THE distinctions that have already
been made, will have shown in sufficiency what is meant
by the status of equality. It is not mere quiescence
and indifference, not a withdrawal from experience,
but a superiority to the present reactions of the mind
and life. It is the spiritual way of replying to life
or rather of embracing it and compelling it to become
a perfect form of action of the self and spirit. It
is the first secret of the soul's mastery of existence.
When we have it in perfection, we are admitted to the
very ground of the divine spiritual nature. The mental
being in the body tries to compel and conquer life,
but is at every turn compelled by it, because it submits
to the desire reactions of the vital self. To be equal,
not to be overborne by any stress of desire, is the
first condition of real mastery, self-empire is its
basis. But a mere mental equality, however great it
may be, is hampered by the tendency of quiescence. It
has to preserve itself from desire by self-limitation
in the will and action. It is only the spirit which
is capable of sublime undisturbed rapidities of will
as well as an illimitable patience, equally just in
a slow and deliberate or a swift and violent, equally
secure in a safely lined and limited or a vast and enormous
action. It can accept the smallest work in the narrowest
circle of cosmos, but it can work too upon the whirl
of chaos with an understanding and creative force; and
these things it can do because by its detached and yet
intimate acceptance it carries into both an infinite
calm, knowledge, will and power. It has that detachment
because it is above all the happenings, forms, ideas
and movements it embraces in its scope; and it has that
intimate acceptance because it is yet one with all things.
If we have not this free unity, ekatvam anupasyatah,
we have not the full equality of the spirit.
The first business of the Sadhaka is to see whether
he has the perfect equality, how far he has gone in
this direction or else where is the flaw, and to exercise
steadily his will on his nature or invite the will of
the Purusha to get rid of the defect and its causes.
There are four things that he must have; first equality
in the most concrete practical sense of the word, samatä,
freedom from mental, vital, physical preferences, an
even acceptance of all God's workings within and around
him; secondly, a firm peace and absence of all disturbance
and trouble, sänti; thirdly, a positive
inner spiritual happiness and spiritual ease of the
natural being which nothing can lessen, sukham;
fourthly, a clear joy and laughter of the soul embracing
life and existence. To be equal is to be infinite and
universal, not to limit oneself, not to bind oneself
down to this or that form of the mind and life and its
partial preferences and desires. But since man in his
present normal nature lives by his mental and vital
formations, not in the freedom of his spirit, attachment
to them and the desires and preferences they involve
is also his normal condition. To accept them is at first
inevitable, to get beyond them exceedingly difficult
and not, perhaps, altogether possible so long as we
are compelled to use the mind as the chief instrument
of our action. The first necessity therefore is to take
at least the sting out of them, to deprive them, even
when they persist, of their greater insistence, their
present egoism, their more violent claim on our nature.
The test that we have done this is the presence of an
undisturbed calm in the mind and spirit. The Sadhaka
must be on the watch as the witnessing and willing Purusha
behind or, better, as soon as he can manage it, above
the mind, and repel even the least indices or incidence
of trouble, anxiety, grief, revolt, disturbance in his
mind. If these things come, he must at once detect their
source, the defect which they indicate, the fault of
egoistic claim, vital desire, emotion or idea from which
they start and this he must discourage by his will,
his spiritualised intelligence, his soul unity with
the Master of his being. On no account must he admit
any excuse for them, however natural, righteous in seeming
or plausible, or any inner or outer justification. If
it is the Prana which is troubled and clamorous, he
must separate himself from the troubled Prana, keep
seated his higher nature in the Buddhi and by the Buddhi
school and reject the claim of the desire-soul in him;
and so too if it is the heart of emotion that makes
the clamour and the disturbance. If, on the other hand,
it is the will and intelligence itself that is at fault,
then the trouble is more difficult to command, because
then his chief aid and instrument becomes an accomplice
of the revolt against the divine Will and the old sins
of the lower members take advantage of this sanction
to raise their diminished heads. Therefore there must
be a constant insistence on one main idea, the self-surrender
to the Master of our being, God within us and in the
world, the supreme Self, the universal Spirit. The Buddhi
dwelling always in this master idea must discourage
all its own lesser insistences and preferences and teach
the whole being that the ego, whether it puts forth
its claim through the reason, the personal will, the
heart or the desire-soul in the Prana, has no just claim
of any kind and all grief, revolt, impatience, trouble
is a violence against the Master of the being.
