SECTION TWELVE

SADHANA IN THE ASHRAM AND OUTSIDE

Object of Creating the Ashram

THIS Ashram has been created with another object than that ordinarily common to such institutions, not for the renunciation of the world but as a centre and a field of practice for the evolution of another kind and form of life which would in the final end be moved by a higher spiritual consciousness and embody a greater life of the spirit. There is no general rule as to the stage at which one may leave the ordinary life and enter here; in each case it depends on the personal need and impulsion and the possibility or the advisability for one to take the step.

Types of Sadhaks and the Problem of Transformation

IT is necessary or rather inevitable that in an Ashram which is a "laboratory", as A puts it, for a spiritual and supramental Yoga, humanity

Page - 465

should be variously represented. For the problem of transformation has to deal with all sorts of elements favourable and unfavourable. The same man indeed carries in him a mixture of these two things. If only sattwic and cultured men come for Yoga, men without very much of the vital difficulty in them, then, because the difficulty of the vital element in terrestrial nature has not been faced and overcome, it might well be that the endeavour would fail. There might conceivably be under certain circumstances an overmental layer supers imposed on the mental, vital and physical, and influencing them, but hardly anything supramental or a sovereign transmutation of the human being. Those in the Ashram come from all quarters and are of all kinds; it cannot be otherwise.

In the course of the Yoga, collectively—though not for each one necessarily—as each plane is dealt with, all its difficulties arise. That will explain much in the Ashram that people do not expect there. When the preliminary work is over in the "laboratory", things must change.

Also, much stress has not been laid on human fellowship of the ordinary kind between the inmates (though good feeling, consideration and courtesy should always be there), because that is not the aim; it is unity in a new consciousness that is the

Page - 466

aim, and the first thing is for each to do his sadhana, to arrive at that new consciousness and realise oneness there.

Whatever faults are there in the sadhaks must be removed by the Light from above—a sattwic rule can only change natures predisposed to a sattwic rule. :

31-10-1935

Flexibility and Variety in the Ashram Discipline

(1)

A HUMAN soul and nature cannot be dealt with by a set of mental rules applicable to everybody in the same way; if it were so, there would be no need of a Guru, each could set his chart of Yogic rules before him like the rules of Sandow's exercise and follow them till he became the perfect siddha!

25-10-1932

Page - 467

(2)

The general principle of self-consecration and Self-giving is the same for all in this Yoga, but each has his own way of consecration and self-giving. The way that X takes is good for X, just as the way that you take is the right one for you, because it is in consonance with your nature. If there were not this plasticity and variety, if all had to be cut in the same pattern, Yoga would be a rigid mental machinery, not a living power.

When you can sing out of your inner consciousness in which you feel the Mother moving all your actions, there is no reason why you should not do it. The development of capacities is not only permissible but right, when it can be made part of the Yoga; one can give not only one's soul, but all one's powers to the Divine.

29-6-1931

(3)

It is a little difficult for the wider spiritual outlook to answer your question in the way you want and every mental being wants, with a trenchant "Thou shalt" or "Thou shalt not"—especially when the

Page - 468

"thou" is meant to cover "all". For while there is an identity of essential aim, while there are general broad lines of endeavour, yet there is not in detail one common set of rules in inner things that can apply to all seekers. You ask: "Is not such and such a thing harmful?" But what is harmful to one may be helpful to another, what is helpful at a certain stage may cease to be helpful at another, what is harmful under certain conditions may be helpful under other conditions, what is done in a certain spirit may be disastrous, the same thing done in a quite different spirit would be innocuous or even beneficial.... there are so many things to be considered: the spirit, the circumstances, the person, the need and cast of the nature, the stage. That is why it is said so often that the Guru must deal with each disciple according to his separate nature and accordingly guide his sadhana; even if it is the same line of sadhana for all, yet at every point for each it differs. That also is the reason why we say that the divine way cannot be understood by the mind, because the mind acts according to hard and fast rules and standards, while the spirit sees the truth of all and the truth of each and acts variously according to its own comprehensive and complex vision. That also is why we say that no one can understand by his personal mental judgment the

Page - 469

Mother's actions and reasons for action: it can only be understood by entering into the larger consciousness from which she sees things and acts upon them. That is baffling to the mind because it uses its small measures, but that is the truth of the matter.

