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Read Summary of '''[[Individualisation Summary|Individualisation]]'''
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= What is Individualisation? =
Individualisation, is the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine centre. (The Mother, 24 February, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-february-1951#p38</ref>
One can't merge one's ego in the Divine before becoming completely individualised. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p40~</refcenter>
== Why Individualisation? ==One can't merge one's ego in the Divine before becoming completely individualised. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p40</ref>
In creating the universe as it was, the Will was an individual projection—individual, you understand, a scattering: instead of being a unity containing all, it was a unity made of innumerable small unities which are individualisations, that is, things that feel themselves separated. And the very fact of being separated from all others is what gives you the feeling that you are an individual. Otherwise you would have the feeling that you were a fluid mass. For example, instead of being conscious of your external form and of everything in your being which makes of you a separate individuality, if you were conscious of the vital forces which move everywhere or of the inconscient that is at the base of all, you would have the feeling of a mass moving with all kinds of contradictory movements but which could not be separated from each other; you would not have the feeling of being an individual at all: you would have the feeling of something like a vibration in the midst of a whole. Well, the original Will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious once again of their divine origin. Because of the process of individualisation one must feel separate if one is to be an individual. The moment you are separated, you are cut off from the original consciousness, at least apparently, and you fall into the inconscient. For the only thing which is the Life of life is the Origin, if you cut yourself off from that, consciousness naturally is changed into unconsciousness. And then it is due to this very unconsciousness that you are no longer aware of the truth of your being.... It is a process. You cannot argue whether it is inevitable or evitable; the fact is it is like that. (The Mother, 27 May, 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/27-may-1953#p17~</refcenter>
'''Raison d'être (Reason Mind, Life, Matter exist and mental, vital, physical individualisation exists as facts in Nature, but the identification of the soul with these things is a false identification. Mind, Life and Matter are ourselves only in this sense that they are principles of being which the true self has evolved by the meeting and interaction of Soul and Nature in order to express a form of its one existence as the Cosmos. Individual mind, life and body are a play of these principles which is set up in the commerce of Soul and Nature as a means for the expression of that multiplicity of itself of which the one Existence is eternally capable and which it holds eternally involved in its unity. Individual mind, life and body are forms of ourselves in so far as we are centres of the multiplicity of the One; universal Mind, Life and Body are also forms of our self, because we are that One in our being. But the self is more than universal or individual mind, life and body and when we limit ourselves by identification with these things, we found our knowledge on a falsehood, we falsify our determining view and our practical experience not only of our self-being but of our cosmic existence and of our individual activities. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-disciplines-of-knowledge#p7</ref> == Who is an Individual? == But what do we mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego has to be)'''extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine and with all beings. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/a-realistic-adwaita#p14</ref> <center>~</center> The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit an emanation of the Transcendence. For if he finds his self, he finds too that his own true self is not this natural personality, this created individuality, but is a universal being in its relations with others and with Nature and in its upward term a portion or the living front of a supreme transcendental Spirit. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-object-of-knowledge#p13</ref> <center>~</center> . . . the true individual is not the ego, but the divine individuality which is through our evolution preparing to emerge in us. . . . <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/25/true-and-false-subjectivism#p6</ref> == What is the Ego? == The individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a subjective substitute for the true self in our surface experience: it is separated by ignorance from other-self and from the inner Divinity, but it is still pushed secretly towards an evolutionary unification in diversity; it has behind itself, though finite, the impulse to the infinite. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil#p28</ref> <center>~</center> What is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical construction of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense. Normally, we go no farther in our knowledge of our individual existence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p3</ref> <center>~</center>
And that is The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense was the first great mystery labour of creation, the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution; for it is the same consciousness, the Consciousness is one. But this was the very moment this Consciousness manifests itself, exteriorises itself, deploys itself, means it divides itself into innumerable fragments found for the need creating out of expansion, and each one of these fragmentations has been the beginning, the origin of an matter a conscious individual being. The origin dissolution of every individual form this limiting ego is the law of this form or the truth of this form. If there were no law, no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would be something extending indefinitely; there would be perhaps points of concentration, assemblages, but no individual consciousness. Each form then represents one element in the changing of the One into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousnesscondition, truths which spread out into the universe and finally become separate individualities. So the individual being seems constantly necessary means for this very same Life to go farther and farther away from arrive at its origin by divine fruition: for only so can the very necessity of individualisationconscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person. But once this individualisation, that is, this awareness of the inner truth is complete, it becomes possible, by an inner identification, to re-establish in the multiplicity the original unity; that is the raison d'être of the universe as we perceive it. The universe has been made so that this phenomenon may take place. The Supreme has manifested Himself to Himself so as to become aware of Himself. (The Mother, 3 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0423/3the-marchrelease-from-the-1951ego#p29p1</ref>
= How can one Individualise? =<center>~</center>
== The Awakening In order to become a conscious, individualised being, one needs his ego; that is why it is there. It is only when one has realised his own individuality sufficiently, has become a conscious, independent being with its own reality, that he no longer needs the ego. And at that time one can make an effort to get rid of Responsibility ==it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p42</ref>
Surely, one has a big responsibility, it is to fulfil a special mission that one is born upon earth. Only, naturally, the psychic being must have reached a certain degree of development; otherwise it could be said that it is the whole earth which has the responsibility. The more conscious and individualised one becomes, the more should one have the sense of responsibility. But this is what happens at a given moment; one begins to think that one is here not without reason, without purpose. One realises suddenly that one is here because there is something to be done and this something is not anything egoistic. This seems to me the most logical way of entering upon the path—all of a sudden to realise, "Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulfil. Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I have something to do with that consciousness—what is it?" (The Mother, 24 March, 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-march-1951#p31~</refcenter>
== Individuality before SelfThe limited ego is only an intermediate phenomenon of consciousness necessary for a certain line of development. Following this line the individual can arrive at that which is beyond himself, that which he represents, and can yet continue to represent it, no longer as an obscured and limited ego, but as a centre of the Divine and of the universal consciousness embracing, utilising and transforming into harmony with the Divine all individual determinations. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-Offering ==ego-and-the-dualities#p15</ref>
First one must become a conscious, well-knit, individualised being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything, see anything without changing. He receives from outside only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive the imprint. Then one begins to become an individuality! When one is an individuality, one can make an offering of '''''Before it. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p44</ref>'s Formation'''''
So long as one does not exist, one can give nothing“... And for the separative ego to disappearfirst state of your being is a state of an almost total mixture with all things from outside, as you sayand that there is almost no individualisation, one must be able to give oneself entirelythat is, totally without reservationspecialisation which makes you a different being. And to be able to give oneselfYou are moved—a kind of form which is your physical being is moved—by all the common universal forces, one must first exist. And to exist one must be individualisedvital forces or mental forces, which go through your form and put it in motion. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0607/2814-julydecember-19541955#p46p18</ref>
And then, later, one offers all this to the Divine. Years of work are needed. You must '''''It’s not only...(silence)... become conscious of yourself, conscious in all details, but you must organise what you call "yourself" around the psychic centre, the divine centre Cause of your being, so that it would make a single, coherent, fully conscious being. And as this divine centre is itself already consecrated (Mother makes a gesture of offering) entirely to the Divine, if everything is organised harmoniously around it, everything is consecrated to the Divine. And so, when the Divine thinks it proper, when the time has come, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine gives you permission to let your ego merge in Him, to live henceforward only for the Divine. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p57</ref>Individuality'''''
== Process It is purposely, mind you, that I have not mentioned the ego as one of Individualisation ==the causes of the sense of individuality. For the ego being a falsehood and an illusion, the sense of individuality would itself be false and illusory (as Buddha and Shankara affirm), whereas the origin of individualisation being in the Supreme Himself, the ego is only a passing deformation, necessary for the moment, which will disappear when its utility is over, when the Truth-Consciousness will be established. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-march-1951#p31</ref>
“..the suppleness needed to follow the movement of Becoming; suppleness, that is, the capacity for de''''' Growth towards Integral Self-crystallisation—the whole period of life spent in individualisation is a period of conscious and deliberate crystallisation, which later has to be undone. Becoming a conscious and individual being is a constant crystallization—constant and deliberate—of all things; and afterwards one must make the opposite movement, constantly, and also, even more so, deliberately. At the same time, one must not lose the benefit, in the consciousness, of what one has acquired by individualisation.” <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-69#p25</ref> Knowledge '''''
== The Need for Education ==Our self-ignorance and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open to a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being and become aware too of the not-self outside it also as self. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/knowledge-by-identity-and-separative-knowledge#p9</ref>
It's indispensable for you to have a frame in which you can learn how to form yourself. If you did your work === The Role of individualisation, of total formations, by yourself, all alone in a corner, nothing at all would be asked of you. But you don't do it, you wouldn't do it, there's not a single child who would do it, he wouldn't even know how to do it, where to begin. If a child were not taught how to live, he could not live, he wouldn't know how to do anything, anything. I don't want to speak about disgusting details, but even the most elementary things he would not do properly if he were not taught how to do them. Therefore, one must, step by step... That is to say, if everyone had to go through the whole experience needed for the formations of an individuality, he would be long dead before having begun to live! This is the contribution—accumulated through centuries—of those who have had the experience and tell you, "Well, if you want to go quickly, to know in a few years what has been learnt through centuries, do this!" Read, learn, study and then, in the material field, you will be taught to do this in this way, that in that way, this again in this way (gestures). Once you know a little, you can find your own method, if you have the genius for it! But first one must stand on one's own feet and know how to walk. It is very difficult to learn it all alone. It's like that for everyone. One must form oneself. Therefore, one needs education. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p59</ref>Ego ===
An individualised mind The ego was created for the work of individualisation; when the work is something extremely rareachieved, which comes only after a long education; (The Mother, 20 February, 1957) it is not unusual for the ego to accept its own dissolution. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0916/207-februarydecember-19571968#p6p2</ref>
