Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. Planes and Parts of the Being

Fragment ID: 317

Jīvātmā is not the psychic being – we have fixed on caitya puruṣa as the equivalent in Sanskrit of the psychic being. Jivatma is the individual Self – the central being.

The central being is that which is not born, does not evolve, but presides over all the individual manifestation. The psychic is its projection here – for the psychic being is in the evolution and from within supports our whole evolution; it receives the essence of all experience and by that develops the personality Godward.

The Self is at once one in all and many – one in its essence, it manifests also as the individual self which may be described as in Nature an eternal portion of the Divine; in spirit a centre of the manifestation, individual but extending its universality and rising into transcendence.