WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Sweet Mother,

What are "the different psychological divisions of the human being"?

These divisions are merely arbitrary. They have been established in order to facilitate the study of human nature and especially to constitute a definite basis for the various methods of self-development and self-discipline. That is why each philosophic, educational or Yogic system has, as it were, its own division based on the experience of its founder. Nevertheless, despite these divergences, there is a sort of tradition which, behind the different terms, makes for an essential analogy. This analogy can be expressed by a quaternary: the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic or soul.

Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject in great detail in some of his letters, in The Synthesis of Yoga and in Essays on the Gita.

30 May 1960

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 16, p. 239