In the Mother's Light

YOGIC ACTION*

THERE are four attitudes possible towards action in spiritual life, and all of them have important bearings on life. The first is an attitude of rejection; the second, of qualified rejection; the third of ethical acceptance, and the fourth, of divine utilization. These are the fundamental attitudes, which not only colour spiritual life in their distinctive ways, but also condition its course and consummation.

The first attitude is of sheer rejection of all action, so far as that is practicable in life. It pertains to the exclusive way of abstractive knowledge or love, which proceeds by a categoric renunciation of all secular relations, obligations and values. It looks down upon action as distracting and impeding, and tolerates only that much of it as is indispensable to the maintenance of the body. This is the way of extreme asceticism advocated and preached by some of the schools of Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism. It exerts a positively discouraging and withering effect on life in the world.

The second attitude of qualified rejection is of a much wider applicability. The Vedanta as interpreted by Shankara, the catholic forms of Mahayana Buddhism, Jainism and Christianity accept action as a preliminary means of purification. Certain prescribed actions, calculated to calm the mind of the neophyte and help the growth of disinterestedness and concentration, are enjoined in the beginning and continued, as a social utility or as an example to others, even through the later stages of progress. But the final aim is a release from all action into an extra-cosmic, immobile peace or silence.

The third attitude is that of ethical acceptance, in which action is not rejected, but accepted, in the beginning as a means of purification and preparation, and later as a medium of ethico-spiritual self-expression. Through it one pours out into the;

* Based on Prayers and Meditations of the Mother,

Page 280

world something of the moral purity, freedom, power, love and compassion which grow in the being as a result of accumulating spiritual realizations. This is a derivative growth or a reflex of the spiritual progress, and not a direct dynamization of the powers of the Spirit. Most spiritual seekers seem to be quite satisfied with it. An authentic and abiding experience of the Absolute within and a constant outflowing of love and light and peace and bliss from the instrumental being seems to be considered a summit attainment, even by most of the greatest of mystics. There may be, in this state, an intermittent or steady perception of a universal or transcendental Will behind the shifting waves of one's individual nature, but usually it is not accompanied by any clear knowledge of the why and the how of its working. A veil still remains, however thinned, between the shining harvest reaped within and its diminished transmission without : the higher values are rendered into cleansed lower terms. The supreme knowledge lacks which could dissipate the veil and integrate the inner and the outer, and the supreme power which could transform the instrumental being into a flawless vehicle of the Vast.

A seeker of the transcendent Light does not bother whether or not Life has an inherent right to possess and be possessed by that Light and express it in its own, but divinely transmuted, terms. He does not recognize any claim of life upon himself, but is content if it makes itself transparent enough to reflect something of the glow and sublimity of the Spirit.

This attitude has a great humanitarian value, and is productive of immense cultural progress—religious, ethical, aesthetic, literary, etc. The Maurya and Gupta periods of Indian culture were a material flowering of this attitude. Their abounding vitality and creative gusto were directly derived from the pre- ceding burst of spiritual achievements which gave them a religio-ethical stamp. But however great and splendid the action welling out of this attitude, however beneficial and elevating to human society, it is not the direct action of God in man, nor the authentic, immediate, unhindered fulfilment of His Will upon earth.

Page 281

The fourth attitude is one of divine utilization of all action. Here action is not accepted on sufferance, nor are its natural defects and drawbacks looked on with a high indifference, but all action is welcomed and embraced, provided it is not prejudicial to one's spiritual progress, first as a potent, indispensable means of self-surrender and liberation, and next as a transformed medium for the manifestation of the Divine and the fulfilment of His Will. This attitude is hardly met with among spiritual seekers of the traditional paths, because it is based upon a comprehensiveness of vision and an integrality of aspiration which have been almost lost to the post-Upanishadic spiritual culture of India. The Nihilism of the Buddhists and the Illusionism of the school of Shankara split the ancient amplitude and harmony and narrowed down the spiritual urge to a few trenchant simplicities. The Vedic and the Upanishadic mystics did not divide life into the spiritual and the secular, but viewed it whole, and endeavoured to render it, in its entirety, a manifesting instrument of the supreme Light. Nothing was repressed or renounced, but all was illumined and transmute to serve the Cosmic Will.

