Faith—Aspiration—Surrender
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It
does not matter what defects you may have in your nature.
The one thing that matters is your keeping yourself open
to the Force. Nobody can transform himself by his own unaided
efforts; it is only the Divine Force that can transform
him. If you keep yourself open, all the rest will be done
for you.
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Sri Aurobindo
Hardly
anyone is strong enough to overcome by his own unaided aspiration
and will the forces of the lower nature; even those who
do it get only a certain kind of control, but not a complete
mastery. Will and aspiration are needed to bring down the
aid of the Divine Force and to keep the being on its side
in its dealings with the lower powers. The Divine Force
fulfilling the spiritual will and the heart’s psychic
aspiration can alone bring about the conquest.
-
Sri Aurobindo
To
do anything by mental control is always difficult, when
what is attempted runs contrary to the trend of human nature
or of the personal nature. A strong will patiently and perseveringly
turned towards its object can effect a change, but usually
it takes a long time and the success at the beginning may
be only partial and chequered by many failures.
To
turn all actions automatically into worship cannot be done
by thought control only; there must be a strong aspiration
in the heart which will bring about some realisation or
feeling of the presence of the One to whom worship is offered.
The bhakta does not rely on his own effort alone, but on
the grace and power of the Divine whom he adores.
-
Sri Aurobindo
There
has always been too much reliance on the action of your
own mind and will—that is why you cannot progress.
If you could once get the habit of silent reliance on the
power of the Mother,—not merely calling it in to support
your own effort,—the obstacle would diminish and eventually
disappear.
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Sri Aurobindo
All
sincere aspiration has its effect; if you are sincere you
will grow into the divine life.
To
be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only,
to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother,
to reject all personal demand and desire other than this
one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine
and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego.
This is the basis of the divine life.
One
cannot become altogether this at once, but if one aspires
at all times and calls in always the aid of the Divine Shakti
with a true heart and straightforward will, one grows more
and more into this consciousness.
-
Sri Aurobindo
A
complete surrender is not possible in a short time,—for
a complete surrender means to cut the knot of the ego in
each part of the being and offer it, free and whole, to
the Divine. The mind, the vital, the physical consciousness
(and even each part of these in all its movements) have
one after the other to surrender separately, to give up
their own way and to accept the way of the Divine. But what
one can do is to make from the beginning a central resolve
and self-dedication and to implement it in whatever way
one finds open, at each step, taking advantage of each occasion
that offers itself to make the self-giving complete. A surrender
in one direction makes others easier, more inevitable; but
it does not of itself cut or loosen the other knots, and
especially those which are very intimately bound up with
the present personality and its most cherished formations
may often present great difficulties, even after the central
will has been fixed and the first seals put on its resolve
in practice.
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Sri Aurobindo
You
ask how you can repair the wrong you seem to have done.
Admitting that it is as you say, it seems to me that the
reparation lies precisely in this, in making yourself a
vessel for the Divine Truth and the Divine Love. And the
first steps towards that are a complete self-consecration
and self-purification, a complete opening of oneself to
the Divine, rejecting all in oneself that can stand in the
way of the fulfilment. In the spiritual life there is no
other reparation for any mistake, none that is wholly effective.
At the beginning one should not ask for any other fruit
or results than this internal growth and change—for
otherwise one lays oneself open to severe disappointments.
Only when one is free, can one free others and in Yoga it
is out of the inner victory that there comes the outer conquest.
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Sri Aurobindo
It
is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort
at once—and not always desirable; for personal effort
is better than tamasic inertia.
The
personal effort has to be transformed progressively into
a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of
the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern
your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something
not yours, but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of
transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal
Adhar—a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive.
But
the psychic poise is necessary: the discrimination must
develop which sees accurately what is the Divine Force,
what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought
in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces. And until
the transfer is complete which always takes time, there
must always be as a personal contribution, a constant consent
to the true Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture.
At
present to give up personal effort is not what is wanted,
but to call in more and more the Divine Power and govern
and guide by it the personal endeavour.
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Sri Aurobindo
