This book for sadhaks or seekers of Integral Yoga is based on the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a practical guide for sadhana of Integral Yoga.
On Yoga
THEME/S
XVIII
Lacking in sufficient will-power is a great handicap in the life of a sadhaka. This deficiency alone, when many other propitious 3 conditions are present, has wrecked the spiritual career of many aspirants. Regrettably, when we look at ourselves, many of us will find, that almost daily we give proof of the debility of our will when confronted with a crisis of choice. The state of our mind at these moments of decision is somewhat like this: "We know and understand many things but at the time of practical application we buckle miserably. We have the conviction that as sadhakas we have to reject every prompting of ego and desire, but when it comes to the actual operation of rejection we simply postpone it to a later date. There is no sufficient urge to do immediately all that is needed. It is not that we do not exactly know what we should do and what we should avoid. Knowledge is there in full measure; a vague general resolution to always do the right thing is also not absent; when we talk to other sadhakas we become quite eloquent in advising them what they should do in a given situation. But, strangely, when it is a question of our own practice, we are prone to accept defeat without much resistance. We are quite aware of the Mother's affirmation: 'A drop of practice is better than an ocean of theories, good advices and resolutions.' We know all this and even believe in the truth of the statement. But why is it that we cannot translate our knowledge and resolution, in actual practice?"
The only answer mat can be offered is that our will-power not sufficiently developed. There is no strength in us to resist and j throw away the temptation. About this lacking in will-power the Mother once spoke to her children in quite harsh terms in course of her class talk of 5 September, 1956:
"Wrong thoughts, wrong impulses, inner and outer falsehood,... so long as one does them or has them through ignorance... one understands, one is in the habit of doing them; it is ignorance, one does not know that it ought to be otherwise. But the moment the
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knowledge is there, the light is there,... how can one do it again? That I do not understand!
"Then what is one made of? One is made of shreds? One is made of goodness knows what, of jelly?... is there no incentive, no will, nothing? Is there no inner dynamism?...
"But the Grace is there, It is always there, It only asks to be allowed to help — one doesn't let it work.
"And nothing but this feeling: 'Oh, I can't!' — that's enough to prevent It from working.
"How can you accept the idea that you can't? You don't know — that, yes, you may not know — but once you know, it's finished!" (Questions and Answers 1956, M C W, Vol. 8, pp. 294-95)
Yes, there are justifiable reasons why the Mother should scold us for the feebleness of our will; we should be ashamed on that account. But ashamed or not, the fact remains that almost at every step of our sadhana-life we give repeated proofs of easily succumbing under pressure. But why should it be so?
All of us have consciously and deliberately chosen the path of spirituality. We know very well what we have to achieve in sadhana and how we should conduct ourselves as sincere sadhakas. We have sufficient awareness about all that has to be rejected from the 1»resent unregenerate nature of the triple instruments of mind and heart and the physical. Yet, it is really surprising that we cannot activate our will-power sufficiently strongly to overcome the manifestations of our weaknesses.
But how can we forget that an indomitable will-power is almost the first requisite the sadhaka should possess if he would like to progress on the path of the Integral Yoga? For we do not want to follow the way of escapist spirituality which seeks to withdraw from life and its activities with the hope of tackling the weaknesses of human nature by bypassing them as far as practicable. We in our sadhana aspire! after a total divine transformation of the whole of our nature. for that we have to accept life with all its complexities tad difficulties. Nature will confront us almost at every step in our daily life with a problem of choice between whether we want to move forward or stagnate or even go backward. And the right choice
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can be made only with the application of an enlightened will-power Hence the strength of our will-power will be put to test almost in a ceaseless fashion all along our journey on the path of the Integral Yoga. This will not do for us that off and on, on some infrequent occasions, our will-power flashes forth like an evanescent lightning, does its job and then goes back to dormancy. It has to act instead like a steady blaze of focussed sunlight which is always in action to expose and scorch out all the frailties of our lower nature.