== The Individualisation of the Parts of the Being ==<center>~</center>
You ...before speaking of merging one's ego in the Divine, one must first know, when a little what one is. The ego is there. Its necessity is that you sleepbecome conscious, the inner independent beings are not concentrated upon the body, they go out and become more or less independent—a limited independence, but independence all the same—and they go to dwell individualised—I mean in their own domains. The mind more so, for it is hardly held within the body, it is only concentrated but see of independent—that you may not contained be the public square where everything goes criss-cross! That you may exist in the bodyyourselves. The vital also goes beyond the body, but it That is why there is more concentrated upon the bodyan ego. The mind however It is such a supple substance like that; that it is sufficient to think about why also there is a person in order to be with skin, like that person, at least partially, mentally. If you think strongly of a place, a part of your mind is there; distance, so to say, does not exist. Of course. though truly, to have a mind centralised around even physical forces pass through the body requires good trainingskin. Few people have a mind with There is a well-defined form: it is like clouds vibration which roll, come and go. Even to have goes a vital with a form similar to that of your physical body, an analogous form, it must be very much individualised, very much centralisedcertain distance. The mind But still more; , it must be completely individualised, centralised, organised around 's the psychic centre in order to have a definite formskin that prevents us from blending into one another. (The Mother, 10 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0406/1028-marchjuly-19511954#p17p56</ref>
But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being. Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the mental around the psychic being that they remain—that happens once in ten million cases, it is very exceptional. (The Mother, 10 March, 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-march-1951#p23~</refcenter>
=== The Importance "I" or the little ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being is discovered, the utility of the Body ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. <ref>http://incarnateword.in Individualisation ===/cwsa/28/the-true-being-and-the-true-consciousness#p2</ref>
If your body were not made in the rigid form it is—for it is terribly rigid, isn't it?—well, if all that were not so fixed, if you had no skin, here, like this, solid, if externally you were the reflection of what you are in the vital and mental fields, it would be worse than being a jelly-fish! Everything would fuse into everything else, like this... Oh, what a mess it would be! That is why it was at first necessary to give a very rigid form. Afterwards we complain about it. We say, "The physical is fixed, it is a nuisance; it lacks plasticity, it lacks suppleness, it hasn't that fluidity which can enable us to merge into the Divine." But this was absolutely necessary, for without this... if you simply went out of your body (most of you can't do it because the vital being is hardly more individualised than the physical), if you came out of your body and went into the vital world, you would see that all things there intermingle, they are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another, take possession of each other, absorb each other, throw each other out... and so it goes on! But it is very difficult to find a real personality in all this. These are forces, movements, desires, vibrations. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p47~</refcenter>
=== Individualisation In order to become a conscious, individualised being, one needs his ego; that is why it is there. It is only when one has realised his own individuality sufficiently, has become a conscious, independent being with its own reality, that he no longer needs the ego. And at that time one can make an effort to get rid of the Vital Powers ===it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p42</ref>
From the vital point of view, take the case of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well then, his hands, for instance, are so individualised in their ability to play, that they can persist subtly even after death, with their form, a form analogous to the old physical form. They float in the vital world and are attracted by people who have similar capacities; they try to become identified with them. A person who is sensitive enough, receptive enough, can become identified with these hands and execute wonderful things, profit by all the individualisation of the past life of these hands. (The Mother, 10 March, 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-march-1951#p24~</refcenter>
“..to the individual vital plane there corresponds a cosmic vital world. When a human being Individualised life-force here is sufficiently developed he possesses an individualised vital being with organs energy of sightindividualising and ignorant Mind, hearing, smell, etcMind that has fallen from the knowledge of its own Supermind. So a person who has a well-developed vital being can see Therefore incapacity is necessary to its relations in the vital world with his vital sight, consciously Life and with inevitable in the memory nature of what he has seen. This is what makes a vision.” things; <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1021/aphorismdeath-desire-and-15incapacity#p4p13</ref>
=== Individualisation The Paradox of the Mental Being Ego ===
… the extent The ego is what helps us to which the mental being individualise ourselves and what prevents us from becoming divine. It is formed like that. Put that together and individualised varies greatly from one individual to you will find the nextego. In Without the great mass of human beings ego, as the mind world is something fluid which has organised, there would be no organisation of its ownindividual, and therefore it is not a personalitywith the ego the world cannot become divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1003/aphorismthe-11ego#p3p14</ref>
But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and has become a personality, it does not depend, it no longer depends on the body for its existence, and it therefore survives the body. The earth's mental atmosphere is filled with beings, mental personalities which lead an entirely independent existence, even after the disappearance of the body; they can reincarnate in a new body when the soul, that is to say, the true Self, reincarnates, thus carrying with it the memory of its previous lives. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p4~</refcenter>
Mind Certainly, if one were to lose one's ego too soon, from the vital and mental point of view one would again become an amorphous mass. The ego is surely the instrument for individualisation, that is, until one is an individualised being, constituted in himself, the final individualising operation ego is an absolutely necessary factor. If one had the power of abolishing the ego ahead of time, one would lose one's individuality. But once the all-comprehending and all-apprehending Supermindindividuality has been formed, the process by which its consciousness works individualised in each form from ego becomes not only useless but harmful. And only then comes the standpoint proper time when it must be abolished. But naturally, as it has taken so much trouble to build you, it does not give up its work so easily, and with it asks for the cosmic relations which proceed from reward of its efforts, that standpointis, to enjoy the individuality. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2107/death12-desire-andjanuary-incapacity1955#p2p25</ref>
= What is the Ego? =<center>~</center>
What is this strongly separative self-experience that When we have passed beyond individualising, then we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally shall be real in itself but only a practical construction of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in usPersons. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from Ego was the rest of being, and that helper; Ego is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense. Normally, we go no farther in our knowledge of our individual existencebar. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2108/the-eternal-and28-thenovember-individual1956#p3p7</ref>
'''Before it's Formation'''<center>~</center>
“...the first So, for everyone—except for those who are born free, and this is obviously very rare—for everyone this state of your being is a state reason, of an almost total mixture with all things from outsideeffort, desire, individualisation and that there solid physical balance in accordance with the ordinary mode of living is almost no individualisationindispensable to begin with, that is, specialisation which makes you until the time one becomes a different conscious being. You are moved—a kind of form which is your physical being is moved—by , when one must give up all the common universal forces, vital forces or mental forces, which go through your form and put it these things in motionorder to become a spiritual being. (The Mother, 14 December, 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0708/1428-decembernovember-19551956#p18p15</ref>
'''It’s not the Cause of Individuality'''<center>~</center>
It is purposely...to begin with, mind you, that I have not mentioned the ego as one of the causes of the sense of individuality. For the ego being a falsehood and an illusiontremendous labour is required to individualise oneself, the sense of individuality would itself be false and illusory (as Buddha and Shankara affirm), whereas the origin of individualisation being afterwards one must demolish all that has been done in the Supreme Himself, the ego is only a passing deformation, necessary for the moment, which will disappear when its utility is over, when the Truth-Consciousness will be establishedorder to progress. (The Mother, 3 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0409/320-marchfebruary-19511957#p31p16</ref>
''' Growth towards Integral Self-Knowledge '''<center>~</center>
Our self-ignorance I suppose the ego came there [into human activity] first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and our world-ignorance can only grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge in proportion , secondly, as our limited ego and its half-blind consciousness open an incentive for tamasic animal man to a greater inner existence act and consciousness get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and a true self-being sleep and become aware too done nothing else. With that incentive of ego (possession, vanity, ambition, eagerness for power etc. etc.) he began doing all sorts of things he might never otherwise have done. But now that he has to go higher, this ego comes badly in the not-self outside it also as selfway. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/knowledge-by-identityego-and-separativeits-knowledgeforms#p9p1</ref>
== The Role = Safety and Limitations of Ego ===
The ego was created for To live without a fortress is extremely difficult—people have the work of individualisation; when the work feeling that they are not living, that they are not individualised, that they are floating about. It is achievedextremely difficult to live in something infinitely vast, moving, constantly changing, perpetually in progress, it is not unusual for the ego to accept its own dissolutionbe held by anything to which one can cling, saying "I am this; this is my way of thinking. (The Mother" It is very difficult, 7 December, 1968) one must not try it too soon; there are those whose mind gets deranged by it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1604/712-decembermarch-19681951#p2p19</ref>
...before speaking of merging one's ego in the Divine, one must first know a little what one is. The ego is there. Its necessity is that you become conscious, independent beings, individualised—I mean in the see of independent—that you may not be the public square where everything goes criss-cross! That you may exist in yourselves. That is why there is an ego. It is like that; that is why also there is a skin, like that... though truly, even physical forces pass through the skin. There is a vibration which goes a certain distance. But still, it's the skin that prevents us from blending into one another. (The Mother, 28 July, 1954) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p56~</refcenter>
The "I" or the little ego … it is constituted by Nature impossible for a divided and is at once individualised consciousness with a mentaldivided, vital individualised and therefore limited power and physical formation meant will to aid in centralising and individualising be master of the All-Force; only the outer consciousness All-Will can be that and action. When the true being is discoveredindividual only, if at all, by becoming again one with the utility of All-Will and therefore with the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its placeAll-Force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2821/the-truedeath-beingdesire-and-the-true-consciousnessincapacity#p2p5</ref>
In order to become a conscious, individualised being, one needs his ego; that == What is why it is there. It is only when one has realised his own individuality sufficiently, has become a conscious, independent being with its own reality, that he no longer needs the ego. And at that time one can make an effort to get rid of it. (The Mother, 22 September, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/22-september-1954#p42</ref>Psychic Being? ==
Individualised life-force here The soul is an energy of individualising and ignorant Mind, Mind something that has fallen comes from the knowledge of its own Supermind. Therefore incapacity is necessary to its relations in Life Divine into the evolution and inevitable in as the nature of things; psychic being it evolves and assumes different personalities from life to life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2128/deaththe-desireself-andor-incapacityatman#p13p14</ref>
== The Paradox of the Ego ==<center>~</center>
The ego is what helps us to individualise ourselves and what prevents us from becoming divine. It is like that. Put that together and you will find In this lower manifestation, aparā prakṛti, this eternal portion of the ego. Without Divine appears as the egosoul, as a spark of the world is organisedDivine Fire, there would be no supporting the individualevolution, supporting the mental, vital and physical being. The psychic being is the spark growing into a Fire, evolving with the ego growth of the world cannot become divineconsciousness. The psychic being is therefore evolutionary, not like the Jivatman, prior to the evolution. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0328/the-egojivatman-in-the-integral-yoga#p14p10</ref>
