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12 November 1952 THE STEPS OF THE SOUL
The human individual is a very complex being: he is composed of innumerable elements, each one of which is an independent entity and has almost a personality. Not only so, the most contradictory elements are housed together. If there is a particular quality or capacity present, the very opposite of it, annulling it, as it were, will also be found along with it and embracing it. I have seen a man brave, courageous, heroic to the extreme, flinching from no danger, facing unperturbed the utmost peril, truly the bravest of the brave; and yet I have seen the same man cowering in abject terror, like the last of poltroons, in the presence of certain circumstances. I have seen a most generous man giving things away largely, freely, not counting any expenditure or sacrifice, without the least care or reservation; the same person I have also found to be the vilest of misers with respect to certain other considerations. Again, I have seen the most intelligent person, with a clear mind, full of light and understanding, easily comprehending the logic and implication of a topic; and yet I have seen him betraying the utmost stupidity of which even an ordinary man without education or intelligence would be incapable. These are not theoretical examples: I have come across such persons actually in life. The complexity arises not only in extension but also in depth. Man does not live on a single plane but on many planes at the same time. There is a scale of gradation in human consciousness: the higher one rises in the scale the greater the number of elements or personalities that one possesses. Whether one lives mostly or mainly on the physical or vital or mental plane or on any particular section of these planes or on the planes above and beyond them, there will be, accordingly, differences in the constitution or psycho-physical make-up of the individual personality. Page - 355 The higher one stands, the richer the personality, because it lives not only on its own normal level but also on all the levels that are below it and which it has transcended. The complete or integral man, some occultists say, possesses three hundred and sixty-five personalities; indeed it may be much more. The Vedas speak of the three and thirty-three and thirty-three hundred and thirty-three thousand gods that may be housed in the human vehicle − the basic three being evidently the triple status or world of Body, Life and Mind. What is the meaning of this self-contradiction, this division in man? To understand that, we must know and remember that each person represents a certain quality or capacity, a particular achievement to be embodied. How best can it be done? What is the way by which one can acquire a quality at its purest, highest and most perfect? It is by setting an opposition to it. That is how a power is increased and strengthened − by fighting against and overcoming all that weakens and contradicts it. The deficiencies with respect to a particular quality show you where you have to mend and reinforce it and in what way to improve it in order to make it perfectly perfect. It is the hammer that beats the weak and soft iron to transform it into hard steel. The preliminary discord is useful and needs to be utilised for a higher harmony. This is the secret of self-conflict in man. You are weakest precisely in that element which is destined to be your greatest asset. Each man has then a mission to fulfil, a role to play in the universe, a part he has been given to learn and take up in the cosmic Purpose, a part which he alone is capable of executing and none other. This he has to learn and acquire through life-experiences, that is to say, not in one life but in life after life. In fact, that is the meaning of the chain of lives that the individual has to pass through, namely, to acquire experiences and to gather from them the thread − the skein of qualities and attributes, powers and capacities − for the pattern of life he has to weave. Now, the inmost being, the true personality, the central Page - 356 consciousness of the evolving individual is his psychic being. It is, as it were, a very tiny spark of light lying in normal people far behind the life-experiences. In grown-up souls this psychic consciousness has an increased light − increased in intensity, volume and richness. Thus there are old souls and new souls. Old and ancient are those that have reached or are about to reach the fullness of perfection; they have passed through a long history of innumerable lives and developed the most complex and yet the most integrated personality. New souls are those that have just emerged or are now emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; they are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents related mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in coming into contact with the psychic consciousness − that is to say, is able to come under its influence − is taken up and lodged there: it remains in the psychic being as its living memory and permanent possession. It is such elements that form the basis, the groundwork upon which the structure of the integral and true personality is raised. The first thing to do then is to find out what it is that you are meant to realise, what is the role you have to play, your particular mission, and the capacity or quality you have to express. You have to discover that and also the thing or things that oppose and do not allow it to flower or come to full manifestation. In other words, you have to know yourself, recognise your soul or psychic being. For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life’s mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to do or that you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking Page - 357 or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, “I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for me.” Neither vanity and arrogance nor self-depreciation and false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge. If you are able to keep such an attitude, if you have this repose and quiet trust in your being and wait for what may be revealed to you, then something like this happens: you are, as it were, in a wood, dark and noiseless; you see in front of you merely a sheet of water, dark and still, hardly visible − a bit of a pond imbedded in the obscurity; and slowly upon it a moonbeam is cast and in the cool dim light emerges the calm liquid surface. That is how your secret truth of being will appear and present itself to you at your first contact with it: there you will see gradually reflected the true qualities of your being, the traits of your divine personality, what you really are and what you are meant to be. One who has thus known himself and possessed himself. conquering all opposition within himself, has by that very fact extended himself and his conquest, making it easier for others to make the same or a similar conquest. These are the pioneers or the elite who by a victorious campaign within themselves help others towards their victory. Page - 358
How can suffering be overcome?
