Rebirth in Consciousness: The Psychic Being
by Soumitra Basu and Michael Miovic
Editor’s note: The following selection is chapter 3 of Consciousness-Based Psychology: Sri Aurobindo’s Vision of Yoga, Health and Transpersonal Growth[1] by Dr. Soumitra Basu and Dr. Michael Miovic.
In an abysmal lapse of all things built
Transcending every perishable support
And joining at last its mighty origin,
The separate self must melt or be reborn
Into a Truth beyond the mind’s appeal.
—Sri Aurobindo[2]
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother used the term “psychic being” to refer to the immortal essence of the human being that survives the death of the body, and is reborn from life to life as it grows in consciousness. Since this evolving soul is the foundation of their yoga and stands at the center of Consciousness-Based Psychology (CBP), we start here with a detailed study of the psychic being. First for Sri Aurobindo’s discussion of the often misunderstood phenomenon of “reincarnation,” which starts out on a humorous note and then becomes deeply insightful:
You must avoid a common popular blunder about reincarnation. The popular idea is that Titus Balbus is reborn again as John Smith, a man with the same personality, character, attainments as he had in his former life with the sole difference that he wears coat and trousers instead of a toga and speaks in cockney English instead of popular Latin. That is not the case. What would be the earthly use of repeating the same personality or character a million times from the beginning of time till its end! The soul comes into birth for experience, for growth, for evolution till it can bring the Divine into matter. It is the central being that incarnates, not the outer personality — the personality is simply a mould that it creates for its figures of experience in that one life. In another birth it will create for itself a different personality, different capacities, a different life and career. Supposing Virgil is born again, he may take up poetry in one or two other lives, but he will certainly not write an epic but rather perhaps slight but elegant and beautiful lyrics such as he wanted to write, but did not succeed, in Rome. In another birth he is likely to be no poet at all, but a philosopher and a Yogin seeking to attain and to express the highest truth — for that too was an unrealised trend of his consciousness in that life. Perhaps before he had been a warrior or ruler doing deeds like Aeneas or Augustus before he sang them. And so on — on this side or that the central being develops a new character, a new personality, grows, develops, passes through all kinds of terrestrial experience.
As the evolving being develops still more and becomes more rich and complex, it accumulates its personalities, as it were. Sometimes they stand behind the active elements, throwing in some colour, some trait, some capacity here and there, — or they stand in front and there is a multiple personality, a many-sided character or a many-sided, sometimes what looks like a universal capacity. But if a former personality, a former capacity is brought fully forward, it will not be to repeat what was already done, but to cast the same capacity into new forms and new shapes and fuse it into a new harmony of the being which will not be a reproduction of what it was before. Thus, you must not expect to be what the warrior and the poet were — something of the outer characteristics may reappear but very much changed and new-cast in a new combination. It is in a new direction that the energies will be guided to do what was not done before.
Another thing. It is not the personality, the character that is of the first importance in rebirth — it is the psychic being who stands behind the evolution of the nature and evolves with it. The psychic when it departs from the body, shedding even the mental and vital on its way to its resting place, carries with it the heart of its experiences, — not the physical events, not the vital movements, not the mental buildings, not the capacities or characters, but something essential that it gathered from them, what might be called the divine element for the sake of which the rest existed. That is the permanent addition, it is that that helps in the growth towards the Divine. That is why there is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives — for this memory there must be a strong development towards unbroken continuance of the mind, the vital, even the subtle physical; for though it all remains in a kind of seed memory, it does not ordinarily emerge. What was the divine element in the magnanimity of the warrior, that which expressed itself in his loyalty, nobility, high courage, what was the divine element behind the harmonious mentality and generous vitality of the poet and expressed itself in them, that remains and in a new harmony of character may find a new expression or, if the life is turned towards the Divine, be taken up as powers for the realisation or for the work that has to be done for the Divine.[3]
Aside from being beautifully written, this statement about the psychic being answers some of the common questions about rebirth, such as why the process exists at all (to “bring the Divine into matter”), why people generally do not remember past lives, and what the difference is between the psychic being and the outer personality.
