November 17, 2010 – Sadhana through Work

Even Vivekananda once in the stress of emotion admitted the fallacy that a personal God
would be too immoral to be suffered
and it would be the duty of all good men to resist Him.
But if an omnipotent supra-moral Will & Intelligence governs the world,
it is surely impossible to resist Him;
our resistance would only serve His ends & really be dictated by Him.
Is it not better then, instead of condemning or denying,
to study and understand Him?

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 173)

Sadhana Through Work

THE ordinary life consists in work for personal aim and satisfaction of desire under some mental or moral control, touched sometimes by a mental ideal. 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.

Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which is the result of their nature and their Karma. When one takes up the yoga and wishes to consecrate one’s life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine. If the ordinary vital motives or vital force can no longer act freely and yet are not replaced by something else, then the push or force put into the work may decline or the power to command success may no longer be there. For the sincere sadhak the difficulty can only be temporary; but he has to see the defect in his consciousness or his attitude and to remove it. Then the Divine Power itself will act through him and use his capacity and vital force for its ends……

Sri Aurobindo

SABCL Vol 23, page 669

All extracts and quotations from the written works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are copyright Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry -605002 India
This entry was posted in Weekly Messages. Bookmark the permalink.