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SPIRITUALITY IN ACTION
A YOUNG man persuaded his father who had travelled all over the world to visit the Ashram if he wanted to see spirituality in action. Another person, an M.L.A., remarked : "I had been to Rameswaram. Having once visited the place, one hardly feels a call to revisit it. But here the experience is different. One likes coming here again and again. I am a busy man, always at work. But here, off my work, I do not feel bored. I feel, however, that a flying visit does not suffice. One must be a resident here to gain anything concrete." There is another side to the picture. A visitor who had just returned from England came to see his brother and spoke to him in a sharp tone, 'What do you do here ? Where is spirituality here ? You use chair, table, bed, cupboard and live as comfortably as we do. Then where is the difference ?' Such a question may arise in many minds. Let us attempt an answer. To-day everywhere there is a cry for work and still more work but with what result? Mere "insistence on work", stresses Sri Aurobindo, "is absurd if one has not the light by which to act." The work done by a man in the world and that by a Yogi are diametrically opposite : The life of an ordinary man1 is a life of confusion, a life of needs and desires. A tension is there in his life all the time. Nothing allows him to be in peace. "His little hour is spent in little things."2 1."The average human being even now is in his inward existence as crude and undeveloped as was the bygone primitive man in his outward life." The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 65-66. 2.Savitri, p. 186. Page-30 In the words of the Upanishad : "Like a corn he is born and like a corn dies." There is a striking line in Savitri: "I toil like the animal, like the animal die."3 We look upon a thing with favour or disfavour with the likes and dislikes of our ego. This is "ego-centricity".4 Until the being learns to separate itself at least a bit from its old ways, one cannot perceive the difference. A sadhak is he who struggles and struggles to get out of the tangle of desires and the black web of the ego. He works not to fulfil but to kill his desires. His work is not for material profit but to live an ideal. "There can be no Karmayoga without the will to get rid of ego..."5 To get rid of the ego, says Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, is like "a labour of Sisyphus."6 Sisyphus, King of Corinth, was taken to the underworld and was given the task of rolling a huge stone up a hill, and every time it reached the top it rolled down again. A Yogi is he who has swum to the shore crossing the sea of sadhana, virtually the sea of Darkness. He lives in God and not in the ego. He has universalised his consciousness. Doing a thing he feels no doing. It is a Cosmic Force that does everything through him. Outwardly one may not mark any difference between the working of an ordinary man and one working strictly on the principles of Karmayoga. Now how to reach this stage: Meditation is one means; work another. "The growth out of the ordinary mind into the spiritual consciousness can be effected either by meditation, dedicated work 3.Savitri, p. 574. 4.Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Fourth Series, p. 431. 5.On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 502. 6.The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 632. Page-31 or bhakti for the Divine."7 There is a general notion among seekers after Truth that time spent in meditation alone is worth something, the rest is sheer waste. Let us study the point more closely in the light of the Master's words : "Meditation is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results; contemplation more difficult...liberation from the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in its fruits."8 Again : "It is not meditation (thinking with the mind) but a concentration or turning of the consciousness that is important, —and that can happen in work, in writing, in any kind of action as well as in sitting down to contemplate."9 Again and again the Master says, let the consciousness grow. In the early forties the word "consciousness" would come from time to time as a whisper in our ear but there were very few who could realise its importance or follow its significance. X could never make out what was meant by consciousness and why the Mother laid so much stress on it. Those were the days when during Prosperity the Mother blessed us either with a white or a red lotus. Asked what was meant by the lotus, the Master replied, I suppose everybody in the Ashram knows that the white lotus is the Mother's consciousness and the red mine.' To some of us work is a joy; to others a burden. Why ? The real import of sadhana pursued in the guiding light of the Mother cannot be understood without the awakening of the consciousness. When "the mind awakes of its obscurity" and becomes a bit conscious, there opens a new chapter in life, begins a new rhythm. 7.On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 500. 8.On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 696. 9.Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Fourth Series, p. 606. Page-32 It is then that light can be seen walking in the darkness of life. All our meditation, concentration or sadhana through works tend towards the development of consciousness. Without that no gain is a solid gain in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. Before we go farther let us note some difference between meditation and concentration. Sadhana through works will occupy a chapter by itself. Concentration is a key to open the door of consciousness10 It is necessary to repeat here that our success or failure in Yoga depends to a large extent on our acquiring the power of concentration. To arrive at one-pointedness, according to the Mother, the primary need is unification of the being. In this respect, there are many factors to be considered. "The next thing to be acquired", says the Master, "is the purification of the heart which brings the Divine touch and in time the Divine presence." Before coming here G did not know how to meditate. With his closing the eye, thoughts would come crowding in like the humming of bees. When he settled here as an inmate in 1933 meditation came pouring into him all by itself. In meditation that is spontaneous there is little scope for personal effort as was the case with us during the days when there was correspondence with the Master. When meditation deepened he got so absorbed as to lose all sense of breathing. But it took him long to realise the value of concentration. After 1940 began his "period of effort". The more he tried to control his mind, the more it revolted. Even when the Mother's Force was active in some part of the body, the mind was subject to unending streams of thought and he was often swept away by 10. "...it is the inner into which you enter whenever you concentrate, then it begins to come out and control the outer..." On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 710. Page-33 their currents. This showed that the inner part was not yet strong enough to dominate. Nothing comes easy in life. So long as the period of effort lasts one cannot escape struggle. Though "effort belongs to the inferior power of Nature; a power of the Ignorance..."11 yet it is necessary for the growth of consciousness. Two quotations from the Master on this point flash upon me: "If there is no personal effort, if the sadhak is too indolent and tamasic to try, why should the Grace act ?" "Beautiful is the face of the Divine Mother but she too can be hard and terrible. Nay, then, is immortality a plaything to be given lightly to a child, or the divine prize without effort or the crown for a weakling ? Strive rightly and thou shalt have; trust and thy trust shall in the end be justified; but the dread Law of the Way is there and none can abrogate it." G adopted different methods given in Bases of Yoga but nothing could halt the waves of thought. All things wait for their time. After hard labour when he acquired the capacity to step out of the realm of thought, he came to realise the distinction between a quiet mind and a calm mind. In maintaining the quiescence of the mind one has to be always vigilant, for if a single thought comes in, it will be enough to drag him down. But it took him time to realise what was really meant by a calm mind. When in concentration his mind was not distracted then he realised what he had read in Bases of Yoga. He had failed to perceive this distinction despite reading about it a number of times. Such is the case with the Mother's and the Master's other writings. Their real import can be grasped better by living them. They are a storehouse of the treasures of the spirit. Purity and concentration go together, the first paving the way to the second. The following may serve to show how obscured 11. The Life Divine, (American Edition), 1951, p. 819. Page-34 vision changes with the purification of the adhar and new doors of perception open. Formerly, Upanishadic utterances appeared too high for R's intelligence. One day he happend to read :
O God, may I become a vessel of immortality ! Not only did it fill his heart with an inner elation but the whole being joined in uttering the prayer in a joyous mood; such was the case also with The Life Divine. It took him more than two decades to glimpse its depths. When the book revealed to him something of itself, he found it to be a perennial well of interest, sweetness, power and inspiration. There run the lines in The Life Divine : "When there is a complete silence in the being, either a stillness of the whole being or a stillness behind unaffected by surface movements, then we can become aware of a Self, a spiritual substance of our being..."12 Silence of the mind he could understand, but he could not make out what was meant by silence in the whole being. He had a great attraction for balcony Darshan. To his mind, each leap forward in sadhana was mostly due to what he had received from the balcony Darshan. Even when this Darshan stopped, he continued his concentration for a long time at that particular hour. Years passed in struggle. Then one day he felt a cooling sensation in the head which made the concentration blissful.13 There was not a trace of thought to hamper its intensification, its effect continuing even at night. The mind seemed full of peace. 12.The Life Divine, (American Edition), 1951, p. 761. 