Conventional psychology studies the surface personality, which revolves around the ego and ends with the death of the body, while the psychic being is an evolving immortal soul-entity that surpasses the ego and is independent of the surface personality. CBP certainly accepts the reality of the surface personality, but it sees this as existing for the sake of the evolving psychic being. In subsequent chapters [of the book] we shall elaborate further the interaction between the psychic being and the outer personality, but for the moment the point to emphasize is that CBP sees growth as not only the meaning and purpose of one passing human life, but as the entire raison d’être of all life and of consciousness itself. This fundamental orientation towards growth of consciousness gives CBP a profoundly positive approach to the human condition.
For example, whereas the older traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism viewed karma and rebirth as problems to be solved by transcending the cycle of reincarnation (via nirvana or moksha), Sri Aurobindo and the Mother viewed the psychic being as a deep potential to be fulfilled via the evolution of consciousness on Earth. In the following letter, Sri Aurobindo explains these yogic issues by way of tracing out the relationship between the psychic being and the Atman or Self of the Vedantic tradition:
It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and the pure Atman, self or spirit. The pure self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature. It is not bound by these things, not limited, not affected, even though it assumes and supports them. The soul, on the contrary, is something that comes down into birth and passes through death—although it does not itself die, for it is immortal — from one state to another, from the earth-plane to other planes and back again to the earth-existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being. This being supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-expression. All this it does from behind a veil, showing something of its divine self only in so far as the imperfection of the instrumental being will allow it. But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life. The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human — it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to the supramental state. Till then, till it has reached the spiritual realisation, there is no reason why it should cease from birth, it cannot in fact so cease. If having reached the spiritual state, it wills to pass out of the terrestrial manifestation, it may indeed make such an exit, — but there is also possible a higher manifestation, in the Knowledge and not in the Ignorance.[4]
The last sentence above spells out the fundamental difference between Sri Aurobindo and all other schools of yoga, be they Eastern or Western. Even the Buddhist notion of the Bodhisattva, the enlightened being who returns to Earth out of compassion to help other beings attain Nirvana, still sees the goal of life as for all beings to transcend the cycle of rebirth. In contrast, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother affirm that the cycle of rebirth exists for a profound purpose, which is for the psychic being to fulfill the evolution of consciousness on Earth. Thus, in CBP the psychic being is the nexus where psychology, religion, philosophy, and metaphysics meet.
Journey of the Soul
Having thus established why the psychic being stands at the center of CBP, we may now go on to answer a host of questions about the soul and rebirth. To begin with, Sri Aurobindo noted that the term “soul” has developed so many different definitions and connotations in English, which is why he preferred the term “psychic being,” which is coined from the Greek root psyche (or psuche, meaning soul or spirit), and is appropriately embedded in the word “psychology.” He learned the term from the Mother (who in turn learned it from European occultists with whom she studied in Algeria), and he equated it with the caitya purusha of the Upanishads. As for reincarnation, Sri Aurobindo preferred the term “rebirth” to other terms such as “transmigration,” “metempsychosis,” and “reincarnation,” because:
Reincarnation is the now popular term, but the idea in the word leans to the gross or external view of the fact and begs many questions. I prefer “rebirth”, for it renders the sense of the wide, colourless, but sufficient Sanskrit term, punarjanma, “again-birth,” and commits us to nothing but the fundamental idea which is the essence and life of the doctrine.[5]
In response to a question about the fear of death, the Mother explained how one can dis-identify the sense of self from the body, and identify instead with the psychic being:
There is another, a little more difficult, but better, I believe. It lies in telling oneself: “This body is not I,” and in trying to find in oneself the part which is truly one’s self, until one has found one’s psychic being. And when one has found one’s psychic being—immediately, you understand—one has the sense of immortality. And one knows that what goes out or what comes in is just a matter of convenience: “I am not going to weep over a pair of shoes I put aside when it is full of holes! When my pair of shoes is worn out I cast it aside, and I do not weep.” Well, the psychic being has taken this body because it needed to use it for its work, but when the time comes to leave the body, that is to say, when one must leave it because it is no longer of any use for some reason or other, one leaves the body and has no fear. It is quite a natural gesture—and it is done without the least regret, that’s all.