Certainly, if one were to lose one's ego too soon, from the vital and mental point of view one would again become an amorphous mass. The ego is surely the instrument for individualisation, that is, until one is an individualised being, constituted in himself, the ego is an absolutely necessary factor. If one had the power of abolishing the ego ahead of time, one would lose one's individuality. But once the individuality has been formed, the ego becomes not only useless but harmful. And only then comes the time when it must be abolished. But naturally, as it has taken so much trouble to build you, it does not give up its work so easily, and it asks for the reward of its efforts, that is, to enjoy the individuality. (The Mother, 12 January, 1955) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/12-january-1955#p25~</refcenter>
When we have passed beyond individualisingThe soul or psychic is immutable only in the sense that it contains all the possibility of the Divine within it, then we shall be real Personsbut this it has to evolve and in its evolution it assumes the form of a developing psychic individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in the evolution. Ego was It is the spark of the Divine Fire that grows behind the helpermind, vital and physical by means of the psychic being until it is able to transform the Prakriti of Ignorance into a Prakriti of Knowledge. This evolving psychic being is not therefore at any time all that the soul or essential psychic existence bears within it; Ego it temporalises and individualises what is eternal in potentiality, transcendent in essence in this projection of the barspirit. (The Mother, 28 November, 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0828/28the-jivatman-in-the-novemberintegral-1956yoga#p7p18</ref>
So, for everyone—except for those who are born free, and this is obviously very rare—for everyone this state of reason, of effort, desire, individualisation and solid physical balance in accordance with the ordinary mode of living is indispensable to begin with, until the time one becomes a conscious being, when one must give up all these things in order to become a spiritual being. (The Mother, 28 November, 1956) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/28-november-1956#p15~</refcenter>
There is individuality in the psychic being but not egoism...to begin Egoism goes when the individual unites himself with, a tremendous labour the Divine or is required to individualise oneself, and afterwards one must demolish all that has been done in order entirely surrendered to progressthe Divine. (The Mother, 20 February, 1957) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0928/20the-februarypsychic-1957being#p16p98</ref>
I suppose the ego came there [into human activity] first as a means of the outer consciousness individualising itself in the flux of Nature and, secondly, as an incentive for tamasic animal man to act and get something done. Otherwise he might merely have contented himself with food and sleep and done nothing else. With that incentive of ego (possession, vanity, ambition, eagerness for power etc. etc.) he began doing all sorts of things he might never otherwise have done. But now that he has to go higher, this ego comes badly in the way. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/ego-and-its-forms#p1~</refcenter>
== Safety It is the psychic inmost being that replaces the ego. It is through love and Limitations of Ego ==surrender to the Divine that the psychic being becomes strong and manifest, so that it can replace the ego. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p99</ref>
To live without a fortress is extremely difficult—people have the feeling that they are not living, that they are not individualised, that they are floating about. It is extremely difficult to live in something infinitely vast, moving, constantly changing, perpetually in progress, not to be held by anything to which one can cling, saying "I am this; this is my way of thinking." It is very difficult, one must not try it too soon; there are those whose mind gets deranged by it. (=== Psychic - The Mother, 12 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p19</ref>True Individual ===
With regard to the evolution upwards, it is impossible for a divided and individualised consciousness with a dividedmore correct to speak of the psychic presence than the psychic being. For it is the psychic presence which little by little becomes the psychic being. In each evolving form there is this presence, but it is not individualised . It is something which is capable of growth and therefore limited power and will follows the movement of the evolution. It is not a descent of the involution from above. It is formed progressively round the spark of Divine Consciousness which is meant to be master the centre of a growing being which becomes the All-Force; only psychic being when it is at last individualised. It is this spark that is permanent and gathers round itself all sorts of elements for the All-Will can be formation of that and individuality; the individual true psychic being is formed onlywhen the psychic personality is fully grown, if at allfully built up, by becoming again one with round the All-Will eternal divine spark; it attains its culmination, its total fulfilment if and therefore when it unites with the All-Forcea being or personality from above. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2103/deathpsychic-desirepresence-and-incapacitypsychic-being-real-origin-of-race-superiority#p5p1</ref>
= The Psychic and Individualisation =<center>~</center>
A psychic entity is there behind these occult activities which is the true support of our individualisation; the ego is only an outward false substitute: for it is this secret soul that supports and holds together our self-experience and world-experience; the mental, vital, physical, external ego is a superficial construction of Nature. It is only when we have seen both our self and our nature as a whole, in the depths as well as on the surface, that we can acquire a true basis of knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-ego-and-self-experience#p15</ref>
It (The Psychic) is always pure. But it is either more or less individualised and independent in its action. What is psychic in the being is always pure, by its very definition, for it is that part of the being which is in contact with the Divine and expresses the truth of the being. But this may be like a spark in the darkness of the being or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two. (The Mother, 16 December, 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/16-december-1953#p15~</refcenter>
'''Aim It (The Psychic) is always pure. But it is either more or less individualised and independent in its action. What is psychic in the being is always pure, by its very definition, for it is that part of the Psychic Being'''being which is in contact with the Divine and expresses the truth of the being. But this may be like a spark in the darkness of the being or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/16-december-1953#p15</ref>
The aim '''''Aim of the psychic being is to form an individual being, individualised, "personalised" around the divine centre. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and becomes conscious) pass without organising the inner being, while the psychic being organises these experiences serially. It wants to realise a particular attitude towards the Divine. Hence it looks for all favourable experiences in order to have the complete series of opportunities, so to say, which will allow it to realise this attitude towards the Divine. (The Mother, 24 February, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-february-1951#p39</ref>Psychic Being'''''
== Evolution The aim of the Psychic ==psychic being is to form an individual being, individualised, "personalised" around the divine centre. Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and becomes conscious) pass without organising the inner being, while the psychic being organises these experiences serially. It wants to realise a particular attitude towards the Divine. Hence it looks for all favourable experiences in order to have the complete series of opportunities, so to say, which will allow it to realise this attitude towards the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-february-1951#p39</ref>
This is what happens. Let us take a divine spark which, through attraction, through affinity and selection, gathers around it a beginning === Evolution of psychic consciousness (this work is already very perceptible in animals—don't think you are exceptional beings, that you alone have a psychic being and the rest of creation hasn't. It begins in the mineral, it is a little more developed in the plant, and in the animal there is a first glimmer of the psychic presence). Then there comes a moment when this psychic being is sufficiently developed to have an independent consciousness and a personal will. And then after innumerable lives more or less individualised, it becomes conscious of itself, of its movements and of the environment it has chosen for its growth. Arriving at a certain state of perception, it decides—generally at the last minute of the life it has just finished upon earth—the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell you a very important thing: the psychic being can progress and form itself only in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own choice and its degree of development—a rest for assimilation, for a passive progress so to say, a rest for passive growth which will allow this same psychic being to pass on to new experiences and make a more active progress. But after having finished one life (which usually ends only when it has done what it wanted to do), it will have chosen the environment where it will be born, the approximate place where it will be born, the conditions and the kind of life in which it will be born, and a very precise programme of the experiences through which it will have to pass to be able to make the progress it wants to make. (The Mother, 24 February, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-february-1951#p22</ref>Psychic ===
The soul This is the eternal essence at the centre of the psychic beingwhat happens. The soul is in fact like Let us take a divine spark which puts on many states , through attraction, through affinity and selection, gathers around it a beginning of psychic consciousness (this work is already very perceptible in animals—don't think you are exceptional beings, that you alone have a psychic being and the rest of increasing densitycreation hasn't. It begins in the mineral, down to the most material; it is inside a little more developed in the bodyplant, within and in the animal there is a first glimmer of the solar plexus, so to saypsychic presence). These states of Then there comes a moment when this psychic being take form is sufficiently developed to have an independent consciousness and developa personal will. And then after innumerable lives more or less individualised, progressit becomes conscious of itself, become individualised of its movements and perfected of the environment it has chosen for its growth. Arriving at a certain state of perception, it decides—generally at the last minute of the life it has just finished upon earth—the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell you a very important thing: the course of many earthly lives psychic being can progress and form itself only in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own choice and its degree of development—a rest for assimilation, for a passive progress so to say, a rest for passive growth which will allow this same psychic beingto pass on to new experiences and make a more active progress. When But after having finished one life (which usually ends only when it has done what it wanted to do), it will have chosen the environment where it will be born, the psychic being is fully formedapproximate place where it will be born, the conditions and the kind of life in which it is aware will be born, and a very precise programme of the consciousness of experiences through which it will have to pass to be able to make the soul and manifests progress it perfectlywants to make. (The Mother, 1 February, 1967) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1604/124-february-1967-11951#p2p22</ref>
The essence of the soul is divine, but the soul (the psychic being) grows through all the forms of evolution; it becomes more and more individualised and increasingly conscious of itself and its origin. (The Mother, 24 January, 1935) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/24-january-1935#p2~</refcenter>
With regard to the evolution upwards, it The soul is more correct to speak of the psychic presence than eternal essence at the psychic being. For it is the psychic presence which little by little becomes centre of the psychic being. In each evolving form there The soul is this presence, but it is not individualised. It is something in fact like a divine spark which is capable puts on many states of growth and follows the movement being of increasing density, down to the evolution. It most material; it is not a descent of inside the involution from above. It is formed progressively round body, within the spark of Divine Consciousness which is meant solar plexus, so to be the centre say. These states of a growing being which becomes the psychic being when it is at last take form and develop, progress, become individualised. It is this spark that is permanent and gathers round itself all sorts of elements for perfected in the formation course of that individuality; many earthly lives and form the true psychic being is formed only when . When the psychic personality being is fully grownformed, fully built up, round it is aware of the consciousness of the eternal divine spark; it attains its culmination, its total fulfilment if soul and when manifests it unites with a being or personality from aboveperfectly. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0316/psychic1-presencefebruary-and1967-1#p2</ref> <center>~</center> The essence of the soul is divine, but the soul (the psychic-being-real-) grows through all the forms of evolution; it becomes more and more individualised and increasingly conscious of itself and its origin. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/24-of-racejanuary-superiority1935#p1p2</ref> <center>~</center>
The soul individualises itself and progressively transforms itself into a psychic being. (The Mother, 28 July, 1960) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/28-july-1960#p2</ref>
'''Kinds of Progress'''
