SECTION
FIVE
Sadhana through Work
THE
ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire
under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. The Gita's
yoga consists in the offering of one's work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the
conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an
entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures,
oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental
Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Men usually work and carry on
their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of
wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the
pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to
their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which is the result
of their nature and their Karma. When one takes up the yoga and wishes to
consecrate one's life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being
have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a
mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with
the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine. If the
ordinary vital motives or vital force can no longer act freely and yet are not
replaced by something else, then the push or force put into the work may
decline or the power to command success may no longer be there. For the sincere
sadhak the difficulty can only be
temporary; but he has to see the defect in his consciousness or his
attitude and to remove it. Then the Divine Power itself will act through him
and use his capacity and vital force for its ends. In your case, it is the
psychic being and a part of the mind that have drawn you to the yoga and were
predisposed to it, but the vital nature or at least a
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large part of it has not yet put
itself into line with the psychic movement. There is not as yet the full and
undivided consecration of the active vital nature.
The signs of the
consecration of the vital in action are these among others:
The feeling (not
merely the idea or the aspiration) that all the life and the work are the
Mother's and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and
surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment
to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a great joy in the
work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose.
The feeling that
the Divine Force is working behind one's actions and leading at every moment.
A persistent
faith which no circumstance or event can break. If difficulties occur, they
raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the firm belief that,
with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difficulties, and
with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that
purpose. When there is full faith and consecration, there comes also a
receptivity to the Force which makes one do the right thing and take the right
means and then circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.
To arrive at
this condition the important thing is a persistent aspiration, call and
self-offering and a will to reject all in oneself or around that stands in the
way. Difficulties there will always be at the beginning and for as long a time
as is necessary for the change; but they are bound to disappear if they are met
by a settled faith, will and patience.
That is the ordinary Karmayoga in
which the sadhak chooses his own work but offers it to the Divine – it is given
to him in the sense that he is moved to it through some impulsion of his mind
or heart or vital and feels that there is some cosmic power or the cosmic Power
behind the impulsion and he tries to train himself to see the One Force behind
all actions working out in him and others the cosmic Purpose.
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Once he has the
ideal of the direct surrender, he has to find the direct moving or Guidance –
that is why he rejects all that he sees to be merely mental, vital or physical
impulsions coming from his own or universal Nature. Of course the full significance
of the surrender comes out only when he is ready.
I do not know that it is possible
for me to give any guidance on the path you have chosen – it is at any rate
difficult for me to say anything definite without more precise data than those
contained in your letter.
There is no need
for you to change the line of life and work you have chosen so long as you feel
that to be the way of your nature (svabhāva)
or dictated to you by your inner being or, for some reason, it is seen to be
your proper dharma. These are the three tests and apart from that I do not know
if there is any fixed line of conduct or way of work or life that can be laid
down for the yoga of the Gita. It is the spirit or consciousness in which the
work is done that matters most; the outer form can vary greatly for different
natures. This, so long as one does not get the settled experience of the Divine
Power taking up one's works and doing them; afterwards it is the Power which
determines what is to be done or not done.
The overcoming
of all attachments must necessarily be difficult and cannot come except as the
fruit of a long sadhana – unless there is a rapid general growth in the inner
spiritual experience which is the substance of the Gita's teaching. The cessation of desire of the fruit, of the
attachment to the work itself, the growth of equality to all beings, to all
happenings, to good repute or ill-repute, praise or blame, to good fortune or
ill fortune, the dropping of the ego which are necessary for the loss of all attachments
can come completely only when all work becomes a spontaneous sacrifice to the
Divine, the heart is offered up to Him and one has the settled experience of
the Divine in all things and all beings. This consciousness or experience must
come in all parts and movements of the being, sarvabhāvena, not only in the mind and idea; then the falling
away of all
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attachments becomes easy. I speak
of the Gita's way of yoga, for in the ascetic life one obtains the same object
differently, by cutting away from the objects of attachment and the consequent
atrophy of the attachment itself through rejection and disuse.
All I can suggest to him is to
practise some kind of Karmayoga – remembering the Supreme in all his actions
from the smallest to the greatest, doing them with a quiet mind and without
ego-sense or attachment and offering them to Him as a sacrifice. He may also
try or aspire to feel the presence of the Divine Shakti behind the world and
its forces, distinguish between the lower nature of the Ignorance and the
higher divine nature whose character is absolute calm, peace, power, Light and
Bliss and aspire to be raised and led gradually from the lower to the higher.
