The Practice of the Integral Yoga

XVII

THE CONQUEST OF SELF-WILL AND

THE ENTHRONEMENT OF THE DIVINE WILL

One of the principal objectives of the sadhana of the Integral Yoga is the total eradication of self-will from the sadhaka' s consciousness and the establishment there of the Divine's supreme Will to shape all his thoughts and feelings and actions. Self-will is one of the three most stubborn causes of bondage, the other two being desire and egoism. But what is actually meant by 'self-will' in the language of sadhana? We must be clear about it before we can possibly embark upon an attempt at its banishment from our mind and action. Sri Aurobindo has explained the matter in great detail two different places of his Synthesis of Yoga. The following paragraph is an abridged adaptation of what he has said there. This will make explicit to the sadhaka the nature of the problem and the hard but essential task set before him if he would attain the perfection in yoga.

In all yoga, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, there are three essential objects to be attained by the seeker: (1) union or abiding contact with the Divine; (2) liberation of the soul or the self, the spirit; and (3) a certain change of the consciousness, the spiritual change. It is this change, which is absolutely necessary for reaching the other two objects, but it is not at all easy to accomplish it. One may almost say that this spiritual change which yoga demands from human nature and individual character is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts. For our character is largely mechanistic and made up of habits and it clings to them, is disposed to think them the very law of its being, and there is almost invariably a resistance and, more often than not, a strong and stub-born resistance to any change demanded from it. And self-will in the mind is one of the commonest and most prominent causes of this resistance. For self-will is deeply attached to its own pride of ideas, its prejudices, its fixed notions and its ignorant reason. This inveterate clinging to old ideas, to preconceived notions, to mental preferences and partial judgments, to opinions and facile rea-

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Soning comes in the way of the higher truth and closes all the avenues to further illumination.

After all, self-will is nothing but an egoism in the mind which makes it prone to be attached, and that in an attractive and self-justifying way, to the sadhaka' s personal preferences, opinions, judgments and imaginations, to the current repetitions of his habitual mind, to the insistences of his pragmatic mind, and to the limitations of his intellectual mind.

All these attachments are there within the sadhaka waiting to wall in the spirit with imperfect and transitional forms. An attachment is always an attachment and acts as a great impediment to 'the progress in sadhana, irrespective of whether it affects the physical or the vital or the mental nature. And mental attachments must go the way of all other attachments and yield to the impartiality of an equal vision.

The ideal attitude to be adopted by a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga vis-à-vis this stubborn enemy that is 'self-will' has been de-scribed by Sri Aurobindo in great detail at two different places of his Synthesis of Yoga. The following paragraph is an abridged adaptation of what he has said there.

Se lf-will with its attend ant attachment must be entirely excised from the mind. Not only must we give up the ordinary attitude to the world and life to which the unawakened mind clings, but we must not remain bound in any mental construction of our own or in any intellectual thought-system or arrangement of religious dogmas or logical conclusions. We must flee beyond the snare of the thinker, the snare of the the theologian and the church-builder, and the bondage of the Idea. We must always go beyond, and renounce the lesser for the greater. We must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state so as to reach the utmost transcendence of the Di vine and its utmost universality. Nor must we attach ourselves even to the truths we ho ld most securely, for they are but forms and express ions of the Ineffable who refuses to limit himself to any form or express ion. Always we must keep ourselves open to the higher Word from above. We must not hold our selves bound and limited by our present knowledge or forbidden by it to

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proceed to fresh insights nor lay too fierce a grasp on truths even when we are using them to the full, or tyranneously chain them to their present formulations. (Adapted from The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 315, 679)

We have now a clear idea of what self-will is and of how wide is its influence in corrupting almost every facet of human psychology. For the perfection in Yoga this self-will in all its manifestation has to be dethroned from its present privileged position of being the motivating force behind the sadhaka' s thoughts and actions. The command upon the spiritual aspirant at all moments and in all situations can be formulated by a few pithy sentences of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother:

'To will what the Divine wills is the supreme wisdom." (Sri Aurobindo)

"We must see only through the Divine's eyes and act only through the Divine's Will." (The Mother)

"Our will must always be a perfect expression of the Divine's Will." (The Mother)

"Offer your will to the Divine and make it one with his eternal Will." (Sri Aurobindo)

Thus, to eliminate his self-will root and branch and make the Divine's Will the sole governor of his life and the determinant of all his actions is the noble objective every sadhaka of the Integral Yoga has to realise.