We know that aspiration is one of the principal limbs of the sadhana of the Integral Yoga. But this aspiration, even if constant] will remain as an idle impotent dream if it is not accompanied by an effective rejection. And this rejection Will surely demand the co-operation of a strong personal will-power. As Sri Aurobindo has said:
"There is a period, more or less prolonged, of internal effort and struggle in which the individual will has to reject the darkness and distortions of the lower nature and to put itself resolutely or vehemently on the side of the divine Light. The mental energies, the heart's emotions, the vital desires, the very physical being have to be compelled into the right attitude or trained to admit and answer to the right influences." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 54)
The indispensability of a strong personal will in the life of sadhana and the roles it has to play at different' stages of the ascending march of spiritual effort has been brought out by Sri Aurobindo in this way:
At the first stage this will will be needed to orient all the movements of our lower nature towards the supernal Light and Truth.
At the second stage this will will have for its important role to persuade all the energies of our ego-being to accept without any] cavil the working of the higher Truth and be glad and willing collaborator in that working.
In the third stage, when the sadhaka will become conscious of the higher Power and Influence, his will will have to see to it that all the parts of his being act as faithful instruments of this superior Influence.
In the fourth stage, the will, the strength and the askesis of the
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sadhaka lose their separate individual character and are felt by him as "activities of that higher Power and Influence at work in the individual."
Whatever may be the variations of forms of the will's functioning under different circumstances and at different stages, its essential role is to free the sadhaka from his slavery to the compulsions of lower nature and to put him always in the service of the higher. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
"... every part of our energies that is given to the lower existence in the spirit of that existence is a contrdiction of our aim and our self-dedication. On the other hand, every energy or activity that we can convert from its allegiance to the lower and dedicate to the service of the higher is so much gained on our road, so much taken from the powers that oppose our progress." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 65)
We have by now realised the necessity of a strong will-power in the life of sadhana. But what is this will as a psychological element? How should a sadhaka come to know that the inner dynamism he is setting into operation in a particular situation is indeed a genuine will and not simply its deformation or simulacrum?
For in man's psychology there are quite many forces which Hp with a great spurt of energy and one-pointed vehemence, and bay make one believe that he is applying his 'will', when it is not so at all. If we indulge in any of these imitation-forms of 'will-power' it is apt to lead us to some adverse consequences, affecting very much the steady progress in sadhana. Hence it is necessary for a sadhaka to know at the outset how to distinguish a true will from a counterfeit one. Let us then have a short discussion of this tricky point here.!
It is said, and said with much truth in it, that the normal life of the general run of humanity is shackled into utter bondage with various fetters of desires. But these desires are not altogether what they seem to be. Each desire has two distinctly separate facets. Or we may otherwise say that each of the desires, when viewed from above and from below, present two different appearances.
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Viewed from below, a desire is nothing but a pricking urge of a blind impulse emanating from our lower nature. Most of the time it does not know what it really craves after. Our ego-conscious ness is always in turmoil because of the agitating pressure of the mutual interaction of the three modes of nature, these modes being Tamas or the principle of inertia, Rajas or the principle of vehemence, and Sattwa or the principle of bright rigidity. A disturbs state of constant worries and unhappiness has become the universal fate of all ego-consciousness. And all the ills can be traced to one basic cause: 'desire impulsion'. For here at this lower level all desires are altogether blind and ignorant.
But the same desire, when viewed from above, presents an appearance far more deep and true. It then reveals itself to be just the deformation of a spiritual Will. That is to say, what exists as the divine Will-Power, the Seer-Will, Kavi-kratu, in the height! and depths of our consciousness undergoes a 'beauty-turned-into-beast' metamorphosis under the malefic spell of cosmic Ignorance and becomes the unenlightened desire-will in the dark fold of our lower nature.
We must remember that the Seer-Will, Knowledge-Will, we referred to above is also a Will but surely not of the nature of our well-acquainted desire-will. The Seer-Will represents the Divine 'Desire', the Will of the Divine, which is entirely enlightened and irresistible in action. As Sri Aurobindo writes:
"There is a will, tapas, śakti, by which the secret spirit imposes on its outer members all their action... This Tapas is the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. It is one will, free in all these at once, comprehensive, harmonious, unified; we find it, when we live and act in the spirit, to be an effortlessless and desireless, a spontaneous and illumined, a self-fulfilling and self-possessing, a satisfied and blissful will of the spiritual delight of being." (The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 648-49)
This, then, is the original genuine Will and this we have to establish in ourselves at the culminating stage of our sadhana and
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make that dynamic in the entirety of our nature's functioning. But it is a vain hope that a sadhaka can achieve this Will in a relatively short span of sadhana. He has to proceed through many difficult stages before he can expect to be guided in all his actions and inspirations by this supreme Will.
