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The Psychic Being Carries the Essence of Experience Through Rebirth and the Evolution of Consciousness · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We are born into the world, we grow, we learn, we participate
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  in it, we age, and eventually we die.
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  Many people look at this process without trying to understand any
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  deeper significance. They involve themselves in the
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  process and do not look at what happened before, what caused the
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  existence we participate in, and what happens afterwards.
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  They live within a plot line of events and relationships without
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  any deeper significance and without identifying the parts of
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  the story that are outside the stage we act upon.
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  This imagery is neatly laid out in Shakespeare's play As You
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  Like It Quote. All the world's a stage and all
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  the men and women merely players.
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  They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his
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  time plays many parts, his axe being 7 ages.
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  At first the infant muelling and puking in the nurse's arms, and
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  then the whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning
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  face creeping like snail, unwilling to school.
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  And then the lover sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad
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  made to his mistress eyebrow. Then a soldier full of strange
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  oaths and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and
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  quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation even in the
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  cannon's mouth. And then the justice in fair
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  round belly with good Cape unlined, with eyes severe and
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  beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances.
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  And so he plays his part. The 6th age shifts into the lean
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  and slippered pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on
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  side. His youthful hose well saved a
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  world too wide for his shrunk Shank, and his big manly voice
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  turning again toward childish trouble.
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  Pipes and whistles in his sound. Last seen of all that ends this
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  strange eventful history is second childishness and mere
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  oblivion. Sand's teeth, sand's eyes,
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  sand's taste, sands, everything. End Quote.
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  When we look at the vast and highly detailed machinery of the
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  Universal Creation, it becomes obvious that all of this
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  structure, all of this complexity, all of this genetic
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  coding, cellular structure, the electromagnetic spectrum, all of
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  these interrelationships cannot be and are not simply random,
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  meaningless events that occurred without a preceding cause and
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  without a follow on effect. What we are missing in this very
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  limited view is not the picture in front of us, but rather an
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  understanding of how our lives fit into the patterns and
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  developments in the universe. Sages and rishis, philosophers
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  and scientists, seers and Mystics, visionaries and those
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  guided by mental reason, all have through the ages explored
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  the question of the significance of our lives, where we come from
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  and why and where we are going to, and how.
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  Sri Aurobindo explored these issues at great depth and
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  concluded that our world is the setting for an evolution of
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  consciousness. That our current lifetime is
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  just one in a series of lifetimes that allow us to carry
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  not an individual personality forward, but rather the essence
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  of the experience distilled in a soul entity, which he called the
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  psychic being that utilizes the process as one of development
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  and maturation to eventually express the Divine consciously
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  through the body, life, mind complex that we inhabit during
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  our lifetime. While he explored these
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  questions at great length in rebirth and karma as well as in
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  the Life Divine, he encapsulates this view in his visionary
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  poetic expression. Sri Robindo writes in his epic
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  poem Savitri, a legend and a symbol in Book 2, Canto 14
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  quote. A person persistent through the
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  lapse of worlds, although the same forever in many shapes, by
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  the outward mind unrecognizable, assuming names unknown, in
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  unknown climes, Imprints through time upon the earth's worn page,
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  a growing figure of its secret self, and learns by experience
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  what the spirit knew till it can see its truth alive and God.
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  End Quote. Reference Srioro Bindu and the
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  Mother, the psychic being soul, its nature, mission and
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  evolution. Section 3.
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  Growth and Development of the Psychic, page 72.