Listening to the Voice of the Soul Rather Than the Voice of the External Mental and Vital Nature

The dynamic has been seen and documented countless times. Virtually everyone has the experience that when a vital desire, or an ambition arises, the mind finds ways to support and justify what the vital wants. It can be something innocuous, or it can be a serious life-altering decision. Whatever it is, even if it is ridiculous, the mind will conveniently create some kind of seemingly logical argument to make it seem like it is not only supportable, but something that must be done!

The mind operates through what we call logical reasoning. It takes a step by step approach based on whatever facts or perceptions it happens to have available to it, and works backwards from the intended result to the steps required to get there. This is a process known as “step-wise decomposition”. A major limitation of this approach is that it is necessarily narrow, limited to the specific situation and line of reasoning adopted. It thus tends to have not only unintended consequences, unforeseen lines of development or limited applicability, but it fails to take into account anything that is outside its current fixation or focus.

Knowledge acquired by the mind is necessarily, therefore, incomplete and secondary. Primary knowledge is what is called “knowledge by identity” and this only comes about through direct experience. Knowledge by identity does not come from the mind, but from a shift of standpoint to what may be called the “divine standpoint”. The soul, the psychic being, which is a direct portion of the Divine in the individual, is therefore the only element of the human being at this stage of its evolution capable of knowledge by identity.

The Mother observes: “How many times have we repeated this: all that comes from the mind is wholly relative. The more the mind is educated and has applied itself to various disciplines, the more it becomes capable of proving that what it puts forward or what it says is true. One can prove the truth of anything by reasoning, but that does not make it true. It remains an opinion, a prejudice, a knowledge based on appearances which are themselves more than dubious.”

“So there seems to be only one way out and that is to go in search of one’s soul and to find it. It is there, it does not make a point of hiding itself, it does not play with you just to make things difficult; on the contrary, it makes great efforts to help you find it and to make itself heard. Only, between your soul and your active consciousness there are two characters who are in the habit of making a lot of noise, the mind and the vital. And because they make a lot of noise, while the soul does not, or, rather, makes as little as possible, their noise prevents you from hearing the voice of the soul.”

“When you want to know what your soul knows, you have to make an inner effort, to be very attentive; and indeed, if you are attentive, behind the outer noise of the mind and the vital, you can discern something very subtle, very quiet, very peaceful, which knows and says what it knows. But the insistence of the others is so imperious, while that is so quiet, that you are very easily misled into listening to the one that makes the most noise; most often you become aware only afterwards that the other one was right. It does not impose itself, it does not compel you to listen, for it is without violence.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pp. 187-188