Time Perspective on Achieving Spiritual Realisations and Change of Human Nature

Life is so short! When one wants to accomplish something extraordinary or difficult, it takes considerable time and focus. If we reflect however, that the first 16 years or more are formative years and are focused on physical growth, development of vital powers of action, and cultivating the inherent mental powers of the human being (if the individual is not held back by factors such as disasters, wars, famine, mass migration, hunger, etc. of course). Then comes a period of what we may call peak productivity, the active adult life of the individual which spans from mid- to late-teenage years until an individual reaches his 5th or 6th decade of life. It is during this time that most people get a higher education, raise a family, undertake a career, and carry out their various interests and pursuits, while the body remains relatively capable of supporting the activity. Those who have various setbacks, chronic diseases or accidents of course have a different set of criteria to deal with). Then we enter into a period of senior or elder existence and face more physical difficulties as the body begins to break down, in many cases the vitality and the mental function may begin to decline, offset (hopefully) by the wisdom gained through the life-span.

Many people leave their spiritual focus until they have had a successful adult life. The tradition of departing for the forest after giving up one’s earthly acquisitions and leaving behind family, friends and acquaintances is of long-standing in India, and it speaks to a quite normal turning of the thought towards the deeper significance of life.

If we view all of these periods or stages from the point of view of achieving true liberation or undertaking a change in human nature, we have to look at the fact that this lifetime is short, ephemeral and filled with both obstacles and life-activities that interfere with the focus on such liberation.

If we shift our standpoint back and outwards for a moment, it becomes clear that true and lasting change does not take place within the framework generally of a single lifetime; rather, we see earth-changes taking place over millions of years, vital changes over hundreds of thousands of years, and changes in human life taking place across millennia. Such a time frame defeats our ambitious (rajasic) nature which wants to get instant gratification. Yet no matter how hard we push, we find that the very act of pushing is itself an obstacle as it raises up rajasic impatience, frustration, anger and when it recedes, depression and tamasic resignation.

When asked about the time it would take for the supramental transformation, Sri Aurobindo spoke of multiple hundred years. This represents, through the conscious participation in the yogic process, a tremendous speeding up of the type of evolutionary change that would ordinarily take many thousands of years, yet it speaks to a time period well beyond our limited single human life span. It is the psychic being, as it grows and accumulates experience and moves through time, that participates in the universal development of the evolution of consciousness. It is the contact with the soul and its oneness with the Divine that provides the seeker with the needed patience and persistence to participate without falling into either rajasic, aggressive desire or tamasic despair.

A disciple inquires: “Sweet Mother, is identification with the psychic the same thing as the psychic coming in front?”

The Mother responds: “That is, the first step is the identification, and then, once you can keep this identification, the psychic governs the rest of the nature and life. It becomes the master of existence. So this is what we mean by the psychic coming in front. It is that which governs, directs, even organises the life, organises the consciousness, the different parts of the being. When this happens, the work goes very fast. Very fast, well… relatively very fast.”

“In the human consciousness everything is very slow. When we compare the time that is necessary to realise something with the average length of human existence, it seems interminable. But happily there comes a time when one escapes from this notion, when one begins to feel no longer according to human measures. As soon as one is truly in touch with the psychic, one loses this kind of narrowness and of agony also, this agony which is so bad: ‘I must be quick, I must be quick, there is not much time, I must hurry, there is not much time.’ One does things very badly or doesn’t do them at all any more. But as soon as there is a contact with the psychic, then indeed this disappears; one begins to be a littl emore vast and calm and peaceful, and to live in eternity.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 97-98