When we observe the standpoint we inhabit closely, we find that we tend to identify ourselves as a distinct ‘person’ or ‘personality’ with specific traits, habits, relationships and viewpoints about ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’. This is the ego-personality and we tend to try to associate everything to its impact on this ego-personality. The ego-personality tends to treat all other beings and forms as totally separate and distinct entities, and it thus creates a form of isolation and fragmentation in the creation which does not exist in reality, just in the ego-sense. The ego-personality is bound up with a specific body-life-mind complex and it dissolves with the dissolution of these successive elements.
The realisations of the Self, the Jivatman, or the soul, the psychic being, are described by Sri Aurobindo as being experienced without the ego-sense placing itself in the centre. Rather, the awareness shifts to a universal standpoint, with an individualised nexus of perception and action, but referring, not to the limited ego, but to the divine manifesting in that individual nexus as part of its universal creation. The psychic being then carries the essence of the experience of an individual lifetime forward into successive births, while maintaining its connection with the multifarious individualised (but not isolated or separated) elements of the divine creation.
Sri Aurobindo observes: “… man is not aware of the self or Jivatman, he is aware only of his ego, or he is aware of the mental being which controls the life and body. But more deeply he becomes aware of his soul or psychic being as his true centre, the Purusha in the heart; the psychic is the central being in the evolution, it proceeds from and represents the Jivatman, the eternal portion of the Divine. When there is the full consciousness, the Jivatman and the psychic being join together.”
“The ego is a formation of Nature; but it is not a formation of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the body. There is a mental and vital ego also.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pg. 101
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 17 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.