26th April 2011
at Hall of Harmony, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India.
Spiritual life
is likened to a New Birth, a birth out of the mental, vital, physical
consciousness and its endless round of desires and ego and suffering into the
psychic and spiritual life. It is like learning everything anew. It is also a
shift of the center of one’s consciousness from the ego-self to the Divine. All
methods and techniques, the proscriptions and prescriptions, the rules and laws
of spiritual life are essentially to teach and to help us grow into this New
Consciousness, the consciousness of the Spirit. That is why in ancient times
there was the concept of the monastery and the Ashram where the disciple
learned this new way right from scratch under the loving and able Guidance of
the Master. Here, the Mother, showed the way to walk and live the life of the
Spirit by Her personal example, teaching us how to walk step by step as a
mother teaches her young one to live and grow. That is what the Mother’s coming
to Pondicherry
means for earth and mankind. The Mother Herself has given the significance of
this day thus:
(About
24 April 1920)
The
anniversary of my return to Pondicherry,
which was the tangible sign of the sure Victory over the adverse forces.
This victory
implies that the Divine Consciousness that has plunged into the darkness and
ignorance emerges despite all the obstacles and resistance offered by the earth
consciousness and matter. This interestingly is also the occult significance of
resurrection, the Easter day which also fell this year on the same date. The
preset talk deals with some aspects of this New Birth.
* * *
Words of the Mother
The number of
hours spent in meditation is no proof of spiritual progress. It is a proof of
your progress when you no longer have to make an effort to meditate. Then you
have rather to make an effort to stop meditating: it becomes difficult to stop meditation,
difficult to stop thinking of the Divine, difficult to come down to the
ordinary consciousness. Then you are sure of progress, then you have made real
progress when concentration in the Divine is the necessity of your life, when
you cannot do without it, when it continues naturally from morning to night whatever
you may be engaged in doing. Whether you sit down to meditation or go about and
do things and work, what is required of you is consciousness; that is the one
need,—to be constantly conscious of the Divine.
*
* *
What we are
seeking is to be concentrated on the Divine in all that we do, at all times, in
all our acts and in every movement. There are some here who have been told to
meditate; but also there are others who have not been asked to do any
meditation at all. But it must not be thought that they are not progressing. They
too follow a discipline, but it is of another nature. To work, to act with
devotion and an inner consecration is also a spiritual discipline. The final
aim is to be in constant union with the Divine, not only in meditation but in
all circumstances and in all the active life. There are some who, when they are
sitting in meditation, get into a state which they think very fine and
delightful. They sit self-complacent in it and forget the world; but if they
are disturbed, they come out of it angry and restless, because their meditation
was interrupted. This is not a sign of spiritual progress or discipline. There
are some people who act and seem to feel as if their meditation were a debt
they have to pay to the Divine; they are like men who go to church once a week
and think they have paid what they owe to God. If you need to make an effort to
go into meditation, you are still very far from being able to live the
spiritual life. When it takes an effort to come out of it, then indeed your
meditation can be an indication that you are in the spiritual life. There are
disciplines such as Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga that one can practise and yet have
nothing to do with the spiritual life; the former arrives mostly at body
control, the latter at mind control. But to enter the spiritual life means to
take a plunge into the Divine, as you would jump into the sea. And that is not
the end but the very beginning; for after you have taken the plunge, you must
learn to live in the Divine. How are you to do it? You have simply to jump
straight in and not to think, “Where shall I fall? What will happen to me?” It
is the hesitation of your mind that prevents you. You must simply let yourself
go. If you wish to dive into the sea and are thinking all the time, “Ah, but
there may be a stone here or a stone there”, you cannot dive.
* * *
The Mother: CWM 3: Page 20 - 21
What is called
“new birth” is the birth into the spiritual life, the spiritual consciousness;
it is to carry in oneself something of the spirit which, individually, through
the soul, can begin to rule the life and be the master of existence. But in the
Supramental world, the spirit will be the master of this entire world and all
its manifestations, all its expressions, consciously, spontaneously, naturally…..
* * *
In fact, the
vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed,
so they suffocate, which is quite natural. But they have with them the key that
opens the doors and windows, and they do not use it.... Certainly there is a
time when they don’t know they have the key, but long after they have come to
know it, long after they have been told about it, they hesitate to use it and
doubt whether it has the power to open the doors and windows or even that it is
a good thing to open them! And even when they feel that “after all, it might be
good”, there remains some fear: “What will happen when these doors and windows
are opened?...” and they are afraid. They are afraid of being lost in that
light and freedom. They want to remain what they call “themselves”. They like
their falsehood and their bondage. Something in them likes it and goes on clinging
to it. They still have the impression that without their limits they would no
longer exist.
That is why
the journey is so long, that is why it is difficult. For if one truly consented
to cease to exist, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so
joyful—but perhaps not in the way men understand joy and ease. In truth, there are
very few people who do not enjoy fighting. There are very few who could accept
the absence of night, few can conceive of light except as the opposite of
darkness: “Without shadows there would be no picture. Without struggle, there
would be no victory. Without suffering there would be no joy.” That is what they
think, and so long as one thinks in this way, one is not yet born into the
spirit.
* * *
The Mother: CWM 9: page 430 – 431 (last
Wednesday talk by the Mother)
