REJECTION

In the Integral Yoga

Part – I

A compilation from the works of

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

REJECTION

In the Integral Yoga

Part – I

© All writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

are copyright of Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

and have been reproduced here with their kind permission.

Cover Painting - Usha Patel (Ashram Artist)

©2014 AuroPublications, Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry

www.aurosociety.org

Year of Publication 2014

“All that denies must be torn out and slain

And crushed the many longings for whose sake

We lose the One for whom our lives were made.”

(SAVITRI p: 316) (SABCL 28: 316) (CWSA 33: 316)

“In the texture of our bound humanity

He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb

Of our inconscient and unseeing base,

The stubborn mute rejection in life’s depths,

The ignorant No in the origin of things. …

A shadowy unity with a vanished past

Treasured in an old-world frame was lurking there,

Secret, unnoted by the illumined mind,

And in subconscious whispers and in dream

Still murmured at the mind’s and spirit’s choice.

Its treacherous elements spread like slippery grains

Hoping the incoming Truth might stumble and fall, …

This now he willed to discover and exile,

The element in him betraying God.

All Nature’s recondite spaces were stripped bare,

All her dim crypts and corners searched with fire

Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts

Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary

Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.

All seemed to have perished that was undivine:

Yet some minutest dissident might escape

And still a centre lurk of the blind force.

For the Inconscient too is infinite;

The more its abysses we insist to sound,

The more it stretches, stretches endlessly.

Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth

He tore desire up from its bleeding roots

And offered to the gods the vacant place.

Thus could he bear the touch immaculate.

A last and mightiest transformation came.”

(SAVITRI) (CWSA 33: 317-318)

Foreword

All over the world, there is a growing interest in Spirituality and Yoga.  There is a search for the true meaning and purpose of life, for deeper solutions to the problems which confront us all, and how we can contribute to the evolutionary change and progress.

In this search, more and more persons are turning to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for guidance and enlightenment.  But in their voluminous literature, they do not know where to find the answers they are looking for.

In this regard the Mother has said,

“It is not by books that Sri Aurobindo ought to be studied but by subjects—what he has said on the Divine, on Unity, on religion, on evolution, on education, on self perfection, on supermind, etc., etc.” (CWM 12: 206)

On another occasion she said:

“If you want to know what Sri Aurobindo has said on a given subject, you must at least read all he has written on that subject. You will then see that he seems to have said the most contradictory things. But when one has read everything and understood a little, one sees that all the contradictions complement one another and are organised and unified in an integral synthesis.” (CWM 16: 309-310)

While there are several compilations which are now available, many sincere spiritual seekers have felt the need of Comprehensive Compilations from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on specific subjects, where the contents are further organised into sub-topics, so that one can get all that one is looking for at one place.

These books are an effort to fulfill this need and thus help spiritual seekers in their journey and sadhana.  We hope these compilations will help us to get a greater mental clarity about a subject so that we can channel our efforts in the right direction. For Sri Aurobindo has written:

“It is always better to make an effort in the right direction; even if one fails the effort bears some result and is never lost.” (CWSA 29: 87)

We will be glad to get suggestions and feedback from the readers.

Vijay

Compiler’s Note

This work is offered at the feet of the master the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. It is offered not only because they are our Master, our Guru, not only because the Yoga demands all offerings be made to the Mother, but because they are offered also with a sense of gratitude for they having written down so much to help us, to guide us at every stage, and not leaving a vacuum after their physical absence. We have to only make an effort to go through their work, if possible subject wise, to get the right guidance to practice the Integral Yoga.

I am also thankful to Manoj da for willingly giving permission to use the quotations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and the painting of Usha Patel for the cover. The copyrights of both rest with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust.

I am also thankful for the motivation and encouragement given by Vijaybhai throughout to bring these comprehensive compilations.

I am thankful to all the wonderful team members of Sri Aurobindo Society for their effort to bring out all the three pdf books. I thank Archana Udaykumar who has been doing meticulous proof reading but even more encouraging is her enthusiasm for reading the Master’s words and this gave me the confidence that there will be more devotees who will enjoy reading the complete compilation. I am also thankful to Vilasani and Rathi Rekha for doing the proof reading so quickly. I am thankful to Vivechana Saraf for doing the covers of the books so promptly.

I am thankful to Shivakumar for all his positive suggestions such as changing the fonts to Tahoma for easier reading and reducing the cover space for easy downloading. To hasten the release of the book he worked on Sundays and late nights and always promptly responded to all my queries.

I am greatly thankful to Shonar, who is in charge of bringing out the e-books of of AuroPublications, for her immense support. She too would reply promptly and work late nights and Sundays to see that we bring out the book in time. Her insistence on doing the proof reading helped me to bring out a more thorough book.

I am extremely thankful to the Mother for giving me this wonderful team to work with and who will be a great help in bringing out other comprehensive compilations in future.

Compiler: Jamshed M. Mavalwalla

Preface

The personal effort required in the Integral Yoga is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender. After presenting the compilation on Surrender and Aspiration, we now present you with the third compilation, ‘Rejection in the Integral Yoga – Part I’.

If the aspiration is intense and surrender complete then realisation and the goal of Yoga can be achieved easily and in a short period. But the difficulty is that all that stands in the way of the yoga has to be rejected to purify the being. And this rejection takes a very long time. In this book, ‘Rejection in the Integral Yoga, Part I’, we have taken quotations on ‘Rejection’ in general. In the next part we intend to take up quotations on specific areas of rejection like ‘Rejection of the movements of the lower nature’; ‘Rejection of mind’s ideas and opinion’; ‘Rejection of desires’; ‘Sexual relation are absolutely forbidden in the sadhana’; etc, etc.

As in actual practice it is rejection that takes a longer time, so even the quotations on rejection – general and specific - are far more than quotations on Surrender and Aspiration. So there is a need for more than one book on Rejection.  As one proceeds with the reading of this book one may realise that lot of perseverance will be needed to complete the process of rejection. Not to dishearten the reader and to motivate to continue the process of rejection, I have included a new section, ‘Encouraging words to continue with rejection till you succeed’.

The importance of rejection in the Integral Yoga is immense. The Mother does caution us that if we do not make sincere efforts in rejection then at the end of our life, we may suddenly feel, that realisation — which is the aim of yoga — will be perhaps for another time. This is something frightful for we may have to wait many thousands of years to find it once again. So one must start rejecting in this present life and not miss the opportunity here. If sincere rejection is not done then if we are on the point of attaining a realisation, on the point of touching a light, having an illumination, we will suddenly feel something pulling us back, suffocating the realisation.

All that needs to be rejected is thrown out of the being for purification. The latter part of this book consists of quotation on purity and purification. In the Integral Yoga purity means something more than what purity is understood in normal terms. If the rejection is not completely done and purification not achieved than there are dangers in Yoga. So rejection and purification are the important parts of the Integral Yoga. The painting on the cover of this book indicates rejection and purification.

In order to facilitate clear understanding, the following methods have been utilised. The quotations have been classified into captioned sections. There are 28 sections written in Roman numerals (I, II, III, IV, V, etc).  Under each section there are different sub sections written as 1, 2, & 3, for example: I – 1. I - 2. In case there are more quotations in each sub section then it is subdivided as IV – 4. a. and  IV – 4. b.

The quotations in this compilation are taken from the volumes of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA), Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL) and The Collected Works of The Mother (CWM). Each quotation is followed by the book, volume number and page number from where it has been taken.

The section headings, and sub headings are given by the compiler to bring mental clarity on the selected subject. Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s words are instilled with a consciousness infinitely higher than our own which can serve to elevate the consciousness of the reader, thereby inducing the aspiration to reject all that comes in the way of yoga, and help us to aspire intensely and complete our surrender to the Mother. I pray that this book may help the readers to make a very sincere effort to reject the obstacles in the Yoga and Her Grace will complete the process for each one of us.

Jamshed M. Mavalwalla.

Contents

I - What is Rejection in the Yoga

II - What is to be rejected in Yoga

III - Why Rejection is necessary in Yoga

IV - Why do we not want to Reject

V - How to Reject – Methods to follow in Rejection

VI - How to break up the whole formation of the Past in Yoga

VII – The procedure for the things that are thrown up by Rejection

VIII - Encouraging words to continue with rejection till you succeed

IX - At the end of life you feel that realisation will be for another time, because we have not done rejection

X - Rejecting Bad Thoughts

XI - Other Important Quotations on Rejection

XII - Rejection and Purification

XIII - What does purity and purification mean in Integral Yoga?

XIV - What is ordinarily called purity but is not purity in Yoga

XV – The objective of Purification

XVI - What needs to be purified?

XVII - General Methods of Purification

XVIII - Spiritual experience without purification has serious dangers

XIX - Pure Mind and Pure Vital

XX - Integral Purity

XXI - Psychic and Purification

XXII – (A) - The power of purification dissolves all bad will

XXII - (B) - No hostile being or force can resist power of purification if handled with goodwill and sincerity

“The Wizard of Oz”

XXIII - Purity is one of the innumerable ways of approaching the Divine

XXIV – Flame of Agni is flame of purification

XXV - The purified understanding is the most potent cleanser of one’s turbid and disordered being

XXVI – Purification of the heart

XXVII – Purification of the Lower Mentality

XXVIII - Other Quotations on Purification

I - What is Rejection in the Yoga

I - 1.  “The principle of the Yoga is rejection—throwing out of the being.” (CWSA 29: 65)

I - 2. “Unfortunately, there is the resistance, a very obscure and obstinate resistance. That necessitates a “negative” element in the yoga, an element of rejection of things that stand in the way and of pressure upon those forms that are crude and useless to disappear, on those that are useful but imperfect or have been perverted to attain or to recover their true movement.” (CWSA 29: 386)

I - 3. a. “The sadhana of this Yoga … proceed … by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, … and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things.” (CWSA 29: 20)

I - 3. b. “Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the Sadhana —accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for.” (SABCL 24: 1167) (CWSA 32:205)

I - 4. “Yes, obviously, the power to say “No” is indispensable in life and still more so in sadhana. It is the power of rejection put into the speech.” (SABCL 24: 1557)

II - What is to be rejected in Yoga

II - 1. “But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadahaka remains necessary.

The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, — … rejection of the movements of the lower nature …” (SABCL 25: 6-7) (CWSA 32: 6)

II - 2. “… —rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, …” (SABCL 25: 6-7) (CWSA 32: 6)

II - 3. “… —rejection of the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, …” (SABCL 25: 6-7) (CWSA 32: 6)

II - 4. “… —rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine; …” (SABCL 25: 6-7) (CWSA 32: 6)

II - 5. “There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.” (SABCL 25: 2) (CWSA 32: 3)

II - 6. “In this Yoga . . . there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others. . . . Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation . . .” (CWSA 35: 135)

II - 7. “These things anger, jealousy, desire are the very stuff of the ordinary human vital consciousness. They could not be changed if there were not a deeper consciousness within which is of quite another character. … Of course we want them also to use their will and reject the desires and wrong movements of the vital, for by doing that the emergence of the true consciousness becomes possible.

But rejection alone cannot succeed; it is by rejection and by inner experience and growth that it (change of nature) is done.” (SABCL 23: 907)

II - 8. a. “To be entirely sincere means to desire the divine Truth only, to surrender yourself more and more to the Divine Mother, to reject all personal demand and desire other than this one aspiration, to offer every action in life to the Divine and do it as the work given without bringing in the ego. This is the basis of the divine life." (CWSA 29: 51)

II - 8. b. “The way to realise is through a quiet mind and a vital free from desires. To reject the desires and demands of the vital and to quiet the excessive activity of the mind, so that a true consciousness and spiritual perception and knowledge may take the place of the mind’s activity, are the requisite conditions of the Yoga.” (CWSA 29: 44)

II - 9. “Q: What do I need to develop most? And what do I need to reject most?

A: Develop—sincerity (that is, an integral adhesion to the Divine’s way).

Reject—the pull of the old human habits.” 25 February 1970 (CWM 14: 67)

II - 10. “The effort should be to reject the restlessness and its suggestions altogether.” (CWSA 29: 65)

II - 11. “The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. … There must be in no part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses.” (The Mother, SABCL 25: 2) (CWSA 32: 3)

II - 12. a. “In the practice of Yoga, what you aim at can only come by the opening of the being to the Mother’s force and the persistent rejection of all egoism and demand and desire, all motives except the aspiration for the Divine Truth.” (CWSA 29: 108)

II - 12. b. “All these egoistic ideas, if indulged, can only aggrandise the ego, spoil the sadhana and lead to serious spiritual dangers. They should be rejected altogether.” (CWSA 29: 22)

{….wrong ideas that you seem to have…ought to be thrown away by every sadhak: — ‘the object of Yoga is not to become “like” Sri Aurobindo or the Mother’, — ‘the object of Yoga is not to get power or to be more powerful than others or to have great siddhis or to do great or wonderful or miraculous things’, — ‘the object of Yoga is not to be a great Yogi or a superman’, — ‘to talk about the supramental and think of bringing it down in yourself is the most dangerous of all.’}  (CWSA 29: 21-22)

II - 12. c. “All that flatters the ego or feeds it should be rejected.” (CWSA 35: 551)

II - 13. “It is personal and egoistic feeling that has to be thrown away; hatred and vital ill-will have to be rejected.” (CWSA 29: 132) (SABCL 23: 666)

II - 14. a. “You must realise that these moods are attacks which should be rejected at once—for they repose on nothing but suggestions of self-distrust and incapacity which have no meaning, since it is by the Grace of the Divine and the aid of a Force greater than your own, not by personal capacity and worth that you can attain the goal of the sadhana.” (CWSA 29: 32)

II - 14. b. “Fitness for Yoga is a very relative term—the real fitness comes by the soul’s call and the power to open oneself to the Divine. If you have that, you have the fitness, and your past actions cannot stand in the way: the past cannot bind the future. Of course, you have to finish with it, reject it and turn into the new ways—otherwise the past remains the present. But that is the question of the will in you and the soul’s call. If you are faithful to your soul’s call there is no reason why you should not be able to do Yoga. All that you have to do is to keep your aspiration and not lose the inner connection that has been made—then the Mother’s thought and the help will be with you and you will find your way.” (CWSA 29: 33)

II - 15. "It is this that the adverse attacks which began when you were on the threshold of the inner experience—as so often happens in the Yoga—try constantly to fix in your brain. They want to have a fixed mental formation there, so that whenever you make the attempt there will be in the physical mind an expectation of difficulty, a dwelling on the idea of difficulty and unsuccess and incapacity, if not always in the front of the mind, yet at the back and by that they hope to prevent the experience from coming. It is these mental formations that you must reject, for they are a much greater obstacle than the vital failings to which you give such an exaggerated importance. It is not a fact that you have not had experiences—you had them but you did not give them their full value, because you were expecting something else.” (CWSA 29: 93-94)

II - 16. “Doubts rise in all, they are natural to the human physical mind—reject them.” (CWSA 29: 111)

II - 17. “Spiritual aims and methods are not easy or natural (e.g. as quarrelling, sex-indulgence, greed, indolence, acquiescence in all imperfections are easy and natural) and if people become disciples, they are supposed to follow spiritual aims and endeavours, however hard and above ordinary nature, and not the things that are easy and natural.” 3 May 1937 (CWSA 35: 461)

II - 18. “To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire. The more one gives oneself, the more the power to receive will grow. But for that all impatience and revolt must go; all suggestions of not getting, not being helped, not being loved, going away, of abandoning life or the spiritual endeavour must be rejected.” (CWSA 29: 345)

II - 19. “All falsehood must be rejected from the speech, thought and action and all ostentation, arrogance and insolence.” (SABCL 24: 1317) (CWSA 32:383)

“But everything that brings down the consciousness is an obstacle in one’s progress. … (CWM 7: 294-296)

III - Why Rejection is necessary in Yoga

III - 1. “And since Yoga is in its essence a turning away from the ordinary material and animal life led by most men or from the more mental but still limited way of living followed by the few to a greater spiritual life, to the way divine, every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contradiction of our aim and our self-dedication.” (SABCL 20: 65) (CWSA 23: 71)

III - 2. “On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress. It is the difficulty of this wholesale conversion that is the source of all the stumblings in the path of Yoga. For our entire nature and its environment, all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth and work against the whole-heartedness of our endeavour. In a certain sense we are nothing but a complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations,—an amalgam of many small self-repeating forces with a few major vibrations.” (SABCL 20: 65-66) (CWSA 23: 71-72)

III - 3. “If there were not a resistance in vital human nature, a pressure of forces adverse to the change, forces which delight in imperfection and even in perversion, this change would effect itself without difficulty by a natural and painless flowering …

Unfortunately, there is the resistance, a very obscure and obstinate resistance. That necessitates a “negative” element in the yoga, an element of rejection of things that stand in the way and of pressure upon those forms that are crude and useless to disappear, on those that are useful but imperfect or have been perverted to retain or to recover their true movement. To the vital this pressure is painful, first because it is obscure and does not understand and, secondly, because there are parts of it that want to be left to their crude motions and not to change. That is why the intervention of a psychic attitude is so helpful. …

At the same time, it is not from the negative part of the movement that you have to judge the Yoga, but from its positive side; for the negative part is temporary and transitional and will disappear, the positive alone counts for the ideal and for the future.” (SABCL 22: 125-126) (CWSA 29: 386-387)

III - 4. “As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must always be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially effective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine Shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible.” (SABCL 20: 80) (CWSA 23: 86)

III - 5. “All interference from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent, and it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and always repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the Truth as it grows in our parts; for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light, Purity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn rejection of all that is contrary to it, inferior or incompatible.” (SABCL 20: 80) (CWSA 23: 86-87)

III - 6. “Even with the lower nature of man, though here we are naturally led to suppose that compulsion is the only remedy, the spiritual aim will seek for a free self-rule and development from within rather than a repression of his dynamic and vital being from without. All experience shows that man must be given a certain freedom to stumble in action as well as to err in knowledge so long as he does not get from within himself his freedom from wrong movement and error; otherwise he cannot grow.” (CWSA 25: 230)

III - 7. “Attacks from adverse forces are inevitable: you have to take them as tests on your way and go courageously through the ordeal. The struggle may be hard, but when you come out of it, you have gained something, you have advanced a step. There is even a necessity for the existence of the hostile forces. They make your determination stronger, your aspiration clearer.

It is true, however, that they exist because you gave them reason to exist. So long as there is something in you which answers to them, their intervention is perfectly legitimate. If nothing in you responded, if they had no hold upon any part of your nature, they would retire and leave you. In any case, they need not stop or hamper your spiritual progress.

The only way to fail in your battle with the hostile forces is not to have a true confidence in the divine help. Sincerity in the aspiration always brings down the required succour. A quiet call, a conviction that in this ascension towards the realisation you are never walking all alone and a faith that whenever help is needed it is there, will lead you through, easily and securely.” (CWM 3: 34)

III - 8. “But the prolongation of the difficulty and its acuteness come from the fact that there are Forces in Nature, not personal or individual but universal, which live upon these movements and through them have long controlled the individual nature. These do not want to lose their rule and so when these movements are thrown out, they throw them back on the sadhak in strong waves or with great violence. Or they create in the vital a great depression, discouragement, despair—that is their favourite weapon—because it is losing its former field of desires and has not yet in any certainty something that would replace it, the assured continuous psychic or spiritual condition or experience. To prevent that is the whole effort of these Forces. So they create these upheavals and the vital admits them because of its own habit of response to the lower Forces. At the same time they put in suggestions to the mind so as to make it also accept the disturbance, discouragement and depression. That is what I meant by saying that these are attacks from outside and must be rejected. If they cannot be rejected altogether, yet one must try to keep a part of the mind conscious which will refuse to admit the suggestions or share in the depression and the trouble,—which will say firmly “I know what this is and I know that it will pass and I can resume my way to the goal which nothing can prevent me from reaching, since my soul's will is and will always be for that.” You have to reach the point where you can do that always; then the power of the Forces to disturb will begin to diminish and fall away.

Our Force is there with you and will not fail to support and strengthen you. The suggestion that we are indifferent is obviously nothing but a suggestion intended to help and fortify the depression. As such you should regard it and not accept it as true or as your own thought; for it could not possibly be true. Your success in reaching peace and light is as much our concern as yours and even more so.”  (SABCL 24: 1756)

III - 9. “Q: Sweet Mother, what does “sincerity” mean, exactly?

A: There are several degrees of sincerity.

The most elementary degree is not to say one thing and think another, claim one thing and want another. For example, what happens quite often: to say, “I want to make progress, and I want to get rid of my defects” and, at the same time, to cherish one’s defects in the consciousness and take great care to hide them so that nobody intervenes and sends them off. This indeed is a very common phenomenon. This is already the second degree. The first degree, you see, is when someone claims, for example, to have a very great aspiration and to want the spiritual life and, at the same time, does completely... how to put it?... shamelessly, things which are most contradictory to the spiritual life. This is indeed a degree of sincerity, rather of insincerity, which is most obvious.

But there is a second degree which I have just described to you, which is like this: there is one part of the being which has an aspiration and says, even thinks, even feels that it would very much like to get rid of defects, imperfections; and then, at the same time, other parts which hide these defects and imperfections very carefully so as not to be compelled to expose them and get over them. This is very common.

And finally, if we go far enough, if we push the description far enough, so long as there is a part of the being which contradicts the central aspiration for the Divine, one is not perfectly sincere. That is to say, a perfect sincerity is something extremely rare. And most commonly, very very frequently, when there are things in one’s nature which one does not like, one takes the greatest care to hide them from oneself, one finds favourable explanations or simply makes a little movement, like this (gesture). You have noticed that when things move like this you can’t see them clearly. Well, where the defect is seated, there is a kind of vibration which does this, and so your sight is not clear, you no longer see your defects. And this is automatic. Well, all these are insincerities.

And perfect sincerity comes when at the centre of the being there is the consciousness of the divine Presence, the consciousness of the divine Will, and when the entire being, like a luminous, clear, transparent whole, expresses this in all its details. This indeed is true sincerity.

When, at any moment, whatever may happen, the being has given itself to the Divine and wants only the divine Will, when, no matter what is going on in the being, at any moment whatever, always, the whole being in perfect unanimity can say to the Divine and feels for the Divine, “Let Thy Will be done”, when it is spontaneous, total, integral, then you are sincere. But until this is established, it is a mixed sincerity, more or less mixed, right up to the point where one is not at all sincere.” (CWM 6: 397-398)

III - 10. “For there is one part of the being which has an aspiration, there is one part of the being which gives itself, and there are other parts—sometimes a small part, some times a big one which hides nicely, right at the bottom, and keeps absolutely quiet so that it may not be found out, but which resists with all its might, so as not to change.