The problem is not as simple as all that. The causes of suffering are innumerable and its quality also varies a great deal, although the origin of suffering is one and the same and comes from the initial action of an anti-divine will. To make this easier to understand, one can divide suffering into two distinct categories, although in practice they are very often mixed. The first is purely egoistic and comes from a feeling that one’s rights have been violated, that one has been deprived of one’s needs, offended, despoiled, betrayed, injured, etc. This whole category of suffering is clearly the result of hostile action and it not only opens the door in the consciousness to the influence of the adversary but is also one of his most powerful ways of acting in the world, the most powerful of all if in addition there comes its natural and spontaneous consequence: hatred and the desire for revenge in the strong, despair and the wish to die in the weak. The other category of suffering, whose initial cause is the pain of separation created by the adversary, is totally opposite in nature: it is the suffering that comes from divine compassion, the suffering of love that feels compassion for the world’s misery, whatever its origin, cause or effect. But this suffering, which is of a purely psychic character, contains no egoism, no self-pity; it is full of peace and strength and power of action, of faith in the future and the will for victory; it does not pity but consoles, it does not identify itself with the ignorant movement in others but cures and illumines it. It is obvious that in the purity of its essence, only that which is perfectly divine can feel that suffering; but partially, momentarily, like flashes of lightning behind the dark clouds of egoism, it appears in all who have a vast and generous heart. However, Page - 359 most often, in the individual consciousness it is mixed with that mean and petty self-pity which is the cause of depression and weakness. Nevertheless, when one is vigilant enough to refuse this mixture or at least to reduce it to a minimum, one soon realises that this divine compassion is based on a sublime and eternal joy which alone has the strength and the power to deliver the world from its ignorance and misery. And this suffering too will disappear from the universe only with the total disappearance of the adversary and all the effects of his action. Page - 360 MEMORY OF PAST LIVES
If one were to say things truly, one would have to say everything, in full detail. For among the innumerable experiences that I have had in the course of eighty years, many were of such a variety and apparently so contradictory that one might say: after all, everything is possible. So then, if I tell you something about past lives without presenting the thread running through everything, that would be opening the door to dogmatism. You will say one day, “Mother has said this, Mother has said that.” And that is how dogmas, alas, are made. Given then the multitude of experiences and the impossibility that I should pass my life in talking and writing, you must tell yourself that everything is possible and not be dogmatic. I may, however, give a few general indications. Only when one is consciously identified with one’s divine origin, can one in truth speak of a memory of past lives. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the progressive manifestation of the Spirit in the forms in which it dwells. When one reaches the summit of this manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers. But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind. Those who claim to have been such a baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place and such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past lives are not beautiful pictures in which you appear as a mighty lord in a castle or a victorious general at the head of an army − that is only romance. What remains is the memory of those instants when the psychic being emerged from the depths of your being and revealed itself to you − that is to say, the memory of those instants when you were wholly conscious. That growth of consciousness is progressively Page - 361 effectuated in the course of evolution, and the memory of past lives is generally limited to the critical moments of evolution, to the decisive turns that marked the progress of your consciousness. At the time when you live such moments of your life, you do not care at all about remembering that you were Mr. X, such a person, living at such a place and in such an epoch; it is not the memory of your civic status that remains. On the contrary, you lose all consciousness of these petty external things, accessories and perishables, so that you may be wholly in the flare of the soul revelation or of the divine contact. When you remember such instants of your past lives, the memory is so intense that it seems to be still very close, still living, and much more living than most of the ordinary memories of our present life. At times, in dreams, when you come into contact with certain planes of consciousness, you may have memories of such intensity, such vibrant colour, so to say, even more intense than the colours and things of the physical world. For these are the moments of true consciousness, and everything then puts on an extraordinary brilliance, everything is vibrant, everything is imbued with a quality that escapes the ordinary eye. These minutes of contact with the soul are often those that mark a decisive turn of our life, a forward step, a progress in consciousness, and that frequently corresponds with a crisis, an extremely intense situation