Calm—Peace—Equality
Page-6
Remember
first that an inner quietude, caused by the purification
of the restless mind and vital, is the first condition of
a secure sadhana. Remember next, that to feel the Mother’s
presence while in external action is already a great step
and one that cannot be attained without a considerable inner
progress. Probably, what you feel you need so much but cannot
define is a constant and vivid sense of the Mother’s
force working in you, descending from above and taking possession
of the different planes of your being. That is often a prior
condition for the twofold movement of ascent and descent;
it will surely come in time. These things can take a long
time to begin visibly, especially when the mind is accustomed
to be very active and has not the habit of mental silence.
When that veiling activity is there, much work has to be
carried on behind the mobile screen of the mind and the
sadhak thinks nothing is happening when really much preparation
is being done. If you want a more swift and visible progress,
it can only be by bringing your psychic to the front through
a constant self-offering. Aspire intensely, but without
impatience.
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Sri Aurobindo
A
strong mind and body and life-force are needed in the sadhana.
Especially steps should be taken to throw out tamas and
bring strength and force into the frame of the nature.
The
way of yoga must be a living thing, not a mental principle
or a set method to be stuck to against all necessary variations.
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Sri Aurobindo
Not
to be disturbed, to remain quiet and confident is the right
attitude, but it is necessary also to receive the help of
the Mother and not to stand back for any reason from her
solicitude. One ought not to indulge ideas of incapacity,
inability to respond, dwelling too much on defects and failures
and allowing the mind to be in pain and shame on their account;
for these ideas and feelings become in the end weakening
things. If there are difficulties, stumblings or failures,
one has to look at them quietly and call in tranquilly and
persistently the Divine help for their removal, but not
to allow oneself to be upset or pained or discouraged. Yoga
is not an easy path and the total change of the nature cannot
be done in a day.
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Sri Aurobindo
The
depression and the vital struggle must have been due to
some defect of over-eagerness and straining for a result
in your former effort—so that when a fall in the consciousness
came, it was a distressed, disappointed and confused vital
that came to the surface giving full entry to the suggestions
of doubt, despair and inertia from the adverse side of Nature.
You have to move towards a firm basis of calm and equality
in the vital and physical no less than in the mental consciousness;
let there be the full downflow of Power and Ananda, but
into a firm Adhar capable of containing it—it is complete
equality that gives that capacity and firmness.
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Sri Aurobindo
Wideness
and calmness are the foundation of the Yogic consciousness
and the best condition for inner growth and experience.
If a wide calm can be established in the physical consciousness,
occupying and filling the very body and all its cells, that
can become the basis for its transformation; in fact, without
this wideness and calmness the transformation is hardly
possible.
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Sri Aurobindo
It
is the aim of the sadhana that the consciousness should
rise out of the body and take its station above,—spreading
in the wideness everywhere, not limited to the body. Thus
liberated one opens to all that is above this station, above
the ordinary mind, receives there all that descends from
the heights, observes from there all that is below. Thus
it is possible to witness in all freedom and to control
all that is below and to be a recipient or a channel for
all that comes down and presses into the body, which it
will prepare to be an instrument of a higher manifestation,
remoulded into a higher consciousness and nature.
What
is happening in you is that the consciousness is trying
to fix itself in this liberation. When one is there in that
higher station, one finds the freedom of the Self and the
vast silence and immutable calm—but this calm has to
be brought down also into the body, into all the lower planes
and fix itself there as something standing behind and containing
all the movements.
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Sri Aurobindo
If
your consciousness rises above the head, that means that
it goes beyond the ordinary mind to the centre above which
receives the higher consciousness or else towards the ascending
levels of the higher consciousness itself. The first result
is the silence and peace of the Self which is the basis
of the higher consciousness; this may afterwards descend
into the lower levels, into the very body. Light also can
descend and Force. The navel and the centres below it are
those of the vital and the physical; something of the higher
Force may have descended there.
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Sri Aurobindo