There are in the psychic being two very different kinds of progress: one consisting in its formation, building and organisation. For the psychic starts by being only a kind of tiny divine spark within the being and out of this spark will emerge progressively an independent conscious being having its own action and will. The psychic being at its origin is only a spark of the divine consciousness and it is through successive lives that it builds up a conscious individuality. It is a progress similar to that of a growing child. It is a thing in the making. For a long time, in most human beings the psychic is a being in the making. It is not a fully individualised, fully conscious being and master of itself and it needs all its rebirths, one after another, in order to build itself and become fully conscious. (The Mother, 5 August, 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/5-august-1953#p2</ref>
'''Growth happens only on Earth'''
It is only upon earth that the psychic being gets its experiences to individualise itself. Hence there is an almost absolute interdependence between the psychic world and the earth. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p25</ref> === Individualisation and the Purusha === ''''' The Purusha and His World-Material ''''' But in the end we have to see that our individualisation is only a superficial formation, a practical selection and limited conscious synthesis for the temporary utility of life in a particular body, or else it is a constantly changing and developing synthesis pursued through successive lives in successive bodies. Behind it there is a consciousness, a Purusha, who is not determined or limited by his individualisation or by this synthesis but on the contrary determines, supports and yet exceeds it. That which he selects from in order to construct this synthesis, is his total experience of the world-being. Therefore our individualisation exists by virtue of the world-being, but also by virtue of a consciousness which uses the world-being for experience of its possibilities of individuality. These two powers, Person and his world-material, are both necessary for our present experience of individuality. If the Purusha with his individualising synthesis of consciousness were to disappear, to merge, to annul himself in any way, our constructed individuality would cease because the Reality that supported it would no longer be in presence; if, on the other hand, the world-being were to dissolve, merge, disappear, then also our individualisation would cease, for the material of experience by which it effectuates itself would be wanting. We have then to recognise these two terms of our existence, a world-being and an individualising consciousness which is the cause of all our self-experience and world-experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p4</ref> ''''' The Purusha and It's Experience of Individualisation ''''' But we see farther that in the end this Purusha, this cause and self of our individuality, comes to embrace the whole world and all other beings in a sort of conscious extension of itself and to perceive itself as one with the world-being. In its conscious extension of itself it exceeds the primary experience and abolishes the barriers of its active self-limitation and individualisation; by its perception of its own infinite universality it goes beyond all consciousness of separative individuality or limited soul-being. By that very fact the individual ceases to be the self-limiting ego; in other words, our false consciousness of existing only by self-limitation, by rigid distinction of ourselves from the rest of being and becoming is transcended; our identification of ourselves with our personal and temporal individualisation in a particular mind and body is abolished. But is all truth of individuality and individualisation abolished? does the Purusha cease to exist or does he become the world-Purusha and live intimately in innumerable minds and bodies? We do not find it to be so. He still individualises and it is still he who exists and embraces this wider consciousness while he individualises: but the mind no longer thinks of a limited temporary individualisation as all ourselves but only as a wave of becoming thrown up from the sea of its being or else as a form or centre of universality. The soul still makes the world-becoming the material for individual experience, but instead of regarding it as something outside and larger than itself on which it has to draw, by which it is affected, with which it has to make accommodations, it is aware of it subjectively as within itself; it embraces both its world-material and its individualised experience of spatial and temporal activities in a free and enlarged consciousness. In this new consciousness the spiritual individual perceives its true self to be one in being with the Transcendence and seated and dwelling within it, and no longer takes its constructed individuality as anything more than a formation for world-experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p5</ref> <center>~</center> The Purusha is aware of all other individuals as selves of himself; he may by a dynamic union become aware of their mental and practical action as occurring in his universal consciousness, just as he is aware of his own mental and practical action; he may help to determine their action by subjective union with them: but still there is a practical difference. The action of the Divine in himself is that with which he is particularly and directly concerned; the action of the Divine in his other selves is that with which he is universally concerned, not directly, but through and by his union with them and with the Divine. The individual therefore exists though he exceeds the little separative ego; the universal exists and is embraced by him but it does not absorb and abolish all individual differentiation, even though by his universalising himself the limitation which we call the ego is overcome. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p7</ref> === The Psychic Presence in the Vital World === As soon as there is organic life, the vital element comes in, and it is this vital element which gives to flowers the sense of beauty. It is not perhaps individualised in the sense we understand it, but it is a sense of the species and the species always tries to realise it. I have noticed a first rudiment of the psychic presence and vibration in vegetable life, and truly this blossoming one calls a flower is the first manifestation of the psychic presence. The psychic is individualised only in man, but it was there before him; but it is not the same kind of individualisation as in man, it is more fluid: it manifests as force, as consciousness rather than as individuality. Take the rose, for example; its great perfection of form, colour, scent expresses an aspiration and a psychic giving. Look at a rose opening in the morning at the first touch of the sun, it is a magnificent self-giving in aspiration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p34</ref> === The Psychic in the Realm of Matter === If there were no psychic in Matter, it would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine. And it is happily due to this psychic presence in Matter that the contact between Matter and the Divine can be direct and all human beings can be told, "You carry the Divine within you, and you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him." It is something very particular to the human being or rather to the inhabitants of the earth. In the human being the psychic becomes more conscious, more formed, more conscious and more independent also. It is individualised in human beings. But it is a speciality of the earth. It is a direct infusion, special and redeeming, in the most inconscient and obscure Matter, so that it might once again awake through stages to the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence and finally to the Divine Himself. It is the presence of the psychic which makes man an exceptional being.. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/9-june-1954#p28</ref> === Full Individualisation === But this sort of progress has an end. There comes a time when the being is fully developed, fully individualised, fully master of itself and its destiny. When this being or one of these psychic beings has reached that stage and takes birth in a human being, that makes a very great difference: the human being, so to say, is born free. He is not tied to circumstances, to surroundings, to his origin and atavism, like ordinary people. He comes into the world with the purpose of doing something, with a work to carry out, a mission to fulfill. From this point of view his progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body. Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one kind of progress stops. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/5-august-1953#p3</ref> For the complete individual is the cosmic individual, since only when we have taken the universe into ourselves, — and transcended it, — can our individuality be complete. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-gnostic-being#p9</ref> === Psychic Being and the Eternal Truth === It organises itself around it and enters into contact with it. The psychic is moved by the Truth. The Truth is something eternally self-existent and dependent on nothing in time or space, whereas the psychic being is a being that grows, takes form, progresses, individualises itself more and more. In this way it becomes more and more capable of manifesting this Truth, the eternal Truth that is one and permanent. The psychic being is a progressive being, which means that the relation between the psychic being and the Truth is a progressive one. It is not possible to become aware of one's psychic being without becoming aware at the same time of the inner Truth. All those who have had this experience—not a mental experience but an integral experience of contact with the psychic being, not a contact with the idea they have constructed of it, but a truly concrete contact—all say the same thing: from the very minute this contact takes place, one is absolutely conscious of the eternal Truth within oneself and one sees that it is the purpose of life and the guide of the world. One can't have one without the other; in fact, it is this that makes you realise that you are in contact with your psychic being. It may not be a conscious contact, but something that governs your life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/18-january-1951#p18</ref> = Why Individualisation? = First one must become a conscious, well-knit, individualised being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything, see anything without changing. He receives from outside only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive the imprint. Then one begins to become an individuality! When one is an individuality, one can make an offering of it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p44</ref> <center>~</center> So long as one does not exist, one can give nothing. And for the separative ego to disappear, as you say, one must be able to give oneself entirely, totally without reservation. And to be able to give oneself, one must first exist. And to exist one must be individualised. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p46</ref> <center>~</center> And then, later, one offers all this to the Divine. Years of work are needed. You must not only...(silence)... become conscious of yourself, conscious in all details, but you must organise what you call "yourself" around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being, so that it would make a single, coherent, fully conscious being. And as this divine centre is itself already consecrated (Mother makes a gesture of offering) entirely to the Divine, if everything is organised harmoniously around it, everything is consecrated to the Divine. And so, when the Divine thinks it proper, when the time has come, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine gives you permission to let your ego merge in Him, to live henceforward only for the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p57</ref> <center>~</center> In creating the universe as it was, the Will was an individual projection—individual, you understand, a scattering: instead of being a unity containing all, it was a unity made of innumerable small unities which are individualisations, that is, things that feel themselves separated. And the very fact of being separated from all others is what gives you the feeling that you are an individual. Otherwise you would have the feeling that you were a fluid mass. For example, instead of being conscious of your external form and of everything in your being which makes of you a separate individuality, if you were conscious of the vital forces which move everywhere or of the inconscient that is at the base of all, you would have the feeling of a mass moving with all kinds of contradictory movements but which could not be separated from each other; you would not have the feeling of being an individual at all: you would have the feeling of something like a vibration in the midst of a whole. Well, the original Will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious once again of their divine origin. Because of the process of individualisation one must feel separate if one is to be an individual. The moment you are separated, you are cut off from the original consciousness, at least apparently, and you fall into the inconscient. For the only thing which is the Life of life is the Origin, if you cut yourself off from that, consciousness naturally is changed into unconsciousness. And then it is due to this very unconsciousness that you are no longer aware of the truth of your being.... It is a process. You cannot argue whether it is inevitable or evitable; the fact is it is like that. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/27-may-1953#p17</ref> '''Raison d'être (Reason to be)''' And that is the great mystery of creation, for it is the same consciousness, the Consciousness is one. But the very moment this Consciousness manifests itself, exteriorises itself, deploys itself, it divides itself into innumerable fragments for the need of expansion, and each one of these fragmentations has been the beginning, the origin of an individual being. The origin of every individual form is the law of this form or the truth of this form. If there were no law, no truth of each form, there would be no possibility of individualisation. It would be something extending indefinitely; there would be perhaps points of concentration, assemblages, but no individual consciousness. Each form then represents one element in the changing of the One into the many. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of laws, elements of consciousness, truths which spread out into the universe and finally become separate individualities. So the individual being seems constantly to go farther and farther away from its origin by the very necessity of individualisation. But once this individualisation, that is, this awareness of the inner truth is complete, it becomes possible, by an inner identification, to re-establish in the multiplicity the original unity; that is the raison d'être of the universe as we perceive it. The universe has been made so that this phenomenon may take place. The Supreme has manifested Himself to Himself so as to become aware of Himself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-march-1951#p29</ref> = How can one Individualise? = == Awakening of Responsibility == Surely, one has a big responsibility, it is to fulfil a special mission that one is born upon earth. Only, naturally, the psychic being must have reached a certain degree of development; otherwise it could be said that it is the whole earth which has the responsibility. The more conscious and individualised one becomes, the more should one have the sense of responsibility. But this is what happens at a given moment; one begins to think that one is here not without reason, without purpose. One realises suddenly that one is here because there is something to be done and this something is not anything egoistic. This seems to me the most logical way of entering upon the path—all of a sudden to realise, "Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulfil. Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I have something to do with that consciousness—what is it?" (The Mother, 10 24 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/124-march-1951#p25p31</ref> == Process of Individualisation ==
