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Yoga of Self-Perfection
(Equality)
11 - The Perfection of Equality
12 - The Way of Equality
13 - The Action of Equality |
The Action of Equality
The distinctions that have already been
made, will have shown in sufficiency what is meant by the status of
equality. It is not mere quiescence and indifference, not a withdrawal
from experience, but a superiority to the present reactions of the mind
and life. It is the spiritual way of replying to life or rather of embracing
it and compelling it to become a perfect form of action of the self
and spirit. It is the first secret of the soul's mastery of existence.
When we have it in perfection, we are admitted to the very ground of
the divine spiritual nature. The mental being in the body tries to compel
and conquer life, but is at every turn compelled by it, because it submits
to the desire reactions of the vital self. To be equal, not to be overborne
by any stress of desire, is the first condition of real mastery, self-empire
is its basis. But a mere mental equality, however great it may be, is
hampered by the tendency of quiescence. It has to preserve itself from
desire by self-limitation in the will and action. It is only the spirit
which is capable of sublime undisturbed rapidities of will as well as
an illimitable patience, equally just in a slow and deliberate or a
swift and violent, equally secure in a safely lined and limited or a
vast and enormous action. It can accept the smallest work in the narrowest
circle of cosmos, but it can work too upon the whirl of chaos with an
understanding and creative force; and these things it can do because
by its detached and yet intimate acceptance it carries into both an
infinite calm, knowledge, will and power. It has that detachment because
it is above all the happenings, forms, ideas and movements it embraces
in its scope; and it has that intimate acceptance because it is yet
one with all things. If we have not this free unity, ekatvam anupasyatah,
we have not the full equality of the spirit. The first business of the
Sadhaka is to see whether he has the perfect equality, how far he has
gone in this direction or else where is the flaw, and to exercise steadily
his will on his nature or invite the will of the Purusha to get rid
of the defect and its causes. There are four things that he must have;
first equality in the most concrete practical sense of the word, samata,
freedom from mental, vital, physical preferences, an even acceptance
of all God's workings within and around him; secondly, a firm peace
and absence of all disturbance and trouble, santi; thirdly, a positive
inner spiritual happiness and spiritual ease of the natural being which
nothing can lessen, sukham; fourthly, a clear joy and laughter of the
soul embracing life and existence. To be equal is to be infinite and
universal, not to limit oneself, not to bind oneself down to this or
that form of the mind and life and its partial preferences and desires.
But since man in his present normal nature lives by his mental and vital
formations, not in the freedom of his spirit, attachment to them and
the desires and preferences they involve is also his normal condition.
To accept them is at first inevitable, to get beyond them exceedingly
difficult and not, perhaps, altogether possible so long as we are compelled
to use the mind as the chief instrument of our action. The first necessity
therefore is to take at least the sting out of them, to deprive them,
even when they persist, of their greater insistence, their present egoism,
their more violent claim on our nature.
The test that we have done this is the presence of an undisturbed calm
in the mind and spirit. The Sadhaka must be on the watch as the witnessing
and willing Purusha behind or, better, as soon as he can manage it,
above the mind, and repel even the least indices or incidence of trouble,
anxiety, grief, revolt, disturbance ill his mind. If these things come,
he must at once detect their source, the defect which they indicate,
the fault of egoistic claim, vital desire, emotion or idea from which
they start and this he must discourage by his will, his spiritualised
intelligence, his soul unity with the Master of his being. On no account
must he admit any excuse for them, however natural, righteous in seeming
or plausible, or any inner or outer justification. If it is the Prana
which is troubled and clamorous, he must separate himself from the troubled
Prana, keep seated his higher nature in the Buddhi and by the Buddhi
school and reject the claim of the desire-soul in him; and so too if
it is the heart of emotion that makes the clamour and the disturbance.
If, on the other hand, it is the will and intelligence itself that is
at fault, then the trouble is more difficult to command, because then
his chief aid and instrument becomes an accomplice of the revolt against
the divine Will and the old sins of the lower members take advantage
of this sanction to raise their diminished heads. Therefore there must
be a constant insistence on one main idea, the self-surrender to the
Master of our being, God within us and in the world, the supreme Self,
the universal Spirit. The Buddhi dwelling always in this master idea
must discourage all its own lesser insistences and preferences and teach
the whole being that the ego, whether it puts forth its claim through
the reason, the personal will, the heart or the desire-soul in the Prana,
has no just claim of any kind and all grief, revolt, impatience, trouble
is a violence against the Master of the being.
