Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / The Dual Levels of Body, Life, Mind and Soul -- the External Formations and the Inner, Subliminal and Subtler Level That Links to the Universal and Causative Being

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The Dual Levels of Body, Life, Mind and Soul -- the External Formations and the Inner, Subliminal and Subtler Level That Links to the Universal and Causative Being · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The framework of the physical body and the limitations of the
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  interface between the body, the life force and the mental powers
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  of the external being circumscribe our awareness and
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  our ability to perceive the forces at work that shape our
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  existence. We can experience under various
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  circumstances, a wider, subtler, more free ranging consciousness
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  that sheds the limitations of the external being.
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  When we quiet the promptings of our mind and vital we can
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  receive inspirations, intuitions, perceptions from
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  another level of awareness. Many people, for instance, have
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  reported the experience of exiting from their physical body
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  and undertaking a form of vital travel whereby they could see
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  and experience things that were outside the range of the
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  physical existence. Similarly, many creative people
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  report that ideas or insights come to them in moments when
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  they are not focused on their external activities.
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  The experience is often described as a kind of flash or
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  intuitive understanding. These are actually impressions
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  from the universal consciousness active in the pure mental, pure
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  vital, or pure physical realms that actually are causative to
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  our external reality. Seen from the divine standpoint,
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  the reality begins and takes shape on these larger universal
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  levels of mind, life and body, and then it is translated into
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  the smaller, denser forms within which we experience our outer
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  life. Similarly, there are two forms
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  of the soul, the external form which takes on the color of our
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  vital personality, which Triorrobindo calls the desire
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  soul, and the deeper inner true soul.
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  Triorrobindo observes quote. There is a double soul or
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  psychic term in us, as every other cosmic principle in US is
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  also double. For we have two minds.
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  One, the surface mind of our expressed evolutionary ego, the
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  superficial mentality created by us in our emergence out of
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  matter. Another, a subliminal mind which
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  is not Hanford by our actual mental life and its strict
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  limitations, something large, powerful and luminous, the true
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  mental being behind that superficial form of mental
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  personality which we mistake for ourselves.
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  So also we have two lives, one outer involved in the physical
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  body, bound by its past evolution and matter, which
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  lives and was born and will die. The other a subliminal force of
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  life which is not cabin between the narrow boundaries of our
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  physical birth and death, but is our true vital being behind the
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  form of living which we ignorantly take for our real
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  existence. Even in the matter of our being
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  there is this duality, for behind our body we have a
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  subtler material existence which provides the substance not only
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  of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths, and is
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  therefore our real substance, supporting this physical form
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  which we erroneously imagined to be the whole body of our spirit.
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  So too we have a double psychic entity in us, the surface desire
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  soul, which works in our vital cravings, our emotions,
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  aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and
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  happiness. And a subliminal psychic entity,
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  a pure power of light, Lovejoy, and refined essence of being,
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  which is our true soul behind the outer form of psychic
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  existence we so often dignify by the name.
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  It is when some reflection of this larger and purer psychic
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  entity comes to the surface that we say of a man he has a soul,
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  and when it is absent in his outward psychic life that we say
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  of him he has no soul. The external forms of our being
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  are those of our small egoistic existence.
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  The subliminal are the formations of our larger true
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  individuality, therefore are these that concealed part of our
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  being in which our individuality is close to our universal
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  universality, touches it is in constant relation and commerce
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  with it. The subliminal mind in US is
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  open to the universal knowledge of the Cosmic Mind, the
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  subliminal life in us to the universal force of the Cosmic
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  life, the subliminal physicality in us to the universal force
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  formation of cosmic matter. The thick walls which divide
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  from these things are surface mind, life, body, and which
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  nature has to Pierce with. So much trouble, so imperfectly,
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  and by so many skillful, clumsy physical devices are there in
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  the subliminal only a rarefied medium at once of separation and
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  communication. So too is the subliminal soul in
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  U.S. Open to the universal delight
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  which the cosmic soul takes in its own existence and in the
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  existence of the myriad souls that represent it, and in the
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  operations of mind, life and matter by which Nature lends
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  herself to their play and development.
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  But from this cosmic delight the surface soul is shut off by
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  egoistic walls of great thickness, which have indeed
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  gates of penetration, but in their entry through them the
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  touches of the divine cosmic delight become dwarfed,
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  distorted, or have to come in masked as their own opposites.
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  End Quote. Reference Sri Aurobindo and the
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  Mother, The psychic being soul, its nature, Mission and
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  evolution. Section 1.
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  Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being, pages 24 to 25.