This Cosmic Will or the self-fulfilling Will of the Eternal operating in Time and Space, is the teleological secret and source of all action, collective and individual. To know this Will by inner identity and fulfil it through our integral being, perfectly attuned to its working, is the aim of Yogic action; and we shall presently see how the Mother throws a flood of light upon the complexity of its nature, process and utility.

I make no apology to reproduce in full the Mother's Prayer of the 28th November, 1912 :

"The outer life, the activity of each day and each moment, is it not the indispensable complement of our hours of meditation and contemplation ? And is not the proportion of time given to each the exact image of the proportion which exists between the amount of effort to be made for the preparation and the realisation ? For, meditation, contemplation. Union is the result obtained—the flower that blooms; the daily activity is the anvil on which all

Page 282

the elements must pass and re-pass in order to be purified, refined, made supple and ripe/or the illumination which contemplation gives to them. All these elements must be thus passed one after the other through the crucible before outer activity becomes needless for the integral development. Then is this activity turned into the means to manifest Thee so as to awaken the other centres of consciousness to the same dual work of the forge and the illumination. Therefore are pride and satisfaction with oneself the worst of all obstacles. Very modestly we must take advantage of all the minute opportunities offered to knead and purify some of the innumerable elements, to make them supple, to make them impersonal, to teach them forgetfulness of self and abnegation and devotion and kindness and gentleness; and when all these modes of being have become habitual to them, then are they ready to participate in the Contemplation, and to identify themselves with Thee in the supreme Concentration. That is why it seems to me that the work must be long and slow even for the best, and that striking conversions cannot be integral. They change the orientation of the being, they put it definitely on the straight path; but truly to attain the goal, none can escape the need of innumerable experiences of every kind and every instant.

O Supreme Master, who shinest in my being and each thing, let Thy Light be manifest and the reign of Thy Peace come for all.”

Three momentous truths of far-reaching consequence emerge from this Prayer which contains the whole gospel of Yogic action, (1) Contemplation, supreme Concentration or Union —the Mother uses these terms almost as synonyms—is not only the meeting of the liberated part of our being, our soul, but of our whole being—soul and nature—with the supreme Reality. (2) Action of every day and of every instant is indispensable for the integral development of our being and the realization of the integral union, which is not possible without the long, chequered discipline of consecrated action. (3) Action continues even after the integral development, but only to manifest the Divine and to awaken other centres of consciousness, i,e. other individuals, to the same "dual work of the forge and

Page 283

the illumination.”

Let us elaborate and try to elucidate these truths, one after another, in order to make them definite and clear to our aspiring intelligence.

1) Union is commonly understood to be an ecstatic identification of the most spiritually developed part of our conscious- ness with the Divine. It is usually effected by an act of abstractive thought, the most spiritualized part of our consciousness withdrawing from the movements of Nature (trance) and plunging in the infinity of the Spirit. But this means the sundering of a part from the whole. The Mother does not regard it as an integral union. According to her, union is a fusion and identification of the whole consciousness of man—physical, vital, mental and spiritual—with the Supreme, who is at once the All and the Beyond-All. In this union, trance is not indispensable; in fact, it is ultimately dispensed with, the whole consciousness enjoying an abysmal silence in the midst of the most stupendous action. Acting, thinking, feeling, sleeping—in all states of being and all modes of its operation—one abides in a perfect union and identification with the Divine. As the Divine has not to abrogate or annul his waking self to realize His transcendent immobility, or forfeit His luminous silence and stillness to engage in world-action, so the individual who has realized an integral union with Him, has not to labour under any such disabling dichotomy and oscillate between peaceful passivity and agitated activity. An integral union denotes a union in all the four states of our being at one and the same time— Jagrat (waking state), Swapna (dream state), Sushupti (massed sleep-state) and Turiya (transcendent state). It is to become absolutely one with the Absolute, but not by self-annihilation or tranced merger. If we refer to the state of the detached Purusha, witnessing the works of Nature but not participating in them, as described in the Gita, we shall more easily under- stand how the individual consciousness, widened beyond all ego-moulds and revelling in the infinity of the Eternal, who is at once in Time and beyond Time, can see all the movements of its nature initiated, guided and consummated by the Divine,

Page 284

in whom it now permanently lives, moves and has its being.

