CWTVKS Volume 2

2) The Psychic

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The Mother said in part:

One can reach the Psychic through the physical, vital or mental. The psychic in us is a being and a consciousness; but there is also a psychic world in the Universe. It is in space and time, though in an inner space and time of its own; but it is not in the Ignorance as Mind, Life and Matter are. It is a wide, luminous world, organised by the Divine—a world of deeper vibration (of Consciousness).

By occult training one can enter the Psychic world and explore it as one does a country.

The beings of the Psychic world have to incarnate, they do not go up from there.

I submit a few points for elucidation.

1) Though the Psychic world is in the Universe belonging to the Manifestation as it does and the beings there are products of evolution, its position is not in the vertical line of Cosmic expression, anywhere in the rising tiers of Matter, Life, Mind and the higher reaches. Can our mind then not comprehend its position (teleological) in the scheme of this created existence?

2) Those that arrive at the Psychic world for rest, return here to take their part in the evolution, while those few who have their consciousness liberated from the Ignorance go straight up; these two roads seem to correspond to the Devayana and Pitryana of the old Indian teaching. Do they not?

3) Though they may take rest in a kind of sleep or trance, the beings of the Psychic world are not static. Then, is there interaction among them? Do any of them turn an active eye upon this world of Matter directly or through the vital or mental, throwing their influence on or even contacting those on earth with whom they have some subtle affinity just as the beings of the vital and mental worlds do?

4) Can a being of the Psychic world get fused into the soul of a human being here, avoiding the assumption of a separate material body?

5) Does a soul continue to take up a body of the same sex?

6) The soul returning here for rebirth enters, possesses, or takes charge of a material body prepared for it by Nature. When does it actually do so, at what stage and in what manner does the soul affect the parents and get itself housed in the garbha, in the bija and ksetra?

No recorded scripture seems to give a satisfactory account of the soul's rebirth, The Chandogya, on the face of it, is fantastic when it speaks of the Pancagni Vidya.

With Pranams,
Kapali

9 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo's Reply

1) The psychic stands behind mind, life and body, supporting them; so also the psychic world is not one world in the scale like the mental, vital or physical worlds, but stands behind all these and it is there that the souls evolving here retire for the time between life and life. If the psychic were only one principle in the rising order of body, life and mind on a par with the others and placed somewhere in the scale on the same footing as the others it could not be the soul of all the rest, the Divine element making the evolution of the others possible and using them as instruments for a growth through cosmic experience towards the Divine. So also the psychic world cannot be one among the other worlds to which the evolutionary being goes for supraphysical experience, it is a plane where it retires into itself for rest, for a spiritual assimilation of what it has experienced and for a replunging into its own fundamental consciousness and psychic nature.

2) Go where? If the few who go out of the Ignorance mean those who enter into Nirvana, then there is no question of their going straight up anywhere. Nirvana or Moksha is a liberated condition of the being, not a world—it is a withdrawal from the worlds and the manifestation. The analogy of the Pitriyana and Devayana can hardly be mentioned in this connection.

3) The condition of the souls that retire to the psychic worldis entirely static; each withdraws into himself and is not interacting with the others. When they come out of their trance, they are ready to go down into a new life, but meanwhile they do not act upon the earth-life. There are other beings, guardians of the psychic world, but they are concerned only with the psychic world itself and the return of the souls to reincarnation, not with earth matters.

4) No. What happens sometimes is that a very advanced psychic being sometimes sends down an emanation which resides in a human body and prepares it until it is ready for the psychic being itself to enter into the life. This happens when some special work has to be done and the human vehicle prepared—such a descent produces a remarkable change of a sudden character in the personality and the nature.

5) Usually, it follows continuously the same line. If there are shiftings of sex, it is as a rule a matter of parts of the personality which are not central.

6) No rule can be laid, for these circumstances vary with the individual. Some psychic beings get into relation with the birth-environment and the parents from the time of inception and determine the preparation of the personality and future in the embryo, others join only at the time of delivery, others even later on in the life and in these cases it is some emanation of the psychic being which upholds the life. It should be noted that the conditions of the future birth are determined fundamentally not during the period of stay in the psychic world, but at the time of death—the psychic being then choosing what it should work out in the next terrestrial appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly. Note that the idea of rebirth and the circumstances of the new life as a reward or punishment for punya or papa is a crude human idea of “Justice” which is quite unphilosophical and unspiritual and distorts the true intention of life. Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature and, if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgment inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance.

9 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Rebirth

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Pranams to Sri Aurobindo

Pranams to the Mother

Sri Aurobindo's letter has clarified my thought in regard to the questions dealt with in it and put fresh strength into me which made itself felt last evening, especially so in the morning meditation today—even before I read the letter.

An explanation is due from me regarding one of the questions in which I made reference to Devayana and Pitriyana. For the sake of brevity I said that the few who have their consciousness liberated from the Ignorance ‘go straight up’; for precision I could have added ‘to the higher worlds above the ‘Mind-plane’. But when I said ‘they go straight up’ I had not in mind the Nirvana of the Buddha or of Shankara or even the Brahma-nirvana of the Gita. I had the idea that one's consciousness must be liberated from the Ignorance of the triple lower Nature to make him eligible for entry into the worlds of the Devas; in other words, it is a kind of Jivanmukti that makes one competent to tread the lit path (arcir-marga) leading to the Swar. The other path leads to the world of the Fathers to which most souls wend their way after going through the dark passage (dhuma-marga).

Iha cedasakad boddhum prak sarirasya visrasah
tatah sargesu lokesu sariratvaya kalpate.

Is this not a liberation, a mukti?

