September 1, 2010 – Basic Requisites of the Path

Medicine is necessary for our bodies in disease
only because our bodies have learned the art of not getting well without medicines.
Even so, one sees often that the moment Nature
chooses for recovery is that in which the life is abandoned as hopeless by the doctors.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 405)

Basic Requisites of the Path

THE goal of yoga is always hard to reach, but this one is more difficult than any other, and it is only for those who have the call, the capacity, the willingness to face everything and every risk, even the risk of failure, and the will to progress towards an entire selflessness, desirelessness and surrender.

This yoga implies not only the realisation of God, but an entire consecration and change of the inner and outer life till it is fit to manifest a divine consciousness and become part of a divine work. This means an inner discipline far more exacting and difficult than mere ethical and physical austerities. One must not enter on this path, far vaster and more arduous than most ways of yoga, unless one is sure of the psychic call and of one’s readiness to go through to the end.

By readiness, I did not mean capacity but willingness. If there is the will within to face all difficulties and go through, no matter how long it takes, then the path can be taken.

A mere restless dissatisfaction with the ordinary life is not a sufficient preparation for this yoga. A positive inner call, a strong will and a great steadiness are necessary for success in the spiritual life.

Mental theories are of no fundamental importance, for the mind forms or accepts the theories that support the turn of the being.

What is important is that turn and the call within you.

The knowledge that there is a Supreme Existence, Consciousness and Bliss which is not merely a negative Nirvana or a static and featureless Absolute, but dynamic, the perception that this Divine Consciousness can be realised not only beyond but here, and the consequent acceptance of a divine life as the aim of yoga, do not belong to the mind. It is not a question of mental theory – even though mentally this outlook can be as well supported as any other, if not better, – but of experience and, before the experience comes, of the soul’s faith bringing with it the mind’s and the life’s adhesion. One who is in contact with the higher Light and has the experience can follow this way, however difficult it may be for the lower members to follow; one who is touched by it, without having the experience, but having the call, the conviction, the compulsion of the soul’s adherence, can also follow it.

An idealistic notion or religious belief or emotion is something quite different from getting spiritual light. An idealistic notion might turn you towards getting spiritual light, but it is not the light itself. It is true however that “the spirit bloweth where it listeth” and that we can get an emotional impulse or touch or mental realisation of spiritual things from almost any circumstance, as Bilwamangal got it from the words of his courtesan mistress. Obviously, it happens because something is ready somewhere, – if you like, the psychic being waiting for its chance and taking some opportunity in mind, vital or heart to knock open a window somewhere.

Mere idealism can only have an effect if one has a strong will in the mind capable of forcing the vital to follow.

The push to drown oneself in the Divine is very rare. It is usually a mental idea, a vital urge or some quite inadequate reason that starts the thing – or else no reason at all. The only reality is the occult psychic push behind of which the surface-consciousness is not aware or else hardly aware.

……

Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol. 23, pages 545-547