People are quite poor sadhaks if they need questions and answers sessions to find out whether they have, or had, “the knowledge of the psychic being”—eventually, after decades here or at the Ashram! The Mother made it clear:

Some people ask, “How do we know whether this is the soul?” I have already answered this question several times. Those who ask this question, by the very fact of asking it, prove that they are not conscious of their souls, because as soon as you are conscious of your soul and identified with it, you have a positive knowledge of it and you no longer ask how you are to know. And that experience can neither be counterfeited nor imagined; you cannot pretend to be in contact with your soul—it is something which cannot be contrived or counterfeited. When the soul governs your life, you know it with absolute certainty and no longer ask any questions.

(14 November 1958, CWM, Vol. 10, 23-4)

When people ask me how one may know whether he is in contact with his psychic being or how one may know whether he has found the Divine, well, it makes me laugh; for when it happens to you it is over, you can no longer ask any questions, it is done; you do not ask how it happens, it is done.

(8 June 1955, CWM, Vol. 7, 194)

The inner contact with the psychic is a concrete and undeniable fact which imposes itself on all sincere consciousness.

(5 April 1972, CWM, Vol. 14, 335)

If only people took the trouble to read Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and find out things by themselves, directly through the Guru… The simple fact of resorting to questions & answers session to find out whether one has experiences of the psychic being, or being told by others how to get it, or any other possible device—there are so many people around always ready to tell others how to get their psychic being!—show that the thing just isn’t there. The point is not to have some fleeting glimpse of the psychic being, which even a crude individual, in some moment of truth, may have. Besides, the Mother also mentioned that there animals with a psychicised vital, particularly the cats. The point is to have the full emergence of the psychic being, reunifying our most discordant parts under its leadership and conducting the sadhana, surrendering to the Mother, calling for her force taking over and doing the sadhana for us. But this is an intimate affair between us and the Divine—and no one else.

The Mother stated, regarding the spiritual life:

When one is united with one’s psychic being and conscious of the divine Presence, and receives the impulses for one’s action from this divine Presence, and when the will has become a conscious collaborator with the divine Will—that is the starting point.

Before that, one may be an aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesn’t have a spiritual life.

(9 May 1956, CWM, Vol. 6, 135)

The Mother also specified that “In almost, almost all cases, a very, very sustained effort is needed to become aware of one’s psychic being. Usually it is considered that if one can do it in thirty years one is very lucky—thirty years of sustained effort, I say.” Here is the unabridged passage:

Sri Aurobindo says: “The nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi.” Ordinarily is there not a nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness?

Ordinarily means in the ordinary life? A relation between the psychic being...

Yes.

It is almost, almost totally unconscious.

In the ordinary life there’s not one person in a million who has a conscious contact with his psychic being, even momentarily. The psychic being may work from within, but so invisibly and unconsciously for the outer being that it is as though it did not exist. And in most cases, the immense majority, almost the totality of cases, it’s as though it were asleep, not at all active, in a kind of torpor.

It is only with the sadhana and a very persistent effort that one succeeds in having a conscious contact with his psychic being. Naturally, it is possible that there are exceptional cases—but this is truly exceptional, and they are so few that they could be counted—where the psychic being is an entirely formed, liberated being, master of itself, which has chosen to return to earth in a human body in order to do its work. And in this case, even if the person doesn’t do the sadhana consciously, it is possible that the psychic being is powerful enough to establish a more or less conscious relation. But these cases are, so to say, unique and are exceptions which confirm the rule.

In almost, almost all cases, a very, very sustained effort is needed to become aware of one’s psychic being. Usually it is considered that if one can do it in thirty years one is very lucky —thirty years of sustained effort, I say. It may happen that it’s quicker. But this is so rare that immediately one says, “This is not an ordinary human being.” That’s the case of people who have been considered more or less divine beings and who were great yogis, great initiates.

(17 August 1955, CWM, Vol. 7, 268-9)

With “the identification with the Presence in the psychic centre, you see things from within outwards”, then “you know at every moment not only what must be done but why it should be done and how it should be done, and you have the vision of the truth of things behind their appearances.” The Mother explained:

One has often the experience of an ascent of the consciousness above the earth. One seems to enter a region where all problems, all questions disappear rather than receive an answer. They seem no longer of any importance. But still this is not “going from knowledge to knowledge”.

This is an opening of the inner being to the divine Presence in the psychic centre, and there you know at every moment not only what must be done but why it should be done and how it should be done, and you have the vision of the truth of things behind their appearances. Instead of seeing things in the usual way, that is, from outside, and so much from outside that, except in a few rare cases, one is incapable even of knowing what another person thinks (you must make a great effort, you see only the surface of things and nothing of what goes on behind); well, after this inner opening and this identification with the Presence in the psychic centre, you see things from within outwards, and the outer existence becomes an expression, more or less deformed, of what you see within: you are aware of the inner existence of beings and their form; their outer existence is only a more or less deformed expression of this inner truth. And it is because of this that I say that the basic equilibrium is completely changed. Instead of being outside the world and seeing it as something outside you, you are inside the world and see outer forms expressing in a more or less clumsy fashion what is within, which for you is the Truth.

(4 January 1951, CWM, Vol. 4, 20-21)

Rebirth is entering into one’s psychic consciousness, one with the Divine, eternally free from the reactions of Karma. In Mother’s words:

For spiritual rebirth means the constant throwing away of our previous associations and circumstances and proceeding to live as if at each virgin moment we were starting life anew. It is to be free of what is called Karma, the stream of our past actions: in other words, a liberation from the bondage of Nature’s common activity of cause and effect. When this cutting away of the past is triumphantly accomplished in the consciousness, all those mistakes, blunders, errors and follies which, still vivid in our recollection, cling to us like leeches sucking our life-blood, drop away, leaving us most joyfully free. This freedom is not a mere matter of thought; it is the most solid, practical, material fact. We really are free, nothing binds us, nothing affects us, there is no obsession of responsibility. If we want to counteract, annul or outgrow our past, we cannot do it by mere repentance or similar things, we must forget that the untransformed past has ever been and enter into an enlightened state of consciousness which breaks loose from all moorings. To be reborn means to enter, first of all, into our psychic consciousness where we are one with the Divine and eternally free from the reactions of Karma. Without becoming aware of the psychic, it is not possible to do so; but once we are securely conscious of the true soul in us which is always surrendered to the Divine, all bondage ceases. Then incessantly life begins afresh, then the past no longer cleaves to us. To give you an idea of the final height of spiritual rebirth, I may say that there can be a constant experience of the whole universe actually disappearing at every instant and being at every instant newly created!

(CWM, Vol. 3, 178-9)

There are psychic qualities (also typical of the Christian saints, Sri Aurobindo explained) which are immediately recognizable in a person: simplicity, humility, sincerity, straightforwardness, aspiration, self-offering, self-effacing, generosity and so on. Conversely, one thing often ignored is that the psychic is a warrior, a warrior for Truth; but it fights calmly, steadily, with detachment and equipoise, without the vital’s anger, despair and revolt.

All the references are taken from a special CD that I received from the Archives for the Mother's Complete Works, Ed. 2003.

I am finalizing Self-perfection: the Process of Integral Yoga, compiling from the Mother; two chapters are dedicated to the psychic being. I have dealt at length with the psychic being in one of my previous books, Being of Gold, also compiling from the Mother.

~ Paulette