Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume I - Part 2
The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and subtle physical Purushas do – that is to say, one can see or another person can see one’s psychic being in such and such a form. But 
this seeing is of two kinds – there is the standing characteristic form taken by this being in this life and there are symbolic forms, such as when one sees the psychic as a newborn child in the lap of the Mother. If the sadhak in question really saw his psychic in the form of a woman it can only have been a constructed appearance expressing some quality or attitude of the psychic.