== The Psychic Presence “..the suppleness needed to follow the movement of Becoming; suppleness, that is, the capacity for de-crystallisation—the whole period of life spent in individualisation is a period of conscious and deliberate crystallisation, which later has to be undone. Becoming a conscious and individual being is a constant crystallization—constant and deliberate—of all things; and afterwards one must make the opposite movement, constantly, and also, even more so, deliberately. At the same time, one must not lose the benefit, in the Vital World ==consciousness, of what one has acquired by individualisation.” <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-69#p25</ref>
As soon as there is organic life, the vital element comes in, and it is this vital element which gives to flowers the sense of beauty. It is not perhaps individualised in the sense we understand it, but it is a sense of the species and the species always tries to realise it. I have noticed a first rudiment of the psychic presence and vibration in vegetable life, and truly this blossoming one calls a flower is the first manifestation of the psychic presence. == The psychic is individualised only in man, but it was there before him; but it is not the same kind of individualisation as in man, it is more fluid: it manifests as force, as consciousness rather than as individuality. Take the rose, Need for example; its great perfection of form, colour, scent expresses an aspiration and a psychic giving. Look at a rose opening in the morning at the first touch of the sun, it is a magnificent self-giving in aspiration. (The Mother, 1 March, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/1-march-1951#p34</ref>Education ==
== The Psychic It's indispensable for you to have a frame in which you can learn how to form yourself. If you did your work of individualisation, of total formations, by yourself, all alone in a corner, nothing at all would be asked of you. But you don't do it, you wouldn't do it, there's not a single child who would do it, he wouldn't even know how to do it, where to begin. If a child were not taught how to live, he could not live, he wouldn't know how to do anything, anything. I don't want to speak about disgusting details, but even the most elementary things he would not do properly if he were not taught how to do them. Therefore, one must, step by step... That is to say, if everyone had to go through the whole experience needed for the Realm formations of Matter ==an individuality, he would be long dead before having begun to live! This is the contribution—accumulated through centuries—of those who have had the experience and tell you, "Well, if you want to go quickly, to know in a few years what has been learnt through centuries, do this!" Read, learn, study and then, in the material field, you will be taught to do this in this way, that in that way, this again in this way (gestures). Once you know a little, you can find your own method, if you have the genius for it! But first one must stand on one's own feet and know how to walk. It is very difficult to learn it all alone. It's like that for everyone. One must form oneself. Therefore, one needs education. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p59</ref>
If there were no psychic in Matter, it would not be able to have any direct contact with the Divine. And it is happily due to this psychic presence in Matter that the contact between Matter and the Divine can be direct and all human beings can be told, "You carry the Divine within you, and you have only to enter within yourself and you will find Him." It is something very particular to the human being or rather to the inhabitants of the earth. In the human being the psychic becomes more conscious, more formed, more conscious and more independent also. It is individualised in human beings. But it is a speciality of the earth. It is a direct infusion, special and redeeming, in the most inconscient and obscure Matter, so that it might once again awake through stages to the divine Consciousness, the divine Presence and finally to the Divine Himself. It is the presence of the psychic which makes man an exceptional being.. (The Mother, 9 June, 1954)<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/9-june-1954#p28~</refcenter>
== Full Individualisation ==An individualised mind is something extremely rare, which comes only after a long education... <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/20-february-1957#p6</ref>
But this sort == The Individualisation of progress has an end. There comes a time when the being is fully developed, fully individualised, fully master Parts of itself and its destiny. When this being or one of these psychic beings has reached that stage and takes birth in a human being, that makes a very great difference: the human being, so to say, is born free. He is not tied to circumstances, to surroundings, to his origin and atavism, like ordinary people. He comes into the world with the purpose of doing something, with a work to carry out, a mission to fulfill. From this point of view his progress in growth has come to an end, that is, it is not indispensable for him to take birth again in a body. Till then rebirth is a necessity, for it is through rebirth that he grows; it is in the physical life and in a physical body that he gradually develops and becomes a fully conscious being. But once he is fully formed, he is free, in this sense that he can take birth or not, at will. So there, one kind of progress stops. (The Mother, 5 August, 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/5-august-1953#p3</ref>Being ==
== You know, when you sleep, the inner beings are not concentrated upon the body, they go out and become more or less independent—a limited independence, but independence all the same—and they go to dwell in their own domains. The mind more so, for it is hardly held within the body, it is only concentrated but not contained in the body. The vital also goes beyond the body, but it is more concentrated upon the body. The Psychic Being mind however is such a supple substance that it is sufficient to think about a person in order to be with that person, at least partially, mentally. If you think strongly of a place, a part of your mind is there; distance, so to say, does not exist. Of course, to have a mind centralised around the body requires good training. Few people have a mind with a well-defined form: it is like clouds which roll, come and go. Even to have a vital with a form similar to that of your physical body, an analogous form, it must be very much individualised, very much centralised. The mind still more; it must be completely individualised, centralised, organised around the Eternal Truth ==psychic centre in order to have a definite form. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-march-1951#p17</ref>
It organises itself around it and enters into contact with it. The psychic is moved by the Truth. The Truth is something eternally self-existent and dependent on nothing in time or space, whereas the psychic being is a being that grows, takes form, progresses, individualises itself more and more. In this way it becomes more and more capable of manifesting this Truth, the eternal Truth that is one and permanent. The psychic being is a progressive being, which means that the relation between the psychic being and the Truth is a progressive one. It is not possible to become aware of one's psychic being without becoming aware at the same time of the inner Truth. All those who have had this experience—not a mental experience but an integral experience of contact with the psychic being, not a contact with the idea they have constructed of it, but a truly concrete contact—all say the same thing: from the very minute this contact takes place, one is absolutely conscious of the eternal Truth within oneself and one sees that it is the purpose of life and the guide of the world. One can't have one without the other; in fact, it is this that makes you realise that you are in contact with your psychic being. It may not be a conscious contact, but something that governs your life. (The Mother, 18 January, 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/18-january-1951#p18~</refcenter>
= Individualisation But the vital does not go to rest nor does the mental being. Generally they are dissolved. It is only if one has followed a yoga throughout his whole life, if one has taken great care to individualise, to centralise the vital and the Spirit =mental around the psychic being that they remain—that happens once in ten million cases, it is very exceptional. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-march-1951#p23</ref>
It is only when === The Importance of the Body in Individualisation === If your body were not made in the veil rigid form it is—for it is rent and the divided mind overpoweredterribly rigid, isn't it?—well, silent and passive to a supramental action if all that mind itself gets back to were not so fixed, if you had no skin, here, like this, solid, if externally you were the Truth reflection of thingswhat you are in the vital and mental fields, it would be worse than being a jelly-fish! Everything would fuse into everything else, like this... There we find Oh, what a luminous mentality reflective, obedient and instrumental mess it would be! That is why it was at first necessary to the divine Real-Ideagive a very rigid form. There Afterwards we perceive what the world really complain about it. We say, "The physical is fixed, it isa nuisance; we know in every way ourselves in others and as othersit lacks plasticity, it lacks suppleness, others as ourselves and all as it hasn't that fluidity which can enable us to merge into the universal and self-multiplied OneDivine." But this was absolutely necessary, for without this... We lose if you simply went out of your body (most of you can't do it because the rigidly separate individual standpoint which vital being is hardly more individualised than the source physical), if you came out of all limitation your body and error. Stillwent into the vital world, we perceive also you would see that all that the ignorance things there intermingle, they are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another, take possession of Mind took for the truth was each other, absorb each other, throw each other out... and so it goes on! But it is very difficult to find a real personality in fact truthall this. These are forces, but truth deflectedmovements, mistaken and falsely conceiveddesires, vibrations. <ref>http://incarnateword. We still perceive in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p47</ref> === Individualisation of the Vital Being === From the divisionvital point of view, take the individualisingcase of a great musician who has worked all his life to make his external being a good instrument for music; he has organised this vital power in his body for playing music; well then, the atomic creationhis hands, but we know them and ourselves for what instance, are so individualised in their ability to play, that they can persist subtly even after death, with their form, a form analogous to the old physical form. They float in the vital world and we really areattracted by people who have similar capacities; they try to become identified with them. A person who is sensitive enough, receptive enough, can become identified with these hands and execute wonderful things, profit by all the individualisation of the past life of these hands. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2104/mind10-andmarch-supermind1951#p19p24</ref> <center>~</center>
== Divine Individualisation ==“..to the individual vital plane there corresponds a cosmic vital world. When a human being is sufficiently developed he possesses an individualised vital being with organs of sight, hearing, smell, etc. So a person who has a well-developed vital being can see in the vital world with his vital sight, consciously and with the memory of what he has seen. This is what makes a vision.” <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-15#p4</ref>
… stage comes by the increasing manifestation of the Divine, the Ishwara in all our being and action. This is when we are constantly and uninterruptedly aware of him. He is felt in us as the possessor of our being and above us as the ruler of all its workings and they become to us nothing but a manifestation of him in the existence of the Jiva. All our consciousness is his consciousness, all our knowledge is his knowledge, all our thought is his thought, all our will is his will, all our feeling is his Ananda and form of his delight in being, all our action is his action. The distinction between the Shakti and the Ishwara begins to disappear; there is only the conscious activity in us of the Divine with the great self of the Divine behind and around and possessing it; all the world and Nature is seen to be only that, but here it has become fully conscious, the Maya of the ego removed, and the Jiva is there only as an eternal portion of his being, aṁśa sanātana, put forth to support a divine individualisation and living now fulfilled in the complete presence and power of the Divine, the complete joy of the Spirit manifested in the being. This is the highest realisation of the perfection and delight of the active oneness; for beyond it there could be only the consciousness of the Avatara, the Ishwara himself assuming a human name and form for action in the Lila. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-action-=== Individualisation of-the-divine-shakti#p10</ref>Mental Being ===