when there comes a call in the whole being, a call so strong that the inner consciousness pierces the layers of unconsciousness covering it and is revealed all luminous on the surface. This call of the being, when very strong, can also bring about the descent of a divine emanation, an individuality, a divine aspect which joins with your individuality at a given moment in order to do a given work, win a battle, express one thing or another. The work done, the emanation very often withdraws. Then one may retain the memory of the circumstances that were around those minutes of revelation or inspiration: one sees again the scenery, the colour of the dress Page - 362 that one had put on, the colour of one’s own skin, the things about you at that time − all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you, reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times, with the help of these details you may reconstitute the age in which you lived or the action that you did, find out the country where you were; but it is very easy also to make a romance and take imagination for reality. Yet you must not believe that all memories of past lives are those of moments of great crisis, of important mission or of revelation. Some times they are moments very simple, transparent, when an integral, a perfect harmony of the being was expressed. And that may correspond to altogether insignificant external situations. Apart from the things that were in your immediate surrounding at that moment, apart from that moment of contact with your psychic being, nothing remains. Once the privileged moment passes, the psychic being plunges into an inner somnolence and the whole outer life melts into a grey monotony which does not leave any trace. Besides, it is almost the same phenomenon as what happens in the course of the life that you lead at present: apart from those exceptional moments when you are at the summit of your being, mental or vital or even physical, the rest of your life seems to melt into a kind of neutral colour which has no great interest, when it matters little whether you were at such a place instead of being at another, whether you did this thing or that. If you try to look at your life all at once, in order to gather, as it were, its essence, the twenty or thirty or forty years behind you, you will see rise up spontaneously two or three images which were the true moments of your life; the rest is effaced. A kind of spontaneous choice works in your consciousness and there is a tremendous elimination. This will give you a little idea of what happens in regard to past lives: the choice of a few select moments and an immense elimination. Page - 363 It is very true that the earliest lives are very rudimentary; very few things subsist out of that, scattered memories few and far between. But the more one progresses in consciousness, the more the psychic being is consciously associated with the outer activities; the memories grow in number and become more coherent and precise. But still, here also, the memory that remains is that of the contact with the soul and at times that of things which were associated with the psychic revelation − not the civic status or the changing scenes around. And this will explain to you why the so-called memories of past animal lives are the most fantastic: the divine spark in them is buried much too deep down to be able to come up consciously to the surface and be associated with the outer life. One must become a wholly conscious being, conscious in all its parts, totally united with one’s divine origin before one can truly say that one remembers his past lives. Page - 364 INNER REALISATION IS THE KEY TO OUTER REALISATION
When the adverse forces want to attack those who are around me and when they do not succeed in making them openly hostile to Sri Aurobindo’s work or in turning them against me personally, they proceed in the matter always in the same way, with the same argument: “You may have all the inner realisations you like,” they say, “the most beautiful experiences possible within the four walls of the Ashram, but on the outer plane your life is spoiled, wasted. There is an abyss that you will never fill between the inner experience and the concrete realisation in the world.” This is the number one argument of the adverse forces. I know it. For millions of years I have heard the same thing repeated and each time I have unmasked it. It is a falsehood − it is the falsehood. Everything that tends to establish a divorce between earth and the Spirit, is good for them, everything that separates the inner experience from the divine realisation in the world. But it is the contrary that is true: it is the inner realisation that is the key to the outer realisation. How can you expect to know the true thing which you have to realise in the world so long as you do not possess the truth of your being? Page - 365 THE ANTI-DIVINE