And so one wonders... with, “Oh, I had such a beautiful aspiration, I had so much goodwill, I had such a great desire to change, and then, see, I cannot! Why?” Then, of course, your mental arrogance comes in and says, “I didn’t get the response I deserved, the divine Grace doesn’t help me, and I am left all alone to shift for myself”, etc., etc.

It is not that. It is that hidden somewhere there is a tiny something which is well coiled up, in there, doubled up, turned in upon itself and well hidden, right at the bottom, as at the bottom of a box, which refuses to stir. (Mother speaks very softly.) So when the effort, the aspiration wane, die down, this springs up like that, gently, and then it wants to impose its will and it makes you do exactly what you did not want to do, what you had decided you would not do, and which you do without knowing how or why! Because that thing was there, it had its turn—for small things, big things, for the details, even for the direction of life.

There are people who see clearly, who know so well what they ought to do, and who feel that they can’t.... They don’t know why. It is nothing else but that. There is a little spot which doesn’t want to change and this little spot awaits its hour. And the day it is allowed, through laxity, fatigue, somnolence, through a little inertia, allowed to show itself, it will show itself with all concentrated, accumulated energy, and will make you do, will make you say, make you feel, make you act ex-act-ly contrary to what you had decided to do! And you will stand there: “Ah, how discouraging this is!...” Then some people say, “Fate!” They think it is their fate. It is not fate, it is themselves!... It is that they don’t have, haven’t used, the light, the searchlight. They have not turned the searchlight into the small hidden corners of their being, they haven’t discovered what was well hidden. They have left it there, and then have done this (Mother turns away her head) so as not to see it. How many times one suddenly feels one is on the point of catching something, “Hup!” It hurts a little.... It is troublesome.... So one thinks of something else, and that’s all! The opportunity has gone. One must wait for another occasion, again commit a few stupidities, before being able to find an opportunity to catch the thing by the tail, like this, or by the ear or the nose, and hold it firmly and say, “No! You won’t hide any longer now, I see you as you are, and you must either get out or change!” (CWM 6: 242 - 243)

III - 11.

“All that denies must be torn out and slain

And crushed the many longings for whose sake

We lose the One for whom our lives were made.”

(SAVITRI p: 316) (SABCL 28: 316) (CWSA 33: 316)

III - 12. “For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it.” (CWM 12: 3)

III - 13. “But in the history of the universe—one can even say in the history of the earth, to limit the problem to our little planet—I think everything that exists had its necessity and importance at a given moment. And it is as one advances that these things are rejected or replaced by others which belong to the future instead of the past. So, of things which have no further purpose one says, “They are bad”, because one tries to find within oneself a lever to push them out, to break with the habit. But perhaps at one time they were not bad, and other things were.” (CWM 8: 5)

III - 14. “For instance, if you have done something you regret having done, if that has unhappy consequences which disturb things, and several people are implicated, you do not know the reactions of the others, but you yourself wish that what has been done may take a turn for the best, and that if there is a mistake, it may be understood, and that no matter what the mistake, this may be for you an opportunity for a greater progress, a greater discipline, a new ascent towards the Divine, a door open on a future that you want to be more clear and true and intense; so all this is gathered here (pointing to the heart) like a force, and then it surges up and rises in a great movement of ascent, and at times without the shadow of a formulation, without words, without expression, but like a springing flame.” (CWM 5: 140-141)

III - 15. “That is well understood. It is not enough to have a positive movement, there must also be the negative movement of rejection. For you cannot attain a stable transformation as long as you harbour in your being elements which oppose it. If you keep obscurities within you, they may for a time remain silent and immobile, so well that you attach no importance to them, and one day they will wake up again and your transformation won’t be able to resist them. Not only is the positive movement of selfgiving necessary but also the negative movement of rejection of everything in you that opposes this giving. You must not leave things “like that”, buried somewhere, in such a way that at the first opportunity they wake up and undo all your work. There are parts of the being which know very well how to do this, there are elements of the vital which are extraordinary from this point of view: they keep quiet, hide in a corner, remain so absolutely silent and motionless that you think they don’t exist; so you are no longer on your guard, you are satisfied with your transformation and your surrender, you think everything is going well, and then, suddenly, one fine day, without warning, the thing jumps up like a jack-in-the-box and makes you commit all the stupidities in the world. And it is the stronger for having remained repressed—repressed and closed tight in a corner—it has remained as though buried so as not to draw your attention, it has kept very, very quiet, and the moment you are not expecting it, it springs up and you tell yourself, “Oh! What was the good of all my transformation?” That thing was there, and so it happened. It is just like that, these things remain there and hide themselves so well, that if you do not go looking for them with a well-lit lantern, you will not know they are there till the day they come out and demolish all your work in one minute.” (CWM 4: 358)

III - 16. “If there is too much egoism in the nature of the seeker or a strong passion or an excessive ambition, vanity or other dominating weakness, or an obscurity of the mind or a vacillating will or a weakness of the life-force or an unsteadiness in it or want of balance, he is likely to be seized on through these deficiencies and to be frustrated or to deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past spiritual experience and have been met by imposing the necessity of initiation, of discipline, of methods of purification and testing by ordeal, of an entire submission to the directions of the path-finder or path-leader, one who has realised the Truth and himself possesses and is able to communicate the light, the experience, a guide who is strong to take by the hand and carry over difficult passages as well as to instruct and point out the way.” (SABCL 19: 905) (CWSA 22: 939)

III - 17. “Naturally, without rejection nothing can be done. And in hard periods or moments concentration on the difficulties is inevitable. Also in the early stages one has often to do a great amount of clearance work so that the road can be followed at all.” 29 April 1935 (CWSA 35: 125)

III - 18. “Keep yourself open to the Mother, remember her always and let her Force work in you, rejecting all other influences—that is the rule for Yoga.” (CWSA 29: 109)

III - 19. “It will not do to say—“Yesterday I determined this time to give myself entirely to the Mother, and look it is not done, on the contrary all the old opposite things turn up once more; so there is nothing to do but to proclaim myself unfit and give up the Yoga.” Of course when you come to the point where you make a resolution of that kind, immediately all that stands in the way does rise up—it invariably happens. The thing to be done is to stand back, observe and reject, not to allow these things to get hold of you, to keep your central will separate from them and call in the Mother’s Force to meet them. If one does get involved as often happens, then to get disinvolved as soon as possible and go forward again. That is what everybody, every Yogin does— to be depressed because one cannot do everything in a rush is quite contrary to the truth of the matter. A stumble does not mean that one is unfit, nor does prolonged difficulty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible.” (CWSA 29: 113)

III - 20. “The lower Nature, that which we know and are and must remain so long as the faith in us is not changed, acts through limitation and division, is of the nature of Ignorance and culminates in the life of the ego; but the higher Nature, that to which we aspire, acts by unification and transcendence of limitation, is of the nature of Knowledge and culminates in the life divine. The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher,—the ordinary view-point,—or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.” (CWSA 23: 44-45)

III - 21. “These things rise because either they are there in the conscious part of the being as habits of the nature or they are there lying concealed and able to rise at any moment or they are suggestions from the general or universal Nature outside to which the personal being makes a response. In any case they rise in order that they may be met and cast out and finally rejected so that they may trouble the nature no longer.” (SABCL 24: 1693)

III - 22. “In the ordinary life, people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or wishes to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard of morality or rule of conduct. Here on the contrary as in all spiritual life, the conquest and complete mastery of these things is demanded. That is why the struggle is more felt, not because these things rise more strongly in sadhaks than in ordinary men, but because of the intensity of the struggle between the spiritual mind which demands control and the vital movements which rebel and wish to continue in the new as they did in the old life. As for the idea that the sadhana raises up things of the kind, the only truth in that is this that, first, there are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realising what is the force that is moving the action—thus things that are done under the plea of altruism, philanthropy, service etc. are largely moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in Yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasised, even exaggerated in a new science called psychoanalysis. Here again in sadhana one has to become conscious of these suppressed impulses and eliminate them—this may be called raising up, but that does not mean that they have to be raised up into action but only raised up before the consciousness so as to be cleared out of the being.” (CWSA 28: 420-421)

III - 23. “To become quiet and quietly and simply to maintain this persistent and patient rejection with our help, without rajasic struggle, sincerely and in fact and in every detail, not merely in wish and idea, is what you need to do. To be divided, to aspire in one part of your being and to indulge and justify and cherish the wrong movements with another part can lead to nothing but endless struggle and fatigue. Only by this turn and change will the struggle and fatigue pass away and purity come.” (SABCL 24: 1316-1317)

IV - Why do we not want to Reject

IV - 1. a. “But unfortunately one loves one’s error, somewhere in the being there is an unwillingness to recognise what is true.

My experience is like this: whenever you sincerely want to know the truth, you do know it. There is always something to point out the error to you, to make you recognise the truth. And if you observe yourself attentively you find out that it is because you prefer error that you do not find the truth.

Even in small details, the very smallest—not to speak of the big things of life, the big decisions that one has to take—even in the smallest things, whenever the aspiration for the truth and the will to be true are wholly sincere, the indication always comes.

There is always, somewhere in the being, something which prefers to deceive itself, otherwise the light is there, always ready to guide, but you shut your eyes in order not to see it.” (CWM 3: 192)

IV - 1. b. “But he cannot take advantage of any help given him because his vital nature cherishes its weakness and is always indulging and rhetorically expressing it instead of throwing it away with contempt as a thing unworthy of manhood and unfit for a sadhak. It is only if he so rejects it that he can receive strength and stand in life or progress in the sadhana.” (SABCL 24: 1703)

IV - 2. “Q: Sweet Mother, One day in class you said, with your hands wide open, that we should give you everything, even our defects and vices and all the dirt in us. Is this the only way to get rid of them, and how can one do it?

A: One keeps one’s defects because one hangs on to them as if they were something precious; one clings to one’s vices as one clings to a part of one’s body, and pulling out a bad habit hurts as much as pulling out a tooth. That is why one does not progress.

Whereas if one generously makes an offering of one’s defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration.” 13 June 1960 (CWM 16: 244)

IV - 3. “There can be only one "solution" for this kind of struggle, - to recognise these feelings for what they are, unregenerated movements of the old vital nature, and to reject these vital suggestions as suggestions of adverse forces that want to push you out of the straight path. If the mind of the sadhak supports these vital movements, if any part of his nature accepts and cherishes them, then, so long as he allows them to do so, he cannot get rid of the struggle.” (SABCL 24: 1311)

IV – 4. “But what do you want to do with all these obscure and useless vital movements that torment you, these wrong thoughts, suggestions, confusions, inabilities etc.? You seem to write as if you thought they must be kept and changed? But why kept and how changed? What would be the use? But precisely what you have got to do is to "shut them out", to reject, refuse to keep them, refuse to have them. It is precisely to see in another way, to see in the true way that the Force is pressing on you. It would indeed be a great blessing if you could forget these other wrong things altogether. Again, why do you want to keep and change the "wrong things" as you yourself call them? If you have an illness, do you want to keep and change the pains, the sickness and all the rest of it? It is to throw out the illness that you want, for the body to forget it, not keep any impression of it, to lose even the possibility of having it again, to live and feel in quite another way, the way of health. It is just the same here.” (SABCL 24: 1342)

IV – 5. a. “There are defects in your vital nature which stand in the way of a settled spiritual progress, but they can be eliminated if, dropping all exaggerated ideas of "sin" and unfitness, you look quietly at them and recognise and reject them. Tranquillise in yourself all over-eager demands and desires, all excitement and exaggeration of opposite feelings and impulses, seek first intensity of devotion, but also calm, strength, purity and peace.” (SABCL 24: 1344)

IV – 5. b. “The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. …

Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depreciation and the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin, difficulty or failure. These feelings do not really help, on the contrary, they are an immense obstacle and hamper the progress. They belong to the religious, not to the yogic mentality. The yogin should look on all the defects of the nature as movements of the lower Prakriti common to all and reject them calmly, firmly and persistently with full confidence in the Divine Power - without weakness or depression or negligence and without excitement, impatience or violence.” (SABCL 24: 1733)

IV – 6. a. “If you want to carryon some part of the yoga by your active efforts and aspiration, there is no reason why you should not find back that capacity; but the first effort to be made is to reject persistently, fully and tenaciously - not for two or three days, but always, so long as they insist or return - these disabling thoughts and feelings which hamstring all hope and faith in you, not to accept them, not to justify them, not to give them by your acquiescence the right to go on harping on the same note always of discouragement, incapacity and failure.” (SABCL 24: 1453-1454)

IV – 6. b. “You must realise that these moods are attacks which should be rejected at once — for they repose on nothing but suggestions of self-distrust and incapacity which have no meaning, since it is by the Grace of the Divine and the aid of a Force greater than your own, not by personal capacity and worth that you can attain the goal of the sadhana.” (SABCL 23: 552) (CWSA 29:32)

IV – 7. “There is nobody who asks you to pretend - what we ask you is to reject false perversions and wrong feelings and ignorance and not to go on supporting them as they want you to do. It is not courage and nobility to accept these things as the law of your nature, nor is it meanness and cowardice to aspire to a higher Truth and try to act according to it and make that the law of your nature.” (SABCL 24: 1702)

V - How to Reject – Methods to follow in Rejection

“It is always better to make an effort in the right direction; even if one fails the effort bears some result and is never lost.” (CWSA 29: 87)

V - 1. a. “To see them {imperfections and impurities} clearly and acknowledge them is the first step, to have the firm will to reject them is the next, to separate yourself from them entirely so that if they enter at all it will be as foreign elements, no longer parts of your normal nature but suggestions from outside, brings their last state; even, once seen and rejected, they may automatically fall away and disappear; but for most the process takes time.” (CWSA 29: 495) (SABCL 23: 794)

V - 1. b. “Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.” (CWSA 32: 4)

V - 2. “The power to refuse and to reject is always there in the being and to go on rejecting till the rejecting is effective. Nothing can obstruct a quiet aspiration except one’s own acquiescence in the inertia.” (SABCL 24: 1451) (CWSA 29: 66)

V - 3. a. “Rejection may not be immediately effective but to maintain the will of rejection and refusal is always possible.” (SABCL 23: 570) (SABCL 24: 1451)

V - 3. b. “One cannot be perfect … in rejection either. The one indispensable thing is to go on trying sincerely till there comes the full success. So long as there is complete sincerity, the Divine Grace will be there and assist at every moment on the way.” (CWSA 29: 53)

V - 3. c. “There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart’s emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences. It is only then, only when this has been truly done, that the surrender of the lower to the higher can be effected, because the sacrifice has become acceptable.” (CWSA 23: 60)

V - 3. d. “The firm will of rejection must be there, the pressure to get rid of them, but not any wrestling or struggle.”(SABCL 24: 1214)

V - 3. e. “If there is a constant use of the will the rest of the being learns however slowly to obey the will and then the actions become in conformity with the will and not with the vital impulses and desires. As for the rest (the feelings and desires etc. themselves) if they are not indulged in action or imagination and not supported by the will, if they are merely looked at and rejected when they come, then after some struggle they begin to lose their force and dwindle away.” (SABCL 24: 1719-1720)

V – 4. “Whereas if one generously makes an offering of one’s defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration.” 13 June 1960 (CWM 16: 244)

V – 5. a. “If one part of you keeps its quietude – the inner being – then the rest can be dealt with. So not to allow the vital to be upset and the disturbance cover up the inner self, that is the most important thing. Keep up the rejection always.” (SABCL 24: 1683)

V – 5. b. “It is simply a steady and quiet rejection that is needed and a quiet and steady calling down of the true Force. All this emotional excitability must be quieted down; it is that that makes the vital open itself to these forces. If it were not so, all the defects of the nature could be quietly observed and quietly mended.” (SABCL 24: 1683-1684)

V – 6. a. “Do you imagine that a quiet mind cannot reject anything and it is only the unquiet mind that can do it? It is the quiet mind that can best do it. Quiet does not mean inert and tamasic.” (CWSA 29: 144)

V - 6. b. “It is simply a steady and quiet rejection that is needed and a quiet and steady calling down of the true Force. All this motional excitability must be quieted down; it is that that makes the vital open itself to these forces. If it were not so, all the defects of the nature could be quietly observed and quietly mended.” (SABCL 24: 1683)

V - 6. c. “What is needed is a quiet mind and a quiet will, patient, persistent, refusing to yield either to excitement or discouragement, but always insisting [tranquilly] on the change needed in the being. A quiet will of this kind cannot fail in the end. Its effect is inevitable. It must first reject in the waking state, not only the acts habitual to the vital being, but the impulses behind them which it must understand to be external to the person even though manifested in him and also the suggestions which are behind the impulses.” (CWSA 36: 304-305)

V - 7. “Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.” (SABCL 24: 1360-1361) (CWSA 32: 222)

V - 8. “One has to stand fast till the power of return fades away. These returns or attacks must be regarded not as parts of oneself, but as invasions - and rejected without allowing any depression or discouragement. If the mind does not sanction them, if the vital refuses to welcome them, if the physical remains steady and refuses to obey the physical urge, then the recurrence of the thought, the vital impulse, the physical feeling will begin to lose its last holds and finally they will be too feeble to cause any trouble.” (SABCL 24: 1712-1713)

V - 9. a. “You are to be conscious of yourself, you must awake to your nature and movements, you must know why and how you do things or feel or think them; you must understand your motives and impulses, the forces, hidden and apparent, that move you; in fact, you must, as it were, take to pieces the entire machinery of your being. Once you are conscious, it means that you can distinguish and sift things, you can see which are the forces that pull you down and which help you on. And when you know the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the divine from the undivine, you are to act strictly up to your knowledge; that is to say, resolutely reject one and accept the other. The duality will present itself at every step and at every step you will have to make your choice. You will have to be patient and persistent and vigilant—“sleepless”, as the adepts say; you must always refuse to give any chance whatever to the undivine against the divine.” (CWM 3: 2)

V - 9. b. The only way to get rid of these vital movements is to do persistently what he describes himself as doing with the invading forces - i.e. he must be always vigilant, try always at every moment to be conscious, always reject these things, refusing to take pleasure in them, call on the Mother, bring down the descent of the Light. If they return persistently he must not be discouraged, it is not possible to change the nature at once, it takes a long time.

If, however, he can keep the psychic consciousness in the front, then it will be much easier and there will be much less difficulty and trouble in the change. That can be done by constant aspiration and abhyasa.” (SABCL 24: 1339)

V - 10. a. “All forces upon earth tend towards selfexpression. These forces come with the object of manifesting themselves and if you place a barrier and refuse to express them, they may try to beat against the barrier for a time, but in the end, they will tire themselves out and not being manifested, they will withdraw and leave you quiet.

So you must never say: “I shall first purify my thought, purify my body, purify my vital and then later I shall purify my action.” That is the normal order, but it never succeeds. The effective order is to begin from the outside: “The very first thing is that I do not do it, and afterwards, I desire it no longer and next I close my doors completely to all impulses: they no longer exist for me, I am now outside all that.” This is the true order, the order that is effective. First, not to do it. And then you will no longer have desire for anything and after that it will go out of your consciousness completely.” (CWM 5: 212-213)

V – 10.b. “Q: Sweet Mother, how can we empty the consciousness of its mixed contents?

A: By aspiration, the rejection of the lower movements, a call to a higher force. If you do not accept certain movements, then naturally, when they find that they can’t manifest, gradually they diminish in force and stop occurring. If you refuse to express everything that is of a lower kind, little by little the very thing disappears, and the consciousness is emptied of lower things. It is by refusing to give expression—I mean not only in action but also in thought, in feeling. When impulses, thoughts, emotions come, if you refuse to express them, if you push them aside and remain in a state of inner aspiration and calm, then gradually they lose their force and stop coming. So the consciousness is emptied of its lower movements.” (CWM 6: 329-330)

V – 11. a. “By constant rejection, the force of recurrence finally dwindles and the individual becomes free and able to bring the higher consciousness and its movements into the physical being.” (SABCL 24: 1435)

V – 11. b. “One has to be very persistent in rejection to get rid of it.” (SABCL 24: 1435)

V – 11. c. “You have to go on rejecting the vital mixture every time it rises. If you are steadfast in rejecting, it will lose more and more of its force and fade out.” (SABCL 23: 602)

V – 12. “Let him also fix this in the mind not to insist that in a given time he must progress, develop, get realisation; whatever time it takes, he must be prepared to wait and persevere and make his whole life an aspiration and an opening for the one thing only, the Divine. To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire. The more one gives oneself, the more the power to receive will grow. But for that all impatience and revolt must go; all suggestions of not getting, not being helped, not being loved, going away, of abandoning life or the spiritual endeavour must be rejected.” (SABCL 23: 763) (CWSA 29:345)

V – 13. a. “You have to be conscious of the wrong movements, but not preoccupied with them only.” (SABCL 24: 1688)

V – 13. b. “It is necessary to observe and know the wrong movements in you; for they are the source of your trouble and have to be persistently rejected if you are to be free. But do not be always thinking of your defects and wrong movements. Concentrate more upon what you are to be, on the ideal, with the faith that, since it is the goal before you, it must and will come.

To be always observing faults and wrong movements brings depression and discourages the faith. Tum your eyes more to the coming light and less to any immediate darkness. Faith, cheerfulness, confidence in the ultimate victory are the things that help, - they make the progress easier and swifter.” (SABCL 24: 1687)

V – 13. c. “The defects should be noticed and rejected, but the concentration should be positive - on what you are to be, i.e., on the development of the new consciousness rather than on this negative side.” (SABCL 24: 1687-1688)

V – 13. d. “It [getting projected from the mind into the vital] came by being preoccupied too much with the difficulties of the nature. It is always better to dwell on the good side of things within yourself. I do not mean in an egoistic way, but with faith and cheerful confidence, calling down the positive experience of which the nature is already capable so that a constant positive growth can help in the rejection of all that has to be rejected.” (SABCL 24: 1688)

V – 13. e. "One should not dwell on the lower nature or its obstacles." Sri Aurobindo.

