In the Mother's Light

THE SOUL OR THE PSYCHIC (I)

IF we probe deep into our nature, we cannot fail to discover that behind the unceasing flux of its constituent elements there is a constant thirst for infinity and eternity. This thirst can be detected even in the very grain of the elements themselves. It is this secret thirst or yearning that is the source of hope which sustains us even in the midst of our worst trials. Our instinctive fear of death is an inverted hope of immortality. Our desires strain after an infinity of satisfaction. We covet a particular thing or a particular enjoyment, and when that is obtained, our desires, instead of ceasing, fully satisfied, increase in intensity and run after further satisfactions. Our emotions like love and hate seem to be limitless and unfathomable. Our sensations, likewise, betray no end or term of their lust for pleasure. Our thoughts, above all, wing and soar beyond the confines of our sense-mind, exploring immeasurable spaces and surprising truths after truths which widen and enlighten our life and culture. All this proves—and even the most confirmed materialist cannot but perceive it— that there is something in us which has a divination of its infinity and immortality, and a conscious or subconscious urge towards it in life—a being, an entity or a principle, call it what you like, that does not perish with the perishing elements of our nature, an immortal inhabitant of this mortal tenement, a child of infinity in this fleeting, finite form. How shall we otherwise account for this thirst implanted in the depth of our consciousness for infinity and immortality, the ever-expanding horizons of our vision and aspiration, our ineradicable faith in an illimitable progression towards perfection ? How could a finite being, made wholly of finite elements and a fixed quantum of finite energies, dream of the infinite and reach after it ? The very perception of our finiteness, our mortality, our state of captivity in a world which imposes its iron laws upon us, and our anguished helplessness against the blind forces of nature that toss and torture our lives into any shapes they like—in

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the spiritual seekers this perception becomes acute and poignant —this very perception presupposes a consciousness somewhere within us, however dim and inchoate it may be, of a potential existence of infinite freedom and immortal bliss. We chafe against our finiteness only because we have an occult apprehension of infinity. Our struggle against death and disintegration is induced by a subconscious feeling that we are heirs to an undying life. Science advances forward to conquer more and more of knowledge and power, but what sustains and inspires its intrepid endeavours is nothing but a faith in the infinite potentialities of man. In fact, if life is evolving, if human culture is progressing in various directions, and the knowledge and power of man are extending their frontiers and their sway over the forces that oppose them, it is only due to the fundamental faith in the heart of man that he can achieve everything, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against his will, which is indomitable in its infinite force. It is at once an evidence and affirmation of the principle of infinity which man contains deep within him.

But what is that in man which exhales this sense of infinity and immortality ? The materialist does not know it. Too exclusively preoccupied with the fugitive elements of his life and nature and the outer aspects and processes of things, he does not care to inquire if there is anything within him which, defying defeat, death and destruction, leads him from behind a veil—an invisible pilot, a living fount of perennial hope and strength and inspiration. If ever a beam of light penetrates into his outer consciousness from behind the veil, or a still small voice breathes into his heart a message of ethereal import, he muffles it lest it disturb his complacent scepticism, the pride of his culture and civilisation. But the salvation of materialistic science lies in being scientific enough to recognise that besides the surface of man and things and Nature it has so successfully explored, there are far-flung uplands and hinterlands and netherlands which it has yet to explore; depths upon depths of human consciousness and nature, and even of material nature, beckon to its adventurous spirit. It must march forward to the

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conquest of the unknown with the same unflagging will and energy by which it has already conquered many a recondite secret of the known. For, indeed, the unknown is not unknowable, and even the known cannot be perfectly known except in reference to the vast unknown that enfolds, informs, sustains and directs it. The latest trend in scientific thought, wobbling between physics and metaphysics, suggests the beginning of the great venture.

