APPENDIX  

(In December 1935, a sadhak had asked Sri Aurobindo a question regarding a passage in Ch. II of Rebirth and Karma — the title under which the series of articles in Section One of this book were first published in the Arya. This question along with Sri Aurobindo’s answer to it is shown below.)

            Q: In Chapter II, “The Reincarnating Soul”, of Rebirth and Karma it is stated:

            “We have, in fact, an immutable Self, a real Person, lord of this ever-changing personality which, again, assumes ever-changing bodies, but the real Self knows itself always as above the mutation, watches and enjoys it, but is not involved in it. Through what does it enjoy the changes and feel them to be its own, even while knowing itself to be unaffected by them? The mind and ego-sense are only inferior instruments; there must be some more essential form of itself which the Real Man puts forth, puts in front of itself, as it were, and at the back of the changings to support and mirror them without being actually changed by them. This more essential form is the mental being or mental person which the Upanishads speak of as the mental leader of the life and body, manomayah prãna-sarîra-netã. It is that which maintains the ego-sense as a function in the mind and enables us to have the firm conception of continuous identity in Time as opposed to the timeless identity of the Self. ” (Pp. 93-94)

         In this passage I find that it is “the mental being” which is put forth from life to life and that it is the reincarnating soul. But would not the mental being be a part of the personality — the mental, nervous and physical composite — which in the popular conception is the thing that is carried over or which takes a new body in next life? And the “Self” in this passage is quite different from “the mental being” — that means the mental being is yet another kind of “self”. Is “the mental being” then the same as “the psychic being” which is carried over to the next life?

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  A: The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part of the mental nervous physical composite — it is the manomaya purusa prãna-sarîra-netã, the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha, — for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishads because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him the manomaya purusa is the leader of the life and body, — of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister, the manomaya, itself being a mild constitutional king; it is the manomaya to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishads gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only — for in the animal it would be rather the prãnamaya purusa that is the netã, leader of mind and body. It is one reason why I have not yet allowed the publication of Rebirth and Karma because this had to be corrected and the deeper truth put in its place. I had intended to do it later on, but had no time to finish the remaining articles.

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