The sentence would be more accurate or generally applicable if it were written "dwell too much" or "dwell solely". Naturally, without rejection nothing can be done. And in hard periods or moments concentration on the difficulties is inevitable. Also in the early stages one has often to do a great amount of clearance work so that the road can be followed at all.” (SABCL 24: 1691) (CWSA 35:125)

V – 14. a. “Your theory is a mistaken one. The free expression of a passion may relieve the vital for a time, but at the same time it gives it a right to return always. It is not reduced at all. Suppression with inner indulgence in subtle forms is not a cure, but expression in outer indulgence is still less a cure. It is perfectly possible to go on without manifestation if one is resolute to arrive at a complete control, the control being not a mere suppression but an inner and outer rejection.”  (SABCL 24: 1402)

V – 14. b. “There are people who have a pretty little theory like that, which I have often heard; they say that one’s vital should never be repressed, it must be allowed to do all it wants, it will get tired and be cured! This is the height of stupidity! First, because the vital by its very nature is never satisfied, and if a certain kind of activity becomes insipid, it will double the dose: if its stupidities bore it, it will increase its stupidities and its excesses, and if that tires it, as soon as it has rested it will start again. For it will not be changed. Others say that if you sit upon your vital it will be suppressed and, one day, it will shoot up like a steam-jet... and this is true. Hence, to repress the vital is not a solution. To let it do what it likes is not a solution either, and generally this brings on fairly serious disorders.” (CWM 178-179)

V – 15. “The difficulties of the character persist so long as one yields to them in action when they rise. One has to make a strict rule not to act according to the impulses of anger, ego or whatever the weakness may be that one wants to get rid of, or if one does act in the heat of the moment, not to justify or persist in the action. If one does that, after a time the difficulty abates or is confined purely to a subjective movement which one can observe, detach oneself from and combat.” (SABCL 24: 1708)

V – 16. a. “Seekers are always told, “If you want to get rid of something, say that it is outside.” This is only an impression, but it is easier to get rid of a difficulty if you have the impression that it is outside you. However, I have just told you the opposite, that if nothing “in you” answers to the hostile forces, they will never attack you. Therefore, what is inside is also outside and what is outside is also inside! The secret lies in knowing how to place it just where it is most convenient for the immediate action.

If you have a serious difficulty in your character, for example, the habit of losing your temper, and you decide: “I must not get angry again”, it is very difficult, but if on the other hand, you tell yourself: “Anger is something which circulates through the whole world, it is not in me, it belongs to everybody; it wanders about here and there and if I close my door, it will not enter”, it is much more easy. If you think: “It is my character, I am born like that”, it becomes almost impossible. It is true there is something in your character which answers to this force of anger.

All movements, all vibrations are general—they enter, they go out, they move about—but they rush upon you and enter into you only to the extent you leave the door in you open. And if you have, besides, some affinity with these forces, you may get angry without even knowing why. (CWM 4: 169-170)

V – 16. b. “That is a known fact that everything comes from outside, from universal Nature. But the individual is not bound to accept everything that comes; he can accept and he can reject. The rejection may not succeed at once, if there is a strong habit of past acceptance; but if it is steadily persisted in, the rejection will succeed in the end.

What you should do, is always to reject the lower experiences and concentrate on a fixed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence of the Contact and the confusion. You have surely had enough of this kind of experience already and should make up your mind to steadily reject it when it comes.” (CWSA 29: 65)

V – 16. c. “Truth in speech and truth in thought are very important. The more you can feel falsehood as being not part of yourself, as coming on you from outside, the easier it will be to reject and refuse it.” (CWSA 29: 126)

V – 16. d. “Q: The first effect of Yoga, however, is to take away the mental control, and the hungers that lie dormant are suddenly set free; they rush up and invade the being.... What you should do is to keep the thing [the sex impulse] away from you, to disassociate from it, take as little notice of it as possible and, even if you happen to think of it, to remain indifferent and unconcerned.” (CWM 3: 5)

A: This is much more difficult than to sit upon a difficulty! It is much more difficult to stand back from the difficulty, to look at it as something which does not concern you, which does not interest you, does not belong to you, which belongs to the world and not to you—but it is only by doing this that you can succeed. This demands a kind of liberation of spirit and a confidence in your inner being: you must believe that if you take the right attitude, it is the best that will happen to you; but if you are afraid when something unpleasant happens to you, then you can do nothing. You must have this confidence within you, whatever the difficulty, whatever the obstacle. Most of the time, when something unpleasant happens, you say, “Is it going to increase? What other accident is yet going to happen!” and so on. You must tell yourself, “These things are not mine; they belong to the subconscious world; naturally I have nothing to do with them and if they come again to seize me, I am going to give a fight.” Naturally you will answer that this is easy to say but difficult to do. But if truly you take this attitude of confidence, there is no difficulty that you will not be able to conquer. Anxiety makes the difficulty greater.” (CWM 4: 72-73)

V - 17. “It happens only when you have decided: “Well, this time, I am going to try not to do it, and I shall not do it, I shall apply all my strength and I shall not do it.” Even if you have just a little success, it is much. Not a big success, but just a small success, a very partial success: you do not carry out what you yearn to do; but the yearning, the desire, the passion is still there and that produces whirls within, but outside you resist, “I shall not do it, I shall not move; even if I have to bind myself hand and foot, I shall not do it.” It is a partial success—but it is a great victory because, due to this, next time you will be able to do a little more. That is to say, instead of holding all the violent passions within yourself, you can begin calming them a little; and you will calm them slowly at first, with difficulty. They will remain long, they will come back, they will trouble you, vex you, produce in you a great disgust, all that, but if you resist well and say: “No, I shall carry out nothing; whatever the cost, I shall not carry out anything; I will stay like a rock”, then little by little, little by little, that thins out, thins out and you begin to learn the second attitude: “Now I want my consciousness to be above those things. There will still be many battles but if my consciousness stands above that, little by little there will come a time when this will return no longer.” And then there is a time when you feel that you are absolutely free: you do not even perceive it, and then that is all. It may take a long time, it may come soon: that depends on the strength of character, on the sincerity of the aspiration. But even for people who have just a little sincerity, if they subject themselves to this process, they succeed. It takes time. They succeed in the first item: in not expressing.” (CWM 5: 211-212)

V – 18. “It is the lower nature, the instincts of the subconscient which govern you and make you do things you should not do. And so it is a choice between your will and accepting submission. There is always a moment when one can decide. It goes to the point where as I said there is even a moment when one can decide to be ill or not to be ill. It even goes so far that a moment comes when one can decide to die or not to die. But for that one must have an extremely awakened consciousness because this speck is infinitesimal in time and like the hundredth part of a second, and because before it one can do nothing and after it one can do nothing; but at that moment one can. And if one is absolutely awake, one can, at that moment, take the decision.

But for ordinary things, as for example, giving way before an impulse or refusing it, it is not a space, not even the space of a second; one has plenty of time before one, one certainly has several minutes. And it is a choice between weak submission and a controlling will. And if the will is clear, if it is based on truth, if truly it obeys the truth and is clear, it always has the power to refuse the wrong movement. It is an excuse you give yourself when you say, “I could not.” It is not true. It is that truly you have not wanted it in the right way. For there is always the choice between saying “yes” and saying “no”. But one chooses to be weak and later gives oneself this excuse, saying, “It is not my fault; it was stronger than I.” It is your fault if the thing was stronger than you. Because you are not these impulses, you are a conscious soul and an intelligent will, and your duty is to see that this is what governs you and not the impulses from below. (CWM 6: 343-344)

V – 19. “Q: Mother, last time you said that often there is in us a dark element which... which suggests to us... which makes us commit stupidities. So you said that when one is conscious of this element, it must be pulled out. But does pulling it out mean... For example, when one is conscious that this element comes to make us do stupid things, then, if by an effort of will one abstains from doing it, can one say that one has pulled it out? …

A: One has sat upon it.

Q: Then, how to pull it out?

A: For that, first of all, you must become conscious of it, you see, put it right in front of you, and cut the links which attach it to your consciousness. It is a work of inner psychology, you know.

One can see, when one studies oneself very attentively.... For example, if you observe yourself, you see that one day you are very generous. Let us take this, it is easy to understand. Very generous: generous in your feelings, generous in your sensations, generous in your thoughts and even in material things; that is, you understand the faults of others, their intentions, weaknesses, even nasty movements. You see all this, and you are full of good feelings, of generosity. You tell yourself, “Well... everyone does the best he can!”—like that.

Another day—or perhaps the very next minute—you will notice in yourself a kind of dryness, fixity, something that is bitter, that judges severely, that goes as far as bearing a grudge, has rancour, would like the evil-doer punished, that almost has feelings of vengeance; just the very opposite of the former! One day someone harms you and you say, “Doesn’t matter! He did not know”... or “He couldn’t do otherwise”... or “That’s his nature”... or “He could not understand!” The next day—or perhaps an hour later—you say, “He must be punished! He must pay for it! He must be made to feel that he has done wrong!”—with a kind of rage; and you want to take things, you want to keep them for yourself, you have all the feelings of  jealousy, envy, narrowness, you see, just the very opposite of the other feeling.

This is the dark side. And so, the moment one sees it, if one looks at it and doesn’t say, “It is I”, if one says, “No, it is my shadow, it is the being I must throw out of myself”, one puts on it the light of the other part, one tries to bring them face to face; and with the knowledge and light of the other, one doesn’t try so much to convince—because that is very difficult—but one compels it to remain quiet... first to stand farther away, then one flings it very far away so that it can no longer return—putting a great light on it. There are instances in which it is possible to change, but this is very rare. There are instances in which one can put upon this being—or this shadow—put upon it such an intense light that it transforms it, and it changes into what is the truth of your being.

But this is a rare thing.... It can be done, but it is rare. Usually, the best thing is to say, “No, this is not I! I don’t want it! I have nothing to do with this movement, it doesn’t exist for me, it is something contrary to my nature!” And so, by dint of insisting and driving it away, finally one separates oneself from it.

But one must first be clear and sincere enough to see the conflict within oneself. Usually one doesn’t pay any attention to these things. One goes from one extreme to the other. You see, you can say, to put it in very simple words: one day I am good, the next day I am bad. And this seems quite natural.... Or even, sometimes for one hour you are good and the next hour you are wicked; or else, sometimes the whole day through one is good and suddenly one becomes wicked, for a minute very wicked, all the more wicked as one was good! Only, one doesn’t observe it, thoughts cross one’s mind, violent, bad, hateful things, like that... Usually one pays no attention to it. But this is what must be caught! As soon as it manifests, you must catch it like this (Mother makes a movement) with a very firm grip, and then hold it, hold it up to the light and say, “No! I don’t want you! I —don’t—want—you! I have nothing to do with this! You are going to get out of here, and you won’t return!”

(After a silence) And this is something—an experience that one can have daily, or almost... when one has those movements of great enthusiasm, great aspiration, when one suddenly becomes conscious of the divine goal, the urge towards the Divine, the desire to take part in the divine work, when one comes out of oneself in a great joy and great force... and then, a few hours later, one is miserable for a tiny little thing; one indulges in so petty, so narrow, so commonplace a self-interestedness, has such a dull desire... and all the rest has evaporated as if it did not exist. One is quite accustomed to contradictions; one doesn’t pay attention to this and that is why all these things live comfortably together as neighbours. One must first discover them and prevent them from intermingling in one’s consciousness: decide between them, separate the shadow from the light. Later one can get rid of the shadow. There we are, and now.” (CWM 6: 262- 264)

V – 20. “That is why I say and shall always repeat, Be perfectly sincere; do not try to deceive yourself, do not say, “I have done all that I could.” If you do not succeed, it means that you do not do all that you can. For, if you truly do “all” that you can, you will surely succeed. If you have any defect which you want to get rid of and which still persists, and you say, “I have done all that I could”, you may be sure that you have not done all that you should have. If you had, you would have triumphed, for the difficulties that come to you are exactly in proportion to your strength—nothing can happen to you which does not belong to your consciousness, and all that belongs to your consciousness you are able to master. Even the things and suggestions that come from outside can touch you only in proportion to the consent of your consciousness, and you are made to be the master of your consciousness. If you say, “I have done all that I could and in spite of everything the thing continues, so I give up”, you may be already sure that you have not done what you could. When an error persists “in spite of everything” it means that something hidden in your being springs up suddenly like a Jack-in-the-box and takes the helm of your life. Hence, there is only one thing to do, it is to go hunting for all the little dark corners which lie hidden in you and, if you put just a tiny spark of goodwill on this darkness, it will yield, will vanish, and what appeared to you impossible will become not only possible, practicable, but it will have been done. You can in this way in one minute get rid of a difficulty which would have harassed you for years. I absolutely assure you of it. That depends only on one thing: that you truly, sincerely, want to get rid of it. And it is the same for everything, from physical illnesses up to the highest mental difficulties. One part of the consciousness says, “I don’t want it”, but behind there hides a heap of things which say nothing, do not show themselves, and which just want that things continue as they are—generally out of ignorance; they do not believe that it is necessary to be cured, they believe that everything is for the best in the best of worlds.” (CWM 4: 73-74)

V – 21. “If one aspires sincerely and rejects what has to be rejected, as far as one can, then the psychic and spiritual influences will more and more work, bring more and more true discrimination, support, stimulate and create the right vibrations, detect, discourage and eliminate the wrong ones. That is the method the Mother and I advise to all.” (CWSA 29: 64)

V – 22. “Rejection is a principle element in this sadhana. But what I say is that one can reject best by bringing in the positive psychic and spiritual forces through the pursuit of positive things like brahmacharya and the rest.” (CWSA 29: 64-65)

V – 23. a. “Q: You have written [in the preceding letter] of detachment “in a positive, not merely a negative way”. Please explain this.

A: By negative I mean merely repressing the desires and wrong movements and egoism, by positive I mean the bringing down of light and peace and purity in those parts from above. I do not mean that these movements are not to be rejected—but all the energy should not be directed solely to rejection. It must also be directed to the positive replacement of them by the higher consciousness. The more this consciousness comes, the easier also will the rejection be.” 19 November 1933 (CWSA 35: 760)

V – 23. b. “All these things are there in human nature, habitual movements, which show their true nature only when the light of the higher consciousness is turned on them. Even after they have been rejected the possibility of a response to such suggestions from outside remains in the grain of the lower vital or vital-physical or the subconscient till there is the full enlightenment there.” (SABCL 24: 1338)

V – 23. c. “It is quite true that rising into a higher consciousness than the ordinary human consciousness is the right way towards transformation. Merely to remain in the ordinary lower consciousness and try to reject from there the wrong movements can produce no permanent 'or complete result.” (SABCL 24: 1366)

V – 24. a. “The thing has been so often said and repeated that it seems quite unnecessary to insist on the fact that a mite of practice is infinitely more precious than mountains of talk. Surely, all the energy that one spends in explaining a theory would be much better utilised in overcoming in oneself a weakness or a defect.

Therefore to conform to the wisdom of this teaching, {Dhammapada} we shall consider the best means of rejecting all passion and ill-will and delusion.

The delusion consists in taking the appearance for the reality and transient things for the only thing worthy of pursuit, the everlasting Truth.” (CWM 3: 200-201)

V – 24. b. To put into practice the little you know is the best way to learn more; it is the most powerful means of advancing on the way—a little bit of really sincere practice. For example, not to do something that you know must not be done. When you have seen a weakness, a disability in your being, you must not allow it to happen again. When, if only for a moment, you have had the vision of what you must be, in an ardent aspiration, you must not—you must never forget to become that.

Some people are always complaining about their disabilities. But that doesn’t lead you very far. If, once, you have truly seen your weaknesses and truly, sincerely understood, seen that you must not be like that—that’s the end of complaining. Then there is the daily effort, the building up of the will, the vigilance of every moment—you must never allow a recognised mistake to renew itself. To err through ignorance, to err through unconsciousness, is obviously very unfortunate, but it can be put right. Whereas to go on making the same mistake, knowing that it must not be made, is an act of cowardice which we must not permit ourselves.

To say, “Oh, human nature is like this. Oh, we are in the inconscience. Oh, we are in the ignorance”—all this is laziness and weakness. And behind this laziness and weakness there is a huge bad will. There!

I say this because many people have made this remark to me, many. And it is always a way of justifying oneself: “Oh, we are doing what we can.” It is not true. Because if you are sincere, once you have seen—as long as you have not seen, nothing can be said—but the moment you see is the moment when you receive the Grace, and once you have received the Grace, you no longer have the right to forget it.” (CWM 10: 34-35)

V – 25. “It must first reject in the waking state, not only the acts habitual to the vital being, but the impulses behind them which it must understand to be external to the person even though manifested in him and also the suggestions which are behind the impulses. When thus rejected, the once habitual thoughts and movements may still manifest in the dream-state, because it is a well-known psychological law that what is suppressed or rejected in the waking state may still recur in sleep and dream because they are still there in the subconscient being. But if the waking state is thoroughly cleared, these dream-movements must gradually disappear because they lose their food and the impressions in the subconscient are gradually effaced. This is the cause of the dreams of which you are so much afraid. You should see that they are only a subordinate symptom which need not alarm you if you can once get control of your waking condition.” (CWSA 36: 305) (SABCL 24: 1658)

V – 26. a. “These things anger, jealousy, desire are the very stuff of the ordinary human vital consciousness. They could not be changed if there were not a deeper consciousness within which is of quite another character. There is within you a psychic being which is divine, directly a part of the Mother, pure of all these defects. It (psychic being) is covered and concealed by the ordinary consciousness and nature, but when it is unveiled and able to come forward and govern the being, then it changes the ordinary consciousness, throws all these undivine things out and changes the outer nature altogether. That is why we want the sadhaks to concentrate, to open this concealed consciousness …  Of course we want them also to use their will and reject the desires and wrong movements of the vital, for by doing that the emergence of the true consciousness becomes possible.

But rejection alone cannot succeed; it is by rejection and by inner experience and growth that it {change of nature} is done.” (SABCL 23: 907)

V – 26. b. “The practice of rejection prevails in the end; but with personal effort only, it may take a long time. If you can feel the Divine Power working in you, then it should become easier.

There should be nothing inert or tamasic in the self-giving to the guidance and it should not be made by any part of the vital into a plea for not rejecting the suggestions of lower impulse and desire.” (CWSA 29: 66)

V – 27. a. “It would be easier to get rid of wrong movements when you bring down a settled peace and equanimity into that part of the being. There will be then more an automatic rejection of such movements and less need of tapasya.” (SABCL 24: 1683)

V – 27. b. “The peace and the equality are there above you, you have to call them down into the mind and the vital and the body. And whenever something disturbs you have to reject the thing that disturbs and the disturbance.” (CWSA 29: 66)

V – 27. c. “The calm and strength will descend from above, what you have to do is open yourself and receive it and at the same time reject all the movements of the lower nature which prevent it from remaining and which are ruled by desires and habits inconsistent with the true being, the true power and the true knowledge. Of course the superior power will itself reveal to you and remove all the obstacles in your nature. But the condition is that not only your mental but your vital and physical being must open and surrender to it and refuse to surrender themselves to other powers and forces.” (SABCL 24: 1208) (CWSA 36:377)

V – 27. d. “If you get peace, then to clean the vital becomes easy. If you simply clean and clean and do nothing else, you go very slowly — for the vital gets dirty again and has to be cleaned a hundred times. The peace is something that is clean in itself, so to get it is a positive way of securing your object. To look for dirt only and clean is the negative way.” (SABCL 23: 654)

V – 28. “Everyone must find his own method, everyone must have his own method, and to the extent you put into practice your method, it will become clearer and clearer, more and more precise. You can correct a certain point, make clear another, etc. So, you start working....  (CWM 4: 180)

V – 29. a. “To discover among all the teachings that have been given on this subject the method that seems to be most effective and to follow it scrupulously, rigorously, with energy and perseverance.” (CWM 2: 64)

V – 29. b. This is how one progresses stage by stage.

But you must take great care to apply at each stage, as perfectly as possible, what you have gained or learnt. If you remain in an indrawn state of consciousness and do not apply materially the inner progress, a time will certainly come when you will not be able to move at all, for your outer being, unchanged, will be like a fetter pulling you back and hindering you from advancing. So, the most important point (what everybody says but only a few do) is to put into practice what you know. With that you have a good chance of succeeding, and with perseverance you will certainly get there.” (CWM 4: 181)

V – 30. “For a while, all will go well. Then, one day, you will find yourself facing an insurmountable difficulty and will tell yourself, “I have done all that and look, everything is as bad as before!” Then, in this case, you must, through a yet more sustained concentration, open an inner door in you and bring into this movement a force which was not there formerly, a state of consciousness which was not there before. And there, there will be a power, when your own personal power will be exhausted and no longer effective. When the personal power runs out ordinary people say, “That’s good, I can no longer do anything, it is finished.” But I tell you that when you find yourself before this wall, it is the beginning of something new. By an obstinate concentration, you must pass over to the other side of the wall and there you will find a new knowledge, a new force, a new power, a new help, and you will be able to work out a new system, a new method which surely will take you very far.

I do not say this to discourage you; only, things happen like that. And the worst of all is to get discouraged when it happens. You must tell yourself, “With the means of transport at my disposal I have reached a certain point, but these means do not allow me to go further.What should I do?... Sit there and not stir any longer?—not at all. I must find other means of transport.” This will happen quite often, but after a while you will get used to it. You must sit down for a moment, meditate, and then find other means. You must increase your concentration, your aspiration and your trust and with the new help which comes to you, make a new programme, work out other means to replace those you have left behind. This is how one progresses stage by stage.” (CWM 4: 180-181)

V – 31. a. “You say that all these things (anger, jealousy, desire) were hidden within you. No, they were not deep within, they were in the outer or surface nature, only you were not sufficiently conscious of them because the other true consciousness (inner being) had not opened and grown within you. … It does not go at once because the vital had so much the habit of them in the past, but they will now have to go because your soul wants to get rid of them and your soul is growing stronger in you. So you must both use your will aided by the Mother’s force to get rid of these things, and go on with your inner psychic experiences — it is by the two together that all will be done.”  (SABCL 23: 907)

V – 31. b. “Always reject it, when it comes, even if you feel strongly its touch; open in your mind and soul to the Mother, keep your will and faith and you will find it receding. Even if it returns obstinately, be equally and more obstinate against it, firm in rejection - that will discourage and wear it out and finally it will grow weak, a shadow of itself and disappear.