In the immortal words of Maitreyi in the Upanishad we find a pointed reference to that which is imperishable in us : "What shall I do with that which will not make me immortal ?” She refused her husband's offer of wealth and property, and ex- pressed her firm resolve to follow him on his quest of the eternal Reality. For she knew that life is lived in vain if death is not conquered in it. She was athirst for the Infinite and Eternal, the one, imperishable Reality of all existence. Christ's teaching, though often quoted, is hardly understood by the majority of those who call themselves Christians. "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?" These are no mere words of visionary idealism, but an impassioned exhortation to man, to every man in the world, to know his real self,¹ his real, eternal "I", and get beyond death and dissolution. What man knows and cherishes as his "I", that for which he sweats and bleeds, outrages his conscience and blackens his life and nature, is but a flux, a changing fabric appearing and disappearing in the tides of Time, as science can very well convince him. Neither his body nor his life, his thoughts nor his feelings, his sensations nor his actions are really his—they are waves and eddies of universal energies passing through him as they pass and repass through all created beings. As the Mother vividly puts it : "Before the true self is known, you are a public place, not a being. There are so many clashing forces

¹"There is a root or depth in thee from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a centre, or as branches from the body of a tree. This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul. This depth is the Unity, the Eternity.. .of thy soul." —William Law

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working in you...”¹ "Your present individuality is a very mixed thing, a series of changes which yet preserves a certain continuity, a certain sameness or identity of vibration in the midst of all flux. It is almost like a river which is never the same and yet has a certain definiteness and persistence of its own. Your normal self is merely a shadow of your true individuality which you will realise only when this normal individual which is differently poised at different times, now in the mental, then in the vital, at other times in the physical, gets into contact with the psychic and feels it as its real being.”² The psychic is the real, abiding core of man's shifting outer structure. That is his real "I". To discover and realise the psychic or the soul must be his first business in life, as Socrates always insisted, and as every religion or spiritual discipline invariably teaches. Science, as Bertrand Russell admits, is incapable of furthering man's genuine progress, simply because it cannot remove his pitiful ignorance of himself and enlighten him on the true ends of life. "I mean by wisdom ! right conception of the ends of life. This is something which science in itself does not provide. Increase of science by itself therefore, is not enough to guarantee any genuine progress.' Genuine progress can come only by finding the soul, the in extinguishable divine spark we carry within us. "The psychic being is also a great discovery to be made requiring as mud fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents."³

The Psychic Presence and the Psychic Being

The Divine Consciousness which is involved here in Matter is immanent as a Presence in all that exists. In every living being on earth this consciousness becomes a psychic presence, a nucleus of the psychic being. "With regard to the evolution upwards, it is more correct to speak of the psychic presence than the psychic being. For it is the psychic presence which little by little becomes the psychic being. In each evolving form there is this presence, but it is not individualised. It is something

¹ & ² Words of the Mother, 3rd Series.

³ The Mother on Education,

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which is capable of growth and follows the movement of the evolution."¹ The psychic presence, a spark of the Divine Consciousness, is the only thing that is permanent in the impermanent forms we assume from life to life. It gathers round itself all sorts of elements for the formation of an individuality, the psychic being, for individualisation is the first decisive step evolution takes in its creation of diversity. But that diversity may not lead to disorder, it proceeds on the basis of the unity of the Divine Consciousness, and uses the psychic being as an immortal, living individual unrolling infinite variation on the bosom of a conscious unity. The psychic being is the living temple of the Divine on earth, and if we aspire to realise the Divine, it can be only through a realisation of the psychic in us. "Below the human level there is, ordinarily, hardly any individual formation—there is only this (psychic) presence more or less.”²

The Origin and Nature of the Psychic Being

We have already seen that it is the one, immanent, indivisible Divine Consciousness that, dwelling in each living form on earth as a psychic presence, develops a psychic personality and becomes the psychic being, an individualised entity representing an aspect of the Divine and meant to manifest that aspect in its earthly life. There is a general belief that the soul comes down from the Divine and gets entangled in the meshes of karma in the material world, and that its salvation lies in its realisation of its innate freedom from karma and its return to from where it came. The Mother does not subscribe to this age-old view. According to her, the soul or the psychic is "a child of the earth.”³ It is here, out of the inconscience of Matter that the involved Divine Consciousness emerges and, remaining immanent in all, becomes a soul or psychic in every living form, and it is this soul that is the indestructible centre of our evolving individuality; in fact, the only real individual in us. Essentially

¹ & ² Words of the Mother, 3rd Series.