If he can do
this, he will become fit in time to dedicate himself to the Divine and lead a
wholly spiritual life.
The line that seems to be natural
to him is the Karmayoga and he is therefore right in trying to live according
to the teaching of the Gita; for the Gita is the great guide on this path.
Purification from egoistic movements and from personal desire and the faithful
following of the best light one has are a preliminary training for this path,
and so far as he has followed these things, he has been on the right way, but
to ask for strength and light in one's action must not be regarded as an
egoistic movement, for they are necessary in one's inner development.
Obviously, a
more systematic and intensive sadhana is desirable or, in any case, a steady
aspiration and a more constant preoccupation with the central aim could bring
an established detachment even in the midst of outer things and outer activity
and a continuous guidance. The completeness, the Siddhi of this way of yoga – I
speak of the separate path of Karma or spiritual action – begins when one is
luminously aware of the Guide and the guidance and when one feels the Power
working with oneself
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as the instrument and the
participator in the divine work.
I gather from his letter to you
that he has been following a very sound method in his practice and has attained
some good results. The first step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and
finally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions
and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he
reaches something like its end. I would not wish to deflect him from that in
any way.
What I had in
view when I spoke of a systematic sadhana was the adoption of a method which
would generalise the whole attitude of the consciousness so as to embrace all
its movements at a time instead of working only upon details – although that
working is always necessary. I may cite as an example the practice of the
separation of the Prakriti and the Purusha, the conscious Being standing back
detached from all the movements of Nature and observing them as witness and
knower and finally as the giver (or refuser) of the sanction and at the highest
stage of the development, the Ishwara, the pure will, master of the whole
Nature.
By intensive
sadhana I meant the endeavour to arrive at one of the great positive
realisations which would be a firm base for the whole movement. I observe that
he speaks of sometimes getting a glimpse of some wide calm.... A descent of
this wide calm permanently into the consciousness is one of the realisations of
which I was thinking. That he feels it at such times seems to indicate that he
may have the capacity of receiving and retaining it. If that happened or if the
Prakriti-Purusha realisation came, the whole sadhana would proceed on a strong
permanent base with a new and entirely yogic consciousness instead of the
purely mental endeavour which is always difficult and slow. I do not however
want to press these things upon him; they come in their own time and to press
towards them prematurely does not always hasten their coming. Let him continue
with his primary task of self-purification and self-preparation.
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If I have not written to you, it
is because I could not add anything to what I had already written before to
you. I cannot promise that within a given time you will have a result which
will enable you either to go out into the world with a stronger spirit or
succeed in the yoga. For the yoga you yourself say that you have not yet the
whole mind for it and without the whole mind success is hardly possible in
sadhana. For the other, it is hardly the function of sadhana to prepare a man
for ordinary life in the world. There is one thing only that could work in a
direction which would help you to something which is not that, but still not
the whole yoga for which you intimate that you are not wholly ready. It is if
you get the spirit of the yoga of works as it is indicated in the Gita – forget
yourself and your miseries in the aspiration to a larger consciousness, feel
the greater Force working in the world and make yourself an instrument for a
work to be done, however small it may be. But, whatever the way may be, you
must accept it wholly and put your whole will into it – with a divided and
wavering will you cannot hope for success in anything, neither in life nor in
yoga.
Any work can be done as a field
for the practice of the spirit of the Gita.
You used the Force for the work,
and it supported you so long as you preferred to stick to that work. What is of
first importance is not the religious or non-religious character of the work
done, but the inner attitude in which it is done. If the attitude is vital and not
psychic, then one throws oneself out in the work and loses the inner contact.
If it is psychic, the inner contact remains, the Force is felt supporting or
doing the work and the sadhana progresses.
There are those who have done the
lawyer's work with the Mother's force working in them and grown by it in inward
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consciousness. On the other hand
religious work can be merely external and vital in its nature or influence.
I may say, however, that I do not
regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it is so regarded
in ancient spiritual India.
