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The Potentiality of the Soul -- the Actuality of the Psychic Being · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  A seed in its essence contains all the potentiality that
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  eventually turns into a full grown tree.
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  It is useful to reflect on this when we look at the position of
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  the soul in relation to the psychic being.
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  The soul is like that seed to the extent that it has all the
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  potential of the divine manifestation, but is not
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  expressing it all at one time. Rather, the creation reveals and
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  unrolls that potentiality into actuality through the operation
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  of time. The psychic being is the
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  instrumentality that turns the potentiality into the actuality.
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  There are some who hold that everything in the universe
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  exists all the time. This is called the block
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  universe concept and it essentially holds that it is our
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  perspective that treats events in a linear step by step fashion
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  as opposed to seeing them all simultaneously.
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  Rishis with spiritual experience speak of the unity of the three
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  times and the ability to see past, present, and future as one
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  reality. The issue of free will or
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  determinism gets bound up with these views as a block universe
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  in which everything already exists implies determinism.
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  There are others who believe that there are an infinite
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  number of universes representing the infinite possible sequences
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  and facts of existence. These opposition's can be
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  resolved by recognizing that from the divine standpoint there
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  is a different vision that encompasses both the timeless
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  and the manifestation through time.
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  Well, from the purely human viewpoint, we see things taking
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  place sequentially in a developing uniform direction,
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  what we call the arrow of time. It is thus possible that both
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  free will and determinism coexist and are both true within
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  the framework from which they are being viewed.
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  The soul, which maintains the potentiality of the creation,
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  and the psychic being, which develops the actuality of the
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  soul's potential, are in this view 2 aspects of the same
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  reality. The Tituria Upanishad sets forth
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  a series of levels of consciousness.
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  Our human viewpoint starts from the gross level of the material
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  existence, the food sheath. There is a more subtle level,
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  which is the vital sheath. Then comes the mental sheath.
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  Beyond this comes the knowledge sheath.
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  It is at this level, which Riora Bindu identifies with the term
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  supra mental consciousness, that the intersection of the eternal
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  and the temporal takes place and the unity is refracted into the
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  multiplicity of forms in the creation.
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  Beyond this sheath comes the level of the pure existent.
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  Satchit Ananda, Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, which is
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  the ultimate source, continent, creator and maintainer of the
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  entire creation, Sri Aurobindo writes Quote.
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  The soul or psyche is immutable only in the sense that it
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  contains all the possibilities of the divine within it, but it
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  has to evolve them, and in its evolution it assumes the form of
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  a developing psychic individual, evolving in the manifestation
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  the individual prakruti and taking part in the evolution.
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  It is the spark of the divine fire that grows behind the mind,
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  vital and physical, by means of the psychic being, until it is
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  able to transform the prakruti of ignorance into the prakruti
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  of knowledge. This evolving psychic being is
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  not, therefore, at any time all that the soul or essential
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  psychic existence bears within it.
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  It temporalizes and individualizes what is eternal
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  in potentiality, transcendent in essence, in this projection of
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  the spirit. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu
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  and the 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 16 to 17.