And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality. As for me, I consider this the best remedy.[6]
Interestingly, the method of dis-identification with the body the Mother describes here is quite similar to the approach of atmic inquiry (“who am I?”) taught by Sri Ramana Maharashi. However, although the process is similar, there is a subtle difference in goal. The experience of Nirvana or Self-realization leads to a state in which all sense of individual “self” or identity disappears, while the experience of the psychic being leads to the sense of an immortal but evolving individual identity that is a manifestation of the Divine. Whereas classical Buddhist and Vedantic practice did not specifically cultivate the psychic being, or use any experience of it as a step to the realization of Nirvana or the Self, the Mother used the experience of the Self or Nirvana as a stable platform upon which to carry on the evolution of the psychic being and the transformation of the body’s consciousness.
The psychic being survives death and carries the deepest and most essential memory-traces of a lifetime forward to serve the evolution of consciousness in future lives. However, it is important to note that the growth of the psychic being happens in life itself, and not between births. The Mother explained that after death, the psychic being
goes into a kind of rest for assimilation where the result of the progress accomplished during its active existence is worked out, and when this assimilation is finished, when it has absorbed the progress it had prepared in its active life on earth, it comes down again in a new body bringing with it the result of all its progress and, at an advanced stage, it even chooses the environment and the kind of body and the kind of life in which it will live to complete its experience concerning one point or another. In some very advanced cases the psychic can, before leaving the body, decide what kind of life it will have in its next incarnation.[7]
The Mother also explained that the withdrawal of energies and consciousness into the psychic being is not the same as attaining Nirvana. A rest of the psychic being between lives does not mean an attainment of Nirvana for “the psychic is something essentially linked to divine manifestation, not to divine nonintervention, not to Nirvana.”[8] She further explained that when the psychic being becomes completely formed and conscious,
it presides over the formation of the new body, and usually through an inner influence it chooses the elements and the substance which will form its body in such a way that the body is adapted to the needs of its new experience. But this is at a rather advanced stage. And later, when it is fully formed and returns to earth with the idea of service, of collective help and participation in the divine Work, then it is able to bring to the body in formation certain elements of the mind and vital from previous lives which, having been organized and impregnated with psychic forces in previous lives, could be preserved and, consequently, can participate in the general progress. But this is at a very, very advanced stage.[9]
Thus, it is not the surface personality or character that is of primary importance in the phenomenon of rebirth, but memories and impressions carried forward by the psychic being in its evolutionary journey. In the letter quoted at the beginning of this article, Sri Aurobindo noted that “there is usually no memory of the outward events and circumstances of past lives.”[10] However, there are exceptions and, in fact, much has been written about cases in which people do have memories of past lives, and this is a topic of perennial appeal to the popular mind. In order to do justice to this topic, one must approach it with a sense of balance, and we must dispense with simplistic notions of “one rule fits all.” The process of rebirth is vast and varied, and one must approach it without preconceptions. As Sri Aurobindo explained:
There is no rule of complete forgetfulness in the return of the soul to rebirth. There are, especially in childhood, many impressions of the past life which can be strong and vivid enough, but a materialising education and the overpowering influences of the environment most often, but not quite always, prevent their true nature from being recognised. There are even a number of people who have definite recollections of a past life. But these things are discouraged by education and the atmosphere and cannot remain or develop; in most cases they are stifled out of existence. At the same time it must be noted that what the psychic being mainly carries away with it and brings back is ordinarily the essence and effect of the experiences it had in former lives, and not the details, so that you cannot expect the same coherent memory as one has of past happenings in the present existence.