Be true to your true self always - that is the real sincerity. Persist and conquer.” (SABCL 24: 1750)

V – 31. c. “Sometimes no tapasya is necessary — one just refers things to the Power that one feels guiding or doing the sadhana and assents to its action, rejecting all that is contrary to it, and the Power removes what has to be removed or changes what has to be changed, quickly or slowly — but the quickness or slowness does not seem to matter since one is sure that it will be done.” (SABCL 23: 621-622) (CWSA 29:196)

V – 32. “As for some men being able to control themselves and others being swept away, that is due to difference of temperament. Some men are sattwic and control comes easy to them, up to a certain point at least; others are more rajasic and find control difficult and often impossible. Some have a strong mind and mental will and others are vital men in whom the vital passions are stronger or more on the surface. Some do not think control necessary and let themselves go. In sadhana the mental or moral control has to be replaced by the spiritual mastery—for the mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. That is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life.” (CWSA 28: 421)

V – 33. “The survival of the evil habits in sleep is easily explained and is a thing of common experience. It is a known psychological law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control is removed or else in sleep. Mental control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. The subconscient in the ordinary man includes the larger part of the vital being and the physical mind and also the secret body consciousness. In order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal experience. Even then, they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete.” (CWSA 36: 365)

V – 34. "... one becomes aware of an inner Being within us — inner mental, inner vital, inner physical — silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature.” (SABCL 23: 519) (CWSA 29:8)

V – 35. “The conversion which keeps the consciousness turned towards the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and rejection also spontaneous is' the psychic conversion.” (SABCL 24: 1105)

VI - How to break up the whole formation of the Past in Yoga

VI – 1. “What we propose in our Yoga is nothing less than to break up the whole formation of our past and present which makes up the ordinary material and mental man and to create a new centre of vision and a new universe of activities in ourselves which shall constitute a divine humanity or a superhuman nature.” (SABCL 20: 65-66) (CWSA 23: 72)

VI – 2. “The first necessity is to dissolve that central faith and vision in the mind which concentrate it on its development and satisfaction and interests in the old externalised order of things. It is imperative to exchange this surface orientation for the deeper faith and vision which see only the Divine and seek only after the Divine.” (SABCL 20: 66) (CWSA 23: 72)

VI – 3. “The next need is to compel all our lower being to pay homage to this new faith and greater vision. All our nature must make an integral surrender; it must offer itself in every part and every movement to that which seems to the unregenerated sense-mind so much less real than the material world and its objects. Our whole being—soul, mind, sense, heart, will, life, body—must consecrate all its energies so entirely and in such a way that it shall become a fit vehicle for the Divine. This is no easy task; for everything in the world follows the fixed habit which is to it a law and resists a radical change. And no change can be more radical than the revolution attempted in the integral Yoga.” (SABCL 20: 66) (CWSA 23: 72)

VI – 4. “Everything in us has constantly to be called back to the central faith and will and vision. Every thought and impulse has to be reminded in the language of the Upanishad that “That is the divine Brahman and not this which men here adore.” Every vital fibre has to be persuaded to accept an entire renunciation of all that hitherto represented to it its own existence.” (SABCL 20: 66) (CWSA 23: 72)

VI – 5. “Mind has to cease to be mind and become brilliant with something beyond it.

Life has to change into a thing vast and calm and intense and powerful that can no longer recognise its old blind eager narrow self of petty impulse and desire. Even the body has to submit to a mutation and be no longer the clamorous animal or the impeding clod it now is, but become instead a conscious servant and radiant instrument and living form of the spirit.” (SABCL 20: 66) (CWSA 23: 72-73)

VII – The procedure for the things that are thrown up by Rejection

VII – 1. “When things are rejected from all other parts of the nature, they go either into the environmental consciousness around us through which we communicate with others and with universal Nature and try to return from there or they sink into the subconscient and can come up from there even after lying long quiescent so that we think they are gone.” (SABCL 22: 356) (CWSA 28: 220-221)

VII – 2. a. “As for the things in our nature that are thrown away from us by rejection but come back, it depends on where you throw them. Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. The mind rejects its mentalities, the vital its vitalities, the physical its physicalities – these usually go back into the corresponding domain of general Nature. It all stays at first, when that happens, in the environmental consciousness which we carry about with us, by which we communicate with the outside Nature, and often it persistently rushes back from there—until it is so absolutely rejected, or thrown far away as it were, that it cannot return upon us any more.” (SABCL 22: 359) (CWSA 28: 219)

VII – 2. b. As for the waves that recur from the general Nature, it is the natural tendency of the inferior forces there to try and perpetuate their action in the individual, to rebuild what he has unbuilt of their deposits in him; so they return on him, often with an increased force, even with a stupendous violence, when they find their influence rejected. But they cannot last long once the environmental consciousness is cleared—unless the “Hostiles” take a hand. Even then these can indeed attack, but if the sadhak has established his position in the inner self, they can only attack and retire.” (SABCL 22: 359) (CWSA 28: 219-220)

VII – 3. a. “But when what the thinking and willing mind rejects is strongly supported by the vital, it leaves the mind indeed but sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind and compel or capture our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too—the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams, in passivity, in extreme tamas. The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance. (SABCL 22: 359) (CWSA 28: 219)

VII – 3. b. “The principle of the Yoga is rejection—throwing out of the being. It is true that rejected from the mind it often goes to the vital, rejected by the vital, to the physical, rejected by the physical to the subconscient. Rejected from the subconscient also, it can still linger in the environmental consciousness—but there it has no longer any possession of the being and can be thrown away altogether.” (CWSA 29: 65)

VII – 4. “About the subconscient—it is the sub-material base of the being and is made up of impressions, instincts, habitual movements that are stored there. Whatever movement is impressed in it, it keeps. If one impresses the right movement in it, it will keep and send up that. That is why it has to be cleared of old movements before there can be a permanent and total change in the nature. When the higher consciousness is once established in the waking parts, it goes down into the subconscient and changes that also, makes a bedrock of itself there also. Then no further trouble from the subconscient will be possible. But even before that one can minimise the trouble by putting the right will and the right habit of reaction in the subconscient parts.” (SABCL 22: 360) (CWSA 28: 221)

VII – 5. “You do not realise how much of the ordinary natural being lives in the subconscient physical. It is there that habitual movements, mental and vital, are stored and from there they come up into the waking mind. Driven out of the upper consciousness, it is in this cavern of the Panis that they take refuge. No longer allowed to emerge freely in the waking state, they come up in sleep as dreams. It is when they are cleared out of the subconscient, their very seeds killed by the enlightening of these hidden layers, that they cease for good. As your consciousness deepens inwardly and the higher light comes down into those inferior covered parts, the things that now recur in this way will disappear.” (SABCL 22: 361)

VII – 6. a. “The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous.” (SABCL 22: 362) (CWSA 28: 222)

VII – 6. b. “If light, strength, the Mother's Consciousness is brought down into the body, it can penetrate the subconscient also and convert its obscurity and resistance.

When something is erased from the subconscient so completely that it leaves no seed and thrown out of the circumconscient so completely that it can return no more, then only can we be sure that we have finished with it for ever.” (SABCL 22: 357) (CWSA 28: 221)

VII – 6. c. “A descent into the subconscient would not help us to explore this region, for it would plunge us into incoherence or into sleep or a dull trance or a comatose torpor. A mental scrutiny or insight can give us some indirect and constructive idea of these hidden activities; but it is only by drawing back into the subliminal or by ascending into the superconscient and from there looking down or extending ourselves into these obscure depths that we can become directly and totally aware and in control of the secrets of our subconscient physical, vital and mental nature.

This awareness, this control are of the utmost importance. For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us,—the infernal also,—has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.” (SABCL 19: 734-735) (CWSA 22: 763)

VII – 7. a. “No, this is the procedure, to reject always into a lower part of the being, and finally the last refuge, he says, is in the inconscient; and in order to get rid of something, to tell the truth, you must go right into the inconscient; if one pursues it there, it cannot go lower down. So there is only one solution for it, to transform itself.

Can’t one transform it without going further?

One can. But it is quite difficult. But one can do it, because rejecting is not the best method. You see, to do this (gesture) is the easiest way; something troubles you, you do this (gesture), as you do for flies; but it is a little as with the flies, it takes a round and then comes back.

But what is necessary is what I explained to you last time in detail: to find out why it comes, why it is there, and change it —the cause itself. Then it no longer returns, there is no affinity any longer.

Things come to you because they have an affinity. There is something to which they can cling, a kind of sympathy somewhere, which may not be very conscious or very open, but there is one. And if it were not there, the thing would no longer come.  There is a whole set of things which never come to bother you any longer, once you have changed the essential points in your nature.” (CWM 7: 94-95)

VII – 7. b. “There is no mystery [about the power of lower forces to attack]. These things were violent and obstinate in you for a long time and you were indulging them - hence they acquired a great force to return even after you began rejecting them,

first because of habit,

secondly because of their belief that they have acquired a right over you,

thirdly because of the habit of assent and passive response to them or endurance of

them that has been stamped on the physical consciousness.

This physical consciousness is not as yet liberated, it has not begun to be as responsive to the higher force as the vital, so it cannot resist their invasion. So these forces, when thrown out, retreat into the environmental consciousness and remain there concealed and at any opportunity make an attack on the centres accustomed to receive them (external mind and the external emotional) and get in. This happens with most sadhaks. Two things are necessary

- (1) to open fully the physical to the higher forces,

(2) to reach the stage when even if the forces attack they cannot come fully in, the inner being remaining calm and free. Then even if there is still a surface difficulty, there will not be these overpowerings.” (SABCL 24: 1574-1575) (CWSA 28:215)

VII – 8. a. “Q: Sweet Mother, how should we reject something in the vital so that it doesn’t enter the subconscient?

A: Ah!

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 his 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.

And then there are two methods: either to put so intense a light, the light of a truth-consciousness so strong, that this will be dissolved; or else to catch the thing as with pincers, pull it out from its place and hold it up before one’s consciousness. The first method is radical but one doesn’t always have at his disposal this light of truth, so one can’t always use it. The second method can be taken, but it hurts, it hurts as badly as the extraction of a tooth; I don’t know if you have ever had a tooth pulled out, but it hurts as much as that, and it hurts here, like that. (Mother shows the centre of the chest and makes a movement of twisting.) And usually one is not very courageous. When it hurts very much, well, one tries to efface it like this (gesture) and that is why things persist. But if one has the courage to take hold of it and pull it until it comes out and to put it before himself, even if it hurts very much... to hold it up like this (gesture) until one can see it clearly, and then dissolve it, then it is finished. The thing will never again hide in the subconscient and will never again return to bother you. But this is a radical operation. It must be done like an operation.” (CWM 7: 83-85)

VII – 8. b. Q: Mother, here it is said that the light of truth is not always at one’s disposal...

A: It is always there; but one can’t always use it. …

It is always there; it is everywhere; but it is not at your disposal in the sense that you don’t know how to make use of it.

Q: But if one went to you to ask how?

A: Ah! … “My children, it is very easy, you have only to call me, and then when you feel the contact, well, you put it upon the thing till that part has understood.”

But here too you must know, it hurts a little; I am warning you, you see, because the thing is clinging somewhere, and in order to pull it out you must have courage; and when you put the light of truth, well, it burns, sometimes it smarts, you see; you must know how to bear it. The sincerity must be sufficient to... instead of shutting yourself up again and saying, “Oh! It hurts”, you must open very wide and receive fully.” (CWM 7: 88-89)

VII – 8. c. “Some people have all kinds of little things like this in their head, dark little things. Some people have them here (Mother points to the heart), others have them lower down, for each one it depends... but for each one it is the same thing, it is always... I am saying this because it is very remarkable that if one does the work—whoever it may be—the result is always the same, wherever it may be, whether in the head or the chest or in all the centres of consciousness, if one pushes the investigation far enough, step by step, step by step, untiringly, one always reaches something; from far it looks like a pea... like the peas... a little black pea; but if one draws near carefully enough—it depends on the degree of concentration—one perceives that it is like a very tiny... serpent, the size of a microbe, but it is very small, all coiled up like that, rolled upon itself like that. Then one takes it by the tail and pulls it out. (CWM 7: 88-89)

VII – 8. d. Q: Sweet Mother, are there as many serpents as bad movements?

A: Yes, precisely! (Laughter) That makes a lot, quite an army. When it is in the head it is troublesome, because it is still more difficult to discover them, and one is so full of wrong ideas that it is very difficult to put any order in there. …

Q: And in the head?

A: Ah! In the head it is all the perversions of thought, all the treacheries—treacheries, there is a huge number of them: one betrays one’s soul so often and so persistently, it is frightful—all the decisions, the points of view and favourable explanations, as I was telling you, and then a kind of habit of criticising... What one doesn’t want to hear, when there is something higher which makes you feel your fault, there is a habit of immediately finding an explanation and a severe criticism of the idea or thought; or else some people turn it into ridicule; there are people who immediately oppose it with another idea or some commonplace notion or other. You can’t imagine the bazaar there is in the head!  It is something terrible. If you were to look really objectively at what is going on in there, it is frightful—before you put some order, see clearly, arrange all that, see that two contradictory ideas are not lined up parallel.

I know a large number of people who shelter in their minds contradictory ideas, not organised or synthesised—there is no question of a synthesis for them—but like... an almost fraternal cohabitation among things which are mortally opposed, that is, ideas which cannot lodge together. You can arrange them in a vast synthesis but that of course is a work of a higher order; yet two things, two ideas which have absolutely contradictory consequences in action and are absolutely contradictory explanations of the same fact... and these two things are there, side by side, they are even sometimes so close that one feels they are joined and live together without being troubled by the ridiculousness of their association.” (CWM 7: 89-90)

VII – 8. e. “Where it is easiest to find and cure is here (Mother shows the centre of the chest), but it is there that it hurts most; however it is the place where one finds it most easily and cures it most radically. Lower down in the vital it is more obscure and entangled—it is quite muddled. It is all mixed up and there are many of these things—when they are there, there are many. You must put some order there first before finding them. There are some which are entangled like this (gesture). For example, many people have the tendency to fly into a rage—suddenly it takes possession of them. Pouff! They get terribly angry. It is here that one must look for the cause; and here it is all entangled, like this, all mixed up, and one must go very deep and very fast because this spreads with the swiftness of a flood; and when it has spread, it is quite a mass of... like a black smoke which rises and burdens the consciousness, and it is very, very difficult to put any order in there. But when one feels that the fury is going to rise up, if one hurries there immediately like that in the vital centre, and goes there with a torch which lights up well, one can find the corner. If one finds the corner, hop! one does this, gets hold of it, and it is finished, the anger falls instantaneously, even before one has had the time to say a word. I give this example; there are hundreds of others.  All affairs of feelings, vanity, ambition, passion—passion... yes, but still not only material passion: I mean (I don’t like to use the word because it is a travesty, but still) what men call love—all that, it is there one finds it, all attachments, all sentimentality, all this, it is in there. (CWM 7: 89-90)

VII – 9.  “You must first have a great deal of perseverance in the search, for usually when one begins searching for these things the mind comes to give a hundred and one favourable explanations for your not needing to search. It tells you, “Why no, it is not at all your fault; it is this, it is that, it is the circumstances, it is the people, these are things received from outside—all kinds of excellent excuses, which, unless you are very firm in your resolution, make you let go, and then it is finished; and so, after a short time the whole business has to be started again, the bad impulse or the thing you didn’t want, the movement you didn’t want, comes back, and so you must begin everything over again —till the day you decide to perform the operation. When the operation is done it is over, one is free. But, as I said, you must distrust mental explanations, because each time one says, “Yes, yes, at other times it was like that, but this time truly, truly it is not my fault, it is not my fault.” There you are. So it is finished. You must begin again. The subconscient is there, the thing goes down, remains there, very comfortably, and the first day you are not on your guard, hop! it surges up again and it can last —I knew people for whom it lasted more than thirty-five years, because they did not resolve even once to do what was necessary.

Yes, it hurts, it hurts a little, that’s all; afterwards it is finished. So there we are.” (CWM 7: 84-85)

VIII - Encouraging words to continue with rejection till you succeed

VIII – 1. “And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realisation.

Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realisation.

The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and not to be concerned with all the difficulties and obstacles and hindrances.

Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely as possible what you do not want to be.” (CWM 3: 215)

VIII – 2. “Do not allow any discouragement to come upon you and have no distrust of the Divine Grace. Whatever difficulties are outside you, whatever weaknesses are inside you, if you keep firm hold on your faith and your aspiration, the secret Power will carry you through … Even if you are oppressed with opposition and difficulties, even if you stumble, even if the way seems closed to you, keep hold on your aspiration; if faith is clouded for a time, turn always in mind and heart to us and it will be removed. … But keep firm on the way—then in the end things open out of themselves and circumstances yield to the inner spirit.” (SABCL 23: 583) (CWSA 29:101)

VIII – 3. a. “All who enter the spiritual path have to face the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from their own nature and those which come in from outside. The difficulties in the nature always rise again and again till you overcome them; they must be faced with both strength and patience. But the vital part is prone to depression when ordeals and difficulties rise. This is not peculiar to you, but comes to all sadhaks—it does not imply an unfitness for the sadhana or justify a sense of helplessness. But you must train yourself to overcome this reaction of depression, calling in the Mother's Force to aid you.” (SABCL 24: 1615)

VIII – 3. b. All who cleave to the path steadfastly can be sure of their spiritual destiny. If anyone fails to reach it, it can only be for one of the two reasons, either because they leave the path or because for some lure of ambition, vanity, desire, etc. they go astray from the sincere dependence on the Divine.” (SABCL 24: 1615) (CWSA 31: 635)

VIII – 3. c. “To cleave to the path means to follow it without leaving it or turning aside.” (SABCL 23: 537) (CWSA 29: 213-214)

VIII – 4. “One must learn to go forward on the path of yoga, as the Gita insists, with a consciousness free from despondency … Even if one slips, one must rectify the posture; even if one falls, one has to rise and go undiscouraged on the divine way. The attitude must be: “The Divine has promised Himself to me if I cleave to Him always; that I will never cease to do whatever may come.” (SABCL 23: 541) (CWSA 29:213)

VIII – 5. “If you desire only the Divine, there is an absolute certitude that you will reach the Divine. But all these questionings and repining at each moment because you have not reached, only delay and keep an impending curtain before the heart and the eyes. For at every step, when one makes an advance, the opposite forces will throw these doubts like a rope between the legs and stop one short with a stumble … one must say, “Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time.” That is what you must keep as your constant mantra and it is besides the only logical and reasonable thing to do — for anything else is an irrational self-contradiction of the most glaring kind. Anything else one may doubt … but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal.” (SABCL 23: 584-585) (CWSA 29:97)

VIII – 6. “I was simply affirming the great need in all crises and attacks, — to refuse to listen to any suggestions, impulses, lures and to oppose to them all the call of the Truth, the imperative beckoning of the Light. In all doubt and depression, to say, “I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail”; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply, “I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine; I have but to be true to myself and to Him—the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would rise again”; to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply, “This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey”. This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call. (SABCL 24: 1425) (CWSA 29: 99)

VIII – 7. “A stumble does not mean that one is unfit, nor does prolonged difficulty mean that for oneself the thing is impossible.” (CWSA 29: 113)

VIII - 8. “He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.” (SABCL 20: 47) (CWSA 23: 53-54)

VIII- 9. “I know by experience that there isn’t one being who, were it only once in his life, has had a great urge towards... it doesn’t matter what he calls it—let us say the Divine for facility of speech, who is not sure to arrive; even if he turns his back on Him at a certain time, it’s of no importance—he is sure to arrive. He will have to struggle more or less, will have more or less difficulty, but he is sure to succeed one day. It’s a soul that has been chosen, it has become conscious because its hour has come—once the hour has come, well, the result will follow more or less quickly. You can do this in a few months; you can do it in some years; you can do it in some lives —but you will do it.

And what is remarkable is that this freedom of choice is left to you and that, if you decide within yourself that you will do it in this lifetime, you will do it. And I am not speaking here of a permanent and continuous decision because then you can arrive in twelve months. No, I mean: if you have suddenly been seized by this, “I want this”, even once, in a flash, the seal is put, there, like that.” (CWM 7: 339-340)

VIII – 10. “Difficulties are sent to us exclusively to make the realisation more perfect.

Each time we try to realise something and meet with a resistance or an obstacle or even a failure—what seems to be a failure—we should know, we should never forget that it is exclusively, absolutely, so that the realisation may be more perfect.

So this habit of cringing, of getting discouraged or even of feeling uncomfortable, or of abusing yourself and telling yourself: “There! Again I have made amistake”—all that is absolute foolishness.

Simply tell yourself: “We don’t know how to do things as they ought to be done; well, they are being done for us, come what may!” And if we could see to what extent all that seems to be, yes, a difficulty, a mistake, a failure, an obstacle—all that is just to help us, so that the realisation may be more perfect.

Once you know that, everything becomes easy.” 6 October 1958 (CWM 14: 218-219)

VIII – 11. “Shocks and trials always come as a divine grace to show us the points in our being where we fall short and the movements in which we turn our back on our soul by listening to the clamour of our mental being and vital being.

If we know how to accept these spiritual blows with due humility, we are sure to cover a great distance at a single bound.” 22 February 19 (CWM 14: 219)

IX - At the end of life you feel that realisation will be for another time, because we have not done rejection

IX - 1. “You see, one shuts the eyes and doesn’t want to see that one has this fault or that difficulty or that ignorance and stupidity; one doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want, one looks away to the other side, but it remains there all the same.

One day you have to face the thing, you have to. Otherwise you can never reach the end, it will always pull you backward.  You may feel ahead, may see the goal there, drawing near, all this more and more, you may have something which goes before and has almost the feeling that it is going to touch, but you will never touch it if you have these millstones pulling you back. One day you must make a clean sweep of everything. It sometimes takes very long but one must burn one’s bridges; otherwise you go in a round, progress bit by bit until the end of your life, and then, when the time to leave has come you suddenly feel: “Ah!  But... well, it will be perhaps for another time.” This is not pleasant; why, it must be something frightful; for if one has known nothing, understood nothing, if one has never tried...” (CWM 7: 195-196)

{Emphasis added by the editor.}

IX – 2. “Q: I want to ask about this point: falling back into the ordinary consciousness, which is becoming more and more obstinate in me, personally; I feel it.

A: That’s a purely personal question.

