Browse Spiritual Growth

The first time we experience something it starts to create a “groove” in our neural network, nerves or responsive centers. As the experience recurs, the groove becomes a ‘pathway’. Eventually, the pathway becomes an embedded habit. When a similar vibration is experienced, it ‘automatically’ follows the established patterns, which is why it is harder to break a habit than to avoid starting one to begin with.

We go through our daily lives, busy ourselves with earning a living, supporting our families, maintaining our bodies, entertaining ourselves, arguing, fighting, gossiping, and following up on hobbies or passions we are engaged in. We close ourselves into a narrow and limited existence and feel content that we are doing something important, or useful, or at least, whiling away our time between birth and death, with no further meaning. We may feel helplessly caught up in a life we do not understand, or alte atively, we may feel powerful and proud in our accomplishments in our lifetime.

Beyond the stage of “flight or fight” we see in panic and the eventual recoil into inertia, where we see the initial reactions of instinct at play, the stage of ‘striving’ begins to harness energy of response by the vital being, albeit still very much under the influence and control of the power of instinctive behaviour. Striving, however, implies marshalling of the vital forces to try to address and overcome the perceived threat or obstacle in the way of the being’s desire, and thus, goes beyond pure instinct to a type of vital focus or attention, characterised by the Guna of rajas.

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We tend to overlook, or underestimate, the powers inherent in our human existence, the powers of the body, the powers of the vital nature, the powers of the mind, the powers of the psychic being, and the power of the spirit. Some of these powers are manifest but not fully understood, explored or developed. Others remain latent within our being. Still others we can see active in other forms and beings in Nature. From time to time, some of these other powers can be activated within the human being as well.

One of the habits that has built up over many millennia among spiritual practitioners is the ingrained idea that Matter and Spirit are essentially irreconcilable and that in order to pursue the spiritual life one must be willing to give up and abandon the material life. Material life and a focus on it is seen as a distraction from the one-pointed effort needed to achieve spiritual liberation. The focus has been placed on the concept “One without a second”, to illustrate the need for focus.

The development of existentialism as a philosophical viewpoint on human existence in the world took place primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. it focused on the apparent lack of meaning in the universe and thus, human significance had to be developed from an individual standpoint of freedom rather than from participation in a larger universal purpose.

Western psychology is still a relatively young science, and it necessarily does not have the complete picture of all the complex interactions that take place within our being.

We read or hear about the accounts of individuals who had some kind of experience, either dramatically uplifting, or severely traumatic, who awaken to a spiritual purpose in their lives which changes the entire direction and focus of what takes place for them afterwards when compared with their earlier life.

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An illness is a vibrational pattern that impacts the body and its normal operations. If one does not succeed in rejecting it before it breaks through the protective vital sheath and then, if one fails to prevent it from taking hold at all in the physical body, one is left with having to deal with the illness that is active in the body and vibrating the physical substance. As we see with all physical forms, they attain a type of “solidity” that makes them less maleable and able to be dealt with, and the physical body shares some of that attribute.

Many people believe that once they become adherents of a particular religion or spiritual tradition, they need no longer make an effort. The idea that someone else is “taking charge” and taking on the burden of one’s life is particularly enticing for people. They frequently then accept that whatever happens is ‘for the best’ and nothing they do, or could have done, would change that.

Rene Descartes famously proclaimed the fact the he existed by stating ‘I think, therefore I am.’ In today’s world, however, that method of proving existence is under pressure as we grapple with more subtle possible answers to how we exist, why we exist and what this entire existence means, if anything. There are scientists who hold that all life has come about purely through various chemical interactions and that these combinations of elements are simply, through the magnitude of time and chances to create our universe and all of our developments of awareness.

Today’s world provides people with both an obstacle and an opportunity when they try to follow their chosen or cherished path in life. The obstacle is based on societal requirement that individuals take up a productive form of work in the world to earn enough money to support their needs for basic necessities of life. In many cases, the skill set and education or training simply is not available to them for the jobs that are accessible to them, or else, to obtain the necessary skills and certifications, the time and cost of acquisition are beyond their means.

