Summary: Explains that sadhana entails a continuous growth and exceeding. Teaches that if done without resistance the overcoming and therefore the sadhana becomes easy and joyful.

Sadhana is all about exceeding oneself at all levels, even so on a physical level. Working with the limits of your physicality you can exceed your physical capacity and so too spiritually. You can have an experience, a great experience so to speak, or even nirvâṇa, enlightenment – but is that the end? If you are satisfied with that you stay there; you stop with your first experience, your second experience or your third experience, whatever it may be. It feels good so you go no further or you do not have the capacity, will and the stamina to carry on. Then you have limited your capacity, your experience, your realisation and your growth.

Surely there is more to the Reality than what you find yourself comfortable with. You can increase yourself continuously. There can be no end to your capacities. One should not be so ready to stop at the first comfortable point or the first enjoyable experience. Of course to be comfortable is not a sin. Be comfortable but at the same time continue to grow, exceed. Do not be satisfied with the comfortable; rather increasingly, exceedingly, progressively be comfortable in any and every situation that comes upon you.

Pb.: Greater and greater comfort?

Yes, greater and greater capacity of comfort. If you approach life and sadhana in this way there would be no negativity at all, rather you feel happy, joyful, inspired and positive. Then you are comfortable even when you are exceeding for there would be no resistance. It is the resistance that makes you uncomfortable and resistance comes from limitations, self-imposed or otherwise. And resistance, when present, should be seen as a challenge and something to overcome and exceed for one’s own growth. So when you exceed you are overcoming, you are overcoming the guṇa of tamas. You are going beyond the guṇa. You are becoming the master of guṇa rather than being subordinate to the guṇa. That subordinate identification is the ego, the tamasic ego which makes you lethargic, resistant and reactive. You are not free in it, rather you are totally identified and lost to it. Then you have to exceed it by having the attitude – positive attitude – remembering that to master this is in your welfare. When you have understood this your understanding takes you beyond the resistant tamasic ego. It is of course an ongoing dynamic progression to be worked out over time through your life as sadhana and this is to be understood. When you have understood that, it is already a great positive change you make in yourself. Nothing can stop you from growing then because the one thing that stops you from growing is yourself, the way you look at yourself. This makes you look at yourself differently, in a new way, and makes you become more aware of yourself. What can you not do then?

This attitude is the right attitude to have. There is nothing impossible for you because you are with yourself, with your soul, the infinite – not only in terms of the timeless but even in terms of time, even in terms of your body. The body has the capacity for infinite transformation; your being in life has infinite capacity for infinite transformation. This is the secret elixir of Truth. It is in you – it is you.

You continue to limit yourself when you allow for the absoluteness of the resistance. But if you can have the fluidity of an open mind, an illuminating mind – that is the mind that is required, the mind of a real sadhak – then your progress is guaranteed. Nothing can stop such a one from growing. You are all the time increasing and then life becomes so much more joyful, the journey becomes joyful: the journey is ‘sunlit’ – as Aurobindo calls it – and you are the master of time, you are the master of life. It is no more an alien imposition from outside because you understand. Even if it seems an imposition from the outside, whether it is a situation, circumstance, or the Guide, you understand that it is in your welfare. Life is providing you an opportunity for growth. This is a positive way of looking at it. The choice and decision is yours, even of rest and relaxation, and thereby the developing of the intellect that sees the progression.

(Pb. justifies himself saying he has no time for Ashram works because he is leaving soon but simultaneously spends time reading magazines meant for the library)

(Responding to Pb.’s justification) But of course, I had to get C. to prise the magazines away from you because on one side there was the repeated entreating from you to P., “Oh, there is so much editing I need to do, so little time, I have to leave and so can I be exempted from charge and duties?”, while on the other I saw you grabbing all the magazines that were outside the kutir plus the ones brought here when no one was looking – of course I was looking, I am always looking, looking out for you guys, needless to say unnoticed by you in your unawareness! This is not the first time but a repeated exercise over all these years of our association even when we were down in our old section of the Ashram, as to how little time you always had when it came to any kind of shared duties. So to ensure you did not miss out at least on your favourite work of editing that night I made sure that C. went a second time and got those magazines out from you which you were concealing.

Pb.: With increasing capacities again decreasing sleep.

Strange that you lose sleep only when you do duties, not when you read magazines of little use to you or us, if any. Anyway at this age one does not get much sleep, it is known – with old age there is reduction of sleep. K. seems to be enjoying himself at your exposé.

Pb.: They all enjoy when the other is… it is human nature.

You mean… caught with his pants down… especially you!

Arya Vihar

13 Sep 2010