The Spiritual Aspirant Has the Potential to Overcome the Limits of His Birth and Social Circumstances

We are born into a family, a culture, a society, a given economic and political system, an educational process, and a vast number of social habits, customs and predilections which create for us a framework within which we are expected to take up our destined place in society and carry it forward, meeting the expectations of the society within which we are born and responding to the pressures from family, friends, peers and co-workers to conform with the norms of our social environment. We can easily see that such a situation seems to create for us a fixed destiny that we are either blessed, or doomed, to follow. We tend to put our predicament in celestial terms, where we consider the astrological framework that somehow maps our destiny for us. And for most people, these conditions apply and they follow their ‘destiny’ from birth to death, even if, as we see in many cases, quite unhappily and dissatisfied with the direction and outcome of their living circumstances. We can trace the arc of life for most people as having a predetermined trajectory, momentum and end point.

And yet, we see people who seem not to be bound by such a destiny. Who, for one reason or another, find themselves ready to abandon or leave behind the life so carefully set forth before them, and try to achieve something different. These people tread the road less taken, so to speak, whether it be in art, science, invention, exploration or in taking up of a spiritual life. To the extent that they focus on achievement in the external world, they are still bound by many of the habits, customs and expectations of the society around them. Those few, however, who take up the inner quest, the spiritual quest, soon learn to extricate themselves, progressively more and more, from the web of social customs, mores and expectations as they begin to actively evolve and change internally. They link themselves to the Divine, and through aspiration, prayer, meditation, contemplation, concentration, or through selfless action dedicated to the Supreme, they forge the links that help them become receptive and responsive to the divine evolutionary purpose and the forces active to bring that about. This link of the aspiration and the corresponding responsive energy can eventually bring about, over time, and against all obstacles, a divine fulfillment.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Destiny in the rigid sense applies only to the outer being so long as it lives in the Ignorance. What we call destiny is only in fact the result of the present condition of the being and the nature and energies it has accumulated in the past acting on each other and determining the present attempts and their future results. But as soon as one enters the path of spiritual life, this old predetermined destiny begins to recede. There comes in a new factor, the Divine Grace, the help of a higher Divine Force other than the force of Karma, which can lift the sadhak beyond the present possibilities of his nature. One’s spiritual destiny is then the divine election which ensures the future. The only doubt is about the vicissitudes of the path and the time to be taken by the passage.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.7 Spiritual Forces of Help and Succour, pg. 170