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Process of Purification
THERE
are three well-marked stages in the process of the purification of
nature and surrender to the Divine. When one has made up one's mind
finally to take to the path of spiritual life and to turn one's back
on the life of ignorant nature, one enters at the outset into a
phase of divided consciousness and life. It is the stage when one
cries, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." One
feels an inner aspiration and devotion and even freedom and purity
and wider consciousness, but actually in the practical world, he
follows the old nature, acts under the pressure of Ignorance and the
Ripus. You are a mundane man with profane habits – and yet within,
when aloof, you are in contact with the deeper and larger breath of
the Spirit. The next stage is one of external control and of
modification of behaviour. You have the inner consciousness of the
spirit grown strong in you and you are no longer a helpless prey to
the physical outbursts of inferior nature: a kind of brake has been
put upon the outgoing passions. Still at this stage the surges of
passion are there within, inside the wall of control, as it were. The
pressure and demand of the Spirit has brought about a deadlock in the
ignorant movements of the outer nature, although the physico-vital
and vital support behind has not been wholly purified and continues
in its old way, expressing itself in veiled and sublimated acts and
in dreams and imaginations. The vital support even when it does not
express itself in grosser physical movements, even when it is
self-contained, yet maintains its old taste for them. Finally,
when this taste even goes away (that is the suggestion in the
beautiful and luminous phrase of the Gita, rasavaljam), then
only one rises into the integral and unadulterated life of the
Spirit. Till that final consummation happens, the period of
interregnum is a great
Page – 371 occasion for training and experience. It is of considerable interest also from the standpoint of occult knowledge. There are two types – which mean two stages – of control. You can control your nature by the force of your will, as one does a wicked horse by means of the toothed bit. But this control is precarious and the clearing or purification effected is only skin-deep. At the slightest weakening of the will or a momentary lack of vigilance, you may find yourself in the very midst of a volcanic eruption of passions. Even otherwise, even if there happens no external outburst, the burden or pressure of t4e ignorant nature is always there and the struggle or tension, although thrown into the background, obstructs the nature, does not give it the free and spontaneous higher poise of the spirit. The other control comes from the inmost being, from the spiritual self itself: it is automatic and it is occult in its action and therefore naturally effective. When the Spirit, the Inner Control (AntaryÄmi) works, it happens that even if the desires are there, the occasions for their satisfaction are withdrawn from you. As the Mother says, some people who are destined for the spiritual life lose all earthly props whenever they wish to lean upon them, they lose their endeared objects whenever they are eager to cherish them. At a certain stage of the growth
of the inner consciousness, the demand of the soul makes it
impossible for the vital (or physico-vital), so far as it is
unpurified and unprepared, to secure its objects: even if the lips
yearn, the cup is taken away. The circumstances themselves yield to
the pressure of the inner being and conspire, as it were, to withhold
and remove all dangerous contacts. The being has not to say, "Lead
me not into temptation", for the temptations by themselves slip
away. That is the earlier poise of the interregnum we are describing;
the next poise comes when the wish-impulses, the subjective
vibrations also melt and disappear. Then there appear no such things
as temptations. Objects, events, circumstances that might have acted
in that role come and go, but the being remains indifferent and
unruffled, because suffused with the delight of another contact. The
detachment from the worldly is secure and absolute because the being
has found its attachment to the Divine. That is the beginning of the
integral spiritualisation of the nature. Page – 372
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