Sri Aurobindo Center of Los Angeles
Monthly Magazine
Theme : Sincerity
  June 2018 Issue - V
There is nothing mind can do that cannot be better done in the mind’s immobility and thought-free stillness.

-Sri Aurobindo
Dedicated to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo who gave their lives to changing the earth-nature and earth-conditions so that the earth becomes a tenement of a Divine Life, and brought down the force of a supreme consciousness ushering a new age of Truth, Harmony, Peace and Love progressively.  The path to the Divine need not be anymore a "walk on the edge of a razor".
 
Center  Activities:

The month of June comprised the regular activities of Savitri readings, SatSang, Tai-Chi and work offerings of devotees. On Saturday evenings, Steven Vincent, long time yoga practitioner, offered sessions on various forms of meditation, physical asana, and principles of spiritual practice including specific practices to apply the principle to our bodies and our lives. 
The theme of the newsletter for June is SINCERITY.  As perhaps the most important quality, a sine qua non for the pursuit of the Divine, its importance cannot be overstated. It is the fulcrum of our seeking, the foundation of our quest, and that which opens the doors of the gates to the Divine. Sri Aurobindo wrote:
"A sincere heart is worth all the extraordinary powers in the world".
 

I have said times without number that if a man is sincere, he will go through in spite of long delay and overwhelming difficulties.

- Sri Aurobindo. 

Those who are sincere, I can help and turn easily towards the Divine. But where there is insincerity I can do very little.

- The Mother. 


Only those who are already very sincere know that they are not completely sincere.

Sincerity is the gate to Divinity


- The Mother. 

     
                                       This month's theme:
                                  Sincerity in Integral Yoga.

 
What is Sincerity                                                                     - Sri Aurobindo

Sincerity and your troubles                                                   - The Mother

Degrees of Sincerity                                                                - The Mother

Do not deceive yourself                                                          - The Mother

Removing the Insincerity                                                     - The Mother

The one thing that counts                                                    - Sri Aurobindo

What is Sincerity                                                      - Sri Aurobindo       Home

Sincerity means more than mere honesty. It means that you mean what you say, feel what you profess, are earnest in your will. As the sadhak aspires to be an instrument of the Divine and one with the Divine, sincerity in him means that he is really in earnest in his aspiration and refuses all other will or impulse except the Divine's.

Sincerity and your troubles                                     - The Mother          Home

… If you come to the spiritual life with a sincere aspiration, sometimes an avalanche of unpleasant things falls upon you: you quarrel with your best friends, your family kicks you out of the house, you lose what you thought you had gained. I knew someone who had come to India with a great aspiration and after a very long effort towards knowledge and even towards Yoga. That was long long ago. At that time, people used to put on watch-chains and trinkets. This gentleman had a golden pencil which his grandmother had given him to which he was attached as the most precious thing in the world. It was fixed to his chain. When he landed at one of these ports – at Pondicherry or perhaps elsewhere in India or at Colombo, I believe it was at Colombo – they used to get into small boats and the boats took you ashore. And so this gentleman had to jump from the gangway of the ship into the boat. He missed his step, somehow got back his balance, but he made a sudden movement and the little gold pencil dropped into the sea and went straight down into the depths. He was at first very much aggrieved, but he told himself: “Why, that is the effect of India: I am freed from my attachments.... “. It is for very sincere people that the thing takes such a form. Fundamentally, the avalanche of troubles is always for sincere people. Those who are not sincere receive things with the most beautiful bright colours just to deceive them, and then in the end to enable them to find out that they are mistaken! But when someone has big troubles, it proves that he has reached a certain degree of sincerity.
 

Degrees of Sincerity                                                - The Mother       Home


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 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. 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.

Do not deceive yourself                                                - Mother       Home
Sincerity is perhaps the most difficult of all things and perhaps it is also the most effective. The first thing is not to deceive oneself. One knows one cannot deceive the Divine; even the cleverest of the Asuras cannot deceive the Divine. But even when one has understood that, one sees that quite often in one’s life, in the course of the day, one tries to deceive oneself without even knowing it, spontaneously and almost automatically. One always gives favourable explanations for all that one does, for one’s words, for one’s acts. That is what happens first. I am not speaking of obvious things like quarrelling and saying, “It is the other one’s fault”, I am speaking of the very tiny things of daily life. I know a child who knocked against a door and he gave a good kick to the door! It is the same thing. It is always the other one who is in the wrong, who has committed the mistake. Even when you have passed the stage of the child, when you have a little reason, you still give the stupidest of all excuses: “If he had not done that, I wouldn’t have done this.” But it should be just the other way round! This is what I call being sincere. When you are with someone, if you are sincere, instantaneously your way of reacting should be to do the right thing, even when you are with someone who does not do it. Take the most common example of someone who gets angry: instead of saying things that hurt, you say nothing, you keep calm and quiet, you do not catch the contagion of the anger. You have only to look at yourself to see if this is easy. It is quite an elementary thing, a very small beginning to know whether you are sincere. And I am not speaking of those who catch every contagion, even that of coarse joking nor of those who commit the same stupidity as the others. I tell you: if you look at yourself with sharp eyes, you will catch in yourself insincerities by the hundred, even though you are trying to be sincere in your general attitude. You will see how difficult it is.  I tell you: If you are sincere in all the elements of your being, to the very cells of your body and if your whole being integrally wants the Divine, you are sure of victory but for nothing less than that. That is what I call being sincere. I am not speaking of glaring things like obeying your impulses, your caprices and then saying: “I do not belong to myself any more, I belong to the Divine; it is the Divine who is doing everything in me, who is acting in me”, that indeed is crude enough. I am speaking of more refined people, a little more noble, who put on a pretty cloak to cover their desires. How many things in the course of the day, how many thoughts, sensations, gestures are turned exclusively towards the Divine in an aspiration? How many? I believe if you have a single one in the whole day, you may mark that in red letters. When I say, “If you are sincere, you are sure of victory”, I mean true sincerity: to be constantly the true flame that burns like an offering. That intense joy of existing only by the Divine and for the Divine and feeling that without Him nothing exists, that life has no longer any meaning, nothing has any purpose, nothing has any value, nothing has any interest, unless it is this call, this aspiration, this opening to the supreme Truth, to all that we call the Divine (because you must use some word or other), the only reason for the existence of the universe. Remove that and everything disappears.
 

Removing the insincerity                                                     The Mother   Home

If you are conscious of your insincerity, you have only one thing to do: that is to put a red-hot iron on it and make yourself sincere. That is the feeling. You must take a red-hot iron: it burns well, and then...   ouch!...  that's the way. For a moment it hurts a little, afterwards one is left in peace.
There is, besides, a marvellous joy in being sincere. Every act of sincerity carries in itself its own reward: the feeling of purification, of soaring upwards, of liberation one gets when one has rejected even one tiny particle of falsehood. Sincerity is the safeguard, the protection, the guide, and finally the transforming power.


Sincerity: The one things that counts                      - Sri Aurobindo       Home

In Yoga the one thing that counts in the end is sincerity and with it the patience to persist in the path— many even without this patience go through, for in spite of revolt, impatience, depression, despondency, fatigue, temporary loss of faith, a force greater than one's outer self, the force of the Spirit, the drive of the soul's need, pushes them through the cloud and the mist to the goal before them. Imperfections can be stumbling-blocks and give one a bad fall for the moment, but not a permanent bar. Obstructions due to some resistance in the nature can be more serious causes of delay, but they too do not last for ever.

 

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