== Spiritual Individuality ==… the extent to which the mental being is formed and individualised varies greatly from one individual to the next. In the great mass of human beings the mind is something fluid which has no organisation of its own, and therefore it is not a personality. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p3</ref>
Spiritual individuality means that each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and all-vision; the circumference—the boundless circumference, as we may say,—of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be different,—not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but a psychological centre related with others through a coexistence of the diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic determinations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt be fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own differentiation,—as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of the same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis and not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of ignorance. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p21 ~</refcenter>
== Individualisation But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and Planes has become a personality, it does not depend, it no longer depends on the body for its existence, and it therefore survives the body. The earth's mental atmosphere is filled with beings, mental personalities which lead an entirely independent existence, even after the disappearance of the body; they can reincarnate in a new body when the soul, that is to say, the true Self, reincarnates, thus carrying with it the memory of Consciousness ==its previous lives. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p4</ref>
The Transcendent, the Supracosmic is absolute and free in Itself beyond Time and Space and beyond the conceptual opposites of finite and infinite. But in cosmos It uses Its liberty of self-formation, Its Maya, to make a scheme of Itself in the complementary terms of unity and multiplicity, and this multiple unity It establishes in the three conditions of the subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient. For actually we see that the Many objectivised in form in our material universe start with a subconscious unity which expresses itself openly enough in cosmic action and cosmic substance, but of which they are not themselves superficially aware. In the conscient the ego becomes the superficial point at which the awareness of unity can emerge; but it applies its perception of unity to the form and surface action and, failing to take account of all that operates behind, fails also to realise that it is not only one in itself but one with others. This limitation of the universal "I" in the divided ego-sense constitutes our imperfect individualised personality. But when the ego transcends the personal consciousness, it begins to include and be overpowered by that which is to us superconscious; it becomes aware of the cosmic unity and enters into the Transcendent Self which here cosmos expresses by a multiple oneness. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destiny-of-the-individual#p16~</refcenter>
The inconscient Mind is not individualised the final individualising operation of the all-comprehending and when you go down into all-apprehending Supermind, the inconscient process by which its consciousness works individualised in yourself, each form from the standpoint proper to it is and with the inconscient of matter. One can't say that each individual has his own inconscient, for cosmic relations which proceed from that would already be a beginning of individualisation.standpoint.. (The Mother, 6 January, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1521/6death-januarydesire-and-1951incapacity#p14p2</ref>
The light, the consciousness that comes down into this inconscient in order to transform it must necessarily be a consciousness that is close enough to be able to touch it. It is not possible to conceive of a light—the supramental light, for example—that would have the power to individualise the inconscient. But, through a conscious, individualised being, this light can be brought down into the inconscient and gradually make it conscious. (The Mother, 6 January, 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p15</ref>== Helpful Practices ==
== Individualisation and the Purusha =='''The Three Processes of Integral Yoga'''
''' The Purusha Integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and His Worldmoral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes* The development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire* The sublimation of human into divine love* The elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and Supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-Material '''i#p20</ref>
But in the end we have to see that our individualisation is only a superficial formation, a practical selection and limited conscious synthesis for the temporary utility of life in a particular body, or else it is a constantly changing and developing synthesis pursued through successive lives in successive bodies. Behind it there is a consciousness, a Purusha, who is not determined or limited by his individualisation or by this synthesis but on the contrary determines, supports and yet exceeds it. That which he selects from in order to construct this synthesis, is his total experience of the world-being. Therefore our individualisation exists by virtue of the world-being, but also by virtue of a consciousness which uses the world-being for experience of its possibilities of individuality. These two powers, Person and his world-material, are both necessary for our present experience of individuality. If the Purusha with his individualising synthesis of consciousness were to disappear, to merge, to annul himself in any way, our constructed individuality would cease because the Reality that supported it would no longer be in presence; if, on the other hand, the world-being were to dissolve, merge, disappear, then also our individualisation would cease, for the material of experience by which it effectuates itself would be wanting. We have then to recognise these two terms of our existence, a world-being and an individualising consciousness which is the cause of all our self-experience and world-experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p4</ref>'''Conscious Sacrifice'''
''' The Purusha This, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and It's Experience every movement of Individualisation '''our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to the one divine Being in all beings. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-sacrifice-the-triune-path-and-the-lord-of-the-sacrifice#p8</ref>
But we see farther that in the end this Purusha, this cause and self of our individuality, comes to embrace the whole world and all other beings in a sort of conscious extension of itself and to perceive itself as one with the world-being. In its conscious extension of itself it exceeds the primary experience and abolishes the barriers of its active self-limitation and individualisation; by its perception of its own infinite universality it goes beyond all consciousness of separative individuality or limited soul-being. By that very fact the individual ceases to be the self-limiting ego; in other words, our false consciousness of existing only by self-limitation, by rigid distinction of ourselves from the rest of being and becoming is transcended; our identification of ourselves with our personal and temporal individualisation in a particular mind and body is abolished. But is all truth of individuality and individualisation abolished? does the Purusha cease to exist or does he become the world-Purusha and live intimately in innumerable minds and bodies? We do not find it to be so. He still individualises and it is still he who exists and embraces this wider consciousness while he individualises: but the mind no longer thinks of a limited temporary individualisation as all ourselves but only as a wave of becoming thrown up from the sea of its being or else as a form or centre of universality. The soul still makes the world-becoming the material for individual experience, but instead of regarding it as something outside and larger than itself on which it has to draw, by which it is affected, with which it has to make accommodations, it is aware of it subjectively as within itself; it embraces both its world-material and its individualised experience of spatial and temporal activities in a free and enlarged consciousness. In this new consciousness the spiritual individual perceives its true self to be one in being with the Transcendence and seated and dwelling within it, and no longer takes its constructed individuality as anything more than a formation for world-experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p5</ref>= Beyond Individualisation =
The Purusha It is aware only when the veil is rent and the divided mind overpowered, silent and passive to a supramental action that mind itself gets back to the Truth of all other individuals as selves of himselfthings. There we find a luminous mentality reflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine Real-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is; he may by a dynamic union become aware of their mental we know in every way ourselves in others and practical action as occurring in his universal consciousnessothers, just others as ourselves and all as he is aware of his own mental the universal and practical action; he may help to determine their action by subjective union with them: but still there is a practical differenceself-multiplied One. The action of We lose the Divine in himself is that with rigidly separate individual standpoint which he is particularly the source of all limitation and directly concerned; error. Still, we perceive also that all that the action ignorance of Mind took for the Divine truth was in his other selves is that with which he is universally concernedfact truth, not directlybut truth deflected, but through mistaken and by his union with them and with falsely conceived. We still perceive the Divine. The individual therefore exists though he exceeds division, the little separative ego; individualising, the universal exists atomic creation, but we know them and is embraced by him but it does not absorb ourselves for what they and abolish all individual differentiation, even though by his universalising himself the limitation which we call the ego is overcomereally are. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternalmind-and-the-individualsupermind#p7p19</ref>
== Cosmos and the Individual ==<center>~</center>
Cosmos and individual are manifestations of a transcendent Self who is indivisible being although he seems to be divided or distributed; but he is not really divided or distributed but indivisibly present everywhere. Therefore all is in each and each is in all and all is in God and God in all; and when the liberated soul comes into union with this Transcendent, it has this self-experience of itself and cosmos which is translated psychologically into a mutual inclusion and a persistent existence of both in a divine union which is at once a oneness and a fusion and an embrace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p9</ref>
<center>~</center> The cosmic being can only know and possess the transcendent unity by ceasing to be cosmic; the individual can only know and possess the cosmic or the transcendental unity by ceasing from all individuality and individualisation. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p12</ref> = Death and = Divine Individualisation ==
The ordinary mass … stage comes by the increasing manifestation of men the Divine, the Ishwara in all our being and action. This is when we are so closely identified with their bodies that nothing constantly and uninterruptedly aware of them survives when the physical disintegrateshim. Not that absolutely nothing survives—the vital and mental stuff always remains but it He is not identical with felt in us as the physical personality. What survives has not possessor of our being and above us as the clear impress ruler of the exterior personality because the latter was content all its workings and they become to remain us nothing but a jumble manifestation of impulses and desireshim in the existence of the Jiva. All our consciousness is his consciousness, all our knowledge is his knowledge, all our thought is his thought, all our will is his will, a temporary organic unity constituted by the cohesion all our feeling is his Ananda and coordination form of bodily functionshis delight in being, and when these functions cease their pseudo-unity also naturally comes to an endall our action is his action. Only if there has been a mental discipline imposed on The distinction between the different parts Shakti and they have been made the Ishwara begins to subserve a common mental ideal, can disappear; there be some sort is only the conscious activity in us of genuine individuality which retains the memory Divine with the great self of its earthly life the Divine behind and around and possessing it; all the world and so survives consciously. The artistNature is seen to be only that, but here it has become fully conscious, the philosopher Maya of the ego removed, and other developed persons who have organisedthe Jiva is there only as an eternal portion of his being, individualised and aṁśa sanātana, put forth to support a certain extent converted their vital divine individualisation and living now fulfilled in the complete presence and power of the Divine, the complete joy of the Spirit manifested in the being can . This is the highest realisation of the perfection and delight of the active oneness; for beyond it there could be said to survive, because they have brought into their exterior only the consciousness some shadow of the psychic entity which is immortal by its very nature Avatara, the Ishwara himself assuming a human name and whose aim is to progressively build up form for action in the being around the central Divine WillLila. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0324/vitalthe-conversionaction-rebirthof-andthe-personaldivine-survivalshakti#p5p10</ref>
“...there is a common misconception about rebirth. People believe that it is they who are reincarnated, yet this is a palpable error, though it is true that parts of their being are amalgamated with others and so act through new bodies. Their whole being is not reborn, because of the simple fact that what they evidently mean by their "self" is not a real individualised entity but their exterior personality, the personality composed of the outward name and form. Hence it is wrong to say that A is reborn as B: A is a personality organically distinct from B and cannot be said to have reincarnated as B. You would be right only if you said that the same line of consciousness uses both A and B as the instruments of its manifestation. For, what does remain constant is the psychic being which is not the outward personality at all, but something deep within, something which is not the exterior name and form.” <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/vital-conversion-rebirth-and-personal-survival#p4</ref>== Spiritual Individuality ==
