Chapter 11

Discovery of the Soul – Its Base

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine,¹ a relation of bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection of the insistences of the separating and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

When awakened, the psychic being gives true Bhakti for God or for the Guru. That Bhakti is quite different from mental or vital Bhakti.

In the mind one may have a strong admiration or appreciation for the intellectual or spiritual greatness of the Guru, – follow him and mentally accept his dictates. But if it is merely mental, that does not carry you very far. Of course, there is no harm in having that also. But by itself it does not open the whole of the inner being; it only establishes a mental contact.

The vital Bhakti demands and demands. It imposes its own conditions. It surrenders itself to God, but conditionally. It says to God, “You are so great,” “I worship you,” – “and now you must satisfy this desire of mine or that ambition”; “make me great; make me a great sadhaka, a great yogin” etc.

The unillumined mind also surrenders to the Truth, but makes its own conditions. It says to the Truth, “Satisfy my judgement, and my opinion”; it demands the Truth to cast itself in the mind’s own forms.

The vital being also insists on the Truth throwing itself into its own vital movement of force. The vital being pulls at the Higher Power and pulls and pulls at the vital being of the Guru. Both of them (the mental and the vital) have got an arrière pensée (mental reservation) in their surrender.

Psychic Bhakti is not like that. Because it is in communication with the Divinity behind, it is capable of true Bhakti. Psychic Bhakti does not make any demand, it makes no reservations. It is satisfied with its own existence. The psychic being knows how to obey the Truth in the right way. It gives itself up truly to God or the Guru, and because it can give itself up truly, therefore it can also receive truly.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

…that the most important thing for you is to develop the psychic fire in the heart and the aspiration for the psychic being to come forward as the leader of the sadhana.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

If desire is rejected and no longer governs the thought, feeling or action and there is the steady aspiration of an entirely sincere self-giving, the psychic usually after a time opens of itself.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The psychic being emerges slowly in most men, even after taking up sadhana. There is so much in the mind and vital that has to change and readjust itself before the psychic can be entirely free. One has to wait till the necessary process has gone far enough before it can burst its agelong veil and come in front to control the nature.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

Then only can the psychic being fully open when the sadhaka has got rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother. If there is any kind of egoistic turn or insincerity of motive, if the Yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards satisfying any vital desire with the help of the Yogic force, then the psychic cannot open, or opens only partially or only at times and shuts again because it is veiled by the vital activities; the psychic fire fails in the strangling vital smoke. Also, if the mind takes the leading part in the Yoga and puts the inner soul into the background, or, if the bhakti or other movements of the sadhana take more of a vital than of a psychic form, there is the same inability. Purity, simple sincerity and the capacity of an unegoistic unmixed self-offering without pretension or demand are the conditions of an entire opening of the psychic being.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

To bring the psychic forward, selfishness and demand (which is the base of the vital feelings) must be got rid of – or at least never accepted.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

Each time there is a purification of the outer nature, it becomes more possible for the inner being to reveal itself…

Words of Sri Aurobindo

That the constant fire of aspiration has to be lit is true; but this fire is the psychic fire and it is lit or burns up and increases as the psychic grows within and for the psychic to grow quietude is needful. That is why we have been working for the psychic to grow in you and for the quietude also to grow and that is why we want you to wait on the Mother’s working in full patience and confidence. To be always remembering the Mother and always with the equal unwavering fire within means itself a considerable progress in sadhana and it must be prepared by various means such as the experiences you have been having. Keep steadfast in confidence therefore and all that has to be done will be done.