The Evolution of the Psychic Being Across Innumerable Lifetimes

There is considerable confusion about the concept of rebirth and the development and growth of the psychic being across multiple lifetimes. Popular imagination has it that the same individual personality is reborn, and that under certain circumstances, past lives can be identified and recalled. Then they can find their ‘soul mate’ and re-establish the relationships of the past.

There is a strong desire to survive after death in some recognisable manner. Christians find this in an eventual resurrection to heaven to rejoin one’s loved ones there. The ancient Greeks had legends where the shades of people who had died went to various holding places in the underworld. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice had Orpheus use his musical skills to charm Hades and Persephone into allowing him to take his wife Eurydice back to the living, as long as he followed the condition of not looking back. He failed the test, but the message is clear that somehow a departed soul can return and resume its life in the world with its existing personality. The Romans adopted a similar view and Virgil, in the Aeneid, had the Trojan hero Aeneas enter the underworld and speak to his departed father. Dante in The Divine Comedy described various circles of hell and the poet Virgil, acting as his guide, showed him the fate of numerous individuals who had committed certain heinous deeds, and who maintained their individual personality during their stay in hell. A region called Purgatory contained souls that were capable of redemption, and finally he described Paradise where the innocent souls and redeemed were able to reside in bliss.

Souls that were intended to be reborn were first bathed in the waters of the river Lethe, which wiped out the memory of the past lifetime. There are instances and circumstances that indicate that it is possible, but not probable or widespread, that a memory of past inca
ations can be brought forward ino the current lifetime. In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that while he recalls his past inca
ations, Arjuna does not. Sri Krishna as an avatar was able to transcend the usual circumstances of human birth. Arjuna as a human being, did not. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition has studied the question of rebirth and determined that certain realized souls could take conscious birth to continue a lineage. They brought with them in their new inca
ation, an affinity for specific items used in the prior inca
ation, in order to be recognised, as well as a line of development that allowed for the continuance of the work of the prior inca
ations, without necessarily carrying the entire burden of details of the lives of past inca
ations into the current life.

Under normal circumstances, the psychic being, as it develops and matures, brings forward from past lifetimes the essence of the experience, not the individual personality or specific memories or relationships. The Greeks had it right to the extent that the process removes the specific details and memories of past lifetimes, which otherwise would tie down and limit the soul’s experience and development.

A disciple asks: “What exactly is the soul or psychic being? And what is meant by the evolution of the psychic being? What is its relation to the Supreme?”

The Mother responds: “The soul and the psychic being are not exactly the same thing, although their essence is the same.”

“The soul is the divine spark that dwells at the centre of each being; it is identical with its Divine Origin; it is the divine in man.”

“The psychic being is formed progressively around this divine centre, the soul, in the course of its innumerable lives in the terrestrial evolution, until the time comes when the psychic being, fully formed and wholly awakened, becomes the conscious sheath of the soul around which it is formed.”

:And thus identified with the Divine, it becomes His perfect instrument in the world.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 1 Meaning and Nature of the Psychic Being, pg. 8