This complete self-surrender must be the chief mainstay
of the Sadhaka because it is the only way, apart from
complete quiescence and indifference to all action,—and
that has to be avoided,—by which the absolute
calm and peace can come. The persistence of trouble,
asänti, the length of time taken for this
purification and perfection, itself must not be allowed
to become a reason for discouragement and impatience.
It comes because there is still something in the nature
which responds to it, and the recurrence of trouble
serves to bring out the presence of the defect, put
the Sadhaka upon his guard and bring about a more enlightened
and consistent action of the will to get rid of it.
When the trouble is too strong to be kept out, it must
be allowed to pass and its return discouraged by a greater
vigilance and insistence of the spiritualised Buddhi.
Thus persisting, it will be found that these things
lose their force more and more, become more and more
external and brief in their recurrence, until finally
calm becomes the law of the being. This rule persists
so long as. the mental Buddhi is the chief instrument;
but when the supramental light takes possession of mind
and heart, then there can be no trouble, grief or disturbance;
for that brings with it a spiritual nature of illumined
strength in which these things can have no place. There
the only vibrations and emotions are those which belong
to the änandamaya nature of divine unity.
The calm established in the whole being must remain
the same whatever happens, in health and disease, in
pleasure and in pain, even in the strongest physical
pain, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or that
of those we love, in success and failure, honour and
insult, praise and blame, justice done to us or injustice,
everything that ordinarily affects the mind. If we see
unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by
the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather
our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends,
in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the
powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces
and happenings, and if besides we can feel that all
is undivided from our self, all the world one with us
within our universal being, then this attitude becomes
much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we
can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision,
we have by all the means in our power to insist on this
receptive and active equality and calm. Even something
of it, svalpam apt asya dharmasya, is a great
step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the
beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness
is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all
the other members of perfection. For without it we can
have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it
we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status
of desire, ego, duality, ignorance.
This calm once attained, vital and mental preference
has lost its disturbing force; it only remains as a
formal habit of the mind. Vital acceptance or rejection,
the greater readiness to welcome this rather than that
happening, the mental acceptance or rejection, the preference
of this more congenial to that other less congenial
idea or truth, the dwelling upon the will to this rather
than to that other result, become a formal mechanism
still necessary as an index of the direction in which
the Shakti is meant to turn or for the present is made
to incline by the Master of our being. But it loses
its disturbing aspect of strong egoistic will, intolerant
desire, obstinate liking. These appearances may remain
for a while in a diminished form, but as the calm of
equality increases, deepens, becomes more essential
and compact, ghana, they disappear, cease to
colour the mental and vital substance or occur only
as touches on the most external physical mind, are unable
to penetrate within, and at last even that recurrence,
that appearance at the outer gates of mind ceases. Then
there can come the living reality of the perception
that all in us is done and directed by the Master of
our being, yathä prayukto'smi tathä karomi,
which was before only a strong idea and faith with occasional
and derivative glimpses of the divine action behind
the becomings of our personal nature. Now every movement
is seen to be the form given by the Shakti, the divine
power in us, to the indications of the Purusha, still
no doubt personalised, still belittled in the inferior
mental form, but not primarily egoistic, an imperfect
form, not a positive deformation. We have then to get
beyond this stage even. For the perfect action and experience
is not to be determined by any kind of mental or vital
preference, but by the revealing and inspiring spiritual
will which is the Shakti in her direct and real initiation.
When I say that as I am appointed, I work, I still bring
in a limiting personal element and mental reaction.
But it is the Master who will do his own work through
myself as his instrument, and there must be no mental
or other preference in me to limit, to interfere, to
be a source of imperfect working. The mind must become
a silent luminous channel for the revelations of the
supramental Truth and of the Will involved in its seeing.
Then shall the action be the action of that highest
Being and Truth and not a qualified translation or mistranslation
in the mind. Whatever limitation, selection, relation
is imposed, will be self-imposed by the Divine on himself
in the individual at the moment for his own purpose,
not binding, not final, not an ignorant determination
of the mind. The thought and will become then an action
from a luminous Infinite, a formulation not excluding
other formulations, but rather putting them into their
just place in relation to itself, englobing or transforming
them even and proceeding to larger formations of the
divine knowledge and action.
