Peace and Calm Workshop

Introduction | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Workshop 4 - April 1st, 2001

You should realise that while quiet surroundings are desirable, the true quiet is within and no other will give the condition want.

(The Foundation of Sadhana, Letters on Yoga).

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.23, p651.

The inner spiritual progress does not depend on outer conditions so much as in the same 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 of 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 learned in the Path. To do otherwise is to encourage the instability of consciousness, the difficulty of keeping 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 outward 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.

(The Foundation of Sadhana, Letters on Yoga).

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.23, p650-651.

That is the right thing that must happen always when Peace or anything else rises. The psychic reply must become habitual pointing out that Peace is neither right nor helpful and then the being must draw back from these outward things and take its stand in its inner self, detach from all these things and people. It is this detachment that is the first thing that must be gained by the sadhak — he must cease to live in these outwards things and live in his inner being. The more that is done the more there is a release and peacefulness.

Afterwards when one is secure in this inner being, the right thing to do, the right way to deal with men and things will begin to come.

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.24, p1411.

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