³ It is, at the same time, a child of the Infinite.

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the psychic being is the Divine Consciousness individualised, immaculate in its purity and conscious of the Divine in itself; but it is shrouded in the obscurity of Matter in the beginning —a thin, quivering spark of fire, a pulsing ray of consciousness in the Cimmerian darkness of the material world. Then it evolves little by little till the spark becomes a flame, a tongue of fire rising straight to the Divine. As it evolves and awakens, it begins to radiate its influence to all the parts of our nature, and it is only because of its growing influence that our heart or mind feels an aspiration for something higher and purer than what ordinary life can give us—an unconditioned peace or bliss, an infinite existence of freedom and harmony, the Divine Reality. All that contributes to sweetness and beauty, to purity and perfection derives from the psychic. The very principle of perfection or the urge to self-transcendence that we feel within us comes from the psychic or the soul. Even those who deny the soul cannot escape its purifying and ennobling influence. But the influence remains indirect, and is impeded in its action so long as the soul has not awakened enough to stamp itself upon the outer parts of our nature. The awakened soul can turn even the rankest scepticism into faith and convert a determined materialist into an ardent seeker of Spirit. "Once we are securely conscious of the true soul in us which is always surrendered to the Divine, all bondage ceases. Then incessantly life begins afresh, the past no longer cleaves to us.”¹ This contact with the psychic being in us, and the change of consciousness that results from it are called new birth. "To be reborn means to enter, first of all into our psychic consciousness where we are one with the Divine and eternally free from the reactions of karma.”²

Till the psychic is awake and in front, it is the ego in us that is the leader of our life. The desires and impulses of our vital (prana) and the ideas, opinions and preferences of our mental being are all egoistic in their nature and drive. If left to them- selves, they would never turn to the Divine, but perpetually spin round the ego. Born of the obscurity of Matter and nursed by subconscient energies, they multiply division and discord)

¹ & ² Words of the Mother, 3rd Series.

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and mechanically repeat the movements of the world forces. And the ego itself with which we are so completely identified and which we regard as our real "I", is but a creation and tool of ignorant Nature and subject to constant mutation. It is only when the psychic awakes that we can be said to be on the way to discovering our real individuality. It is only a contact with the soul and with the Divine in the soul that can make our life worth living, for, the soul gives not only meaning and significance to our life, but the right direction, and, finally, the right fulfilment. "All things are insignificant in ordinary life. The thoughts you think, the actions you do, the feelings you experience, all your movements have no significance at all, they possess no value. They belong to the superficial parts of your being, they come and pass away, like ripples on the sea, leaving no trace or effect in the depths. Only at a rare moment, if ever you come in contact with a corner of your soul, if something of that inmost consciousness touches or gazes at any limb of yours, that flash of a moment is the only significant thing that happens in the midst of all the useless mass that is your life. This is the only precious point and the rest a world of rubbish. To make your life significant, to give it its true meaning and value, you must then draw back from the surface trivialities and look for something else behind. You must go very deep indeed if things are to cease being insignificant.”¹

In the dust and heat of life's struggles, we hardly ever pause to reflect and ask ourselves whether there is any ulterior purpose and goal of our life, whether or not, indeed, there is something deep within us that whirls not in the vortex of Nature, that craves not in our cravings, suffers not in our sufferings, dies not in our death, but abides, calm and smiling, watching our Joys and griefs, watching our victories and defeats, and raying. out its influence, little by little, to turn our consciousness from the futile turmoil of the surface to the limpid peace and harmony of the depths, from the ignorance and discord and ugliness of the external world to the beauty and truth and happiness of the veiled domains of our being, from the passing show of

¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta.