A soul can go straight to the psychic world but that depends on the state of consciousness at the time of departure. If the psychic is in front at the time, this immediate transition is possible. It does not depend on the acquisition of a mental and vital as well as a psychic immortality — those who have acquired that would rather have the power to move about in the different planes and even act on the physical world without being bound to it. On the whole it may be said that there is no one rigid rule for these things; manifold variations are possible depending upon the consciousness, its energies, tendencies and formations, although there is a general framework and design into which all fit and take their place.[11]
The Mother explained that true psychic memories
are unforgettable moments of life when the consciousness is intense, luminous, strong, active, powerful, and sometimes turning points in life that have changed the direction of one’s life. But one will never be able to say what dress one was wearing or the gentleman with whom one spoke and the neighbours and the kind of field where one was.[12]
Or again:
When you have the psychic memory you remember a set of circumstances at one moment of life, particularly of the inner emotion, of the consciousness that acted at that moment. And then that passes into the consciousness along with some associations, with all that was around you, perhaps a word spoken, a phrase heard; but what was most important was the state of the soul in which you were: for that indeed remains very clearly engraved.[13]
The Mother cautions that most people’s recollections of “past lives” are the product of fancy and imagination:
Those who claim to have been such a baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place and such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past lives are not beautiful pictures in which you appear as a mighty lord in a castle or a victorious general at the head of an army — that is only romance. What remains is the memory of those instants when the psychic being emerged from the depths of your being and revealed itself to you — that is to say, the memory of those instants when you were wholly conscious.…
At the time when you live such moments of your life, you do not care at all about remembering that you were Mr. X, such a person, living at such a place and in such an epoch; it is not the memory of your civic status that remains. On the contrary, you lose all consciousness of these petty external things, accessories and perishables, so that you may be wholly in the flare of the soul revelation or of the divine contact. When you remember such instants of your past lives, the memory is so intense that it seems to be still very close, still living, and much more living than most of the ordinary memories of our present life. At times, in dreams, when you come into contact with certain planes of consciousness, you may have memories of such intensity, such vibrant colour, so to say, even more intense than the colours and things of the physical world. For these are the moments of true consciousness….
These minutes of contact with the soul are often those that mark a decisive turn of our life, a forward step, a progress in consciousness, and that frequently corresponds with a crisis, an extremely intense situation when there comes a call in the whole being, a call so strong that the inner consciousness pierces the layers of unconsciousness covering it and is revealed all luminous on the surface….
Yet you must not believe that all memories of past lives are those of moments of great crisis, of important mission or of revelation. Sometimes they are moments very simple, transparent, when an integral, a perfect harmony of the being was expressed. And that may correspond to altogether insignificant external situations…. Once the privileged moment passes, the psychic being plunges into an inner somnolence and the whole outer life melts into a gray monotony which does not leave any trace.[14]
It is hardly surprising that we only retain the imprints of key moments of past lives, for this also holds true in our present lives. As the Mother also noted, when we look at our current life in retrospect, we find that we recall only essential moments, key lessons, and capacities or skills or understanding that we have built up over time. Most day-to-day details of our lives are forgotten.[15]
Sometimes, individuals claim to have memories of their “animal births.” The Mother pointed out that such claims are wholly based on fancy because in the case of animals, “the divine spark… is buried much too deep down to be able to come up consciously to the surface and be associated with the outer life. One must become a wholly conscious being, conscious in all its parts, totally united with one’s divine origin before one can truly say that one remembers his past lives.”[16]
Another source of confusion is the difference between psychic memories and memories of the vital being, which can also be “true” but are not the same. The ordinary individual is a loose amalgam of disorganized ideas, desires, and vital impulses revolving in a disjointed fashion around an ego constructed from these very same elements. When a person dies, these amorphous elements of the surface personality get de-linked, dissipated, and scattered in the cosmic consciousness as fringe entities of little importance. However, if a person has one plane of consciousness that is exceptionally well-developed in a particular lifetime, that organization can remain in the cosmic consciousness to inspire subjects in future eras who are ready to receive and benefit. Thus the exceptional vision of Alexander, the mighty courage of Shivaji, or the indomitable determination of Napoleon can still inspire and embolden warriors on the battlefield. Likewise, a brilliant philosophical mindset can remain in the cosmic consciousness to influence future generations of thinkers.