But what is this Divine's Will, what its nature? Is it the will of a super-despot, albeit divine, who acts according to his arbitrary whims? Is the Divine a super-Person with infinite Power but somehow separate from the creation or manifestation? How is his Will related to a human being's will, if it is at all related? A last question: Does the Divine's Will function in the same way as a man's will does; that is to say, does the Divine also judge the circumstances, deliberate on pros and cons, and then come to a decision? And after coming to the decision does he activate his dynamic energy to translate this decision into action? And who knows, this is perhaps what is called the Divine's Will! But in that case, is it

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this Will with which we are asked in sadhana to merge our personal will?

The sole answer to all these questions is an emphatic No. But as this book deals with practical aspects of sadhana and not with metaphysical inquiry, we need not spend much rime and space here on this discussion. We content ourselves with quoting here just a single meaningful sentence from the Mother and a few lines from Sri Aurobindo' s writings. And this will suffice for us in the present essay.

"The divine Will is a vision united with a power of realisation." (The Mother)

"The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power.... this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 206-07)

It is this Will that the sadhaka should aspire to know and make sovereign in his life's activities. But it is important to note that this Divine Will has two aspects which, seeming to be contradictory, are actually complementary to each other, and act to fulfil the far strategic aim of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo has termed one of the aspects "Will of the Cosmic Divine" and die other "Will of the Transcendent Divine". The first one expresses the Divine's "immediate Will of the moment", considering the totality of the prevailing circumstances. But at the same rime the other aspect too acts parallelly, with a comprehensive prospective vision of the future. This is the Divine's "Will for the future fulfilment."

While seeking to know the Divine's Will at any given moment, the sadhaka should be cognisant of both these Wills of the Divine and develop a double attitude in his consciousness. Otherwise there will arise terrible confusion in his heart and mind, which may easily derail his action from the right spiritual track.

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It is clear that the knowledge of the first aspect of the Divine's Will will enable the sadhaka to maintain a spirit of equanimity in all situations and circumstances, however adverse they may apparently be. He will acquiesce in joy in all the turns of events without any mood of doubt and revolt and impatience. For such being the 'immediate Will' of the Divine, his eternal Lover, the sadhaka should accept it fully without the slightest reservation.

But he should not stop at that. For, then, all further progress and advancement will come to a halt. Therefore, the sadhaka has to realise at the same time that this 'immediate Will of the moment" is not the Divine's "ultimate Will". The Divine wants that the sadhaka should co-operate in the fulfilment of his "Will for the future", while accepting fully and joyously his "Will for the present." This second knowledge, i.e., the knowledge of the Dh Vine's "Will for the future", will impart to the sadhaka' s consciousness an inextinguishable flame of aspiration, an elan for continual progress and sustained effort for attaining perfect perfection.

Now the question is: How should the sadhaka discover this Divine's Will and know it to be so and not be misled by any impostor alien will? To answer it properly, we have to introduce hen a very important concept which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have designated as the "central will of the being".

This "central will of the being" entirely depends on the Divine Will. It is, in fact, the individualised expression of the Divine's Will. The natural corollary is that the Divine's Will is always active in the deepest core-consciousness of every human being, making his adhara the vehicle of its manifestation.

Thus, at any moment of a sadhaka' s life, before arriving at any decision, if he wants to know the Divine's Will in the matter in question, he should first try to recognise this 'central will' in his 'heart-centre'; because, as we have just now mentioned, the D» vine Will becomes operative in the individual's life through the 'central will'.