Basing ourselves on Sri Aurobindo' s revelation we may state that there are indeed three stages of a growing spiritual progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced, and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. In a significant passage of The Synthesis of Yoga, already quoted on pp. 228-29 of this book (q.v.), Sri Aurobindo has described with great precision the various possibilities of the supreme Will acting in the sadhaka' s ādhāra. It is worth pondering over Sri Aurobindo' s words in order to have a clear perception of where we have to reach in our sadhana of the cultivation of the true Will. Sri Aurobindo says:
"But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous selfdetermining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members." (p. 207)
But it is obvious that all these stages mentioned in the passage just quoted are far beyond the reach of us, the novice sadhakas of the Path. We have to start from where we are and what we are and proceed step by step in our unslackening sadhana of the replacement of personal desire-will by the divine Will.
In fact, there are, broadly speaking, five rungs in this ascent of the
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will Godward. These rungs can be summarily described as follows:
Rung One: Instinctive drives, species-specific urges; blind and ignorant desire-pushes.
Rung Two: Intelligent will but a will enslaved to the lower impulsions, acting as their pleading advocate and trying to rationalise and justify them.
Rung Three: The same intelligent will as above but this time it is truly rational and enlightened, and governed by the sense of 'duty', of what one should do and not of what one would like to do. This 'duty' of the moment is determined by the sadhaka according to the best light available to him at that moment.
Rung Four: Will of the Yogi who has already realised his union with the Divine and merged his personal will in the divine Will.
Rung Five: The Will of the Supreme, operative in the universe of manifestation. This is the only true Will; .all other wills and urges and yearnings, in all the creatures in all the worlds, are nothing but its deformed guises in a more or less pronounced degree.
About the "desire-pushes" mentioned in the first rung above, it should be noted that these can sometimes take the appearance of a strong 'will-power', when actually they are not so. For the definition of a will as given by Sri Aurobindo is: "will is the pressure of a conscious force on Nature." (Letters on Yoga, p. 566) If that is so, a mere vehemence of the urge or the inflexibility of obstinacy or the unidirectional rush of a passion cannot claim the status of a 'will'. For such a forceful impulsion, when analysed to its roots, proves to be just a propelling force of the lower Nature to which the individual has ignorantly succumbed at the moment.
So far as the rational will mentioned in the second rung is concerned, tins too is not a veritable will; for, the rationalising intelligence here has lost its freedom of judgment, decision and action and is acting solely at the behest of the desire-impulsions of the Nature.
As for the 'will' mentioned in the fourth rung above, it is the governing will of a realised soul, siddha-yogī. So we exclude it from the purview, of our discussion. For we are dealing with the, procedure of sadhana meant for a sadhaka who has not yet reached his Goal.
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In our present chapter we are mainly concerned with the "intelligent will" of rung three above. Our intention is to indicate the sadhana-procedure, if there is any, by adopting which the sadhaka can develop and intensify his will-power so that it can always be put at the service of his varying exigencies under different situations of life.
The firstling we have to note in this .connection is that once the sadhaka has entered the stage of "rationally intelligent will'* he is faced with two opposite trends of this will. By adopting Sri Aurobindo' s analysis (Essays on the Gita, pp. 91-92) we may say that this rational will may either take a downward and outward orientation in the ignorant triple play of Nature, or, it may take an award and inward orientation towards the calm purity of the conscious soul no longer subject to the distractions of Nature.
In the former alternative the subjective being of the individual is at the mercy of the objects of sense and lives in the outward contacts of things. That life is just a life of desires. For, the senses excited by their objects create a restless or often violent disturbance and a strong or even headlong outward movement towards the seizure of these objects and their subsequent enjoyment.... The mind of the individual becomes subject to the emotions, passions, longings and impulsions awakened by this outward movement, bhahirmukha-vrt; the intelligent will loses at the same time the power of calm discrimination and effective mastery. This downward trend of the rational will creates the troubled life of the ordinary, unenlightened, undisciplined man of the world.
