In
Difficulty
Page-4
These
fluctuations in the force of the aspiration and the power
of the sadhana are unavoidable and common to all sadhaks
until the whole being has been made ready for the transformation.
When the psychic is in front or active and the mind and
vital consent, then there is the intensity. When the psychic
is less prominent and the lower vital has its ordinary movements
or the mind its ignorant action, then the opposing forces
can come in unless the sadhak is very vigilant. Inertia
comes usually from the ordinary physical consciousness,
especially when the when the vital is not actively supporting
the sadhana. These things can only be cured by a persistent
bringing down of the higher spiritual consciousness into
all the parts of the being.
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Sri Aurobindo
An
occasional sinking of the consciousness happens to everybody.
The causes are various, some touch from outside, something
not yet changed or not sufficiently changed in the vital,
especially the lower vital, some inertia or obscurity rising
up from the physical parts of nature. When it comes, remain
quiet, open yourself to the Mother and call back the true
conditions and aspire for a clear and undisturbed discrimination
showing you from within yourself the cause of the thing
that needs to be set right.
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Sri Aurobindo
There
are always pauses of preparation and assimilation between
two movements. You must not regard these with fretfulness
or impatience as if they were untoward gaps in the sadhana.
Besides, the Force rises up lifting part of the nature on
a higher level and then comes down to a lower layer to raise
it; this motion of ascent and descent is often extremely
trying because the mind partial to an ascent in a straight
line and the vital eager for rapid fulfilment cannot understand
or follow the intricate movement and are apt to be distressed
by it or resent it. But the transformation of the whole
nature is not an easy thing to accomplish and the Force
that does it knows better than our mental ignorance or our
vital impatience.
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Sri Aurobindo
It
is very serious difficulty in one’s Yoga—the absence
of a central will always superior to the waves of the Prakriti
forces, always in touch with the Mother, imposing its central
aim and aspiration on the nature. That is because you have
not yet learned to live in your central being; you have
been accustomed to run with every wave of Force, no matter
of what kind, that rushed upon you and to identify yourself
with it for the time being. It is one of the things that
has to be unlearned; you must find your central being with
the psychic as its basis and live in it.
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Sri Aurobindo
However
hard the fight, the only thing is to fight it out now and
here to the end.
The
trouble is that you have never fully faced and conquered
the real obstacle. There is in a very fundamental part of
your nature a strong formation of ego-individuality which
has mixed in your spiritual aspiration a clinging element
of pride and spiritual ambition. This formation has never
consented to be broken up in order to give place to something
more true and divine. Therefore, when the Mother has put
her force upon you or when you yourself have pulled the
force upon you, this in you has always prevented it from
doing its work in its own way. It has begun itself building
according to the ideas of the mind or some demand of the
ego, trying to make its own creation in its “own way”,
by its own strength, its own sadhana, its own tapasya. There
has never been here any real surrender, any giving up of
yourself freely and simply into the hands of the Divine
Mother. And yet that is the only way to succeed in the supramental
Yoga. To be a Yogi, a Sannyasi, a Tapaswi is not the object
here. The object is transformation, and the transformation
can only be done by a force infinitely greater than your
own; it can only be done by being truly like a child in
the hands of the Divine Mother.
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Sri Aurobindo
There
is no reason why you should abandon hope of success in the
Yoga. The state of depression which you now feel is temporary
and it comes even upon the strongest sadhaks at one time
or another or even often recurs. The only thing needed is
to hold firm with the awakened part of the being, to reject
all contrary suggestions and to wait, opening yourself as
much as you can to the true Power, till the crisis or change
of which this depression is a stage is completed. The suggestions
which come to your mind telling you that you are not fit
and that you must go back to the ordinary life are promptings
from a hostile source. Ideas of this kind must always be
rejected as inventions of the lower nature; even if they
are founded on appearances which seem convincing to the
ignorant mind, they are false, because they exaggerate a
passing movement and represent it as the decisive and definite
truth. There is only one truth in you on which you have
to lay constant hold, the truth of your divine possibilities
and the call of the higher Light to your nature. If you
hold to that always, or, even if you are momentarily shaken
from your hold, return constantly to it, it will justify
itself in the end in spite of all difficulties and obstacles
and stumblings. All that resists will disappear in time
with the progressive unfolding of your spiritual nature.
What
is needed is the conversion and surrender of the vital part.
It must learn to demand only the highest truth and to forego
all insistence on the satisfaction of its inferior impulses
and desires. It is this adhesion of the vital being that
brings the full satisfaction and joy of the whole nature
in the spiritual life. When that is there, it will be impossible
even to think of returning to the ordinary existence. Meanwhile
the mental will and the psychic aspiration must be your
support; if you insist, the vital will finally yield and
be converted and surrender.
Fix
upon your mind and heart the resolution to live for the
Divine Truth and for that alone; reject all that is contrary
and incompatible with it and turn away from the lower desires;
aspire to open yourself to the Divine Power and to no other.
Do this in all sincerity and the present and living help
you need will not fail you.
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Sri Aurobindo
The
attitude you have taken is the right one. It is this feeling
and attitude which help you to overcome so rapidly the attacks
that sometimes fall upon you and throw you out of the right
consciousness. As you say, difficulties so taken become
opportunities; the difficulty faced in the right spirit
and conquered, one finds that an obstacle has disappeared,
a first step forward has been taken. To question, to resist
in some part of the being increases trouble and difficulties—that
is why an unquestioning acceptance, an unfailing obedience
to the directions of the guru was laid down as indispensable
in the old Indian Yogas—it was demanded not for the
sake of the Guru, but for the sake of the Shishya.
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Sri Aurobindo