13."Brain concentration is always a tapasya and necessarily brings a strain. It is only if one is lifted out of the brain mind altogether that the strain of mental concentration disappears." On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 701. Page-35 When there is peace in the mind its influence usually spreads to other parts too. This time there was a new feature. The consciousness had an access for the first time to the "inner rooms" of the mind. Then the passage quoted above flashed before his eyes. The experience, though of a few minutes' duration, gave a new colour to the picture of his life. In meditation no effort is necessary, no struggle with darkness. One sends forth a silent call. If in response, the higher Force comes and finds a "quiet receptivity" in us, the inner working begins. The greater the intensity of the action of the Mother's Force, the greater the possibility of a "free flow of various kinds of experiences" leading to a further kindling of consciousness. Seeing a dazzling light in a dark room, a vision of the sea and sky meeting together, luminous spaces opening one after another and the like are common experiences. What they reveal is thus expressed by the Master: "In this Yoga one sees many levels of consciousness which appear as skies or else as seas." "The sea with the Sun over it is a plane of consciousness lit by the Truth." As the stilling of the mind becomes easy the "touches of heavenlier heights" become more frequent. When one feels the passing of the Force into the various systems of the body, according to Sri Aurobindo, it means that the Yoga Force is beginning to take up the sadhana. Hundreds of letters are there to show what experiences we had in the days when the Master sat up all night pouring something of his own self into us through those inspiring letters. Regarding the vision of a maidan, he said: "...you entered into the psychic and spiritual state which takes the figure of the beautiful maidan." To someone else he wrote: "The open ground you saw is the symbol of the silent inner consciousness free and bright and clear and calm. Page-36 "The things you see are mostly indications of a working that is going on inside you; there is no fear that they will be merely visions without effect on the consciousness. Already your consciousness has changed much and yet it is only a beginning of still greater change that is to come." It is not possible to speak of experiences in a systematic form. Mention is made here only of those that I chanced upon and they are pieced together. The experiences that one has by concentration in the heart are quite different from those in the mental regions. The experiences that occur from self-opening inward are so elevating that one is led to believe the kingdom of heaven is indeed in the heart. Then sadhana does not appear like the crossing of Sahara; one feels one is on the threshold of a new life. This is not enough. The Mother reveals and we have to realise: "...When you attain a kind of perfection in concentration, if you can sustain this perfection for a sufficiently long time, then a door opens and you pass beyond the limit of your ordinary consciousness—you enter into a deeper and higher knowledge—or you go within. Then you can feel some sort of a dazzling light, an inner marvel, a bliss, a full knowledge, a total silence... To attain that concentration much effort is necessary; an immediate or even a quick result is rarely possible. But if the door within had once been opened, you can be sure that it will open again if you know how to persevere. "As long as the door was not opened, you could doubt your capacity, but once opened, no more doubt is possible, if you go on aspiring and willing."14 Thus when concentration reaches perfection and remains always at that height, the vehicle can be said to be ready for inner illumination. If the goal is not yet in sight that is no reason to give way to despair. 14. Bulletin, Nov. 1963, p. 43. Page-37 "...whenever you concentrate and aspire, you feel a force, a light, a peace coming down into you,—you aspire and the answer is immediate. This shows that the relation is well established."15 What can be more heartening to the "pilgrim of the inner world"16 than these joyous words of the Mother? When the mind is not carried away on the "wings of thought"17 there grows a tendency to remain more and more concentrated even in work, whenever possible. This can be done with ease either when the Mother's Force is in action or the mind lends its inner support. If force is used to expel thought, no concentration is possible. When concentration becomes spontaneous during working hours, there is a sort of absorption but the beauty of it is that the work does not suffer. Rather it goes on much more smoothly. Such is the period when one can sense and see a secret hand adjusting everything in a way which does not require serious attention. Even "circumstances adapt themselves", and turn favourable. But such intensity of concentration is very rare, say, once in months. When its spontaneity would grow by itself it would be "no longer concentration, but the settled poise of the soul in the Divine". This is a much higher stage. I am not competent to say more on the point. Our survey is confined to the sadhana of the seekers of light, fighting the night of obscurity, to see the divine dawn in their life. Some of us had the feeling that the Master did not encourage meditation. But he has never said "work alone prepares" or that meditation should be discarded. 