2) But, paradoxical though it may seem, the integral union cannot be realized without Yogic action. We must take special note of this truth, lest in the impatient fervour of our devotion, or the vertiginous flight of our Godward thought, we let our- selves drift away from action and seal for ever the highest and widest fulfilment of our terrestrial destiny. Action is indispensable in this Yoga of integral union. The Mother calls it preparation or the work of the forge. It is only through action that each part of our being, each fibre of our subjective and objective personality, can be purified, refined, made supple, unegoistic, self-abnegating and impersonal. There is a nuclear formation of the ego in each element of our being, which has to be broken up, and the elements have to be released into a dynamic impersonality. But if we eschew action, we shall find ourselves eschewing the essential preparation; and the myriad elements of our nature, deprived of their natural play and process of purification and development, will either lie supinely dormant or chafe in resentful repression—they can never be transformed and divinely dynamic.

It was the renunciation of action under the fateful spell of Buddhism and illusionistic Vedantism that atrophied the veins and arteries of the Indian society and caused its eventual decay and subjection to foreign domination. A religion or spirituality that disdains life and discourages its natural growth and colourful self-expression, discounts, in effect, the Will of God in creation and is doomed to wither out of existence. It may have its fulfilment in some timeless Otherwhere, but none here, in the eternal march of Time.

The great gift of the West to the culture of modern humanity is the insistent sense of the significance of Life and its irresistible purpose in the material world. But this purpose cannot be read on the surface of its ceaseless flux; it is hidden in its depths and can be known only by the light of the Spirit and fulfilled only by its all-achieving Power. Science skims the surface of life and fails to fathom its depths and discover its goal, How human life can be explored, expanded, purified and

Page 285

transfigured by Yoga and, married to the supreme Light, become its blissful manifesting medium upon earth, is what the Mother teaches in the present Prayer. The union with the supreme Reality, which will illumine and transform life and make it divinely creative, cannot be achieved, the Mother insists, without "action of every kind and of every instant”. This teaching coincides with the Gita's gospel of work except for the enthralling glimpse it affords of the glory of the final achievement—the divinization of the whole human nature and the revelation of Sachchidananda through it. By action is it to be freed. The actions performed for the sake of oneself, for the satisfaction of one's egoistic desires and for personal profit, hem in and heave the consciousness with their reactions and results, and emphasize the separateness of the individual from the universal. It is only when actions are stripped of desires and turned Godwards, that they become a powerful liberating force and a sure means of progressive self-transcendence. Each action, offered to the Infinite and the Eternal, is a step forward towards It and the unravelling of one of the million knots that attach man to ignorance and death. Rejection of action, therefore, is a willful postponement of the solution of the central problem of life, and cannot effect the release of the embodied being of man from Nature's yoke, however high his detached soul may soar in its unclamped freedom. That which binds must unbind, that which veils must be the agent of the supreme unveiling. "Action cleaves not to man", says one of the Upanishads, but it must be an action scrupulously performed in the spirit of sacrifice, as the Gita definitely lays down. "The daily activity is the anvil on which all the elements must pass and re-pass in order to be purified refined, made supple and ripe for the illumination which contemplation gives to them. All these elements must be thus passed one after the other through the crucible (of action)." These words imply not only a consecration and Godward orientation of all actions, but their utilization in the transformation of the numberless elements of our nature which have a right, as much as the naked soul, to the bliss of the divine union. It is only in the

Page 286

course of action that one meets with opposition, unmerited calumny, deceit and dishonesty on the part of those with. whom. one deals, or praise and flattery and generous rewards, and one can watch one's various reactions to these outer touches —anger and lust and greed and vanity and resentment and envy and egoistic elation and gratification—and offer them to the divine Force for the transformation of their perverted energies and their conversion into their spiritual counter- parts. How else can the weak and obscure life of homo sapiens change into an epiphany of Light and Force, once the possibility of such a radical change is admitted ? Renunciation of work spells a betrayal of God's intention in the world and a turning of one's back upon the highest perfection of one's terrestrial existence.