Q: But why is it like that, when I know that it is absurd?

A: It is because, I think, you have kept the division in your being, that is, there is one part of your being which has refused to go along with the rest. It is usually like this that it happens.  There is one part which has progressed, one part which holds on and doesn’t want to move; so you feel it more and more as something which persists in being what it is. That’s because you have dropped some of your baggage on the way and left it on the roadside instead of carrying it along with you. That will always pull you backward. Sometimes, unfortunately, one has to turn back, go and pick it up and bring it along; so one loses much time. This is how, indeed, one loses time. It’s because one shuts one’s eyes to so many things in the being. One doesn’t want to see them, because they are not so pretty to see. So one prefers not to know them. But because one is ignorant of the thing it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist any longer. One does this: one puts it down on the way and then tries to go forward, but it is bound by threads, it pulls one back like a millstone drag, and so one must courageously take it up and hold it up like this (gesture) and tell it: “Now you will walk along with me!” It’s no use playing the ostrich.” (CWM 7: 194-195)

IX – 3. “People are born, live, die and are reborn and live and die again, and it goes on, continues indefinitely, they don’t even put the problem before themselves. But when one has had the taste, the foretaste of what life is, and why one is here, and what one has to do here, and then in addition one has made some effort and tries to realise, if one doesn’t get rid of all the baggage of what does not follow, then it will be necessary to begin again yet another time. Better not. It is better to do one’s work while one can do it consciously, and indeed this is what is meant by “Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today.” This “today” means in this present life, because the occasion is here, the opportunity here; and perhaps one will have to wait many thousands of years to find it once again. It is better to do one’s work, at any cost.  There!... Losing as little time as possible.” (CWM 7: 196)

IX – 4. “Every time you are afraid to face yourself and hide carefully from yourself what prevents you from advancing, well, it is as though you were building a wall on the way; later you must demolish it to pass on. It is better to do your task immediately, look yourself straight in the face, straight in the face, not try to sugar-coat the bitter pill. It is very bitter: all the weaknesses, uglinesses, all kinds of nasty little things which one has inside —there are, there are, there are, oh! lots of them. And so you are on the point of attaining a realisation, on the point of touching a light, having an illumination, and then suddenly you feel something pulling you back like this (gesture), and you suffocate, you cannot advance further. Well, in these moments some people weep, some lament, some say, “Oh, poor me, here it is yet once again!” All this is a ridiculous weakness. You have only to look at yourself like this and say, “What petty meanness, small stupidity, little vanity, ignorance, bad will is still there, hidden in the corner, preventing me from crossing the threshold, the threshold of this new discovery? Who is there in me, who is so small, so mean and obstinate, hiding there like a worm in a fruit so that I may not be able to see it?” If you are sincere you find it; but above all it is this, absolutely this: you always sugar-coat the pill. The sugar-coating is a kind of what is called mental understanding of oneself. So one coats as thickly with sugar as possible in order to hide well from oneself what is there, the worm in the fruit; and one does it always, always gives oneself an excuse, always, always” (CWM 7: 196-197)

IX – 5. “The Supreme demands your surrender to her, but does not impose it: you are free at every moment, till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall your self-giving, if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence.” (CWSA 32: 4)

IX – 6. “To do Sri Aurobindo’s yoga is to want to transform oneself integrally, it is to have a single aim in life, such that nothing else exists any longer, that alone exists. …

And to do yoga you must want it consciously, you must now what it is, to begin with. You must know what it is, you must take a resolution about it; but once you have taken the resolution, you must no longer flinch.” (CWM 7: 198)

IX – 7. “But the day you make a choice—when you have done it in all sincerity and have felt within yourself a radical decision—the thing is different. There is the light and the path to be followed, quite straight, and you must not deviate from it. It fools no one, you know; yoga is not a joke. You must know what you are doing when you choose it. But when you choose it, you must hold on to it. You have no longer the right to vacillate. You must go straight ahead.” (CWM 7: 200)

X - Rejecting Bad Thoughts

X - (A) “Why do bad thoughts come?

X – (A) - 1. “Why do bad thoughts come?

Haven’t I told you why bad thoughts come?... For as many reasons as there are bad thoughts! Each one comes for its own special reason: it may be through affinity, it may be just to tease you, it may be because you call them, it may be because you expose yourself to attacks, it may be all this at once and many more things besides.

Bad thoughts come because there is something corresponding somewhere within you; otherwise you might see something passing like that, but they would not come inside you. I suppose the question means: why do you suddenly think something bad?” (CWM 8: 207)

X – (A) - 2. “That is why the nature of the thoughts you receive may be quite an important indication for you of the kind of character you have—it may be quite subconscious for you, for a man is not in the habit of really knowing himself, but it is an indication of the general tendency of your character. To put things in a very simplified way, if you take an optimist, for instance, well, in general, optimistic ideas will come to him; for a pessimist they will generally be pessimistic ideas—I am speaking very broadly—for a person with a rebellious nature, they will be rebellious ideas; and for a very sheepish person, they will be sheepish ideas! Granting that sheep have ideas! That is the usual normal condition.

Now, if it so happens that you have decided to progress and if you enter the path of yoga, then a new factor intervenes. As soon as you want to progress, you immediately meet the resistance of everything that does not want to progress both in you and around you. And this resistance naturally expresses itself in all the thoughts that correspond to it.” (CWM 8: 208)

“Therefore, your occupations and affinities are going to put you almost contradictorily into contact not only with ideas having an affinity and relation with your way of being, but with the opposite. And if you don’t take care from the beginning to keep an attitude of discernment, you will be turned into a mental battlefield.” (CWM 8: 209)

X - (B) Why not to admit thoughts that destroy Aspiration?

X – (B) - 1. “This makes us understand the necessity of not admitting into ourselves any thought which destroys aspiration or the creation of the truth of our being. It reveals the considerable importance of not allowing what one doesn’t want to be or doesn’t want to do to formulate itself into thought within the being. Because to think these things is already a beginning of their realisation. From every point of view it is bad to concentrate on what one doesn’t want, on what one has to reject, what one refuses to be, for the very fact that the thought is there gives to things one wants to reject a sort of right of existence within oneself. This explains the considerable importance of not letting destructive suggestions, thoughts of ill-will, hatred, destruction enter; for merely to think of them is already to give them a power of realisation. Sri Aurobindo says that thought is not the cause of existence but an intermediary, the instrument which gives form to life, to creation, and the control of this instrument is of foremost importance if one wants disorder and all that is anti-divine to disappear from creation.

One must not admit bad thoughts into oneself under the pretext that they are merely thoughts. They are tools of execution. And one should not allow them to exist in oneself if one doesn’t want them to do their work of destruction.” (CWM 8: 396-397)

X – (B) - 2. “But for instance, when undesirable thoughts come, if you look at them, observe them, if you take pleasure in following them in their movements, they will never stop coming. It is the same thing when you have undesirable feelings or sensations: if you pay attention to them, concentrate on them or even look at them with a certain indulgence, they will never stop. But if you absolutely refuse to receive and express them, after some time they stop. You must be patient and very persistent.”  (CWM 6: 330)

X – (B) - 3. “Thoughts are real entities which usually last until they are realised. Some people are obsessed by their own thoughts. They think of something and the thought returns and goes round and round in their heads as if it were something from outside. But it is their own formations returning again and again and striking the mind that has formed them. That is one aspect of the matter.” (CWM 15: 309)

X - (C) How can we get rid of bad thoughts?

X – (C) - 1. “Q: Mother, at times unpleasant thoughts come and disturb us. How can we get rid of them?

A: There are several methods. Generally—but it depends on people —generally, the easiest way is to think of something else. That is, to concentrate one’s attention upon something that has nothing to do with that thought, has no connection with that thought, like reading or some work—generally something creative, some creative work. For instance, those who write, while they are writing (let us take simply a novelist), while he is writing, all other thoughts are gone, for he is concentrated on what he is doing. When he finishes writing, if he has no control, the other thoughts will return. But precisely when a thought assails you, one can try to do some creative work; for example, the scientist could do some research work, a special study to discover something, something that is very absorbing; that is the easiest way.  Naturally, those who have begun to control their thought can make a movement of rejection, push aside the thought as one would a physical object. But that is more difficult and asks for a much greater mastery. If one can manage it, it is more active, in the sense that if you reject that movement, that thought, if you chase it off effectively and constantly or almost repeatedly, finally it does not come any more. But in the other case, it can always return. That makes two methods.

The third means is to be able to bring down a sufficiently great light from above which will be the “denial” in the deeper sense; that is, if the thought which comes is something dark (and especially if it comes from the subconscient or inconscient and is sustained by instinct), if one can bring down from above the light of a true knowledge, a higher power, and put that light upon the thought, one can manage to dissolve it or enlighten or transform it—this is the supreme method. This is still a little more difficult. But it can be done, and if one does it, one is cured —not only does the thought not come back but the very cause is removed.

The first step is to think of something else (but in this way, you know, it will be indefinitely repeated); the second is to fight; and the third is to transform. When one has reached the third step, not only is one cured but one has made a permanent progress.” (CWM 6: 22-23)

X – (C) - 2. “In a great aspiration, if you can put yourself into contact with something higher, some influence of your psychic being or some light from above, and if you can manage to put this in touch with these lower movements, naturally they stop more quickly.  But before even being able to draw these things by aspiration, you can already stop those movements from finding expression in you by a very persistent and patient refusal. When thoughts which you do not like come, if you just brush them away and do not pay them any attention at all, after some time they won’t come any longer. But you must do this very persistently and regularly.” (CWM 6: 330)

X – (C) - 3. “When bad thoughts come, you must reject them, not assent to them in your mind, not give voice to them in your speech, not believe in them or their suggestions. These things cannot vanish in a day, but if you do like that, they will diminish and lose their power to lay strong hold of you and disturb you, and in the end they will disappear.” 21 April 1932 (CWSA 32: 227)

X – (C) - 4. “Therefore, your occupations and affinities are going to put you almost contradictorily into contact not only with ideas having an affinity and relation with your way of being, but with the opposite. And if you don’t take care from the beginning to keep an attitude of discernment, you will be turned into a mental battlefield.

If you know how to rise to a higher level, simply into a region of the speculative mind which is not quite the ordinary physical mind, you can see all this play and all this struggle, all this conflict, all these contradictions as a curiosity which does not touch or affect you. If you rise a step higher still and see the goal towards which you want to go, you will gradually come to discern between ideas favourable to your progress which you will keep, and ideas opposed to this progress which harm and impair it; and from above you will have the power to set them aside, calmly, without being otherwise affected by them. But if you remain there, at that level in the midst of that confusion and conflict, well, you risk getting a headache!

The best thing to do is to occupy yourself with something Practical which will compel you to concentrate specially: studies, work or some physical occupation for the body which demands attention—anything at all that forces you to concentrate on what you are doing and no longer be a prey to these ramblings. But if you have the misfortune to remain there and look at them, then surely, as I said, you will get a headache. For it is a problem which must be resolved either by a descent into practical life and a concentration on some practical effort or else by rising above and looking from above at all this chaos so as to be able to bring some order into it and set it right.

But one must never remain on the same plane, it is a plane which is no good either for physical or moral health.” (CWM 8: 209)

X – (C) - 5. “Q” Mother, when we come to you, we try to be at our best possible, that is, to have very good thoughts; but often, on the contrary, all the bad impulses, bad thoughts we had during the day come forward.

A: That is perhaps so that you can get rid of them.

If they come, one can offer them and ask to be rid of them.

That perhaps is the reason, it is because the Consciousness acts for purification. It is no use at all hiding things and pushing them behind, like this, and imagining they are not there because one has put a veil in front. It is much better to see oneself as one is—provided one is ready to give up this way of being. If you come allowing all the bad movements to rise to the surface, to show themselves; if you offer them, if you say, “Well, this is how I am”, and if at the same time you have the aspiration to be different, then this second of presence is extremely useful; you can, yes, in a few seconds receive the help you need to get rid of them; while if you come like a little saint and go away content, without having received anything, it is not very useful.

Automatically the Consciousness acts like that, it is like the ray that brings light where there wasn’t any. Only, what is needed is to be in a state where one wants to give up the thing, to get rid of it—not to cling to it and keep it. If one sincerely wants to pull it out of oneself, make it disappear, then it is very useful.

(Silence)

Indeed, I could ask a question myself: Why—I don’t know if it is common, but still—why, when you come to me, do you want to have good thoughts and be at your best? For what reason?

To have bad movements before you is very ugly! (Laughter)

If you want to keep them, yes, it is very ugly, but if you want to get rid of them!... It is perhaps a chance to get rid of them. It is surely even an opportunity to get rid of them, because before me they appear exactly as they are; while far from me they are coloured with all sorts of brilliant and false lights, so that you take them for what they are not. If the movement is nasty and you see it in my atmosphere, it appears exactly as it is. Then that is the time to get rid of it.

(Silence)

To give the best one has is very fine and is much appreciated; but to give the worst one has is much more useful; and perhaps this offering is even more appreciated—on condition that it is given in order to get rid of it, not to take it back afterwards!” (CWM 8: 307-309)

X – (C) - 6. “Thoughts are real entities which usually last until they are realised. Some people are obsessed by their own thoughts. They think of something and the thought returns and goes round and round in their heads as if it were something from outside. But it is their own formations returning again and again and striking the mind that has formed them. That is one aspect of the matter.

Did you ever have the experience of a thought taking the form of words or a sentence in your mind and returning over and over again? But if you are clever enough to take a piece of paper and a pencil and write it down—that is the end of it, it won’t return any more, you have thrown it out of yourself.

The thing has had its little satisfaction, it has manifested itself sufficiently and it won’t return.

And there is something more interesting still: if you have a bad thought that annoys and disturbs you, write it down very attentively, very carefully, putting as much consciousness and will as you can. Then take the piece of paper and, with concentration, tear it up with the will that the thought will be torn up in the same way. That is how you will get rid of it.” (CWM 15: 309-310)

XI - Other Important Quotations on Rejection

XI - 1. “Q: How can I apply this {rejection} in my working life?

A: This has to be done in life itself—whether the life is in an Asram or outside, the rule and method is the same. It is an internal change for which one must become conscious of the lower nature as well as of the psychic and spiritual workings. Meditation is usually necessary for that but so also is life, for it is only life that tests the genuineness of the change.” 7 April 1938  (CWSA 35: 110)

XI – 2. “Complete samata takes long to establish and it is dependent on three things— the soul’s self-giving to the Divine by an inner surrender, the descent of the spiritual calm and peace from above and the steady, long and persistent rejection of all egoistic, rajasic and other feelings that contradict samata.” (CWSA 29: 131)

XI – 3. “One gets by the rejection of desire, rajas and ego a quietude and purity into which the Peace ineffable can descend; ...” (CWSA 29: 217)

XI – 4. “If you try to apply everything you read, there will be no end to your new beginnings. One can stop thinking by rejecting the thoughts and in the silence discover oneself.” (CWSA 29: 302)

XI – 5. “The concentration in the heart is what brings about the opening of the psychic which is your principal need. If the concentration has brought about a feeling which makes you judge clearly all the other movements and see their nature, then the psychic is already in action. For this is the psychic feeling which brings with it a clear insight into the nature of all movements that come and makes it easy to reject what has to be rejected and keep the right attitude and perception.” (CWSA 29: 310)

XI – 6. “The inner being may have the realisation strongly and live in the oneness, calm, peace, but the interior parts of the outer may feel the reactions of desire etc. In this case the reactions are more superficial; but even so rejection is needed till they cease. When all the being lives in the solid realisation of calm, peace, liberation, oneness, then the desires fall away and the necessity of rejection ceases, because there is nothing to reject any longer.” (CWSA 29: 425)

XI – 7. “To reject doubts means control of one’s thoughts—very certainly so.” (CWSA 35: 242-243)

XI – 8. “Sri Aurobindo’s yoga also insists on the rejection of the darker and lower elements of the nature.” (CWSA 36: 114)

XI – 9. “Revolt and impatience mean always that there is a part of the being or something in the being which does not submit, has not given itself to God, but insists on God going out of his way to obey it. That may be very well in the Bhaktimarga, but it will not do on this Way. The revolt and impatience may come and will come in the heart or the prana when these are still subject to imperfection and impurity; but it is then for the will and the faith in your buddhi to reject them, not to act upon them. If the will consents, approves and supports them, it means that you are siding with the inner enemy. If you want rapid progress, the first condition is that you should not do this; for every time you do it, the enemy is strengthened and the shuddhi postponed. This is a difficult lesson to learn, but you must learn it.” (CWSA 36: 229)

XI – 10. “If you really accept and give yourself to me, you must accept my truth. My truth is one that rejects ignorance and falsehoods and moves to the knowledge,

rejects darkness and moves to the light,

rejects egoism and moves to the Divine Self;

rejects imperfections and moves to perfection.

My truth is not only the truth of Bhakti or of psychic development but also of knowledge, purity, divine strength and calm and of the raising of all these things from their mental, emotional and vital forms to their Supramental reality.” (CWSA 36: 373) (SABCL 23: 1049)

{The sentences of the text are broken down into phrases and printed in separate lines in order to add emphasis to each phrase.}

XI – 11. “Its completion may take some time because these vital beings are very sticky and persistent and are always returning to the attack. The one thing which can make the cure rapid is if the boy himself develops a will in his mind to change, for that will take away the ground of the hostile influence. It is because something in him is amused and takes pleasure in the force {hostile force} which comes with the influence that these things are able to recur and continue. This element in him calls the invading presence back even when it has been centrally rejected.” (CWSA 36: 376)

XI – 12. The powers of life, this world is not to be rejected in the Integral Yoga.

XI – 12. a. “This Yoga does not mean a rejection of the powers of Life, but an inner transformation and a change of the spirit in the life and the use of the powers. These powers are now used in an egoistic spirit and for undivine ends; they have to be used in a spirit of surrender to the Divine and for the purposes of the divine Work. That is what is meant by conquering them back for the Mother.” (CWSA 29: 384)

XI – 12. b. “I gather that it is in the main a statement and justification of the Purna Yoga and of my message; I believe you have rightly stated the two main elements of it,—first, the acceptance of the world as a manifestation of the Divine Power, not its rejection as a mistake or an illusion, and, secondly, the character of this manifestation as a spiritual evolution with Yoga as a means for the transformation of mind, life and body into the instruments of a spiritual and supramental perfection.” (CWSA 29: 373-374)

XI – 12. c. “This Yoga is not a rejection of life or of closeness and intimacy between the Divine and the sadhaks. Its ideal aims at the greatest closeness and unity on the physical as well as the other planes, at the most divine largeness and fullness and joy of life.” (CWSA 29: 387)

XI – 12. d. “But vairagya always tends to a turning away from life and a tamasic element in vairagya, despair, depression etc., often dilapidates the force of the being and may even lead in some cases to falling between two stools so that one loses earth and misses heaven. I therefore prefer to replace vairagya by a firm and quiet rejection of what has to be rejected, sex, vanity, ego-centrism, attachment, etc. etc.; but that does not include rejection of the activities and powers that can be made instruments of the sadhana and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry etc.—Yoga can be done without the rejection of life, without killing or impairing the life-joy and the vital force.” (CWSA 29: 388)

XI – 13. “The uneasiness created by the psychic is not depression - it is in the nature of a rejection of the wrong movement.

If the uneasiness causes depression or vital dissatisfaction, it is not the psychic.” (SABCL 24: 1118)

XI – 14. “They [the hostile forces] come because they were freely permitted in the past - so they want to renew and continue their action.

An entire rejection and a complete turning to the Divine are the way to meet them.” (SABCL 24: 1740)

XI – 15. “The earth-consciousness does not want to change, so it rejects what comes down to it from above - it has always done so. It is only if those who have taken this yoga open themselves and are willing to change their lower nature that this unwillingness can disappear.” (SABCL 24: 1435)

XI – 16. “Truth in speech and truth in thought are very important.

The more you can feel falsehood as being not part of yourself, as coming on you from outside, the easier it will be to reject and refuse it.” (SABCL 23: 652) (CWSA 29: 126)

XI – 17. “It will be better to do the work as a sadhana for getting rid of the defects rather than accept the defects as a reason for not doing the work. Instead of accepting these reactions as if they were an unchangeable law of your nature, you should make up your mind that they must come no longer — calling down the aid of the Mother's force to purify the vital and eliminate them altogether. If you believe that the trouble in the body must come, naturally it will come; rather fix in your mind the idea and will that it must not come and will not come. If it tries to come reject it and throw it away from you.” (SABCL 23: 706) (CWSA 29: 241)

XI – 18. “All difficulties can be conquered, but only on condition of fidelity to the Way that you have taken. There is no obligation on anyone to take it,—it is a difficult and trying one, a way for heroes, not for weaklings, —but once taken, it must be followed, or you will not arrive.” (CWSA 36: 228)

XI – 19. “There must be no attachment to the work or the result, no laying down of conditions, no claim to possess the Power that should possess you, no pride of the instrument, no vanity or arrogance. Nothing in the mind or in the vital or physical parts should be suffered to distort to its own use or seize for its own personal and separate satisfaction the greatness of the forces that are acting through you. Let your faith, your sincerity, your purity of aspiration be absolute and pervasive of all the planes and layers of the being; then every disturbing element and distorting influence will progressively fall away from your nature.” (CWSA 32: 13)

XII - Rejection and Purification

XII – 1. “Purification—rejecting from one’s nature all that is egoistic or of the nature of rajasic desire.

Aspiration for peace and calm and a perfect equality.

Purification and a basis of calm are the first necessary steps in the spiritual life.” (CWSA 29: 46)

XII – 2. “All purification is a release, a delivery; for it is a throwing away of limiting, binding, obscuring imperfections and confusions: purification from desire brings the freedom of the psychic prana, purification from wrong emotions and troubling reactions the freedom of the heart, purification from the obscuring limited thought of the sense mind the freedom of the intelligence, purification from mere intellectuality the freedom of the gnosis.” (SABCL 21: 647) (CWSA 24: 674)

XII – 3. “Not only the mind but the vital must become calm; these impulses must lose their force of recurrence by rejection and purification. Entire purity and peace must be established in the whole Adhar; it is only then that he will have a safe and sure basis for further progress.” (SABCL 24: 1215)

XII – 4. “It is as in Yoga where things active or latent in the being have to be put into action in the light so that they may be grappled with and thrown out or to emerge from latency in the depths for the same purificatory purpose. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable.” (CWSA 36: 498) (SABCL 26: 171)

XII – 5. “Q: Mother, when we come to you, we try to be at our best possible, that is, to have very good thoughts; but often, on the contrary, all the bad impulses, bad thoughts we had during the day come forward.