In the same vein, it can be said that if an individual has a vital consciousness that has indulged in terrible acts, then after death a disembodied fragment of this vital force can persist and maliciously influence susceptible subjects. Sometimes such vital formations can appear or be interpreted as apparitions or “ghosts.” In this context, it must be emphasized that not all subtle formations that survive beyond a particular life-span necessarily represent soul-elements.[17] In exceptional cases when a dramatic account of a past life is actually corroborated by cross-checking facts, it is not the memory traces carried by the psychic being but rather a strong vital memory carried by a disembodied vital element that is responsible. Also, the Mother described small vital entities which are
… formed by the decomposition of desires that have persisted after a man’s death and retained their form; of imaginations that have remained coagulated and try to manifest and reappear. Sometimes they are small beings of the vital world, not very well-disposed; as soon as they see people playing at such things — automatic writing, spirit-communication — they come and play. And as they are in a domain from where it is easy to read human thought, they tell you very well what you have in your head.[18]
When asked about the difference between spectacular past-life events narrated by children and reported in newspapers, and the specific memory imprints carried by the psychic being, the Mother answered:
The memories… mentioned in the newspapers, are the memories of the vital being, when exceptionally it has come out of a body in order to enter another. That happens, though not frequently. The memories I am referring to are those of the psychic being, and one is conscious of them only when one is in conscious relationship with one’s psychic being.[19]
Things can only be different if all the planes and parts of the being are completely integrated around the psychic being, so as to produce “a completely formed conscious being” that can “pass consciously from one life to another without losing anything of its consciousness.”[20] The Mother added that this is a rare occurrence and usually such beings “are not in the least inclined to narrate their adventures.”[21]
Finally, apropos the question about when exactly the psychic being enters the body upon rebirth, Sri Aurobindo pointed out that this, too, is variable:
As regards the stage at which the soul returning for re-birth enters the new body no rule can be laid down, for the circumstances vary with the individual. Some psychic beings get into relation with the birth-environment and the parents from the time of inception and determine the preparation of the personality and future in the embryo, others join only at the time of delivery, others even later on in the life and in these cases it is some emanation of the psychic being which upholds the life. It should be noted that the conditions of the future birth are determined fundamentally not during the stay in the psychic world but at the time of death — the psychic being then chooses what it should work out in the next terrestrial appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly.[22]
Past Lives and Therapeutic Work
The next question that arises is whether a regression analysis of past life events can be beneficial for psychotherapeutic work. There are past-life therapies that attempt to trace the effects of karmas from past lives into the present, and work upon them. However, while past-life regression therapy has garnered some popular attention in the West, it is generally not consonant with CBP, where the aim of rebirth is understood as being spiritual progression. The integral vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother does not favor past-life regression as this puts one back in touch with things that were already in the process of elimination, and if one is spiritually receptive and open to the Divine Grace, the karmas can be automatically driven away.[23] These principles are illustrated in the following case study:
An 8 year-old girl was having repetitive disturbances in the form of being pushed and physically harassed by invisible forces. Every time she seemed about to suffer a near-fatal outcome, at the last moment she would be saved by an inner voice who cautioned her. This voice identified itself as her mother from a past birth and gave precise descriptions of her supposed past life. At peak moments of her crisis, her distress responded to low doses of anti-psychotics (olanzapine), but her problems recurred repeatedly. She had such misery and agony that everyone was afraid she could not bear such suffering. Her inner guidance from her “other mother” always saved her, but family and clinicians alike were both concerned about the possibility of death or a complete psychotic breakdown.
On questioning, it was found that the girl’s estranged father, who did not agree to a legal divorce with her mother, had commissioned a Muslim occultist to create disturbances in the child’s behavior. Presumably, the father believed that this would force her mother to seek his help. The girl was then referred to a Sufi occultist and a Hindu Tantrik, both of whom did not explore her past life or deal with her inner voice of a mother from a past life. Instead of giving importance to her “other mother,” what both occultists did was to invoke a Higher Light that would free the girl from past attachments as well as from her present predicament. Of course, it was acknowledged that her past life experiences had made her vulnerable to disruptive occult forces in the present life. But the emphasis was to facilitate the forward journey of the soul rather than ruminating on the past. Within six months of these spiritual interventions, the girl gradually recovered from disturbances by “invisible forces.”