So you will see that here there is no mental rule» but in each case the guidance is determined by spiritual reasons which are of a flexible character.

There is no other consideration, no rule. Music, painting, poetry and many other activities which are of the mind and vital can be used as part of spiritual development or of the work and for a spiritual purpose: it depends on the spirit in which they are done.

Aim of the Ashram Work

(1)

THIS is not an Ashram like others—the members are not Sannyasis; it is not moksha that is the sole aim of the Yoga here. What is being done here is a preparation for a work—a work which will be founded on Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, and can

Page - 470

have no other foundation. Meanwhile, every member here is expected to do some work in the Ashram as part of his spiritual preparation.

(2)

Work can be of two kinds—the work that is a field of experience used for the sadhana, for a progressive harmonisation and transformation of the being and its activities, and work that is a realised expression, of the Divine. But the time for the latter can be only when the Realisation has been fully brought down; to the earth-consciousness; till then all work whether done in the Ashram or without it, must be of the former kind.

17-3-1932

Basic Consciousness of Karmayoga

WHAT you received and kept in the work is indeed the true basic consciousness of Karmayoga—the calm consciousness from above supporting and the

strength from above doing the work, with that the Bhakti which feels it to be the Mother's consciousness

Page - 471

present and working. You know now by experience what is the secret of Karmayoga.

15-9-1936

Work for the Mother

WORK for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is as much a sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.

Openness to the Mother

To be open is simply to be so turned to the Mother that her Force can work in you without anything refusing or obstructing her action. If the mind is shut up in its own ideas and refuses to allow her to bring in the Light and the Truth, if the vital clings to its desires and does not admit the true initiative and impulsions that the Mother's power brings, if the physical is shut up in its desire habits and inertia and does not allow the Light and Force to enter in it and work, then one is not open. It is not possible

Page - 472

to be entirely open all at once in all the movements, but there must be a central opening in each part and a dominant aspiration or will in each part (not in the mind alone) to admit only the Mother's 'workings', the rest will then be progressively done.

28-10-1934

True Attitude in Work

THIS happens when the work is always associated with the Mother's thought, done as an offering to her, with the call to do it through you. All ideas of ego, all association of egoistic feelings with the work must disappear. One begins to feel the Mother's force doing the work; the psychic grows through a certain inner attitude behind the work and the adhar becomes open both to the psychic intuitions and influences from within and to the descent from above. Then the result of meditation can come through the work itself.

5-5-1936

Page - 473

True Movement in Sadhana

WHAT do you call meditation? Shutting the eyes and concentrating? It is only one method for calling down the true consciousness. To join with the true consciousness or feel its descent is the only thing important and if it comes without the orthodox. method, as it always did with me, so much the better. Meditation is only a means or device, the true movement is when even walking, working or speaking, one is still in sadhana.

10-6-1933

Sadhana through Work

(1)

To work in calm, ever-widening consciousness is at once a Sadhana and Siddhi.

26-5-1937

Page - 474

(2)

Why argue from your personal experience, great or little, and turn it into a generalisation? A great many people (the majority perhaps) find it (sadhana through work) the easiest of all. Many find it easy to think of the Mother when working; but when they read or write, their mind goes off to the thing read or written and they forget everything else. I think that is the case with most. Physical work, on the other hand, can be done with the most external part of the mind, leaving the rest free to remember or to experience.

Consciousness in Physical Things

IT is very true that physical things have a consciousness within them which feels and responds to care and is sensitive to careless touch and rough handling. To know or feel that and learn to be careful of them is a great progress of consciousness.