I shall drop the analogy, but when I wrote yesterday the correspondence was striking and I thought of asking about it. Even then, I did not mean to say that the ancients had the same conception of their two yanas as when we speak of the world of Gods and the Psychic world—this apart from the distinguishing features of Sri Aurobindo's yoga and philosophy, such as the meaning of Rebirth, Spiritual evolution, Cosmic Purpose, the character of the many-sided Ignorance etc.

My explanation is perhaps correct, perhaps not correct; I have simply submitted the working of my mind.

With Pranams,
Kapali

10 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo's Reply

It is quite probable that the sloka refers to a going up into higher worlds of felicity and light and this can be called a liberation or release. In later times the idea grew strong that from all these higher worlds return is inevitable and it is only release from all cosmic existence that gives mukti. The Vedic Rishis seem to have looked to an ascent into a divine luminous world or state above the falsehood and ignorance. In the Upanishad the sun is the symbol of the supramental Truth and it is said that those who pass into it may return but those who pass through the gates of the Sun itself do not; possibly this meant that an ascent into the supermind itself above the golden lid of overmind was the definitive liberation. The Veda speaks of the Truth hidden by a Truth where the Sun looses his horses from his car and there all the myrial rays are drawn together into One and that was considered the goal. The Isha Upanishad also speaks of the golden lid hiding the face of the Truth by removing which the Law of the Truth is seen and the highest knowledge in which the One Purusha is known (so'hamasmi) is described as the kalyanatama form of the Sun. All this seems to refer to the supramental states of which the Sun is the symbol.

11 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II: The Veda and the Upanishads

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Pranams to Sri Aurobindo

Pranams to the Mother

Last week my brief reference to Devayana apparently at the cost of precision side-tracked the issue, but got me the authentic words about liberation as understood by the Vedic seers, the sages of the Upanishads and the Vedantins of later time.

But my question remains. I think it is permissible, has Sri Aurobindo's approval, to use the word Jivanmukta in the sense of one living on earth liberated in consciousness from Nature's hold on it, experiencing the essential unity of Existence, the Self or the Divine.

1) (A) Does a Jivanmukta ‘go straight up’ (without turning to the psychic world) to those of the higher worlds to which the dynamic side, the nature-part in him was open during his life on earth?

(B) If he does, does he or can he prepare from there to go still further up to Being beyond the higher worlds, to the Supermind or still above without the possibility of return?

(C) In case he returns from a Divine necessity, does he take rest in the psychic world before re-incarnation?

2) In the answer to one of my questions it was stated ‘An advanced psychic being...sends an emanation to support the life...until it is ready for the psychic being itself to enter it... Such a descent produces remarkable change, sudden etc.'

(A) What is an advanced being? One who has developed many personalities? If so, do they always live with their central being in the psychic world? Or retaining the thread with their central being in the psychic world these personalities move about in those higher planes whose elements have composed them or are predominant in them?

(B) Descent is associated in our minds with something coming down from above. When it is applied to a psychic being, as is quoted above, is it meant that it calls down one of its personalities from above at the time of entering the life which it was supporting with an emanation of its own until then?

3) Can a psychic being from its world send two or more emanations at a time to support two or more human lives here? Or can two or more human beings have a common central being in the psychic world?

4) It was said that the guardians of the Psychic world are concerned with the return of the souls to reincarnation. Are these functionaries human souls become elegible for the office or are they denizens of the psychic world occupying that position at the Will of the Presiding Presence of the Divine whom we adore as the Mother?

With Pranams
Kapali

17 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo's Reply

It is difficult to give a positive answer to these questions because no general rule can be laid down applicable to all. The mind makes rigid rules or one rigid rule, but the Manifestation is in reality very plastic and various and many-sided. My answers therefore must not be taken as exhaustive of the subject or complete.

1) (A) He can go wherever his aim was fixed, to a state of Nirvana or one of the divine worlds and stay there or remain, wherever he may go, in contact with the earth movement and return to it if his will is to help that movement.

(B) This is doubtful. If originally he is not a being of the evolution but of some higher world, he could go back to that world—if he wants to go higher, it is logical that he should return to the field of evolution so long as he has not evolved the consciousness proper to that higher plane. The orthodox idea that even the gods have to come to earth if they want salvation may be applied to this ascension also. If he is originally an evolutionary being (Ramakrishna's distinction of the Jivakoti and Ishwarakoti may be extended to this also) he must proceed by the evolutionary path to either the negative withdrawal through Nirvana or some positive divine fulfilment in the increasing manifestation of Sachchidananda.

As to the impossibility of return, that is a knotty question. A divine being can always return—as Ramakrishna said, the Ishwarakoti can at will ascend or descend the stair between Birth and Immortality. For the rest, it is probable that they may rest a relative infinity of time, saswatih samah, if that is the will in them, but a return cannot be barred out unless they have reached their highest possible status.

(C) No. That is part of the evolutionary line only, not obligatory for divine returns.

2) (A) No. An advanced psychic being means one who has arrived at the soul's freedom and is immersed in the Divine—immersed does not mean abolished. Such a being does not sleep in the psychic world, but may remain in his state of blissful immersion or come back for some purpose.

(B) The word “descend” has various meanings according to the context—I used it here in the sense of the psychic being ‘coming down’ into the human consciousness and body ready for it; it might have come down at birth or before, or it comes down later—that is all. I do not quite understand what are these personalities from above—it is the psychic being itself that takes up a body.

3) No, there is only one psychic being for each human being, but the Beings of the higher planes e.g. the Gods of the Overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by sending different emanations into different bodies. These would be called Vibhutis of these Devatas.

4) These are not human souls nor is this an office to which they are appointed nor are they functionaries—these are beings of the psychic plane pursuing their own natural activity in that plane. My word guardian was simply a phrase meant to indicate by an image or metaphor the nature of their action.

20 July 1937

Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Rebirth