15.Ibid, Nov. 1957,p. 111. 16. Savitri, p. 566. ll.Savitri, p. 273. Page-38 The following exchange of letters with the Master reveals how he directed us according to our needs and tendencies without letting us fall into errors. Q: Since 1932 when you gave the direction: "You can go on meditating and see what develops in you", I have been trying all along to develop it in me. Now it has grown into such a habit that I can't do without it. In meditation I feel peace, power, light, etc. The moment I feel the action of the Mother's Force, I give up all effort and leave myself to its charge. There is a growing faith that the Divine Force finds an opportunity to work more swiftly in meditation than otherwise. Is it a right attitude ? Sri Aurobindo : There is nothing wrong in it. Q : Can I not do without meditation ? Sri Aurobindo : At present it is necessary. Q : Is it that the progress of my sadhana is likely to be hampered if I do not meditate at all ? Sri Aurobindo : It would certainly be a mistake not to meditate at all. Q : Often a question arises in the mind, why should I allow myself to think that I should progress more swiftly by meditation while there are many who give no importance to it ? Sri Aurobindo : There is no reason why you should imitate others. Your sadhana must follow its own lines, not those of others. Q: Should I give more time to meditation than I do ? Sri Aurobindo: Probably the time you give is enough. Q : If I give more time to work is it likely to be more beneficial ? Sri Aurobindo : You must be able to feel the sadhana going on in the work itself—after that you will be able to progress equally through works. And, said N, this boon was vouchsafed to him when he found rasa in work. Page-39 On D complaining that work tended to lower his consciousness and brought the inner to the outer, he was told, "that is what one has to learn not to do". "You must be master of what you do and not possessed by it...You must not be carried away—you must keep your full contact with higher things." Concentration is a help, not a hindrance, to meditation. In concentration, as said earlier, one has to gather all his energies to keep off the wandering thoughts, till the very stuff of the mind falls quiet and vacant. Whenever M succeeded in doing so, he discovered a new method of working. When problems arose he would stop the inner machine in the hope of hearing a voice of solution or a quiet suggestion which often proved unfailing. The voice may not be heard in words but in a "spiritual feeling or direction of the consciousness that comes through the psychic,"18 Such are the occasions when friction becomes rare. Even if there arises a cause of offence the inner being refuses to be shaken or irritated as formerly was the case. Hot words hurled by the opposite party provoked no response or reaction within. Drawing upon his experience, M said, 'when one roars in anger, just meet him with a smile, half his temperature will fall.' One or two instances of how a secret guidance is felt: A certain part of the room was kept ready for storing new stuff. When it arrived, of a sudden X got them stacked up on the opposite side. Then he wondered why he had acted against his own plan. The secret revealed itself when in a shower the roof began to leak over the planned site. L was unwell both physically and mentally. Finding the situation going out of hand, he invoked the Mother's help: Mother, it is your work, do it yourself. And he withdrew from the scene in a spirit of resignation. To his grateful amazement, he found that the work was done without a flaw. In the Ashram life, the play of the secret hand is no rare event. 18. On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 672. Page-40 Now can be understood the truth of the Master's saying: "Openness in work means the same thing as openness in the consciousness. The same Force that works in your consciousness in meditation and clears away the cloud and confusion whenever you open to it, can also take up your action and not only make you aware of the defects in it but keep you conscious of what is to be done and guide your mind and hands to do it. If you open to it in your work, you will begin to feel this guidance more and more until behind all your activities you will be aware of the Force of the Mother." An instance of even a solicitor from far-off Bombay, receiving inner guidance in the midst of his extremely busy life, may not be out of place here. The Synthesis of Yoga is his constant companion. Even on tour he never misses it and pours over its pages whenever possible. Often something comes to him like a flash and it gives his work, be it a draft or anything else, the right orientation. K used to be the first to attend to his work and the last to close his office. X could not understand how one could have experiences without closing his eyes and sitting in meditation. If one is not blessed with experience what is the use of sadhana"? There is a very fine letter of Sri Aurobindo in answer to this question : "What do you call meditation ? Shutting the eyes and concentrating? It is only one method of calling down the true consciousness. To join with the true consciousness or feel its descent is the only thing important and if it comes without the orthodox method as it always did with me, so much the better." It