Two Ways to Overcome Suffering — the Way of the Self and the Way of the Psychic Being
Sri Aurobindo provides a detailed overview of the causes and types of suffering we experience and how to transcend the suffering through a shift in standpoint away from the external nature to the Self above or the psychic being within. Sri Aurobindo writes: "It is not the soul that suffers; the Self is calm and equal to all things and the only sorrow of the psychic being is the sorrow of the resistance of Nature to the Divine Will or the resistance of things and people to the call of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. What is affected by suffering is the vital nature and the body. When the soul draws towards the Divine, there may be a resistance in the mind and the common form of that is denial and doubt — which may create mental and vital suffering. There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine ...