The Individual Seeker and the Best Path Forward in the Practice of the Yoga

As each individual tries to understand his life and purpose, he begins a process of observation, review, and experimentation. At this stage, many seekers have little clue about the path that is best suited for them, and they may try out different approaches. Once a path has been identified, they believe in many cases this is the “best” path and they begin to recommend it to others. It is, however, frequently the case, that what suits one individual will not suit the next one. Either there is a temperamental difference, a developmental difference, or a different starting point or life circumstance that requires each to find his own unique way forward and follow his own path to realisation and transformation of the nature. Thus, there is no one absolute way forward, and each path has its own obstacles and difficulties along the way, and relies on different aspects of the being to progress along the way. The common theme is the need to overcome the basic limitations of the human individual as presently constituted, with the drag of the physical limitations, the workings of desire in the vital nature, and the limits of the mentality and its narrow and very limited view as well as its openness to the influence of the desire-soul to bias the decisions it makes or supports.

The Mother writes: “Everyone must follow his path in accordance with his own nature, and there is always a preference for one way rather than another… for one who follows the path of action, it is much more difficult to feel that the human personality does not exist and that only the divine Force works. For one who follows the path of knowledge it is relatively very easy, it is something one discovers almost immediately. For one who follows the path of love it is elementary, since it is by giving himself that he progresses. But for one who follows the path of action it is much more difficult, and consequently for him the first step is to do what is said here in the passage of The Synthesis of Yoga which we have just read*: to create in himself this complete detachment from the fruit of action, to act because this is what must be done, to do it in the best possible way, and not to be anxious about the consequences, to leave the consequences to a Will higher than his own.”

*”It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and a new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the life-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced by the true spiritual person, the central being, and life itself must be turned towards the fulfillment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose.” (Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga pg. 166)

“The Mother continues: “One can’t make a general rule for the order of importance of the paths, it is an exclusively personal affair. And there is a time when one understands very well, it is apparent, that no two paths are alike, no two paths can be alike, and that every man follows his own path and that this is the truth of his being. One can, if one looks from a sufficient height, see a difference in the speed of advance, but it does not always conform to the external signs; and one could say a little humorously, that it is not always the wisest who goes fastest!”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter V Growth of Consciousness, Means and Methods, pp. 103-105