Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Triple Transformation - Track 1002

Questions & Answers – Family Life-Spiritual Life

Question: How do we silence those thoughts which we know are detrimental to our spiritual progress? The responsibilities of a family are very demanding and time consuming. For true spiritual growth there has to be single mindedness. How do I go about it?

There are three things to be done simultaneously. First of all you spoke of the responsibilities. Each responsibility has a meaning and has a connection with your soul. So if you undertake any responsibility as a plan of the discovery of the soul, as a discovery of God's will then every activity that you do in discharge of responsibilities will give you an inner quietude. From action you go to quietude. The other is, from quietude you go to action. You must find some time every day, when you are really by yourself after the discharge of all your responsibilities, when you can really go within yourself. When you go within yourself, as you say many ideas come, many emotions come and then is the whole scenario of life before you, which becomes more visible, even more active, exactly when you are trying to withdraw yourself from it. Then you discover which is the most dominant at that given moment, out of all the scenarios that are presented. In that dominant domain you will find one of the three problems or all the three of them.

One is the need of clarity of thought with regard to some problem or the other. The second problem that you will find is a certain weakness of emotion which needs to be corrected. The third problem you will find is some kind of imperfection in the discharge of some responsibilities. These are the three deficiencies that you will discover in regard to a dominant domain that is uppermost at that given moment.

If it is a question of clarity of thought, whatever thought is present in your mind at present which is guiding you in action, you can present it to a higher light in you and allow the higher light to radiate itself without your bringing up any thought. Either the thought becomes clearer at that time or in due course of time that deficiency of thought, unclarity of thought will become clearer. This is the method of throwing light from above. If there is a deficiency of emotion, then in intensifying the inner sense of sympathy with everybody, look at the whole world with sympathetic eyes. This is one of the Vedic methods, to develop the eyes of a friend and look at the whole world with friendly eyes and when you look at the world with friendly eyes our deficiencies of emotions begin to become strengthened and we come out much more purified. If there is a deficiency in activities, then you need to have a programme of chiselling. We know that when a diamond is cut and chiseled it becomes very bright.  Chiselling is often done by will, but before doing, there must be a will to do it. So when you are alone in a state of looking at yourself you take a resolution that this is the point which requires chiselling and you will do it while performing the action.

This is the threefold method: to place your obscurity of thought under a light, to look at the whole world with friendly eyes, and the resolution to chisel your activities or capacities of action. Normally these processes in regard to each one requires at least several repetitions. So one is to be patient, but you will see that as you begin to grow and develop, an inner mastery will begin to awaken. In fact these three processes are the processes of three yogas. The first is Jnana yoga, the second is Bhakti yoga and the third is Karma yoga. But these three processes are the basic processes: to put an obscurity in the search light of a higher luminosity, to put every emotion under the x-ray of the friendly eyes and put every deficiency of action under the hammer of chiselling action – these three processes – and you repeat them again and again and again. In fact these three processes are the best methods of entering into the process of triple transformation.

Question: What is to be done to bring about the purification of a psychic change? There are so many forces acting upon it that it does not come out so pure by the time it reaches the surface?

I think what you need to do is to take off one or two days, but exclusively. I do not know whether you have the chance of doing it or not but take off one or two days, walk in a beautiful garden, very slowly and leisurely, on and on, without any anxiety of what is to be done, what is not to be done; or if you have still anxiety, first finish whatever you are anxious about and then go for this walk so that nothing is calling you back, you are really in a state of complete leisure and then imagine that you are walking into a cave where there is nothing to be afraid about, it is a safe cave but it is a cave. Continue this until you are tired and you want to rest, sit on a bench or wherever, if you are hungry take your food if you have got it with you. If you feel like lying down, do so; when you are rested, again repeat the same exercise. After some time you will really feel extremely light, then you sit down very quietly and in that state, concentrate upon the heart, on the solar plexus and imagine that you are walking into a cave, there you were actually walking, here you are entering into a cave, and on, and on, remembering that your psychic being is not merely one inch deep but fathoms deep, it is very, very far in the depths and as you will go on moving towards these depths you will feel the touch, a vibration of sweetness or a vibration of happiness if not sweetness; or you will hear something very deep coming from within you, it may not be a sound but you will have something prompting you, sometimes it comes in the form of a command which opens up the path of the next stage of your development; or else you will feel a presence, a great presence, effortlessly without imagining and in that presence you seem to be a small little figure in the background of a huge presence, a sense of devotion, or surrender will automatically surge up in that situation; and thirdly you will feel as if the knots of the mind are loosened. Various emotions are purified. Even the body feels some thrill or also purified. This is the condition in which the purity of the soul comes straight on the surface without obstruction. If you repeat this even over a month you will see how much exalted you will be.