July 4, 2018 – Collaboration and Harmony in Work

And in a small body self is all that counts,

Wherever love and light and largeness lack,

These crooked fashioners take up their task.

To all half-conscious worlds they extend their reign.

Here too these godlings drive our human hearts,

Our nature’s twilight is their lurking-place:

Here too the darkened primitive heart obeys

The veiled suggestions of a hidden Mind

That dogs our knowledge with misleading light

And stands between us and the Truth that saves.

It speaks to us with the voices of the Night:

Our darkened lives to greater darkness move;

Our seekings listen to calamitous hopes.

A structure of unseeing thoughts is built

And reason used by an irrational Force.

This earth is not alone our teacher and nurse;

The powers of all the worlds have entrance here.

In their own fields they follow the wheel of law

And cherish the safety of a settled type;

On earth out of their changeless orbit thrown

Their law is kept, lost their fixed form of things.

Into a creative chaos they are cast

Where all asks order but is driven by Chance;

Strangers to earth-nature, they must learn earth’s ways,

Aliens or opposites, they must unite:

They work and battle and with pain agree:

These join, those part, all parts and joins anew,

But never can we know and truly live

Till all have found their divine harmony.

Sri Aurobindo

Savitri, Book II, Canto V, page 153

Collaboration and Harmony in Work

The field of work does not change. What you are doing now, you will continue to do. It is in the attitude in the work, especially in the relation with the other workers, that the change must take place. Each one sees the work in his own way and believes it is the only true way, the only way that expresses the Divine Will. But none of these ways is completely true; it is only by rising above these divided conceptions that one can reach a better understanding of the Divine’s Will. This means mutual understanding and collaboration instead of opposition and clash of wills and feelings.

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For harmony and better work, it is not by changing men that things can get better, but by changing one’s own consciousness and character.

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If in the work you meet with some difficulties, look sincerely into yourself and there you will discover their origin.

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The difficulties in work come not from circumstances or petty outer occurrences, they come from something which is wrong in the inner attitude, especially in the vital attitude: egoism, ambition, fixity of mental conceptions regarding work, vanity, etc. And it is always good, in order to correct the disharmony, to look for the cause in oneself rather than in others.

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To recognise the presence of a “disharmonious atmosphere” is useful only so far as it wakes in each one the will to change it into a harmonious atmosphere and to do that the first important step is for each one to get out of his own limited point of view in order to understand the point of view of others. It is more important for each one to find the mistake in himself than to insist on the mistake of others. I add that all those to whom I have given responsibility in the work are expected to be faithful to this responsibility and, without allowing of any “hurt feeling” to creep in, do their best to carry on successfully their duty. My blessings are with all those who are sincere and have goodwill.

The Mother

Words of the Mother II, CWM pages 309-310