The Deeper Meaning of Will-Power

We speak generally about exercising will-power, particularly when it relates to overcoming an impulsion or attempting to achieve some particular result. We may want to overcome an addiction, or follow a particular diet and we struggle to carry out our resolve. We make ‘new year’s resolutions’ to create a form of will for the upcoming year, to somehow improve ourselves in some way from our current status. All of these involve making a substantial effort and in most cases, we wind up either failing, partially or wholly, or else, we wind up suppressing an impulse and eventually having to encounter it in a much more powerful form when it can no longer be contained. Sri Aurobindo describes this generally as “willings” not an act of “will”.

In the deepest sense, the ‘will’ is an expression of a truth of existence, the manifestation of that truth and knowledge into a form in a particular domain or world. It comes from the ultimate reality, which is termed Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence, Consciousness, Bliss. The will is associated with the aspect of consciousness and thus, Sri Aurobindo utilizes the term chit-shakti to show both the static and dynamic aspects of that truth. The Truth has the dynamic power of realization associated with it, automatically and completely, without straining or a failing effort as we see in our human attempts to enforce our will in the external world in some way.

Sri Aurobindo writes in his Thoughts and Glimpses: “When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper, Effort is the bar.”

The Mother elaborates: “And he contrasts these ‘willings’ — that is, all these superficial wills, often opposite and contradictory and without any lasting basis because they are founded on what he calls a ‘knowing’ and not on knowledge — with the true will. These willings are necessarily fragmentary, passing, and often in opposition to one another, and this is what gives to the individual life and even to the collective its nature of incoherence, inconsistency and confusion…. The word ‘will’ is normally reserved to indicate what comes from the deeper being or the higher reality and what expresses in action the true knowledge which Sri Aurobindo has contrasted with knowings. So, when this will which expresses the true knowledge manifests in action, it manifests through the intervention of a deep and direct power which no longer requires any effort. And that is why Sri Aurobindo says here that the true power for action cannot come until one has gone beyond the stage of willings, that is, until the motive of action is the result not of a mere mental activity but of true knowledge.”

“True knowledge acting in the outer being gives true power.”

“This seems to be an explanation, the real explanation of that very familiar saying which is not understood in its essence but expresses a truth: ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’, to will is to have the power. It is quite obvious that this does not refer to ‘willings’, that is, to the more or less incoherent expression of desires but to the true will expressing a true knowledge; for this true will carries in itself the force of truth which gives power — an invincible power. And so, when one expresses ‘willings’, to be able to apply them in life and make them effective, some effort must come in — it is through personal effort that one progresses, and it is through effort that one imposes one’s willings upon life to make it yield to their demands — but when they are no longer willings, when it is the true will expressing the true knowledge, effort is no longer required, for the power is omnipotent.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter V Will-Power, pp. 47-48