A sadhaka worth the name cannot permit himself to lead such a disordered life. For after all he has voluntarily decided to be an aspirant of the spiritual path. Therefore he has to resolutely choose, with a settled concentration and perseverance, the upward and inward orientation of his intelligent will. And for that the first movement of the sadhaka must be to get rid of blind desire in all its forms; for desireiiathe whole root of the evil and suffering in man's life. The sadhaka has to acquire the skill of observing the action of Nature without being subject to it and not desiring anything whatsoever (hat the objective life of vanity and ignorance can offer.
And for this the sadhaka needs a very strong illumined will-
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power. For he has to overcome almost at every step the downward! and outward pulls exercised by the lower Nature. If he already possesses such a will, well and good. But if not, he has to set himself to the task of developing such a will-power. This can be called the "yoga of the will" and has to be practised on two front)] (1) first a general practice to create the right attitude in oneself befitting a sadhaka; (2) and the specific procedure to be adopted in face of individual cases of temptation.
(1) Generalised Practice: This consists of several elements which are as follows:
(i)Never to admit "I can't possibly resist this present temptation." For this avowal on the part of the sadhaka automatically prevents the action of the divine Grace. After all, this "I can' cannot stand the scrutiny. For, it is a fact of spiritual life that whenever a sadhaka sincerely decides to fight against any of his weaknesses, the Divine himself actively intervenes to help him in his enterprise. And what is there impossible for the divine Power ?
So if it is ever found that the sadhaka' s will is not being able to cope with a particular temptation, it simply means that he has not yet decided really to resist.
(ii)Sometimes it so happens that the sadhaka wants many different things at the same time and these wills are mutually contradictory. This opposition of the wills enfeebles them all and makes them impotent to stand up against particular temptations.
So the sadhaka, instead of remaining as he is now a heterogeneous personality, has to achieve an integrated and homogeneous consciousness. In Sri Aurobindo' s words:
"... this aggregate is... a heterogeneous compound, not a single harmonious and homogeneous whole... [full of] different and conflicting tendencies... disparate consortium of habitual motiveforces... many incoherent and inharmonious mental elements... This is the reason why there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members... we drift too much or are driven by the stream of our nature and act from whatever in it comes uppermost at the time and seizes the instruments of thought and action..."(The Life Divine, p. 897)
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(iii) Even if the will fails in its battle against the temptation, not only once but many times over, the sadhaka should not feel discouraged and give up the effort. Instead of sorrowing and complaining over his temporary failures, he should try again and again; for, as the Mother says, "La victoire est au plus persistant1 — "Victory is to the most persistent." We must give attention to the following rebuke of Sri Aurobindo:
"... it is the sentimental lachrymose attitude"... "always weeping and complaining and lamenting instead of facing life and overcoming its difficulties"... "that keeps his troubles unsolved and alive. This is a temperament which the gods will not help because they know that help is useless, for it will either not be received or will be spilled and wasted." {Letters on Yoga, pp. 1702-03)
(iv)The sadhaka has to throw out all flabbiness of character and build up in its stead in his psychological disposition the strong joy of a warrior, the joy of scoring victory in one's fight against temptations and the zealous joy of making constant progress.
"Am I not a child of the Divine Mother? How can I then accept ignoble defeat at the hands of my nature's foibles? I must always advance on the path of my spiritual destiny — come what pay" — such an attitude of self-confidence and resolution has to grow up in the sadhaka' s heart. Here is the Mother's instruction to her children in this regard:
"What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance: to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that this is the truth of to-morrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come..." {Questions and Answers 1957, p. 158)
(v)The sadhaka must build up in his consciousness a strong sense of dignity and self-respect. A note of warning has to be sounded here. The dignity we are referring to is not the amour-propre of a self-conscious ego; it is rather the spiritual dignity of
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an aspiring soul. In other words, the sadhaka should wake up from his attitude of laisser-aller and be able to declare at all times with an enthusiastic vigour: "Fie upon me! Am I not a child of the Mother of Might ? Do I not claim to be a since re sadhaka? In that ca se, how is it that I lap se into se lf-oblivion so easily and get caught in the traps laid by the six enemies of the spiritual path , the se enemies, sadripus, being (a) lust and desire, (b) anger and irritation, (c) greed and voracity, (d) delusion and deception, (e) pride and vanity, and , last , (f) envy and jealous y. Do I not profess that I aspire after a divine life? - How can I then act and behave as if I am a worm wriggling in the gutter?"
