Signs of Entering the Spiritual Path

Most children focus on their need for food, emotional comfort and play, which is a means of gaining knowledge and power of action for them. As they move into later stages of life, they can get fixated on attaining good grades in school, making friends, hobbies and sports. As they reach puberty, thoughts and focus may turn to relations with the opposite sex, along with determining an academic or a career path. Then comes generally a time in life when an individual may be focused on career, a home, accumulation of weatlh, and family life. Some wind up seeking after power or influence. Some devote themselves to careers of compassion, in the fields of healing or charitable work of some sort. Some devote themselves to science, or religion, or learning various advanced disciplines. Some focus on sensual enjoyment of the basic experiences of life. This generally encompasses the vast majority of individuals. As long as they are fixated on these external matters of the body, the life and the mind, they do not tend to pay attention to the larger context within which they live their lives, the purpose, the ‘big picture’ so to speak. As per the proverb, ‘they cannot see the forest for the trees.’

At a certain point, something may intervene and change the nature and direction of their focus and attention. It may be a peak experience of some sort, it may be a tragedy that intervenes, it may be a natural and growing sense of dissatisfaction with the rewards offered by the world for their actions. One way or the other, they begin to recognise that all of these activities are transitory and ephemeral. It is at this stage that individuals begin to seek for, and refocus their attention on, their spiritual path.

A disciple asks: “When can one say that one has truly entered the spiritual path?”

The Mother answers: “The first sign (it is not the same for everybody) but in a chronological order, I believe is that everything else appears to you absolutely without importance. Your entire life, all your activities, all your movements continue, if circumstances so arrange things, but they all seem to you utterly unimportant, this is no longer the meaning of your existence. I believe this is the first sign.”

“There may be another, for example, the feeling that everything is different, of living differently, of a light in the mind which was not there before, of a peace in the heart which was not there before. That does make a change; but the positive change usually comes later, very rarely does it come at first except in a flash at the time of conversion when one has decided to take up the spiritual life. Sometimes, it begins like a great illumination, a deep joy enters into you; but generally, afterwards this goes into the background, for there are too many imperfections still persisting in you…. It is not disgust, it is not contempt, but everything appears to you so uninteresting that it is truly not worth the trouble of attending to it. For instance, when you are in the midst of certain physical conditions, pleasant or unpleasant (the two extremes meet), you say to yourself, ‘It was so important to me, all that? But it has no importance at all!’ You have the impression that you have truly turned over to the other side.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter II Awakening of Consciousness, pp. 27-28