The Mother: Conversations 1929
7 April 1929
Question: Will you say something to us about Yoga ?
What do you want the Yoga for ? To get power ? To attain
peace and calm ? To serve humanity ?
None of these motives is sufficient to show that you are
meant for the Path.
The question you are to answer is this: Do you want the
Yoga for the sake of the Divine ? Is the Divine the supreme fact of your
life, so much so that it is simply impossible for you to do without it
? Do you feel that your very raison d'être is the Divine
and without it there is no meaning in your existence ? If so, then only
can it be said that you have a call for the Path.
This is the first thing necessary: aspiration for the Divine.
The next thing you have to do is to tend it, to keep it
always alert and awake and living. And for that what is required is concentration
- concentration upon the Divine with a view to an integral and absolute
consecration to its Will and Purpose.
Concentrate in the heart. Enter into it; go within and
deep and far, as far as you can. Gather all the strings of your consciousness
that are spread abroad, roll them up and take a plunge and sink down.
A fire is burning there, in the deep quietude of the heart.
It is the divinity in you - your true being. Hear its voice, follow its
dictates.
There are other centres of concentration, for example,
one above the crown and another between the eye-brows. Each has its own
efficacy and will give you a particular result. But the central being
lies in the heat and from the heart proceed all central movements - all
dynamism and urge for transformation and power of realisation.
Question: What is one to do to prepare oneself for the
Yoga ?
To be conscious, first of all. We are conscious of only
a insignificant portion or our being; for the most part we are unconscious.
It is this unconsciousness that keeps us down to our unregenerate nature
and prevents change and transformation in it. It is through unconsciousness
that the undivine forces enter into us and make us their slaves. You are
not 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.
Question: Is the Yoga for the sake of humanity ?
No, it is for the sake of Divinity. It is not the welfare
of humanity that we seek but the manifestation of the Divine. We are here
to work out the Divine Will, more truly, to be worked upon by the Divine
will so that we may be its instruments for the progressive incorporation
of the Supreme and the establishment of His reign upon earth. Only that
portion of humanity which will respond to the Divine Call shall receive
its Grace.
Whether humanity as a whole will be benefited, if not directly,
at least, in an indirect way, will depend upon the condition of humanity
itself. If one is to judge from the present conditions, there is not much
hope. What is the attitude today of the average man - the representative
humanity ? Does he not rise in anger and revolt directly he meets something
that partakes of the genuinely divine ? Does he not feel that the Divine
means the destruction of his cherished possessions ? Is he not continually
yelling out the most categorical negative to everything that the Divine
intends and wills ? Humanity will have to change much before it can hope
to gain anything by the advent of the Divine.
Question: How is that we have met ?
We have all met in previous lives. Otherwise we would not
have come together in this life. We are of one family and have worked
through ages for the victory of the Divine and its manifestation upon
earth.
The Mother
in CWM, volume 3, "Questions and Answers 1929",
pages 1-3
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
The Mother commented this text on 18
March 1953
Next Conversation: 14 April 1929
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