16-4-1936

Page - 475

Sports in the Ashram

CERTAINLY, we do not want only sportsmen in the Ashram: that would make it not an Ashram but a playground. The sports and physical exercises are primarily for the children of the school and they also do not play only but have to attend to their studies as well. Secondarily, the younger sadhaks are allowed, not enjoined or even recommended, to join in these sports, but certainly they art not supposed to be sportsmen only: they have other and more important things to do. To be a sportsman must necessarily be a voluntary choice and depends on one having the taste and inclination. There are plenty of people who would never dream of engaging in sports and the Mother also would never think of asking them to do so. Some, of course, might ask why any sports at all in an Ashram which ought to be concerned only with meditation and inner experiences and the escape from life into the Brahman. But that applies only to the ordinary kind of Ashram to which we have got accustomed and this is not that orthodox kind of Ashram. It includes life in Yoga, and once we admit life we can include anything that we find useful for life's ultimate and immediate purpose and not inconsistent with the works of the Spirit. After all, the

Page - 476

orthodox Ashram came into being only after Brahman began to shun all connection with the world and the shadow of Buddhism stalked over all the land and the Ashrams turned into monasteries. The old Ashrams were not entirely like that; the boys and young men who were brought up in them were trained in many things belonging to life; the son of Pururavas and Urvasie practised archery in the Ashram of a Rishi and became an expert bowman and Kama became disciple of a great sage in order to acquire from him the use of powerful weapons. So there is no a priori ground why sports should be excluded from the life of an Ashram like ours where we are trying to equate life with the Spirit.

Propaganda for the Ashram

I DON'T believe in advertisement except for books etc. and in propaganda except for politics and patent medicines. But for serious work it is a poison. It means either a stunt or a boom—and stunts and booms exhaust the thing they carry on their crest and leave it lifeless and broken high and dry on the shores of nowhere—or it means a movement. A movement in the case of a work like mine means

Page - 477

the founding of a school or a sect or some other nonsense. It means that hundreds or thousands of useless people join in and corrupt the work or reduce it to a pompous farce from which the Truth that was coming down recedes into secrecy and silence. It is what has happened to the "religions" and is the reason of their failure. If I tolerate a little writing about myself, it is only to have a sufficient counter-weight in that amorphous chaos, the public mind, to balance the hostility that is always aroused by the presence of a new dynamic Truth in this world of Ignorance. But the utility ends there and too much advertisement would defeat that object. I am perfectly "rational", I assure you, in my methods and I do not proceed merely on any personal dislike of fame. If and so far as publicity serves the Truth, I am quite ready to tolerate it; but I do not find publicity for its own sake desirable.

 This "contemporary philosophy", British or Indian, looks to me very much like book-making and, though the "vulgarisation" of knowledge—to use the French term—by book-making has its use, I prefer to do solid work and leave that to others. You may say that I can write a solid thing in philosophy and let it be book-made. But even the solid tends to look shoddy in such surroundings. And

Page - 478

besides, my solid work at present is not philosophy but something less wordy and more to the point. If that work gets done, then it will propagate itself so far as propagation is necessary—if it were not to get done, propagation would be useless.

The Propagandist Spirit

WELL-KNOWN or unknown has absolutely no importance from the spiritual point of view. It is simply the propagandist spirit. We are not a party or a church or religion seeking adherents or proselytes. One man who earnestly pursues the Yoga is of more value than a thousand well-known men.

16-1-1935

The first Necessity

To concentrate most on one's own spiritual growth and experience is the first necessity of the sadhak— to be eager to help others draws away from the inner work. To grow in the spirit is the greatest help one

Page - 479

can give to others, for then something flows out naturally to those around that helps them.

9-4-1937

Abandoning the Ordinary Life for Yoga

(1)

EVERYTHING depends upon the aim you put before you. If, for the realisation of one's spiritual aim, it is necessary to give up the ordinary life of the Ignorance (samsara), it must be done; the claim of the ordinary life cannot stand against that of the spirit.

