The True Attitude ~ Remember and Offer
|
It is quite possible for you to do Sadhana at home and in the midst of your work - many do so. What is necessary in the beginning is to remember the Mother as much as possible, to concentrate on her in the heart for a time every day, if possible thinking of her as the Divine Mother, to aspire to feel her there within you, offer her your works and pray that from within she may guide and sustain you. This is a preliminary stage which often takes long, but if one goes through it with sincerity and steadfastness, the mentality begins little by little to change and a new consciousness opens in the Sadhak which begins to be aware more and more of the Mother's presence within, of her working in the nature and in the life or of some other spiritual experience which opens the gate towards realisation. Sri Aurobindo (Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol 25, P: 161) |
|
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 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. Sri Aurobindo (Ref: Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol. 23, P: 689-690) |
You lose it because your consciousness
is still divided. The Divine has not settled into your mind; you are
not wholly consecrated to the Divine Life. Otherwise you could
concentrate to any extent upon such things and still you would have
the sense of being helped and supported by the Divine.
The condition to be aimed at, the real
achievement of Yoga, the final perfection and attainment, for which
all else is only a preparation, is a consciousness in which it is
impossible to do anything without the Divine; for then, if you are
without the Divine, the very source of your action disappears;
knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel that the
powers you use are your own, you will not miss the Divine support. The Mother (Ref: Mother's Collected Works, Vol. 3, P: 25-27) |
|
In work too there is an austerity. It consists in not having any preferences and in doing everything one does with interest. For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that one can learn to find interest in everything one does, even in what appear to be the most insignificant chores. The secret of this attainment lies in the urge towards self-perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot, you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing. The Mother (Ref: Mother's Collected Works, Vol. 12, P: 53) |
|
I suppose it is different for each one.
So each one must find those activities which increase his
aspiration, his consciousness, his deeper knowledge of things, and
those which, on the contrary, mechanise him and bring him back more
thoroughly into a purely material relation with things. The Mother (Ref: Mother's Collected Works, Vol 8, P: 160-161) |