But while commenting on the yoga of cells in the Agenda, the Mother shed some more light on the real difficulty and intractability of this problem. She said :
“All possible difficulties in the body’s subconscient rose up en masse —it had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too…I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociously—now I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion.Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces;”Â
Looks like the revolt of the subconscient is the biggest challenge even for the Avatars. The physical body seems to be its worst refuge. One gets to see this first-hand in Agenda in the tremendous yoga done by the Mother on her body.
The big push is not about Sattwa. They never seemed to attach too much importance to mental rules and regulations except for what is needed to keep a basic collective order which requires self-discipline. The push was to grow conscious and sincere, to reject the pull of lower nature, and to throw away doubts, depression and the like.
The difficulty was that each sadhak was / is the representative of his type. What is worked out in him is worked out in all. So basically each one who has sincerely takrn up the yoga takes up the considerable more burden of others as well. Here is what Sri Aurobindo reveals in the Synthesis of Yogs.
‘But for the sadhaka of the integral Yoga this inner or this outer solitude can only be incidents or periods in his spiritual progress. Accepting life, he has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world’s burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe.
Nor is the seeker of the integral fulfilment permitted to solve too arbitrarily even the conflict of his own inner members. He has to harmonise deliberate knowledge with unquestioning faith; he must conciliate the gentle soul of love with the formidable need of power; the passivity of the soul that lives content in transcendent calm has to be fused with the activity of the divine helper and the divine warrior. To him as to all seekers of the spirit there are offered for solution the oppositions of the reason, the clinging hold of the senses, the perturbations of the heart, the ambush of the desires, the clog of the physical body; but he has to deal in another fashion with their mutual and internal conflicts and their hindrance to his aim, for he must arrive at an infinitely more difficult perfection in the handling of all this rebel matter. Accepting them as instruments for the divine realisation and manifestation, he has to convert their jangling discords, to enlighten their thick darknesses, to transfigure them separately and all together, harmonising them in themselves and with each other,—integrally, omitting no grain or strand or vibration, leaving no iota of imperfection anywhere. An exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he must labour.’
1. So what exactly is this subconscient? Is it the sum total of all habits, tendencies and impressions that we have carried in us from millions of years?
Yes it is the whole past of the earth that yet continues to exist as collective memory and atavistic habits and tendencies.Â
2. Is a problem that only the Avatars have to worry about or sadhaks too?
Everyone who takes up the yoga encounters it. But those who depend upon the Mother and have found their psychic being go through it easily. Others, especially those who believe too much upon their own effort and pursue the yoga for personal ends, even personal spiritual ends, and do not open to the Mother find it difficult beyond a point. It is these, especially those who could not open to the Mother who sometimes left
3. If the problem is important to all, what is the best way to purify the subconscient, for simple aspirants like us?Â
The remedy is simple. It is to turn to Her, open to Her, love Her, have faith in Her, aspire to Her, serve Her, be full of Her. But human vanity prefers to do it all by oneself as it feeds the spiritual ego and hence the problem gets bigger and bigger.
One feels that if this rebellion is not brought under control, nothing is truly done. (I can see in my own life that the habits I thought I conquered seem to surge up from time to time and I feel like a stupid puppet with little control over my nature. It feels as if my efforts at correction have been in vain, after all.)
I don’t think that is the right way to proceed. Instead of struggling with oneself too much, learn to be simple, to surrender, to call Her Name, to think of Her instead of the difficulties. Concentrating too much upon difficulties is the sure way to increase them. On the other hand concentrating upon Her Grace is the sure way to get rid of them.
Here is what the Mother herself has advised.
‘But now that person, who is perhaps a bit impatient, tells me this: “Why have the difficulties increased for quite a large number of sadhaks?” (Mother puts the paper down forcefully on the table) Who told you that it is not because you have become more conscious! that all your difficulties were there before, only you did not know it?… If you see more clearly and see things which are not very pretty, it is not the fault of the Supermind, it is your fault! It gives you a light, a mirror in which you can see yourself better than you did before, and you are a little troubled because it is not always very pretty? But what can I do?
And this person concludes: “Doesn’t the supramental Force work here in spite of all the obstacles the unregenerate human nature puts up against it?” Truly, I hope it does! for otherwise, nothing could be done, the world would never be regenerated. But I have explained to you why it seems more difficult to you. It is because you are a little more conscious now and see things you did not see before.
There is yet another reason. When the Force which is at work is stronger, more insistent, naturally what resists, resists as strongly. And if instead―it is here I have to say something that’s not very pleasant―if instead of being hypnotised by your little difficulties, your little inconveniences, your small discomforts, your “big” defects, if instead of being hypnotised by all that, you tried to see the other side, how much more powerful the Force is, the Grace more active, the Help more tangible; in a word, if you were a little less egoistic and less concentrated on yourselves and had a little wider vision in which you could include things that don’t concern you personally, perhaps your view of the problem would change.
Well, this is what I advise you to do, and then we shall speak about it later when you have tried my remedy: don’t think so much about yourself.
After all, this perhaps is the problem which interests you most, but it is certainly not the most interesting.’
Affectionately,
Alok Da
