The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

Organise your Life

Moral notions have nothing to do with the growth of the inner being. I regret to say it, but the two are ill-assorted mates and go opposite ways. You may fall totally sick by doing a very unselfish act, on the other hand you may continue to be hale and hearty while doing the most egoistic acts.

There is a great difference between a moral consciousness and a consciousness that is the expression of truth. I tell you again it is infinitely more difficult to have a. consciousness expressing the truth than to have a moral consciousness. For any blockhead who knows social rules and follows them has a moral consciousness, but to have a consciousness of the truth, one must not be a blockhead, that is the first condition.

All the misadventures of life come from a lack of organisation of life. You live from moment to moment, take things as they arrive, somehow or other. Or, you try a mental organisation which does not at all agree with the truth and is therefore thwarted at each step. But if life is organised according to a higher principle, without the gropings that usually attend it, that is to say, following every minute a precise indication with regard to what is to be done and how it is to be done, then things can be arranged without mishaps.

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Generally speaking, it is better to choose one's work carefully, take up only as much as one is able to do and do that well; often you take up too much and in that too much there are a good amount of useless things which can be cut out or diminished considerably without affecting the result. I do not make this an absolute general rule. I am stating only an experience of mine. If you are all attention to the inner indication and you refuse to be pushed about by the waves coming from outside—movements of other people's will, routine circumstances or adverse forces that do not want the things to be done—I say, instead of being driven hither and thither, if you receive the clear precise inner sign and follow it without evading or hesitating, with a strictness even that may be displeasing to others—so much the worse for the others—in that case you find that you do become in some sort master of circumstances, they organise themselves favourably and you are able to do more work in less time.

There is a way of diminishing the time taken for a work and that is by increasing your concentration. There are people incapable of concentration; it tires them. But it is like carrying a weight; you can get used to it. So, first you have to master this power of concentration; for that you have to calm your mind and in that calmness, concentrate, go on concentrating on the point that you have to deal with, on the work that is to be done, whatever it is. The concentration comes with a kind of driving force, quiet but extremely powerful; and you

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go forward without hesitation. Then you can do in a quarter of an hour what might normally take full one hour. That saves you a good deal of time. You can, instead of continually passing from one work to another, stretch yourself for a while and have complete rest. The rest gives you relaxation to all the limbs that were under tension while you were working, that is to say, brings new strength to them and you can start again another spell of concentration.

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