It's a problem. When you contact the Supraconscient and the Shakti emerges at the crown of the head, it's something rising from below, isn't it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement...?
That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness.

It's something that grows....
It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being - the part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each human being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Théon called the "psychic being." And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme - the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine spark - immutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the "psychic being."

Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divine's work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.

This is what aspires, this is what has the contact.

So, when you're told "become conscious of your psychic being," it's for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide.... Well, when I was a little child, this "person" (which wasn't a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but that's a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstances - it's truly wonderful! ... I have seen - not only for myself but for so many people who also had conscious psychic beings - that everything is arranged with a view to ... not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call "disastrous," are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.

Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual power - a luminous, conscious power - which has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, it's trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power.... Don't you feel a kind of luminous force?


page 283-84, Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 25th July 1962.
There is the soul. There is the soul, which is quite simply an emanation of ... we can call it the supreme Consciousness, supreme Reality, supreme Truth, anything, whatever they like, it's all the same to me - any words they like. But anyway, the soul is an emanation of That, a direct emanation. In the body, That becomes clothed in the psychic being. The psychic being is a being which is progressively formed throughout all the existences. So are you talking about the soul, are you talking about the psychic being (which is first an embryo and eventually becomes a conscious, perfectly independent being), or are you simply talking of the life of an individual consciousness after death? Because that's yet another thing. There are proofs of that; but in that case, it's a quite vital consciousness of an inferior order, and it may happen to immediately come back into another body through some combination of circumstances (it was into the same family that the father had come back), and to come back with the memory. Otherwise, according to the experiences of those who have studied the question, it's only the psychic being in the process of being formed that retains the memory of its former existences. But it retains the

memory of the material, purely physical existence ONLY FOR THOSE MOMENTS WHEN IT PARTICIPATED. So, instead of all those stories that are told (and are made up), you only have memories like that (Mother draws a series of "points" in space with her fingertips), which may be more or less detailed, more or less complete, but which are only fragmentary memories of the MOMENT when the psychic physically manifested. Lots of people do have this sort of memory, but they don't know what it is. Most of the time they regard it as "dreams" or "imaginings." Those who know (that is to say, who are conscious of what goes on in their physical consciousness) can see that it's memories.

The number of memories of this kind I've had is almost incalculable. But it doesn't have the same character as the memories of the higher consciousness (then it's not a "memory": it's a sort of vision the higher beings [[Mother does not refer to a category of so-called higher "beings," but to higher levels of being or states of being. ]] have of life; but that's something else). The memories I speak of are memories of the psychic being, they have a different character: a rather personal character, I mean there is the sense of a PERSON remembering something. While the others, the visions from above, are memories of an "acting consciousness." But the memories of the psychic being aren't mentalized, that is, if for instance at the time of the recollection you weren't paying attention to the way you were dressed or the surroundings, you don't remember them. You only remember what took place and especially what took place from the point of view of the consciousness and the feelings and the inner movements.


page 254-55 , Mother's Agenda , volume 7 , 1966 , 3rd Nov.


The soul is a spark of the Supreme Divine, I do not see how the Lord needs a body in order to be conscious of being.

It's nothing very new, but it's a broadening of the consciousness. And all these questions have in fact been coming into the atmosphere lately, giving at first the impression that man knows nothing about death - he doesn't know what it is, doesn't know what happens, he has built all kinds of hypotheses but has no certainties. And by pressing on - by insisting and pressing on - I have reached the conclusion ... that there is really no such thing as death.

There is only an appearance, and an appearance based on a limited outlook. But there is no radical change in the vibration of consciousness. This came as an answer to a sort of anguish - there was in the cells a sort of anguish at not knowing what death really is; a sort of anguish, like that. And the response was very clear and persistent: it was that the consciousness alone can know, because ... because the importance attached to the difference of state is a merely superficial difference based on an ignorance of the phenomenon in itself. One who could retain a means of communication would be able to say that as far as he himself is concerned, it doesn't make much difference.

But this is something being worked out at the moment. There still remain gray areas and some details of experience are missing. So it would be better to wait, it seems to me, until the knowledge is more complete, because rather than give an approximation with assumptions, it would be better to tell the complete fact with the total experience. So we'll put it off till later.



page 74 , Mother's Agenda , volume 8 , 7th March - 1967

Sri Aurobindo says that "the soul is naked and unashamed,"[[Aphorism 350 - "Only the soul that is naked and unashamed can be pure and innocent, even as Adam was in the primal garden of humanity." ]] and you are asked, "Isn't the soul always pure?" So you reply:

"The soul wears no disguise, it shows itself as it is and cares nothing for people's judgement,

because it is the faithful servant of the Divine

whose home it is."


page 87 , Mother's Agenda , volume 11 , 25th Feb - 1970

The psychic, that's true, has masculine and feminine tendencies, but it's not "man" or "woman": the psychic is sexless.


page 361 - Mother's Agenda , volume 11 , 31st Oct. - 1970


(This is an extract from a meeting with a few teachers from the

school. We owe these recordings to the kind cooperation

of one of them.)

