Let Endurance Be Your Watchword in the Yogic Endeavour

Successful people, in whatever field, tend to highlight their ability to keep going. They indicate that no matter how many times one falls, one must get up, or in the local vernacular, ‘keep on keeping on’. Reactiveness, an inability to hold one’s peace under provocation, is considered to be a sign of vital weakness. People who have cultivated vital strength tend to be able to bear much without expressions of anger, without lashing out, without crying or otherwise evidencing signs of distress.

Many people have a habit of complaining, of whining, of expressing how much they have to put up with or how much suffering they are asked to bear. Some people make it a habit to flaunt their weakness with their constant bouts of anger and complaints about how they are a ‘victim’. Much energy is spilled and wasted. These individuals tend to break down easily under pressure.

Spiritual seekers, who are confronted with challenges, both external and internal, on a constant basis, are asked to cultivate not just a stoic ability to bear suffering, but to actually maintain a cheerful attitude of endurance, ‘come what may’. They are preparing the being to receive, bear and hold more energy and thereby to increase their capacity for the yogic force to enter and transform them. Yoga tends to increase the flow of energy and it is part of the seeker’s role to widen themselves and increase their ability to hold and use this energy without wasting it or spilling it.

The Mother observes: “Let endurance be your watchword: teach the lifeforce in you — your vital being — not to complain but to put up with all the conditions necessary for great achievement. The body is a very enduring servant, it bears the stress of circumstance tamely like a beast of burden. It is the vital being that is always grumbling and uneasy. The slavery and torture to which it subjects the physical is almost incalculable. How it twists and deforms the poor body to its own fads and fancies, irrationally demanding that everything should be shaped according to its whimsicality! But the very essence of endurance is that the vital should learn to give up its capricious likes and dislikes and preserve an equanimity in the midst of the most trying conditions. When you are treated roughly by somebody or you lack something which would relieve your discomfort, you must keep up cheerfully instead of letting yourself be disturbed. Let nothing ruffle you the least bit, and whenever the vital tends to air its petty grievances with pompous exaggeration just stop to consider how very happy you are, compared to so many in the world.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 140

Unflagging Perseverance and Persistence Is Required for the Practice of the Integral Yoga.

Athletes undergo extensive training routines, logging many thousands of hours with, in many cases, tough physical conditioning and practice, in order to achieve their goals for physical development and to be able to participate in a competitive sporting event. Many who are not athletes undertake training routines to modify their physical strength or endurance. Actors in many cases have to take serious programs to prepare for a particularly demanding role that requires physical toning, strengthening or conditioining of their bodies. In each case, the individual does not achieve the desired result overnight, but has to undergo in some cases daily training that can go on for weeks, months or years. To maintain the condtioning requires ongoing regular supportive activity.

Similarly, great artists have to hone their craft, just as do great scientists, mathematicians or others who develop powers of the vital being or the mind.

Some of the individuals who start on these paths give up due to the strenuous nature of what they are called to do, as in some cases, the training and focus consumes their lives and leaves them little freedom to explore other aspects of life. If they find it too difficult and give up, they simply move on into other areas of life and leave the dreams behind.

For the spiritual seeker it is not different. Some people have the notion that taking up spirituality means some kind of escape from the rigours and circumstances that they have to face. Yet anyone who has tried to achieve a quiet mind in meditation, or who has attempted to change some element of his physical, vital or mental being, soon finds out that it is not as easy as was imagined. For those who took up a spiritual life out of a sense of defeat and to avoid facing the difficulties of the external life, there are constant setbacks and some of these individuals, finding it too difficult, give up and go back to some less trying outer life activity. Others recognise that, while they may have sought an escape, there is no escape and they simply find a way to accept the trials and continue to push forward.

When we observe the hundreds of millions of years that life on earth has had to develop fixed habits and instinctive behaviour, it becomes clear why it may take some time and constant, persevering efforts, to effectuate a change! In fact, the individual setbacks are simply steps along the way as the seeker works out the necessary means to uplift some aspect of human nature. This involves a focus as intense, if not more intense, than anything that an athlete or some other individual striving to succeed in the external world, has to face, as one is then up against millions of years of habitual patterns that have to be deconstructed and modified.

