Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His Published Prose Writings

Passages from Lights on Yoga [8]

“This central being has two forms — above, it is Jivatman,... below, it is the psychic being ...” [p. 15]. Is it meant that the Jivatman and the psychic being are different forms of the central being? If they are forms of the central being, how can they be beings?

“Forms” is not used in a physical sense here. The central being is the being in its original self, the psychic being is the same in the becoming.

Again, when one rises from the psychic being below to the Jivatman above, does the psychic being cease to be? And when one rises above the Jivatman does the central being become formless?

The evolution or becoming continues, so the psychic also continues, just as the rest of the nature continues, only spiritualised and felt as one being in all planes. It is not a question of formed or formless. As I have said “forms” is not used here in its outward but its inward or metaphysical sense.

11 October 1935