Chapter 4The Jivatman in the Integral Yoga · The Surrender of the Central Being

Divine. When there is the full consciousness, the Jivatman and

The ego is a formation of Nature; but it is not a formation of physical nature alone, therefore it does not cease with the body. There is a mental and vital ego also.

The base of the material consciousness here is not only the Ignorance, but the Inconscience — that is, the consciousness is involved in form of matter and energy of matter. It is not only the material consciousness but the vital and the mental too that are separated from the Truth by the Ignorance.

* The body is not the individual Self — it is the basis of the external personality or of the physical self, if you like so to express it; but that is not the individual Self. The individual Self is the central being (Jivatma) manifesting in the lower nature as the psychic being — it is directly a portion of the Divine.

* The soul, representative of the central being, is a spark of the Divine supporting all individual existence in Nature; the psychic being is a conscious form of that soul growing in the evolution — in the persistent process that develops first life in matter, mind in life, until finally mind can develop into overmind and overmind into the supramental Truth. The soul supports the nature in its evolution through these grades, but is itself not any of these things.

The lower Nature, Apara Prakriti, is this external objective and superficial subjective apparent Nature which manifests all these minds, lives and bodies. The supreme Nature, Para Prakriti, concealed behind it is the very nature of the Divine — a supreme Consciousness-Force which manifests the multiple Divine as the Many. These Many are in themselves eternal selves of the Supreme in his supreme Nature, Para Prakriti. Here in relation to this world they appear as the Jivatmas supporting the evolution of the natural existences, sarvabh¯ut¯ani, in the mutable Becoming which is the life of the Kshara (mobile or mutable)