If I did, I would not be able to receive money from X or from those of our
disciples who in Bombay trade with East
Africa; nor could we then encourage them to go on with their work
but would have to tell them to throw it up and attend to their spiritual
progress alone. How are we to reconcile X's seeking after spiritual light and
his mill? Ought I not to tell him to leave his mill to itself and to the devil
and go into some Ashram to meditate? Even if I myself had had the command to do
business as I had the command to do politics I would have done it without the
least spiritual or moral compunction. All depends on the spirit in which a
thing is done, the principles on which it is built and the use to which it is
turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary
politics, ghoram karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though
politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a
spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the
most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human
work, sarvakarmāņi. Do you
contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was
mistaken or wrong in principle? Krishna goes further and declares that a man by
doing in the right way and in the right spirit the work dictated to him by his
fundamental nature, temperament and capacity and according to his and its
dharma can move towards the Divine. He validates the function and dharma of the
Vaishya as well as of the Brahmin and Kshatriya. It is in his view quite
possible for a man to do business and make money and earn profits and yet be a
spiritual man, practise yoga, have an inner life. The Gita is constantly
justifying works as a means of spiritual salvation and enjoining a Yoga of
Works as well as of Bhakti and Knowledge. Krishna, however, superimposes a
higher law also that work must be done
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without desire, without
attachment to any fruit or reward, without any egoistic attitude or motive, as
an offering or sacrifice to the Divine. This is the traditional Indian attitude
towards these things, that all work can be done if it is done according to the
dharma and, if it is rightly done, it does not prevent the approach to the
Divine or the access to spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life.
There is, of
course, also the ascetic idea which is necessary for many and has its place in
the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete
if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest
anchorite's. Obviously, greed for wealth and money-making has to be absent from
his nature as much as greed for food or any other greed and all attachment to
these things must be renounced from his consciousness. But I do not regard the
ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical
with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual
self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the
midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by
the Divine. If it were not so, there would not have been great spiritual men like
Janaka or Vidura in India and even there would have been no Krishna or else
Krishna would have been not the Lord of Brindavan and Mathura and Dwarka or a
prince and warrior or the charioteer of Kurukshetra, but only one more great
anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and
elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and
for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian
tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmāņi, is un-Indian,
European or western and unspiritual.
All acts are included in action;
work is action regulated towards a fixed end and methodically and constantly
done; service is work done for the Mother's purpose and under her direction.
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II
Recommendation to X not to take
you away but to let you realise the Divine first has no meaning. Must one
realise the Divine before one can serve him or is not service of the Divine a
step towards it? In any case, the service and the realisation are both
necessary for a complete yoga and one cannot fix an unalterable rule of
precedence between the two.
Your object is not only to
practise yoga for your internal progress and protection but also to do a work
for the Divine.
The only work that spiritually
purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for
fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence on one's
own mental motives or vital lusts and demands or physical preferences, without
vanity or crude self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, done for the
sake of the Divine alone and at the command of the Divine. All work done in an
egoistic spirit, however good for people in the world of the Ignorance, is of
no avail to the seeker of the yoga.
The spiritual effectivity of work
of course depends on the inner attitude. What is important is the spirit of
offering put into the work. If one can in addition remember the Mother in the
work or through a certain concentration feel the Mother's presence or force
sustaining or doing the work, that carries the spiritual effectivity still
farther. But even if one cannot in moments of clouding, depression or struggle
do these things, yet there can be behind a love or bhakti which was the
original motive power of the work and that can remain behind the cloud and
re-emerge like the sun after dark periods. All sadhana is like that and it is
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why one should not be discouraged
by the dark moments, but realise that the original urge is there and that
therefore the dark moments are only an episode in the journey which will lead
to greater progress when they are once over.
To be free from all egoistic
motive, careful of truth in speech and action, void of self-will and
self-assertion, watchful in all things, is the condition for being a flawless
servant.
There should be no straining
after power, no ambition, no egoism of power. The power or powers that come
should be considered not as one's own, but as gifts of the Divine for the
Divine's purpose. Care should be taken that there should be no ambitious or
selfish misuse, no pride or vanity, no sense of superiority, no claim or egoism
of the instrument, only a simple and pure psychic instrumentation of the nature
in any way in which it is fit for the service of the Divine.
It is the spirit and the
consciousness from which it is done that makes an action yogic – it is not the
action itself.
Self-dedication does not depend
on the particular work you do, but on the spirit in which all work, of whatever
kind it may be, is done. Any work done well and carefully as a sacrifice to the
Divine, without desire or egoism, with equality of mind and calm tranquillity
in good or bad fortune, for the sake of the Divine and not for the sake of any
personal gain, reward or result, with the consciousness that it is the Divine
Power to which all work belongs, is a means of self-dedication through Karma.
