The Power of the Evolved Soul to Tread the Spiritual Path

We frequently hear people speak about the ‘law of attraction’. In most cases, they treat this as some kind of method or ‘trick’ to attract wealth, fame or other objects of desire to them, through use of a sort of mental focus or vital magnetism effect. The true ‘law of attraction’ however is much more subtle and not focused on the gratification of the external being and its desires, but based on the way that an evolved soul is able to link to the higher divine purpose and intention and organise the entire being around the dictates of that higher purpose. As that happens, the intentionality that the soul directs is in touch with the universal forces and begins to smooth the path in front of the soul for its evolutionary need. This does not necessarily mean that the individual gets his desires fulfilled. On the contrary, the soul may actually find its path of growth under stress of difficult situations or obstacles! Judgment on this point does not rely on whether the individual is wealthy, has fame or success, or any other outward signs.

What we do find in the case of a sincere aspiration of the soul, organised around a higher purpose, is that circumstances begin to provide the seeker opportunities to see and understand, to delve into the depths of the being and understand the occult linkages to all the past beings, actions and formations that led him to this point, and provides him thereby the leverage to effectuate a change. It is through this process that the past karmic links of cause and effect can actually be changed.

People always want to change others. The spiritual seeker soon recognises that understanding of their own nature, and apppreciating the direct correspondence to influences they have undergone through family, friends, social conditioning, and environmental circumstances is the true power to effectuate change, within their own being. They soon recognise that they cannot enforce change on anyone else and that they already have their work cut out for them in changing their own nature.

The Mother observes: “If you have within you a psychic being sufficiently awake to watch over you, to prepare your path, it can draw towards you things which help you, draw people, books, circumstances, all sorts of little coincidences which come to you as though brought by some benevolent will and give you an indication, a help, a support to take decisions and turn you in the right direction. But once you have taken this decision, once you have decided to find the truth of your being, once you start sincerely on the road, then everything seems to conspire to help you to advance, and if you observe carefully you see gradually the source of your difficulties: ‘Ah! Wait a minute, this failing was in my father; oh! this habit was my mother’s; oh! my grandmother was like this, my grandfather was like that’ or it could well be the nurse who took care of you when you were small, or brothers and sisters who played with you, the little friends you met, and you will find that all this was there, in this person or that or the other. But if you continue to be sincere, you find you can cross all this quite calmly, and after a time you cut all the moorings with which you were born, break the chains and go freely on the path.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 151-152