WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

True self and the psychic

30 March 1955

Sweet Mother, the true self and the psychic are the same thing?

No. The true self is what is also called the truth of the being. It is the divine element which is your individual reality. It is the divine element which makes you a separate individuality, and it is at the same time a fragment of the one Being and naturally the one Being itself; that is, while being a particular aspect which makes you an individual, it is an integral part of the One which makes you only an objectivisation of the One.

This is the true self. The psychic being is a terrestrial formation. It is human beings who have a psychic being which has been developed upon earth and by earthly life and which is a projection of the divine Consciousness into Matter to awaken Matter out of its inertia so that it takes the path back to the Divine. [new p. 105][old p. 106]

But in certain cases the true self is found in the psychic being, that is, it dwells in the psychic being--but not always.

There is always a divine Presence in the psychic being, but it is the divine Presence which was at the origin of the psychic formation, it is an emanation from the divine Consciousness; whereas the true self is not a terrestrial formation. It precedes the terrestrial formation.