The Power of the Psychic Being to Guide the Direction and Focus of One’s Life

When we look back on our lives, with the benefit of hindsight, we frequently can identify a change in direction that took an individual from a normal path of societal acceptance, career, marriage, family, social interactions and entertainment, to a life that is dedicated to some cause or purpose or inner growth. For some this change comes somewhat naturally as they mature and reflect on what they are here on earth to do. They feel an inner dedication or mission, whether to solve some technical or societal issue, or to dedicate themselves to a life of service and caring for others, or possibly to some development of the body or perhaps an artistic calling of some kind. Yet for many others, it is not so simple. There was a story of a young woman in Africa who came from a family of traditional healers, but who wanted to follow a different path in her life. Everything she tried fell apart, and she suffered from serious health issues of her own. Eventually she was told by an experienced healer that she would not find any fulfillment in any other career and her health would not improve until she finally accepted her ‘calling’ as a traditional healer. She did that and her life turned around and her health improved! Her story is recounted in the book Called to Heal by Susan Schuster-Campbell, who met with her and interviewed her as part of her own journey toward understanding the significance and meaning of her own life.

Another individual reported undertaking a successful college course with the view to achieving a position of success in his society. After experiencing a near death experience, he became aware of yoga and another meaning to life, left all ideas of school and career aside and took up study and practice of yoga.

Another person, Danion Brinkley wrote in his book Saved by the Light, that he was a trained military killer, a merciless individual who got paid to harm other people. At a certain point in life he was actually physically struck by lightning and was declared clinically dead. He returned to life with a new understanding and a mission, and he left his past behind him to found an organization called Compassion in Action (CIA) which trained people on how to provide caring and supportive hospice care for people undergoing a transition out of their current life and body.

Not every circumstance or life-story is as traumatic as those recounted here, but the point is clear. If one does not easily grow into the path, and tries to look in other directions, the psychic being sometimes employs ‘tough love’ to bring the individual to the right place in his or her life.

A disciple asks: “Has the psychic any power?”

The Mother writes: “Power? It is usually the psychic which guides the being. One knows nothing about it because one is not conscious of it but usually it is that which guides the being. If one is very attentive, one becomes aware of it. But the majority of men haven’t the least idea of it. For instance, when they have decided, in their outer ignorance, to do something, and instead of their being able to do it, all the circumstances are so organised that they do something else, they start shouting, storming, flying into a rage against fate, saying (that depends on what they believe, their beliefs) that Nature is wicked or their destiny baleful or God unjust, or… no matter what (it depends on what they believe). Whilst most of the time it is just the very circumstance which was most favourable for their inner development. And naturally, if you ask the psychic to help you to fashion a pleasant life for yourself, to earn money, have children who will be the pride of the family, etc., well, the psychic will not help you. But it will create for you all the circumstances necessary to awaken something in you so that the need of union with the Divine may be born in your consciousness. At times you have made fine plans, and if they had succeeded, you would have been more and more encrusted in your outer ignorance, your stupid little ambition and your aimless activity. Whilst if you receive a good shock, and the post you coveted is denied to you, the plan you made is shattered, and you find yourself completely thwarted, then, sometimes this opposition opens to you a door on something truer and deeper. And when you are a little awake and look back, if you are in the least sincere, you say: ‘Ah! it wasn’t I who was right — it was Nature or the divine Grace or my psychic being who did it.’ It is the psychic being which organised that.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XX The Psychic, pp. 155-156