In The Synthesis of Yoga there is beautiful passage in Chapter I of Part I (The Ascent of the Sacrifice–1, SABCL, vol. 20, pp. 146-147) that describes with a great clarity the different stages of the growth of the psychic in our being. In this passage we find an extraordinary description of the psychic pressure and how it moves from stage to stage. In this essay I briefly review these stages and emphasise the ways in which the ascent of the psychic helps gradually transform the outer nature and personality.
The most intimate character of the psychic being is its one-pointed and intimate pressure towards the Divine. However, it is not rigid in its insistence like the mind or the vital. At every moment there is “a supple sureness” in its march towards the Truth. Because it is so very exclusively pointed towards the love of the Divine, it does not lose the direction and yet it has to go slow in its upward growth.

The first stage in its growth is that it leans on “earthly love, affection, tenderness, goodwill, compassion, benevolence, and all beauty and gentleness and fineness and light and strength and courage, on all that can help to refine and purify the grossness and commonness of human nature…” (SABCL, vol. 20, p. 146). This is where religion and ethics come into the picture, when we are taught to practice “goodwill, compassion, benevolence” etc. That is, in fact, the highest ideal given to us. If you want to be a cultured, civilized, religious, ethical, moral person try to develop these qualities— that is what we have been told, and that is what according to Indian terminology, is a sattvic personality. The sattvic realization is only this. From the point of view of the psychic growth this is the very first step, but from the point of view of morality and religion it is the highest step.

We can see how difficult it is for the psychic to pursue in its efforts to move towards the Divine. Ordinarily, we are very crude in our mental and  in our vital nature and pretty far away from any true divine feelings, but the very fact that we can respond to affection, tenderness, compassion, goodwill, benevolence, beauty, only means that there is the  beginning of the psychic pressure. Otherwise, try as much as we want by our mental or vital consciousness to develop any of these characteristics, it is not possible, because these are not qualities that could be cultivated by outer personality. They have to be born within by the psychic pressure.

The second step is taken once that particular individual begins to respond to that benevolence and compassion and all the so called ‘values’ of our life. This is the second stage in the journey of the psychic. At this level “[i]t is ready and eager to break all the old ties, imperfect emotional activities and replace them by a greater spiritual Truth of love and oneness. It may still admit the human forms and movements but on condition that they are turned to the One alone. It accepts the ties only that are helpful, the heart’s reverence for the Guru, the union of the God-seekers, a spiritual compassion for the ignorant human and the animal world and its peoples, the joy and happiness and satisfaction of beauty that comes from the perception of the divine everywhere.” (p.146)

After relating itself to human beings through benevolence and goodwill and all such qualities, it really cuts off all relations. It goes a little deeper, that is, we become in our outer attitude more profound and deeper. We could say that we become more selective in our actions and our relations—only those that help positively in our inward growth are accepted and the rest are left out.

As is assumed generally, we need not be altruistic to all of humanity and show our sympathy to the whole of the community.  That is the first impulse when we go out and expand our consciousness. But then immediately there is an ‘inward-isation’ of the consciousness; it shrinks, as if, and tells you to ‘select your group’.  It is no more necessary to expand to all humanity, but just to select a group of our contacts and activities that are helpful for our divine realisation within.

Sri Aurobindo writes that at this time there is a grouping of the god-seekers, there is a grouping of the gurubhais, those that are around the guru. A spiritual community is formed around this common reverence for the Guru. This could be a ‘place’ of one-pointed aspiration which goes under the name of a community or a project or an Ashram – an institution where there is a kind of a central spiritual aspiration. It may be anything, not just Integral Yoga, but any yoga or Ashram, any spiritual institution which has a spiritual foundation. The second step begins here.

The third step is when the psychic “plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine in the heart’s secret centre and, while that call is there, no reproach of egoism, no mere outward summons of altruism or duty or philanthropy or service will deceive or divert it from its sacred longing and its obedience to the attraction of the Divinity within it. It lifts the being towards a transcendent Ecstasy and is ready to shed all the downward pull of the world from its wings in its uprising to reach the One Highest…” (pp. 146-147).

