When we work in the external world, whether it is to study, to follow up a line of development of some sort, to train the body for athletic endeavours, to strengthen and refine the mind to undertake serious development of the powers of Reason and intuition, etc., we do so with some expectation of a result or benefit. It may be some form of inner satisfaction of accomplishment, or it may be fame, or fortune or acclamation of some sort. It may that the form of a benefit to family, friends, community, our religion, or our country. Whatever the ostensible reason is, we expect to see some result, some benefit for whatever effort of hard work and intensity of focus we put into the process. Sometimes this takes years of dedication.
So it must be asked as to the result and benefit that can be expected by an individual for undertaking the long, arduous and, in many cases, frustrating task of unification of all the parts of the being and their modes of action around the spiritual purpose and the soul’s focus. The results in many cases are subtle, not as visible and immediate as those provided by efforts made in the external life for benefit of the body, the life-force or the mind.
The Mother provides the answer in the form of achieving self-mastery and the potential to transform the consciousness and achieve greater illumination; in other words, to participate consciously in the evolutionary development of consciousness on the planet and to obtain the knowledge, power and ananda, bliss, that comes with the growth of consciousness.
Seekers find that as they leave behind the transitory aims and variable results of the external life, with its successes and failures, joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, and turn their attention to the immutable and eternal values that represent the spiritual consciousness in its action, they are more than compensated for the shift of their focus to the spiritual and away from the ephemeral.
The Mother writes: “This unification is indispensable if one wants to be the master of one’s being and of all its actions.”
“It is a long and meticulous work that requires much perseverance, but the result is worth the trouble, for it brings not only mastery but also the possibility of the transformation and illumination of the consciousness.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 5, Organisation, Harmonisation, Unification, pg. 135
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 18 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.