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Psychological Perfection THERE
is a flower to which we have given this name. It is the familiar Champa. The
flower has five petals. Each petal represents a quality or movement of
consciousness, the five qualities or movements making up the psychological
perfection. In the beginning I named them-(l) Surrender, (2) Sincerity, (3)
Faith, (4) Devotion and (5) Aspiration. Of course the meaning can be changed.
In fact, when I give the flower to someone, I do not always mean the same
qualities. I change according to the need of the person and at the moment.
However, we can have all the same a general scheme. In any case, in all combinations
and to whomsoever I may give, the first among the qualities is and must always
be Sincerity. For, if sincerity is not there, one cannot move even half
a step. So sincerity is the first thing necessary and should be always there. This
can be translated by another word, if you like. That would be transparence. Let
me explain. When
someone comes to me and I look at him, I look into his eyes, straight into his
eyes. If the person is sincere, that is to say, transparent, I enter
into him through his eyes and I see his soul clearly. But when I look and see
in the eyes a cloud, and then a screen or continuing farther I meet a wall or
something very black and when I find I have to pass through all that and drill
holes at places to go through, even so at the last minute I am not sure if I do
not stand against a bronze wall that refuses all entry, then in such cases I do
not find the soul and the person I can declare to be not sincere. Literally,
such a person is not transparent. So, then, this is the first thing. The next item which is also obviously necessary for all progress is Faith. There is also another word for it which although seemingly limited, possesses for me at least a greater importance;
Page – 48 I
mean, trust. If your faith is not made of a complete trust in the Divine or if
you begin to lose the trust, then you gradually lose faith in the Divine Power
or in the Divine Goodness or in the trust that the Divine has in you. These
are the three great stumbling-blocks. It
happens at times, if not quite often, that starting with a faith which you
describe unshakable, the faith that the Divine alone does everything and can do
everything, that whatever occurs in me or in others, everywhere, is the work of
the Divine and of none other than the Divine and you continue to the logical
end, apparently at least, till after a time you begin to accuse the Divine of
the most frightful misdeeds, make him a veritable demon being the author or
abettor of all the evils in the world. Or
you say, you have faith in the Divine, but as to this world, you know what it
is and you put no trust in it. You say: "In the first instance, I suffer
much, I am unlucky, much more unlucky than any other person"–one is always
more miserable than one's neighbour, be sure "life has been unkind to me.
Now, if the Divine is divine, all kindness, all generosity, all love and
harmony, how is it that I am so unfortunate? The Divine must then be powerless.
Otherwise, how can he leave me in unhappiness, if he is so kind?" That is
the second stumbling-block. The third one is this. There are people who are too
modest, full of an excessive and misguided humility, who say: "Surely the
Divine has rejected me, I am good for nothing, He can do nothing with me, it is
better for me to give it all up." Such difficulties will always crop up,
if along with faith you do not have complete trust in the Divine. Next in the series comes Devotion. Certainly,
devotion is very good; but here too, unless it is accompanied with many other
things, it can lead you into much error. For with devotion one keeps one's ego
also. Out of devotion you may behave most egoistically. You think of your
devotion, only of your devotion, that is to say, you think of yourself alone,
you do not think of others, of the world, of the work that you do and ought to
do you become formidably egoistic. And when you see that the Divine, for some
reason or other, does not respond to your devotion with an enthusiasm you
expect of him, you despair and fall into one or all of the three difficulties I
spoke of just now. Either the Divine must be cruel–we know of devotees who
Page – 49 throw all
their anger upon the Divine, accusing him of neglect and cruelty; or then they
think, "I must have made a grave, blunder, I am hopeless in his eyes and I
am rejected." Now,
there is a movement which one can have and constantly along with devotion, as
complementary to it – a sense of gratitude, that the Divine exists and one
feels a kind of gratefulness, born of wonder, which fills you truly with a
sublime joy; the very fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in
the universe which is the Divine, that it is not merely a monstrosity that we
see here below, brings a flow of unspeakable gladness in you. Every time the least
thing puts you in contact with this sublime reality of the Divine's existence,
whether directly or indirectly, your heart is filled with a feeling so intense,
so marvellous, the feeling precisely of a profound gratitude which has of all
things the sweetest savour, that no other joy can bring. So I say devotion by
itself is incomplete, it must have gratitude as its companion. We
come to the next term. I spoke to you once of courage; I said courage means the
taste for adventure, the supreme adventure. This taste for the supreme
adventure is Aspiration – aspiration that seizes you wholly and throws
you without calculation or reserve, without the possibility of withdrawal, into
the great adventure of the discovery of the Divine, the great adventure of meeting
the Divine and the still greater adventure of realising the Divine. It means
plunging into an unknown venture without looking backward, without asking even
for a moment what is going to happen – for if you ask where you are going to
fall, you never start, you remain fixed where you are, both your feet firmly
rooted on the spot, fearing lest you lose your balance. That is why I call the
thing courage. But truly it is aspiration. The two go together. True aspiration
is something full of courage. We have till now, then, four elements. The
fifth one I wish to add is Endurance. For, if you are not capable of
facing your difficulties without getting disheartened, without abandoning your
effort because it is too difficult, and if you are not able to bear blows,
pocket them and go on never minding – for the blows come because of your faults
and mistakes – you cannot go very far: at the first turning where you lose
sight of your petty habitual life, you despair and give up the game.
Page – 50 Endurance
in its physical expression is perseverance. That is to say, you must be
prepared to do a thousand times, if necessary, the same thing over and over
again. You take a step forward, you think you are firmly placed; but there
will always crop up something or other which brings back the old difficulty.
You think you have solved the problem, you will have to solve it again: it will
come in a slightly different form, but it is the same problem. You must be
ready to face the problem, go through the same difficulties a million times.
That is how you are sure to arrive at the goal. We have left out one very important factor
– Surrender. Now Sri Aurobindo says that surrender is the first and
absolute condition for doing Yoga. Without it there is no Yoga. So we can say
that it is not one of the qualities required, but that it is the primary
indispensable attitude for one to be able to begin Yoga. If you have not
decided to surrender you cannot start on the path. But to make this surrender
total and complete all the Five that we have enumerated are needed. This is
then what I propose. We put Surrender on the top, at the head; for to do the
integral Yoga, one must first of all take the resolution to surrender entirely
to the Divine, there is no other way that is the one way. Afterwards, one must
have the five psychological perfections.
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