The Mother writes: “… if you are not able to face difficulties without getting discouraged and without giving up, because it is too difficult; and if you are incapable… well, of receiving blows and yet continuing, of ‘pocketing’ them, as they say — when you receive blows as a result of your defects, of putting them in your pocket and continuing to go forward without flagging — you don’t go very far; at the first turning where you lose sight of your little habitual life, you fall into despair and give up the game.”

“The most… how shall I put it? the most material form of this [quality of endurance] is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if need be… You know, people come to me in despair, ‘But I thought it was done and now I must begin again!’ And if they are told, ‘But that’s nothing, you will probably have to begin again a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times; you take one step forward and think you are secure, but there will always be something to bring back the same difficulty a little farther on. You think you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again; it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be the same problem’, and if you are not determined that: ‘Even if it comes back a million times, I shall do it a million times, but I shall go through with it’, well, you won’t be able to do the yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.”

“People have a beautiful experience and say, ‘Ah, now this is it!…’ And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and blocks your way. And then you say, ‘Ah! what’s the good of having made this progress if it’s going to start all over again? Why should I do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it’s as if I had done nothing! It’s indeed hopeless.’ For you have no endurance.”

“If one has endurance, one says, ‘It’s all right. Good, I shall begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again — but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 138-139

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

The Three General Forms of Response to the Touches of Nature

Endurance can be trained and developed. There are entire philosophical programs that have developed to systematically help an individual face the pressures and circumstances of the world with a sense of equality and equanimity. Some of these disciplines rely on acclimating the body to handle increasing stress. One well-known escape artist from the 20th century used to immerse himself in a bathtub of ice in order to prepare his body for extremely cold water during his performances. Others do systematic training to harden their bodies and prepare them for various extreme conditions. But endurance is not just about the physical body and its reactions. It also has to do with both the vital being’s reactions and the mind’s responses to situations, circumstances, events and various forms of pressure or stress.

There are many strategies that have been tried, including accustoming oneself to treat ‘positive’, ‘negative’ and ‘neutral’ touches equally without becoming excited or depressed. Some strategies try to reduce the influence of vital desire overall so that those things that would be normally attractive become less important, while those things that would be the subject of repulsion or concern are treated as of little or no importance.

There are others who simply try to minimize and avoid all such touches possible, and thereby not have to work at achieving equality or equanimity under pressure. This strategy is, however, shown to have its drawbacks if the individual ever has cause to enter into active life, as the springs of reaction remain in seed form and can come roaring to life when given the right circumstances.

Some recognise that these are all simply waves of vibration and in some cases, it is the intensity of the wave that creates the difficulty, the inability to withstand or hold it without shrinking or breaking in some way. In these cases, the approach is either to work on widening the being to be able to handle a greater intensity or strengthening the being so that it can handle more.

The physical, vital and mental reactions are also very much influenced by the three Gunas or qualities of Nature, which keep changing all the time within each individual, so that now one is in the ascendent and at another time, another one is in the ascendent. This implies that the same individual, confronted with two somewhat similar circumstances, may respond differently depending on the Guna which is at that moment driving his actions and reactions.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The principle of endurance relies on the strength of the spirit within us to bear all the contacts, impacts, suggestions of this phenomenal Nature that besieges us on every side without being overborne by them and compelled to bear their emotional, sensational, dynamic, intellectual reactions. The outer mind in the lower nature has not this strength. Its strength is that of a limited force of consciousness which has to do the best it can with all that comes in upon it or besieges it from the greater whirl of consciousness and energy which environs it on this plane of existence. That it can maintain itself at all and affirm its individual being in the universe, is due indeed to the strength of the spirit within it, but it cannot bring forward the whole of that strength or the infinity of that force to meet the attacks of life; if it could, it would be at once the equal and master of its world. In fact, it has to manage as it can. It meets certain impacts and is able to assimilate, equate or master them partially or completely, for a time or wholly, and then it has in that degree the emotional and sensational reactions of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, liking, love, etc., or the intellectual and mental reactions of acceptance, approval, understanding, knowledge, preference, and on these its will seizes with attraction, desire, the attempt to prolong, to repeat, to create, to possess, to make them the pleasurable habits of its life. Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it or too dissimilar and discordant or too weak to give it satisfaction; these are things which it cannot bear or cannot equate with itself or cannot assimilate, and it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission. Against them it seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimise their recurrence; it has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to and even invites the causes and therefore the results; for these impacts are part of life, tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature. Other impacts again the normal mind succeeds in holding at bay or neutralising and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility or tolerance which is neither positive acceptance and enjoyment nor rejection or suffering. To things, persons, happenings, ideas, workings, whatever presents itself to the mind, there are always these three kinds of reaction. At the same time, in spite of their generality, there is nothing absolute about them; they form a scheme for a habitual scale which is not precisely the same for all or even for the same mind at different times or in different conditions. The same impact may arouse in it at one time and another the pleasurable or positive, the adverse or negative or the indifferent or neutral reactions.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pp. 68-70

