The Spiritual Seeker and the Material World

One of the habits that has built up over many millennia among spiritual practitioners is the ingrained idea that Matter and Spirit are essentially irreconcilable and that in order to pursue the spiritual life one must be willing to give up and abandon the material life. Material life and a focus on it is seen as a distraction from the one-pointed effort needed to achieve spiritual liberation. The focus has been placed on the concept “One without a second”, to illustrate the need for focus. And it is true that if a spiritual seeker is fixated on the external, material world, its objects and opportunities, as a goal or objective in and of itself, it is difficult, if not impossible to make progress in the spiritual quest.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, recognising this need, at the same time have set before us a different objective and a different means of realisation. They add to the concept of “One without a second”, the other great dictum of the ancient sages, “All this is the Brahman.” Their objective is to bring about the liberation of the consciousness from the boundaries set by the body-life-mind complex, not for escape, but to aid in the transformation of life through the infusion of the spiritual consciousness into the very depths of Matter and the material consciousness.

In their view, action in the world and interaction with other beings and the very material substance is not to be abandoned; rather, the action is to be infused with spiritual force so that Matter can take on the spiritual energy and radiate it. In his epic poem Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, Sri Aurobindo makes this clear when he states: “… And Matter shall reveal the Spirit’s face”.

It is from this standpoint that Sri Aurobindo takes up our way of handling material things. Without becoming lost in the material world, we can bring down the spiritual consciousness and treat Matter as One with the Spirit, treat it as the manifestation of Consciousness that it is, respect it and act in relation to material objects so as to aid in their transformation and transfiguration as visible expressions of the Spirit.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “It is very true that physical things have a consciousness within them which feels and responds to care and is sensitive to careless touch and rough handling. To know or feel that and learn to be careful of them is a great progress of consciousness.”

“The rough handling and careless breaking or waste and misuse of physical things is a denial of the yogic consciousness and a great hindrance to the bringing down of the Divine Truth to the material plane.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 3, Action and Work, pp. 68-69