The Self: Transcendent, Universal and Individual

In order to distinguish standpoint and nexus of attention, we refer to the Divine Being as either Transcendent, i.e. exceeding the entire manifested universe and containing both the manifest and unmanifest aspects; Universal, i.e. the consciousness that maintains awareness of the universal creation; or Individual, i.e. the consciousness that represents each individual being’s nexus within the universal creation. These are not ‘separate and distinct’ from one another, as they are all aspects of the same consciousness, just seen from different perspectives.

In terms of the Individual level, there is the spiritual aspect, what is called the Jivatman, and then there is the psychic being, the individual soul in creation. The spiritual aspect is free of the changes that take place in any individual lifetime, while the soul takes on the essence and grows as it moves from birth to birth.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “The self, Atman is in its nature either transcendent or universal (Paramatma, Atma). When it individualises and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. The Jivatman feels his oneness with the universal but at the same time his central separateness as a portion of the Divine.”

“The phrase ‘central being’ in our yoga is usually applied to the portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and birth. This central being has two forms — above, it is Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes, — below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it.”

“The Jivatman is for me the Unborn who presides over the individual being and its developments, associated with it but above it and them and who by the very nature of his existence knows himself as universal and transcendent no less than individual and feels the Divine to be his origin, the truth of his being, the master of his nature, the very stuff of his existence.”

“By Jivatma we mean the individual self. Essentially it is one self with all others, but in the multiplicity of the Divine it is the individual self, an individual centre of the universe — and it sees everything in itself or itself in everything or both together according to its state of consciousness and point of view.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 80-82