took X long to learn that the experiences one has in work-ing hours are not less absorbing than those in meditation. For here one sees or feels something changing in the very texture of his being, something becoming part of him. An experience was vouchsafed to him in December 1964. It appeared the most heartening of all experiences so far. Now he Page-41 came to know what was meant by waking consciousness. At that divine moment he had a descent of something from above which led to effortless concentration with open eyes in the midst of working hours. From the time he started operating the machine, the mind became collected and slowly grew into full concentration. Formerly he had reached this peak only in meditation in a secluded state but today the hands were at work, the eyes were open, part of the mind observing the work done by labour, all the while the consciousness remaining absorbed and possessed by silence. It was not a momentary touch but of a full two-hour duration. He said that he enjoyed this state of mind consciously. Two hours passed unnoticed. As in deep meditation there remains no thought, no sense of breath, so was the case here too.19 Thus our self-giving to the Divine, in the words of Monod Herzon, Prof. of Physics, is not only in the silence of meditation but also in all the activities of life.20 It would be a mistake to conclude that we are concerned with work and work alone, divorced from devotion. Here devotion springs up from deeper and deeper wells of our being. Regarding the repetition of the name without moving lips while at work, the Master wrote to one of us on July 4, 1937 : "The condition you describe in your work means that the inner being is awake and that there is now the double consciousness. It is the inner being which has the inner happiness, the calm and quiet, the silence free from any ripple of thought, the inwardly silent repetition of the name. The automatic repetition of the mantra is 19."...what is attained in the inner state, becomes easier to acquire by the waking consciousness..." The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 487. 20.Mother India, 1949. Page-42 part of the same phenomenon—that is what ought to happen to the mantra, it must become a conscious but spontaneous thing repeating itself in the very substance of the consciousness itself, no longer needing any effort of the mind. All these doubts and questionings of the mind are useless. What has to happen is that this inner consciousness should be always there not troubled by any disturbance, with the constant silence, inner happiness and quietude etc., while the outer consciousness does what is necessary in the way of work, etc. or, what is better, has that done through it—it is this later experience that you had some days as someone pushing the work with so much continuous force without your feeling tired." Thus in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga though work has a prominent place devotion is by no means of secondary importance; rather, it forms the basis of work and sustains it. Where there is a happy mingling of the two, it culminates in spiritual Knowledge. Here we have instances where sadhaks pass through the basic combination of work and devotion to clear-visioned Knowledge, instead of pursuing the long and arduous and strictly exclusive path of Knowledge by itself. Experience will confirm the fact that love and devotion quickens one's progress much more easily and effectively, though the goal is the same. From personal knowledge of R extending over two decades, I feel free to say that it is difficult to distinguish which of the three elements is the most prominent in his make-up. When he gave readings from The Life Divine, he would speak off-hand all through, leaving out no paragraph, nothing of importance, and bringing the difficult points home by a clear and impressive exposition. This was his picture in the forties. Sri Aurobindo once spoke about him, "He is a born worker." The energy and endurance with which R throws himself into work are in inverse ratio to his frail body. Whoever chances to talk with him about the Mother knows how strains of devotion sweeten Page-43 his talk. His crystal-clear exposition of the Mother's teaching is an example of depth of devotion and height of knowledge. There are other similar instances. Let us quote here the observation of Justice S. C. Misra :— "The Pondicherry Ashram which sets out to cultivate and develop the principles of Integral Yoga is a practical demonstration of the technique of this synthetic form of Yoga... The disinterested and dedicated Ashram activities for meeting the material requirements of the inmates are the Karma Yoga, the calm inner movement towards spiritual illumination and wide-ness in Jnana Yoga, and the happy intense surrender to the Mother is Bhakti Yoga, all of which are combined in Integral Yoga. The conquest of matter, the love of art and literature in their nobler aspects, all illustrate the additional element of Integral Yoga21 which does not seek an escape of any sort..." 21. Often a question is asked how the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo differs from the Gita's. Here is Sri Aurobindo's answer: "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." (Lights on Yoga, p. 89) Page-44
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