As this case shows, when a subject in distress talks of past-life experiences, the endeavour of intervening mystics and occultists should not be to dwell on and explore those experiences, but rather to offer these experiences to a higher spiritual truth, so that the past bonds can be outgrown with the help of the Divine Grace. Spiritually, the mission of the psychic being is always to move forward towards the Supramental manifestation, and therefore delving into past-life experiences, much of which are anyway distorted, has limited significance in the growth of consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo explained,
Seriously, these historical identifications are a perilous game and open a hundred doors to the play of imagination. Some may, in the nature of things must be true; but once people begin, they don’t know where to stop. What is important is the lines, rather than the lives, the incarnation of Forces that explain what one now is — and, as for particular lives or rather personalities, those alone matter which are very definite in one and have powerfully contributed to what one is developing now. But it is not always possible to put a name upon these; for not one hundred-thousandth part of what has been has still a name preserved by human Time.[24]
About the “lines” of spiritual development that Sri Aurobindo alludes to above, the Mother further explained that there are certain lines of consciousness that support different individuals at different points in time: “[T]here is the line of divine consciousness which seeks to manifest from above and upholds a certain series of formations, peculiar to itself, in the universe which is its field of manifestation.”[25] Thus, a certain line of consciousness that explores music originating from higher planes might support different musicians (say X, Y, and Z) at different eras in history—but that does not mean that X is reborn as Y or Z. Rather, X, Y, and Z have the capacity of manifesting a certain higher-order musical tradition through inspiration from higher planes of consciousness, but each composes in accordance with the demands of the Time-Spirit and each has one’s own contemporary uniqueness.
Sri Aurobindo also noted that in his approach to yoga, the future is much more important than the past:
It is not of course indispensable to know [about past lives]. It is sometimes a matter of interest for knowing the lines of one’s past development and how one has come to what one is now. But to overpass this outward development is of course the main aim of the Yoga. We are not to be tied by our past lives.
Too much importance must not be given to past lives. For the purpose of this Yoga one is what one is and, still more, what one will be. What one was has a minor importance.[26]
Another reason that memories of past lives are not pursued in Integral Yoga is because subconscious memory is not carried across lifetimes, so it is not likely that any clinically significant problems are propagated through the process of rebirth. Whatever energies are carried forward should be viewed more as circumstances the psychic being has chosen for its work and growth in this life:
Certainly, the subconscient is formed for this life only and is not carried with it by the soul from one life to another. The memory of past lives is not something that is active anywhere in the being — if by memory is meant the memory of details…. But usually it is only the essence of past lives that is activised in the being, not any particular memories.[27]
Names, events, physical details are remembered only under exceptional circumstances and are of a very minor importance. When people try to remember these outward things, they usually build up a number of romantic imaginations which are not true.[28]
Also, Sri Aurobindo did not ascribe to the notion that rebirth is traumatic:
I know nothing about any terrible suffering endured by the soul in the process of rebirth; popular beliefs even when they have some foundation are seldom enlightened and accurate.[29]
Finally, it is worth noting that antecedents arising in the past should not be confused with the play of subtle physical forces in the present, which can very much cause psychological distress that warrants clinical attention. Sri Aurobindo explains that such forces have nothing to do with predetermination.[30] Thus, even if there seem to be antecedents in the past, it is not necessary that these are invincible causative factors of distress in the present:
There is no such thing as an insuperable difficulty from past lives. There are formations that help and formations that hamper; the latter have to be dismissed and dissolved, not to be allowed to repeat themselves.[31]
Finding the Soul
A common question is what contact with the psychic being feels like, or how to know that one is in contact with the psychic being. One sure sign is a feeling of inexplicable sweetness or joy that has no outer cause, but arises spontaneously. The psychic feeling is simple, pure, supra-rational, and immediate. It is not an emotion so much as a subtle tact or feeling that stands behind all emotion. It also has a sense as having existed from and for all eternity. As the Mother described,
And the moment you are in your psychic being, you have that feeling, spontaneously, effortlessly. You soar above the physical life and have the sense of immortality…. This is a deep experience and you can always get it back as soon as you recover the contact with the psychic being. This is a truly interesting phenomenon, for it is automatic. The moment you are in contact with your psychic being, you have the feeling of immortality, of having always been and being always, eternally. And then what comes and goes — these are life’s accidents, they have no importance.[32]
Also, note that the psychic being may make its presence felt not only in beautiful and harmonious circumstances imbued with peaceful emotions and sensations, but also in dangerous and painful moments of crisis, or when life itself stands in the balance. For if the psychic being were not able to confront the most dire extremes of disaster and death, then it would not be truly immortal. Satprem, who worked closely with the Mother, eloquently expressed the beauty and power of the psychic being as follows:
