do not want it; that ties them, restricts them to a rule which they refuse.

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It is a fact—I do not like to say it often to him, for he has such a high opinion of himself that he needs no encouragement, but it is a fact and hence I am obliged to state—that man has this exceptional virtue of having in him the psychic being. But to tell you the truth he does not seem to turn it to good account, he does not appear to consider it at all as a desirable thing, so far as one can judge from the manner in which he treats this Presence. He prefers to it his mental ideas, he prefers to it his vital desires, he prefers to it his bodily habits.

There is a story in the Bible which I always liked. Two brothers were there, Esau and Jacob. Esau returns home hungry and tells his brother Jacob that he is very hungry. He was so hungry that he proposed to his brother, "Listen, if you give me your plate of pottage—Jacob had prepared a dish of pottage—I will give over to you my birthright." One can understand the story in quite a superficial way. But it has a deeper meaning. The birthright is the right of being the son of

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God. And the man was ready to give up his divine right in order to eat because he was hungry. It is a very old story, but it is eternally true.

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At its origin, the psychic begins by a kind of a divine spark within oneself, a spark of the divine consciousness. Out of this spark will slowly emerge an independent conscious being which will have its own action and its own will.

The progress of the psychic consists in its formation, building and organisation. It grows into a conscious individuality through successive lives; for there can be progress only upon earth, in the physical world; it is not possible everywhere. In the psychic world there is a kind of rest, full of beatitude. One remains there as one is, still, without moving.

The progress is like the progress of a child that grows. It is a continuous growing. For a long time, in most human beings the psychic is a continuously growing entity. It is not a fully individualised, fully conscious being and master of itself. It needs to be born in many lives one after another so that it may build itself and become fully conscious.

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But that has an end. There comes a moment when the being is fully built up, fully individualised, fully master of itself and its destiny. When one such psychic being incarnates in a human body, it makes a great difference. This human being is, so to say, born free; he is not bound to circumstances or surroundings or heredity like ordinary human beings. He comes into the world and he has the impression that he is come purposely to accomplish something, he has a work to do, a mission to fulfil.

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From that point of view the progress of his growth has ended. That is to say, it is no longer necessary for him to be reborn in a body. Till then reincarnation was obligatory. For it is in the physical life and in the physical body that he grows little by little until he becomes a wholly conscious being. But once he is completely formed, he is free, in the sense that he can, at will, take a body or not take.

When a psychic being incarnates, it throws itself down into inconscience, because the physical world and even a human consciousness, whatever it may be, are very unconscious in comparison

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with the psychic consciousness. It is as if it fell on its head and it is stunned. Generally, but for some rare exceptions, for a long time it knows nothing; it does not know where it is, what it does, nor why it is there, nothing. It is in a great difficulty to express itself, especially in a baby who has not a brain but only the embryo of a brain. So it is very rare for a child to show that it contains within itself an exceptional being. That happens, but generally it takes time.

The psychic awakes slowly from its dazed condition and slowly it becomes aware that it is there for some reason and by choice. But the intensive mental education that one usually receives shuts out completely the psychic consciousness. Then a mass of circumstances, happenings of all kinds, emotions and sensations and various other things are needed to open the inner doors and to enable one to begin to remember—remember that one has come from another world, one has come for a very definite reason. If the psychic however had chanced to fall upon a little knowledge instead of falling into a world of ignorance, there could have been a quicker contact.

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There are not very many fully developed souls upon earth. Evidently those who have reached a certain culture, a certain growth, a certain individualisation have instinctively the tendency to come together and form groups. It is then that we come across in particular epochs and climes fully formed beings gathering together. But you must not believe that that gives in any way the exact measure of human culture and growth. That is only a spray of foam on the surface. Even among those who already form a selection, there is not perhaps one in a thousand who can be called truly an individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and therefore partially at least if not wholly free from external influences; because being a conscious entity when these influences come he sees them, those that seem to agree with his inner growth and normal development he accepts and those that contradict he rejects. And instead of being a chaos, or in any case a frightful mixture, he is an organised individual being, conscious of himself, moving in life knowing where he wants to go and how to go.

That is the best of mankind that Nature is capable of producing. They are men still, but the

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top of mankind. They are ready to become something else. But unless and until one becomes that, one remains in greater part an animal with only just a little beginning of manhood. It is only that that one can call Man. And I am saying this in the hope that you will become such a one.

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