Organizing One’s Life Around a Central Aspiration

One of the things that spiritual seekers experience is that regardless of how strong the central aspiration of the soul happens to be within them, they experience fluctuations based on the various parts of the external nature coming to the front and asserting their own priorities. This leads to a confused and unfocused life punctuated by periods of spiritual aspiration, times of consecration, and then, a fall back into the priorities set by the body, the life-energy and the mind and their relationship to the ego-personality that has been formed and the pressures and demands of the external life.

The Mother suggests that the solution of this situation is based in organising the entire life, step by step, around the soul’s aspiration and bringing the thoughts, the emotions, the vital responses and the very actions of the body into alignment with the direction of the soul.

A disciple inquires: “You say that it is necessary to establish ‘homogeneity in our being’?

The Mother notes: “Don’t you know what a homogeneous thing is, made up of all similar parts? That means the whole being must be under the same influence, same consciousness, same tendency, same will. We are formed of all kinds of different pieces. They become active one after another. According to the part that is active, one is quite another person, becomes almost another personality. For instance, one had an aspiration at first, felt that everything existed only for the Divine, then something happens, somebody comes along, one has to do something, and everything disappears. One tries to recall the experience, not even the memory of the experience remains. One is completely under another influence, one wonders how this could have happened. There are examples of double, triple, quadruple personalities, altogether unconscious of themselves…. But it is not about this I am speaking; I am speaking about something which has happened to all of you: you have had an experience, and for some time you have felt, understood that this experience was the only thing that was important, that had an absolute value — half an hour later you try to recall it, it is like a smoke that vanishes. The experience has disappeared. And yet half an hour ago it was there and so powerful…. It is because one is made of all kinds of different things. The body is like a bag with pebbles and pearls all mixed up, and it is only the bag which keeps all that together. This is not a homogeneous, uniform consciousness but a heterogeneous one.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 1, Our Manifold Being, pp. 7-8