Such a spirit of inner dignity, if always active in the sadhaka' s consciousness, will immensely fortify his will against all alien suggestions and protect him from man y a temptation.
(vi) The sadhaka must love and cherish his freedom with all his heart and develop in himself a strong distaste for all kinds ofslavery and bond age. He must have an ardent yearning for perfect mastery over his own nature.
Here too we have to sound a note of warning to avoid any confusion and misunderstanding. The 'freedom' we are speaking of is a true spiritual freedom and not the arrogant self-assertion of a self-willed ego.
As this love for inner freedom grows in the sadhaka' s consciousness, he realises that 'will' is essentially the forceful application of the intrinsic freedom of the Purusha or Self against the serfdom Prakriti or Nature seeks to impose. The sadhaka will then have a natural shrinking from surrendering his well-loved liberty and going under the yoke of the wily manoeuvrings of the lower Nature. Let us recall in this connection what Sri Aurobindo has said about the freedom and slavery of the working consciousness of the sadhaka:
"The weak-willed man is governed by his vital and physical impulsions, his mental being is not dynamic enough to make its will prevail over them. His will is not 'free' because it is not strong enough to be 'free', it is the slave of the forces that act on or in his vital and physical nature.
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"[In the strong-willed person] the will is so far free that it stands above the play of these forces and he determines by his mental idea and resolve what he shall or shall not do.... the Purusha has begun to emancipate itself and decide what it shall accept or shall not accept — the conscious being has begun to impose itself on the forces that act on it." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 473-74)
(vii) A hierarchy of values has to be established in the consciousness of the sadhaka. A clear and unhesitant awareness of this hierarchy will help the sadhaka to make the right choice whenever he is confronted with two or more alternative courses of action. Without such a previously established hierarchy of values governing his decisions, the sadhaka is apt to be confused at every step and face the Hamletian dilemma of "to be or not to be, that is the question."
But what is the standard of reference by whose help the sadhaka will be able to form his hierarchy with the relative values of its different degrees properly fixed?
The criterion is, of course, always the same for all the sadhakas. It may be formulated in this way: Whenever two alternative choices, A and B for example, present themselves to the sadhaka for his possible acceptance or rejection, he should judge the situation dispssionately without any bias positive or negative and determine which of the two alternatives will help him better to advance towards the realisation of his spiritual goal. The same rule applies in the case of other pairs of alternatives such as B and C, C and D,... M and N,... X and Y, etc.
In this way the sadhaka should make up a scale of values with its constituent elements arranged in an ascending order A, B, C, D, E, etc., for example. This is what we have called a 'hierarchy of values' valid for a particular sadhaka. If this hierarchy is judiciously constituted and kept available in the sadhaka' s consciousness at temptation at its proper place and accept or reject it following the universal rule of "Always sacrifice the lower for the sake of the higher, whatever may be the emotional inclination at that moment." Without such a scale of values shining before his eyes, the
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sadhaka' s will-power will stumble before the task of making the right choice and sticking to it in spite of the immediately alluring prospects presented by the other alternative courses of action
(viii) A last advice: Along with the seven generalised practices indicated above, the sadhaka should have some regular training in the building up of the strength of his will-power. Two short citations from the Mother's writings will make the point clear:
"If no will, first of all, to build up a strong will; if one has a strong will, to orient it properly."
"In order to make the will stronger and stronger, you must educate and exercise it, just as one exercises one's muscles by repeated particular usage. What is needed is a regular and systematic exercise and training of the will."
Here ends the eightfold generalised practice the sadhaka has to methodically adopt in order to build up in himself the right attitude conducive to the effective application of his will-power. Now comes the question of how to apply this will whenever the sadhaka is confronted with a problem of choice. This will be the theme of the following Section.
(2) Specific Procedure: Suppose at this very moment a sadhaka is faced with a particular weakness of his nature or a temptation assailing from outside. What should he do to come out victorious in this situation?