3) The third truth the Mother brings out in the Prayer is the dual nature of Yogic action—its nature as a means of purification and preparation for divine union, and as a means of manifestation of the divine splendours. When all the elements of one's nature have been radically cured and converted by a long discipline of consecrated action, then one stands independent of all action, it ceases to be indispensable; but still it goes on, even as life goes on, as the world goes on, as a vehicle of divine revelation and a means of awakening other human beings to the great "dual work of the forge and the illumination.” The liberated soul in a liberated, luminous nature—this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo means by the term "Jivanmukta"—works on in the world in an immortalized divine body or in several divine bodies in succession, if that be God's Will, securely stationed in the Divine and moved by His Force alone.

It is a long, a very long and laborious discipline, this of Yogic action, demanding constant vigilance and an integral, ungrudging surrender to the divine Force, and a sudden, "striking conversion cannot be integral.” In order to reach the goal which is nothing short of a divinization of the whole being in all its states of consciousness and modes of operation, "none can escape the need of innumerable experiences of every kind

Page 287

and every instant.” But the goal, the great glorious goal has magnetized the soul of humanity, and whatever the difficulties of the path, whatever the resistance in the nature and the buffet and drag of tradition, humanity cannot rest till it has been attained.

II

The formula of Yogic action is twofold : action for Yoga and action in Yoga. The essential object of Yogic action is, therefore. Yoga or union. Most of the schools of dynamic Yoga in the world—and they are not many—occupy themselves only with the first formula and its realization—action for Yoga. They explore some of the possibilities of disinterested and consecrated action for a speedy attainment of union with the object of their seeking, whoever and whatever that may be. Once that is done, once the central consciousness has discovered and learned to live in the infinite Reality or the Eternal Being, the object of Yoga is thought to have been achieved, and action is then relegated to a very subordinate position. It reflects, indifferently, sometimes the ethical being, sometimes the liberated soul, sometimes even the simmering or settled turbidity of the subconscient, and seldom, if at all, the undeflected Will of the Supreme. Even if clarity and rhythm are achieved in the outer nature, they are maintained at a great cost of unflagging vigilance and circumspection, and one is never as free and self-possessed in action as in inaction. To overcome this drawback, the second formula has to be lived to the utmost possible perfection—action in Yoga. The Union attained at the centre has to be extended to the most physical peripheries of the being and plunged into the unlit profundities of the subconscient, so that the will of God may make itself easily felt and powerfully and perfectly expressed in life.

The Will of God, the direct, unimpeded, undiminished, undistorted will of God is the fount and fulcrum of all authentic Yogic action. It may reveal itself in various ways :—

1) as an intermittent drive strongly or faintly felt and

Page 288

Working itself out in the nature of the Yogi with the why and the how of its action rather obscure,

2) as a phosphorescent impulsion with a modicum of knowledge of the why and the how, but little of the result;

3) as a luminous, fully conscious direction lighting up the whole process and result of the action.

These ways sometimes alternate and sometimes combine and make up the complex working of the divine Will in the Yogin till the channel has been completely cleared and tempered for its direct, uninterrupted self-fulfilment.

The self-expression of the supreme Will, which is the sole end of Yogic action, depends upon a variety of factors which a Karmayogi has to tackle with an intent, receptive flexibility and a subtle, discerning tact. It depends not only upon the completeness and constancy of his identification with the supreme Consciousness, but also—and probably more—upon the state of his normal active consciousness and the fitness or unfit- ness of the dynamic parts of his nature. If there are twists and hurdles in his nature and his normal consciousness is not immune to the inroads of the forces of Ignorance, the Will cannot act in its purity and undiluted potency. An immixture takes place, and though the action may be felt as inspired or impelled from within or above, it does not carry on it the hall- mark of the divine Will.

How to incarnate the divine Will and let it express itself freely and effectively in life ? This is the central problem of a dynamic Yoga, and the Mother gives us an inestimable guidance in it.