What is the best way of preparing ourselves? For one clearly feels that all this is going to require a rather extensive prepa

ration.

To broaden and enlighten your consciousness, naturally. But how to do that ? ... How do you broaden and enlighten your


consciousness? If each one of you could find his psychic being and unite with it, all problems would be solved.

The psychic being is the Divine's representative in the human being. It's true, you know: the Divine isn't something far-off and out of reach; the Divine is within you, but you aren't fully conscious of it. You have rather ... so far it is acting more as an influence than a Presence. It must become a conscious Presence, so at each moment you can ask yourselves how ... how the Divine sees.

That's how it is: first, how the Divine sees; then, how the Divine Wills ... then, how the Divine does. It has nothing to do with going off to inaccessible regions: it's RIGHT HERE. Although, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness have put a sort of lid on it, which prevents us from seeing and feeling. We must ... we must lift that, lift it off.

Basically, we must become conscious instruments ... conscious ... conscious of the Divine.

Normally it takes an entire lifetime, or even several lives in some cases. But here, in the present conditions, you can do it in ... a few months. Those who have an ardent aspiration can do it in a few MONTHS.

(Mother remains concentrated for a few moments)

Did you feel anything?

(One of the teachers:) Was there a special descent?
There is no "descent"! That's another wrong idea. There is no "descent." It's something that is ALWAYS here, but you just don't feel it. There is no descent, that's a completely wrong idea.

Do you know what the fourth dimension is?

We have heard about it....
Have you experienced it?

No, Mother.
Oh, but it's precisely the best example modern science can offer - the fourth dimension. The Divine is the fourth dimension for us. It ... belongs to the fourth dimension. It's everywhere, you see - always everywhere. It doesn't come and go: it's always there ...

everywhere. It's we, it's our stupidity that keeps us from feeling it. There's no need to go off anywhere ... no need at all, none at all

To be conscious of your psychic being, you must be able to have felt the fourth dimension, felt it once, otherwise you cannot know what it is.... Oh, Lord!

It's been seventy years since I've known what the fourth dimension is - more than seventy years.

(silence)

Indispensable, it's indispensable. Life begins with that. Otherwise, you are in falsehood - in a hodgepodge of confusion and ignorance.... The mind! The mind! The mind!

Otherwise, to be conscious of your own consciousness, you must mentalize it. It's dreadful, dreadful!

There you are.

This new life isn't the continuation of the old one, is it Mother,it has to spring up from within.

Yes! Yes!

There is no common ground between the two....
There is - there is, but you aren't conscious of it. You must ... you must ... it's the mind that prevents you from feeling it. One Must BE, you see. All you do is mentalize everything - everything. What you call "consciousness" is thinking things out; that's what you call consciousness. But that's not it at all! That's not consciousness. Consciousness ... should be wholly lucid and WORDLESS.

(Mother closes her eyes)

Like that ... everything becomes luminous and warm and ... STRONG!

And peaceful ... a true peace, which is not inertia or immobility.

Mother, can we give this as an objective to all children?

All ... no! They are not all the same age, even when they are the same physical age. Some children are primitive. One should.... You see, if you yourself were fully conscious of your psychic being, you would know which children are psychically developed. Some children have only an embryonic psychic - the age of the psychic varies enormously. Normally, it takes several lives for the psychic to become completely formed, and it's the psychic that passes from one body to another; that's why we aren't conscious of our past lives - because we aren't conscious of our psychic being. But sometimes, at some MOMENT the psychic being participated in a particular event, it became conscious; and that creates a memory. Sometimes you may find you have a partial recollection of something, the fleeting memory of a circumstance or event or thought, or even of an action.... It's because the psychic was conscious of it.

(silence)

What would you, I am nearing my hundredth year - it's only five years away - and I started my effort to become conscious when I was five. It's a fact. That's telling you.... And I am going on, and it is going on. Now, of course, I have come to doing the work in the cells of the body, but the work started long ago.

I don't mean to discourage you, but only to tell you it isn't done in a wink!

The body ... the body is made of a substance that is still very heavy. It is the substance itself that must change for the Supermind to manifest.

That's all I can say.


page 360-63 , Mother's Agenda , volume 13 , 8th Feb - 1972-1973