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Of course the idea of bigness and
smallness is quite foreign to the spiritual truth.... Spiritually there is
nothing big or small. Such ideas are like those of the literary people who
think writing a poem is a high work and making shoes or cooking the dinner is a
small and low one. But all is equal in the eyes of the Spirit – and it is only
the spirit within with which it is done that matters. It is the same with a particular
kind of work, there is nothing big or small.
I may add that in the wider
consciousness one can deal with the small as well as the high things, but one
comes to deal with them with a larger as well as a profounder, subtler and more
accurate view coming from a more and more understanding and luminous
consciousness so that the thoughts about small things also cease to be
themselves small or trivial, being more and more part of a higher Knowledge.
Every artist almost (there can be
rare exceptions) has got something of the public man in him in his
vital-physical parts, which makes him crave for the stimulus of an audience,
social applause, satisfied vanity, appreciation, fame. That must go absolutely
if you want to be a yogi, – your art must be a service not of your own ego, not
of anyone or anything else but solely of the Divine.
If you wish to be free from
people's expectations and the sense of obligation, it is indeed best not to
take from anybody; for the sense of claim will otherwise be there. Not that it
will be entirely absent even if you take nothing, but you will not be bound any
longer.
What you write
about the singing is perfectly correct. You sing your best only when you forget
yourself and let it come out from within without thinking of the need of
excellence or the impression it may make. The outer singer should indeed
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disappear into the past, – it is
only so that the inner singer can take her place.
As for your singing, I was not
speaking of any new creation from the aesthetic point of view, but of the
spiritual change – what form it takes must depend on what you find within you
when the deeper basis is there.
I do not see any
necessity for giving up singing altogether; I only meant, – it is the logical
conclusion from what I have written to you, not now only but before, – that the
inner change must be the first consideration and the rest must arise out of
that. If singing to an audience pulls you out of the inner condition, then you
could postpone that and sing for yourself and the Divine until you are able,
even in facing an audience, to forget the audience. If you are troubled by
failure or excited by success, that also you must overcome.
It is not that you have to do
what you dislike, but that you have to cease to dislike. To do only what you
like is to indulge the vital and maintain its domination over the nature – for
that is the very principle of the untransformed nature, to be governed by its
likes and dislikes. To be able to do anything with equanimity is the principle
of Karmayoga and to do with joy because it is done for the Mother is the true
psychic and vital condition in this yoga.
One must be able to do the same
work always with enthusiasm and at the same time be ready to do something else
or enlarge one's scope at a moment's notice.
Yes. It depends on a certain
extension and intensifying of the consciousness by which all activity becomes
interesting not for
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itself but because of the
consciousness put into it and, through the intensity of the energy, there is a
pleasure in the exercise of the energy, and in the perfect doing of the work,
whatever the work may be.
As a rule, I mean in their
unchanged condition, the lower parts get interested and enthusiastic when the
ego mixes with the interest. But the pure enthusiasm can come into them as they
get more and more converted and purified and they then become very
indispensable forces for the realisation.
It is natural for the vital or
even the mind to feel energised by something new – but for the physical plane
the work always repeated is the foundation – so one has to be able at least to
take a steady calm interest in it always. But in this case I think it was a
particular strength the Mother sent you when she saw you there.
Part of the physical cannot do
without work, another part (more material) finds it an infliction. What gives
the force and joy of the work is however not physical but vital.
The reason of the difference of
result between the two moods in work is that the first mood is that of a vital
joy, while the other is that of a psychic quiet. Vital joy though it is a very
helpful thing for the ordinary human life, is something excited, eager, mobile
without a settled basis – that is why it soon gets tired and cannot continue.
Vital joy has to be replaced by a quiet settled psychic gladness with the mind
and vital very clear and very peaceful. When one works on this basis, then
everything becomes glad and easy, in touch with the Mother's force and fatigue
or depression do not come.
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III
Before things become pucca in the
consciousness, the doing of work does carry the consciousness outward unless
one has made it a sadhana to feel the “Force greater than oneself” working
through one. That I suppose is why the Shankarites considered work to be in its
own nature an operation of the Ignorance and incompatible with a condition of
realisation. But as a matter of fact there are three stages there: (I) in which
the work brings you to a lower as well as outer consciousness so that you have
afterwards to recover the realisation. (II) in which the work brings you out,
but the realisation remains behind (or above), not felt while you work, but as
soon as the work ceases you find it there just as it was. (III) in which the
work makes no difference, for the realisation or spiritual condition remains
through the work itself. You seem this time to have experienced No. (II).
