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The Growth and Maturation of the Psychic Being Brings Increasing Power and Influence on the External Being · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  We experience a growth of consciousness during the
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  maturation process, starting with birth and continuing as the
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  infant becomes a school aged child, then grows into teenage
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  years and passes through puberty and the hormonal changes that
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  come with that period, then into young adulthood and experience
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  of adult life. Eventually, as an elder who
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  hopefully has gained some vision and reflection about life as he
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  reflects on his experience, a similar process occurs for the
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  growth and maturation of the psychic being the sole essence
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  within each individual, although that process takes place not
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  within the space of a single lifetime, but across numerous
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  lifetimes, gathering the fruit of the soul's experience without
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  attachment to specific bodies, lifetimes, or formations that
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  may have been part of that experience.
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  This brings us to an important and interesting observation.
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  We cannot expect the psychic being to wield the same
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  influence in its initial stages of development as when it has
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  fully matured. Each individual passes through
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  these various stages, and thus we have a continuum of soul
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  development across not only the individual soul's growth, but
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  across the entire spectrum of humanity.
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  Just as we do not blame the infant or the child for not
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  having at that stage of life the full mental capacity that they
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  will have as an adult, so we also cannot blame any individual
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  whose psychic being is still forming and not yet fully
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  managing the external being and its interactions in the world.
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  And if we reflect on the growth process, we begin to appreciate
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  that there is no room for pride or arrogance about one's own
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  superiority, as it is not truly a superiority but a matter of
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  timing. The butterfly cannot look down
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  upon the Caterpillar because it cannot yet fly, Sri Aurobindo
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  observes Quote. Moreover, the psychic being, the
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  sole personality in US, does not emerge full grown and luminous.
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  It evolves, passes through a slow development and formation.
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  Its figures of being may be at first indistinct, and may
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  afterwards remain for a long time weak and undeveloped, not
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  impure, but imperfect. For it rests its formation, its
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  dynamic self, building on the power of soul that has been
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  actually, and more or less successfully, against the
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  resistance of the ignorance and inconscience put forth in the
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  evolution upon the surface. Its appearance is the sign of a
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  soul emergence in nature. And if that emergence is as yet
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  small and defective, the psychic personality also will be
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  stunted, or feeble. It is, too, by the obscurity of
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  our consciousness, separated from its inner reality, in
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  imperfect communication with its own source, in the depths of the
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  being. For the road is as yet I'll
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  built easily obstructed the wires often cut or crowded with
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  communications of another kind, and proceeding from another
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  origin its power to impress what it recedes upon the other
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  instruments is also imperfect. In its penury, it has for most
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  things to rely on these instruments, and it forms its
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  push to expression and action on their data, and not solely on
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  the unerring perceptions of the psychic entity.
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  In these conditions it cannot prevent the true psychic light
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  from being diminished or distorted in the mind into a
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  mere idea or opinion, the psychic feeling in the heart
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  into a fallible emotion or mere sentiment, the psychic will to
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  action in the life parts into a blind vital enthusiasm or a
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  fervid excitement. It even accepts these
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  mistranslations for want of something better, and tries to
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  fulfil itself through them. For it is part of the work of
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  the soul to influence mind and heart and vital being, and turn
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  their ideas, feelings, enthusiasms, dynamisms in the
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  direction of what is divine and luminous.
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  But this has to be done at first, imperfectly, slowly, and
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  with a mixture. As the psychic personality grows
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  stronger, it begins to increase its communion with the psychic
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  entity behind it and improve its communications with the surface.
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  It can transmit its intimations to the mind and heart and life
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  with a greater purity and force, for it is more able to exercise
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  a strong control and react against false mixtures.
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  Now more and more it makes itself distinctly felt as a
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  power in the nature. But Even so, this evolution
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  would be slow and long if it left slowly to the difficult
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  automatic action of the evolutionary energy.
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  It is only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul and
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  feels a need to bring it to the front and make it the master of
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  his life in action that a quicker conscious method of
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  evolution intervenes and a psychic transformation becomes
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  possible. End Quote Reference Sri
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  Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter
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  2, Hidden Forces within pages 48 to 49.