A: That is perhaps so that you can get rid of them. If they come, one can offer them and ask to be rid of them. That perhaps is the reason, it is because the Consciousness acts for purification. It is no use at all hiding things and pushing them behind, like this, and imagining they are not there because one has put a veil in front.” (CWM 8: 307)

XIII - What does purity and purification mean in Integral Yoga?

XIII - 1.“Sri Aurobindo does not use the word purity in the ordinary moral sense. For him, “purity” means “exclusively under the influence of the Divine”, expressing only the Divine.” 12 January 1970 (CWM 10: 294)

XIII - 2. a. “Purity is to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine.” (SABCL 23: 645) (CWSA 29: 48)

XIII - 2. b. “This is purity, to accept no other influence but only the influence of the Divine.” (CWM 14: 149)

XIII - 2. c.  “… the essence of purity is to respond only to the Divine Influence and not to have an affinity with other movements.” (SABCL 23: 644) (CWSA 29: 48)

XIII - 3. “Purity means freedom from soil or mixture. The divine Purity is that in which there is no mixture of the turbid ignorant movements of the lower nature. Ordinarily, purity is used to mean (in the common language) freedom from sexual passion and impulse.” (SABCL 23: 645) (CWSA 29: 48)

XIII - 4. a. “Purity is perfect sincerity and one cannot have it unless the being is entirely consecrated to the Divine.” (CWM 14: 149)

XIII - 4. b. “Purity and sincerity are the same thing.” (CWM 10: 202)

XIII - 5. a. “It [purity] is more a condition than a substance. Peace helps to purity—since in peace disturbing influences cease and the essence of purity is to respond only to the Divine Influence and not to have an affinity with other movements.” (SABCL 23: 644) (CWSA 29: 48)

XIII - 5. b. “Purity is the best of powers.” (CWM 14: 149)

XIII – 6. Thus purification, liberation, perfection, delight of being are four constituent elements of the Yoga,— ´suddhi, mukti, siddhi, bhukti.” (SABCL 21: 613) (CWSA 24: 639)

XIII – 7. “Let us not be in too furious a haste to acquire even peace, purity and perfection. Peace must be ours, but not the peace of an empty or devastated nature or of slain or mutilated capacities incapable of unrest because we have made them incapable of intensity and fire and force. Purity must be our aim, but not the purity of a void or of a bleak and rigid coldness. (SABCL 20: 234) (CWSA 23: 246)

XIII - 8. “Again, when your heart is turned to the Mother and satisfied with her love, when you are full of peace, contentment and happiness, then there is no room for wrong feelings and desires; your heart is pure.

This is what the Mother meant by purity; to be free from false ideas, wrong feelings, desires, demands etc. is to be pure.” (CWSA 29: 49)

XIII – 9. “Purity in the consciousness and purity in the conduct is what is usually meant by these terms [inner and outer purity].” (CWSA 29: 49)

XIII - 10. “The being itself, the spirit, the divine Reality in man stands in no need of purification; it is for ever pure, not affected by the faults of its instrumentation or the stumblings of mind and heart and body in their work, as the sun, says the Upanishad, is not touched or stained by the faults of the eye of vision.” (SABCL 21: 616) (CWSA 24: 643)

XIV - What is ordinarily called purity but is not purity in Yoga

XIV - 1. “What is ordinarily called purity of the being, is either a negative whiteness, a freedom from sin gained by a constant inhibition of whatever action, feeling, idea or will we think to be wrong, or else, the highest negative or passive purity, the entire God-content, inaction, the complete stilling of the vibrant mind and the soul of desire, which in quietistic disciplines leads to a supreme peace; for then the spirit appears in all the eternal purity of its immaculate essence. That gained, there would be nothing farther to be enjoyed or done. But here we have the more difficult problem of a total, unabated, even an increased and more powerful action founded on perfect bliss of the being, the purity of the soul’s instrumental as well as the spirit’s essential nature. Mind, heart, life, body are to do the works of the Divine, all the works which they do now and yet more, but to do them divinely, as now they do not do them. This is the first appearance of the problem before him on which the seeker of perfection has to lay hold, that it is not a negative, prohibitory, passive or quietistic, but a positive, affirmative, active purity which is his object. A divine quietism discovers the immaculate eternity of the Spirit, a divine kinetism adds to it the right pure undeviating action of the soul, mind and body.” (SABCL 21: 616-617) (CWSA 24: 643-644)

XIV - 2. “It {total purification} is not, ultimately, the narrower moral purification of the ethical nature. Ethics deals only with the desire-soul and the active outward dynamical part of our being; its field is confined to character and action. It prohibits and inhibits certain actions, certain desires, impulses, propensities, —it inculcates certain qualities in the act, such as truthfulness, love, charity, compassion, chastity. When it has got this done and assured a base of virtue, the possession of a purified will and blameless habit of action, its work is finished. But the Siddha of the integral perfection has to dwell in a larger plane of the Spirit’s eternal purity beyond good and evil. By this phrase it is not meant, as the rash hastily concluding intellect would be prone to imagine, that he will do good and evil indifferently and declare that to the spirit there is no difference between them, which would be in the plane of individual action an obvious untruth and might serve to cover a reckless self-indulgence of the imperfect human nature. Neither is it meant that since good and evil are in this world inextricably entangled together, like pain and pleasure,—a proposition which, however true at the moment and plausible as a generalisation, need not be true of the human being’s greater spiritual evolution,—the liberated man will live in the spirit and stand back from the mechanical continued workings of a necessarily imperfect nature. This, however possible as a stage towards a final cessation of all activity, is evidently not a counsel of active perfection. But it is meant that the Siddha of the active integral perfection will live dynamically in the working of the transcendent power of the divine Spirit as a universal will through the supermind individualised in him for action.” (SABCL 21: 617) (CWSA 24: 644)

XIV - 3. “In other words, purification must not be understood in any limited sense of a selection of certain outward kinetic movements, their regulation, the inhibition of other action or a liberation of certain forms of character or particular mental and moral capacities. These things are secondary signs of our derivative being, not essential powers and first forces. We have to take a wider psychological view of the primary forces of our nature. We have to distinguish the formed parts of our being, find out their basic defect of impurity or wrong action and correct that, sure that the rest will then come right naturally. We have not to doctor symptoms of impurity, or that only secondarily, as a minor help, —but to strike at its roots after a deeper diagnosis.” (SABCL 21: 618) (CWSA 24: 645)

XIV – 4. “X pretends to be pure and surrendered to the will of God. How can he be pure when his whole trouble has come from the indulgence of impure desires? He pretends to act according to God’s will, but his actions are moved by three things, desire, vanity and self-will. The devil makes suggestions supported by one or another of these three motives and persuades him that it is the will of God.

Ignorance is not a state of innocence or purity; that is an old blunder. Only a consciousness full of light can be pure. For instance, when you are conscious, your mind is clear and you have the right ideas about things and people; your mind is pure of ignorance. But when the mind is clouded by some impurity, —say, anger, jealousy or pride or some unreasonable desire,— you at once become ignorant and mistake and misunderstand everything.” (CWSA 29: 49)

XIV – 5. “Purification of the nature by the “influence” of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change—the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose.” (CWSA 35: 174)

XV – The objective of Purification

XV - 1. “The object of purification is to make the whole mental being a clear mirror in which the divine reality can be reflected, a clear vessel and an unobstructing channel into which the divine presence and through which the divine influence can be poured, a subtilised stuff which the divine nature can take possession of, new-shape and use to divine issues. For the mental being at present reflects only the confusions created by the mental and physical view of the world, is a channel only for the disorders of the ignorant lower nature and full of obstructions and impurities which prevent the higher from acting; therefore the whole shape of our being is deformed and imperfect, indocile to the highest influences and turned in its action to ignorant and inferior utilities. It reflects even the world falsely; it is incapable of reflecting the Divine.” (SABCL 20:494) (CWSA 23: 515)

XV - 2. “The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. An integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty.” (SABCL 20: 43) (CWSA 23: 48-49)

XV – 3. “That mixed and confused action has to be mended; purification is an essential means towards self-perfection. All these impurities and inadequacies result in various kinds of limitation and bondage: but there are two or three primary knots of the bondage,—ego is the principal knot,—from which the others derive. These bonds must be got rid of; purification is not complete till it brings about liberation. … Thus purification, liberation, perfection, delight of being are four constituent elements of the Yoga,— ´suddhi, mukti, siddhi, bhukti.” (SABCL 21: 613) (CWSA 24: 639)

XV – 4. “Ego is a very curious thing and in nothing more than in its way of hiding itself and pretending it is not the ego. It can always hide even behind an aspiration to serve the Divine. The only way is to chase it out of all its veils and corners. You are right also in thinking that this is really the most important part of yoga. The Rajayogis are right in putting purification in front of everything—as I was also right in putting it in front along with concentration in The Synthesis of Yoga. You have only to look about you to see that experiences and even realisations cannot bring one to the goal if this is not done—at any moment they can fall owing to the vital still being impure and full of ego.” (SABCL 23: 574-575)

XV – 5. “Experience in the sadhana is bound to begin with the mental plane,—all that is necessary is that the experience should be sound and genuine. The pressure of understanding and will in the mind and the Godward emotional urge in the heart are the two first agents of yoga, and peace, purity and calm (with a lulling of the lower unrest) are precisely the first basis that has to be laid; to get that is much more important in the beginning than to get a glimpse of the supraphysical worlds or to have visions, voices and powers. Purification and calm are the first needs in the yoga. One may have a great wealth of experiences of that kind (worlds, visions, voices, etc.) without them, but these experiences occurring in an unpurified and troubled consciousness are usually full of disorder and mixture.

At first the peace and calm are not continuous, they come and go, and it usually takes a long time to get them settled in the nature. It is better therefore to avoid impatience and to go on steadily with what is being done. If you wish to have something beyond the peace and calm, let it be the full opening of the inner being and the consciousness of the Divine Power working in you. Aspire for that sincerely and with a great intensity but without impatience and it will come.” (SABCL 23: 889)

XV – 6. a. “Quite correct. Unless the Adhar is made pure, neither the higher truth (intuitive, illumined, spiritual) nor the overmental nor the supramental can manifest; whatever forces come down from them get mixed with the inferior consciousness and the half-truth takes the place of the Truth or even sometimes a dangerous error.” (SABCL 23: 890)

XV - 6. b. “I don't think there is any cause for dissatisfaction with the progress made by you. Experiences come to many before the nature is ready to make full profit from them; to others a more or less prolonged period of purification and preparation of the stuff of the nature or the instruments comes first, while experiences are held up till this process is largely or wholly over. The latter method which seems to be adopted in your case is the safer and sounder of the two.” (SABCL 23: 887-888)

XV – 7. “Do not be over-eager for experiences; for experiences you can always get, having once broken the barrier between the physical mind and the subtle planes.

What you have to aspire for most is the improved quality of the recipient consciousness in you,

discrimination in the mind,

the unattached impersonal Witness look on all that goes on in you and around you,

purity in the vital,

calm equanimity,

enduring patience,

absence of pride and the sense of greatness

—and more especially, the development of the psychic being in you

—surrender, self-giving, psychic humility, devotion.

It is a consciousness made up of these things, cast in this mould, that can bear without breaking, stumbling or deviation into error the rush of lights, power and experiences from the supraphysical planes.

An entire perfection in these respects is hardly possible until the whole nature from the higher mind to the subconscient physical is made one in the light that is greater than the mind, but a sufficient foundation and a consciousness always self-observant, vigilant and growing in these things is indispensable—for perfect purification is the basis of the perfect Siddhi.” (SABCL 23: 886)

{The sentences of the text are broken down into phrases and printed in separate lines in order to add emphasis to each phrase.}

XV – 8. “His perfection will not be a sattwic purity, but a thing uplifted beyond the gunas of Nature, perfection of spiritual knowledge, spiritual power, spiritual delight, unity and harmony of unity; the outward perfection of his works will be freely shaped as the self-expression of this inner spiritual transcendence and universality. For this change he must make conscient in him that power of spirit and supermind which is now superconscient to our mentality. But that cannot work in him so long as his present mental, vital, physical being is not liberated from its actual inferior working. This purification is the first necessity.” (SABCL 21: 618) (CWSA 24: 645)

XV – 9. “You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence.” (CWSA 32: 4)

XVI - What needs to be purified?

XVI – 1. “If there is to be an active perfection of our being, the first necessity is a purification of the working of the instruments which it now uses for a music of discords.” (SABCL 21: 616) (CWSA 24: 643)

XVI – 2. “Moreover, it is a total purification of all the complex instrumentality in all the parts of each instrument that is demanded of us by the integral perfection. It is not, ultimately, the narrower moral purification of the ethical nature. Ethics deals only with the desire-soul and the active outward dynamical part of our being; its field is confined to character and action. It prohibits and inhibits certain actions, certain desires, impulses, propensities, —it inculcates certain qualities in the act, such as truthfulness, love, charity, compassion, chastity. When it has got this done and assured a base of virtue, the possession of a purified will and blameless habit of action, its work is finished. But the Siddha of the integral perfection has to dwell in a larger plane of the Spirit’s eternal purity beyond good and evil.” (SABCL 21: 617) (CWSA 24: 644)

XVI – 3. “Mind, heart, the soul of vital desire, the life in the body are the seats of impurity; it is they that must be set right if the working of the spirit is to be a perfect working and not marked by its present greater or less concession to the devious pleasure of the lower nature.” (SABCL 21: 616) (CWSA 24: 643)

XVI – 4. a. “Purity or impurity depends upon the consciousness;

in the divine consciousness everything is pure,

in the ignorance everything is subject to impurity, not the body only or part of the body, but mind and vital and all.

Only the self and the psychic being remain always pure.” (SABCL 23: 645) (CWSA 29: 48-49)

{The sentence of the text is broken down into phrase and printed in separate line in order to add emphasis to each phrase.}

XVI – 4. b. “The purification of the mental being and the psychic prana … prepares the ground for a spiritual liberation. Suddhi is the condition for mukti.” (SABCL 21: 647) (CWSA 24:674)

XVI – 5. “The first necessity of preparation {in Yoga} is the purifying of all the members of our being; especially, for the path of knowledge, the purification of the understanding, the key that shall open the door of Truth; and a purified understanding is hardly possible without the purification of the other members. An unpurified heart, an unpurified sense, an unpurified life confuse the understanding, disturb its data, distort its conclusions, darken its seeing, misapply its knowledge; an unpurified physical system clogs or chokes up its action.” (SABCL 20: 295) (CWSA 23: 309)

XVI – 6. a. “It is more important to look at the thing from the positive rather than the negative side. The things that have to be established are— brahmacaryam samah satyam prasantir atmasamyamah: brahmacaryam, complete sex-purity; samah, quiet and harmony in the being, its forces maintained but controlled, harmonised, disciplined; satyam, truth and sincerity in the whole nature; prasantih, a general state of peace and calm; atmasamyamah, the power and habit to control whatever needs control in the movements of the nature. When these are fairly established, one has laid a foundation on which one can develop the yogic consciousness and with the yogic consciousness there comes an easy opening to realisation and experience” (SABCL 23: 888)

XVI – 6. b. “But we have on the other hand this advantage that one important instrument sufficiently purified can be used as a means for the purification of the others, one step firmly taken makes easier all the others and gets rid of a host of difficulties. Which instrument then by its purification and perfection will bring about most easily and effectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the rest?”  (SABCL 21: 627) (CWSA 24: 654)

XVI – 7. “The aspiration must be for entire purification, especially (1) purification from sex, so that no sex imaginations may enter and the sex impulse may cease, (2) purification from desires and demands, (3) purification from depression which is the result of disappointed desires. It is the most important for you. Particularly what you must aspire for is peace in all the being, complete equanimity, samata.” (CWSA 29: 46)

XVI - 8. “Purification from egoistic movements and from personal desire and the faithful following of the best light one has are a preliminary training for this path, and so far as he has followed these things he has been on the right way, but to ask for strength and light in one’s action must not be regarded as an egoistic movement, for they are necessary in one’s inner development.”  (CWSA 29: 235)

XVI - 9. “If you are surrendered only in the higher consciousness, with no peace or purity in the lower, certainly that is not enough and you have to aspire for the peace and purity everywhere. (CWSA 29: 72)

XVII - General Methods of Purification

XVII – 1. “But to quiet the mind and get the spiritual experience it is necessary first to purify and prepare the nature. This sometimes takes many years. Work done with the right attitude is the easiest means for that—i.e. work done without desire or ego, rejecting all movements of desire, demand or ego when they come, done as an offering to the Divine Mother, with the remembrance of her and prayer to her to manifest her force and take up the action so that there too and not only in inner silence you can feel her presence and working.” (SABCL 23: 533) (CWSA 29:226)

XVII - 2. a. “In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible.” (SABCL 20: 129) (CWSA 23: 138)

XVII - 2. b. “Adoration, before it turns into an element of the deeper Yoga of devotion, a petal of the flower of love, its homage and self-uplifting to its sun, must bring with it, if it is profound, an increasing consecration of the being to the Divine who is adored. And one element of this consecration must be a self-purifying so as to become fit for the divine contact, or for the entrance of the Divine into the temple of our inner being, or for his self revelation in the shrine of the heart.” (SABCL 21: 547-548)  (CWSA 24: 572-573)

XVII – 2. c. “Let no demand or insistence creep in to stain the purity of the self-giving and the sacrifice.” (CWSA 32: 13)

XVII – 3. “There are two possibilities, one of purification by personal effort, which takes a long time, another by a direct intervention of the Divine Grace which is usually rapid in its action. For the latter there must be a complete surrender and self-giving and for that again usually it is necessary to have a mind that can remain quite quiet and allow the Divine Force to act supporting it with its complete adhesion at every step, but otherwise remaining still and quiet. This last condition which resembles the baby-cat attitude spoken of by Ramakrishna, is difficult to have. Those who are accustomed to a very active movement of their thought and will in all they do, find it difficult to still the activity and adopt the quietude of mental self-giving. This does not mean that they cannot do the yoga or cannot arrive at self-giving—only the purification and the self-giving take a long time to accomplish and one must have the patience and steady perseverance and resolution to go through.” (SABCL 23: 591) (CWSA 29: 83)

XVII - 4. a. “Peace helps  to purity — since in peace disturbing influence cease and the essence of purity is to respond only to the Divine Influence and not to have an affinity with other movements.” (SABCL 23: 644) (CWSA 29:48)

XVII - 4. b. “When the peace is fully established everywhere in the being, these things [reactions of the lower vital] will not be able to shake it. They may come first as ripples on the surface, then only as suggestions which one looks at or does not care to look at but in either case they do not get inside, affect or disturb at all.

It is difficult to explain, but it is something like a mountain at which one throws stones — if conscious all through the mountain may feel the touch of the stones, but the thing would be so slight and superficial that it would not be in the least affected. In the end even that reaction disappears.” (SABCL23: 649) (CWSA 29: 150-151)

XVII - 4. c. “If you get peace then to clean the vital becomes easy. If you simply clean and clean and do nothing else, you go very slowly – for the vital gets dirty again and has to be cleaned a hundred times. The peace is something that is clean in itself, so to get it is a positive way of securing your object. To look for dirt only and clean is the negative way.” (SABCL23: 654) (CWSA 29:152)

XVII – 5. “To be moral from the social viewpoint one has only to take good care to do nothing which is not approved of by others; this may be somewhat difficult, but still it is not impossible; and one may be, as I said, a monument of insincerity and impurity while doing this; whereas to be pure from the spiritual point of view means a vigilance, a consciousness, a sincerity that stand all tests.” (CWM 6: 439)

XVII - 6. “This courage, this heroism which the Divine wants of us, why not use it to fight against one’s own difficulties, one’s own imperfections, one’s own obscurities? Why not heroically face the furnace of inner purification so that it does not become necessary to pass once more through one of those terrible, gigantic destructions which plunge an entire civilisation into darkness?” (CWM 9: 75)

XVII – 7.  a. “It is a mistake to dwell too much on the lower nature and its obstacles, which is the negative side of the sadhana. They have to be seen and purified, but preoccupation with them as the one important thing is not helpful. The positive side of experience of the descent is the more important thing. If one waits for the lower nature to be purified entirely and for all time before calling down the positive experience, one might have to wait for ever. It is true that the more the lower nature is purified, the easier is the descent of the higher Nature, but it is also and more true that the more the higher Nature descends, the more the lower is purified. Neither the complete purification nor the permanent and perfect manifestation can come all at once, it is a matter of time and patient progress. The two (purification and manifestation) go on progressing side by side and become more and more strong to play into each other's hands—that is the usual course of the sadhana.” (SABCL 23: 906)

XVII – 7.  b. “Why should it be an imagination? When the higher consciousness touches it creates so long as it is there an essential purity in which all parts of the being can share. Or, even if the exterior being does not share actively in it, it may fall quiescent so that there is nothing to interfere with the whole inner being realising the truth of a certain experience. The state does not last because it is only a preparatory touch, not the full or permanent descent; but while it is there it is real. The sex-sensation is of course the thing in the external being, the perversion or false representation in nature, that is the chief obstacle to the experience becoming frequent and then normal. It usually happens that such an opposite tries to assert itself after an experience.” (SABCL 23: 1212)

XVII – 8. a. “What you have to aspire to is bhakti, purification of the nature, right psychic consciousness and surrender.” (CWSA 35: 629)

XVII – 8.  b. “You can also write briefly to her explaining the principle of this Yoga (its practice) which is to open oneself to the Divine Power which is always secretly there above, aspire and call down its peace, calm, purity, wideness into one’s own consciousness and its working which will change the nature and fill it with a higher light and Ananda. One’s own part is to so aspire and open oneself and to reject all that belongs to ego, desire and the lower nature.” 21 December 1932 (CWSA 35: 818)

XVII - 9. “Q: Mother, tell me how I can keep Your service holy and free from the slightest stain of human impurity.

A: By wanting it and always aspiring for it.” (CWM 14: 149)

XVIII - Spiritual experience without purification has serious dangers

XVIII – 1. “Even before the tranquillising purification of the outer nature has been effected one can still break down the wall screening our inner being from our outer awareness by a strong force of call and aspiration, a vehement will or violent effort or an effective discipline or process; but this may be a premature movement and is not without its serious dangers.