Even in this life, we have all known instants of pure transparency or sudden flowering, and twenty or forty years later we find intact the snapshot, including the exact hue of the sky, even the little pebble on the path or the absurd routine that was unfolding that day, as if it were there for all eternity — it is not “as if,” it really is for eternity. These are the only moments when we have lived, when a real I has surfaced in us out of these thousands of hours of nonexistence. In tragic circumstances too, the psychic can emerge, when all at once the whole being gathers together in a great poignant intensity, and something is rent: then we feel a kind of presence behind which makes us do things we would normally be quite incapable of doing. This is the other face of the psychic, not only one of joy and sweetness, but also of tranquil power, as though it were forever above every possible tragedy, an invulnerable master.[33]
An example of how the psychic being can come forth to confront danger happened to the author (Dr. Basu) in the 1980s, when he was working with a group of people who were abusing heroin. The drug mafia decided to assault him, as his work interfered with their business, and at the moment that he was attacked by a gang of thugs intent on crippling him, he suddenly felt a deep peace within and a massive inner strength that was oblivious to the blows being inflicted upon him. He felt calm, relaxed and protected—in the very midst of a severe beating—and soon help appeared from unexpected quarters to rescue him. Afterwards he understood that it was the psychic being that had come forward to safeguard the outer being.
Karma
In the Aurobindonian paradigm, rebirth is viewed from a flexible poise that emerges naturally from the consciousness perspective. Whether one passes after birth into hell or heaven is also psychologically untenable from the integral perspective, as hell and heaven are merely mental formations. However, these formations have been so fed with beliefs and dogmas across religions that they can nonetheless affect people:
Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul, or rather of the vital being, which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through some vital world or a dolorous lingering there, as for instance in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are also, of course, real worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences, and one may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities. But the idea of reward or retribution is a crude or vulgar conception and we can disregard it as a mere popular error.[34]
In fact, Sri Aurobindo dismissed simplistic notions of karmic rewards and punishments for purported deeds or misdeeds as “Too symmetrical to be true.”[35] He added that:
The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction for good and ill is not good fortune for the one and bad fortune for the other, but this that good leads us towards a higher nature which is eventually lifted above suffering and ill pulls us towards the lower nature which remains always in the circle of suffering and evil.[36]
In another conversation he commented:
The Law of Karma is not mathematical or mechanical: Certain energies are put forward and certain results tend to be produced. Karma is not the fundamental law of consciousness. The basic law is spiritual. Karma is a secondary machinery to help the consciousness to grow by experience. The laws of being are primarily spiritual. It is quite possible to eliminate the Karmic force — it is not absolute. It is the mind that formulates these laws; and the mind always tries to put them as absolute.[37]
Sri Aurobindo also explained that our notions of time-periods between death and rebirth cannot be construed along rigid lines: “[T]he rigid rules of time and of Karmic reaction laid down dogmatically by the Theosophist hierophants are certainly erroneous.”[38] The Mother, based on her vast repertoire of experiential knowledge, said that there are no common rules as in some cases there could be immediate rebirth while in others it could take centuries or millennia to find a suitable milieu for rebirth.[39]
Importantly, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother there is an intimate connection between the individual and collective evolution of consciousness, such that each new life has a continuity with the cosmic memory. If this continuity were absent, then there could be no evolutionary process, either individually or collectively, and we could never manifest shared universal values and nor be capable of an infinite expansion of knowledge and vision. For example, a highly developed psychic being can transfer its memory traces to other evolving psychic beings, and this sort of inner influence or transmission shows that rebirth should be understood not in only individualistic terms, but also as a cosmic phenomenon that affects the whole evolution of consciousness. In Sri Aurobindo’s vision, the old idea of reincarnation errs by an excessive individualism. The psychic being enters into birth not as an isolated being, but as a part in the life of the whole—and therefore the soul inherits the life of the whole.[40] [41] Rebirth is thus an occasion and means of a spiritual evolution that explains all the missing links in the evolution of consciousness on Earth, which biological factors alone do not explain.[42] In Sri Aurobindo’s yoga psychology, a major breakthrough occurs when the psychic being comes forward and takes over the ego as the leader of individual identity and growth. The planes and parts of the being can now be organized and harmonized around the psychic being, and this integrated individual is then ready to travel forward and upward along the evolutionary trajectory.[43]
The child of the Void shall be reborn in God,
My Matter shall evade the Inconscient’s trance.