== Death Spiritual individuality means that each individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and all-vision; the circumference—the boundless circumference, as we may say, of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be different, not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but a psychological centre related with others through a coexistence of the diversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to its own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the Infinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic determinations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt be fundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own differentiation,—as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of the same cosmic things, yet always with an Aid individual difference. This self-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a common universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own centre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis and not with any blindness to Individualisation other-self and Evolution ==other-nature. It would be consciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti#p21 </ref>
It was the conditions of matter upon earth that made death indispensable. The whole sense of the evolution of matter has been a growth from a first state of unconsciousness to an increasing consciousness. And in this process of growth dissolution of forms became an inevitable necessity, as things actually took place. For a fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of the form that made death inevitable. Matter had to assume forms; individualisation and the concrete embodiment of life-forces or consciousness-forces were impossible without it and without these there would have been lacking the first conditions of organised existence on the plane of matter. But a definite and concrete formation contracts the tendency to become at once rigid and hard and petrified. The individual form persisted as a too binding mould; it cannot follow the movements of the forces; it cannot change in harmony with the progressive change in the universal dynamism; it cannot meet continually Nature's demand or keep pace with her; it gets out of the current. At a certain point of this growing disparity and disharmony between the form and the force that presses upon it, a complete dissolution of the form is unavoidable. A new form must be created; a new harmony and parity made possible. This is the true significance of death and this is its use in Nature. But if the form can become more quick and pliant and the cells of the body can be awakened to change with the changing consciousness, there would be no need of a drastic dissolution, death would be no longer inevitable. (The Mother, 5 May, 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/5-may-1929#p21</ref>== Beyond Personal Consciousness ==
== DeathThe Transcendent, Desire the Supracosmic is absolute and Strife ==free in Itself beyond Time and Space and beyond the conceptual opposites of finite and infinite. But in cosmos It uses Its liberty of self-formation, Its Maya, to make a scheme of Itself in the complementary terms of unity and multiplicity, and this multiple unity It establishes in the three conditions of the subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient. For actually we see that the Many objectivised in form in our material universe start with a subconscious unity which expresses itself openly enough in cosmic action and cosmic substance, but of which they are not themselves superficially aware. In the conscient the ego becomes the superficial point at which the awareness of unity can emerge; but it applies its perception of unity to the form and surface action and, failing to take account of all that operates behind, fails also to realise that it is not only one in itself but one with others. This limitation of the universal "I" in the divided ego-sense constitutes our imperfect individualised personality. But when the ego transcends the personal consciousness, it begins to include and be overpowered by that which is to us superconscious; it becomes aware of the cosmic unity and enters into the Transcendent Self which here cosmos expresses by a multiple oneness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destiny-of-the-individual#p16</ref>
The struggle of limited forces increasing their capacity by that struggle under the driving impetus of instinctive or conscious desire is therefore the first law of Life. As with desire, so with this strife; it must rise into a mutually helpful trial of strength, a conscious wrestling of brother forces in which the victor == Individualisation and vanquished or rather that which influences by action from above and that which influences by retort of action from below must equally gain and increase. And this again has eventually to become the happy shock of divine interchange, the strenuous clasp of Love replacing the convulsive clasp of strife. Still, strife is the necessary and salutary beginning. Death, Desire and Strife are the trinity of divided living, the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its first essay of cosmic self-affirmation. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/death-desire-and-incapacity#p13</ref>Inconscience ==
== Immortality ==The inconscient is not individualised and when you go down into the inconscient in yourself, it is the inconscient of matter. One can't say that each individual has his own inconscient, for that would already be a beginning of individualisation... <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p14</ref>
But this is not what Sri Aurobindo calls Immortality. Immortality is a life without beginning or end, without birth or death, which is altogether independent of the body. It is the life of the Self, the essential being of each individual, and it is not separate from the universal Self. And this essential being has a sense of oneness with the universal Self; it is in fact a personified, individualised expression of the universal Self and has neither beginning nor end, neither life nor death, it exists eternally and that is what is immortal. When we are fully conscious of this Self we participate in its eternal life, and we therefore become immortal. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p5~</refcenter>
= The Supermind =light, the consciousness that comes down into this inconscient in order to transform it must necessarily be a consciousness that is close enough to be able to touch it. It is not possible to conceive of a light—the supramental light, for example—that would have the power to individualise the inconscient. But, through a conscious, individualised being, this light can be brought down into the inconscient and gradually make it conscious. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p15</ref>
== The Individualisation of and the Supermind ==
The individualisation of states of being which have so far never been conscious in man, that is to say, there are superposed states of consciousness, and there are new regions which have never yet been manifested on earth, and which Sri Aurobindo called supramental. It is that, this was the same idea. That is, one must go into the depths or the heights of creation which have never been manifested upon earth, and become conscious of that, and manifest it on earth. Sri Aurobindo called it the Supermind. I simply say these are states of being which were never yet conscious in man (that is, that man has so far never been aware of them). One must get identified with them, then bring them into the outer consciousness, and manifest them in action. (The Mother, 11 November, 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/11-november-1953#p24</ref>
== The Ascent Towards Supermind ==
The gnostic individual would be in the world and of the world, but would also exceed it in his consciousness and live in his self of transcendence above it; he would be universal but free in the universe, individual but not limited by a separative individuality. The true Person is not an isolated entity, his individuality is universal; for he individualises the universe: it is at the same time divinely emergent in a spiritual air of transcendental infinity, like a high cloud-surpassing summit; for he individualises the divine Transcendence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-gnostic-being#p8</ref>
 
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For his experience of cosmic existence will be, by its form of nature and by an individualised centration, that of one living in the universe but, at the same time, by self-diffusion and extension in oneness, that of one who carries the universe and all its beings within him. This extended state of being will not only be an extension in oneness of self or an extension in conceptive idea and vision, but an extension of oneness in heart, in sense, in a concrete physical consciousness. He will have the cosmic consciousness, sense, feeling, by which all objective life will become part of his subjective existence and by which he will realise, perceive, feel, see, hear the Divine in all forms; all forms and movements will be realised, sensed, seen, heard, felt as if taking place within his own vast self of being. The world will be connected not only with his outer but with his inner life. He will not meet the world only in its external form by an external contact; he will be inwardly in contact with the inner self of things and beings: he will meet consciously their inner as well as their outer reactions; he will be aware of that within them of which they themselves will not be aware, act upon all with an inner comprehension, encounter all with a perfect sympathy and sense of oneness but also an independence which is not overmastered by any contact. His action on the world will be largely an inner action by the power of the spirit, by the spiritual-supramental idea-force formulating itself in the world, by the secret unspoken word, by the power of the heart, by the dynamic life-force, by the enveloping and penetrating power of the self one with all things; the outer expressed and visible action will be only a fringe, a last projection of this vaster single total of activity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-gnostic-being#p16</ref>
 
= Death and Individualisation =
 
The ordinary mass of men are so closely identified with their bodies that nothing of them survives when the physical disintegrates. Not that absolutely nothing survives—the vital and mental stuff always remains but it is not identical with the physical personality. What survives has not the clear impress of the exterior personality because the latter was content to remain a jumble of impulses and desires, a temporary organic unity constituted by the cohesion and coordination of bodily functions, and when these functions cease their pseudo-unity also naturally comes to an end. Only if there has been a mental discipline imposed on the different parts and they have been made to subserve a common mental ideal, can there be some sort of genuine individuality which retains the memory of its earthly life and so survives consciously. The artist, the philosopher and other developed persons who have organised, individualised and to a certain extent converted their vital being can be said to survive, because they have brought into their exterior consciousness some shadow of the psychic entity which is immortal by its very nature and whose aim is to progressively build up the being around the central Divine Will. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/vital-conversion-rebirth-and-personal-survival#p5</ref>
 
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“...there is a common misconception about rebirth. People believe that it is they who are reincarnated, yet this is a palpable error, though it is true that parts of their being are amalgamated with others and so act through new bodies. Their whole being is not reborn, because of the simple fact that what they evidently mean by their "self" is not a real individualised entity but their exterior personality, the personality composed of the outward name and form. Hence it is wrong to say that A is reborn as B: A is a personality organically distinct from B and cannot be said to have reincarnated as B. You would be right only if you said that the same line of consciousness uses both A and B as the instruments of its manifestation. For, what does remain constant is the psychic being which is not the outward personality at all, but something deep within, something which is not the exterior name and form.” <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/vital-conversion-rebirth-and-personal-survival#p4</ref>
 
== Why Death? ==
 
It was the conditions of matter upon earth that made death indispensable. The whole sense of the evolution of matter has been a growth from a first state of unconsciousness to an increasing consciousness. And in this process of growth dissolution of forms became an inevitable necessity, as things actually took place. For a fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of the form that made death inevitable. Matter had to assume forms; individualisation and the concrete embodiment of life-forces or consciousness-forces were impossible without it and without these there would have been lacking the first conditions of organised existence on the plane of matter. But a definite and concrete formation contracts the tendency to become at once rigid and hard and petrified. The individual form persisted as a too binding mould; it cannot follow the movements of the forces; it cannot change in harmony with the progressive change in the universal dynamism; it cannot meet continually Nature's demand or keep pace with her; it gets out of the current. At a certain point of this growing disparity and disharmony between the form and the force that presses upon it, a complete dissolution of the form is unavoidable. A new form must be created; a new harmony and parity made possible. This is the true significance of death and this is its use in Nature. But if the form can become more quick and pliant and the cells of the body can be awakened to change with the changing consciousness, there would be no need of a drastic dissolution, death would be no longer inevitable. (The Mother, 5 May, 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/5-may-1929#p21</ref>
 
== Immortality ==
 