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appearances to the ever-lasting, all-enfolding Reality, the Divine. We, who brag of our knowledge and culture, are so blissfully ignorant of the very essence of our being, the reason of our existence, the infinite source of light and love and life we carry within us ! The soul, our inmost being, "is a centre of light and truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of you creates by His Presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and moved by the Divine Consciousness of which it is a part and parcel. It is in each of you the deep inner being which you have to find in order that you may come in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the Divine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the inner life; it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule of the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the psychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal Consciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the ignorance as the human being constantly is, you grow aware of the presence of an eternal light and knowledge within you, and to it you surrender and are integrally consecrated to it and moved by it in all things.

"For your psychic being is that part of you which is already given to the Divine. It is its influence gradually spreading from within towards the most outward and material boundaries of yow consciousness that will bring about the transformation of your entire nature. There can be no obscurity here; it is the luminous part in you.”¹

"The psychic being is that which persists after death, because it is your eternal self; it is this that carries the consciousness forward from life to life.”²

Though the psychic being represents and manifests one particular aspect of the Divine, yet it is one with the Divine. It does not feel its own existence as separate from the universal existence. It lives in conscious unity with all. "You are conscious

¹ & ² Words of the Mother.

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there (in the psychic being) that your individuality is your own line of expression, but at the same time you know too that it is an expression objectifying the one universal consciousness.”¹ It is only the ego in us that, in its pitiful ignorance, denies the soul, denies God, denies everything that would deliver it from death and suffering. It is proud of its atheism, its agnosticism, its scepticism, and regards them as the hall-mark of a rationalistic culture. It continues in its willful blindness till the breath of the psychic passes over it, quickening it to a new aspiration and orienting its consciousness towards the Infinite and Eternal. For, sooner or later, the psychic must awake and the troubled night of our ignorance must pass for ever. The Divine in us wills to manifest.

The Mission of the Psychic Being

That the soul or psychic being has any mission to fulfil on earth is overlooked by almost all religions and philosophies. The general notion is that the soul has somehow got ensnared in Prakriti (Nature) or karma, and has, in consequence, to pass through numberless births and deaths, suffering the agonies incidental to them, and that its only business in life is to break out of the snare and retire to its unconditioned existence of perfect purity and freedom. This notion bypasses all question of the mission of the soul. It does not care to inquire why the soul, intrinsically pure and free and blissful, should have got enmeshed in Prakriti, karma or samskaras. The fact of the bondage is taken for granted, and escape or flight is proclaimed as the summum bonum of human life. It is hardly realised that this notion is a tacit repudiation of most forms of theism, particularly those in which elements of monistic teleology predominate. The Mother gives us an original exposition of the mission of the psychic.

We have already learnt from the Mother how the psychic being is formed, how, essentially one with the Divine Consciousness and partaking of its infinity and immortality, it

¹ Words of the Mother.

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yet develops by the process of evolution an individuality of its own which becomes a particular radiating centre of the Divine Consciousness. It manifests an individual aspect of the universal and transcendent Divine. The object of its passing through births is not only awakening and liberation from the thraldom of Nature and recovery of its essential consciousness, but also a progressive preparation of its nature parts of mind, life and body for an eventual manifestation of the Divine and the fulfilment of His purpose on earth.

"The Psychic is like the wire between the generator and the lamp. What is the generator and what is the lamp, or rather, who is the generator and who the lamp ? The Divine is the generator and the body, the visible being, the lamp. The function, then, of the Psychic is to connect the two. In other words, if there were no Psychic in Matter, Matter would not come in direct contact with the Divine.”¹

Is it not a flood of new light thrown upon the role the psychic being is meant to play upon earth ? The psychic being is, we are told, a living link, a bridge, between the Divine and brute Matter. "It is a specialty of the earth alone." Though the Divine immanence is there in all beings and objects in all the worlds of the universe, the psychic being is only in the beings of the earth, and in no other. And among the beings of the earth, it is man alone who has the rare, glorious privilege of achieving a full efflorescence of the psychic being in himself and thereby becoming a perfect channel of divine manifestation. Integral divine transformation, integral divine union and manifestation of which even the gods are not capable, are the inevitable destiny of man on earth, thanks to the presence of the psychic in him.² The psychic is "the direct infusion of a purifying and redeeming agent into the most obscure and unconscious Matter

¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta.

