Facing Difficulties and Transforming Them at Their Source Is the Path of Integral Yoga

There are implications for anyone accepting the mission to work toward the evolutionary change of human nature, speeded up by the yogic process. We think we should somehow have amazing spiritual experiences, and live in a world of peace, sunshine and joy. The reality is likely to be far different.

What does it mean to change or transform human nature? It means we need to confront and address the difficulties inherent in the current state of human nature. In his epic poem Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo states the issue plainly: “He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose; He too must bear the pang that he would heal: Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate, How shall he cure the ills he never felt?” and “He carries the suffering world in his own breast; Its sins weigh on his thoughts, its grief is his: Earth’s ancient load lies heavy on his soul; Night and its powers beleaguer his tardy steps, The Titan adversary’s clutch he bears; His march is a battle and a pilgrimage. Life’s evil smites, he is stricken with the world’s pain: A million wounds gape in his secret heart. He jou
eys sleepless through an unending night; Antagonist forces crowd across his path; A siege, a combat is his inner life. Even worse may be the cost, direr the pain: His large identity and all-harbouring love Shall bring the cosmic anguish into his depths, The sorrow of all living things shall come And knock at his doors and live within his house; A dreadful cord of sympathy can tie All suffering into his single grief and make All agony in all the worlds his own.”

The fact that someone has chosen the path of transformation means that he accepts facing and addressing all the weaknesses, limitations, resistances, obscurities and obstructions that the long habits of earth-nature present. This is the work to be done. It is new ground that needs to be explored, the exploration of the depths of inner space, deeper human psychology and the very roots of that psychology in the development of matter, life and mind itself. The more advanced the seeker is along the path, the greater the challenges he is asked to tackle.

The Mother notes: “Difficulties are sent to us exclusively to make the realisation more perfect.”

“Each time we try to realise something and meet with a resistance or an obstacle or even a failure — what seems to be a failure — we should know, we should never forget that it is exclusively, absolutely, so that the realisation may be more perfect.”

“So this habit of cringing, of getting discouraged or even of feeling uncomfortable, or of abusing yourself and telling yourself: ‘There! again I have made a mistake’ — all that is absolute foolishness.”

“Simply tell yourself: ‘We don’t know how to do things as they ought to be done; well, they are being done for us, come what may!’ And if we could see to what extent all that seems to be, yes, a difficulty, a mistake, a failure, an obstacle — all that is just to help us, so that the realisation may be more perfect.”

“Once you know that, everything becomes easy.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp. 74-75