Are We There Yet?

0:00 We tend to start our conscious spiritual quest from the external standpoint of our ego, personality and the mental, vital and physical complex we have developed during our lives. Something has opened up within us that causes us to begin the process. As we begin to have various experiences that go outside our normal frame of reference, we identify them as soul experiences. We find that life begins to present us with coincidences, chance meetings that we no longer interpret as pure chance, synergies, and what appear to be in some cases, extraordinary openings to new insights, powers, awareness, or visions and voices. We may have revelatory dreams.

0:52 We may enter into states of spiritual trance. We we may suddenly feel an uprush of emotions that support our aspiration, consecration, self giving, and present us with a widening into a form of universal or cosmic consciousness. Many believe that these experiences indicate that they have shifted to the standpoint of the soul, the psychic being. For the most part, however, these experiences are very much mixed with our mental, vital and physical aspects of being and represent not a definitive shift to the sole standpoint, but a recognition of the influence that the psychic being has on the external being.

1:41 At a certain point, however, as the experiences withdraw for a time or difficulties arise, the seeker begins to question and ask whether he is truly shifted to the standpoint of the psychic being. As the mother points out, if you have to ask, then you are not there yet. We tend to be impatient and expect easy solutions, fast responses and instant results. Thus our predilection towards jumping to the conclusion after receiving the first signs and touches of the psychic consciousness. This impatient reigns despite the long history and recitation of realized souls about the complex issues and the time it takes to work through all the knots, limitations, obstructions, obscurities and deformations of the external nature to truly shift the standpoint to that of the soul.

2:43 The experiences are important and valuable as they point the way and provide us encouragement. They can and should be welcomed when they come. They should not be a cause of any complacency or slacking off of the spiritual focus. A disciple asks Sweet Mother, here Sri Aurobindo has said, if the inmost soul is awakened, if there is a new birth out of the mere mental, vital and physical into the psychic consciousness, then this yoga can be done. Why has he said the inmost soul? Is there a superficial soul?

3:29 The Mother responds quote. It is because this inmost soul that is the central psychic being, influences the superficial parts of the consciousness, superficial in comparison with it, mental parts, vital parts, the purest mind, the highest vital, the emotive being. The soul influences them, influences them to an extent where one has the impression of entering into contact with it through these parts of the being. So people take these parts for the soul, and that is why he says the inmost soul, that is the central soul, the real soul.

4:12 For very often when one touches certain parts of the mind which are under the psychic influence and full of light and the joy of that light, or when one touches certain very pure and very high parts of the emotive being, which has the most generous, most unselfish emotions, one also has the impression of being in contact with one's soul. But this is not the true soul. It is not the soul in its very essence. These are parts of the being under its influence and manifesting something of it. So very often people enter into contact with these parts and this gives them illuminations, great joy, revelations, and they feel they have found their soul.

5:00 But it is only the part of the being under its influence, one part or another. For exactly what happens is that one touches these things, has experiences, and then it gets veiled, and one wonders how is it that I touched my soul and now have fallen back into this state of ignorance and in conscience. But that's because one had not touched one's soul. One had touched those parts of the being which are under the influence of the soul and manifest something of it, but are not it. I have already said many times that when 1 enters consciously into contact with one's soul and the union is established, it is over. It can no longer be undone.

5:46 It is something permanent, constant, which resists everything and which at any moment whatever, if referred to, can be found, whereas the other things one can have very fine experiences. And then it gets veiled again and one tells oneself, How does that happen? I saw my soul and now I don't find it anymore. It was not the soul one had seen. And these things are very beautiful and give you very impressive experiences. But this is not the contact with the psychic being itself. The contact with the psychic being is definitive. And it is about this that I say when people ask, do I have a contact with my psychic being?

6:36 Your question itself proves that you don't have it. End Quote. Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother, the psychic being soul, its nature, Mission and evolution. Section 1. Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being, pages 22 to 23.