It refers to a certain stage when
the consciousness is sometimes in activity and when not in activity is
withdrawn in itself. Afterwards comes a stage when the Sachchidananda condition
is there in work also. There is a still further stage when both are, as it
were, one, but that is the supramental. The two states are the silent Brahman
and the active Brahman and they can alternate (1st stage), coexist (2nd stage),
fuse (3rd stage)....
Certainly, it
[the highest Sachchidananda realisation] is realisable in work. Good Lord! How
could the integral yoga exist, if it were not?
The passage describes the state
of consciousness when one is aloof from all things even when in their midst and
all is felt to be unreal, an illusion. There are then no preferences or desires
because things are too unreal to desire or to prefer one to another. But, at
the same time, one feels no necessity to flee from the world or not to do any
action, because being free from the illusion, action or living in the world
does not weigh upon one, one is not
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bound or involved. Those who flee
from the world or shun action (the Sannyasis) do so because they would be
involved or bound; they believe the world to be unreal, but in fact it weighs
on them as a reality so long as they are in it. When one is perfectly free from
the illusion of the reality of things, then they cannot weigh on one or bind at
all.
Do? Why should he want to do
anything if he was in the eternal peace or Ananda or union with the Divine? If
a man is spiritual and has gone beyond the vital and mind, he does not need to
be always “doing” something. The self or spirit has the joy of its own
existence. It is free to do nothing and free to do everything – but not because
it is bound to action and unable to exist without it.
But the Jivanmukta feels no
bondage. In all works and action he feels perfectly free, because the work is
not done by him personally (there is no sense of limited ego) but by the cosmic
Force. The limitations of the work are those put by the cosmic Force itself in
its own action. He himself lives in communion of oneness with the Transcendent
which is above the cosmos and feels no limitation. That is at least how it is
felt in the overmind.
If ego and desire are different
things from the gunas, then there can be an action of the gunas without ego and
desire and therefore without attachment. That is the nature of the action of
these gunas in the unattached liberated yogi. If it were not possible, then it
would be nonsense to talk of the yogis being unattached, for there would remain
still attachment in part of their being. To say that they are unattached in the
Purusha, but attached in the Prakriti, therefore they are unattached, is to
talk nonsense. Attachment is attachment in whatever part of the being it may
be. In order to be unattached one must be
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unattached everywhere, in the
mental, vital, physical action and not only in the silent soul somewhere
inside.
In the liberated state it is not
the inner Purusha only that remains detached – the inner Purusha is always
detached, only one is not conscious of it in the ordinary state. It is the
Prakriti also that is not disturbed by the action of the gunas or attached to
it – the mind, the vital, the physical (whatever Prakriti) begin to get the
same quietude, unperturbed peace and detachment as the Purusha, but it is a
quietude, not a cessation of all action. It is quietude in action itself. If it
were not so, my statement in the Arya that there can be a desireless or
liberated action on which I found the possibility of a free (mukta) action would be false. The whole
being, Purusha-Prakriti, becomes detached (having no desire or attachment) even
in the action of the gunas.
The outer being
is also detached – the whole being is without desire or attachment and still
action is possible. Action without desire is possible, action without
attachment is possible, action without ego is possible.
You seem to think that action and
Prakriti are the same thing and where there is no action there can be no
Prakriti! Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers of the being. It is not that
Purusha = quiescence and Prakriti = action, so that when all is quiescent there
is no Prakriti and when all is active there is no Purusha. When all is active,
there is still the Purusha behind the active Nature and when all is quiescent,
there is still the Prakriti, but the Prakriti at rest.
Prakriti is the Force that acts.
A Force may be in action or in quiescence, but when it rests it is as much a
Force as when it acts. The gunas are an action of the Force, they are in the
Force itself. The sea is there and the waves are there, but the waves are not
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the sea and when there are no
waves and the sea is still, it does not stop being the sea.
The sattwa predominates, the
rajas acts as a kinetic movement under the control of sattwa until the tamas
imposes the need of rest. That is the usual thing [in the liberated state]. But
even if the tamas predominates and the action is weak or the rajas predominates
and the action is excessive, neither the Purusha nor the Prakriti get
disturbed, there is a fundamental calm in the whole being and the action is no
more than a ripple or an eddy on the surface.