By the way, when we speak of a 'temptation', we do not mean by it an ordinary 'unethical' temptation conceived of as such by the conventional norms of a particular society. 'Temptation' has for us a far wider connotation. Any thought, feeling or act not behoving a sincere sadhaka who wants to advance on the spiritual path will be deemed to be a temptation , even if the particular thought, feeling or action is not judged 'unethical' by the society at large or even considered normal and laudable by men of the world. Our sole criterion is 'spiritual' and anything however innocuous, if it does not actively help in the growth of the spirit, is to be judged as a 'temptation' and has to be rejected. As the Mother
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has reminded us:
"In the integral Yoga, the integral life down even to the smallest detail has to be transformed, to be divinised. There is nothing here that is insignificant, nothing that is indifferent. You cannot say, 'When I am meditating, reading philosophy or listening to these conversations I will be in this condition of an opening towards the Light and call for it, but when I go out to walk or see friends I can allow myself to forget all about it.' To persist in this attitude means that you will remain untransformed and never have the true union; always you will be divided..."
(Questions and Answers, M C W, Vol. 3, p. 24)
Let us go back to the point we were discussing. Suppose a particular temptation has come before the sadhaka to test the power of his will: the aspirant is face to face with a weakness of his nature. It is not that he does not know what to do and what not to do. He knows that perfectly well. But for some reason or other he is tempted to do the wrong thing and fails to muster enough of will-power to reject the wrong course of action. What should he do in this situation?
It goes without saying that as a sadhaka he is expected to take the right decision and translate that into action: he has to score victory over his weakness. And for that he must intensify his fighting will and with its help resist and reject the temptation at hand. The procedure to do that effectively consists of a few steps which are indicated below:
1.The very first thing the sadhaka has to do is to establish in his mind and heart an ambience of perfect tranquillity. Any agitation or excitement, fear and trepidation, or the whispering prompting of his self-will will strongly inhibit him from requisitioning sufficient will power which can help him to avoid the wrong track and seek what is right under the circumstances. An absolute calm is therefore the very first necessity.
2.From this background of undisturbed calm the sadhaka has now to throw the searchlight of keen observation into the recesses of his consciousness to detect there all the specific preferences
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and antipathies that might be hiding there: these preferential de-sires and shrinkings are bound to sap and mine the vigour of the will-power. Therefore, at least for the time being, all these preferences and antipathies have to be muted and, if possible, a neutral blank created there so that the will of the sadhaka may be enabled to act without any drag from behind.
3.Next, the sadhaka should steadily hold before his conscious ness the clear outline of his real goal in life. He should possess a definite unhesitant idea of what is expected of him as a sadhaka of the spiritual path and of all that can nullify the realisation of his goal. The more clear and definite is his conception of the goal, and the more committed he is to the realisation of this goal, the more ardent and powerful will be the resistance of his will against all negative urges and allurements.
4.One of the most effective tricks applied by any invading temptation is to create a blinding deception in the sadhaka' s mind and heart by inflating the temptation's worth, importance and suggestion far beyond its actual measure. Thus the temptation begins to loom large before the sadhaka' s consciousness and he loses all sense of perspective making him incapable of judging properly and coming to the right decision.
So, each time he is under some sly attack of a temptation, the sadhaka should step back in his consciousness from the pressing present appearance, place himself in imagination in the background of eternity and infinity, judge from there all the passing vanities life and be totally convinced of the relativity of things however overpowering they may appear to be at the present moment.
This exercise, if properly initiated, will prick the bubble of the threatening temptation and the sadhaka will feel it easy to overcome.
5.Lastly, whenever confronted with the feebleness of will and with the feeling of being incapable of resisting the incoming temptation, the sadhaka should recall the bracing adage: "Always behave as if the Divine is looking at you, for he is indeed always present." He should activate his love for the Divine and try to grow in the living Presence of the Divine Mother. This love and the sense of Presence, if strong and genuine, will immensely fortify;
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his will-power and the conquest over one's weaknesses will almost become a child's play.
Here ends our essay on "Will-power in Sadhana" but the ascent of 'will' does not end here. In this chapter we have mainly dealt with the ways of fortifying our 'rational intelligent will' ; for with its help only the sadhaka can successfully proceed on the difficult path of spiritual sadhana . But beyond this lies the 'psychic will' , the fire of the psychic being; and still beyond is the Knowledge-Will of the Supreme, the Seer-Tapas of the Divine. At the culmination of his prolonged sadhana, the aspirant has to merge his self-will completely in this divine Seer-Will, Kavi-kratu.
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