Distrust and Disobedience in the Practice of Yoga Interferes With the Action of the Force

We like to believe that we are independent actors in control of our own destiny and our own lines of development. We want ‘freedom’ to express ourselves. The ego-personality acting in the outside world is very much a captive of past energies, whether those of the formation of physical and vital life, or those that have been acquired and developed through the process of evolution of the mental power. We have been educated, pressured, traumatized, and socialized to make certain decisions and act in certain ways, all while believing that we are free and independent actors.

While we are engaged in the life of the world, all of this has very little importance as we somehow get through the life situations and deal with the issues that arise. When we take up spiritual sadhana, however, a different set of criteria comes to the forefront.

The entire principle of spiritual growth is to successively tune the being to the higher, spiritual force, be receptive to it, and allow it to act to carry out the changes that go beyond what is possible for our physical-vital-mental self. Tihs implies following the guidance and direction of the psychic being and the spiritual guidance to which it adheres. In this context, any deviation, following suggestions of the mind, the vital or the physical body, represents a distortion which weakens the connection and interferes with the higher force.

The adherence to the spiritual truth of the being develops successively to encompass not only the inward acceptance and recognition, but eventually also the acceptance and support of the mind, the vital being and the physical body to the pressure for change and transformatoin that the force is bringing with it. This is the unification of the entire being around the spiritual principle and the influence of the psychic being.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The difficulty must have come from distrust and disobedience. For distrust and disobedience are like falsehood (they are themselves a falsity, based on false ideas and impulses), they interfere in the action of the Power, prevent it from being felt or from working fully and diminish the force of the Protection.”

“Not only in your inward concentration, but in your outward acts and movements you must take the right attitude. If you do that and put everything under the Mother’s guidance, you will find that difficulties begin to diminish or are much more easily got over and things become steadily smoother.”

“In your work and acts you must do the same as in your concentration. Open to the Mother, put them under her guidance, call in the peace, the supporting Power, the protection and, in order that they may work, reject all wrong influences that might come in their way by creating wrong, careless or unconscious movements.”

“Follow this principle and your whole being will become one, under one rule, in the peace and sheltering Power and Light.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pg. 59