The Soul, the Mind, Nature and the Works of Time

We generally are immersed in the external world, its attractions, its temptations, its opportunities and above all, its constant demand on us for our attention and interaction. We center our awareness usually in our minds, while we receive sensory input through the physical body and the vital being. We are so focused on the external world and our interaction with it, that we usually fail to pay attention to the cause, purpose and objectives that create both our external awareness and the creation of the external world of which we are aware. This does not imply, however, that there is no cause, nor that there is no consciousness that carries out its intentions through our external instruments of mind, life and body.

Through the process of the external development we can trace an evolution of increasingly complex and subtle levels of consciousness. This can be seen as the ‘macro level’ of the universal manifestation. Purely from a utilitarian standpoint, there is no need for evolutionary progress by each individual being, as the development takes place through time at the level of the entirety of the creation itself.

In order for there to be a meaning to individual lives and conscious awareness, another level must be operative, and this is the level of the soul which develops the psychic being through many lifetimes, accumulating the essence of its experience in the development of a mature and conscious psychic entity which maintains its connection with the Divine while working to carry out the evolution of consciousness at the macro level and develop its own powers to eventually come forward and take over direct control and management of the instrumentality it now cedes to the external being. In the interim, it provides impulsions, guidance and some amount of direction to the external being so that it is carrying out, one way or another, the directive of the Divine through the impulsion of the soul from behind the veil.

Sri Aurobindo, in his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, writes: “A conscious soul in the Inconscient’s world, Hidden behind our thoughts and hopes and dreams, An indifferent Master signing Nature’s acts Leave the vicegerent mind a seeming king. In his floating house upon the sea of Time The regent sits at work and never rests: He is a puppet of the dance of Time; He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call Compels him with the thronging of life’s need And the babel of the voices of the world.” [Book VII, Canto 2]

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution , Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pg. 158