The Soul
The Blessing of Misfortune
We have not only an Outer Being (which is known as the personality in contemporary psychology) but a larger and vaster but subliminal Inner Being. Unlike the outer being, the Inner Being cannot be sustained by the ego, it needs to be supported by the inmost soul-essence or the Psychic Being. The Inmost Being occupies the soul-space deeper to the psychological space of the inner Being and the aspirant for personal growth has to traverse all other spaces to reach the soul-space.
The Jivatman
There are two poises of the soul (True Self) in the soul-space. The traditionally eulogised poise that has always been sought for generations is the soul-poise above the manifestation; it is the Jivatman or Central Being; the soul in its un-evolving poise. An experiential contact with the Jivatman brings the realisation of impersonality and the feeling of wideness, immobility and infinity beyond time and space; it is that which supports the manifestation. The identification with the Jivatman frees us from the fetters of our karma carried through the cycles of life, frees us from the chains of our actions and the bondage of our attachments. It brings infinite freedom; freedom to describe the Supreme Reality beyond as a Divine Reality or as a Nihil or zero; freedom to ascribe positive attributes to the Reality beyond or divesting it from all attributes through an absolute rejection; its nature therefore springs from the widest catholicity ever-conceivable. The experience of the Jivatman is beyond theistic creeds and atheistic doubts; beyond scientific hypotheses and metaphysical theses; beyond the attachments and dependencies of life and hence liberates one from the pull of life. It is a crowning and overwhelming experience, which in its extreme consummation, can lead to a rejection of life.
Psychic Being
However, consciousness per se is all pervading and acknowledgment of the Unmanifest does not exclude the manifestation. Sri Aurobindo described that the soul-space gives access also to the soul-poise in its evolving mode; it is the projection of the unmanifest Self in the manifestation as the evolving Self. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo named this evolving Self as the Psychic Being (Caitya-Puruṣa). An experiential contact with the Psychic Being brings the realisation of the most intense movements of love, bliss, rapture, joy, sweetness, devotion, faith, aspiration for the Divine, Godward-parleys, peace, purity, unity and beauty in life. Its very stuff is that of light and love; it is unaffected by the polarities of emotions and dualities of life; it is unaffected by suffering or adversities; it radiates unalloyed joy, unfaltering strength, infallible love and undisturbed peace; its consciousness outlives the universal lifespan.
Integration
A pursuit of personal growth needs to integrate the planes and parts of consciousness and harmonise the myriad facets of life around the Psychic Being. The Mother explained, “The whole purpose of the Yoga is to gather all the divergent parts together and forge them into an undivided unity… This (the Psychic Being) is the centre round which should come about the unification of all these divergent parts, all these contradictory movements of your being (1).” “Through interiorisation and concentration one has to enter into conscious contact with one’s psychic being (2).” The Psychic Being is the true integrating and harmonising principle in life, a task that the ego cannot perform properly. The first major step in personal growth is to replace the ego with the Psychic Being. It is only then that the individual is not an amorphous chaos of sensations, emotions and ideas but an integrated Self ready to vertically ascend the stairs of consciousness as well as to horizontally expand into universality.
Soul-personality
Each individual carries a divine spark that organises over time in the evolutionary trajectory as a soul-personality in the form of the Psychic Being. “This psychic being always has an influence on the outer being, but that influence is almost always occult, neither seen nor perceived nor felt, save on truly exceptional occasions (3).” The Psychic Being thus cannot act directly on the outer being; it needs the support of the Inner Being. When the channels of communication or cakras between the outer Being and inner Being are optimally activated, the outer Being and the Inner Being fuse together and the ego can be replaced by the Psychic Being.
The Psychic Being or soul-personality, “…. carries in it a sense of universality, limitless expansion, unbroken continuity (4).”
It allows one to decentralise, widen the consciousness, break the barriers separating individuals and thus enables one, “…. to live in the life of all” …. it is thus “…. a great discovery which requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents (5).”
Fourth Dimension
The Psychic Being carries the deepest impressions of life as memory-traces that outlive the individual lifespan. In the Aurobindonian perspective, both the experiential contact with the unevolving or impersonal Self as well as with the evolving Self are equally necessary to give the Integral experience of the fourth dimension without which the work of transformation is not possible. The unevolving Self being Impersonal is inactive too and is in stark contrast to the activity of ignorant Nature, and hence, “…. the impersonal Self has no power to change or divinise the Nature (6).” The evolving Self as the Psychic Being is needed for the work of transformation. Thus, the soul-space manifesting the Divine becomes the fourth dimension. The Mother explained that one cannot mentalise consciousness and to understand it, one must have the ability to feel the fourth dimension (7). The real locus of control of the personality, as psychology understands it, is thus actually located in the fourth dimension of consciousness as understood in spirituality.
Soul-comradeship
The inner or subliminal Being is connected with the cosmic consciousness and gives a sense of universal love, universal sympathy, universal compassion — in short, universal values that uplift the human race and brings the sense of human unity. However, that unity based on the subliminal consciousness has a wide perspective that exceeds the ego; yet lacks the intensity of a total identification. It is only the Psychic Being which gives the total and integral identification in the most intense movement of soul-comradeship. The Psychic being is therefore the real harbinger of human unity and this unity extends to all existence for, in reality, the Supreme Consciousness is present in each manifested form, inanimate or animate as an essence. This essence at the heart of everything that exists goes on qualitatively changing till it reaches the possibility of soul-personality in the human being; nevertheless, the basic stuff springs from the same matrix of consciousness. As such, it is not out of mere compassion and sympathy that we extend our unitary perspective to plants and animals, it is not merely for mere survival that we care for our eco-systems and environment, it is absolutely obligatory for us to do so. The programme for personal growth therefore extends to soul-comradeship with other fellow-beings and beyond that to concern for other creatures and eco-systems based on the unitary nature of soul-substance pervading all strata of the manifestation. A new soul-fraternity that can give rise to a higher-order human collectivity with integrated individuals (integrated around the Psychic Being) can therefore emerge leading to the appearance of a Gnostic community. This appearance is perhaps the new society of the future. This movement will be complemented by a new psycho-ecology based on the consciousness perspective.
References
1. The Mother. The Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 3. 2nd ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 2003, pp. 6-7.
2. The Mother. Collected Works, Volume 16; 2003, p. 221.
3. Ibid., pp. 221-22.
4. The Mother. Collected Works, Volume 12; 1999; p. 33
5. Ibid.
6. Sri Aurobindo. The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Volume 28. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 2012, p. 12.
7. The Mother (ed. Satprem). Mother’s Agenda, Volume 13. Mysore: Mira Aditi Centre; 2013, pp. 361-62.
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