But it is not easy for the extrovert superficial consciousness of the sadhaka to discover this 'central will' in its utter purity and genuineness. For there is a long space of separation between the 'central will' dwelling in the psychic being and the working con-

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sciousness of the outer man and this space is peopled with many unhelpful forces which prevent the psychic will from emerging fully to the front of the consciousness.

Otherwise, as the Mother has insisted, it should not be difficult for one to recognise the Voice of the soul or psychic being; for, it does not make a point of hiding itself or playing with the Sadhaka just to make things difficult for him. On the contrary, the ; soul makes great efforts to help him find it and to make itself heard. Then, why is it that normally we cannot recognise its intimation? The Mother has explained the situation in this way:

"Between your soul and your active consciousness there are two characters who are in the habit of making a lot of noise, the mind and the vital. And because they make a lot of noise, while the soul does not, or, rather, makes as little as possible, their noise prevents you from hearing the voice of the soul." (On Thoughts and Aphorisms, M C W, Vol. 10, p. 24)

These 'noises' created by the mind and the vital are, psychologically speaking, nothing but the personal preferences and antipathies of the sadhaka. If these negative factors could be removed and the sadhaka sincerely wanted to know the Divine's Will in order to carry that out—this last condition is absolutely essential—then, sooner or later he would come to know it. As the Mother has said:

"When you hesitate, when you wonder what to do in this or that circumstance, there come the desire, the preference both mental and Hal, that press, insist, affirm and impose themselves, and, with the best reasons in the world, build up a whole case for themselves. And if you are not on the alert, if you don't have a firm discipline, if you don't have the habit of control, they finally convince you that they are right. And as I was saying... they make so much noise that you do not even hear the tiny voice or the tiny, very quiet indication Of the soul which says, 'Don't do it.' " (Ibid., p. 25)

But the Mother assures us: "If you are truly sincere in your will to find and live the truth, then you learn to listen better and

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better, you learn to discriminate more and more, and even if it costs you an effort, even if it causes you pain, you learn to obeys (Ibid., M C W, 10, p. 25)

This is so far as the Mother's elucidation of the problem and its solution is concerned. Sri Aurobindo also has made a detailed analysis of

the situation in page s 893-94 of The Life Divine. The following passage, makes it explicit why it is normally so difficult for a sadhaka to receive the intimations of his 'central will' , the'voice' of his psychic being:

"But (his psychic influence or action does not come up to the surface quite pure or does not remain distinct in its purity; if it did, we would be able to distinguish clearly the soul element in us an4 follow consciously and fully its dictates. An occult mental and vital and subtle-physical action intervenes, mixes with it, tries to use it and rum it to its own profit, dwarfs its divinity, distorts or diminishes its self-expression, even causes it to deviate and stumble or stains it with the impurity, smallness and error of mind and life and body.

"After it reaches the surface, thus alloyed and diminished, it is taken hold of by the surface nature in an obscure reception and ignorant formation, and there is or can be by this cause a still further deviation and mixture.

"A twist is given, a wrong direction is imparted, a wrong application, a wrong formation, an erroneous result of what is in itself pure stuff and action of our spiritual being; a formation of consciousness is accordingly made which is a mixture of the psyj| chic influence and its intimations jumbled with mental ideas and opinions, vital desires and urges, habitual physical tendencies.", (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp. 893-94. Paragraphing ours.)

