The Practice of the Integral Yoga

III

On Aspiration

Aspiration is one of the most essential elements conducive to the success in sadhana. Without an aspiration to support the sadhaka at every step, any meaningful progress on the spiritual path is not only difficult but highly improbable. Sri Aurobindo has reminded us that aspiration is one of the two crucial factors which open wide the window of spirituality, the other one being the progressive eradication of the ego-centric attitude. He has also affirmed that the difficult task the Integral Yoga has taken in hand, that is to say, the establishment of a divine life upon earth itself, can only be achieved with the conjunction of two forces: (I) a steadily mounting ardent aspiration from the side of the sadhaka, and (ii) from the Divine's side an answering Grace descending from above in response to the sadhaka 's call. And the significant fact is that wherever there is the flame of aspiration burning bright in the sadhaka' s heart, the Grace of the Divine Mother cannot but respond.

But what is after all this aspiration? The sadhaka should not make any confusion here. For aspiration is not the exuberance of the vital nor the insistent hungry demand of Desire. It has a special quality of its own, also its characteristic movement and manifestation. We shall come to the discussion of these points in right time in course of this essay. For the moment let us briefly state that a veritable aspiration represents the pure and sacred flame of the psychic fire rising from the depths of consciousness. But this fire envelopes our heart and mind and body too and then mounts upward with an unwavering orientation. Under its vivifying influence all the different parts of our being start aspiring in their characteristic fashions. Thus an effective aspiration in the case of a sincere sadhaka comprises in its wide sweep the indomitable willpower of the mind, the insatiable thirst of the heart, the plenary consent of the vital, and the perfect opening of the physical consciousness.

All of us know that aspiration is one of the three basic limbs of the sadhana of the Integral Yoga, the other two being 'rejection'

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and 'surrender'. Viewed from one angle, aspiration excels the other two in its value. For without aspiration to vivify it, the sadhaka' s effort at rejection of wrong movements will very soon degenerate into a hard and dessicated ascetic exercise not very effective in actual practice. And the movement of self-surrender to the Divine? Why should the sadhaka feel at all any urge to surrender himself to the Divine unless the fire of aspiration burns out the resistance and recalcitrance of his lower human nature? Is it such a simple affair to make an unreserved surrender to the Divine?

It is because of this interconnection that we ventured to state above that a genuine aspiration precedes in its importance the other two movements of rejection and surrender. For it is undeniable that if the sadhaka' s aspiration becomes sincere and ardent, and all-enveloping, 'rejection' and 'self-surrender' too are bound to follow suit in no time.

Did not Sri Aurobindo make the point explicit in one of his exchange of letters with Nirodbaran, his beloved disciple? Here is what the exchange was like:

Nirodbaran, to Sri Aurobindo: "In your letter to Somnath you said that what is most needed is an upward aspiration. But then what about the other two movements: rejection and surrender you mention in The Mother¹}... You can see that aspiration per se, however strong and true, cannot achieve much."

Sri Aurobindo laconically replied: "Who says no?"

Nirodbaran, being puzzled, asked his Master again: "Do you mean that a strong aspiration will necessarily bring in rejection and surrender?"

Sri Aurobindo' s two-word reply: "Of course."

No further explanation is needed as regards the essentiality of aspiration. Yet, in spite of this categorical assertion made by Sri Aurobindo, some sadhakas may at times harbour in their mind a lurking thought like: "is a constantly maintained ardent aspiration so very essential in the life of sadhana? Can it not be that the Grace of the divine alone will suffice to bring about all the necessary fulfilment? Why should we limit the potency of grace and make its action conditional on the sadhaka' s call ?"

The questions thus put suffer from some fallacy. For it is of

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course true that the Grace of the Divine is omnipotent and self-existent: its effectivity does not depend in any way on any other factor. But and this but is a big 'But', for the Divine Grace acts with all its Power only in the case of a sadhaka who has eliminated all his separative ego-consciousness, overpassed all sense of being a personal actor, and realised by actual experience that the Divine alone is the agent at all times. In such a sadhaka' s case no other condition need be imposed for the effective intervention of the divine Grace.

But have we, most of us, reached that state? Surely not. We, novices on the Path, are still dominated by the sense of ego. All our actions arise out of a sense of personal motivation and urged by a separate-seeming personal will. Now, so long as we dwell in such a state of ego-dominated consciousness, we have to make some personal effort for our spiritual progress. We cannot pass on everything to the action of the divine Grace. This will be an act of sheer self-deception, of mithyācāra as the Gita would say. Sri Aurobindo has clarified the situation in these words:

"In Yoga... it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the Adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., P-6)

And in the very next sentence Sri Aurobindo has included the 'labour of aspiration' as the primary element of this necessary personal effort.