It is more difficult for the
Prakriti [to separate from surface action than for the Purusha] as its ordinary
play is that of the surface being. It has to divide itself into two to separate
from that. The Purusha, on the contrary, is in its nature silent and separate –
so it has only to go back to its original nature.
When Prakriti is liberated it
divides itself into an inner Force that is free from its action (free from
rajas, tamas, etc.) and the outer Prakriti which it is using and changing.
If consciousness and energy are
the same thing, there would be no use in having two different words for them.
In that case, instead of saying, “I am conscious of my defects”, one can say,
“I am energetic of my defects”. If a man is running fast, you can say of him,
“He is running with great energy”. Do you think it would mean the same if you
said, “He is running with great consciousness”? Consciousness is that which is
aware of things – energy is a force put in action which does things.
Consciousness may have energy and keep it in or put it out, but that does not
mean that that is only another word for energy, and that it has to go
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out when the energy goes out and
that it can't stand back and observe the energy in action. You have plenty of
inertia in you, but that does not mean that you and inertia are the same and
when inertia rises and sweeps you, it is you who rise and sweep yourself.
Certainly, the mind and the inner
being are consciousness. For human beings who have not got deeper into
themselves, mind and consciousness are synonymous. Only when one becomes more
aware of oneself by a growing consciousness, then one can see different
degrees, kinds, powers of consciousness, mental, vital, physical, psychic,
spiritual. The Divine has been described as Being, Consciousness, Ananda, even
as a Consciousness (Chaitanya), as putting out a force or energy, Shakti that
creates world. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental
energy. But the Divine can stand back from his energy and observe it at its
work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the
mind can do that – a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the
mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection is
based upon the fact that one can so divide oneself into a consciousness that
observes and an energy that acts. These are quite elementary things supposed to
be known to everybody. Anybody can do that merely by a little practice; anybody
who observes his own thoughts, feelings, actions, has begun doing it already.
In yoga we make the division complete, that is all.
It [consciousness] is not by its nature detached from the mental and
other activities. It can be detached, it can be involved. In the human
consciousness it is as a rule always involved, but it has developed the power
of detaching itself – a thing which the lower creation seems unable to do. As
the consciousness develops, this power of detachment also develops.
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No, without sadhana the object of
yoga cannot be attained. Work itself must be taken as part of sadhana. But
naturally when you are working, you must think of the work, which you will
learn to do from the yogic consciousness as an instrument and with the memory
of the Divine.
It is because the energy is put
forward in the work. But as the peace and contact grow, a double consciousness
can develop – one engaged in the work, another behind, silent and observing or
turned towards the Divine – in this consciousness the aspiration can be
maintained even while the external consciousness is turned towards the work.
One can both aspire and attend to
the work and do many other things at the same time when the consciousness is
developed by yoga.
No – it is only if it is an inner
absorption that it would come in the way. But what I mean is a sort of stepping
backward into something silent and observant within which is not involved in
the action, yet sees and can shed its light upon it. There are then two parts
of the being, one inner looking at and witnessing and knowing, the other
executive and instrumental and doing. This gives not only freedom but power –
and in this inner being one can get into touch with the Divine not through
mental activity but through the substance of the being, by a certain inward
touch, perception, reception, receiving also the right inspiration or intuition
of the work.
If one feels a consciousness not
limited by the work, a consciousness behind supporting that which works, then
it is easier. That
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usually comes either by the
wideness and silence fixing and extending itself or by the consciousness of a
Force not oneself working through the worker.
Mother does not disapprove of
your writing a book – what she does not like is your being so lost in it that
you can do nothing else. You must be master of what you do and not possessed by
it. She quite agrees to your finishing and offering the book on your birthday,
if that can be done. But you must not be carried away – you must keep your full
contact with higher things.
I repeat that we do not object to
your writing – whether it be poetry or short stories or novels. What we felt
was that this kind of total absorption and possession by it was not good for
your spiritual condition and that it put a lesser thing in front, even
occupying the whole front of the
consciousness for most of the time instead of putting it in its proper place in
a sound spiritual harmony.
You can try [writing a novel], if
you like. The difficulty is that the subject matter of a novel belongs mostly
to the outer consciousness, so that a lowering or externalising can easily
come. This apart from the difficulty of keeping the inner poise when putting
the mind into outer work. If you could get an established poise within, then it
would be possible to do any work without disturbing or lowering the
consciousness.
