Listening and Heeding the Voice of the Soul

The voice of reason, the urging of desire, the warning of what we call the conscience, all of these are aspects of the inner dialogue that takes place within the individual as he determines his direction and his response to life situations. None of these are, however, the voice of the soul. How can we distinguish the voice of the soul from these other elements?

When confronted with any situation in which we are asked to make a decision, whether formally or simply by virtue of the choices we make in response to circumstances, we can reliably count on two very loud voices to make their case, to argue the need to follow their guidance. These are the voices of the vital nature and the mind. In many cases, we can trace the mind’s arguments to an attempt to justify the desire of the vital being, so for most people, it can be said that they live under the control or direct influence of the vital. 

A smaller number of individuals have gained some amount of separation and insight into the vital and its desires, and they try to exercise some control based on a principle, whether it is a religioius, ethical or moral code, or a reasoned analysis of potential consequences or of different choices that might be found more beneficial.

The conscience is actually a vital-mental response based primarily on training and societal ethical constraints that have been hammered into people as they grow in the society. Different societies, with different moral and ethical standards, wind up having different actions of conscience when it tries to intercede and advise the individual of the rightness or wrongness of a particular choice.

How can we identify and get in touch with the soul, and understand its guidance? The soul tends to be drowned out in the noise of the mental and vital internal dialogue. The first step towards identifying the voice of the soul then is to bring oneself to a state of quiet receptivity, a stillness in the mind. Through practice, we can see a separation between a consciousness that witnesses the action, the clamor, the various voices alive within the being, and the active nature that throws up the desires, impulsions and directions that rule most lives. 

In the stillness, deep within one, a quiet prompting can be felt or heard. It is not loud, nor is it insistent. It leaves the individual free to follow whichever line he feels is appropriate, but it has a clarity and a purity and a purpose that eventually begin to resonate with the individual as he determines to follow the soul’s guidance.

The Mother notes: ”So there seems to be only one way out and that is to go in search of one’s soul and to find it. It is there, it does not make a point of hiding itself, it does not play with you just to make things difficult; on the contrary, it makes great efforts to help you find it and to make itself heard. Only, between your soul and your active consciousness there are two characters who are in the habit of making a lot of noise, the mind and the vital. And because they make a lot of noise, while the soul does not, or, rather, makes as little as possible, their noise prevents you from hearing the voice of the soul.”

“When you want to know what your soul knows, you have to make an inner effort, to be very attentive; and indeed, if you are attentive, behind the outer noise of the mind and the vital, you can discern something very subtle, very quiet, very peaceful, which knows and says what it knows. But the insistence of the others is so imperious, while that is so quiet, that you are very easily misled into listening to the one that makes the most noise; most often you become aware only afterwards that the other one was right. It does not impose itself, it does not compel you to listen, for it is without violence.”

“When you hesitate, when you wonder what to do in this or that circumstance, there come the desire, the preference both mental and vital, that press, insist, affirm and impose themselves, and, with the best reasons in the world, build up a whole case for themselves. And if you are not on the alert, if you don’t have a firm discipline, if you don’t have the habit of control, they finally convince you that they are right. And as I was saying a little while ago, they make so much noise that you do not even hear the tiny voice or the tiny, very quiet indication of the soul which says, ‘Don’t do it.’ “

“This ‘don’t do it’ comes often, but you discard it as something which has no power and follow your impulsive destiny. But if you are truly sincere in your will to find and live the truth, then you learn to listen better and better, you learn to discriminate more and more, and even if it costs you an effort, even if it causes you pain, you learn to obey. And even if you have obeyed only once, it is a powerful help, a considerable progress on the path towards the discrimination between what is and what is not the soul. With this discrimination and the necessary sincerity you are sure to reach the goal.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 186-187