The Psychic Being and Contact with the Eternal Truth

It is said that the earth is the place of development and is the place where the soul comes to participate in that development. There are other worlds that are static worlds, that do not change, and grow and develop. If a being wants to participate in this development process, it needs to take birth on earth.

The Kena Upanishad takes up the question of whether other beings, including those that are described as gods, can have the direct experience of the Eternal if they do not have a psychic being to create that direct contact. In parts 3 and 4, the gods, Agni, Vayu and Indra are celebrating their unique powers and their conquest over the creation. They are confronted by a power that is beyond them, which can nullify their own characteristic powers. Eventually Indra, representing powers of the mind, comes upon the creative power of Nature. He inquires of Nature what that is which is able to neutralise the action of the gods. He learns that it is the Eternal, which is the origin and source of all the worlds, powers and beings.

The Upanishad thus describes the possibility that static beings that do not have the developing psychic being, that are not of the earthly world of manifestation, can experience a direct relation with the Eternal.

The psychic being, as a portion of the Divine, is always in contact with the Eternal, whether one recognises that connection in the external being or not. As the psychic being develops and matures, the connection is able to infuse itself into the external life consisting of mind, life and body. The awakened, conscious expression of the psychic being in the outer nature is a unique power of the human being.

A disciple asks: “Can one be in contact with the eternal Truth without having any contact with one’s psychic being?”

The Mother answers: “Some beings in the universe may have tis direct contact with the eternal Truth without any contact with the psychic being, because they don’t have any psychic being. But in man there is always a psychic being, and it is always through it that he comes into contact with the eternal Truth. And this contact with the psychic being is usually disclosed to him in the same way, for it carries with it its own grace, its own splendour and beatitude. The psychic being is characteristic of man, and if one goes to the bottom of the matter, perhaps this is what gives man his superiority.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pg. 170