It depends upon the plasticity of
the consciousness. Some are like that, they get so absorbed they don't want to
come out or do anything else. One has to keep a certain balance by which the
Page
─ 688
fundamental consciousness remains
able to turn from one concentration to another with ease.
The absorption in work is not
undesirable – but the difficulty in turning inwards can only be temporary. A
certain plasticity in the physical consciousness which is sure to come makes it
easy to turn from one concentration to another.
The resistance you speak of and
the insufficient receptivity and the inability to continue in communion while
doing work must all be due to some part of the physical consciousness that is
still not open to the Light – probably something in the vital-physical and the
material subconscient which stands in the way of the physical mind being in its
mass free and responsive.
There is no harm
in raising the aspiration from below to meet the power from above. All that you
have to be careful about is not to raise up the difficulty from below before
the descending power is ready to remove it.
There is no necessity
of losing consciousness when you meditate. It is the widening and change of the
consciousness that is essential. If you mean going inside, you can do that
without losing consciousness.
It is a certain inertia in the
physical consciousness which shuts it up in the groove of what it is doing so
that it is fixed in that and not free to remember.
All the difficulties you describe
are quite natural things common to most people. It is easy for one,
comparatively, to remember and be conscious when one sits quiet in meditation;
it is difficult when one has to be busy with work. The remembrance and
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consciousness in work have to
come by degrees, you must not expect to have it all at once; nobody can get it
all at once. It comes in two ways, – first, if one practises remembering the
Mother and offering the work to her each time one does something (not all the
time one is doing, but at the beginning or whenever one can remember,) then
that slowly becomes easy and habitual to the nature. Secondly, by the
meditation an inner consciousness begins to develop which, after a time, not at
once or suddenly, becomes more and more automatically permanent. One feels this
as a separate consciousness from that outer which works. At first this separate
consciousness is not felt when one is working, but as soon as the work stops
one feels it was there all the time watching from behind; afterwards it begins
to be felt during the work itself, as if there were two parts of oneself – one
watching and supporting from behind and remembering the Mother and offering to
her and the other doing the work. When this happens, then to work with the true
consciousness becomes more and more easy.
It is the same
with all the rest. It is by the development of the inner consciousness that all
the things you speak of will be set right. For instance it is a part of the
being that has utsāha for the
work, another that feels the pressure of quietude and is not so disposed to
work. Your mood depends on which comes up at the time – it is so with all
people. To combine the two is difficult, but a time comes when they do get
reconciled – one remains poised in an inner concentration while the other is
supported by it in its push towards work. The transformation of the nature, the
harmonising of all these discordant things in the being are the work of
sadhana. Therefore you need not be discouraged by observing these things in
you. There is hardly anybody who has not found these things in himself. All
this can be arranged by the action of the inner Force with the constant consent
and call of the sadhak. By himself he might not be able to do it, but with the
Divine Force working within all can be done.
It is a little difficult at first
to combine the inward condition
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with the attention to the outward
work and mingling with others, but a time comes when it is possible for the
inner being to be in full union with the Mother while the action comes out of
that concentrated union and is as easily guided in its details so that some
part of the consciousness can attend to everything outside, even be
concentrated upon it and yet feel the inward concentration in the Mother.
It is a very good sign that even
in spite of full work the inner working was felt behind and succeeded in
establishing the silence. A time comes for the sadhak in the end when the
consciousness and the deeper experience go on happening even in full work or in
sleep, while speaking or in any kind of activity.
It is not at first easy to
remember the presence in work; but if one revives the sense of the presence
immediately after the work is over it is all right. In time the sense of the
presence will become automatic even in work.
The unhappiness is not necessary
or inevitable in the sadhana, but it comes because your inner nature feels the
touch of the Divine Presence indispensable to it and uneasy when it does not
feel it: to feel it always a certain constant detachment within allowing you to
remain within and do everything from within is necessary. This can more easily
be done in quiet occupations and quiet contacts. For it is quietness and
inwardness that enable one to feel the Presence.
You must learn to act always from
within – from your inner being which is in contact with the Divine. The outer
should be
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a mere instrument and should not
be allowed at all to compel or dictate your speech, thought or action.
All should be done quietly from
within – working, speaking, reading, writing as part of the real consciousness
– not with the dispersed and unquiet movement of the ordinary consciousness.
One can work and remain quiet
within. Quietude does not mean having an empty mind or doing no action at all.
The stress of the Power is all
right, but there is really nothing incompatible between the inner silence and
action. It is to this combination that the sadhana must move.
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