All sensations carry signals through the nervous system to the brain, which then can interpret the signal. The signal may be more or less intense. It may be interpreted as pain or pleasure. Intensity of the sensation has something to do with the experience and its interpretation. There is a certain intensity which is comfortable for an individual, and beyond that intensity, it is frequently interpreted as painful. Thus, the signal traveling to the brain, in and of itself is not necessarily pleasurable or painful.

It is difficult to both understand and appreciate the apparent regression from spiritual heights to a world in which the physical being and material focus reigns supreme and predominates in the entire world to an overwhelming degree. It is likely that the intellectual and then the spiritual development reached a point where it was too rarified and the generality of mankind was unable to adopt it, particularly as they struggled to survive and thrive in difficult exte al circumstances.

A relatively frequent occurrence for the spiritual aspirant is to reach the boundary wall of consciousness and get a glimpse or experience of the spiritual consciousness without limits. This experience, when it comes, may raise up tremendous fear in the individual and he reacts, almost automatically and spontaneously, drawing himself away from that unlimited field and back into his own comfortable ego-self. The reaction is one of the ego-consciousness that fears its dissolution.

At some point in life everyone is confronted with physical conditions which cause pain. What is pain exactly? When we speak about physical pain in particular, we reference particular sensations or impulses of an intensity that activates the nerves to carry the sensation to the brain, which interprets the signal. Pain can be a great aid at certain times as it acts as a warning system of danger to provoke the mental and vital being to action.

How do we look at our lives? Do we find any meaning or purpose in living? Or are we just here to live a material existence, enjoy ourselves as much as possible, try to avoid suffering and eventually die without much pain? Many people do not take the opportunity to shift their perspective on life and this then represents the frame within which they exist. They live in the exte al world without much reflection.

From early childhood we are inculcated with the idea of achieving success, becoming foremost and occupying a position of power, prestige or wealth in the world. Parents drum this idea into the mind of their children that they need to study, attain degrees, choose suitable (lucrative) careers, and marry well to occupy their role in society. A hierarchy is established through this process that treats certain types of careers as prestigious and rewarding, and others as low, demeaning, degrading, or somehow of lesser value or importance.

If we examine our reactions to circumstances that occur daily in our lives, we will see we generally go through a range of feelings from elation when something we deem positive occurs, to depression when it seems like the house is falling in on us. Major events, such as achievements in school, falling in love and getting married, having children, developing a successful career, enjoying amazing travel opportunities, spending time with loved ones, all create feelings of pleasure or joy.

Whenever anything happens in the world, the senses capture the vibrations and send them up the nervous channels to the brain where they are they interpreted and responded to. When the nervous system is sensitive and overly responsive it may vibrate continuously and not let up. This creates an uncomfortable feeling that makes the individual nervous or jumpy, wound up or overly reactive. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to calmly view whatever the circumstance is and respond to it calmly and in the most effective manner.

The mental consciousness tends to look at things with a linear perspective. It expects things to systematically roll out in a continuous, directed stream. It becomes upset and disoriented when what appears to be a settled result gets suddenly disrupted or upset by new circumstances, forces or events.

Most people have very little, if any, real control over circumstances that arise in their lives. They are born into a family, a community, a society, a religious background, an ethnic background, an economic system, an educational system and a raft of customs, traditions, habits and lifeways that they breathe in with every breath as the grow, learn and take their place within the social structure. This structure focuses attention on the outward existence and builds up the persistence of the ego-personality.

The ego-personality almost always interprets exte al activity, work, by an arbitrary measure of value, in many cases, monetary, but in some cases, based on the benefits provided to the society. Religious and spiritual institutions frequently take up work that is considered to be charitable in nature, such as feeding large numbers of people, or treating people for their health conditions, founding hospitals, and providing refuge to people who are suffering. These things are then seen as a representation of selfless work, a form of karma yoga.

