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Sincerity THE first condition of the spiritual life and the
last condition as well, is sincerity. One must sincerely want the spiritual
life in order to have it. The soul – the psychic being – is always sincere: it
is made of the very stuff of sincerity, for it is a part, or a spark of the
Divine Consciousness itself. When one feels the call, turns one's back to the
worldly life, moves towards the life spiritual, one follows then the urge of
one's true being, the psychic being: one is then naturally sincere, firmly and spontaneously
devoted to the Divine, unequivocally loyal and faithful to the Beloved and the
Master. This central sincerity, however, has
to be worked out in actual life. For, one may be true in the spirit, but false
– weak, that is to say – in the flesh. The light of the central being usually
finds its way first into the mind. One becomes then mentally sincere: in other
words, one has the idea, the thought that the Divine is the goal and nothing
else can or shall satisfy. With the light in the mind, one sees also in oneself
more and more the dark spots, the weaknesses, the obstacles – one becomes
conscious of one's feelings, discovers elements that have to be corrected or
purged. But this mental sincerity, this recognition in the understanding is not
enough: it remains mostly ineffective and barren with regard to life and
character. One appears at this stage to lead a double life: one knows and
understands, to some extent at least, but one is unable to act up even to that
much knowledge and understanding. It is only when the power of sincerity
descends still further and assumes a concreter form, when the vital becomes
sincere and' is converted, then the urge is there not only to see and
understand, but to do and achieve. Without the vital's sincerity, its will to
be transformed, one remains at best a witness, one has
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an inner perception of consciousness of the Divine, but in
actual living one lets the old ordinary nature to go its own way. It is the
sincerity in the vital,-its win to possess the Divine and the Divine alone, its
ardour to collaborate with the Divine that brings about the crucial, the most
dynamic change. Sadhana instead of being a mere mental occupation, an intellectual
pursuit, acquires the urgency of living and doing and achieving. Finally, the
vital sincerity, when it reaches its climax, calls for the ultimate sincerity –
sincerity in the body. When the body consciousness becomes sincere then we
cannot but be and act as decided and guided by the divine consciousness; we
live and move and have our being wholly in the divine manner. Then what the
inmost being, the psychic, envisages in the divine light, the body inevitably
and automatically executes. There is no gap between the two. The spirit and the
flesh – soul and body – are soldered, fused together in one single compact
entity. One starts with the central sincerity in the psychic being and progress
of sadhana means the extension of this sincerity gradually to all the outlying
parts and levels of the being till, when the body is reached, the whole
consciousness becomes, as it were, a massive pyramid of loyalty.
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