² "...Beings from other worlds, worlds of what are known as demi-gods or even gods, beings from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, are anxious to take a physical body upon earth so that they may experience the Psychic, as they do not possess it".

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to waken it by degrees towards the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Presence, to the Divine Himself. It is the psychic presence that makes of man an exceptional being...But to tell the truth, tie does not seem to have profited much by it. He does not look like considering his virtue as something very desirable. He prefers to it his mental ideas, he prefers to it his vital demands and he prefers to it his physical habits. I do not know how many of you have read the Bible. But there is a story that I used to like always. There were two brothers, Esau and Jacob. Esau had gone out hunting and felt tired and hungry. He came back home and found his brother preparing a dish. He asked Jacob to feed him. Jacob said he would give him food if he, Esau, sold his birthright to him. Esau said, of what use is the birth-right to me now, and sold it to his brother. You understand the significance ? You can take it quite in the superficial way. But I took it differently. The birth-right is the right to be son of God. And Esau was quite ready to give up his divine right for a mess of pottage. It is an old story, but it is eternally true.”¹ It is the worst tragedy that can happen to mankind—and it happens perpetually—that he sells away his soul, his divine birth-right to be a son of God, for a mere mess of earthly pottage ! If he only turned to the psychic within him, believing that it is his own true, essential and immortal divine self, and that the external parts of his being are all a flux of ephemeral elements, that would be the end of his ignorant struggles and miseries. The psychic would, then, gradually become the overt leader of his life, linking his external consciousness to the Divine Consciousness and manifesting in his outer nature "the order and rule of the Divine Will.” It is the psychic being that infuses its influence into all the parts of our nature and transforms them. It is the psychic from which we receive intimations of freedom, purity, infinity and immortality. It is the psychic that enlivens us with a sense of beauty and makes us participate in the termless ecstasy of the Divine Existence. It is the psychic that inflames us with love and devotion for the Divine, and compels the discords of our life to dissolve into order and harmony.

¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part VII, by Nolini Kanta Gupta.

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The unity, equality, happy concord and cooperation which the progressive modern mind is groping after, the coordinated progress of mankind towards a nobler existence, a higher perfection to which it is dimly aspiring, can be realised only by a direct flow of the Divine Force into us through a full-fledged psychic being. No moral precept, no emotional or humanitarian appeal, but the psychic alchemy alone can change the animal in man into a god. It is impossible to regard others as others after a perfect realisation of the psychic being—others become our own self. Conscious unity with all is of the very stuff of the psychic life. A dynamic union with the psychic unites us with the Divine, and with the whole universe in the Divine. This union is the well-spring of universal love. "Live in the consciousness of the psychic centre, thus your will shall express the Divine’s Will alone and your transformed being will then be able to receive and manifest the Divine Love.”¹

What we know as faith in the Divine Presence everywhere and the Divine's power to heal and redeem all, is a gift of the psychic. It is nothing irrational or superstitious, as the callow rationalist would glibly assert, but a reflection upon our consciousness of the spontaneous knowledge of the psychic; for, the psychic knows and is one with the Divine by identity. It is small wonder, then, that faith moves mountains. For, behind the strong faith of a man, sustaining and fortifying it, stands the infinite omnipotence of the Divine to which nothing is impossible. To kindle faith and establish a conscious contact with the psychic within us is the first, indispensable preliminary to manifesting God in Matter, which is the mission of the psychic on earth.

¹ Words of the Mother.

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