It is a frequent occurrence. Someone takes up the spiritual path and tries to follow the dictates set forth in that path, down to the smallest detail. They treat goals and aspiration as a type of ‘rule-book’ that needs to be followed. If, as is to be expected, they do not succeed in each such detail, they can get into a cycle of self-criticism. In some cases, this simply breeds an obsessive state of mind and an emotional reaction, but in others it can actually lead them to take up acts of violence against themselves in the form of various sorts of self-inflicted corporal punishments.

The mental consciousness evolved subsequent to the emergence of the physical consciousness and the vital consciousness. It appears in rudimentary forms in various animals, and advances to a much higher state of activity and power in the higher primates, including human beings, as well as ocean-going mammals such as dolphins and whales.

People who take up spiritual life frequently believe that they should change their line of work and focus in the exte al world. In some cases, this is a recognition of the inner being’s guidance as the individual awakens to his true calling. In other cases, however, this is a mistaken belief that certain lines of work or action are ‘more spiritual’ and thus, one should abandon what was a natural calling for one that the mind has determined is the ‘more spiritual’ activity.

In the preceding page, a passage from The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo was cited. The Mother is commenting on her impressions while reading that passage.

The Mother provides another example of the need for insight and flexibility to address changing circumstances. Most people want to have a fixed routine provided for them. ‘Do this, and you will achieve that.’ This process, while comforting to the mental consciousness that normally functions within fixed and narrow limits, is unable to address the fluidity and complexity of the world within which we actually live.

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.

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Western civilisation has a distinct bias in favor of what we may call a materialistic viewpoint. Money, possessions, status and power based on monetary power, a drive to own ever newer possessions, and the need to try to increase our enjoyment and satisfaction of life through these factors leads those born into Western civilisation to consider that having a good job, amassing wealth and buying things constitutes the basis of enjoyment.

At some point in life, the individual becomes aware that the former methods of reacting to circumstances and events are not only counter-productive, but actually harmful to their own health and well-being and the successful resolution of the situation. Struggling and striving, fighting and reacting, instinctive behaviour and apathy and inertia, all past responses, wind up leaving the situation unresolved, the individual exhausted or worn out or in a state of despair or depression.

We do not usually recognise or appreciate how much influence our environment, our surroundings, the society we live in, the customs and life-ways of that social system impact what we think about, how we focus our attention and what we do with our lives. The Mother puts this also into the process of evolution that takes place, not just within a species, but in entire civilisations which go through cycles of development, changes in focus, and progress as various different aspects of life and consciousness are taken up in the evolutionary process.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks how one can identify a realised soul. His question indicates there should be some outward sign that can be observed. Sri Krishna, however, demurs and indicates it is not by any specific outward action or formation that such a soul can be recognised. Everything depends on the inner standpoint, or as the Mother calls it, the inner ‘attitude’.

We live in the world without fully appreciating or understanding it. This is not something new that we are experiencing, but a statement of what we may call the ‘human condition’. The Rishis of the Rig Veda faced these same issues. In the Hymn of Creation, Mandala X, Sukta 129, Verses 6 and 7 (as translated by Nolini Kanta Gupta) they expressed their yearning for knowledge and their frustration with the seemingly impenetrable nature of the manifestation of which we are part, when they say: “Who knows in truth, Who would tell us here below, From where was it born, Whence this Surging Creation?

We normally judge things based on our own individual egoistic standpoint, basically, how a particular event or circumstance affects us in the moment. We build up expectations and plans, and suddenly, something gets in the way and destroys or diverts those plans. We naturally become disappointed, potentially even angry about what happened. With the benefit of hindsight, however, we may frequently find that what took place at that time actually was an enormous act of Grace that helped us move into a direction that we otherwise would not have seen, or would have actively avoided.