The first calm that comes is of the nature of peace,
the absence of all unquiet, grief and disturbance. As
the equality becomes more intense, it takes on a fuller
substance of positive happiness and spiritual ease.
This is the joy of the spirit in itself, dependent on
nothing external for its absolute existence, niräsraya,
as the Gita describes it, antah-sukho'ntarärämah,
an exceeding inner happiness, brahmasamsparsam atyantam
sukham asnute. Nothing can disturb it, and it extends
itself to the soul's view of outward things, imposes
on them too the law of this quiet spiritual joy. For
the base of it is still calm, it is an even and tranquil
neutral joy, ahaituka. And as the supramental
light grows, a greater Ananda comes, the base of the
abundant ecstasy of the spirit in all it is, becomes,
sees, experiences and of the laughter of the Shakti
doing luminously the work of the Divine and taking his
Ananda in all the worlds.
The perfected action of equality transforms all the
values of things on the basis of the divine änandamaya
power. The outward action may remain what it was or
may change, that must be as the Spirit directs and according
to the need of the work to be done for the world,—but
the whole inner action is of another kind. The Shakti
in its different powers of knowledge, action, enjoyment,
creation, formulation, will direct itself to the different
aims of existence, but in another spirit; they will
be the aims, the fruits, the lines of working laid down
by the Divine from his light above, not anything claimed
by the ego for its own separate sake. The mind, the
heart, the vital being, the body itself will be satisfied
with whatever comes to them from the dispensation of
the Master of the being and in that find a subtlest
and yet fullest spiritualised satisfaction and delight;
but the divine knowledge and will above will work forward
towards its farther ends. Here both success and failure
lose their present meanings. There can be no failure;
for whatever happens is the intention of the Master
of the worlds, not final, but a step on his way, and
if it appears as an opposition, a defeat, a denial,
even for the moment a total denial of the aim set before
the instrumental being, it is so only in appearance
and afterwards it will appear in its right place in
the economy of his action,—a fuller supramental
vision may even see at once or beforehand its necessity
and its true relation to the eventual result to which
it seems so contrary and even perhaps its definite prohibition.
Or, if—while the light is deficient,—there
has been a misinterpretation whether with regard to
the aim or the course of the action and the steps of
the result, the failure comes as a rectification and
is calmly accepted without bringing discouragement or
a fluctuation of the will. In the end it is found that
there is no such thing as failure and the soul takes
an equal passive or active delight in all happenings
as the steps and formulations of the divine Will. The
same evolution takes place with regard to good fortune
and ill fortune, the pleasant and the unpleasant in
every form, mangala amangala, priya apriya.
And as with happenings, so with persons, equality brings
an entire change of the view and the attitude. The first
result of the equal mind and spirit is to bring about
an increasing charity and inner toleration of all persons,
ideas, views, actions, because it is seen that God is
in all beings and each acts according to his nature,
his svabhäva, and its present formulations.
When there is the positive equal Ananda, this deepens
to a sympathetic understanding and in the end an equal
universal love. None of these things need prevent various
relations or different formulations of the inner attitude
according to the need of life as determined by the spiritual
will, or firm furtherings of this idea, view, action
against that other for the same need and purpose by
the same determination, or a strong outward or inward
resistance, opposition and action against the forces
that are impelled to stand in the way of the decreed
movement. And there may be even the rush of the Rudra
energy forcefully working upon or shattering the human
or other obstacle, because that is necessary both for
him and for the world purpose. But the essence of the
equal inmost attitude is not altered or diminished by
these more super-ficial formulations. The spirit, the
fundamental soul remain the same, even while the Shakti
of knowledge, will, action, love does its work and assumes
the various forms needed for its work. And in the end
all becomes a form of a luminous spiritual unity with
all persons, energies, things in the being of God and
in the luminous, spiritual, one and universal force,
in which one's own action becomes an inseparable part
of the action of all, is not divided from it, but feels
perfectly every relation as a relation with God in all
in the complex terms of his universal oneness. That
is a plenitude which can hardly be described in the
language of the dividing mental reason for it uses all
its oppositions, yet escapes from them, nor can it be
put in the terms of our limited mental psychology. It
belongs to another domain of consciousness, another
plane of our being.
-Sri
Aurobindo
