The Mother identifies a distinction between those of goodwill who are ‘unconscious’ instruments of the Divine, and those who can and do become ‘conscious’ instruments of the Divine. Those with good will and aspiration may be guided or impelled to undertake actions which support the divine intention in the manifestation. If they are not fully conscious instruments, however, they will tend to have limiting or contrary movements that partially deflect the true and powerful direction intention. The more conscious the individual becomes, the more capability he has to channel the intended force with the least resistance or deflection or diminished result, through ensuring that all the elements of the being are actively able to support and amplify the divine intention. There are many forces that shape the action, including past historical or even genetic elements, educational factors, family, community, national or religious influences, all of which have an impact on the final result. As the conscious individual takes up a review of these factors, he can begin to mitigate their influence and ensure that the ‘signal’ becomes stronger in relation to the ‘noise’ of all of these obstructive elements.
The Mother notes: “It seems to me impossible to escape from this necessity [organisation of the being around the psychic] if one wants to be and is to be a conscious instrument of the divine Force. You may be moved, pushed into action and used as unconscious instruments by the divine Force, if you have a minimum of goodwill and sincerity. But to become a conscious instrument, capable of identification and conscious, willed movements, you must have this inner organisation; otherwise you will always be running into a chaos somewhere, a confusion somewhere or an obscurity, an unconsciousness somewhere. And naturally your action, even though guided exclusively by the Divine, will not have the perfection of expression it has when one has acquired a conscious organisation around this divine Centre.”
“It is an assiduous task, which may be done at any time and under any circumstances, for you carry within yourself all the elements of the problem. You don’t need anything from outside, no outer aid to do this work. But it requires great perseverance, a sort of tenacity, for very often it happens that there are bad ‘creases’ in the being, habits — which come from all sorts of causes, which may come from atavistic malformation or also from education or from the environment you have lived in or from many other causes. And these bad creases you try to smooth out, but they wrinkle up again. And then you must begin the work over again, often, many, many, many a time, without getting discouraged, before the final result is obtained. But nothing and nobody can prevent you from doing it, nor any circumstance. For you carry within yourself the problem and the solution.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 5, Organisation, Harmonisation, Unification, pp. 140-141
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 19 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.