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The Soul, the Psychic Being and the External Mind, Life and Body · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The voice of the soul is quiet, not loud or insistent.
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  It does not try to overpower the evolved external being, but
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  rather to guide from behind, allowing the being to gain
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  experience and turn toward the divine as a natural progression,
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  not a coerced subjugation. The body, life mind complex that
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  is active in our external lives brings with it a lot of fixed
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  ways of acting, long standing interactions between them that
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  create pathways of perception, understanding and expression
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  that are virtually automatic. When the psychic being attempts
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  to influence the external life, it comes up against these
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  embedded habits and reactions. Changing them takes time and
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  patience. At the same time, the psychic
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  being grows, matures and gains both insight and strength, which
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  it can then use to expand its influence on the external being.
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  This dynamic is at the heart of the relation between the soul
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  and the external nature and its expression as the desire soul.
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  Sriorbin denotes quote. It is the very nature of the
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  soul of the psychic being to turn towards the Divine Truth as
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  the sunflower to the sun. It accepts and clings to all
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  that is divine, or progressing towards Divinity, and draws back
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  from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is
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  false and undivine. Yet the soul is at first but a
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  spark, and then a little flame of Godhead, burning in the midst
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  of a great darkness. For the most part it is veiled
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  in its inner sanctum, and to reveal itself it has to call on
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  the mind, the life force, and the physical consciousness and
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  persuade them as best they can to express it.
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  Ordinarily it succeeds at most in suffusing their outwardness
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  with its inner light, and modifying with its purifying
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  fineness their dark obscurities or their coarser mixture.
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  Even when there is a form psychic being able to express
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  itself with some directness in life, it is still in all but a
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  few, a smaller portion of the being.
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  No bigger in the mass of the body than the thumb of a man,
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  was the image used by the ancient seers.
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  And it is not always able to prevail against the obscurity
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  and ignorant smallness of the physical consciousness, the
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  mistaken surenesses of the mind, or the arrogance and vehemence
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  of the vital nature. This soul is obliged to accept
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  the human mental, emotive, sensational life as it is, its
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  relations, its activities, its cherished forms and figures.
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  It has to labor to disengage and increase the divine element in
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  all this relative truth mixed with continual falsifying error.
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  This love turned to the uses of the animal body or the
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  satisfaction of the Vilego. This life of an average manhood
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  shot with rare and pale glimpses of Godhead and the darker
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  luridities of the demon and the brute unerring in the essence of
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  its will. It is obliged, often under the
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  pressure of its instruments, to submit to mistakes of action,
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  wrong placement of feeling, wrong choice of person, errors
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  in the exact form of its will, in the circumstances of its
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  expression of the infallible inner ideal.
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  Yet is there a divination within it which makes it a surer guide
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  than the reason, or than even the highest desire.
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  And through apparent errors and stumblings its voice can still
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  lead better than the precise intellect and the considering
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  mental judgment. This voice of the soul is not
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  what we call conscience, for that is only a mental and often
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  conventional erring substitute, is it?
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  It is a deeper and more seldom heard call, yet to follow it
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  when heard is wisest even. It is better to wander at the
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  call of 1's soul than to go apparently straight with the
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  reason and the outward moral mentor.
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  But it is only when the life turns towards the Divine that
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  the soul can truly come forward and impose its power on the
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  outer members for itself. A spark of the Divine to grow in
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  flame towards the Divine is its true life and its very reason of
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  existence. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu
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  and the Mother. The psychic being soul, its
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  nature, mission and evolution. Section 1.
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  Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being, pages 28 to 29.