In entering within one may find oneself amidst a chaos of unfamiliar and supernormal experiences to which one has not the key or a press of subliminal or cosmic forces, subconscient, mental, vital, subtle-physical,

which may unduly sway or chaotically drive the being,

encircle it in a cave of darkness,

or keep it wandering in a wilderness of glamour, allurement, deception,

or push it into an obscure battlefield full of secret and treacherous and misleading

or open and violent oppositions;

beings and voices and influences may appear to the inner sense and vision and hearing claiming to be the Divine Being or His messengers or Powers and Godheads of the Light or guides of the path to realisation, while in truth they are of a very different character.” (SABCL 19: 905) (CWSA 22: 938-939)

{The sentence of the text is broken down into phrase and printed in separate lines in order to add emphasis to each phrase.}

XVIII – 2. “The outer nature has to undergo a change of poise, a quieting, a purification and fine mutation (transformation) of its substance and energy by which the many obstacles in it rarefy, drop away or otherwise disappear; it then becomes possible to pass through to the depths of our being and from the depths so reached a new consciousness can be formed, both behind the exterior self and in it, joining the depths to the surface.” (SABCL 19: 904) (CWSA 22: 937-938)

XVIII - 3. “If there is too much egoism in the nature of the seeker or a strong passion or an excessive ambition, vanity or other dominating weakness, or an obscurity of the mind or a vacillating will or a weakness of the life-force or an unsteadiness in it or want of balance, he is likely to be seized on through these deficiencies and to be frustrated or to deviate, misled from the true way of the inner life and seeking into false paths, or to be left wandering about in an intermediate chaos of experiences and fail to find his way out into the true realisation. These perils were well-known to a past spiritual experience and have been met by imposing the necessity of initiation, of discipline, of methods of purification and testing by ordeal, of an entire submission to the directions of the path-finder or path-leader, one who has realised the Truth and himself possesses and is able to communicate the light, the experience, a guide who is strong to take by the hand and carry over difficult passages as well as to instruct and point out the way. But even so the dangers will be there and can only be surmounted if there is or there grows up a complete sincerity, a will for purity, a readiness for obedience to the Truth, for surrender to the Highest, a readiness to lose or to subject to a divine yoke the limiting and self-affirming ego. These things are the sign that the true will for realisation, for conversion of the consciousness, for transformation is there, the necessary stage of the evolution has been reached: in that condition the defects of nature which belong to the human being cannot be a permanent obstacle to the change from the mental to the spiritual status; the process may never be entirely easy, but the way will have been made open and practicable.” (SABCL 19: 905-906) (CWSA 22: 939)

XVIII - 4. “Purification of the nature is the first aim to be achieved. There should be no over-eagerness for experiences but such as come should be observed and, if helpful to the right attitude and true development, accepted. All that flatters the ego or feeds it should be rejected.” (CWSA 35: 551)

XVIII – 5. “The descent of the peace is often one of the first major positive experiences of the sadhana. In this state of peace the normal thought-mind (buddhi) is apt to fall silent or abate most of its activity and, when it does, very often either this vital mind can rush in, if one is not on one’s guard, or else a kind of mechanical physical or random subconscient mind can begin to come up and act; these are the chief disturbers of the silence. Or else the lower vital mind can try to disturb; that brings up the ego and passions and their play. All these are signs of elements that have to be got rid of, because if they remain and other of the higher powers begin to descend, Power and Force, Knowledge, Love or Ananda, those lower things may come across with the result that either the higher consciousness retires or its descent is covered up and the stimulation it gives is misused for the purposes of the lower nature. This is the reason why many sadhaks after having big experiences fall into the clutch of a magnified ego, upheavals, ambition, exaggerated sex or other vital passions or distortions. It is always well therefore if a complete purification of the vital can either precede or keep pace with the positive experience— at least in natures in which the vital is strongly active.” (CWSA 28: 180-181)

XVIII - 6. “As for Shakti, the descent of Shakti before the vital is pure and surrendered, has its dangers. It is better for him to pray for purification, knowledge, intensity of the heart’s aspiration and as much working of the Power as he can bear and assimilate.” 18 May 1931 (CWSA 35: 545)

XVIII - 7. “A certain amount of purification is necessary before there can be any realisation of the Divine and that is what has been going on in you. It is after all not a very long time since the real purification began and it is never an easy work. So the impatience may be natural, but it is not exactly reasonable.” (CWSA 29: 46)

XVIII - 8. “Very often the earlier stage of the sadhana is successful, because there is an opening of the mind to first workings of the Force —afterwards the lower vital consciousness and the physical rise up and if these are not ready or inclined for the sadhana, it ceases. The sadhaka has first to purify and open them and call in the Force to work there and make all ready until he can bring the true consciousness and experience there. Yoga implies a long and difficult work and one must be ready to accept the necessity of years of preparation and purification and increasing consecration before the greater results can come.” (CWSA 29: 47)

XVIII – 9. “In your nature there are many obstacles, chiefly a great activity of the outward-going mind and a thick crust of the impure lower Prakriti that covers the heart and the vital being. Quieting of the mind and purification of the nature are what you must have before you can fulfil your aim. Aspire for these two things first; ask for them constantly from above. You will not be able to achieve them by your own unaided effort.” (CWSA 29: 47)

XVIII – 10. “In fact one cannot or ought not to plunge into the experiences of this sadhana without a fairly long period of preparation and purification (unless one has already a great spiritual strength and elevation).” (CWSA 35: 398)

XIX - Pure Mind and Pure Vital

Pure Mind

XIX - 1. “A pure mind means a mind quiet and free from thoughts of a useless or disturbing character.” (SABCL 23: 645) (CWSA 29: 49)

XIX - 2. “Mental purity: a mirror which does not distort.” (CWM 14: 150)

XIX - 3. “Perfect mental purity: a spotless mirror constantly turned towards the Divine.” (CWM 14: 157)

XIX - 4. “Integral mental purity: silent, attentive, receptive, concentrated on the Divine—this is the path to purity.” (CWM 14: 150)

Pure Vital

XIX - 5. “Vital purity: it begins with the abolition of desire.” (CWM 14: 157)

XIX - 6. “Vital purity is very necessary, but it is not easy to make it immune from attack unless the wideness is there along with a solid spiritual purity and peace descending in the wideness. Of course, wideness by itself is not sufficient.” (SABCL 23: 1740)

XX - Integral Purity

XX – 1. “Integral purity: the whole being is purified of the ego.” (CWM 14: 149)

XX – 2. “Power of integral purity: the power to accept nothing but the divine influence.” (CWM 14: 150)

XX – 3. “Collective purity: a very precious achievement but one difficult to obtain.” (CWM 14: 150)

XX - 4. “On earth, true purity is to think as the Divine thinks, to will as the Divine wills, to feel as the Divine feels.” 24 September 1945 (CWM 14: 149)

XX – 5. “Q: Sweet Mother, to be pure means what?

A: To be pure, what does it mean? One is truly perfectly pure only when the whole being, in all its elements and all its movements, adheres fully, exclusively, to the divine Will. This indeed is total purity. It does not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. It depends exclusively on this: when all the elements and all the movements of the being adhere exclusively and totally to the divine Will. (CWM 6: 438)

XX - 6. “If one lives only for the Divine and by the Divine, there follows a perfect purity.” (CWM 14: 149)

XX - 7. “Divine purity: it is happy just to be, in all simplicity.” (CWM 14: 150)

XXI - Psychic and Purification

XXI – 1. “Purification and consecration are two great necessities of sadhana. Those who have experiences before purification run a great risk: it is much better to have the heart pure first, for then the way becomes safe. That is why I advocate the psychic change of the nature first—for that means the purification of the heart: the turning of it wholly to the Divine, the subjection of the mind and the vital to the control of the inner being, the soul. Always, when the soul is in front, one gets the right guidance from within as to what is to be done, what avoided, what is the wrong thing or the true thing in thought, feeling, action. But this inner intimation emerges in proportion as the consciousness grows more and more pure.” (SABCL 23: 902-903)

XXI - 2. “It is the very nature of the soul or the psychic being to turn towards the divine Truth as the sunflower to the sun; it accepts and clings to all that is divine or progressing towards divinity, and draws back from all that is a perversion or a denial of it, from all that is false and undivine.”  (SABCL 20: 144) (CWSA 23: 153)

XXI – 3. “The psychic does not watch and observe in this way like a witness, but it feels and knows spontaneously in a much more direct and luminous way by the very purity of its own nature and the divine instinct within it, and so, whenever it comes to the front it reveals at once what are the right and what the wrong movements in your nature.” (CWSA 28: 63)

XXI – 4. “It is only the inmost psychic being unveiled and emerging in its full power that can lead the pilgrim sacrifice unscathed through these ambushes and pitfalls; at each moment it catches, exposes, repels the mind’s and the life’s falsehoods, seizes hold on the truth of the Divine Love and Ananda and separates it from the excitement of the mind’s ardours and the blind enthusiasms of the misleading life-force.” (SABCL 20: 157) (CWSA 23: 167)

XXI – 5. “All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated and vitiated by this soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, selfdenial, are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separative soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire. If the curse of disquiet and disharmony and perversion is to be lifted from Life, the true soul, the psychic being, must be given its leading place and there must be a dissolution of the false soul of desire and ego. But this does not mean that life itself must be coerced and denied its native line of fulfilment; for behind this outer life soul of desire there is in us an inner and true vital being which has not to be dissolved but brought out into prominence and released to its true working as a power of the Divine Nature. The prominence of this true vital being under the lead of the true inmost soul within us is the condition for the divine fulfilment of the objects of the Life-Force. Those objects will even remain the same in essence, but transformed in their inner motive and outer character.” (SABCL 20: 164-165)  (CWSA 23: 175)

XXI – 6. “Q: Sri Aurobindo has written in Savitri:

“Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun;

But few are they who tread the sunlit path;

Only the pure in soul can walk in light.”

What a joy it would be to possess the required purity!

A: When one is living among men with all their miseries, it is only the Grace that can bestow this state—even in those who by Tapasya have abolished their ego.

It is beyond all personal effort.” 27 May 1968 (CWM 16: 379)

XXI – 7. “The psychic-vital seeks after the Divine, but it has a demand in its self-giving, desire, vital eagerness the psychic has not, for the psychic has instead pure self-giving, aspiration, intensity of psychic fire. The psychic-vital is subject to pain and suffering, which there is not in the psychic.” (CWSA 28: 108)

XXI – 8. “Purified and perfected are not epithets that can properly be applied to the psychic—the psychic is always pure and has no positive imperfection.” (CWSA 28: 113)

XXI – 9. “The Divine Purity is a more wide and all-embracing experience than the psychic.” (SABCL 23: 645) (CWSA 29: 48)

XXII – (A) - The power of purification dissolves all bad will

XXII – (A) - 1. “But if you want to know or understand the nature of the Force or the Power that enables or brings about this transformation—particularly where evil is concerned, but also with ugliness to a certain extent—you see that love is obviously the most potent and integral of all powers—integral in the sense that it applies in all cases. It is even more powerful than the power of purification which dissolves all bad will and which is, as it were, the master of the adverse forces, but which has not the direct power of transformation. The power of purification first dissolves in order to allow the transformation afterwards. It destroys one form in order to be able to create a better one, whereas love need not dissolve in order to transform; it possesses the direct power of transformation. Love is like a flame that changes what is hard into something malleable and even sublimates this malleable thing into a kind of purified vapour— it does not destroy, it transforms.” (CWM 10: 72)

XXII - (B) - No hostile being or force can resist power of purification if handled with goodwill and sincerity

“The Wizard of Oz”

A short explanation will surely increase the interest of the picture to be shown to you tonight.

This picture is in three sections, two black and one, the most extensive, in colour. The two black sections (first and last) show how things appear in the physical world; the coloured one expresses a similar sequence of events and similar characters in the vital world, the world where one can go when the body is in deep sleep, when one gets out of the body. So long as you have a physical body, no true harm can happen to you in the vital world, for the physical body acts as a  protection, and you can always return into it at will. This is shown in the picture in a classical way. You will see that the little girl wears on her feet some magic ruby-red slippers, and so long as she keeps the slippers on her feet nothing wrong can happen to her. The ruby red slippers are the sign and the symbol of the connection with the physical body, and as long as the slippers are on her feet, she can, at will, return to her body and find shelter therein.

Two other details can be noted with interest. One is the snow shower that saves the party from the influence of the wicked witch who by her black magic has stopped their advance towards the emerald castle of beneficent vitality. In the vital world, snow is the symbol of purity. It is the purity of their feelings and intentions that saves them from the great danger. Note also that to go to the castle of the good wizard they must follow the broad path of golden bricks, the path of luminous confidence and joy.

The second is: when Dorothy throws water on the straw man to save him from burning, some water falls on the face of the wicked witch who lit the fire and at once she gets dissolved and dies. The water is the symbol of the power of purification and no hostile being or force can resist this power handled with goodwill and sincerity.

Finally, when the good fairy teaches the little girl how to go back home by knocking her red slippers one against the other, she says that nothing is better than home; by “home” she means the physical world which is the place of protection and realisation.” 14 September 1952 (CWM 12: 244-245) {Emphasis added by the editor.}

“Once I saw the Mother sitting on the peak of an icy mountain; a narrow path led there and I was gradually advancing towards that.

This is simply a symbol of the purity and silence of the higher consciousness which has to be reached by the path of sadhana. The narrowness symbolises the difficulty because one has not to slip to one side or the other, but go straight.” 7 December 1936 (CWSA 32: 281)

XXIII - Purity is one of the innumerable ways of approaching the Divine

XXIII – 1. “But perfection is only one special way of approaching the Divine; it is one side, and in the same way there are innumerable sides, angles or aspects, innumerable ways of approaching the Divine, for example: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, infinity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness, etc. The number of approaches is almost unlimited. With each one you approach or draw near or enter into contact with the Divine through one aspect and if you really do it, you find that the difference is merely in the most external form, but the contact is identical. It is as if you were turning around a centre, a globe, and seeing it from many different angles as in a kaleidoscope; but once the contact is made, it is the same thing.” (CWM 10: 104)

XXIII – 2. “… the true purity: identification with the Supreme.” (CWM 9: 241)

XXIII - 3. “I am speaking now of the realisation of the Divine, of the contact with the Divine, through whatever lever, heart or mind, or both. In your case it is likely to come through the heart, through increase of bhakti or psychic purification of the heart: that is why I was pressing the psychic way upon you.” (CWSA 29: 29)

XXIV – Flame of Agni is flame of purification

XXIV – 1. “Q: Mother, I would like to know something about this flame of Agni.

It is the flame of purification, the will for progress.” 9 February 1935 (CWM 17: 80)

XXIV – 2. “Agni is the will for progress, the flame of purification that burns up all obstacles and difficulties. By giving you the flower, I am encouraging you to let it burn in you.” 15 October 1936 (CWM 17: 146)

XXIV – 3. “There is a sacred fire that burns in the heart and envelops the whole being: it is Agni, who illumines and purifies all. I kindle that fire in you each time that you ask me for some progress; but it destroys nothing except falsehood and obscurity.” 20 June 1935 (CWM 17: 104)

XXIV – 4. “You say that You kindle that fire in me—then why do the falsehood and obscurity still exist?

An integral purification is a long and slow labour.” 21 June 1935 (CWM 17: 105)

XXIV - 5. “Q: The perfected ones were no longer obliged, like other men, to purify themselves in new bodies.” What is meant by “purify themselves in new bodies”?

A: It is during one’s physical life on earth that one has the opportunity to purify oneself, to make spiritual progress.” 1 July 1935 (CWM 17: 108)

XXIV - 6. “Q: I must find out how I can consecrate this being to You.

A: Keep always burning in you the fire of aspiration and purification which I have kindled there. (CWM 16: 181)

XXIV – 7. “As for the heat, it must be the heat of Agni, the fire of purification and tapasya; it often feels like that when the inner work is going on.” (CWSA 29: 162)

XXV - The purified understanding is the most potent cleanser of one’s turbid and disordered being

XXV – 1. a. “There must be an integral purity. Here also there is an interdependence; for the purification of each member of our being profits by the clarifying of every other, the progressive tranquillisation of the emotional heart helping for instance the purification of the understanding while equally a purified understanding imposes calm and light on the turbid and darkened workings of the yet impure emotions. It may even be said that while each member of our being has its own proper principles of purification, yet it is the purified understanding that in man is the most potent cleanser of his turbid and disordered being and most sovereignly imposes their right working on his other members. Knowledge, says the Gita, is the sovereign purity; light is the source of all clearness and harmony even as the darkness of ignorance is the cause of all our stumblings.” (SABCL 20: 295) (CWSA 23: 309)

XXV – 1. b. “Since we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally be in the mind, the antahkarana, that we must look for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the intelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power the intelligent will must be our main force for effectuation and to purify it becomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and will are well purified of all that limits them and gives them a wrong action or wrong direction, they can easily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth, understand themselves and the rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine and scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do it without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually their response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action.” (SABCL 21: 627-628) (CWSA 24: 654-655)

XXV – 2. We must, however, consider deeply and clearly what we mean by the understanding and by its purification. We use the word as the nearest equivalent we can get in the English tongue to the Sanskrit philosophical term buddhi; therefore we exclude from it the action of the sense mind … Nor can we include that constant leaping current of habitual thought which does duty for understanding in the mind of the average unthinking man, but is only a constant repetition of habitual associations, desires, prejudices, prejudgments, received or inherited preferences, … and is of no avail in the search whether for scientific or philosophical or spiritual knowledge. We have to go beyond it; its purification can only be effected either by dismissing or silencing it altogether or by transmuting it into the true understanding. (SABCL 20: 295-296) (CWSA 23: 309-310)

XXV – 3. “By the understanding we mean that which at once perceives, judges and discriminates, the true reason of the human being not subservient to the senses, to desire or to the blind force of habit, but working in its own right for mastery, for knowledge. Certainly, the reason of man as he is at present does not even at its best act entirely in this free and sovereign fashion; but so far as it fails, it fails because it is still mixed with the lower half-animal action, because it is impure and constantly hampered and pulled down from its characteristic action. In its purity it should not be involved in these lower movements, but stand back from the object, and observe disinterestedly, put it in its right place in the whole by force of comparison, contrast, analogy, reason from its rightly observed data by deduction, induction, inference and holding all its gains in memory and supplementing them by a chastened and rightly-guided imagination view all in the light of a trained and disciplined judgment. Such is the pure intellectual understanding of which disinterested observation, judgment and reasoning are the law and characterising action. (SABCL 20:296-297) (CWSA 23: 310-311)

XXV – 4. But the term buddhi is also used in another and profounder sense. The intellectual understanding is only the lower buddhi; there is another and a higher buddhi which is not intelligence but vision, is not understanding but rather an over-standing (The Divine Being … who seated over all in the supreme ether over-sees things, views and controls them from above.} in knowledge, and does not seek knowledge and attain it in subjection to the data it observes but possesses already the truth and brings it out in the terms of a revelatory and intuitional thought. … For there is an intuitive mind in man which serves as a recipient and channel for these instreamings from a supramental faculty. But the action of intuition and inspiration in us is imperfect in kind as well as intermittent {irregular} in action; ordinarily, … even before its givings enter the conscious mind, they are already affected by the thought or aspiration which went up to meet them, are no longer pure but altered to the needs of the heart or intellect; … (SABCL 20: 297) (CWSA 23: 311)

XXV – 5. a. “The object of the purification of the buddhi will then be to arrive at the possession of our own truth of self-being, but also at the possession of the highest truth of our being in Nature. For that purpose we must first purify the buddhi of all that makes it subject to the sense-mind and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations and convert its inferior mental intelligence and will into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge.” (SABCL 21: 640) (CWSA 24: 667)

XXV – 5. b. “To arrive then at the whole truth of our self and Spirit and the knowledge, greatness, bliss of our free and complete being must be the object of the purification, liberation and perfection of the buddhi. (SABCL 21: 638) (CWSA 24: 666)

XXV – 6. a. The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the thought-function becomes subservient to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its perceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond the siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves purified. The will to enjoy is proper to the vital being but not the choice or the reaching after the enjoyment which must be determined and acquired by higher functions; therefore the vital being must be trained to accept whatever gain or enjoyment comes to it in the right functioning of the life in obedience to the working of the divine Will and to rid itself of craving and attachment. … The tranquillisation and mastery of these members is a first condition for the immunity of the understanding from error, ignorance and perversion. This purification spells an entire equality of the nervous being and the heart; equality, therefore, even as it was the first word of the path of works, so also is the first word of the path of knowledge. (SABCL 20: 298-299) (CWSA 23: 313)

XXV – 6. b. All immiscence of desire in the buddhi is an impurity. The intelligence coloured by desire is an impure intelligence and it distorts Truth; the will coloured by desire is an impure will and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection upon the soul’s activity. All immiscence of the emotions of the soul of desire is an impurity and similarly distorts both the knowledge and the action. All subjection of the buddhi to the sensations and impulses is an impurity. The thought and will have to stand back detached from desire, troubling emotion, distracting or mastering impulse and to act in their own right until they can discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine Shakti which will take the place of desire and mental will and impulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express themselves in the action of that Shakti. This complete detachment, impossible without an entire self-government, equality, calm, ´sama, samata, ´santi, is the surest step towards the purification of the buddhi. A calm, equal and detached mind can alone reflect the peace or base the action of the liberated spirit. (SABCL 20: 642) (CWSA 24: 669)

XXV – 7. a. The second cause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence of the sense-mind in the thinking functions. (SABCL 20: 299) (CWSA 23: 313)

XXV – 7. b. Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of thought to the mind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from the action of the sense-mind and repels its intermiscence, the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be watched in its separate action. It then reveals itself as a constantly swirling and eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions, desires without any real sequence, order or principle of light. It is a constant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. Ordinarily the human understanding accepts this undercurrent and tries to reduce it to a partial order and sequence; but by so doing it becomes itself subject to it and partakes of that disorder, restlessness, unintelligent subjection to habit and blind purposeless repetition which makes the ordinary human reason a misleading, limited and even frivolous and futile instrument. There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.” (SABCL 20: 299-300) (CWSA 23: 314)

XXV – 8. a. A third cause of impurity has its source in the understanding itself and consists in an improper action of the will to know. That will is proper to the understanding, but here again choice and unequal reaching after knowledge clog and distort. They lead to a partiality and attachment which makes the intellect cling to certain ideas and opinions with a more or less obstinate will to ignore the truth in other ideas and opinions, cling to certain fragments of a truth and shy against the admission of other parts which are yet necessary to its fullness, cling to certain predilections of knowledge and repel all knowledge that does not agree with the personal temperament of thought which has been acquired by the past of the thinker.” (SABCL 20: 300)  (CWSA 23: 314-315)

XXV – 8. b. The remedy lies in a perfect equality of the mind, in the cultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental disinterestedness. The purified understanding as it will not lend itself to any desire or craving, so will not lend itself either to any predilection or distaste for any particular idea or truth, and will refuse to be attached even to those ideas of which it is the most certain or to lay on them such an undue stress as is likely to disturb the balance of truth and depreciate the values of other elements of a complete and perfect knowledge. (SABCL 20: 300)  (CWSA 23: 315)

XXV – 9. a. An understanding thus purified would be a perfectly flexible, entire and faultless instrument of intellectual thought and being free from the inferior sources of obstruction and distortion would be capable of as true and complete a perception of the truths of the Self and the universe as the intellect can attain.