If a Yoga of works alone is chosen as the path, then one may remain in the samsara, but it will be freely, as a field of action and not from any sense of obligation; for the Yogin must be free inwardly from all ties and attachments. On the other hand, there is no necessity to live the family life—one can leave it and take any kind of works as a field of action.

In the Yoga practised here the aim is to rise to at higher consciousness and to live out of the higher consciousness alone, not with the ordinary motives.

Page - 480

This means a change of life as well as a change of consciousness. But all are not so circumstanced that they can cut loose from the ordinary life; they accept it therefore as a field of experience and self- training in the earlier stages of the sadhana. But they must take care to look at it as a field of experience only and to get free from the ordinary desires, attachments and ideas which usually go with it; otherwise, it becomes a drag and hindrance on their sadhana. When one is not compelled by circumstances there is no necessity to continue the ordinary life.

One becomes tamasic by leaving the ordinary actions and life, only if the vital is so accustomed to draw its motives of energy from the ordinary consciousness and its desires and activities that if it loses them, it loses all joy and charm and energy of existence. But if one has a spiritual aim and an inner life and the vital part accepts them, then it draws its energies from within and there is no danger of one's being tamasic.

6-6-1935

(2)

It is not absolutely necessary to abandon the ordinary life in order to seek after the Light or to

Page - 481

practise Yoga. This is usually done by those who want to make a clean cut, to live a purely religious or exclusively inner and spiritual life, to renounce the world entirely and to depart from the cosmic existence by cessation of the human birth and passing away into some higher state or into the transcendental Reality. Otherwise, it is only necessary when the pressure of the inner urge becomes so great that the pursuit of the ordinary life is no longer compatible with the pursuit of the dominant spiritual objective. Till then what is necessary is a power to practise an inner isolation, to be able to retire within oneself and concentrate at any time on the necessary spiritual purpose. There must also be a power to deal with the ordinary outer life from a new inner attitude and one can then make the happenings of that life itself a means for the inner change of nature and the growth in spiritual experience.

Necessity of Sadhana in the Ashram

IT is certainly quite true that the psychic contact can exist at a distance and that the Divine is not limited by place, but is everywhere. It is not necessary for everybody to be in the Ashram or physically near to

Page - 482

the Mother in order to live the spiritual life or to practise the Yoga, especially in its early stages. But it is only one side of the truth; there is another; otherwise the logical conclusion might be that there was no necessity for the Mother to be here at all, or for the existence of the Ashram, or for anyone to come here.

The psychic being is there in all, but in very few it is well developed, well built up in the consciousness or prominent in the front; in most it is veiled, often ineffective or only an influence, not conscious enough or strong enough to support the spiritual life. It is for this reason that it is necessary for those drawn towards this truth to come here in order that they may receive the touch which will bring about or prepare the awakening of the psychic being, —that is for them the beginning of the effective psychic contact.

It is also for this reason that a stay here is needed for many,—if they are ready—in order that under the direct influence and nearness they may have the development or building up of the psychic being in the consciousness or its coming to the front. When the touch has been given or the development effected, so far as the sadhak is at the moment capable of it, he returns to the outside world and under the protection and guidance even at a distance is able

Page -  483

to keep the contact and go on with the spiritual life. But the influences of the outside world are not favourable to the psychic contact and the psychic development and if the sadhak is not sufficiently careful or concentrated, the psychic contact may easily be lost after a time or get covered over and the development may become retarded, stationary or even diminished by adverse movements or influences. It is therefore that the necessity exists and is often felt of return to the place of the central influence in order to fortify or recover the contact or to restore or to give a fresh forward impulse to the development. The aspiration for such nearness from time to time is not a vital desire; it becomes a vital desire only when it is egoistically insistent on or mixed with a vital motive, but not if it is an aspiration of the psychic being calm, deep and without clamour in it or perturbing insistence.

