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Namah Sri Aurobindo’s Prevision of a Greater Psychology

potentiality to develop because the universal to the higher planes and acted on by their
soul or spirit, “… dwells in all these planes in powers and beings. He can open up and
a certain simultaneity and builds upon each increase the action of these higher planes in
of these principles a world or series of worlds himself…. But his most important capacity is
with its beings who live in the nature of that that of developing the powers of the higher
principle (20).” principles in himself, a greater power of
life, a pure light of mind, the illumination of
supermind, the infinite being, consciousness
and delight of spirit…. he has to begin from
the law of his present imperfection, to take full
account of it and see how it can be converted
to the law of a possible perfection…. Mind
in him, though he is an embodied mental
being, has to bear the control of the body
and the physical life and can only, by some
more or less considerable effort of energy and
concentration, consciously control life and
body. It is only by increasing that control that
he can move towards perfection, — and it is
only by developing soul-power that he can
reach it. Nature-power in him has to become
more and more completely a conscious act
Moreover, just as annular rings are present of soul, a conscious expression of all the will
in a tree-trunk revealing the whole history and knowledge of spirit (21).”
of the tree, similarly, all the planes of the
Higher Nature and lower Nature are It can thus be surmised that Sri Aurobindo
present in the consciousness of each visualised a consciousness-based integral
individual human being, giving him or psychological perspective with a whole-person
her, a chance to shift from the ignorance orientation from the beginning. The whole-
of divisibility to the knowledge of unity. person in the Aurobindonian ambit includes
“Man, the microcosm, has all these planes in the outer being and the inner being supported
his own being, ranged from his subconscient by the soul-principle and its field of action
to his superconscient existence. By a extends from the embodied consciousness
developing power of Yoga he can become to the transcendental consciousness, as well
aware of these concealed worlds hidden as expanding into the cosmic consciousness.
from his physical, materialised mind and The soul-principle itself is a projection
senses which know only the material of the Spirit in its individual poise that is
world, and then he becomes aware that identified simultaneously with the Spirit in
his material existence is not a thing apart the Transcendental and Universal poises. It
and self-existent, as the material universe is significant that the integral psychological
in which he lives is also not a thing apart perspective of contemporary times includes
and self-existent, but is in constant relation personal, interpersonal and transpersonal

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