"In my view the ideal state is that in which, constantly conscious with Thy Consciousness, we know at every moment, spontaneously, without any necessity of reflection, exactly what we should do to express in the best way Thy law. I know this state because I have been in it at certain moments, but very often the knowledge of the "how” is veiled by a mist of ignorance and we have to appeal to reflection which is not always a good councellor, not to speak of all that we do every moment, without having time

Page 289

for reflection, being at the mercy of the inspiration of the moment. In what measure is it in conformity with or contrary to Thy law? All depends on the state of the subconscient, on what is active in it at the moment. Once the act is accomplished, if it has any importance, if we can look at it, analyse it, understand it, it serves as a lesson, enables us to be aware of the motive force which has made us act, and so of something of that subconscient which still governs us and has to be mastered.

"It is impossible that in every terrestrial action there should not be a good and a bad side. Even the actions which best express the most divine law of Love contain in them something of the disorder and darkness inherent in the world as it is at present.

"Some men, those who are called pessimists, perceive almost solely the dark side of everything. The optimists, on the contrary, see only the side of beauty and harmony. And if it is ridiculous and ignorant to be an involuntary optimist, is it not a happy conquest to be made to become a voluntary optimist? In the eyes of the pessimists, whatever one does will be always bad, ignorant or egoistic; how could one satisfy them? It is an impossible enterprise.

"There is only one resource-—it is to unite ourselves as perfectly as we can with the highest and purest light we can conceive of., to identify our consciousness as completely as possible with the absolute Consciousness, to strive to receive all inspiration from it alone, in order to facilitate as best we can its manifestation upon the earth, and, confident of its power, consider the events with serenity. Since everything is necessarily mixed in the present manifestation, it is wisest to do our best, striving towards a higher and higher light, and to resign ourselves to the fact that absolute perfection is for the moment unrealizable.

"Still with what an ardour should we not always aspire towards this inaccessible perfection.”¹

The implications of the Mother's teaching in this Prayer favour our initial postulate of the twofold nature of Yogic action. The dual formula corresponds, we can say with more

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, March 23, 1914.

Page 290

or less precision, to the double movement of the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo—the movement of ascent and the movement of descent. The first movement is a movement of spontaneous self-offering through action, as well as through love and knowledge. Yoga or union with the supreme Consciousness is the goal towards which the most developed and aspiring part of our consciousness shoots with a greater and greater intensity. Each action is undertaken and accomplished in the spirit of an offering, a sacrifice, which brings about a releasing reversal of the desire-ridden, egoistic poise of the being and its entry into a super-personal wideness. Nothing is done for the satisfaction and aggrandizement of the ego, but all for the love and worship of the One with whom a conscious and constant union is consumingly sought for. This sincere and unremitting self- giving through action works as a great purifying force, and with the increase of purity and elimination of desires and attachments, there is felt more and more a natural, irresistible tendency towards a liberating self-transcendence and approximation to the Eternal and the Infinite. This experience of a progressive self-transcendence is usually accompanied, in the dynamic Yoga which the Mother has in view, by an increasing perception of a serene, subtly impelling Will, and the tormenting goad of egoistic desires is replaced, by slow or swift stages, as the case may be, by its developing direction.

The movement of ascent—the inner plunge and the subsequent climb—admits of many possibilities of descent. Some- times the two movements alternate and enrich each other— a downpour from above bathes the climber and refreshes and invigorates him on his upward way, just as an ascent induces a delivering descent. But this is not, according to the Mother, a very high, let alone the ideal state. In it the divine Will can manifest itself but intermittently and-with a modified force.

For a glimpse of the ideal state, as the Mother envisages it here, and as many of her later experiences fully illustrate, and the other two inferior states from which a God-seeker may also act sometimes, let us draw a little closer to the Prayer.