The Mother on her part speaks more bluntly and seeks to disabuse our mind of any false complacency in this regard. This is what she says in substance:

'It is absolutely ludicrous to think that all that is necessary in the life of sadhana will come to you automatically through the magical power of divine Grace. No, this is not true at all. You must

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not lapse into sleep with this vain thought: "Oh, everything will be done for me by the Divine; I need not do anything at all except that I glide along the stream of time." No, this is never true to fact; nothing will be done for you automatically.'

No, an ardent aspiration is very much needed for the speedy advancement on the path of Yoga. As a matter of fact every sadhaka has to engage himself in a twofold sadhana:

(i)to keep constantly burning in one's heart a living aspiration for the attainment of the Divine and for belonging only to the Divine; and

(ii)to make a constant and sincere effort to offer oneself fully to the Divine and consecrate to him all that one is, one has, and one does without the slightest expectation of any fruit in return.

If the sadhaka can do this in all earnestness, the Divine Mother herself will take charge of his life and sadhana and lead him along a sunlit path to the ultimate attainment of union with the Divine.

The place of aspiration is so very important in the building up of a genuine spiritual life that once when a disciple complained to Sri Aurobindo that he was not being able to call and aspire sufficiently strongly, the Master emphatically advised:

"Well then, aspire weakly and phantasmally — but anyhow aspire." (Nirodbaran, Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, p. 315)

'But anyhow aspire', that should be the mantra of 'open sesame' in our sadhana-life. And we, the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga, should often meditate upon the following encouraging words of the Mother as regards the miraculous potency of aspiration:

"We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find... that Something which will change the whole significance of life, reply to all our questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it, to that Reality which alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life." (M C W Vol. 9, pp. 374-75)

Such is the great contribution of the sadhana-movement called aspiration. But this has to be kept pure and free from all alien admixture. For a strong and insistent desire can very often take the

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garb of an aspiration and grievously deceive the sadhaka, thus leading to his spiritual downfall. So it is advisable to devote some time here to the discussion of the basic difference between a movement of demand and desire and that of a genuine aspiration.

There is a gulf of difference between a desire and an aspiration. Desires are the manifestation of the insatiable thirst and appetite of the separative ego-consciousness. Ego would like to remain an ego; it stubbornly refuses to dissolve its sense of separativity. But any separativity cannot but lead to an inevitable contraction and limitation. And because of this limitation it cannot but be that the actual possessions of the ego have to suffer from many a lacuna and imperfection. Yet the occult truth remains that behind his outward ego-consciousness every individual human being' has within him, deeply hidden behind the veil of Ignorance, the eternal Godhead with his intrinsic Will to possess the universe; for, that is his inherent divine right.

Here we meet a strange mysterious phenomenon. Man's superficial ego, being obscurely aware of the inner Godhead's right to infinite and absolute possession, claims for itself the same divine right but because of its inherent limitation in power and capability it cannot fulfil its urge in actual practice. Hence arises for the separative ego an unbridgeable gap between its insistent demands and actual attainments. This creates a sense of constant discontent.

Ego forgets that without the abolition of the sense of separativity and the restitution of the experience of divine unity and universality, it cannot hope to possess the world. For this possession can be effected only in the spiritual way. But ego mistakenly follows its own impossible way which amounts to gathering from outside, from what it feels as not-self, more and more of objects of enjoyment and bringing all these to its voraciously hungry mouth. Ego's tendency is to pull everything to its own centre. But in that way it cannot satisfy its insatiable appetite: its parching thirst remains basically unquenchable.

To take an arithmetical analogy: So long as the decimal point immediately after the initial zero of a decimal number is maintained, any number of nines, however inordinately large that number

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may be, added to the right of this decimal point cannot reach the value one. For that one has first to knock out the decimal point which is psychologically equivalent to the separative and divided ego-consciousness.

Wherever there is the sense of ego, there is bound to appear with it the centripetal urge to grab and devour, in a vain bid to replenish itself to fulness. And this is the genesis of the movement of desire. Thus, however high and noble it may be in its frontal appearance, however generous and apparently self-sacrificing may be its movement, every desire is basically ego-oriented.

A genuine aspiration is just the opposite of this. It is intensely aware of the insufficiencies and imperfections of the ego-bound existence; hence it tries to come out of this sordid prison house. All its urges are dovetailed to the realisation of this fundamental release. Each of its movements is directed not to the ego-centre but away from it.

