Exceeding the Limits Set By Our Minds to Harness Powers of Health and Fitness

We generally remain locked within the framework of our past training and experience. We create walls around ourselves that circumscribe what we believe we can accomplish, what we can do, what is ‘real’ and what is possible. As long as we remain primarily fixated on the past, we limit our opportunity for growth and development in the future. We deny possibilities based on never having experienced them previously. Or if we have tried, and not succeeded, we conclude that the attempt was doomed to failure either due to it being an illusory goal, or due to our own lack of fitness and capacity to achieve the goal.

This limiting mechanism is something that the mind, with its limited framework and vision, imposes on our vital nature and our physical body. Something is either not feasible, too difficult, or we are simply not adaptable enough to succeed at it; at least, that is what our inner voice tells us.

If we reflect for a moment, we can see that such limiting concepts in our minds have not guided us well in the past. We believed for ages that the moon was unapproachable. But during the 1960’s humanity was able to harness rudimentary techniques of space flight and actually land people on the moon. We believed that certain diseases were incurable. The history of the bubonic plague, known as the “black plague” in Europe, is such an example. Fear ran rampant and people died. Over time, with research and consideration of potential vectors, the disease was indeed brought under control. Leprosy was a feared disease which was eventually brought under control Smallpox was a world-wide mass killing disease which was eventually eradicated. These successes were brought about by people who refused to listen to the voices of denial, the claims of impossibility, and who overcame the fear of trying. It is clear that just because something has not been done in the past, it cannot be worked out and developed in the future.

These examples, however, relate to humanity as a whole, not any specific individual. Someone might then believe that the ‘sum’ of humanity is greater than the ‘parts’ of humanity, and that what humanity can accomplish collectively is not applicable to any individual’s own situation. This, however, would be easily found to be inaccurate.

While humanity has had successes as noted above, they were built on the contributions of a series of individuals, either working on their own, or collaborating or building upon the work of others before them. Forerunners in various fields have seen, intuited or worked out solutions to concerns that others simply disbelieved.

When we turn to the individual case, however, it is also clear that many things can be accomplished through patient, persevering and consistent efforts, focus and receptivity. In this way, even the physical body has been pushed far beyond limits that were considered impossible to attain even just a few short years or decades ago. We hear of individuals who have systematically trained themselves to withstand extreme cold temperatures, or to generate inner ‘psychic heat’ through the practice of tummo. We hear of people who were partially paralyzed in an accident who do not accept the limitations and who eventually regain full use of their limbs. There are others who struggle with various academic subjects until one day, through their persistent efforts, the proverbial light goes on and they now understand what was incomprehensible to them previously. We find people who develop powers of intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, various powers of will and expression through focus and commitment and a sense of receptivity to those powers, simply by not believing that such things are impossible!

If we were limited by what has occurred in the past, or even, in our own past, we would not be able to grow, to learn, to progress, to develop new capacities at all. Yet we see that all of these things are not only possible, but are the normal condition that pertains to much of humanity when people are not simply under pure survival mode at all times. Even then, we hear of situations where people have lifted cars to free a trapped child, even though the car was far beyond any weight limit they could have conceived. They simply did not think about it — they just did it under the force of necessity.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Above all, do not harbour that idea of an unfit body — all suggestions of that kind are a subtle attack on the will to siddhi and especially dangerous in physical matters… the first business is to expel it bag and baggage. Appearances and facts may be all in its favour, but the first condition of success for the yogin and indeed for anybody who wants to do anything great or unusual is to be superior to facts and disbelieve in appearances. Will to be free from disease, however formidable, many-faced or constant its attacks, and repel all contrary suggestions.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pg..108