Page 291

The ideal state is that in which the consciousness of the Yogi is united with the absolute consciousness of the Divine. It is a state in which "we know at every moment, spontaneously, without any necessity of rejection, exactly what we should do to express in the best way Thy law. The divine Will is known luminously, integrally and unerringly, and no necessity is felt for resorting to reflection. "At the moment when the being becomes aware of Thy Presence and identifies itself with Thy Consciousness, it is conscious in everything and everywhere.” But the duration of this supreme consciousness is fugitive. Why ? It can be explained by the "complexity of the elements of the being, by their inequality in the illumination and by the fact that they enter successively into activity.” Before we attempt any elaboration, it would be advisable, because helpful, to make ourselves clear as to what the Mother means by "Thy Consciousness". The absolute divine Consciousness of which the Mother speaks is not the supracosmic, incommunicable Consciousness which is the ultimate goal of some traditional Yogas, but the supreme, integral divine Consciousness, which is everywhere and everything in the universe as well as beyond it. No dynamic Yoga can proceed on the conception of the incommunicable, relationless Transcendent as the only goal; for, in the relationless Absolute there is no stirring of the Will to self-creation and self-expression. What the Mother means by the Absolute Consciousness is the all-comprehending Consciousness of the Supreme Being, the One without a second, the supreme Purusha who is beyond even the Unmanifest, as the Upanishad describes Him with a disarming definiteness. In Him is the omnipotent Will to eternal self-multiplication and self-manifestation as well as the timeless silence of the absolute immutability. To be identified with Him, integrally, that is to say, physically, vitally, mentally and spiritually, is the sole condition of ex- pressing His Will or rather letting it express itself in the material world. It is to become "a pure crystal without stain which allows Thy divine ray to pass without obscuring, colouring or deforming it.”

How to realize this identification with the Supreme Purusha ?

Page 292

The Mother gives a very concentrated idea of it in the Prayer of the 27th May, 1914 :-

"In each of the domains of the being, we must awaken the consciousness to the perfect Existence, Knowledge and Beatitude. These three worlds or modes of the Divine are found in the physical reality as well as in the regions of Force and Light and those of impersonality, infinitude and eternity. When we enter fully conscious into the higher regions, it is easy, almost inevitable, to live this Existence, this Light and this Beatitude. But what is very important, as also very difficult, is to awaken the being to this triple divine consciousness on the most material levels. This is the first point. Then we must find out the centre of all the divine worlds (probably in the intermediate world), from where we can unite the consciousness of these divine worlds, synthesize them and act simultaneously and in full knowledge in all the domains”

Was it the unimaginable difficulty of this integral union and divine manifestation that led the spiritual seekers to discover a short cut and turn vertiginously to the static Impersonal ? Or was it that this comprehensive ideal had been lost to the contracting consciousness of humanity and that an intensive churning of the material levels had become an imperative need of the evolutionary Nature ? But the Mother would have us shun the easy paths and "aspire towards this inaccessible perfection” , short of which nothing can satisfy our deepest aspiration.

This integral union in the waking, active consciousness of man is usually and unavoidably fugitive, in as much as "everything is necessarily mixed in the present manifestation” and disorder and darkness are "inherent in the world as it is at present.” The absolute perfection of the individual depends upon the perfection of the collectivity of which he is an inseparable part, and the perfection of the collectivity is the great end which the divine Force has been working out through the evolutionary process of Nature and revolutionary Yoga.

The first cause of the fugitiveness of this union is, as the Mother explains it, the complexity of the elements of our multi-

Page 293

dimensional being. There are elements within elements, world within world, jagatyām jagat, interwoven and interacting, each of which has to be sedulously and patiently weaned from the disorder and darkness of Ignorance and brought into perfect accord with the supreme Consciousness and its Will, for, each, in its essence, is derived from that Consciousness and is a note indispensable to the final diapason in creation.

"So long as one element of the being, one movement of thought is still subjected to outside influences, that is to say, not solely under Thine, it cannot be said that the true union is realized; there is still the horrible mixture without order and light; for that element, that movement is a world, a world of disorder and darkness, as is the entire earth in the material world, as is the material world in the entire universe.”¹

The second cause is their inequality in the illumination, as the Mother puts it. Some elements may have been purified and transmuted enough to enter into the Unitive Life, but others may be still lingering in the twilight, slackers and stragglers of the rear-guard, fighting shy of the total conversion. This in- equality in the very constituents of the being retard the fullness and permanence of the Union.

