Will and Love
On the Path, progress depends on continuous acts of Will and Love. One advances because one has chosen, by a lucid and strong act of Will, to advance; one loves because it is now manifest that Love is the engine of the evolutionary process in this Universe, and therefore that of loving appears to be the only modality that makes sense.
Let us learn, then, to:
– educate the selfish, immature and habitual personality;
– submit the individual ego to the Good of the Group;
– make the field of our relationships an experiential laboratory of fraternal relations;
– identify ourselves with ever larger and impersonal realities;
– subordinate every other achievement to the fulfilment of the Plan.
We see the meaning of universal Service and finally understand the strong admonition of the Gospel, so far removed from the common emotional, personalistic and “familistic” feeling:
“If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14, 26).
The task of living as a disciple in the modern world seems to be more arduous than it might have been in past centuries when those who dedicated themselves “to the spirit” often retreated into isolation, or into monasteries and convents. The new aspirant-seeker lives between different planes: he begins to awaken to the Reality of Creation, which had hitherto been precluded to him by his own ignorance, and, at the same time, he experiences the reality of illusion, which he gradually learns to manage with new and more effective ways of creative thinking and forward-looking action.
In the East, the lotus plant represents a kind of synthesis of the human personality: the roots that go down into the mud represent the physical body, the stem that develops in the layer of water corresponds to the emotional body, the lotus flower symbolises the mental body. The flower opens to the Beauty and Harmony of Creation, getting air and light as its nourishment; when the leaves turn yellow and fall into the water, they enrich the silt that prepares the plant for a new blossoming.
Thus, in the natural rhythm of perpetual becoming, man rises from the mire of his material nature to the aerial regions of the spirit, evolving in Love and Beauty in successive expansions of consciousness.
It seems that new “initiatory trials” are proposed to those who intend to act “in the world”, but without being “of the world”: the chaos and stresses of everyday life; the impossibility of anchoring oneself to the “fixed points” of the past, since they are evidently inadequate to the new reality and the new feelings; overcoming values and ideologies that are now crystallised; abandoning dogmatic and fideistic religiosity; the need to “keep up” with ever new technological, economic and communication tools; the demand for continuous changes and/or reformulations of ideas, procedures, methodologies and ways of relating.
It is by feeding “the Fire” that the awakened ones will be able to “give birth to the New Era”:
“Verily, only he who is fortified by the armor of Agni can the more fully consummate his destiny. Agni must not be in a state of inaction. The element of fire is the most active, most speedy, and most spatial, and it is manifested in the midst of the tension of thought. Does not man preserve the planet by thought? The most precious substances are created by thought. Compare breadth of thought with insipidity. I attest that people can gather a treasure of thought, which, in rhythm with the Cosmos, will create the New Era. (Agni Yoga Series – Fiery World I § 514)
“Thy Will be done”
Only a few advanced individuals from every country and religious faith, having achieved a certain degree of freedom and decentralisation, contribute to the outcome of the battle humanity is fighting for eternal Freedom; their only prayer is “Thy Will be done”.
The progress of humanity depends, dramatically, on the consciousness of the few awakened individuals, who work for evolution, having realised that the reality we experience outside ourselves (economy, politics, society, spirituality) is but the reproduction of the collective inner state of mind:
“In archery we have something like the way of the wise man. When the archer misses the center of the target, he turns round and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself.” (Confucius)
The greatest problem for the seeker on the Path, whatever teaching he or she is referring to, is to bring the ideas down to the level of lived reality, to have them reflect their light in feelings and relationship life. In the practice of everyday life, we often pursue egoistic desires, petty concerns and personal anxieties, showing that we do not know how to follow the current of life with abandon, that we do not feel deep down that “Everything is for the Good”.
The disciple on the Path does not undertake anything for personal gain, does not betray what he has begun, and relies on Love:
Remember Paul’s teaching (in his First Letter to the Corinthians):
If I have all faith so as to move mountains… and if I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am nothing… I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.
Many are the stumbling blocks and ruinous falls, from which it is necessary, however, to get up again promptly to resume the journey, having grasped the lesson and the personal or group message.
We recall the sorrowful cry of the initiate Paul, who considers the aspects of his personality not yet transmuted:
“Lord why do I always do what I would not like to do and instead do not do what I should do?”
Tendencies to react according to inadequate patterns, die-hard predispositions, “compulsions to repeat”, lifestyles that reproduce scripts that have already been performed often go back to the past, in our current incarnation or previous ones. They recur punctually, until confronted and purified, and cause us to do “what we do not want”. Sometimes we manage to change them, sometimes it is necessary for Life to intervene with a dramatic shock that “knocks us out” and has the effect of accelerating or intensifying our contact with the soul.
This is until the human being is no longer a “prisoner of the planet”, i.e. dominated by ego and the pursuit of individual pleasure, and the Transfigured Man (that Aurobindo wished for), aware of his Destiny of Light, emerges.
“He (the Avatar) comes as a divine personality to fill the consciousness from the straits of the ego by opening it to the infinite and the universal, to release it from the obligation of birth and lead it to Being, to replace the egoistic and limited personality and to liberate it, to release it to immortality.” (Aurobindo, The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita)
The hope for all mankind lies in the success of aspirants and disciples, who catch a glimpse of the “far-off worlds” and aspire to the Infinite:
[…] The far-off worlds are our manifested path. The far-off worlds are our enlightenment. The far-off worlds are our vistas of the mighty vision of the Mother of the World. The human spirit seeking expansion finds the manifested far-off worlds. Let us say that the unattainable may become attainable and that privation may become wealth. (Agni Yoga Series – Infinity I § 61)
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Note: This article is published to coincide with the conjunction of Venus (5th Ray of concrete Mind and Knowledge) with Jupiter (2nd Ray of Love and Wisdom) in the sign of Taurus (4th Ray of Harmony through conflict)
