The Need to Employ the Searchlight on Every Aspect of One’s Being

In its essence, yoga is a form of applied psychology. The practitioner of yoga is attempting to redirect the focus, the responses and the reactions of the being, in many cases having to overcome deeply rooted and embedded instincts, habits, and trained responses, as well as the forces of desire, physical sensations, cravings and mental predilections. The development takes place by a refocusing the being on the higher principles or forces and then by a systematic rejection of the uprising of lower forces which try to distract, distort, or dilute the action of the higher force. The review of the normal and obscure reactions of the lower being becomes an important part of the sadhana as the seeker grapples with the realities of changing human nature within his own being.

The Mother advises of the need to turn the ‘inner searchlight’ onto all the hidden, obscure and dark places in the nature. This is sometimes compared to the process of psychotherapy in the West, but in reality, it is a vastly different process, with dramatically different leverage and outcomes. Psychotherapy does not start from the principle of radically changing and upgrading human nature; rather, it tries to help an individual cope with forces within the context of the normal expectations of living in society. Second, psychotherapy does not first develop the connection and link to the psychic being or the spiritual force, so as it explores the inner, obscure depths, it does not have a power already developed to deal with these forces and the uprisings they precipitate. In many cases, psychotherapy is stirring up things that can lead to serious confusion or setbacks for an individual; whereas, the systematic ‘inner searchlight’ is based first and foremost on the ground of the separation of the witness consciousness from the external nature, a place of detachment and observation. This provides enormous leverage for dealing with the reactions that arise during this review.

The Mother notes: “… there is one part of the being which has an aspiration, there is one part of the being which gives itself, and there are other parts — sometimes a small part, sometimes a big one which hides nicely, right at the bottom, and keeps absolutely quiet so that it may not be found out, but which resists with all its might, so as not to change….”

“… hidden somewhere there is a tiny something which is well coiled up, in there doubled up, turned in upon itself and well hidden, right at the bottom, as at the bottom of a box, which refuses to stir. (Mother speaks very softly.) So when the effort, the aspiration wave, die down, this springs up like that, gently, and then it wants to impose its will and it makes you do exactly what you did not want to do, what you had decided you would not do, and which you do without knowing how or why1 Because that thing was there, it had its turn — for small things, big things, for the details, even for the direction of life.”

“There are people who see clearly, who know so well what they ought to do, and who feel that they can’t…. They don’t know wy. It is nothing else but that. There is a little spot which doesn’t want to change and this little spot awaits its hour. And the day it is allowed, through laxity, fatigue, somnolence, through a little inertia, allowed to show itself, it will show itself with all concentrated, accumulated energy, and will make you do, will make you say, will make you feel, make you act ex-act-ly contrary to what you had decided to do! And you will stand there: ‘Ah, how discouraging this is!…’ Then some people say, ‘Fate!’ They think it is their fate. It is not fate, it is themselves!… It is that they don’t have, haven’t used the light, the searchlight. They have not turned the searchlight into the small hidden corners of our being, they haven’t discovered what was well hidden. They have left it there, and then have done this (Mother turns away her head) so as not to see it. How many times one suddenly feels one is on the point of catching something, ‘Hup!’ It hurts a little…. It is troublesome…. So one thinks of something else, and that’s all! The opportunity has gone. One must wait for another occasion, again commit a few stupidities, before being able to find an opportunity to catch the thing by the tail, like this, or by the ear or the nose, and hold it firmly and sasy, ‘No! you won’t hide any longer now, I see you as you are, and you must either get out or change!’ “

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp.81-83