The mind, with its need to correlate facts, gather evidence and develop proofs, finds it difficult, if not impossible, to credit ideas that seem to fall outside the logical reason based on the mind’s limited understanding of the oneness of the universal creation. The mind sets up certain ‘rules’ and holds doggedly to them until such time as more ‘facts’ come to conveniently overtu the past rules. Witness the idea that the sun revolves around the earth, which only in recent centuries was overtu ed by a new understanding of the operations of the solar system.

We can observe, in our own lives and in the lives of various individuals we see on the ‘world stage’, the difference between those who are driven primarily by the impulses of the exte al vital nature and the ego-personality, and those who have made contact with the inner being and has developed a new standpoint that is based on the harmony of the divine, or spiritual, consciousness. Those who are fixated on the exte al vital nature may exhibit various forces of the animal nature, may be filled with desire, lust, greed, and a power-hungry demand that can turn into bullying and intimidation.

When we rely on our surface impressions, which are very much based on and influenced by our background, family, society and the values inculcated into us by those relationships, we only are able to truly understand a fraction of what is actually occurring, and generally this is conditioned by our desires, wishes and preconceived ideas based on our ego-consciousness. It is thus, necessarily, not truly possible to get a real sense of the larger perspective that encompasses our growth, and the developmental trend that is working itself out within us and in our environs.

Our experience in the world is one of dualities, hot and cold, wet and dry, happy and sad, love and hate, darkness and light, etc. We recognise that we cannot have the one without the other. The Chinese symbol of In/Yang illustrates the intertwined nature of these dualities and that even in the greatest light there is a spot of darkness and vice versa.

We tend to be reactive by nature. Something occurs and we immediately capture the vibration and respond to it. Thus we have outbursts of anger when we are frustrated or feel insecure, or when something gets in the way of some idea, intention or movement we want to undertake. An example of this type of instantaneous reactivity is the phenomenon of ‘road rage’. Perhaps someone is driving too slowly, or cuts in front. There is a reaction of anger and in some cases, this manifests as a confrontation and a beating, a fight or even an attempted murder.

We think and plan and harbor expectations as if we are the sole arbiter of what happens in our lives. We then judge the results from the standpoint of our ideal expectations and express either dismay or disappointment that what we hoped for has not come to pass. What we frequently fail to take into account is the interactive and complex nature of the world within which we live and act. There is a play of forces that adjusts, modifies and reacts to the energy we express, and in many cases, we find that those forces defect our intention into another direction entirely.

We tend to evaluate events or circumstances based on their relation to our personal identification with the exte al ego-personality, and our prevalent idea about ourselves at that point in time. In retrospect, we frequently find that those things which we considered to be ‘bad’ were actually the starting point of an entirely new development which turned out to be far better than what we anticipated at the time of the ‘bad’ event that interfered with our preconceived notions. For example, there was the case of a college student who excelled at his studies and had career goals in his mind.

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It is only in still waters that we can see our reflection. Swami Vivekananda in his lectures on Raja Yoga, describes the mind-stuff (chitta), and how impressions, desires, observations and thoughts all disturb the stillness of the mind-stuff. He also describes methods of bringing it to a status of stillness, in which the individual can step away from the call of the vital desire nature or the mental processes, and thus, be receptive to higher forces and levels of interfacing with the universal reality.

The most direct way to align oneself with the Divine Will is to treat the soul, the psychic being, as the standpoint from which the being takes its stance. This is not a mental analysis, a desire of the vital or a physical need or impulsion; rather it takes the form of an aspiration, a prayer, a consecration which recognises the Divine as the focus, driver and director of all one’s actions.

While a reaction may seem to be taking place instantaneously, it is always conditioned by prior acts or events, the chain of cause and effect, dependent origination or the law of karma, however one wants to term it. By adopting the standpoint of the witness consciousness, observing the exte al nature of the body-life-mind complex, one creates a space of distance that allows one to not be so absorbed in the motion that one cannot see the links and the antecedents.

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