And by this sole sign a sadhaka can recognise whether his governing impulse of the moment is of the nature of a desire or of an aspiration. Thus, an aspiration is, in its origin, a thirst arising from the soul, a yearning towards the divine love, light and progress. There can be, nay should be, a great intensity in an aspiration but never any froth and spume of egoistic fervour. In an aspiration there is constant turning to the Divine but no impatience nor any sense of frustration if the fulfilment is delayed. For there is no intrusion of ego here with its spoiling antics.

In other words, an aspiration is an upward elan of our consciousness towards all that is essentially good and pure and beautiful; it is a thirst for spiritual knowledge; it is a quiet and steady seeking for the Divine and divine life; it embodies an indomitable courage to fight against all that tries to prevent the sadhaka' s progress by exercising upon him a gravitational pull downward and backward.

Here are some characterisations given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother which will make abundantly clear what a true aspiration is and how it is distinguished from the movement of a desire.

Sri Aurobindo defines aspiration as "a spiritual enthusiasm, the height and ardour of the soul's seeking." Now from the Mother:

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An aspiration is "an inner enthusiasm towards the New, the Unknown, the Perfection." It is "a yearning, a longing for the contact with the Divine Force, divine Harmony, divine Love." An aspiration is "an inner flame, a need for the light... A luminous enthusiasm that seizes the whole being... An unquenchable thirst, an elan, a luminous drive towards all that is high, all that is noble, all that is divine." It is "a courage with a taste for the supreme adventure, the adventure of consciousness." Aspiration is a "silently mounting column of fire that carries in its tip what one wants to be, one wants to have, one wants to do." Finally, an aspiration is "a purifying Will, an evermounting drive."

What we have given above are abstract definitions and generalisations. But how does an aspiration make its appearance in the life of an individual? What impact does it make upon the quality of his life? And what is the result of this aspiration? — All these and other allied questions the Mother discussed in one of her last classes held in the Ashram Playground. It was on 13 August 1958. This is what she said inter alia:

"One day... just imagine, you are going to wake up all of a sudden to something you never noticed but which is deep within you and thirsts for the truth, thirsts for transformation and is ready to make the effort required to realise it. On that day you will go very fast, you will advance with giant strides....

"You will suddenly feel an irresistible need not to live in unconsciousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have contradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit, routine, reactions — you take life easy. And one day you are no longer satisfied with that.

"It depends, for each one it is different. Most often it is the need to know, to understand; for some it is the need to do what must be done as it should be done;...

"One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that there is something which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something,

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that all this — all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy — all that must have a purpose, an aim, and that this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this thirst for something must lead us somewhere else....

"You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half-conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly....

"The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it." {Questions and Answers 1957-58, pp. 373-75)

So this is aspiration, and the Mother in her infinite compassion cited her own personal case to exemplify the thing. She told the inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram that the first time, between the age of eighteen and twenty years, when she came to know that there was a discovery to make within her, the discovery of the inner Godhead, that became the most important thing for her: that was put before everything else. And she rushed like a cyclone to make the discovery, and nothing could have stopped her. And the result was that in one month the whole work was done. (M C W Vol. 6, pp. 298-99)

Such was the case with the Mother, but what about us, her children, who have declared ourselves to be sadhakas on her Path? Do we have even a thousandth part of her aspiration? Actually, she sternly scolded the Ashramites on the lack of sufficient ardour in their aspiration. This is what she said in substance on August 23, 1954:

'How many years you have been here, half asleep!... Everything has been explained to you, the whole work has almost been chewed up for you, you have been not only with words but with psychic aids, in all possible ways, put on the path to this inner discovery, and still you let yourselves live, like that (gesture) it will come when it comes!... Where is that ardour, that will which conquers all obstacles, that concentration which overcomes everything!' (Adapted from pp. 298-300 of M C W Vol. 6)

Yes, where is that ardour? where is that intensity of aspiration? Yet it has been made clear by now that without proper aspi-

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ration nothing tangible can be achieved on the path of spirituality. So all of us would like to know whether there is any sadhana-procedure following which a sadhaka can awaken his dormant aspiration and make it in time all-enveloping and all-conquering?

In fact, there is one, and the Mother has elaborated it at many places of her extensive writings. The interested reader can refer to those portions of her Works. We give below a gist of her teaching in the barest outline.