But this is not what Sri Aurobindo calls Immortality. Immortality is a life without beginning or end, without birth or death, which is altogether independent of the body. It is the life of the Self, the essential being of each individual, and it is not separate from the universal Self. And this essential being has a sense of oneness with the universal Self; it is in fact a personified, individualised expression of the universal Self and has neither beginning nor end, neither life nor death, it exists eternally and that is what is immortal. When we are fully conscious of this Self we participate in its eternal life, and we therefore become immortal. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p5</ref>
 
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By individual we mean normally something that separates itself from everything else and stands apart, though in reality there is no such thing anywhere in existence; it is a figment of our mental conceptions useful and necessary to express a partial and practical truth. But the difficulty is that the mind gets dominated by its words and forgets that the partial and practical truth becomes true truth only by its relation to others which seem to the reason to contradict it, and that taken by itself it contains a constant element of falsity. Thus when we speak of an individual we mean ordinarily an individualisation of mental, vital, physical being separate from all other beings, incapable of unity with them by its very individuality. If we go beyond these three terms of mind, life and body, and speak of the soul or individual self, we still think of an individualised being separate from all others, incapable of unity and inclusive mutuality, capable at most of a spiritual contact and soul-sympathy. It is therefore necessary to insist that by the true individual we mean nothing of the kind, but a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p10</ref>
= More on Individualisation =
It is conceivable that so the Eternal may have actually chosen to manifest or rather to conceal himself in the body; he may have willed to become or to appear as an individual passing from birth to death and from death to new life in a cycle of persistent and recurrent human and animal existence. The One Being personalised would pass through various forms of becoming at fancy or according to some law of the consequences of action, till the close came by an enlightenment, a return to Oneness, a withdrawal of the Sole and Identical from that particular individualisation. But such a cycle would have no original or final determining Truth which would give it any significance. There is nothing for which it would be necessary; it would be purely a play, a Lila. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-philosophy-of-rebirth#p22</ref>
 
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The normal experience of the reason therefore is not applicable to these higher truths. In the first place the ego is the individual only in the ignorance; there is a true individual who is not the ego and still has an eternal relation with all other individuals which is not egoistic or self-separative, but of which the essential character is practical mutuality founded in essential unity. This mutuality founded in unity is the whole secret of the divine existence in its perfect manifestation; it must be the basis of anything to which we can give the name of a divine life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-eternal-and-the-individual#p10</ref>
 
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When the individualised consciousness rises to and lives in that truth of the cosmic play, then even in full action, even in possession of the lower being the Jiva remains still one with the Lord, and there is no bondage and no delusion. He is in possession of Self and released from the ego. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-ego#p12</ref>
Man has in him two distinct master impulses, the individualistic and the communal, a personal life and a social life, a personal motive of conduct and a social motive of conduct. The possibility of their opposition and the attempt to find their equation lie at the very roots of human civilisation and persist in other figures when he has passed beyond the vital animal into a highly individualised mental and spiritual progress. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/standards-of-conduct-and-spiritual-freedom#p12</ref>
To be individualised in a collectivity, one must be absolutely conscious of oneself. And of which self?—the Self which is above all intermixture, that is, what I call the Truth of your being. And as long as you are not conscious of the Truth of your being, you are moved by all kinds of things, without taking any note of it at all. Collective thought, collective suggestions are a formidable influence which act constantly on individual thought. And what is extraordinary is that one does not notice it. One believes that one thinks "like that", but in truth it is the collectivity which thinks "like that". The mass is always inferior to the individual. Take individuals with similar qualities, of similar categories, well, when they are alone these individuals are at least two degrees better than people of the same category in a crowd. There is a mixture of obscurities, a mixture of unconsciousness, and inevitably you slip into this unconsciousness. To escape this there is but one means: to become conscious of oneself, more and more conscious and more and more attentive. (The Mother, 13 January, 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/13-january-1951#p26~</refcenter>
There are many souls upon earthTo be individualised in a collectivity, human beingsone must be absolutely conscious of oneself... ObviouslyAnd of which self?—the Self which is above all intermixture, those who have a certain culturethat is, a certain development, a certain individualisation gather together usually: instinctively they get together, form groupswhat I call the Truth of your being. And so one can find in space and time a number—not considerable but still sufficiently large—of cultured beings who as long as you are united, but one must not believe that this gives conscious of the exact proportion Truth of the culture and development your being, you are moved by all kinds of human beings. It is only like a sort things, without taking any note of foam that has been brought up and is on the surfaceit at all. But even among these latterCollective thought, even among these beings who collective suggestions are already a selection, there formidable influence which act constantly on individual thought. And what is extraordinary is hardly that one does not notice it. One believes that one thinks "like that", but in a thousand who truth it is the collectivity which thinks "like that". The mass is a truly always inferior to the individual being. Take individuals with similar qualities, conscious of himselfsimilar categories, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and, consequently, almost if not totally free from external influences; for, being consciouswell, when they are alone these influences come, he sees them: those that seem to him to harmonise with his inner development and normal growth he accepts; those which individuals are opposed he refuses. And so, instead at least two degrees better than people of being the same category in a chaos—or in any case crowd. There is a frightful mixture—they are organised beingsmixture of obscurities, individuala mixture of unconsciousness, and inevitably you slip into this unconsciousness. To escape this there is but one means: to become conscious of themselvesoneself, walking through life knowing where they want to go more and more conscious and more and how they want tomore attentive. (The Mother, 14 April, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0604/1413-apriljanuary-19541951#p25p26</ref>
But solidarity does not stop there. There is a vital solidarity and a mental solidarity which you cannot prevent. There is, after all (though men are much more individualised than animals), there is a spirit of the species. There are collective suggestions which don't need to be expressed in words. There are atmospheres one cannot escape. It is certain (for I know this by experience), it is certain that there is a degree of individual perfection and transformation which cannot be realised without the whole of humanity having made a particular progress. And this happens by successive steps. There are things in Matter which cannot be transformed unless the whole of Matter has undergone transformation to a certain degree. One cannot isolate oneself completely. It is not possible. One can do the work, one can choose: there are people who have chosen to go into solitude and try to realise in themselves the ideal they saw—usually they reached a certain point, then stopped there, they could go no further. It has been thus historically. I was saying the other day: "There are perhaps people upon earth whom I don't know who have realised extraordinary things" but precisely because they have isolated themselves from the earth, the earth does not know them. This is just to say that nothing is impossible. It seems doubtful, is all that I can say. But it is impossible, even if one isolates oneself physically, to do so vitally and mentally. There is the vast terrestrial atmosphere in which one is born, and there is a sort of spirit or genius of the human race; well, this genius must have reached a certain degree of perfection for anyone to be able to go farther. It is not that one has to wait till all have done it, no; but it is as though all had to reach a certain level for one to be able to take one's spring and go farther.... Surely the individual will always be ahead of the mass, there's no doubt about that, but there will always be a proportion and a relation. (The Mother, 7 October, 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/7-october-1953#p47~</refcenter>
== Individualisation There are many souls upon earth, human beings... Obviously, those who have a certain culture, a certain development, a certain individualisation gather together usually: instinctively they get together, form groups. And so one can find in space and time a number—not considerable but still sufficiently large—of cultured beings who are united, but one must not believe that this gives the exact proportion of Animals ==the culture and development of human beings. It is only like a sort of foam that has been brought up and is on the surface. But even among these latter, even among these beings who are already a selection, there is hardly one in a thousand who is a truly individual being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and, consequently, almost if not totally free from external influences; for, being conscious, when these influences come, he sees them: those that seem to him to harmonise with his inner development and normal growth he accepts; those which are opposed he refuses. And so, instead of being a chaos—or in any case a frightful mixture—they are organised beings, individual, conscious of themselves, walking through life knowing where they want to go and how they want to. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/14-april-1954#p25</ref>
Except for very rare cases, the animals are not individualised and when they die they return to the spirit of the species. (The Mother, 6 August, 1966) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-august-1966#p3~</refcenter>
= Recommended Practices =But solidarity does not stop there. There is a vital solidarity and a mental solidarity which you cannot prevent. There is, after all (though men are much more individualised than animals), there is a spirit of the species. There are collective suggestions which don't need to be expressed in words. There are atmospheres one cannot escape. It is certain (for I know this by experience), it is certain that there is a degree of individual perfection and transformation which cannot be realised without the whole of humanity having made a particular progress. And this happens by successive steps. There are things in Matter which cannot be transformed unless the whole of Matter has undergone transformation to a certain degree. One cannot isolate oneself completely. It is not possible. One can do the work, one can choose: there are people who have chosen to go into solitude and try to realise in themselves the ideal they saw—usually they reached a certain point, then stopped there, they could go no further. It has been thus historically. I was saying the other day: "There are perhaps people upon earth whom I don't know who have realised extraordinary things" but precisely because they have isolated themselves from the earth, the earth does not know them. This is just to say that nothing is impossible. It seems doubtful, is all that I can say. But it is impossible, even if one isolates oneself physically, to do so vitally and mentally. There is the vast terrestrial atmosphere in which one is born, and there is a sort of spirit or genius of the human race; well, this genius must have reached a certain degree of perfection for anyone to be able to go farther. It is not that one has to wait till all have done it, no; but it is as though all had to reach a certain level for one to be able to take one's spring and go farther.... Surely the individual will always be ahead of the mass, there's no doubt about that, but there will always be a proportion and a relation. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/7-october-1953#p47</ref>
== The Three Processes Individualisation of Integral Yoga == The Integral Yoga, refusing to rely upon the fragile stuff of mental and moral ideals, puts its whole emphasis in this field on three central dynamic processes—the development of the true soul or psychic being to take the place of the false soul of desire, the sublimation of human into divine love, the elevation of consciousness from its mental to its spiritual and Supramental plane by whose power alone both the soul and the life-force can be utterly delivered from the veils and prevarications of the Ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-i#p20</ref> == Conscious Sacrifice Animals ==
ThisExcept for very rare cases, in short, is the demand made on us, that we should turn our whole life into a conscious sacrifice. Every moment and every movement of our being is to be resolved into a continuous and a devoted self-giving to the Eternal. All our actions, animals are not less the smallest and most ordinary and trifling than the greatest and most uncommon and noble, must be performed as consecrated acts. Our individualised nature must live in the single consciousness of an inner and outer movement dedicated when they die they return to Something that is beyond us and greater than our ego. No matter what the gift or to whom it is presented by us, there must be a consciousness in the act that we are presenting it to spirit of the one divine Being in all beingsspecies. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2317/the-sacrifice-the-triune-path-and-the-lord-of6-theaugust-sacrifice1966#p8p3</ref>
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= References =