It is in a shrinking of its cosmic spread in a group that is aspiring for the same ideal that the psychic finds a greater concentration, and in this concentration “it plunges the nature inward towards its meeting with the immanent Divine…” The meaning of the Ashram is exactly this – one finds the atmosphere congenial for the ‘inwardisation’. That is what was being done in the ancient Ashrams. They provided one an exclusive atmosphere for an inward journey.

Allow me to make a small digression here. At the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, that this ‘inwardisation’ has included all the external action also, because of its integral ideal. It does not mean that we get lost in the politics and ways of the outer world. The external activities are there, but more for the purpose of self-purification. It is easy to go to any traditional Ashram and sit there in meditation for ten hours: no other activity — no laundry, no press, no physical exercises etc. One just meditates, gets into Samadhi if one can. There it is easier to cut off from the works, but here Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have provided a whole plethora of works.  At the same time, it is important to remember that the Ashram is not meant to be only a field or kshetra of works. There are varieties of works covering different aspects of nature of work so each one can find his or her work. The different activities in the Ashram are there to help one to find and fulfill one’s own swabhava.

So to come back to our analysis, the third step is the plunging of the nature towards the immanent Divine. Let us look closely at what it means. It could mean, among other possibilities, that the psychic is leading our nature towards the central being. The psychic is now taking itself and us towards the Central being. It is important here to refer to Canto II of Book VII of Savitri ‘The Parable of the Search for the Soul.’ This is a marvellous canto that tells us about the grand unity: about the unification of the psychic being and the Central being. This is the central attempt of this third stage. In the process our entire being is lifted up into an ecstasy and we begin to live in an inner ananda, shedding off all the outer and downward pulls of the ordinary life.

The fourth stage happens when the psychic “calls down also this transcendental Love and Beatitude to deliver and transform this world of hatred and strife and division and darkness and jarring ignorance. It opens to a universal Divine Love, a vast compassion, an intense and immense will for the good of all, for the embrace of the World-Mother enveloping or gathering to her her children, the divine Passion that has plunged into the night for the redemption of the world from the universal Ignorance.” (p. 147)

This is such a marvelous stage. Once the psychic has reached the Immanent Divine, the next stage is to bring that spiritual power back into the outward human endeavour. This is where Sri Aurobindo’s yoga comes in. One has reached one’s innermost point – the spiritual centre, the central Self, and that consciousness and power is brought back to be showered on the human being’s outer personality as well the surrounding community. It is then that the true Integral Yoga begins.

After the psychic realization the psychic energy, the force, the consciousness of the Central Self is turned to humanity. So the best way to help humanity is to connect it to the divine love and light and compassion. This is not what we practice at the first step, which is vital and mental and emotional — a step towards self-expanding. True help comes in when the Inner Force comes back into action. It is at that time the transformation of Nature can begin.

At this stage our outer nature is not attracted by mental or vital illusions of name and fame, nor is it tied up in the bondage of the mental and the vital being. The psychic being exposes them in its search-light and purifies them to a great extent only “to heal these malformations, to deliver mental, vital, physical love from the insufficiencies or their perversions and reveal them their abounding share of the intimacy and the oneness and the ascending ecstasy and descending rapture.” (p. 147)

This seems to be the whole raison d’etre of the ascent of the psychic being: to bring down the light and consciousness of the Central being into the mental, vital and physical being and to begin the ultimate transformation of nature. As concluded by Sri Aurobindo: “Only by the ascent to the original Truth can the deformation be healed and all the works of love, as too all the works of knowledge and life, be restored to a divine significance and become part of an integral spiritual existence.” (p. 147)

About the author: Ananda Reddy is the Director of Sri Aurobindo Centre for Advanced Research, Puducherry. This essay is based on a talk given by him at a conference held in Auroville in 2006.