The Shift of Standpoint from the External Being to the Psychic Being Brings a Release from Suffering

In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens sketches the character, personality and habits of an individual who utilized alcohol to avoid confronting the issues, the lack of direction and the loneliness of his life. Over time, he gains the goodwill and support of a family as he helps free a young wife’s husband from false espionage charges leveled by that husband’s enemies. He was able to do that through the confusion engendered by his extraordinary similarity of appearance to the husband. Over time, he recognised that his initial attraction for the young wife was converted into a sense of pure good will. When the husband, who was French, went back to his native land to aid some servants who had been caught up in the French Revolution, he was arrested, charged with crimes against the French revolutionary state, and scheduled for execution. At this point, Sidney Carton stepped in and changed places with the condemned man. While being transported for the execution, he befriended a young maid who was also condemned. As he ascended the platform of the guillotine, he declared that it was a far better thing that he was doing than anything in his life, and he was going to a far better rest. The incarceration, the suffering and death of the body and his external life took on a minor importance for him as he shifted his standpoint away from the external life to some inner realisation.

As long as we maintain our standpoint on the external personality, the body, the life-force and the mind, we suffer and try to find ways to reduce or avoid that suffering, as well as find happiness. We do not control the circumstances or the interactions that occur, and when they do not meet our desires, ambitions, goals or sensibilities we become upset.

If we shift our standpoint away from this external personality and its desires, we can experience what may be called ‘unconditioned happiness’, which is the native status of the psychic being, and we begin to respond from the standpoint of the psychic being, bringing with that change a new way of understanding our lives and our destiny.

The Mother writes: “It is not the psychic being that suffers for personal reasons, it is the mind, the vital and the ordinary consciousness of ignorant man. This is because the contact between the outer consciousness and the psychic consciousness is not well established. He in whom the contact has been well established is always happy.”

“The psychic being works with perseverance and ardour for the union to be made an accomplished fact, but it never complains and knows how to wait for the hour of realisation to come.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pp. 182-183