This complete self-surrender must be the chief mainstay of the Sadhaka
because it is the only way, apart from complete quiescence and indifference
to all action, - and that has to be avoided, - by which the absolute
calm and peace can come. The persistence of trouble, asanti, the length
of time taken for this purification and perfection, itself must not
be allowed to become a reason for discouragement and impatience. It
comes because there is still something in the nature which responds
to it, and the recurrence of trouble serves to bring out the presence
of the defect, put the Sadhaka upon his guard and bring about a more
enlightened and consistent action of the will to get rid of it. When
the trouble is too strong to be kept out, it must be allowed to pass
and its return discouraged by a greater vigilance and insistence of
the spiritualised Buddhi. Thus persisting, it will be found that these
things lose their force more and more, become more and more external
and brief in their recurrence, until finally calm becomes the law of
the being. This rule persists so long as the mental Buddhi is the chief
instrument; but when the supramental light takes possession of mind
and heart, then there can be no trouble, grief or disturbance; for that
brings with it a spiritual nature of illumined strength in which these
things can have no place. There the only vibrations and emotions are
those which belong to the anandamaya nature of divine unity.
The calm established in the whole being must remain the same whatever
happens, in health and disease, in pleasure and in pain, even in the
strongest physical pain, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or
that of those we love, in success and failure, honour and insult, praise
and blame, justice done to us or injustice, everything that ordinarily
affects the mind. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all
comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our
opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers
that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist,
in all energies and forces and happenings, and if besides we can feel
that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within
our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart
and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that
universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on
this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, svalpam
api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness
in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is
the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of
perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced
lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of
desire, ego, duality, ignorance.
This calm once attained, vital and mental preference has lost its disturbing
force; it only remains as a formal habit of the mind. Vital acceptance
or rejection, the greater readiness to welcome this rather than that
happening, the mental acceptance or rejection, the preference of this
more congenial to that other less congenial idea or truth, the dwelling
upon the will to this rather than to that other result, become a formal
mechanism still necessary as an index of the direction in which the
shakti is meant to turn or for the present is made to incline by the
Master of our being. But it loses its disturbing aspect of strong egoistic
will, intolerant desire, obstinate liking. These appearances may remain
for a while in a diminished form, but as the calm of equality increases,
deepens, becomes more essential and compact, ghana, they disappear,
cease to colour the mental and vital substance or occur only as touches
on the most external physical mind, are unable to penetrate within,
and at last even that recurrence, that appearance at the outer gates
of mind ceases. Then there can come the living reality of the perception
that all in us is done and directed by the Master of our being, yatha
prayukto'smi tatha karomi, which was before only a strong idea and faith
with occasional and derivative glimpses of the divine action behind
the becomings of our personal nature. Now every movement is seen to
be the form given by the shakti, the divine power in us, to the indications
of the Purusha, still no doubt personalised, still belittled in the
inferior mental form, but not primarily egoistic, an imperfect form,
not a positive deformation. We have then to get beyond this stage even.
For the perfect action and experience is not to be determined by any
kind of mental or vital preference, but by the revealing and inspiring
spiritual will which is the shakti in her direct and real initiation.
When I say that as I am appointed, I work, I still bring in a limiting
personal element and mental reaction. But it is the Master who will
do his own work through myself as his instrument, and there must be
no mental or other preference in me to limit, to interfere, to be a
source of imperfect working. The mind must become a silent luminous
channel for the revelations of the supramental Truth and of the Will
involved in its seeing. Then shall the action be the action of that
highest Being and Truth and not a qualified translation or mistranslation
in the mind. Whatever limitation, selection, relation is imposed, will
be self-imposed by the Divine on himself in the individual at the moment
for his own purpose, not binding, not final, not an ignorant determination
of the mind. The thought and will become then an action from a luminous
Infinite, a formulation not excluding other formulations, but rather
putting them into their just place in relation to itself, englobing
or transforming them even and proceeding to larger formations of the
divine knowledge and action. The first calm that comes is of the nature
of peace, the absence of all unquiet, grief and disturbance. As the
equality becomes more intense, it takes on a fuller substance of positive
happiness and spiritual ease. This is the joy of the spirit in itself,
dependent on nothing external for its absolute existence, nirasraya,
as the Gita describes it, antah-sukho'ntararamah, an exceeding inner
happiness, brahmasamsparsam atyantam sukham asnute. Nothing can disturb
it, and it extends itself to the soul's view of outward things, imposes
on them too the law of this quiet spiritual joy. For the base of it
is still calm, it is an even and tranquil neutral joy, ahaituka. And
as the supramental light grows, a greater Ananda comes, the base of
the abundant ecstasy of the spirit in all it is, becomes, sees, experiences
and of the laughter of the shakti doing luminously the work of the Divine
and taking his Ananda in all the worlds.