But for real knowledge something more is necessary, since real knowledge is by our very definition of it supra-intellectual. … we have to reach to that something more and cultivate a power exceedingly difficult for the active intellectual thinker and distasteful to his proclivities, the power of intellectual passivity. (SABCL 20: 301) (CWSA 23: 315)

XXV – 9. b. In the first place we have seen that intellectual thought is in itself inadequate and is not the highest thinking; the highest is that which comes through the intuitive mind and from the supramental faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual habit and by the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages to us subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before it reaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only with an inadequate rarity and a great imperfection in its functioning. In order to strengthen the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuition, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can command

for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth conscious vision,—the ideal would be a complete transition,— or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty. (SABCL 20: 301-302) (CWSA 23: 315-316)

XXV – 9. c. “If this higher buddhi could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth;

observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses;

imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth,

reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them,

judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate;

while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future2 no less than the past.

Certainly, we are intended to grow in our receptivity to this higher faculty of truth-conscious knowledge, but its full and unveiled use is as yet the privilege of the gods and beyond our present human stature.” (SABCL 20: 297-298) (CWSA 23: 311-312)

XXVI – Purification of the heart

XXVI – 1. “Similarly the heart must be freed from subjection to the cravings of the life principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the false emotions of fear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc. which constitute the chief impurity of the heart. The will to love is proper to the heart, but here also the choice and reaching after love have to be foregone or tranquillised and the heart taught to love with depth and intensity indeed, but with a calm depth and a settled and equal, not a troubled and disordered intensity. The tranquillisation and mastery of these members is a first condition for the immunity of the understanding from error, ignorance and perversion. This purification spells an entire equality of the nervous being and the heart; equality, therefore, even as it was the first word of the path of works, so also is the first word of the path of knowledge. (SABCL 20: 299) (CWSA 24: 313)

XXVI – 2. “Love, for example, is the purifier of the heart and by reducing all our emotions into terms of divine love the heart is perfected and fulfilled; yet love itself needs to be clarified by divine knowledge. The heart’s love of God may be blind, narrow and ignorant and lead to fanaticism and obscurantism; it may, even when otherwise pure, limit our perfection by refusing to see Him except in a limited personality and by recoiling from the true and infinite vision. The heart’s love of man may equally lead to distortions and exaggerations in feeling, action and knowledge which have to be corrected and prevented by the purification of the understanding.” (SABCL 20: 295) (CWSA 23: 309)

XXVI – 3. “There is no impossibility in the purification of the heart which was the thing you were trying for, and when the heart is purified, other things which seemed impossible before become easy —even the inner surrender which now seems to you impracticable.” (SABCL 23: 902) (CWSA 29:48)

XXVI - 4. “The most important thing for the purification of the heart is an absolute sincerity. No pretence with oneself, no concealment from the Divine, or oneself, or the Guru, a straight look at one's movements, a straight will to make them straight. It does not so much matter if it takes time: one must be prepared to make it one's whole life-task to seek the Divine. Purifying the heart means after all a pretty considerable achievement and it is no use getting despondent, despairful, etc., because one finds things in oneself that still need to be changed. If one keeps the true will and true attitude, then the intuitions or intimations from within will begin to grow, become clear, precise, unmistakable and the strength to follow them will grow also: and then before even you are satisfied with yourself, the Divine will be satisfied with you and begin to withdraw the veil by which he protects himself and his seekers against a premature and perilous grasping of the greatest thing to which humanity can aspire.” (SABCL 23: 903-904)

XXVI – 5. “... purification of the heart which brings the divine touch and in time the divine presence, ...” (CWSA 29: 47) (CWSA 35: 619)

XXVII – Purification of the Lower Mentality

XXVII – 1. a. “But this purification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural obstacles in the other lower parts of the antahkarana, and the chief natural obstacle running through the whole action of the antahkarana, through the sense, the mental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the intermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic prana. {nervous or vital and physical mentality}. This then must be dealt with, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted and prepared for purification.” (SABCL 21:  628) (CWSA 24: 655)

XXVII – 1. b. This mentality is pervaded by the life-force, which becomes here an instrument for psychic consciousness of life and psychic action on life. Every fibre of the sense mind and basic consciousness is shot through with the action of this psychic prana, it is a nervous or vital and physical mentality. Even the buddhi and ego are overpowered by it, although they have the capacity of raising the mind beyond subjection to this vital, nervous and physical psychology. This combination creates in us the sensational desire-soul which is the chief obstacle to a higher human as well as to the still greater divine perfection. (SABCL 21: 620) (CWSA 24: 647)

XXVII – 2. “The deformation which enters in and prevents the purity, is a form of vital craving; the grand deformation which the psychic prana contributes to our being, is desire. The root of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have not, it is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It creates the sense of want,—first the simpler vital craving of hunger, thirst, lust, then these psychical hungers, thirsts, lusts of the mind which are a much greater and more instant and pervading affliction of our being, the hunger which is infinite because it is the hunger of an infinite being, the thirst which is only temporarily lulled by satisfaction, but is in its nature insatiable. (SABCL 21: 629) (CWSA 24: 656)

XXVII – 3. “The psychic prana invades the sensational mind and brings into it the unquiet thirst of sensations, invades the dynamic mind with the lust of control, having, domination, success, fulfilment of every impulse, fills the emotional mind with the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, for the wreaking of love and hate, brings the shrinkings and panics of fear and the strainings and disappointments of hope, imposes the tortures of grief and the brief fevers and excitements of joy, makes the intelligence and intelligent will the accomplices of all these things and turns them in their own kind into deformed and lame instruments, the will into a will of craving and the intelligence into a partial, a stumbling and an eager pursuer of limited, impatient, militant prejudgment and opinion.” (SABCL 21: 629) (CWSA 24: 656)

XXVII – 4. “Desire is the root of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish joy of pursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of the being, it carries into its pursuit and its getting a labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of limitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, a ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, asanti.” (SABCL 21: 629-630) (CWSA 24: 656-657)

XXVII – 5. “To get rid of desire is the one firm indispensable purification of the psychical prana,—for so we can replace the soul of desire with its pervading immiscence in all our instruments by a mental soul of calm delight and its clear and limpid possession of ourselves and world and Nature which is the crystal basis of the mental life and its perfection.” (SABCL 21: 630) (CWSA 24: 656-657)

XXVIII - Other Quotations on Purification

XXVIII – 1. “All pursuit of knowledge, if not vitiated by a too earthward tendency, tends to refine, to subtilise, to purify the being. In proportion as we become more mental, we attain to a subtler action of our whole nature which becomes more apt to reflect and receive higher thoughts, a purer will, a less physical truth, more inward influences.

The power of ethical knowledge and the ethical habit of thought and will to purify is obvious.

Philosophy not only purifies the reason and predisposes it to the contact of the universal and the infinite, but tends to stabilise the nature and create the tranquillity of the sage; and tranquillity is a sign of increasing self-mastery and purity.

The preoccupation with universal beauty even in its aesthetic forms has an intense power for refining and subtilising the nature, and at its highest it is a great force for purification.

Even the scientific habit of mind and the disinterested preoccupation with cosmic law and truth not only refine the reasoning and observing faculty, but have, when not counteracted by other tendencies, a steadying, elevating and purifying influence on the mind and moral nature which has not been sufficiently noticed.” (SABCL 20: 495) (CWSA 23: 516)

XXVIII – 2. “Can silence bring all the force needed for purification and transformation?

Not exactly bring, but in silence one can receive it.” 24 June 1935 (CWM 17: 106)

XXVIII – 3. “Q: Z’s letter is enclosed regarding his wife. He hopes to receive a token of Thy Grace to take for her.

A: Let her purify the outer being, and abolish the ego, by a complete and perfect consecration to the Supreme Divine, and the obstacle will be removed.

The adverse forces are allowed to act only in order to compel us to make ourselves pure and receptive enough for the descent and the union. With love and blessings.” 30 December 1964 (CWM 17: 400-401)

XXVIII – 4. “Q: “My darling Mamma, I want to lead a pure life and I shall do all I can to progress towards the divine life.

A: This does not depend so much on outer conditions, but above all on the inner state.

A pure being is always pure, in all circumstances.” (CWM 16: 187)

XXVIII – 5. “Those who are pure—that is to say, exclusively under the Divine influence— have no fear.” 10 November 1965 (CWM 16: 330)

XXVIII – 6. Purity and concentration

XXVIII – 6. a. “ Purity and concentration are indeed two aspects, feminine and masculine, passive and active, of the same status of being; purity is the condition in which concentration becomes entire, rightly effective, omnipotent; by concentration purity does its works and without it would only lead to a state of peaceful quiescence and eternal repose.” (SABCL 20: 303) (CWSA 23: 317)

XXVIII – 6. b. “Equally, without purity the complete, equal, flexible concentration of the being in right thought, right will, right feeling or secure status of spiritual experience is not possible. Therefore the two must proceed together, each helping the victory of the other, until we arrive at that eternal calm from which may proceed some partial image in the human being of the eternal, omnipotent and omniscient activity.” (SABCL 20: 303) (CWSA 23: 317-318)

XXVIII – 7. About Impurity

XXVIII – 7. a. “One is truly perfectly pure only when the whole being, in all its elements and all its movements, adheres fully, exclusively, to the divine Will. This indeed is total purity. It does not depend on any moral or social law, any mental convention of any kind. …

Now, there are stages, there are degrees. For example, insincerity, which is one of the greatest impurities, always arises from the fact that a movement or a set of movements, an element of the being or a number of elements, want to follow their own will and not be the expression of the divine Will. So this produces in the being either a revolt or a falsehood. I don’t mean that one tells lies, but I mean that one is in a state of falsehood, of insincerity. And then, the consequences are more or less serious and more or less extensive according to the gravity of the movement itself and its importance. But these, if one sees from the point of view of purity, these are the real impurities.

For example, if you take your stand on a moral viewpoint —which is itself altogether wrong from the spiritual point of view—there are people who apparently lead an altogether perfectly moral life, who conform to all the social laws, all the customs, the moral conventions, and who are amass of impurity —from the spiritual point of view these beings are profoundly impure. On the other hand there are some poor people who do things... who are born, for instance, with a sense of freedom, and do things which are not considered very respectable from the social or moral point of view, and who can be in a state of inner aspiration and inner sincerity which makes them infinitely purer than the others. This is one of the big difficulties. As soon as one speaks of these things, there arises the deformation produced in the consciousness by all the social and moral conventions. As soon as you speak of purity, a moral monument comes in front of you which completely falsifies your notion. And note that it is infinitely easier to be moral from the social point of view than to be moral from the spiritual point of view. To be moral from the social viewpoint one has only to take good care to do nothing which is not approved of by others; this may be somewhat difficult, but still it is not impossible; and one may be, as I said, a monument of insincerity and impurity while doing this; whereas to be pure from the spiritual point of view means a vigilance, a consciousness, a sincerity that stand all tests.

Now, I may put you on your guard against something—I think it is precisely in this very book that Sri Aurobindo has spoken about it—about people who live in their vital consciousness and say, “I indeed am above moral laws, I follow a higher law, I am free from all moral laws.” And they say this because they want to indulge in all irregularities. These people, then, have a double impurity: they have spiritual impurity and in addition social impurity. And these usually have a very good opinion of themselves, and they assert their wish to live their life with an unequalled impudence. But such people we don’t want.

Yet usually the people whom I have found most difficult to convert are very respectable people. I am sorry, but I have had much more difficulty with respectable people than with those who were not so, for they had such a good opinion of themselves that it was impossible to open them. But the true thing is difficult. That is to say, one must be very vigilant and very self-controlled, very patient, and have a never-failing goodwill. One must not neglect having a small dose of humility, a sufficient one, and one must never be satisfied with the sincerity one has. One must always want more.” (CWM 6: 438-440)

XXVIII – 7. b. “In the next verse it is said that there is no greater impurity than ignorance, that is to say, ignorance is considered as the essential, the central fault, which urgently needs to be corrected, and what is called ignorance is not simply not knowing things, not having the superficial knowledge of things, it means forgetting the very reason of our existence, the truth that has to be discovered.” (CWM 3: 264)

XXVIII – 7. c. “And finally, lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapada gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realisation.

Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the supreme purity which can

translate itself into a wonderful realisation. The whole point is to think of that, to concentrate on that and not to be concerned with all the difficulties and obstacles and hindrances.

Concentrate exclusively on what you want to be, forget as entirely as possible what you do not want to be. 7 March 1958 (CWM 3: 215)

XXVIII – 7. d. “There is not the slightest necessity for the Mother drawing impurities into herself—any more than for the sadhak inviting impurity to come into himself. Impurity has to be thrown away, not drawn in.” 18 March 1936 (CWSA 32: 589)

XXVIII – 7. e. “In all doubt and depression, to say “I belong to the Divine, I cannot fail”; to all suggestions of impurity and unfitness, to reply “I am a child of Immortality chosen by the Divine; I have but to be true to myself and to Him —the victory is sure; even if I fell, I would be sure to rise again”; to all impulses to depart and serve some smaller ideal, to reply “This is the greatest, this is the Truth that alone can satisfy the soul within me; I will endure through all tests and tribulations to the very end of the divine journey.” This is what I mean by faithfulness to the Light and the Call.” (CWSA 29: 99)

XXVIII – 8. Impurity according to Buddhism.

XXVIII – 8. “What Buddhism means by “impurities” is chiefly egoism and ignorance; because, from the Buddhist standpoint, the greatest of all taints is ignorance, not ignorance of external things, of the laws of Nature and of all that you learn at school, but the ignorance of the deepest truth of things, of the law of the being, of the Dharma.

It is noteworthy that the two defects insisted upon here are lack of self-control and lack of loyalty. Loyalty means here sincerity, honesty; what the Dhammapada censures most severely is hypocrisy: to pretend that you want to live the spiritual life and not to do it, to pretend that you want to seek the truth and not to do it, to display the external signs of consecration to the divine life—here symbolised by the yellow robe—but within to be concerned only with oneself, one’s selfishness and one’s own needs.

It is interesting to note the insistence of the Dhammapada on self-control, for according to the Buddhist teaching, excess in all things is bad. The Buddha always insisted on the Middle Path. You must not be too much on one side nor too much on the other, exaggerate one thing or the other. You must have measure, balance in all things, the balance of moderation.

Therefore the qualities that make you worthy of leading the spiritual life are to have an inner balance, a balance in your action, and to be moderate in everything, to be sincere, honest, loyal.

Balance, moderation, loyalty, honesty: this is the subject of our meditation.” (CWM 3: 190-191)

XXVIII – 9. “This is the condition of the earth, and it is not very bright. But for us one possibility remains—I have spoken about it to you several times already — even if, outside, things are deteriorating completely and the catastrophe cannot possibly be avoided, there remains for us, I mean those for whom the supramental life is not a vain dream, those who have faith in its reality and the aspiration to realise it—I don’t necessarily mean those who have gathered here in Pondicherry, in the Ashram, but those who have as a link between them the knowledge Sri Aurobindo has given and the will to live according to that knowledge— there remains for them the possibility of intensifying their aspiration, their will, their effort, to gather their energies together and shorten the time for the realisation.

There remains for them the possibility of working this miracle—individually and to a small extent collectively—of conquering space, duration, the time needed for this realisation; of replacing time by intensity of  effort and going fast enough and far enough in the realization to liberate themselves from the consequences of the present condition of the world; of making such a concentration of force, strength, light, truth, that by this very realisation they can be above these consequences and secure against them, enjoy the protection bestowed by the Light and Truth, by Purity—the divine Purity through the inner transformation—and that the storm may pass over the world without being able to destroy this great hope of the near future; that the tempest may not sweep away this beginning of realisation.

Instead of falling asleep in an easy quietude and letting things happen according to their own rhythm, if one strains to the utmost one’s will, ardour, aspiration and springs up into the light, then one can hold one’s head higher; one can have, in a higher region of consciousness, enough room to live, to breathe, to grow and develop above the passing cyclone.

This is possible. In a very small way, this was already done during the last war, when Sri Aurobindo was here. It can be done again. But one must want it and each one must do his own

work as sincerely and completely as he can.” (CWM 9: 170-171)

XXVIII – 10. Utility of work for purification

XXVIII – 10. “Here there is nothing that ministers to the human vital nature; the work is small, silent, shut off from the outside world and its circumstances, of value only as a field for spiritual self-culture. If one is governed by the sole spiritual motive and has the spiritual consciousness, one can take joy and interest in this work. Or if, in spite of his human shortcomings, the worker is mainly bent on spiritual progress and self-perfection, then also he can take interest in the work and both feel its utility for the discovery and purification of his egoistic mental and vital and physical nature and take joy in it as a service of the Divine.” 11 August 1932 (CWSA 35: 751)

XXVIII – 11. “Pure and true thoughts and emotions and impulsions can rise from the human mind, heart and vital, because all is not evil there. The heart may be unpurified, but that does not mean that everything in it is impure.” (CWSA 28: 193)

XXVIII – 12. “Remember first that an inner quietude, caused by the purification of the restless mind and vital, is the first condition of a secure sadhana.” (CWSA 29: 138)

XXVIII – 13. “All difficulties disappearing in a minute? ... This “state of grace” is often prepared by a long tapasya or purification in which nothing decisive seems to happen, only touches or glimpses or passing experiences at the most, and it comes suddenly without warning. If this is what is spoken of in Ramakrishna’s saying, then it is true that when it comes, the fundamental difficulties can in a moment and generally do disappear. Or at the very least something happens which makes the rest of the sadhana— however long it may take—sure and secure.” (CWSA 29: 195)

XXVIII – 14. “And if one truly aspires, one does unfailingly get it, {true love for the Divine} more and more as the purification proceeds and the nature undergoes its needed change.” (CWSA 29: 338) (CWSA 32: 461)

XXVIII – 15. “Emotion is a good element in Yoga; but emotional desire becomes easily a cause of perturbation and an obstacle. Turn your emotions towards the Divine, aspire for their purification; they will then become a help on the way and no longer a cause of suffering.” (CWSA 29: 350)

XXVIII – 16. “Psychic weeping, a weeping from the soul deep within, tears of the soul’s yearning, of sorrow for the resistance of Nature, of joy or love or bhakti does not cause a fall, it can help and open up the inner soul from its veils; but this weeping has no strain or suffering in it, it is something very deep and quiet and brings a sense of purification and release. That is not so with the weeping which comes from the vital and is born of hurt or abhiman or disappointment or shakes or disturbs the nature.” 16 March 1937 (CWSA 32: 512)

XXVIII – 17. “But the state of bhakti and constantly growing surrender does not come to all at an early stage of the sadhana; many, most indeed, have a long journey of purification and tapasya to go through before it opens, and experiences of this kind, at first rare and interspaced, afterwards frequent, are the landmarks of their progress.” (CWSA 29: 352)

XXVIII – 18. Peace and purity

XXVIII – 18. a. “Peace and purity of the consciousness are the very foundation of the necessary change in the nature.” (CWSA 29: 123)

XXVIII – 18. b. “Peace is necessary for all; without peace and an increasing purity, even if one opens, one cannot receive perfectly all that comes down through the opening. Light too is necessary for all —without light one cannot take full advantage of all that comes down.” (CWSA 29: 123)

XXVIII – 18. c. “Peace and purity must be got as the foundation of the consciousness, otherwise there is no firm standing ground for the divine play.” (CWSA 29: 155)

XXVIII – 18. d. “One gets by the rejection of desire, rajas and ego a quietude and purity into which the Peace ineffable can descend; ..." (CWSA 29: 217)

XXVIII – 19. “He must have a strong will to purification and an aspiration that does not flag and cease, if the Mother’s grace is to be there and effective.” 6 May 1930 (CWSA 32: 165-166)

XXVIII – 20. “Desire nothing but the purity, force, light, wideness, calm, Ananda of the divine consciousness and its insistence to transform and perfect your mind, life and body.” (CWSA 32: 8)

XXVIII – 21. “You can at least know that anger, jealousy, envy, restlessness, despair, indolence etc. are not divine things and that purity, peace, harmony, zeal, unselfishness etc., are good things and help the growth to the Divine.” (CWSA 32: 63)

XXVIII – 22. “There is no harm in the vital love provided it is purified from all insincerity (e.g. the self-importance etc.) and from all demand. To feel joy in seeing the Mother is all right, but to demand it as a right, to be upset or in revolt or abhiman when it is not given, to be jealous of others who get it—all that is demand and creates an impurity which spoils both the joy and the love.” 13 September 1934 (CWSA 32: 473)

XXVIII – 23. “Never mind about the purity of the body. The love of the Mother purifies both heart and body—if the soul’s aspiration is there, the body also is pure. What happened in the past does not in the least matter.”  (CWSA 32: 482)

XXVIII – 24. “To become quiet and quietly and simply to maintain this persistent and patient rejection with our help, without rajasic struggle, sincerely and in fact and in every detail, not merely in wish and idea, is what you need to do. To be divided, to aspire in one part of your being and to indulge and justify and cherish the wrong movements with another part can lead to nothing but endless struggle and fatigue. Only by this turn and change will the struggle and fatigue pass away and purity come.” (SABCL 24: 1316-1317)

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