My body like my spirit shall be free.
It shall escape from Death and Ignorance.[44]
Notes
[1]. Soumitra Basu and Michael Miovic, Consciousness-Based Psychology (Auroville, India: Prisma, 2023).
[2]. Savitri, Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA), vols. 33–34 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1997), p. 307.
[3]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, CWSA, vol. 28 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2005), pp. 543–544.
[4]. Ibid., pp. 536–537.
[5]. Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, CWSA, vol. 13 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1998), p. 259.
[6]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1953, Complete Works of the Mother, (CWM), vol. 5 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1977, 2003), pp. 315–316.
[7]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1957–1958, CWM, vol. 9 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 2004), p. 268.
[8]. The Mother, Mother’s Agenda, vol. 4, English translation (Paris: Institut de Recherches Évolutives, 1987), p. 275.
[9]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1957–1958, pp. 268–269.
[10]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, p. 544.
[11]. Ibid., p. 536.
[12]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1953, p. 36.
[13]. Ibid., p. 33. See also Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 406; and Soumitra Basu and Michael Miovic, Consciousness-Based Psychology, p. 72.
[14]. The Mother, Words of the Mother III, CWM, vol. 15 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2004), pp. 340–342.
[15]. Ibid., pp. 342–343.
[16]. Ibid., p. 343.
[17]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, pp. 552–553.
[18]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1953, p. 35.
[19]. The Mother, Mother’s Agenda, vol. 8, p. 387.
[20]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1953, p. 34.
[21]. Ibid.
[22]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, p. 539.
[23]. The Mother, Mother’s Agenda, vol. 3, pp. 63–64.
[24]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, p. 553–554.
[25]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1929–1931, CWM, vol. 3 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2003), p. 148.
[26]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, pp. 552–553.
[27]. Ibid., p. 551.
[28]. Ibid., p. 552.
[29]. Ibid., p. 538.
[30]. Ibid., p. 562.
[31]. Ibid., p. 545.
[32]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1953, p. 316.
[33]. Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, English translation (Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives, 1993), p. 89.
[34]. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga I, p. 535–536.
[35]. Ibid., p. 533.
[36]. Ibid.
[37]. Evening Talks with Sri Aurobindo, recorded by A. B. Purani (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2007), p. 219–220.
[38]. Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human, CWSA, vol. 12 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1997), p. 71.
[39]. The Mother, Questions and Answers 1929–1931, p. 145.
[40]. Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, pp. 365–366.
[41]. Ibid., pp. 363–364.
[42]. Ibid., p. 297.
[43]. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, CWSA, vols. 23–24 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1999), p. 150.
[44]. Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 406.
About the Authors
Dr. Soumitra Basu is a consultant psychiatrist and has been working on consciousness paradigms on health and psychology for nearly four decades.
Michael Miovic has published numerous articles on Sri Aurobindo’s consciousness-based approach to psychology, and is the co-author of Consciousness-Based Psychology with Dr. Soumitra Basu.
