Shape and Form of the Psychic

Has the soul a form? A sadhak told me he saw his own psychic being as a woman.

The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form for its expression, just as the mental, vital and subtle physical Purushas do — that is to say, one can see or another person can see one’s psychic being in such and such a form. But this seeing is of two kinds — there is the standing characteristic form taken by this being in this life and there are symbolic forms such as when one sees the psychic as a new-born child in the lap of the Mother. If the sadhak in question really saw his psychic in the form of a woman it can only have been a constructed appearance expressing some quality or attitude of the psychic.

You said, “The soul is not limited by any form, but the psychic being puts out a form…” With regard to form what is the difference between the soul and the psychic being?

As there is in us a mind which one does not see in form but is aware of and as there is at the same time a mental being which one can see in form, so there is a soul and a psychic being. The soul is the same always, the psychic being is what it develops in the evolution.

When you say that the psychic being puts out a form, do you imply that it has a subtle-physical form so that one can see it as an embodied personality — just like a human body?

Yes, but it is not limited by the form as the physical consciousness.

After death when the soul returns for a new birth, who moulds the mind, vital and physical?

It is done by Nature under the influence of the soul. In a certain sense it may be said that the soul does it, because what it sees as needed is drawn in as material and shaped.

What is meant by “shaped”? Is a construction made?

Unless material is given form (i.e. shaped) it cannot be used. Construction itself means shaping. You can’t construct something shapeless.

Is the exterior being also moulded by the soul? Tulsi told me that the inner being is constructed by the soul according to its need for a new manifestation on earth; but the outer is moulded by Nature as it belongs to Nature.

All belongs to Nature — the soul itself acts under the conditions and by the agency of Nature.

What is exactly the difference between an aspect of the Divine known as the self and a portion of the Divine called the soul?

The self feels always its unity with the Divine and is always the same. The soul is a portion of the Divine that comes down into the evolution and evolves a psychic being more and more developed through experiences of successive lives until it is ready for the divine realisation here.

If ‘the self feels always its unity with the Divine’, does not the soul too feel the same? Of course the psychic being does not till it attains to a certain consciousness by Yoga.

The soul in evolution is only a power for the evolution, it contains everything in potentiality; but that can only be worked out by the psychic being. It is quite different from the condition of the self.

At present, I find that among the parts of my being — the soul, mind, vital and physical — only the first is in relation with the Divine and has love, faith, equality etc. But what is new in this? Every soul on earth contains these qualities even without practising Yoga.

Every soul is not awake and active; nor is every soul turned directly to the Divine before practising Yoga. For a long time it seeks the Divine through men and things much more than directly.

 Whatever purity, knowledge and force the soul has, are they of its own nature or does it derive them from the higher consciousness?

The soul is always pure, but the knowledge and force in it are involved and come out only as the psychic being evolves and grows stronger.