November 30, 2011 – A Very Tiny Serpent

Immortality is not the survival of the mental personality after death,
though that also is true,
but the waking possession of the unborn and deathless Self
of which body is only an instrument and a shadow.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 514)

A Very Tiny Serpent

There is a great difference between pushing back a thing simply because one doesn’t want it and changing the state of one’s consciousness which makes the thing totally foreign to one’s nature. Usually, when one has a movement one doesn’t want, one drives it away or pushes it back, but one doesn’t take the precaution of finding within oneself what has served and still serves as a support for this movement, the particular tendency, the fold of the consciousness which enables this thing to enter the consciousness. If, on the contrary, instead of simply making a movement of reprobation and rejection, one enters deeply into one’s vital consciousness and finds the support, that is, a kind of particular little vibration buried very deeply in a corner, often in such a dark corner that it is difficult to find it there; if one starts hunting it down, that is, if one goes within, concentrates, follows as it were the trail of this movement to its origin, one finds something like a very tiny serpent coiled up, something at times quite tiny, not bigger than a pea, but very black and sunk very deeply.

The Mother

The Great Adventure: Page 68