Calm—Peace—Equality
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It
is not possible to make a foundation in Yoga if the mind
is restless. The first thing needed is quiet in the mind.
Also to merge the personal consciousness is not the first
aim of the Yoga: the first aim is to open it to a higher
spiritual consciousness and for this also a quiet mind is
the first need.
-
Sri Aurobindo
The first thing to do in the sadhana is to get a settled
peace and silence in the mind. Otherwise you may have experiences,
but nothing will be permanent. It is in the silent mind
that the true consciousness can be built.
A
quiet mind does not mean that there will be no thoughts
or mental movements at all, but that these will be on the
surface and you will feel your true being within separate
from them, observing but not carried away, able to watch
and judge them and reject all that has to be rejected and
to accept and keep to all that is true consciousness and
true experience.
Passivity
of the mind is good, but take care to be passive only to
the Truth and to the touch of the Divine Shakti. If you
are passive to the suggestions and influences of the lower
nature, you will not be able to progress or else you will
expose yourself to adverse forces which may take you far
away from the path of Yoga.
Aspire
to the Mother for this settled quietness and calm of the
mind and this constant sense of the inner being in you standing
back from the external nature and turned to the Light and
Truth.
The
forces that stand in the way of the sadhana are the forces
of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them
are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical
worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and
heart have become one pointed and concentrated in the single
aspiration to the Divine.
-
Sri Aurobindo
Silence
is always good; but I do no mean by quietness of mind entire
silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble,
steady, light and glad so as to open to the Force that will
change the nature. The important thing is to get rid of
the habit of the invasion of troubling thoughts, wrong feelings,
confusion of ideas, unhappy movements. These disturb the
nature and cloud it and make it difficult for Force to work;
when the mind is quiet and at peace, the Force can work
more easily. It should be possible to see things that have
to be changed in you without being upset or depressed; the
change is the more easily done.
-
Sri Aurobindo
The
difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this:
that when the mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception,
no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception
of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind,
it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so
still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities
come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they
come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds
crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing,
leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most
violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remain
as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal
and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this
calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully,
but it will keep its fundamental stillness—originating
nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving
it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly,
dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the
happy power and light of its passage.
-
Sri Aurobindo
It
is not an undesirable thing for the mind to fall silent,
to be free from thoughts and still—for it is oftenest
when the mind falls silent that there is the full descent
of a wide peace from above and in that wide tranquillity
the realisation of the silent Self above the mind spread
out in the vastness everywhere. Only when there is the peace
and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in
and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to
raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual
thoughts. What the sadhak has to do is to be careful to
reject and hush these outsiders, so that during the meditation
at least the peace and quietude of the mind and vital may
be complete. This can be done best if you keep a strong
and silent will. That will is the will of the Purusha behind
the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one
can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from
the action of the nature.
To
be calm, steady, fixed in the spirit, dhïra sthïra,
this quietude of the mind, this separation of the inner
Purusha from the outer Prakriti is very helpful, almost
indispensable. So long as the being is subject to the whirl
of thoughts or the turmoil of the vital movements, one cannot
be thus calm and fixed in the spirit. To detach oneself,
to stand back from them, to feel them separate from oneself
is indispensable.
For
the discovery of the true individuality and building up
of it in the nature, two things are necessary, first, to
be conscious of one’s psychic being behind the heart
and, next, this separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti.
For the true individual is behind veiled by the activities
of the outer nature.
-
Sri Aurobindo
