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A distinction has to be made between the soul
in its essence and the psychic being. Behind each and all there
is the soul which is the spark of the Divine -none could exist without
that. But it is quite possible to have a vital and physical being
without a clearly evolved psychic being behind it. Still, one cannot
make general statements that I no aboriginal has a soul or there
is no display of soul anywhere.
The inner being is composed of the inner mental, inner vital, inner
physical, -but that is not the psychic being.
The psychic is the inmost being and quite distinct from these. The
word 'psychic' is indeed used in English to indicate anything that
is other or deeper than the external mind, life and body, anything
occult or supraphysical, but that is a use which brings confusion
and error and we entirely discard it when we speak or write about
yoga. In ordinary parlance we may sometimes use the word 'psychic'
in the 1ooser popular sense or in poetry, which is not bound to
intellectual accuracy, we may speak of the soul sometimes in the
ordinary and more external sense or in the sense of the true psyche.
The psychic being is veiled
by the surface movements and expresses itself as best it can through
these outer instruments which are more governed by the outer forces
than by the inner influences of the psychic. But that does not mean
that they are entirely isolated from the soul. The soul is in the
body in the same way as the mind or vital - but the body it
occupies is not this gross physical frame- only, but the subtle
body also. When the gross sheath falls away, the vital and mental
sheaths of the body still remain as the soul's vehicle till these
too dissolve.
The soul of a plant or
an animal is not altogether dormant -only its means of expression
are less developed than those of a human being. There is much that
is psychic in the plant, much that is psychic in the animal. The
plant has only the vital-physical evolved in its form, so it cannot
express itself; the animal has a vital mind and can, but its consciousness
is limited and its experiences are limited, so the psychic esseflce
has a less developed consciousness and experience than is present
or at least possible in man. All the same, animals have a soul and
can respond very readily to the psychic in man.
The ghost is of course not the soul. It is either the
man appearing in his vital body or it is a fragment of his vital
that is seized on by some vital force or being. The vital part of
us normally exists after the dissolution of the body for some time
and passes away into the vital plane where it remains till the vital
sheath dissolves. Afterwards it passes, if it is mentally evolved,
in the mental sheath to some mental world and finally the psychic
leaves its mental sheath also and goes to its place of rest. If
the mental is strongly developed, then the mental part of us can
remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and
centred round the true psychic being -for they then share the immortality
of the psychic. Otherwise the psychic draws mind and life into itself
and enters into an internatal quiescence.
SRI AUROBINDO
I did not
understand' the explanation of the psychic you have given: "One
could say, for example, that the creation of an individual being
is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the
countless possibilities latent in the supreme origin of all manifestation
which, through the medium of the one and universal consciousness,
takes concrete form in the law or the truth of an individual and
so, by a progressive development, becomes his soul or psychic being.
"
It is a little philosophical. ...You know the difference between
what is subjective and what is objective? You know it! Well, imagine
precisely this Reality we were speaking about, which is at the origin
of all things, passing from the subjective to the objective state.
That is, what was within becomes as though projected outside. It
is the same thing: it is the state that changes. And so,
within it there are all the possibilities of objective existence;
within they are unexpressed, unmanifested; outside they are projected,
as a picture is projected on the cinema-screen: we see it before
us. And every element that was a possibility within, a law, becomes
the law of a realisation. And everyone of these possibilities becomes
the reality of a being, of an individuality if you like, of something
existing objectively. And it is that law which is the origin of
the centre of the psychic being: it is the truth of the being or
the law of the being. The Buddha called it the "law",
he spoke of the Dharma. It is the truth of the being. It
is that which binds it again indestructibly to its origin. And that
is the starting-point of the psychic being. And so, even as this
develops, like the picture on the screen, it takes a more and more
complex and precise form in the manifestation. But the reality of
that form is one, it is bound to the One. And all the units are
linked together and reproduce the One.
THE
MOTHER
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