Standing Back from the Reactions of the External Nature

The action of the three Gunas rules our exte
al nature. Rajas active in the vital being tends to fixate on the fulfillment and satisfaction of desires of whatever kind. Desires, however, cannot ever be fully satisfied as the fulfillment of a desire simply increases the vital’s push for more. A ‘groove’ is more or less created that is a known and easy pathway for energy to flow and thereafter, it tends to go down that path more easily than trying to take a different approach.

When a desire is not satisfied, it tends to recoil into the Guna of Tamas, which can bring about dissatisfaction, depression, weakness, lethergy or feelings of incapacity or insufficiency.

The action of the Gunas in the exte
al nature is so automatic that people tend to get caught up in them and just accept them as the reality of their lives.

The spiritual seeker has before him the task of unraveling these reactions and responses and rewiring the direction of the energy flow toward the Divine. One of the most powerful methods is to create within oneself the ‘witness consciousness’ which stands back and observes the action of the exte
al nature, and is able to see these reactions for what they are. He can also note that both satisfaction of the desire, and denial of the desire create results that keep the attention focused on the outer nature instead of on the spiritual aspiration itself. Eventually this witness can become more or less a neutral observer and not provide any sanction or support to those movements; rather, he can consciously turn his focus to the psychic being, and support the soul’s aspiration and the link to the Divine Presence and Reality.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “The rule in Yoga is not to let the depression depress you, to stand back from it, observe its cause and remove the cause; for the cause is always in oneself, perhaps a vital defect somewhere, a wrong movement indulged or a petty desire causing a recoil, sometimes by its satisfaction, sometimes by its disappointment. In Yoga a desire satisfied, a false movement given its head produces very often a worse recoil than disappionted desire.”

“What is needed for you is to live more deeply within, less in the outer vital and mental part which is exposed to these touches. The inmost psychic being is not oppressed by them; it stands in its own closeness to the Divine and sees the small surface movements as surface things foreign to the true Being.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pg. 43