Q: In Sri Aurobindo’s words, “in every being there is a Soul, but Psychic Being is not present in everybody … after a long process it can be developed”. Please explain?
ALOKDA: The soul is the divine element in man. It is like a seed that carries within itself all the divine possibilities that must one day blossom. But this blossoming is through a long passage of time running through several lives. In this process all experiences, whether we in our ignorance consider ‘good’ and ‘pleasant’ or ‘bad’ and ‘painful’ are feeders for its growth. Night and day, darkness and light are simply two sides of a single movement whose aim is to fulfil the divine possibility that is embedded within itself. That is what the real game of life is about and it goes on behind the surface experiences and reactions of our outer personality.
Then a time comes when this divine seed has grown sufficiently under the cover of darkness and is ready to open to the Light. It is when this happens that we open to Divinity within or around us. It is at this stage that there is the birth of conscious aspiration and a seeking for Light and Truth and Beauty and Harmony and Good. This seeking meets an answer within and the Divine immanent in our inmost heart manifests Himself in the form of our Master and Guru and Guide. We meet the One who is destined to carry us further following the ways and trail of the Light. We become aware of a sacred Presence within that is the Source of all that we have thus far sought outside. This second phase of growth ends in the blossoming of the soul, the divine seed into the fully grown psychic being. This completes our basic schooling in the fields of Ignorance.
It is then that we are given another choice. The fully developed psychic being can either withdraw from terrestrial existence by extinguishing itself into the One Supreme, – the aim of traditional yoga; or it can consciously enter into the curve of further evolution awaiting earth and thereby participate consciously in the destiny of humanity by expressing its divine potential into the play. If it chooses the latter possibility then it must take upon itself a much greater challenge and it is of preparing human nature and its instruments that have evolved so far into becoming free and unobstructed channels of the Divine outpouring upon creation. This is an enormous work and can be fulfilled only through the yoga of transformation.
In between these two there are other intermediary possibilities for the fully developed psychic being. It can linger on some higher plane of consciousness after departure casting its influence and help for those still laboring in the ignorance. Or it can come back incarnating some being of the higher worlds and thereby express some breath of divinity upon earth though short of the perfect perfection of the supermind.
To put it in another way we can say that the soul within us is a divine spark. It grows into a flame as it passes repeatedly through the doors of Death and Rebirth. This divine flame can withdraw into the Sun out of which it had emerged as a spark. Or it can grow further into a living Fire setting the earth ablaze with its divine Energy.
Loving regards,
alok
