The Distinction Between Spiritual and Psychic

0:00 The distinction between spiritual and psychic comes down to the experiential basis. For the most part, as mental beings, we have a tendency to try to define, delineate, classify and analyze, creating fine differences and trying to then categorize based on these differences. Trior, Ovindo and the Mother have described the psychic, the soul, as a spark of the divine in the individual being. Spiritual is a term that relates to the universal existence. Both terms share the common link to the divine reality, while the experience from one to the other may vary based on the level and the frequency of the vibration that each one represents.

0:51 The falling away of the individual ego personality and the shifting of the standpoint of the consciousness to what the Vedic grishes termed the Truth, the Right, the vast is the experience that is termed spiritual. When the seeker enters this experience, there is no element of the ego present. In fact, when the consciousness first crosses over the boundary, there can frequently be the rising of the sense of fear that one is dying or leaving one's existence, as the awareness recognizes that an entirely different order of reality is now being presented.

1:32 If the seeker at that moment allows the fear to rule, then he is immediately brought fully back into the individual mind, life and body. The experience of the psychic or soul spark is of a different character. There is frequently a sense, not necessarily of wideness or an abstract void, but of a flame of aspiration, consecration, self giving, that is associated with the role of the soul in eventually turning the external being toward the divine. Essentially, the two different experiences share the common basis in the divine consciousness.

2:19 The disciple asks, is there a difference between the spiritual and the psychic? Are they different planes? The Mother answers quote yes, the psychic plane belongs to the personal manifestation. The psychic is that which is divine in you, put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual, we are thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind and above the outward play. It supports the instruments of the nature, but is not itself included or involved in the external manifestation here.

3:08 But in Speaking of these things, one must be careful not to be imprisoned by the words we use. When I speak of the psychic or the spiritual, I mean things that are very deep and real behind the flat surface of the words and intimately connected even in their difference. Intellectual definitions and distinctions are too external and rigid to seize the true truth of things. End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the psychic being soul, its nature, mission and evolution. Section 1. Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being. Page 36.