|
The
Mother Answers on The Divine Body - III
The
description Sri Aurobindo gives here of the possibility of
a prolonged fast while maintaining all activities, is a description
of his own experience.
He
is not speaking of a possibility but of something he has done.
But it would be a great mistake to believe that it is an experience
that can be imitated in its outer appearance; and even if
one managed to do it by an effort of will, it would be perfectly
useless from the spiritual point of view, if the experience
has not been preceded by a change of consciousness which would
be a preliminary liberation.
It
is not by abstaining from food that you can make a spiritual
progress. It is by being free, not only from all attachment
and all desire and preoccupation with food, but even from
all need for it; by being in the state in which all these
things are so foreign to your consciousness that they have
no place there. Only then, as a spontaneous, natural result,
can one usefully stop eating. It could be said that the essential
condition is to forget to eat—forget, because all the
energies of the being and all its concentration are turned
towards a more total, more true inner realisation, towards
this constant, imperative preoccupation with the union
of the whole being, including the bodily cells, with the vibration
of the divine forces, with the supramental force which is
manifesting, so that this may be the true life: not only the
purpose of life, but the essence of life, not only an imperative
need of life, but all its joy and all its raison d'être.
When
that is there, when this realisation is attained, then to
eat or not to eat, to sleep or not sleep, all this has no
longer any importance. It is an outer rhythm left to the play
of the universal forces as a whole, finding expression through
the circumstances and people around you; and then the body,
united, totally united with the inner truth, has a suppleness,
a constant adaptability: if food is there, it takes it; if
it isn't there, it doesn't think about it. And so too with
all things... This is not life! They are modes of existing
to which one adapts oneself without giving it any thought.
This gives you the feeling of a kind of blossoming, as a flower
opens on a plant, a sort of activity which does not come from
a concentrated will but is in harmony with all the forces
around you, a way of being which is adapted to the circumstances
you live in, which have absolutely no importance in themselves.
There
comes a moment when, free from everything, one needs practically
nothing, and one can use anything, do anything without this
having any real influence on the state of consciousness one
is in. This is what really matters. To try through outer gestures
or arbitrary decisions which come from a mental consciousness
aspiring for a higher life can be a means, not a very effective
one but still a sort of reminder to the being that it ought
to be something other than what it is in its animality\\but
it's not that, it's not that at all! A person who could be
entirely absorbed in his inner aspiration, to the point of
not giving any thought or care to these external things, who
would take what comes and not think about it when it doesn't,
would be infinitely farther on the path than someone who undertakes
ascetic practices with the idea that this will lead him to
realisation.
The
only thing that is truly effective is the change of consciousness;
it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union,
absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental
forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all
the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being,
including all the cells of the body, is this union with the
supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer
any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences
will be. What has to be in the play of the universal forces
and their manifestation will be, quite naturally, spontaneously,
automatically, there is no need to be preoccupied with it.
The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete
contact—constant, yes, constant—with the Force,
the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight
of the supramental consciousness.
That
is sincerity. All the rest is an imitation, it is almost a
part one plays for oneself.
Perfect
purity is to be, to be ever more and more, in a self-perfecting
becoming. One must never pretend that one is: one must
be, spontaneously.
This
is sincerity.
12
June 1957
- The Mother
|
