Transformation of Human Nature Requires the Action of the Psychic Being Connected to the Higher Consciousness

The external life and its conditions tend to fixate the attention for most people to such a degree, that they are overwhelmed by the needs of the body, the impositions of the life-energy and the force of desire, and the focus and attention of the mind. Just trying to keep up with all the constant demands of the outer life turns into a “full-time job” and leaves most people with very little time, energy or peace of mind to turn to questions of the deeper significance of life and how one should interface with the divine consciousness that manifests the world. These questions are thus relegated to general background if they are taken up at all by an individual.

As the psychic being matures and begins to exercise the influence of its direct connection to the Divine, it begins to assert the need for the individual to adjust the priorities away from total focus on the external life. More time and attention is given to questions of spiritual import and the individual finds the focus and balance of his life changing to accommodate this adjustment.

Such changes do not take place overnight! The external life’s demands impinge constantly on the individual. The need to eat, sleep, find shelter, and address interactions with family, friends, acquaintances and the society at large. The development of a capable physical being, a cultured vital-emotional being and a powerful mental being are the next level of focus through which an individual journeys along the way. When an opening comes that reveals the presence of the psychic being, an individual can gradually recognise that the call of the spirit, the soul’s aspiration and need for oneness with the Divine, is the essential question that must take precedence in the life.

Traditionally, this conversion to focus on the spiritual destiny of the individual led to an attempt to abandon the outer life to a greater or lesser degree, with the intention to turn the attention, as much as possible in human life, toward the spirit. This quest was described as the attempt to attain the state of liberation, liberation from the demands and needs of the external existence, and liberation into the larger realm of the spiritual existence.

None of this can be done without the connection between the soul and the developing psychic being which accumulates the essence of the soul’s experience in each lifetime, and the spiritual consciousness. It is not individual human effort of body, life or mind that alone can achieve this, as they are bound within the framework that makes up the ordinary external existence. Even with this connection, the individual constantly is drawn out toward the objects of the external life, and the process of refocusing time and attention to the spiritual aims is generally slow and painstaking, with frequent need to step back and reconnect and refocus. This is what takes time as human nature runs in well-established grooves of long habit, instinct and learned ways of existence in the world.

Sri Aurobindo states: “The nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi.”

A disciple asks: “Ordinarily is there not a nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness?”

The Mother notes: “Ordinarily means in the ordinary life? A relation between the psychic being…

“Yes.”

“it is almost, almost totally unconscious. … In the ordinary life there’s not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but so invisibly and unconsciously for the outer being that it is as though it did not exist. And in most cases, the immense majority, almost the totality of cases, it’s as though it were asleep, not at all active, in a kind of torpor.”

“It is only with the sadhana and a very persistent effort that one succeeds in having a conscious contact with his psychic being. Naturally, it is possible that there are exceptional cases — but this is truly exceptional, and they are so few that they could be counted — where the psychic being is an entirely formed, liberated being, master of itself, which has chosen to return to earth in a human body in order to do its work. And in this case, even if the person doesn’t do the sadhana consciously, it is possible that the psychic being is powerful enough to establish a more or less conscious relation. But these cases are, so to say, unique and are exceptions which confirm the rule.”

“In almost, almost all cases, a very, very sustained effort is needed to become aware of one’s psychic being. Usually it is considered that if one can do it in thirty years one is very lucky — thirty years of sustained effort, I say. It may happen that it’s quicker. But this is so rare that immediately one says, ‘This is not an ordinary human being.’ That’s the case of people who have been considered more or less divine beings and who were great yogis, great initiates.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 99-100