The Evolution, Growth and Maturation Process of the Psychic Being and the Possibility of a Psychic Transformation of the Being

0:00 Everywhere we look in nature, we see a similar process. A seed sprouts and a tiny seedling struggles to grow and survive. Eventually it grows, matures and comes into its adult strength. The animal Kingdom has a similar reality. The newborn animal has to develop its body, its vital strength, and whatever mental capacities it is intended to have over time, through embedded processes which we call instincts, through experience and through education. In some cases, this occurs in one lifetime, yet we see an evolving process that takes place across many lifetimes, stretching across millennia.

0:49 It is useful to reflect on this process as we consider the mechanism and process that provides meaning to this development. If human life is restricted to 1 brief lifetime, then very little significance in the universal creation can be attributed to any individual life. We might assign significance to the human race as it grows and matures through the action of individuals as they contribute to the larger human story. It even this seems to lack ultimate significance if there is not also a mechanism for some process that provides continuity across numerous successive lifetimes. Srioro Bindo has provided an extensive review of the various options in Rebirth and karma, in addition to the detail he provides in The Life Divine in chapters devoted specifically to this subject.

1:49 The mechanism that provides meaning and continuity is the process of rebirth. The soul puts forth the psychic being, which begins as more or less a newborn seed of the spirit in each individual and then grows, matures and evolves, gaining strength and experience to eventually be able to not only influence the external body, life and mind, but gain mastery over them and turn them to the larger purposes of the divine creation. Sri Robindu observes quote. Moreover, the psychic being, the sole personality in US, does not emerge full grown and luminous. It evolves, passes through a slow development and formation. Its figure of being may be at first indistinct, and may afterwards remain for a long time weak and undeveloped, not impure but imperfect, For it rests its formation, its dynamic self, building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully against the resistance of the ignorance, and in conscience put forth in the evolution upon the surface.

3:11 Its appearance is the sign of a sole emergence in nature, and if that emergence is as yet small and defective, the psychic personality also will be stunted or feeble. It is too, by the obscurity of our consciousness, separated from its inner reality, in imperfect communication with its own source in the depths of the being. For the road is as yet I'll built, easily obstructed, the wires often cut or crowded with communications of another kind, and proceeding from another origin. Its power to impress what it receives upon the outer instruments is also imperfect in its penury.

3:57 It has for most things to rely on these instruments, and it forms its push to expression and action on their data, and not solely on the unerring perceptions of the psychic entity. In these conditions it cannot prevent the true psychic light from being diminished or distorted in the mind into a mere idea or opinion, the psychic feeling in the heart into a fallible emotion or mere sentiment. The psychic will to action in the life parts into a blind vital enthusiasm or a fervid excitement. It even accepts these mistranslations for want of something better, and tries to fulfill itself through them. For it is part of the work of the soul to influence mind and heart and vital being and turn their ideas, feelings, enthusiasms, dynamisms in the direction of what is divine and luminous.

5:01 But this has to be done at first, imperfectly, slowly and with a mixture. As the psychic personality grows stronger, it begins to increase its communion with the psychic entity behind it and improve its communications with the surface. It can transmit its intimations to the mind and heart and life with a greater purity and force, for it is more able to exercise a strong control and react against false mixtures. Now more and more it makes itself distinctly felt as a power in the nature. But Even so, this evolution would be slow and long if left solely to the difficult automatic action of the evolutionary energy.

5:51 It is only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul and feels a need to bring it to the front and make it the master of his life in action, that a quicker conscious method of evolution intervenes and a psychic transformation becomes possible. 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 54 to 56.