The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

Meditation and Some Questions

Why am I unable to meditate?

Because you have not learnt it. A sudden fancy seizes you and you say, "Now I will sit down and meditate". But to sit down cross-legged, cross-armed, eyes closed is not doing meditation. You have to learn how to meditate, even as you learn to do mathematics or play on the piano. There are regular courses of meditation given by all teachers in ail ages and countries. There are so many rules and regulations. There are all kinds of instructions, such as, to keep the mind quiet, to be silent and not to think, to gather all your thoughts and concentrate them etc., etc. You have been taught how to sit, stand, walk, eat: you do not remember the method and the discipline, because you did that when you were very young. In the same way if you were taught how to meditate in your childhood, you would not find it difficult to do today. Unfortunately you were not taught. You are not taught things of that kind. You are not taught even how to sleep. You think that to go to bed and lie down anyway is the way to sleep. Not at all. You are to learn to sleep exactly in the same way as you learn how to walk or eat. You do not learn so many things, you are not taught. As you grow in years, slowly, laboriously through unpleasant experiences, through suffering

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and blundering, in the end you come to know of certain fundamental things. And when you are old, and your hairs are grey, you see you are beginning to learn something, when, that is to say, it is too late. Instead of that, if your parents, the people who looked after you took the trouble of teaching you what you have to do, to do it well—to act well, to think well, to feel well, in the correct manner—then you could avoid all the blunders you have been making all your life. You are surprised when you fall ill, when you feel tired and exhausted. For you know nothing. It requires years to learn something, to learn even the most elementary things such as to be clean.

To live as one should, in the right way, is a very difficult art. It requires study, it requires practice. Try simply to keep the body healthy, the mind quiet, and the heart full of good will—these are some of the indispensable elements for the basis of decent living; you will see the thing is not easy.

Is some kind of work necessary for us to do, apart from our study?

That depends upon you, upon your aim. If you wish to do sadhana, you should naturally give at least some time to a work that is not selfish, that is, not done for the sake of yourself. Study is very good, very necessary, even indispensable; precisely because it is just one of the things I referred to a little while ago, which you

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should learn when you are young, it becomes difficult when you are grown up. There may come, of course, an age when you have done the basic studies and when you have the urge to do sadhana. Then you must take up something which is not exclusively personal. You must do something disinterested, not concerned with yourself. If you are concerned with yourself only, you shut yourself within a kind of shell and you are not open to the universal forces. An unselfish movement, an unselfish action, however small, opens the door to something other than your little self. Normally you are imprisoned in your shell and you know of the existence of other similar shells only when you knock against them. But to be aware of the one Force that pervades all, of the mutual dependence of things and beings is quite another matter: it is the indispensable basis for Sadhana.

But cannot one study for the sake of the Divine, to prepare oneself for the divine work?

One can. But that requires quite a different attitude. You have to study in altogether another spirit. First of all, there would be no subject that pleases you, none that displeases you, neither a class that bores you, nor one that amuses you. There would be no difficult lessons nor easy lessons, neither would there be a teacher who is unpleasant nor another who is pleasant. All such likes and dislikes, prejudices and preferences disappear. You are in a condition when you begin to learn from everything

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that you meet with, everything is an occasion for an experience, a knowledge: everything prepares you for the divine work, everything is interesting. If you study in that spirit, it is quite all right.

How is it that so much money is allowed to be wasted here? People entrusted with a work seem to spend lavishly according to their fancy!

Money is not the only thing that is wasted. The Energy, the Consciousness is wasted a thousand times more, infinitely more than money. There is not a second when there is no wastage, sometimes worse things are there. There is a habit, I hope it is unconscious, to take in as much energy, as much consciousness as one is capable of and then use it for one's personal satisfaction. It is a thing happening every minute. If all this energy, all this consciousness that is being ceaselessly poured upon you all were used for the right purpose, that is to say, for the divine work, for preparing the divine work, we would have gone by now far on the road, much farther than where we are at present. But unfortunately everyone, if not consciously, at least instinctively, absorbs as much as possible this divine gift and misuses it for selfish ends.

Who thinks of it?—that this Force is there which is infinitely greater, infinitely more precious than ail money power, this force is there and is being given consciously, constantly, with an endless patience and perseverance

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with a single end in view, that of accomplishing the divine work—I say, who thinks of not wasting it? Who recollects that it is a sacred duty for all to progress, to prepare themselves so that they may understand better and live better? It is because you live by the divine energy and the divine consciousness that you are able to live upon them, spend them for your own self's sake. People are shocked when they see a few thousand rupees wasted, but they do not notice that a whole flood of consciousness and knowledge is being turned aside from its true direction.

If one wants to do a divine work upon earth, one must come there with tons of patience and endurance, one must be able to live in eternity and wait till consciousness awakes in every one, the consciousness of true honesty.

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