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Turning the Vision Inward to Reveal the Soul · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The external world has a way of commanding attention for most of
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  us. We experience sights, sounds,
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  smells, touches or tastes through our senses, and they
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  have an immediacy that draws our attention to them.
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  These sense impressions also tend to carry with them
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  additional content, mental ideas, emotional feelings, vital
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  drives, physical sensations and needs.
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  We experience thereby pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, and
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  any number of similar responses to the impressions which reach
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  us. We can become so immersed in
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  this external stimulus and response cycle that we fail to
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  pay attention to the quiet voice of the soul and its connection
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  to the divine and the divine intention in the Universal
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  Creation. In his epic poem Savitri, a
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  Legend and a symbol, Sri Aurobindo states, quote, O
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  bliss, whoever dwelleth deep hid within, while men seek the
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  outside and never find. End Quote.
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  This is the state that we most frequently find ourselves in.
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  When the seeker takes up spiritual development, he begins
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  to turn his gaze inward into the secret cave in the Mystic heart
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  where the soul resides. Then the soul can be heard and
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  its impulsion towards the transformation of the outer
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  instruments and their actions can be put into practice.
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  A disciple asks in everybody, is the psychic always pure or has
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  it to be made pure? The Mother answers quote.
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  It is always pure, but it is either more or less
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  individualized and independent in its action.
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  What is psychic in the being is always pure by its very
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  definition, for it is that part of the being which is in contact
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  with the divine and expresses the truth of the being.
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  But this may be like a spark in the darkness of the being, or it
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  may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and
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  independent. There are all the gradations
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  between the two disciple usually is it veiled, the Mother.
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  It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it,
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  for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards.
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  For it lives amidst all the external noises and movements in
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  what it sees, what it does, what it says, instead of looking
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  within into the depths of the being and listening to the inner
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  inspirations. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Aurobindo 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 34 to 35.