The perfected action of equality transforms all the values of things
on the basis of the divine anandamaya power. The outward action may
remain what it was or may change, that must be as the Spirit directs
and according to the need of the work to be done for the world, - but
the whole inner action is of another kind. The shakti in its different
powers of knowledge, action, enjoyment, creation, formulation, will
direct itself to the different aims of existence, but in another spirit;
they will be the aims, the fruits, the lines of working laid down by
the Divine from his light above, not anything claimed by the ego for
its own separate sake. The mind, the heart, the vital being, the body
itself will be satisfied with whatever comes to them from the dispensation
of the Master of the being and in that find a subtlest and yet fullest
spiritualised satisfaction and delight; but the divine knowledge and
will above will work forward towards its farther ends. Here both success
and failure lose their present meanings. There can be no failure; for
whatever happens is the intention of the Master of the worlds, not final,
but a step on his way, and if it appears as an opposition, a defeat,
a denial, even for the moment a total denial of the aim set before the
instrumental being, it is so only in appearance and afterwards it will
appear in its right place in the economy of his action, - a fuller supramental
vision may even see at once or beforehand its necessity and its true
relation to the eventual result to which it seems so contrary and even
perhaps its definite prohibition. Or, if - while the light is deficient,
- there has been a misinterpretation whether with regard to the aim
or the course of the action and the steps of the result, the failure
comes as a rectification and is calmly accepted without bringing discouragement
or a fluctuation of the will. In the end it is found that there is no
such thing as failure and the soul takes an equal passive or active
delight in all happenings as the steps and formulations of the divine
Will. The same evolution takes place with regard to good fortune and
ill fortune, the pleasant and the unpleasant in every form, mangala
amangala, priya apriya.
And as with happenings, so with persons, equality brings an entire change
of the view and the attitude. The first result of the equal mind and
spirit is to bring about an increasing charity and inner toleration
of all persons, ideas, views, actions, because it is seen that God is
in all beings and each acts according to his nature, his svabhara, and
its present formulations. When there is the positive equal Ananda, this
deepens to a sympathetic understanding and in the end an equal universal
love. None of these things need prevent various relations or different
formulations of the inner attitude according to the need of life as
determined by the spiritual will, or firm furtherings of this idea,
view, action against that other for the same need and purpose by the
same determination, or a strong outward or inward resistance, opposition
and action against the forces that are impelled to stand in the way
of the decreed movement. And there may be even the rush of the Rudra
energy forcefully working upon or shattering the human or other obstacle,
because that is necessary both for him and for the world purpose. But
the essence of the equal inmost attitude is not altered or diminished
by these more superficial formulations. The spirit, the fundamental
soul remain the same, even while the shakti of knowledge, will, action,
love does its work and assumes the various forms needed for its work.
And in the end all becomes a form of a luminous spiritual unity with
all persons, energies, things in the being of God and in the luminous,
spiritual, one and universal force, in which one's own action becomes
an inseparable part of the action of all, is not divided from it, but
feels perfectly every relation as a relation with God in all in the
complex terms of his universal oneness. That is a plenitude which can
hardly be described in the language of the dividing mental reason for
it uses all its oppositions, yet escapes from them, nor can it be put
in the terms of our limited mental psychology. It belongs to another
domain of consciousness, another plane of our being.
Sri Aurobindo
in "The Synthesis of Yoga" - Part 4: The Yoga of Self-Perfection
SABCL Volume 21
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
or
Lotus Light Publications
U.S.A. - Pages 693-700
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