Changing the Driving Force of Action from the Mind and Vital Nature to the Psychic Being and its Guidance

For the spiritual seeker, the motivation changes and a different calculus enters into the picture. The spiritual seeker tries to live according to his aspiration, to be true to his highest and deepest self, to overcome the mistakes of the external being which set back the spiritual progress. For this seeker, however, the habitual reliance on the vital and mental nature of the external being is still the predominant mode of response. There is an additional element at work here, and that is the seeker’s contact with the psychic being, which guides and orients the being toward a more complete and all-embracing consecration to the Divine.

People speak of the conscience and associate it somehow with their higher nature. For the most part, conscience is something inculcated on the ethical and moral elements of the mind and is a reflected and highly diluted form of governance over the vital impulses and desires. The promptings of the psychic being may loosely translate into the conscience, but this is not the native working of the psychic being’s guidance or influence.

One of the first steps for the seeker is to cultivate ‘distance’ from the external nature’s actions and reactions by developing what Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘witness consciousness’. From this standpoint, it becomes easier to observe and understand the impulses, the desires, the ambitions, the habitual responses. It is also easier to follow the line of the aspiration to develop and maintain the contact with the psychic being. As that contact grows and matures, the seeker is more able to hear and heed the soul’s guidance.

That guidance is quiet, not easily heard or recognised by the external nature. As the seeker then tries to implement it, he faces the pressure of the mind and the vital. Over time, he is able to break the habit of responding to those pressures and focus instead on the indications of the psychic being to maintain and enhance the psychic control over the external actions.

The Mother notes: “When you hesitate, when you wonder what to do in this or that circumstance, there come the desire, the preference both mental and vital, that press, insist, affirm and impose themselves, and, with the best reasons in the world, build up a whole case for themselves. And if you are not on the alert, if you don’t have a firm discipline, if you don’t have the habit of control, they finally convince you that they are right. And as I was saying a little while ago, they make so much noise that you do not even hear the tiny voice or the tiny, very quiet indication of the soul which says, ‘Don’t do it.’ “

“This ‘Don’t do it’ comes often, but you discard it as something which has no power and follow your impulsive destiny. But if you are truly sincere in your will to find and live the truth, then you learn to listen better and better, you learn to discriminate more and more, and even if it costs you an effort, even if it causes you pain, you learn to obey. And even if you have obeyed only once, it is a powerful help, a considerable progress on the path towards the discrimination between what is and what is not the soul. With this discrimination and the necessary sincerity you are sure to reach the goal.”

But you must not be in a hurry, you must not be impatient, you must be very persevering. You do the wrong thing ten times for every time that you do the right thing. But when you do the wrong thing you must not give up everything in despair, but tell yourself that the Grace will never abandon you and that next time it will be better.”

“So, in conclusion, we shall say that in order to know things as they are you must first unite with your soul and to unite with your soul you must want it with persistence and perseverance.”

“Only the degree of concentration on the goal can shorten the way.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pp. 188-189