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The Soul: the Mystic Flame in the Secret Heart of the Inmost Being · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  It is impossible to dissect the body and find the soul.
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  It is not an organ like the heart, brain, kidneys, lung,
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  stomach or liver. We can thus establish that the
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  soul is not the physical body or its component parts.
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  The vital being, that part of us that feels, reacts, emotes, is
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  variable. Our feelings and emotions change
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  from one moment to the next. If we look for the soul here, we
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  find that everything is changing.
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  Nothing is permanent. While we may mistake our
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  emotional and aesthetic responses as belonging to the
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  soul, they turn out to be superficial, transitory, ever
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  changing, and not the eternal immutable soul that we are
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  seeking. Descartes maintained that his
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  ability to process thought meant that he existed.
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  If we reverse this logic, then those who don't think do not
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  exist. What about all of the plants and
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  animals without mental formation?
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  Do they exist? Of course, the test of existence
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  based in the ability to think is flawed and certainly does not
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  speak to the existence or any evidence of the soul.
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  What is the soul? Sages and seers who have focused
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  on this question have identified an experience that leads them to
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  what they designate as the soul, an eternal central element that
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  has the direct knowledge through identity with the Divine
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  presence, yet resides within the formation we identify as our set
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  lives, our mind, life, body, complex.
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  They tell us that the soul is veiled, hidden deep within,
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  behind this external personality we tend to identify with more
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  often. They identify it as a flame, the
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  Mystic fire which Kindles our deepest aspirations and awakens
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  our sense of wonder, devotion and consecration.
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  Sri Robindo writes quote the true soul secret in US.
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  Subliminal, we have said. But the word is misleading, for
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  this presence is not situated below the threshold of waking
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  mind, but rather burns in the temple of the inmost heart,
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  behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind, life and body.
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  Not subliminal, but behind the veil.
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  This veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead, always
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  alight within us, inextinguishable even by that
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  dense unconsciousness of any spiritual self within which
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  obscures our outward nature. It is a flame borne out of the
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  divine and luminous inhabitant of the ignorance grows in it
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  till it is able to turn it towards knowledge.
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  It is the concealed witness and control, the hidden guide, the
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  demon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the
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  Mystic. It is that which endures and is
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  imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay
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  or corruption, an indestructible spark of the divine, not the
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  unborn self or Atman. For the self, even in presiding
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  over the existence of the individual, is aware always of
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  its universality and transcendence.
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  It is yet its deputy in the forms of nature, the individual
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  soul chaitya purusha, supporting mind, life and body, standing
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  behind the mental, the vital, the subtle physical being in US
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  and watching and profiting by their development and
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  experience. These other person powers in
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  man, these beings of his being are also veiled in their true
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  entity, but they put forward temporary personalities which
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  compose our individuality and whose combined superficial
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  action and appearance of status we call ourselves.
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  This inmost entity also taking form in us as the psychic
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  person, puts forward a psychic personality which changes,
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  grows, develops from life to life.
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  For this is the traveler between birth and death and between
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  death and birth. Our nature parts are only its
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  manifold and changing vesture. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Robindo and the Mother, the psychic being soul,
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  its nature, mission and evolution.
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  Section 1. Meaning and Nature of the
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  Psychic Being, pages 30 to 32.