THE PSYCHIC BEING

Sri Aurobindo says that after years of searching, He made a supreme discovery. He discovered the psychic. Nobody has ever talked about the spirit evolving before. When you go into the higher experiences or trance you see the great Spirit behind, but He was the first to discover that there is a spirit within the evolution that is evolving. Sri Aurobindo says in The Life Divine the we know God in the descent, but we do not know God in the ascent. God in the descent is the Parameshwara who has willed the creation. But what is God in the ascent? It is the godhead concealed in Matter that is evolving from Matter and progressively manifesting itself. That is the psychic. It is not outside of the evolution. It is the seed of spiritual consciousness that is awakening through our conscious experience in Prakriti. When we talk about the soul that goes through the experience of life after life and evolves and gains knowledge, we really mean the psychic.

Sri Aurobindo made the great spiritual discovery that if you concentrate on the Manomaya Purusha, you go to Purushottama, which takes you outside the creation. If you concentrate on the psychic, if you realize the psychic, it takes you to Parameshwara, the Lord of Creation, inside the creation, and you ascend the path by which the lord descended to manifest the worlds in the first place. You go right up the same path from mind to Overmind to Supermind without ever leaving the world. So He discovered the key. He discovered how we can have that contact with the Lord in the creation and bring down Mother’s power into our life. That is the whole secret of this yoga.

Psychic awakening

overcomes division

I am sure many of you know that Mother has given some rules for getting in touch with the psychic. She presents ten rules in her essay on Psychic Education:

1.      Rely on the soul, not on the mind. What does this mean? The mind cannot really know, so do not put faith in the mind’s understanding of things. Know that the mind is a mind of ignorance. Do not take mental initiatives. Only the psychic always knows what is true.

2.      Take interest in everything you do. Do not be the vital ego. The vital ego wants to do only what it is interested in. She says we must take interest in all the work that comes to us.

3.      Do not complain against others. This is another rule for the vital. The vital loves to complain against others. It feels so fulfilled when complaining about others. If you do not allow yourself to complain even silently in your own mind against other people, it helps you to move from the vital to the psychic.

4.      Do not seek comfort. She does not advocate austerities, but She advises us not to be preoccupied with the body’s comfort. If comforts come to us on their own, we can accept them. But we should not go out of our way to seek comfort or become a slave to it.

Rules of Psychic Education

5.      Make progress at every moment. At every moment there is a progress we can make. We should discover what that progress is. Can I be more thoughtful? Can I be better organized? Can I be more patient? Can I remember Mother?

6.      Accept the rule that the outer is the reflection of the inner. Do not be sorry about the correspondences you see, but be grateful for the knowledge that life presents them to you as a personal instruction. Life is a great teacher for us.

7-10.    Consecrate. Consecrate before eating, sleeping, talking, and acting. That does not leave much left. Consecrate everything to Mother and the psychic will come forward. When you consecrate everything to Her, you will be in direct contact with Her. Once you have that contact there will never be any question for you of why you are here. You will be conscious at every moment of the spirit evolving in you. You will have that knowledge of the miracle of the Divine Lila. When you do everything for Mother, there is a psychic joy in every act.