Question: Can you tell us exactly what the psychic being is? Also, if it is useful for the aspirant to try to establish some kind of relationship with his psychic being, how can he do it?
Sri Chinmoy: Just as the soul is the representative of God for us, the psychic being, to some extent, is the representative of the soul. Everything on earth, whether animate or inanimate, has a soul. You, as a human being, have a soul; this glass tumbler has a soul; animals have a soul; flowers have a soul. But the psychic being is found only in those human beings who have started to aspire consciously.Animals do not have psychic beings. Not even all men have psychic beings, because there are many human beings on earth who do not aspire. When you walk along the street you can easily see that some people have had only a few human incarnations. Some have just come from the animal kingdom, and are in their first incarnation. They are half animal. Now these people do not have a psychic being yet. Only spiritual people who are sincerely and devotedly aspiring have psychic beings. Now the soul is not born on earth; the soul is born in the soul’s region. But even though there is a world that we call the psychic world, the psychic being only takes birth on earth when the seeker begins to aspire. The psychic being, this most beautiful child, is born on earth and also develops here on earth. The psychic being grows like a seed. It germinates into a small plant that grows into a huge banyan tree.
The psychic being is most beautiful. When one develops the psychic being, purity incarnate and divinity incarnate grow within his heart. When the psychic being is first formed, one may feel a very sweet, delicate sensation in the spine.
The psychic being is like the youngest child in the family, like a baby. In the physical world, the parents feel that it is their constant, bounden duty to please their young child. The baby cries and the parents give the baby what it wants. Constantly the psychic being is making fervent requests to the Eternal Father, the Supreme, or to the eldest brother, the soul, to make the whole body, the entire being, divine and perfect.
When the psychic being is six or seven years old in terms of human age, then it takes a little responsibility. But when there is something very urgent, very important, to be done, or when power is needed, the psychic being cries, and the soul within us takes the responsibility.
In the spiritual life, there are quite a few ways one can know if danger or success is imminent even if one has not developed occult vision or spiritual power. If the psychic being is developed, it will immediately bring the news that something serious is going to happen — something dangerous or some catastrophe. The psychic will be like a messenger boy. Also, if something most encouraging and inspiring is going to happen, the psychic being will bring this news too. The psychic knows and sees everything, but the psychic does not have the necessary power to change what will happen; it can just inform us. Only with the help of the soul or with the guidance and blessing of the Supreme can the psychic being change something. However, it does have the power to transform our human nature with purity. But the psychic being does not have the same amount of power that the soul has. And the soul does not and cannot have the same amount of power as God.
In our path we see the necessity of always consciously feeling the Presence of God. The psychic being helps us to feel the Presence of God all the time. There are many divine gifts that we get from God through the aspiration of the psychic being. For instance, we get constant joy, a constant sense of security and a constant feeling of our own progress from the psychic being. Right now we are making progress, but we do not feel sure about it. But if the psychic being comes to the fore and remains to the fore, then our progress is noticeable to all.
If you pay attention to the psychic being, you can bring it to the fore without fail. When you develop real surrender to the Supreme, giving your whole life over to the path of love, devotion and surrender to God’s Will, automatically the psychic being appears. To make your surrender beautiful, soulful and unconditional, you have to meditate every day. When you make complete surrender, immediately the psychic being comes to the fore. Before that, if you have love for God, the psychic may come to the fore. If you have devotion for God or do devoted service, the psychic may come, but that is not the rule.
If we can feel the presence of the psychic being, and if the psychic being prays and invokes the presence of God in our outer being, then we will make fast progress. But if we do not want to adopt that method, the most important thing we can do and the only thing that is necessary is to offer our conscious gratitude to the Supreme. The moment we offer our gratitude to the Supreme, our progress becomes the fastest.
The psychic being is like a messenger or a beautiful child. We do not actually need a messenger boy, or a little beautiful child. We do not absolutely need this little brother in the family to cry and speak to the Father on our behalf. We need only God. So if you do not want to have any connection with the psychic being, or if you feel that the psychic being is unnecessary, then you can do without its help.
Some of you sometimes see your psychic being, but if the Master does not tell you, then you may not know what it is. You may feel that you dreamt that you saw a most beautiful child. Or you may feel that you had a vision. In your case, also, once you saw it, but you did not know that it was your psychic being. A seeker can see the psychic being on rare occasions. Only someone who is realised or most advanced can see the psychic being at any time.
One can also see the psychic being of another. As a child, I saw the psychic being of my sister, Ahana, before I saw my own. I did not recognise it as her psychic being at the time. But one year later, when I started regaining all the spiritual and occult vision of my previous incarnations at the age of fourteen, I knew that it was her psychic being which I had seen.
The psychic being cannot come to the fore and grow most powerfully when the mind is still roaming in worldly information, worldly thoughts and worldly ideas. The psychic being comes to the fore only when we have the sweet, pure, innocent feeling of our oneness with the rest of the world, even with those we now consider our enemies. The psychic being has no enemies.
The psychic being finds it extremely difficult to deal with the developed mind. By the developed mind I mean the sophisticated mind, the dry and intellectual mind where there is no sweetness, but only a barren desert. The psychic being is a child. A child tries to play in the eternal garden of God, the Eternal Child. So the mind, which some people consider the greatest or the most developed part of our existence, is not and cannot be the real friend of the psychic being. The heart and the psychic being always go together. The heart, the psychic being and the soul forever go together.
A man will see his psychic being as a beautiful boy, and a woman will see hers as a beautiful girl. A man has a masculine psychic being and a woman has a feminine one. The soul, however is neither masculine nor feminine, but when it incarnates it takes on a masculine or a feminine body. If it takes a masculine form in the first human incarnation, then it goes on taking this form in all future incarnations, and the same if it takes a feminine form. Only three times since the creation has a soul changed from the masculine to feminine once it began incarnating in a human body. There are some spiritual Masters who tell people that in their past incarnations they were men and in this incarnation they are women, but this is not true. I have to say that, in the inner world, I know that the soul has changed this way only three times.
Now, the psychic being does not age like a human being. After forty or fifty years, the human body decays and we lose our strength, capacity and energy. As one matures spiritually, the psychic being comes to the psychic age of between eighteen and twenty-two. After that, it gains strength and capacity, but it does not age. It not only retains its beauty, strength, power, light and divinity of that time, but it actually continues to increase these. It may be two hundred years old in terms of human age, but the form that you will see will always be that of a youth. I am now forty-two, but my psychic being looks like a youth of twenty. My psychic being is now like a most powerful soldier or warrior.
When the seeker dies, the physical body is dissolved into the five principal elements. The vital enters into the vital world, and the psychic being goes to take rest in the psychic world. The soul will remember, however, which psychic being it had. Then, before the soul comes into the world for its next incarnation, it will go to its psychic being and say, “Now I am going down. You come also.” First the soul goes to the Supreme for His blessings and to make a promise about how much it will accomplish for the Supreme in its next incarnation. Then the soul goes down. On the way down it asks the psychic being to join it. The psychic being is very happy to come back at that time. After the psychic being, the soul takes a spiritual heart from the heart’s world. Next, if the mind is developed, the soul goes to the mental plane for subtle intelligence. Then it goes to the vital plane for the dynamic vital, and finally to the gross physical.