I have noticed one thing, that in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this [attack by adverse forces] is an excuse which people give to themselves. I have seen that practically almost all who write to me: “I am violently attacked by adverse forces”, give this as an excuse. It is because there are many things in their nature which do not want to surrender, so they put all the blame on the adverse forces. In reality I am turning more and more towards something where the role of the adverse forces will be reduced to that of an examiner; that is to say, they are there to test the sincerity of your spiritual seeking. These things have their reality in the action and for the work − and it is a great reality − but when you have gone beyond a certain region, all that reaches a point where it is no longer so distinct and clear-cut. In the occult world, or rather, if you look at the world from the occult point of view, these adverse forces are very real, their action is very real, completely concrete, and their attitude towards the divine realisation is positively hostile. But as soon as you pass beyond this domain and enter into the spiritual world where there is nothing other than the Divine, who is everything, and where there is nothing that is not divine, these “adverse forces” become a part of the total play and they can no longer be called adverse forces. It is only a posture that they have taken; to speak more exactly, it is only a posture that the Divine has taken in his play. This also forms part of the dualities of which Sri Aurobindo speaks in The Synthesis of Yoga, the dualities that are reabsorbed. I do not know if he has spoken of this particular one I do not think so − but it is the same thing; it is just a way of seeing. He has spoken of the dualities Personal-Impersonal, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti. There is one more: the Divine and the Anti-Divine. Page - 366 EATING THE FRUIT
A peach should ripen on the tree; it is a fruit that is to be plucked when the sun is there upon it. At the time when the sun falls upon it, you come, pluck it and bite into it. Then it is absolutely heavenly ! There are two fruits like this: the peach and the golden greengage. It is the same for both: you must take them warm from the tree, bite them, and you are filled with an Edenic taste. Each fruit should be eaten in a special way. Fundamentally, this is the symbol of earthly paradise and of the tree of Knowledge: in eating of the fruit of Knowledge, you lose your spontaneity of movement and you begin to objectify, to learn, to discuss; thus, when they had eaten of the fruit they became full of sin. I say each fruit should be eaten in its own way. A being living according to its own nature, its own truth, should spontaneously discover its own way of using things. When you live according to the truth of your being, you have no need to learn things, you do them spontaneously, according to the inner law. When you follow your nature spontaneously and sincerely, you are divine. As soon as you think, see yourself doing and begin to discuss, you are full of sin. It is man’s mental consciousness that has filled all Nature with the idea of sin and all the misery which it brings! Animals are not unhappy in the way we are, not at all, not at all, except, as Sri Aurobindo says, those that have been corrupted. The corrupted ones are those that live with men. Dogs have the sense of sin and guilt. It is because their whole aspiration is to become like man − man is god − and then, dissimulation, falsehood. Dogs do lie. Men admire that; they say, “Oh! How intelligent they are!” Page - 367 They have lost their divinity. The human species, in the spiral ascent, is truly at a point which is not pretty. But isn’t a dog more conscious than a tiger, more evolved, and higher in the spiral, that is to say, nearer to the Divine? To be conscious is not the point. Man is more evolved than the tiger, there is not the shadow of a doubt, but the tiger is more divine than man. You must not confuse things: the two things are quite different. You see, the Divine is everywhere, in everything. You should never forget that, not for a second should you forget it. He is everywhere, in everything; and unconsciously, but spontaneously and therefore sincerely, everything that is below the mental manifestation is divine without mixture, that is to say, spontaneously, by its very nature. It is man with his mind who has introduced the idea of guilt. Naturally he is much more conscious ! That is not to be disputed, it is well understood, because what we call consciousness (what “we” call, that is to say, what man calls consciousness) is the power to objectify and mentalise things. It is not the true consciousness, but it is what men call consciousness. So in this human way, it is understood that man is much more conscious than the animal. But with man comes sin and perversion, which do not exist outside the state that we call “conscious”, but which is not truly conscious, which simply consists in mentalising things, in having the capacity to objectify them. It is a curve of ascent, but that curve moves away from the Divine, and one must rise much higher to find again, naturally, a higher Divine, for it is a conscious Divine, whereas the others are divine without being conscious, spontaneously and instinctively. And our whole moral notion of good and bad, we have Page - 368 thrown all that upon the creation with our deformed and perverted consciousness. It is we who have invented it. We are the deforming intermediary between the purity of the animal and the divine purity of the gods. Page - 369 DO NOT WASTE ENERGY