This for those who are not called upon or are not yet called upon to live in this Ashram under the direct pressure of the central force and presence Those who must so live are those called from the very beginning or who have become ready or who are for some reason or another given a chance to form a part of the work or creation which is being prepared by Yoga. For them the stay here in the atmosphere, the nearness is indispensable; to depart

Page - 484

would be for them a renunciation of the opportunity given them, a turning of the back upon the spiritual destiny. Their difficulties are in appearance greater than the struggle of those who remain outside because the demand and the pressure are greater; but also is their opportunity greater and the power and the influence for the development poured upon them and that too which they can spiritually become and will become if they are faithful to the choice and the call.

Action of Spiritual Force at a Distance

LEAVE aside the question of Divine or undivine, no spiritual man who acts dynamically is limited to physical contact—the idea that physical contact through writing, speech, meeting is indispensable to the action of the spiritual force is self-contradictory, for then it would not be a spiritual force. The spirit is not limited by physical things or by the body. If you have the spiritual force, it can act on people thousands of miles away who do not know and never will know that you are acting on them or that they are being acted upon—they only know that there is a force enabling them to do things and may very well suppose it is their own great energy and genius

Page - 485

Sadhana Outside Ashram

(1)

IT is quite possible for you to do sadhana at home and in the midst of your work—many do so. What is necessary at the beginning is to remember the Mother as much as possible, to concentrate on her in the heart for a time every day, if possible thinking of her as the Divine Mother, to aspire to feel her there within you, offer her your works and pray that from within she may guide and sustain you. This is a preliminary stage which often takes long, but if one goes through it with sincerity and steadfastness the mentality begins little by little to change and a new consciousness opens in the sadhak which begins to be aware more and more of the Mother's presence within, of her working in the nature and in the life or of some other spiritual experience which opens the gate towards realisation.

22-2-1937

(2)

When one is living in the world, one cannot do as in an Ashram—one has to mix with others and keep

Page - 486

up outwardly at least ordinary relations with others. The important thing is to keep the inner consciousness open to the Divine and grow in it. As one does that, more or less rapidly according to the inner intensity of the sadhana, the attitude towards others will change. All will be seen more and more in the Divine and the feelings, actions, etc. will more and more be determined, not only by the old external reactions, but by the growing consciousness within you.

14-9-1934

(3)

"Dedication of life" is quite possible for some without their staying here. It is a question of inward attitude and of the total consecration of the being to the Divine.

28-6-1936

Peace in Worldly Life

PEACE is never easy to get in the life of the world and never constant, unless one lives deep within

Page - 487

and bears the external activities as only a surface front of being.

13-9-1936

Spiritual Destiny and Outer Circumstances

WHEN someone is destined for the Path, all circumstances through all the deviations of mind and life help in one way or another to lead him to it. It is his own psychic being within him and Divine Power above that use to that end the vicissitudes both of mind and outward circumstance.

8-1Q-1936

Destiny in Yoga

DESTINY in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts

Page - 488

and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One's spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future. The only doubt is about the vicissitudes of the path and the time to be taken by the passage. It is here that the hostile forces playing on the weaknesses of the past nature strive to prevent the rapidity of the progress and to postpone the fulfilment. Those who fall, fall not because of the attacks of the vital forces, but because they put themselves on the side of the hostile Force and prefer a vital ambition or desire (ambition, vanity, lust, etc.) to the spiritual siddhi.

16-6-1933

The Past and the Future

THE past has not to be kept,—one has to go into the future realisation. All that is necessary in the

Page - 489

past for the future will be taken up and given a new form.

10-1-1935

Spiritual Opportunity

A SPIRITUAL opportunity is not a thing that should be lightly thrown away with the idea that it will be all right some other time—one cannot be so sure of the other time. Besides, these things leave a mark and at the place of the mark there can be a recurrence.

Page - 490