The Will to Endure and the Body’s Ability to Withstand Hardship and Suffering

While most people are quite insulated from direct confrontation with extremes which the body is asked to endure, our modern media makes it possible to see and relate to some of these extreme situations. Far beyond the pressure of training for and running in a marathon race, there are circumstances, some of them voluntary, many of them involuntary, which expose us to the powers of the body to withstand what can only be called extreme suffering with a will to live and endure that beggars the imagination. We see both the capacity of the physical body under severe pressures, as well as its enormous pliancy and goodwill to provide a solid base for the ‘will to live’ which inhabits every being.

When the concentration camps were opened up after the end of World War II, we witnessed many thousands of individuals emaciated to the point of starvation. When villages in Vietnam were bombed with napalm during the Vietnam war, we were able to view the extreme pain and suffering of people who had lived through that horrible experience of having their skin burned alive. We have heard the stories of survivors of the atomic blasts that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. When we observe the mass migrations, the droughts, the starvation and the ravages of disease and warfare in other parts of the world, we see that millions of people are subjected to extremes that cause excruciating pain and yet, they somehow survive and try to go on with their lives.

On a day to day level, we have been advised that the pain experienced by women in childbirth can be far higher than any other pain that we normally experience. This is part of our normal human life on a regular basis and for those who have not undergone this experience in all its intensity, it is truly impossible to imagine.

We may reflect on the body’s endurance to pain and suffering and ask how it is that it is able to take this on, survive and continue to desire to live and breathe!

The Taittiriya Upanishad provides us an enigmatic answer: “for who could labour to draw in the breath or who could have strength to breathe it out, if there were not that Bliss in the heaven of his heart, the ether within his being?”

It may not appear that there is any sense of that bliss about which the Upanishad speaks in any of the experiences related above. But somehow, deep within each being there is that secret space where bliss dwells, covered over by pain, covered over by suffering, covered over by all the stress of living, but nevertheless there, waiting to come forward and transform the life. The surface being may not consciously recognise or appreciate this hidden source of the will to live, but nevertheless, it endures. This is what keeps people alive and hoping to survive under extreme circumstances and in intense pain.

The Mother writes in ‘The Science of Living’ in On Education: “The body has a remarkable capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is fit to do so many more things than one can usually imagine. If instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, one will be surprised at what it is capable of doing.”

The Mother clarifies further: “During the last war, it was proved that the body was capable of enduring such suffering as is normally impossible to endure. You have surely read or heard these stories of war in which the body was made to suffer and endure terrible things, and it withstood all that, it proved that it had almost inexhaustible capacities of endurance. Some people happened to be under conditions that should have killed them; if they survived, it was because they had in them a very strong will to survive and the body obeyed that will.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pg. 68

Endurance Is Required for Progress, Growth and Success

Each part of the being has its own form of endurance. Endurance is essential for any true and lasting development. Change tends to be mostly incremental. When it comes more rapidly it is usually accompanied by major disruptions to the status quo. In either case, one form of endurance, or another, is required.

Physical endurance is the ability to withstand pressure on the physical body and continue on. This is seen in sports, exploration activities, and adventure challenges, such as climbing mountains, or undertaking marathon races or triathlon. Vital endurance includes the power to remain positive and confident in the face of opposition and apparent setbacks. Mental endurance implies that the mind remains firm and without doubt about the results, even when everything looks bleak. Despair, depression and gloom are signs of a lack of endurance.

We tend not to understand the way Nature develops and evolves, and the time frame needed to accomplish these changes. Endurance implies ‘staying the course’ despite immediate appearances. For example, Sri Aurobindo, in his epic poem Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol, has the following passage: “When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp, As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread Of one who steps unseen into his house.” When all around us is darkness, defeat, suffering, death, and pain, the need for utmost endurance is required. As the proverb says, ‘It is always darkest before the dawn.’

