People commonly believe that espousing a particular religion or religious doctrine, reading scriptural texts, singing devotional songs, practicing yoga, or meditation or any of the numerous other practices often called ‘spiritual’ makes them spiritual. While these practices may help to turn their minds, their hearts, their life energy and even their bodies towards spiritual realisation, they do not, in and of themselves, constitute ‘living in the spirit’ or as the Mother puts it, ‘being born into the spirit.’
In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna a related question, how to recognise the realised man: “What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” [Bhagavad Gita, Ch. 2, V. 54, translated by Sri Aurobindo in Bhagavad Gita and Its Message]
Sri Krishna’s response makes it clear that none of the outward acts of the individual are relevant to the question of the inward realisation of the individual. The true sign, as Sri Aurobindo explains in his comment on this verse is “No such signs can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective.”
Being born into the spirit, then, is not something one can declare by simply espousing a specific doctrine or marching under the banner of some religion or other. It is not something that comes automatically by any of the practices generally attributed to the spiritual life. It is a transformation of the consciousness such that the individual lives in an atmosphere of oneness with the entire creation, breathes in the awareness of the spirit and moves under its impulsion. At that point, the spirit rules ones life and actions, one becomes liberated from attachment to the desires and fulfillments of the ego-personality and acts under the direction and force of the spiritual purpose in the manifested universe.
The Mother observes: “For the moment the spirit plays the part of a helper and guide, but it is not the all-powerful master of the material manifestation; when the Supermind is organised into a new world, the spirit will become the master and govern Nature in a clear and visible way.”
“What is called ‘new birth’ is the birth into the spiritual life, the spiritual consciousness; it is to carry in oneself something of the spirit which, individually, through the soul, can begin to rule the life and be the master of existence. But in the supramental world, the spirit will be the master of this entire world and all its manifestations, all its expressions, consciously, spontaneously, naturally.”
“In the individual existence, that is what makes all the difference; so long as one just speaks of the spirit and it is something one has read about, whose existence one vaguely knows about, but not a very concrete reality for the consciousness, this means that one is not born into the spirit. And when one is born into the spirit, it becomes something much more concrete, much more living, much more real, much more tangible than the whole material world. And this is what makes the essential difference between beings. When that becomes spontaneously real — the true, concrete existence, the atmosphere one can freely breathe — then one knows one has crossed over to the other side. But so long as it is something rather vague and hazy — you have heard about it, you know that it exists, but… it has no concrete reality — well, this means that the new birth has not yet taken place. As long as you tell yourself, ‘Yes, this I can see, this I can touch, the pain I suffer from, the hunger that torments me, the sleep that makes me feel heavy, this is real, this is concrete…’ (Mother laughs), that means you have not yet crossed over to the other side, you are not born into the spirit.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XXII Spirit, pp[. 164-165
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast located at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky
He is author of 20 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.
Video presentations, interviews and podcast episodes are all available on the YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@santoshkrinsky871
More information about Sri Aurobindo can be found at www.aurobindo.net
The US editions and links to e-book editions of Sri Aurobindo’s writings can be found at Lotus Press www.lotuspress.com
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