We may conclude from the long discussion that has gone before that there is in the world of manifestation only one Will, the Will of the Divine. "There is nothing separate or independent; it is a single force, a single consciousness, a single will which movesj in the world with innumerable ways of being." (The Mother) And

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what is significant, this Divine Will operative always and everywhere is also active in every individual human being in his 'central will' which resides in his central being. But this Will cannot reach the outer consciousness in its pure form; it becomes deformed in many ways and then acts in many different forms. About this polychromous chameleon manifestation of ordinary personal will, Sri Aurobindo has this to say:

"The will itself takes different shapes, [i] the will of the intelligence, [ii] the wishes of the emotional mind, [iii] the desires of the passion and the vital being, [iv] the impulsions and blind or half-blind compulsions of the nervous and the subconscient nature. And all these make by no means a harmony, but at best a precarious concord among discords. The will of the mind and life is a stumbling about in search of right force, right Tapas..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 762)

In sadhana we are called upon to reject all these spurious forms of personal will and give expression, always and in all situations, to the "right Tapas", me Divine Will which is besides our own will in the deepest and highest sense. For, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out,

"The divine Will is not an alien Power or Presence; it is intimate to us and we ourselves are part of it: for it is our own highest Self that possesses and supports it. Only, it is not our conscious mental will; it rejects often enough what our conscious will accepts and accepts what our conscious will rejects. For while this secret One knows all and every whole and each detail, our surface mind knows only a Utile part of things." (Ibid., p. 90)

The sadhaka has to be cautious about another point; otherwise he would not be able to keep the right attitude in his sadhana; instead, he will fall into many pitfalls, quite many of them being alpably grievous. The point is: Why should the sadhaka renounce his self-will and seek to know the Divine Will in order to fulfil it? Is it for some personal interest, be that interest high and noble and

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glorious or even garbed in some 'spiritual' guise?

No, Surely not; for if such is the behind-the-screen motive of the sadhaka in his quest after the Divine Will, he can be sure that the Divine's Will will not normally manifest in his consciousness. All that the sadhaka will' do then in the name of doing the Will of the Divine will be nothing else in reality but the sole satisfaction of the camouflaged appetites of his own ego. Let us listen to what the Mother has said in this regard:

"So long as there will be any personal aspiration, or a personal desire or preference, an egoistic will, this will always create a mixture and it will no longer be an exact expression of the divine Will. The only thing that should count is the Divine, His Will, His manifestation, and His expression in us and through us."

Thus, be it noted, the sadhaka should aspire to know and obey the Divine Will, simply because it is the Will of the Divine and for no other extraneous reason. He should on no account allow the slightest intrusion of any of his separate personal reasons to sneak in. And in the measure he will be able to do this, it will be easier for him to know the Divine's Will. The following guidelines given by the Mother should be his Mantra at all times:

"To exist only for the Divine. To exist only by the Divine. To exist only in the service! of the Divine. To exist only by becoming the Divine. All else is falsehood which must vanish."

"To exist only by becoming the Divine": this is, of course, the ultimate attainment, but this is surely far beyond the capability of an ordinary sadhaka. Instead, what he can always aspire after and try for in his sadhana is "to exist only for the Divine and in the' service of the Divine." But for that he has to renounce his self-will and turn his consciousness into the neutral purity of a blank slate in which the Divine can write whatever He wills without encountering any alien intrusion.

But how to arrive at this state of total absence of self-will? Also, is this annulment of self-will tantamount to the annulment

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of will-power itself? Sadly, many sadhakas, beginning at where they are now, get into this confusion. They cannot make a distinction between "offering one's will to the Divine and "abdication of one's will itself ". To obviate the confusion, let us discuss the point a little more elaborately.

What the sadhaka has to renounce at the initial stage of his sadhana — and this stage covers a rather long period of time — is the raja sic elan for action and the obscure impulsions of vital desires, but surely not the strength of his will-power. For 'will' is something very very essential for the progress in sadhana. Self-will has, of course, to be eliminated but not the 'will' as will. For will is what is indicated by the following poise of mind:

"I shall do and do it I must against all odds, whatever I have honestly understood to be true and judged as my duty at this moment, judged not according to my fancy or impulsive desire but by the sincere and impartial application of my enlightened power of discrimination, viveka."