The third cause is that these elements enter successively and not simultaneously into the integrating and sublimating action of the Yoga. In the wise dispensation of Providence the spiritual life, as indeed all life, is so arranged that no element of it is hustled into a premature conversion, but each is given its proper time and opportunity to grow and evolve into the supreme identification. Today it is one part of the being or one group of elements seeking illumination and submitting to its transforming rhythm, and tomorrow it is another, which entails a long preparation for the final resolution of all their discords and disparities into the conquering harmony of the progressive Union. A simultaneous utilization of all the elements in perfect concordance is possible only when the whole human

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, December 2, 1912,

Page 294

consciousness rests in the supreme Consciousness and the whole human nature is possessed and moved by it.

We have seen what is the ideal state of integral Union in which the divine Will expresses itself in its native purity and omnipotence. There are two other states from which the Yogin has to act at the immature stages of his sadhana. The first state, as the Mother indicates it, is that in which the knowledge of the how is veiled by a mist of ignorance, and one has perforce to appeal to reflection. But reflection is not always a good counsellor, for, it bases its operations on the crystallized experiences of the mind and the prima facie evidences of the senses, on the one hand, and, on the other, on inference and imagination. The data of the senses being, more often than not, misleading and confusing, and imagination not always a very reliable truth-finder, reflection labours under certain inherent disabilities and cannot be a safe guide of man on the path of Yoga. Its judgment at a given moment depends upon the being's psychological poise and orientation and the stress of the forces at work in it. Even at its best, reflection can give but a poor and halting lead and can never be a substitute for intuition, born of the divine identification.

The second state is that in which action is impelled by the inspiration of the moment, and the being has neither any steady light of intuition to lead it nor time to take the help of reflection. This action may be flawless and authentically Yogic, but also it may not be—it all depends upon the then state of the being's subconscient. If the subconscient is pure and calm, the divine inspiration may be received undeformed, but if it is full of impurities and obscure movements, the inspiration received may be a false one, and the action can only betray the the riot and reek of the sub-soil. Besides, reflection is smothered in the rush and tumult of the nether energies, and the dynamic parts of the being lie helpless at the mercy of the moment's impulsion. This is a movement of the unregenerate personality of man which is a creation and tool of the lower nature and trails evil and falsehood as the dark heritage of Matter, But from the Yogic standpoint, even this retrograde

Page 295

movement has a utility : it affords the Yogin a glimpse of the hidden working of his nature and of the elements and energies which have to be exposed to the light, purified and transformed. The Yogin cannot rest content with a surface polish and refinement of his nature; he is not concerned to put up a presentable appearance in society, but to weed out the obstinate remnants of his inconscient origin and build up a nature invulnerably pure and divinely dynamic. He has, therefore, to face and conquer and convert the obscure forces that lie below the threshold and surprise him by their sporadic incursions. He takes advantage even of all his stumbles and detours to effect a solid and secure progress. Not the eye outside but the eye within is his guide, and woe unto him who slurs or glosses over the nether upsurges of his nature.

In the light of the Mother's teaching we learn, then, that the prime object of Yogic action is the constant realization and fulfilment of the divine Will in all the multifarious details of life. An unceasing self-surrender through action as well as through love and knowledge inevitably culminates in an integral union and identification of our whole being with the supreme Consciousness, and it is out of this blissful union that the all- achieving Will blazes forth and fulfils itself in the material world. One of the Mother's experiences, recorded on September 17, 1914, gives an illustration of such a union :—

"No longer can any impulse to action come from outside or from any particular world. It is Thou, O Lord, who settest all in motion from the depths of the being; it is Thy Will that directs, Thy Force that acts; and no longer on the limited field of a small individual consciousness, but on the universal field of a conscious- ness which, in each state of being, is united to all. And the being has at once the conscious perception of all the universal movements in their complexity, and even in their confusion, and the silent and perfect peace of Thy sovereign immutability.”

Human life will turn into an epic of creative ecstasy when, cradled on the bosom of the Divine and rocked by His Love

Page 296