The Mother notes: “Let endurance be your watchword: teach the life-force in you — your vital being — not to complain but to put up with all the conditions necessary for great achievement. The body is a very enduring servant, it bears the stress of circumstance tamely like a beast of burden. It is the vital being that is always grumbling and uneasy. The slavery and torture to which it subjects the physical is almost incalculable. How it twists and deforms the poor body to its own fads and fancies, irrationally demanding that everything should be shaped according to its whimsicality! But the very essence of endurance is that the vital should learn to give up its capricious likes and dislikes and preserve an equanimity in the midst of the most trying conditions. When you are treated roughly by somebody or you lack something which would relieve your discomfort, you must keep up cheerfully instead of letting yourself be disturbed. Let nothing ruffle you the least bit, and whenever the vital tends to air its petty grievances with pompous exaggeration just stop to consider how very happy you are, compared to so many in this world. Reflect for a moment on what the soldiers who fought in the last war had to go through. if you had to bear such hardships you would realise the utter silliness of your dissatisfactions. And yet I do not wish you to court difficulties — what I want is simply that you should learn to endure the little insignificant troubles of your life.”

“Nothing great is ever accomplished without endurance. If you study the lives of great men you will see how they set themselves like flint against the weaknesses of the vital. Even today, the true meaning of our civilisation is the mastery of the physical through endurance in the vital. The spirit of sport and of adventure and the dauntless facing of odds which is evident in all fields of life are part of this ideal of endurance. In science itself, progress depends on the countless difficult tests and trials which precede achievement…. What you must do is to give your vital a good beating as soon as it protests; for, when the physical is concerned, there is reason to be considerate and to take precautions, but with the vital the only method is a sound ‘kicking’. Kick your vital the moment it complains, because there is no other way of getting out of the petty consciousness which attaches so much importance to creature comforts and social amenities instead of asking for the Light and the Truth.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pp. 66-68

The Body’s Will to Health Is the True Cure of Illness

Most people associate the will-power with the mind. We concentrate on achieving something and we “set our mind to it” and exercise our will. When the issue turns to overcoming vital habits or bodily weaknesses, however, we find that the mental will is much less effective, and in many cases, we try to resort to various methods of brute force to gain control over them. What we fail to recognise in all of this is that the mental will is most effective on the mental plane, but that there are also a vital will and a physical will. When we say someone is being “willful” we generally are referring to a vital action that goes contrary to our mental conception of how things should be.

The mental will and the vital will, through their interaction with the physical body, can have an impact on health, yet, in the end, it is the body’s own will that determines health. Most people do not consider the body and its cells to be conscious and therefore able to have an expression of “will”. They look on the body purely as a type of ‘machinery’. Yet if we examine the body more closely, we see activities that go beyond simple machinery, and of course, the ‘machinery’ view only goes so far before it breaks down. Clearly it is not the mind that created the machinery nor can it control the machinery at the cellular level. Similarly, the vital force, while it animates the physical body, clearly is not the designer and developer of the cellular action. The mind does not direct cells on how to carry out their specific functions, nor does the vital.

At the cellular level, there are numerous functions that indicate a level of intelligence and self-direction such as the ability of cells to assimilate and then produce energy, the action of the immune cells, the coding and replication of the detailed cellular structures and function, the interactive nature of the different organs to coordinate together to create a living being, etc. The regular action of the immune system is clearly an expression of the body’s will to health. It is aided by the protective action of the vital sheath, or aura, but when once an illness gets inside that envelope, it is the immune system that takes up the effort to restore the health. Medicines applied from outside are adjuncts or aids to the body’s own resistance to disease or illness.

In The Mother’s Agenda, the Mother goes into a deep, and experiential review, of the cellular action and the aspiration and intentionality that takes place at the cellular level. As part of this review, she makes clear that external treatments or medicines only go a certain distance toward restoring and maintaining health: it is the internal cellular response, the ‘will’ in the cells, that is the true source of health and vibrant energy.

The Mother notes: “Wake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can’t do anything; you may take a hundred medicines but they won’t cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness.”

“The body is cured if it has decided to be cured.”

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Living Within: The Yoga Approach to Psychological Health and Growth, Disturbances of the Body and Physical Consciousness, Will, Discipline, Endurance, pp. 88-90