First Step: Either through the Grace of the Divine, or because of some good Karma done in past lives, or through the luminous exercise of one's power of discrimination, the sadhaka becomes convinced of the vanity and transitoriness of all that an ordinary ego-dominated life of desires can offer him, of the futility of its love and power and happiness and enjoyments. A strong mood of disenchantment grips him so far as the normal human life of lower nature is concerned.

Second Step: The sadhaka ardently seeks to come out of this hollow human living, to escape from the prison-house of lower nature. He does not as yet know what he really wants or wherein lies the solution to his malaise and discontent. But this he knows that release he must have from the present state of nauseating imperfections. Such is the sign of the second stage.

Third Step: Because of the persistent insistence of the aspirational seeking on the part of the sadhaka for something else, although as yet vague and unknown, sooner or later the divine Grace responds and creates a chink in the wall of ignorance surrounding the sadhaka or removes for a short while the impenetrable veil obscuring his vision. Through this chink and because of this removal, the sadhaka gets a glimpse of the higher consciousness, of the glories and opulence of the supernal realms. And that begins attracting the amazed sadhaka as a powerful magnet and he loses very soon even the vestiges of his previous fascination for the lower life of the common run of humanity.

Fourth Step: The chink may be covered up again; the veil may again come back to block the sadhaka' s vision. Now the sadhaka has to be extra careful, not to lose the remembrance of the glimpse.

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He has to keep it vibrant and living before his consciousness and constantly direct his aspiration for the re-emergence of the glory from behind the clouds and its stay for a greater length of time.

Fifth Step: The sadhaka will now find that by and by the attraction for the higher order of life is gaining in more and more of intensity and the attachment to the hold lower life is falling off like a withered leaf. A new brand of yeaning and resolution fills his heart and mind whose form expressed in words will be some what like this:

"O Divine, I want you alone. I do not want anything or anyone else except through you and for you. I want to belong entirely to you and will never allow anyone or anything else to stake a separate claim on my consciousness. I want to be reborn in you: let the dead skin of my personality drop off and disintegrate."

Sixth Step: When the sadhaka arrives at this step, the whole up his life turns into a brazier of sacred fire of aspiration. in his stage. there is no uttered sound of prayers, vocal or mental, there is only the mounting flame or spiritual fire rising steadily upward in the background of a profound silence. An intense seeking to belong to the Divine, to be united with him, and to server him as a perfect instrument of his manifestation, A great Hunger , an insatiable Thirst, the constant sense of a supreme Need permeates the entire being of the aspirant. The mother has described this wonderfully delectable state in one of her "Notes on the Way" of 1965.Here is what she said:

"...the thirst for progress, the thirst for knowledge, the thirst for transformation and, above all, the thirst for Love and Truth...Truly a thirst, a need, All the rest has s no importance; it is that one has need of.

"To cling to something one believes that one knows, to cling to something that one feels, to cling to something that one's loves, to cling to one's habits, to cling to the world as it is, is that which binds you. you must undo all, that, one thing after another. Undo all the ties.... No more bond-free, Always ready to change everything, except one thing:

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to aspire, this thirst.... [for] the 'Something' one is in need of, the Love one is in need of, the Truth one is in need of, the supreme Perfection one is in need of — and that is all.... a need, which the Thing alone can satisfy — nothing else, no half-measure, only that. And then, you go !" (M C W Vol. 11, p. 6)

Such is the nature of an all-accomplishing aspiration, for "all-accomplishing" it surely is. The Mother has assured us that a sincere aspiration introduces in the events another higher determinism and thus can altogether change the course of things. But for that the sadhaka has to pay attention to a few points:

(i)The object one aspires after has to be constantly held before the sadhaka's consciousness. To aspire for a couple of minutes and then go to sleep for ten hours will not do. The sadhaka has to remove the two stumbling-blocks of laxity and forgetful-ness.

(ii)One should not mix up a spirit of impatience with aspiration; for, impatience is bound to breed the undesirable moods of depression and rebellion.

(iii)The aspiration should be fortified with the power of concentration: this concentration should be focussed on the object sought after. The sadhaka' s mind should be prevented from wandering about hither and thither; his heart should be restrained from knocking at all possible doors for its supposed satisfaction. They should be constantly brought back from their wayward wanderings to dwell fixedly on the object of aspiration.

(iv)An aspiration, to be effective, should be strengthened by a constant practice of rejection of all the negative elements of the sadhaka' s nature, that try to nullify the potency of the aspiration. One should remember that a sincere and all-encompassing effort at rejection cannot but make the fire of aspiration burn bright more and more and reach its goal of fulfilment by consuming to nothingness all the dirt and scum on the way.

Our next essay will be devoted to the elaboration of this sadhana of rejection.

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