Human beings do not know how to preserve energy. When something happens, an accident or an illness, they ask for help and a double or triple dose of energy is administered. They feel that they are receptive and they receive it. This energy is given for two reasons: to repair the disorder caused by the accident or illness, and to give a power for transformation in order to mend, to change what was the true cause of the illness or accident. Instead of utilising energy in that way, immediately, immediately they throw it out. They begin to move about, they begin to be active, they begin to work, they begin to speak, they begin… they feel themselves full of energy and throw everything out ! They can keep nothing. Then naturally, since the energy was not meant to be wasted like that, but for an inner use, they fall quite flat. And this is universal. They do not know, they do not know how to make this movement: to go within, to utilise the energy − not to keep it, it cannot be kept − to utilise it to mend the damage done to the body and to go deep down to find out the reason for the accident or the malady, and there, to change that into an aspiration, an inner transformation. Instead of this, people begin immediately to chatter, to move about, to act, to do this, to do that ! Indeed, the great majority of human beings feel that they are alive only when they waste energy; otherwise it does not look like life. Not to waste energy means to utilise it for the purposes for which it was given. If the energy is given for transformation, for the sublimation of the being, it must be used for that; if the energy is given to set right something that has been disorganised in the body, it must be used for that. Page - 370 Naturally, if someone is given a special work and if he is given the energy to do that work, it is all right, it is used for its own purposes, and it was given for that. As soon as a man feels energetic, he rushes immediately into action. Or else, those who have not got the sense to do something useful, gossip. Worse still, those who have no control over themselves become intolerant and begin to dispute ! If their will is contradicted, they feel themselves full of energy and take it as holy wrath ! Page - 371
Why, and through what mechanism, does mental formulation dissipate an experience, cause it to lose the major part of its power for action on the consciousness? If, for example, you want to get rid of a wrong movement and, as the result of a grace, the force is sent out for this purpose, this force begins to act on the consciousness. Then, if you draw it towards you, so to speak, in order to formulate it, naturally you decentralise it, disperse and dissipate it. But this is not all: the simple fact of speaking to another person opens you automatically to whatever may come from him; an interchange always occurs. In this way his curiosity, his obscurity, his good-will and also at times his ill-will intervenes, modifies, deforms. On the other hand, if you want to speak of your experience to your Guru and he agrees to listen to you, it means that he adds his force, his knowledge and his experience to the working of the force and he helps to bring about the result. But doesn’t the harm caused by the formulation still exist? Yes, but he repairs it. Page - 372 THE SENSE OF BEAUTY
To do this yoga, one must have, at least a little, the sense of beauty. If one does not, one misses one of the most important aspects of the physical world. There is this beauty, this dignity of soul − a thing about which I am very sensitive. It is a thing that moves me and evokes in me a great respect always. Yes, this beauty of soul that is visible in the face, this kind of dignity, this harmony of integral realisation. When the soul becomes visible in the physical, it gives this dignity, this beauty, this majesty, the majesty that comes from one’s being the Tabernacle. Then, even things that have no particular beauty put on a sense of eternal beauty, of it the eternal beauty. I have seen in this way faces that pass from one extreme to the other in a flash. Someone has this kind of beauty and harmony, this sense of divine dignity in the body; then suddenly there comes the perception of an obstacle, a difficulty, and the sense of fault, of indignity − and then, a sudden deformation in the appearance, a kind of decomposition of the features ! And yet it is the same face. It was like a flash of lightning, and it was frightful. That kind of hideousness of torment and degradation − what has been translated in religions as “the torment of sin” − that gives you a face indeed ! Even features that are beautiful in themselves become horrible. And it was the same features, the same person. Then I saw how horrible the sense of sin is, how much it belongs to the world of falsehood. Page - 373 THE WORSHIP OF THE SUPREME IN MATTER
In all religious and particularly in occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in every detail; each word uttered, each gesture made has its importance and the least infraction of the rule, the least mistake committed can have disastrous consequences. It is the same with the material life, and if one were initiated into the true way of living, one would be able to transform physical existence. If the body is considered as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for example, becomes the initiatory ritual for service of the temple and doctors of all categories are the priests who officiate in the different rituals of the worship. Thus, medicine is truly a priesthood and should be treated as such. The same thing may be said of physical culture and of all the sciences dealing with the body and its working. And if the material universe is regarded as the external robe and manifestation of the Supreme, then it can be said, generally, that all the physical sciences are rituals of worship. So we always come back to the same thing: the absolute necessity of a perfect sincerity, a perfect honesty, and a sense of the dignity of what one does, so that one does it as it should be done. If one could know all the details truly, perfectly, all the details of the ceremony of life, of the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderful − to know and not to make more mistakes, never make any more mistakes. One performs the ceremony with the perfection of an initiation. Page - 374 |