It will not do if the sadhaka gives up this resolute 'will' pre-maturely. For, in that case, it is not self-will which will cease to function; rather, a tamasic inertia and flabbiness of character will come to replace the raja sic vehemence. And surely that will not be a very laudable change. For the net result will be that the empty ground of the sadhaka 's consciousness will be filled up by all sorts of unhealthy wills and urges rushing in from here, there, and everywhere. And the unwary sadhaka will be eager to carry these out in action under the wrong impression that these impulses have come from the Divine himself. Moreover, the mood of inertia parading itself as a state of "surrender" to the Divine will undermine in the sadhaka all the power of his resistance and completely dull the light of his discrimination.

Therefore the sadhaka has to work on two fronts at the same $me: (i) to give no quarter to his self-will and throw out as sincerely as possible and as wholly as practicable all one's personal preferences, opinions and judgments; and at the same time (ii) to keep up in oneself an ardent and active will-power whose sole aspiration and effort will to act as an obedient instrument of the Divine' s Will.

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This is what is called the "offering of the will" and the sadhaka has to start his sadhana with this "offering". He has to pray to the Divine in some such way as follows:

"O Divine, I do not know exactly what I should do now; I have no idea of what your Will is at this moment of my life. Yet, it is a fact that I sincerely want to fulfil your Will and your Will alone. I have kept my! will-power ever-awake and ever-ready to execute your Will whatever form that may take. Guide my will along the right path. Make my will aligned With your own, even without my knowing it. So long as I do not come to realise directly and intimately what your Will is, I shall see to it that it be not engaged in satisfying my desires and other ego-movements. Instead, I shall always apply it to the execution of what I sincerely consider to be right according to the best light available to me at this moment. I make it plastic to your touch and wait in expectant silence for your intervention. My ādhāra is ready for the command; the only thing I lack is right knowledge. Please fill up this lacuna and guide me even in my ignorance according to your Knowledge and Will so that in future I can 'see' retrospectively how you guided me all the time without my beingaware of your Guidance."

This is the attitude into which the sadhaka has to grow, and he has to activate it in ceaseless prayer before any and every one of his actions. And if the sadhaka persists in this attitude with an undimmed zeal, slowly but surely all the veils will fall off from before his eyes and his consciousness will gain in progressive trans parency. As a result he will come to recognise the Divine's WM with greater and greater clarity and sureness of perception.

This sadhana of the recognition of the Divine Will Will proceed from stage to stage until the sadhaka' s will is completely merged with the Divine's Will. A few of the significant ascending stages Sri Aurobindo has described in this way:

"... even before [the] highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as

(i) an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force, but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards.

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(ii) Or the impulse to action may come... 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.

(iii) The divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command

(iv) 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." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 207. Paragraphing ours.)

And at last will come the last stage of spiritual fulfilment when the sadhaka'^Arrives at a consciousness in which one feels the Force or Presence acting within and moving or governing all the actions and the personal will is entirely surrendered or identified with that greater Truth-Will..." (The Life Divine, p. 903) "The action of the person is [then] the action of the Ishwara in the person, of the One in the many, and there can be no reason for a separative assertion of self-will..." (Ibid., p. 1006)

Thus comes the culmination in the long sadhana for the conquest of self-will and the enthronement of the Divine Will. But the sadhana itself, even in its initial stages, if practised with a comprehensive thoroughness, is full of a charm of its own. It is impossible to describe the peace and delight that fills the life of a sadhaka who makes sincere effort to abdicate his self-will in all its ramifications and act only according to his "central will" which, as we have mentioned earlier, will be a constant expression of the Divine Will. Here are some pertinent words of the Mother:

"...I may tell you from my personal experience that there is nothing in the world more interesting. If you begin making this effort you will find that.... Everything becomes so interesting, the least little thing, the least casual meeting, the least word exchanged, ... everything is full of life and interest." (Questions and Answers 1950-51, M C W, Vo l .4, pp. 88 - 89)

Such is the spiritual recompense for all sincere sadhana.

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