Transitioning from the View of a Body With a Soul, to a Soul With a Body

The primary standpoint for most people is that they are a physical body endowed with Life, Mind and (potentially in their minds) a Soul. Everything starts from the primacy of the body and its centrality in their view of their lives. This makes the purpose of life one of survival and procreation, with vital enjoyments and mental preoccupations as possible ways to enjoy the sojourn in the body.

For a relatively small percentage of people, there comes a call to a spiritual awakening. For these individuals, the urge of the soul asserts itself to begin to examine the meaning of life, the significance of their specific life and, eventually, there comes about a ‘reversal of consciousness’, where the body is no longer the center and cause, but rather, is taken up and occupied by the soul. The image of an individual changing his clothes then comes into the picture as a metaphor for the soul taking up a body and using it for the soul’s purpose, then discarding it and moving to another body and life suitable for the next stage of the soul’s growth.

We wonder how and why such an urge arises. This is where we can get intimations of pressure from the native domains of life, mind and spirit to grow and develop the latent powers they have ‘involved’ in the material world. As the spiritual force gains more ascendancy, the individual finds that he may lose interest in the external life and its activities and potential rewards, and he begins to explore his inner life and being in a very intense way. He may feel that the outer life is something of an illusion, or a distraction, or simply a prior focus that is no longer relevant to the deeper concerns that arise.

It is not a matter of intellectual thought, but rather, this seeking is something that goes much deeper, touches an aspiration for something more, some meaning, some relevance, some answers to the puzzle that is our existence, whether we call it a seeking for God, or a seeking for our true Self, or we call it a seeking for ‘liberation’ from the outer life.

Just as a child grows and leaves behind his preoccupations and his toys of his youth, so the human individual, as he grows inwardly, leaves behind the vital and mental preoccupations that demanded his focus prior to that awakening soul-aspiration. This then begins his larger existence based on the centrality of his Soul and his entire viewpoint about life, its purpose and significance and his role in the world undergoes a radical shift of focus.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “A secret continuous action of the higher powers and principles from their own planes upon terrestrial being and nature through the subliminal self, which is itself a projection from those planes into the world born of the Inconscience, must have an effect and a significance. Its first effect has been the liberation of Life and Mind out of Matter; its last effect has been to assist the emergence of a spiritual consciousness, a spiritual will and spiritual sense of existence in the terrestrial being so that he is no longer solely preoccupied with his outermost life or with that and mental pursuits and interests, but has learned to look within, to discover his inner being, his spiritual self, to aspire to overpass earth and her limitations. As he grows more and more inward, his boundaries mental, vital, spiritual begin to broaden, the bonds that held Life, Mind, Soul to their first limitations loosen or snap, and man the mental being begins to have a glimpse of a larger kingdom of self and world closed to the first earth-life. No doubt, so long as he lives mainly on his surface, he can only build a sort of superstructure ideal and imaginative and ideative upon the ground of his normal narrow existence. But if he makes the inward movement which his own highest vision has held up before him as his greatest spiritual necessity, then he will find there in his inner being a larger Consciousness, a larger Life. An action from within and an action from above can overcome the predominance of the material formula, diminish and finally put an end to the power of the Inconscience, reverse the order of the consciousness, substitute the Spirit for Matter as his conscious foundation of being and liberate its higher powers to their complete and characteristic expression in the life of the soul embodied in Nature.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.147-148