One’s Attitude to Events Affects the Impact of the Event

We tend to evaluate events or circumstances based on their relation to our personal identification with the external ego-personality, and our prevalent idea about ourselves at that point in time. In retrospect, we frequently find that those things which we considered to be ‘bad’ were actually the starting point of an entirely new development which turned out to be far better than what we anticipated at the time of the ‘bad’ event that interfered with our preconceived notions. For example, there was the case of a college student who excelled at his studies and had career goals in his mind. At a certain point he had a near-death experience and after that, he recognised that the entire college career was actually wasting his time. He left college, began a spiritual quest, and found fulfillment in the integration of that spiritual purpose into his life. In retrospect, he reported that the circumstances that disrupted his plans was not a ‘bad’ thing, but a ‘good thing.

Another example was related in the book Called to Heal. A particular young woman in Africa had ideas about the direction her career and life should go. She kept having obstacles showing up in her way, whether disappointments in her career development, or health issues that kept arising. She eventually consulted an experienced healer who advised her that all these problems would disappear if she took up her true calling of being a shamanic healer. Eventually she heeded that advice and found out that, in fact, what she thought was “bad luck” earlier in her life as to career and health, turned out to be the start of the change in focus and new avenues of fulfillment she found once she made the transition.

Paramahansa Yogananda told the story of a person he met who was practicing a yogic discipline and did not eat solid food. She was vigorous, alert and focused on her practice. She did not consider herself to be ‘starving’. Another person, not having solid food, might be suffering starvation, and yet another, could be practicing the restriction as part of either a short-term practice of fasting, or a longer term attempt to lose weight through dieting. In each case, the individual is not eating solid food, but their interpretation and their results are vastly different.

Quantum mechanics illustrates for us the fact that one is not simply a victim of events, but that as a participant/observer, one also influences the outcome of events. This provides an area for fruitful contemplation about how we can gain mastery in our lives as opposed to simply becoming the victim of whatever happens to be taking place. Of course, in some events, that are on the world-scale, the event itself will still take place, but the individual response to it may find a different interpretation and a different value than what others may experience.

One person’s solid poise and balance under difficult circumstances can also make a difference for those around him. A story was related about a protest against the Vietnam War back in the 1970’s in the USA. The heavily armed police surrounded a crowd of peaceful protestors and people felt intimidated and fearful. Then one individual began to chant OM and others took it up, the crowd lost its fear, and, while they were arrested (and later released without charges), the atmosphere that developed from the chanting of OM and the crowd response to it, made it clear that something very special had taken place, changing a potentially harmful, dangerous and intimidating circumstance into one that had no serious unpleasant consequences for anyone.

The Mother writes: “There is a state in which one realises that the effect of things, circumstances, all the movements and actions of life on the consciousness depends almost exclusively upon one’s attitude to these things. There is a moment when one becomes sufficiently conscious to realise that things in themselves are truly neither good nor bad: they are this only in relation to us; their effect on us depends absolutely upon the attitude we have towards them. The same thing, identically the same, if we take it as a gift of God, as a divine grace, as the result of the full Harmony, helps us to become more conscious, stronger, more true, while if we take it — exactly the very same circumstance — as a blow from fate, as a bad force wanting to affect us, this constricts us, weighs us down and takes away from us all consciousness and strength and harmony. And the circumstance in itself is exactly the same — of this, I should like you all to have the experience, for when you have it, you become master of yourself. Not only master of yourself but, in what concerns you, master of the circumstances of your life. And this depends exclusively upon the attitude you take; it is not an experience that occurs in the head, though it begins there, but an experience which can occur in the body itself. So much so, that — well, it is a realisation which naturally asks for a lot of work, concentration, self-mastery, consciousness pushed into Matter, but as a result, in accordance with the way the body receives shocks from outside, the effect may be different. And if you attain perfection in that field, you become master of accidents. I hope this will happen. It is possible. It is not only possible, it is certain. Only it is just one step forward. That is, this power you have — already fully and formidably realised in the mind — to act upon circumstances to the extent of changing them totally in their action upon you, that power can descend into Matter, into the physical substance itself, the cells of the body, and give the same power to the body in relation to the things around it. … This is not a faith, it is a certitude that comes from experience.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pp. 4-5