Religious, Mechanical and Psychological Methods of Inner Development

When an individual awakens to the inner need for significance and meaning in life, he generally takes up one or more methods to try to understand the purpose of his life. Religious worship and belief systems tend to be quite external in their nature, trying to find a relationship between the individual and a separate powerful deity, a creator. Efforts are made to please this deity and the concepts of heaven and hell represent a system of reward and punishment to signify the success of the individual in pleasing God. Religious practices tend to accept a duality of creator and created, separate and thus, forever different with a gap that cannot be eliminated between them.

There are of course those individuals who, while living within the social framework of a religion, nevertheless have a deeper calling and who undertake various forms of psychological methods in order to understand their deeper truth. In this instance, however, despite the trappings of religion, they should be considered practitioners of the psychological methods.

It has long been recognised that specific actions upon the outer physical body, vital and nervous force and the mind can elicit an altered state of consciousness, whereby one can obtain realisations not easily experienced in the normal functions of life. Thus we see the use of the vision quest, fasting, various techniques of pranayama, tratak (concentrated gazing on a single point of light), or in some cases use of various drugs, to shift the awareness away from the surface being. These methods are what the Mother calls ‘mechanical’.

We come then to the psychological methods which seek to take the individual inward to explore and understand the workings of the mind, the vital energy and the physical being, and harness their powers to achieve spiritual realisations. Terms used in the psychological methodology include aspiration and surrender, which is the attenuation of the ego-personality and unification of the outer surface being with the deepest inner being, the soul, and a shifting of the awareness and source of action to the Divine. Psychological methods tend to recognise a state of Oneness which, when realised, brings the individual into coherence and harmony with the Divine Consciousness. By its very nature, the psychological methods bring to the seeker’s awareness, over time, the numerous inconsistencies, weaknesses and obstacles put up by and through the ego-personality and the vital nature which need to be resolved.

The Mother notes: “What is the difference between mechanical, religious and psychological methods? Religious methods are those adopted by the various religions. Not many religions speak of the inner Truth; for them, it is more a matter of coming into contact with their God. Heaven and hell: this is a roundabout way of saying…” (n.b. words missing in the transcription)

“Psychological methods are those that deal with states of consciousness, that try to realise the inner self by withdrawing from all activity and attempting to create the conscious inner conditions of detachment, self-abstraction, concentration, higher Reality, renunciation of all the outer movements, etc. A psychological method is one which acts on the thoughts, feelings and actions.”

“Mechanical methods are those which are based on purely mechanical means — one can benefit from them by using them in a certain way. Take breath-control, for example: it acts more or less mechanically, but it is sometimes recommended to add to this a concentration of one’s thought, to repeat a word, as in Vivekananda’s teaching. This works up to a certain point, but then it fades away. These human attempts in various times and places have been more or less successful individually but they have never given a collective result.”

“The psychological method is far more difficult but far more effective: through your actions, to be in a state of inner will to express nothing in yourself but the Truth of your being, and to make everything dependent on that Truth. Of course, if you do nothing, it is easier, but it is also easier to deceive yourself. When you sit down in isolation, in complete silence and far away from everybody, and examine yourself with more or less indulgent eyes, you may imagine that you are realising something wonderful. But when you are put to the test at every minute of your life, when you have the occasion to become aware of your imperfections, your infirmities, your little movements of bad will a hundred times a day, you soon lose the illusion of being … (n.b. words missing in the transcription) and so your efforts are more sincere.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter V Growth of Consciousness, Means and Methods, pp. 83-84