AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER

Why do I experience deep fall in consciousness intermittently? Why do I commit inexcusable acts whenever I start approaching the Mother and Sri Aurobindo with much intensity? I have encountered these situations many a time, whenever I come to Pondicherry, or when I am returning from Pondicherry, after a Satsang at home, or returning from attending a Satsang at the Centre. I commit blunders after blunders in many ways, in expressing my ego, my arrogance, my anger, my fight, my jealousy, my idleness, my desire for food, gossip and sex skyrocket whenever I start becoming serious in my Sadhana. I feel some rush of unknown massive adverse force has captured me in parallel to The Mother’s Force within me and is not letting me go towards The Mother or do any kinds of Divine work. Sometime I feel so devastated and helpless within that I am worried about the consequences of acting against the Divine Will. Please guide me how to tackle these forces within?

This is quite a common experience. The Mother has described it stating the reasons for the same. Savitri also describes it beautifully.

‘The high and luminous tension breaks too soon,

The body’s stone stillness and the life’s hushed trance,

The breathless might and calm of silent mind;

Or slowly they fail as sets a golden day.

The restless nether members tire of peace;

A nostalgia of old little works and joys,

A need to call back small familiar selves,

To tread the accustomed and inferior way,

The need to rest in a natural pose of fall,

As a child who learns to walk can walk not long,

Replace the titan will for ever to climb,

On the heart’s altar dim the sacred fire.

An old pull of subconscious cords renews;

It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights,

Or a dull gravitation drags us down

To the blind driven inertia of our base.

This too the supreme Diplomat can use,

He makes our fall a means for greater rise.

For into ignorant Nature’s gusty field,

Into the half-ordered chaos of mortal life

The formless Power, the Self of eternal light

Follow in the shadow of the spirit’s descent;

The twin duality for ever one

Chooses its home mid the tumults of the sense.

He comes unseen into our darker parts

And, curtained by the darkness, does his work,

A subtle and all-knowing guest and guide,

Till they too feel the need and will to change.

All here must learn to obey a higher law,

Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame.

Else would the spirit reach alone its source

Leaving a half-saved world to its dubious fate.

Nature would ever labour unredeemed;

Our earth would ever spin unhelped in Space,

And this immense creation’s purpose fail

Till at last the frustrate universe sank undone.

Even his godlike strength to rise must fall:

His greater consciousness withdrew behind;

Dim and eclipsed, his human outside strove

To feel again the old sublimities,

Bring the high saving touch, the ethereal flame,

Call back to its dire need the divine Force.

Always the power poured back like sudden rain,

Or slowly in his breast a presence grew;

It clambered back to some remembered height

Or soared above the peak from which it fell.

Each time he rose there was a larger poise,

A dwelling on a higher spirit plane;

The Light remained in him a longer space.

In this oscillation between earth and heaven,

In this ineffable communion’s climb

There grew in him as grows a waxing moon

The glory of the integer of his soul.’

There is a part that aspires with intensity and the greater the intensity, the more there is a response from Above. However there are several other parts in our nature that are not ready and hence react with resistance with the same vehemence as the intensity of aspiration. But eventually the resistances begin to soften and eventually give way before the persistent aspiration and an increasing opening to the Grace. What is important is not to allow thoughts of unfitness, guilt, reactions of depression, fear etc to enter. Instead, each time one slips one must learn to bounce back sooner. Instead of getting into fears of any kind (which is the worst), one should quietly detect the insincere elements that are inextricably mixed as grains of sand in nature, and become conscious and try to reject or offer them to Her for the change. Slowly one reclaims all these unconscious parts and integrates them into oneself and grows whole. One must remember that the struggle is often most acute before the hour of victory and the night is darkest before the dawn.

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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