My Pilgrimage to the Spirit

To Personal Effort

###March 5, 1932

Q. What is the difference between the personal effort and the action of the Divine Force? How can the personal effort be eliminated?

A. It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once—and always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia.

The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then, call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours but the Mother's. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal Adhar—a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive.

But the psychic poise is necessary: the discrimination must develop, which sees accurately what is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces. And until the transfer is complete which always takes time, there must always be as a personal contribution, a constant consent to the true Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture—that is very important.

At present to give up personal effort is not what is wanted, but to call in more and more the Divine Power and govern and guide by it the personal endeavour.

Sri Aurobindo