A Soul Using the External Instrumentation of Body, Life and Mind

0:01 How do we see and interpret who and what we are? Most people identify with the physical body. The body is their essential being. In many cases, they build up the body, work to create an image that they project to others. They judge themselves and others based on the form and presence they develop for the body, whether it is a beautiful body, a fit body or a trained body. Bodybuilding, dieting, beauty treatments, makeup, expensive clothes, rare food and drinks all represent a focus on the body as the central aspect of the life.

0:41 This also works in the other direction. When people try to achieve the idealized version that their society demands but are unable to meet the criteria, they may fall into a form of depression and actually undertake actions which undermine the ideal bodily development in their culture. Others identify with the vital force they project. They may seek power, wealth, sex. They may measure themselves according to their vital status and position in society. In many cases, they flaunt their wealth or wield their power to seem like they are at the head of the pecking order in the society.

1:24 By whatever means that society tends to judge vital position. Those who have setbacks may identify themselves as a victim and wear that badge as their claim to being noticed. Still others identify with their mental powers. They focus on their high IQ, outstanding test scores, or specialized skills they have developed in math, science, technology, or other fields that require strong mental capacities. They rate themselves highly in comparison to others who have not focused on this particular form of development. Those who cannot succeed as well may tend to internalize the failure and fixate on their shortcomings. Whether an individual focuses on one or more of these aspects, the external ego personality takes on a persona related to this outward person.

2:23 This external focus tends to consume the attention. Few are those who recognize that they are not a body with a soul, but rather a soul using a body. Ramana Maharshi, the sage of Arunachala, famously asked the seeker to raise the question within himself, Who am I? With the sense that eventually the seeker would come to realize that he is not the body, not the life force, not the mind and not the ego personality, but rather is an immortal being identified with the Divine through the soul, hidden deep within. The Bhagwad Gita states quote.

3:13 The Lord, O Arjuna, is seated in the heart of all beings, turning all beings mounted upon a machine by his Maya. End Quote Reference Bhagwad Gita and its Message, translated by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter 18, verse 61. When the seeker shifts his standpoint from the external to the internal, he can begin to consciously hear the voice of the soul and accept its guidance. In the meantime, the soul waits patiently as the external instruments develop and mature, preparing themselves to eventually become powerful and conscious instruments for the soul's purpose in the creation, Sriorabhindu observes.

4:00 Quote If the psychic entity had been from the beginning unveiled and known to its ministers, not a secluded king in a screen chamber, the human evolution would have been a rapid soul out flowering, not the difficult checkered and disfigured development it now is. But the veil is thick, and we know not the secret light within us, the light in the hidden crypt of the hearts innermost sanctuary. Intimations rise to our surface from the psyche, but our mind does not detect their source. It takes them for its own activities, because before even they come to the surface, they are clothed in mental substance. Thus ignorant of their authority, it follows or does not follow them according to its bent or turn at the moment. If the mind obeys the urge of the vital ego, then there is little chance of the psyche at all controlling the nature or manifesting in us something of its secret spiritual stuff and native movement.

5:08 Or if the mind is overconfident to act in its own smaller light, attached to its own judgement, will and action of knowledge, then also the soul will remain veiled and quiescent and wait for the mind's farther evolution. For the psychic part within us is there to support the natural evolution. And the first natural evolution must be the development of body, life and mind successively, and these must act each in its own kind or together in their I'll assorted partnership in order to grow and have experience and evolve. The soul gathers the essence of all our mental, vital and bodily experience and assimilates it for the farther evolution of our existence in nature.

5:59 But this action is a cult and not obtruded on the surface. In the early material and vital stages of the evolution of being. There is indeed no consciousness of soul. There are psychic activities, but the instrumentation, the form of these activities, are vital and physical or mental when the mind is active. For even the mind, so long as it is primitive or is developed but still too external, does not recognize their deeper character. It is easy to regard ourselves as physical beings or beings of life, or mental beings using life and body, and to ignore the existence of the soul altogether. For the only definite idea that we have of the soul is a something that has survived the death of our bodies. But what this is we do not know, because even if we are conscious sometimes of its presence, we are not normally conscious of its distinct reality, nor do we feel clearly its direct action in our nature.

7:09 End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The psychic being soul, its nature, mission and evolution. Section 2. Role, function and Action of the Psychic. Pages 51 to 52.