Seeking and Attaining Mastery Over the Touches of Nature

Seekers throughout the ages have struggled with the issue of how to deal with the pressures and circumstances of the external world. They recognise the swing of emotions, feelings and thoughts that occur as they receive input from people and events. They recognise that sometimes this causes them to lose control and do things that are counter-productive, or which create enormous internal stresses and disturb the calm of the mind and emotions, the nervous and vital framework and even the operations of their physical bodies.

Sri Aurobindo describes three steps that can aid the seeker in gaining mastery over his internal reactions and responses. The first step is one which has been commonly employed, namely, to habituate the being to bear stronger and stronger touches as forces from outside create their pressure on the being. It is in the second step where Sri Aurobindo focuses on a method that, while not unknown to spiritual seekers in the past, has not been put into consistent practice. That is to create the separation of the witness consciousness and the active nature, the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, and to take the standpoint of the Purusha, observing but not intervening in the operations of the external Nature, which includes the mental, vital and physical elements of the being. The third step moves a step further and the Purusha exerts control over the external nature and changes the entire structure of reaction and response.

Apropos of this view, Sri Aurobindo has translated the following verses from chapter 4 of the Shwetashwatara Upanishad: “Two winged birds cling about a common tree, comrades, yoke-fellows; and one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not, but watches. The Soul upon a common tree is absorbed and because he is not lord, grieves and is bewildered; but when he sees and cleaves to that other who is the Lord, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him.”

Sri Aurobindo notes: “The soul which seeks mastery may begin by turning upon these reactions the encountering and opposing force of a strong and equal endurance. Instead of seeking to protect itself from or to shun and escape the unpleasant impacts it may confront them and teach itself to suffer and to bear them with perseverance, with fortitude, an increasing equanimity or an austere or calm acceptance. This attitude, this discipline brings out three results, three powers of the soul in relation to things. First, it is found that what was before unbearable, becomes easy to endure; the scale of the power that meets the impact rises in degree; it needs a greater and greater force of it or of its protracted incidence to cause trouble, pain, grief, aversion or any other of the notes in the gamut of the unpleasant reactions. Secondly, it is found that the conscious nature divides itself into two parts, one of the normal mental and emotional nature in which the customary reactions continue to take place, another of the higher will and reason which observes and is not troubled or affected by the passion of this lower nature, does not accept it as its own, does not approve, sanction or participate. Then the lower nature begins to lose the force and power of its reactions, to submit to the suggestions of calm and strength from the higher reason and will, and gradually that calm and strength take possession of the mental and emotional, even of the sensational, vital and physical being. This brings the third power and result, the power by this endurance and mastery, this separation and rejection of the lower nature, to get rid of the normal reactions and even, if we will, to remould all our modes of experience by the strength of the spirit. This method is applied not only to the unpleasant, but also to the pleasant reactions; the soul refuses to give itself up to or be carried away by them; it endures with calm the impacts which bring joy and pleasure; refuses to be excited by them and replaces the joy and eager seeking of the mind after pleasant things by the calm of the spirit. It can be applied too to the thought-mind in a calm reception of knowledge and of limitations of knowledge which refuses to be carried away by the fascination of this attractive or repelled by dislike for that unaccustomed or unpalatable thought-suggestion and waits on the Truth with a detached observation which allows it to grow on the strong, disinterested, mastering will and reason. Thus the soul becomes gradually equal to all things, master of itself, adequate to meet the world with a strong front in the mind and an undisturbed serenity of the spirit.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pp. 70-71