Calm—Peace—Equality
Page-4
Aspire,
concentrate in the right spirit and, whatever the difficulties,
you are sure to attain the aim you have put before you.
It
is in the peace behind and that “something truer”
in you that you must learn to live and feel it to be yourself.
You must regard the rest as not your real self, but only
a flux of changing or recurring movements on the surface
which are sure to go as the true self emerges.
Peace
is the true remedy; distraction by hard work is only a temporary
relief—although a certain amount of work is necessary
for the proper balance of the different parts of the being.
To feel the peace above and about your head is a first step;
you have to get connected with it and it must descend into
you and fill your mind and life and body and surround you
so that you live in it—for this peace is the one sign
of the Divine’s presence with you, and once you have
it all the rest will begin to come.
Truth
in speech and truth in thought are very important. The more
you can feel falsehood as being not part of yourself, as
coming on you from outside, the easier it will be to reject
and refuse it.
Persevere
and what is still crooked will be made straight and you
will know and feel constantly the truth of the Divine’s
presence and your faith will be justified by direct experience.
-
Sri Aurobindo
First
aspire and pray to the Mother for quiet in the mind, purity,
calm and peace, an awakened consciousness, intensity of
devotion, strength and spiritual capacity to face all inner
and outer difficulties and go through to the end of the
Yoga. If the consciousness awakens and there is devotion
and intensity of aspiration, it will be possible for the
mind, provided it learns quietude and peace, to grow in
knowledge.
-
Sri Aurobindo
This
is due to an acute consciousness and sensitiveness of the
physical being, especially the vital-physical.
It
is good for the physical to be more and more conscious,
but it should not be overpowered by these ordinary human
reactions of which it becomes aware or badly affected or
upset by them. A strong equality and mastery and detachment
must come, in the nerves and body as in the mind, which
will enable the physical to know and contact these things
without feeling any disturbance; it should know and be conscious
and reject and throw away the pressure of the movements
in the atmosphere, not merely feel them and suffer.
-
Sri Aurobindo
To
recognise one’s weaknesses and false movements and
draw back from them is the way towards liberation.
Not
to judge anyone but oneself until one can see things from
a calm mind and a calm vital is an excellent rule. Also,
do not allow your mind to form hasty impressions on the
strength of some outward appearance, nor your vital to act
upon them.
There
is a place in the inner being where one can always remain
calm and from there look with poise and judgement on the
perturbations of the surface consciousness and act upon
it to change it. If you can lean to live in that calm of
the inner being, you will have found your stable basis.
-
Sri Aurobindo
Do
not allow yourself to be shaken or troubled by these things.
The one thing to do always is to remain firm in your aspiration
to the Divine and to face with equanimity and detachment
all difficulties and all oppositions. For those who wish
to lead the spiritual life, the Divine must always come
first, everything else must be secondary.
Keep
yourself detached and look at these things from the calm
inner vision of one who is inwardly dedicated to the Divine.
-
Sri Aurobindo
At
present your experiences are on the mental plane, but that
is the right movement. Many sadhaks are unable to advance
because they open the vital plane before the mental and
psychic are ready. After some beginning of true spiritual
experiences on the mental plane there is a premature descent
into the vital and great confusion and disturbance. This
has to be guarded against. It is still worse if the vital
desire-soul opens to experience before the mind has been
touched by the things of the spirit.
Aspire
always for the mind and psychic being to be filled with
the true consciousness and experience and made ready. You
must aspire specially for quietness, peace, a calm faith,
an increasing steady wideness, for more and more knowledge,
for a deep and intense but quiet devotion.
Do
not be troubled by your surroundings and their opposition.
These conditions are often imposed at first as a kind of
ordeal. If you can remain tranquil and undisturbed and continue
your sadhana without allowing yourself to be inwardly troubled
under these circumstances, it will help to give you a much
needed strength; for the path of Yoga is always beset with
inner and outer difficulties and the sadhak must develop
a quiet, firm and solid strength to meet them.
-
Sri Aurobindo
This
inner spiritual progress does not depend on outer conditions
so much as on the way we react to them from within—that
has always been the ultimate verdict of spiritual experience.
It is why we insist on taking the right attitude and persisting
in it, on an inner state not dependent on outer circumstances,
a state of equality and calm, if it cannot be at once of
inner happiness, on going more and more within and looking
from within outwards instead of living in the surface mind
which is always at the mercy of the shocks and blows of
life. It is only from that inner state that one can be stronger
than life and its disturbing forces and hope to conquer.
To
remain quiet within, firm in the will to go through, refusing
to be disturbed or discouraged by difficulties or fluctuations,
that is one of the first things to be learnt in the Path.
To do otherwise is to encourage the instability of consciousness,
the difficulty of keeping the experience of which you complain.
It is only if you keep quiet and steady within that the
lines of experience can go on with some steadiness—though
they are never without periods of interruption and fluctuation;
but these, if properly treated, can then become periods
of assimilation and exhaustion of difficulty rather than
denials of sadhana.
A
spiritual atmosphere is more important than outer conditions;
if one can get that and also create one’s own spiritual
air to breathe in and live in it, that is the true condition
of progress.
-
Sri Aurobindo
