(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

The Double Soul in Man

The manifestation of Delight

Delight, which is a cosmic principle has to manifest in earthly life and in earthly terms. How does it do that?

Sri Aurobindo describes that creation is manifested and maintained by a fourfold principle of divine being: Existence (Sat), Conscious-Force (Chit-Shakti), Bliss (Ananda) and Supermind. Each of these divine principles, though omnipresent in the cosmos, lie concealed and veiled behind their subordinate earthly representations.(the Life Divine, pg.233) Thus Supermind is veiled behind its subordinate term mind. Conscious-Force or Chit-Shakti that builds the multiverses lies veiled and secretly operative behind its subordinate term, Life. The omnipresent principle of cosmic Matter is veiled behind its subordinate presentation as Substance or Form of being or physical Matter. In the same vein, the omnipresent principle of Divine Bliss must be hidden by a veiled subordinate principle in the manifestation. Sri Aurobindo describes that the subordinate principle that veils the Universal principle of Delight is actually what we call as the soul –‘the psychic principle which is not the life or the mind, much less the body, but which holds in itself the opening and flowering of the essence of all these to their own peculiar delight of self, to light, to love, to joy and beauty and to a refined purity of being.’ (Ibid, pg.234)

The Double terms in the manifestation

Not only is each divine principle veiled by its subordinate in the manifestation but each manifested principle has a double poise on one hand , revolving around the ego and transcending the ego (the true individuality) and on another hand is linked with the universality. Thus:

(a) Behind the outer mind or what is the ‘surface mind of our expressed evolutionary ego’, there is a unrestricted ‘large, powerful and luminous’ subliminal principle –the true mental being. (Ibid, pg.234) This true subliminal mind is connected with the ‘universal knowledge of the cosmic Mind’. (Ibid, pg.235)

(b) Behind the outer life that is involved in the physical body conditioned by life and death and bound by its atavistic evolutionary past, there deeper ‘subliminal force of life which is not cabined between the narrow boundaries of our physical birth and death, but is our true vital being behind the form of living which we ignorantly take for our real existence’. (Ibid, pg.234) This subliminal life is linked with the universal force of cosmic Life.

(c) Behind ‘the matter of our being there is this duality; for behind our body we have a subtler material existence which provides the substance not only of our physical but of our vital and mental sheaths and is therefore our real substance supporting this physical form which we erroneously imagine to be the whole body of our spirit’. (Ibid) This ‘subliminal physicality’ opens to ‘the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter’.(Ibid, pg.235) It is to be noted that while the outer mind, life and body are separated from their subliminal counterparts by thick layers of consciousness which Nature finds difficult to pierce, the separation of the subliminal principles from universality is modulated by ‘a rarefied medium at once of separation and communication’. (Ibid)

(d) We also have ‘a double psychic identity, the surface desire-soul which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness, and a subliminal psychic entity, a pure power of light, love, joy and refined essence of being which is our true soul behind the outer form of psychic existence…It is when some reflection of this larger and purer psychic entity comes to the surface that we say of a man, he has a soul’ (Ibid, pg.234-235). This subliminal soul opens ‘to the universal delight which the cosmic soul takes in its own existence and in the existence of the myriad souls that represent it’. (Ibid, pg.235) However the surface soul is cut off from the cosmic Delight by thick egoistic walls which are not fully opaque but have gates of penetration but in their entry through them, the cosmic Delight gets dwarfed, distorted, perverted or masked in terms that are the opposite of Delight (Ibid) – terms interpreted as pleasure, pain and indifference.

Table

Surface being (ego-linked)	True Individuality (Beyond ego)	Connection to Universality (Cosmic Self)
Outer mind	True Mental being	cosmic Mind of universal Knowledge
Outer life	True Vital being	cosmic Life of universal Force
Outer matter	True Physical being	cosmic Matter of universal Force-Form
Desire-soul	True Psychic entity	cosmic Soul of universal Delight

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu