The One Essential Thing in Spiritual Development Is an Inward Focus of the Awareness on the Divine Presence

In the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, v. 54, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna how to recognise the enlightened man. Sri Aurobindo translates: “What is the sign of the man in Samadhi whose intelligence is firmly fixed in wisdom? How does the sage of settled understanding speak, how sit, how walk?” Sri Aurobindo goes on to explain: “Arjuna, voicing the average human mind, asks for some outward, physical, practically discernible sign of Samadhi. No such signs can be given, nor does the Teacher attempt to supply them; for the only possible test of its possession is inward and that there are plenty of hostile psychological forces to apply. Equality is the great stamp of the liberated soul and of that equality even the most discernible signs are still subjective.” [Bhagavad Gita and Its Message]

In Chapter 2, v. 55, Sri Krishna explains further: “When a man expels, O Partha, all desires from the mind, and is satisfied in the self by the self, then is he called stable in intelligence.” Sri Aurobindo adds: “The test of Samadhi is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which this freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions, the alternations of sunshine and storm and stress of the external life. It is drawn inward even when acting outwardly; it is concentrated in self even when gazing out upon things; it is directed wholly to the Divine even when to the outward vision of others busy and preoccupied with the affairs of the world.”

This response also relates to the entire life and standpoint of the individual. External actions, such as focus on sattwic diet, moderation in eating, regulation of one’s external activities, have their place, but the real test for the seeker is the shift to the inner psychic standpoint and identification with the divine Presence. To the extent the seeker fixates so much on external details and fails to direct his awareness and energies towards the spiritual realisation, he is actually defeating his own purpose. Systematically removing the element of vital desire in all its forms, and creating the inner attitude of surrender to the Divine is the one essential thing to be done.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “All these [giving up indulgence in food, tea, etc.] are external things that have their use, but what I mean [by ‘the complete attitude of the sadhak’] is something more inward. I mean not to be interested in outward things for their own sake, following after them with desire, but at all times to be intent on one’s soul, living centrally in the inner being and its progress, taking outward things and action only as a means for the inner progress.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 167-168

Understanding and Addressing the Desire and Craving for Food

We have a fixation on food. We do not seek food just for nourishment and proper care of our bodies, generally; rather, we use food to provide us with comfort, emotional support, and fulfillment of desires for various tastes. We center many of our relationship rituals around food.

At some point, many individuals conclude that they need to adjust their eating habits, whether through dieting, or fasting. The disease conditions of anorexia and bulimia are extreme examples of our attempts to incorporate our manner of addressing food issues in relation to societal expectations and norms.

Spiritual seekers also have, at some point in their spiritual growth, frequently adopted various habits related to food, nutrition and taking care of the body. In many cases, when they try to control the impulse for food, they try to enforce a discipline on the body and work to suppress the response. This does not necessarily ‘solve’ the issue. The attention to the drive for food, or for particular types of food, remains, and at times this attention asserts itself and distracts the seeker from the spiritual effort. This can lead to a cycle of attention, suppression, and obsession that does not resolve the issue satisfactorily.

There is a need to get to the real root of the issue, which can be understood through a process of detailed observation. Most times the individual is focused elsewhere and thus, there is not a constant pressure. When the interruptions arise, the observational standpoint of the witness can engage to determine the actual causative factors, so that they can be removed, modified or transformed.

All actions of the outer nature are driven by the action of the three Gunas, qualities of Nature, Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa. There are thus different factors involved depending on which Guna is predominant at any point in time. Cravings and desire for food that arise during the ascendency of Tamas include habits that are built up by repeated experiences, regardless of the actual needs of the body. Also, as a response to stress, as well as hormonal triggers based on despondency, feelings of weakness and alienation etc. A craving for sweet taste frequently arises during Tamasic events. Those that arise as a result of Rajas tend to include a drive for particular responses or tastes, such as a hankering for highly spiced or salted foods. Rajas also responds easily to energies that the individual is exposed to in daily interactions. Engagement with individuals who are filled with desires or ambitions, or pressures that arise due to societal tendencies and expectations frequently translate internally into a sense of hunger. There are even responses of hunger associated with the predominance of Sattwa, for instance when one undertakes to focus intensely on the body, its nutritional needs, a scientific way of eating, or some particular dietary preference, and thus, the fixation on eating is translated into a process justified as having a rational and necessary basis.

Whichever causative factor may be involved, the physiological response includes the release of hormones, neurotransmitters and signals that spur a response to food or a particular food. Feedback loops are created by repeated, habitual activities, such that the body expects food at certain times and will send signals around that time to remind the being that it is “time to eat”.

Once we can begin to understand and identify the mechanism, the next step is to specifically unravel these varying motive forces and apply a suitable corrective. In some cases, simply denying the impulse repeatedly will work if the basis is a habitual response that the body has cultivated. In other cases, recognising the influence of external pressures or the force of rajasic desire, a conscious shift of attention to a higher level focus and callilng forth sattwic support can aid the process. In some instances, we can actually recognise the need for a particular nutritional element and satisfy that, noting then that the craving is resolved and does not return once the underlying missing element has been provided. In modern day life, processed foods are actually made with tastes and chemicals to enhance the ‘addictive’ nature of the foods, and thus, avoidance of highly processed foods can yield fast and highly advantageous results, both to help resolve cravings and for the individual’s overall health and well-being over time.

Some paths try to solve the issue by asking the practitioner to simply accept whatever comes into the begging bowl that day. Others try to enforce the body through discipline and in some cases elements of torture. Still others counsel a specific dietary regimen to follow such that the scope of craving and desire is held back.

The issue then is to understand and solve rather than to put a lot of energy obsessing about food, the craving for food, or the suppression of the craving. In the end, the energy spent in the obsession is energy that could be better directed to the spiritual pursuits.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Perhaps with regard to the greed for food, your attitude has not been quite correct. Greed for food has to be overcome, but it has not to be given too much thought. The proper attitude to food is a certain equality. Food is for the maintenance of the body and one should take enough for that — what the body needs; if one gives less the body feels the need and hankers; if you give more, then that is indulging the vital. As for particular foods the palate likes, the attitude of the mind and vital should be, ‘If I get, I take; if I don’t get, I shall not mind.’ One should not think too much of food either to indulge or unduly to repress — that is the best.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 166

Understanding and Addressing Desire, Hunger and Food

Sri Aurobindo translates Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Chapter One, Section Two, Verse 1:  “Formerly there was nothing here; this was concealed by Death — by Hunger, for it is Hunger that is Death.  That created mind, and he said, ‘Let me have substance.’  He moved about working and as he worked the waters were born and he said, ‘Felicity was born to me as I worked.’  This verily is the activity in action.  Therefore felicity cometh to him who thus knoweth this soul of activity in action.”

“Hunger is Death.” In this case, the Upanishad is not referring directly to the physical hunger for food, but to the much deeper and broader issue of desire and how the individual fulfilling the desire, in his attempt to consume the object of its desires, is itself eventually consumed. A wise man [anecdotally considered to be the Buddha] once indicated that a bird, while it is alive and satisfying its hunger, may eat ants. When it dies, however, ants eat the bird. Everything that eats, everything that consumes, is part of the cycle of eating. Concisely stated: “The Eater, eating, is eaten.”

The Taittiriya Upanishad states: “I am food! I am the eater of food! … He who giveth me, verily he preserveth me; for I being food, eat him that eateth.” [Taittiriya Upanishad, Bhriguvalli, chapter 10, translated by Sri Aurobindo]

Sri Aurobindo clarifies this in his discussion of the Upanishads: “If God is everywhere, He must be in the food we eat. Not only is God the eaten, but He is the eater and eventually, says the Vedanta, when you come to the bottom fact of existence there is neither eaten or eater, but all is God.”

It is one thing to address these issues on a philosophical level, but when the seeker is called upon to address the force of desire which he experiences in his life, he comes up against the reality that desire is embedded deeply in the mind-life-body complex and he experiences desire, cravings, unsatisfied yearnings and hungers, of various sorts. The desire for food is illustrative but not exclusive.

Sri Aurobindo advises that the seeker should shift his standpoint to one of the witness and experrience hunger, or craving for a specific food, as something external to his true being. It may be helpful to reflect that the human being is not a unified whole, but an amalgamation of parts, and not all these parts are actually the human being himself. For example, our digestive system is populated by a symbiotic colony of bacteria, without which we would have a hard time digesting anything. The question arises, ‘whose hunger is it’ when we experience the sensation or the impulse to hunger, or a craving for a particular food? Is it our own habit of response to the force of desire, or is it indeed the prompting of the bacterial colony seeking to satisfy ITS hunger? Either way, this is part of the process of understanding, addressing and transcending desire as the motive force of life and action.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “It is certainly not very yogic to be so harassed by the importunity of the palate…. In this as in many other matters…, if you want to do yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression [Fasting comes under the head; it is of no use for this purpose. Abandon that idea altogether.] stands on the same level as free indulgence; in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one’s own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pp. 165-166

Indulgence of Desire Does Not Lead to Rejection

If we reflect on how we learn, how we gain skills, we find that one of the key elements is repetition. We train our muscles through repetition of an exercise regimen. We train our minds through repetition and we train our responses through repetition. At some point we embed the results of the repetition into what we call ‘muscle memory’ or ‘cellular memory’. Our immune systems respond more effectively to provocations that have been seen before. There is thus a ‘memory’ in our immune system. Events and perceptions create a cascade of hormones, neurotransmitters and nervous impulses, all of which can be, and mainly are, encapsulated in our cells as memories which can be ‘triggered’ by similar circumstances, events or perceptions.

This same mechanism of repetition has been explored in the field of human psychology. A general understanding has arisen that we build neural pathways, ‘grooves’ if you will, that move repeated impulses and stimuli more easily and swiftly than anything we experience for the first time, which requires new pathways and linkages to be created.

We can apply this understanding to our vital nature. Repetition builds a pathway for easier entry and response. Our vital nature ‘recognises’ the stimulus and based on prior experience, automatically ‘admits’ it. Eventually this creates a fixed habit of response. Over long periods of evolutionary time, fixed habits tend to become embedded as what we call ‘instincts’. We find that in many cases the idea that indulgence will help eliminate the desire eventually is simply a way the vital nature finds to try to justify the indulgence to the mind. This is frequently supported by cultural and societal norms that may justify the fulfillment of certain types of desires as being something ‘natural’ and ‘necessary’ for health and well-being of the individual. Of course, what may be ‘natural’ based on long vital habit, and therefore, acceptable to normal life in the world, is not the objective or goal of the spiritual seeker; rather, the seeker aspires to transform and uplift human nature to a next level of evolutionary development.

Once a habit of response has been created, it becomes more difficult to reject it than if we make a choice the first time to not accept the impulsion that is asking the vital nature to respond. The deeper the habit becomes embedded, the more strenuous the effort needed to effectuate the rejection later, necessitating patience and perseverance on the part of the seeker.. This is the reason why indulgence is not generally a suitable mechanism for overcoming the force of vital desire.

There is sometimes confusion about the experience of indulgence leading to a sense of satiation, which leads the individual to believe that the action has led to the intended result of rejection. This is simply a shift from the rajasic quality which reaches out to experience the object of desire, and the fall back to the tamasic quality when the desire is fulfilled. This is a temporary experience and when rajas once again comes to the fore, it once again reaches out for the fulfillment of the desire. This repetitive cycle does not lead to rejection, but to an endless series of indulgences followed by the lassitude that follows the fulfilled desire.

There are a variety of methods to change this dynamic over time. Shifting to the witness consciousness and rejecting the entry of the desire when it tries to invade is one method. Opening to the psychic being and changing the focus to the spiritual realisation is another. There are also ‘short-term’ methods that can aid the seeker in particular situations, such as remembering and calling on the Guru or the Divine Presence, which immediately moves the awareness away from the fulfillment of the desire. Some seekers flood the being with the force of a mantra for short-term immediate relief from pressure of an insistent desire. The vibrations overwhelm the nervous and vital pathways that otherwise would be carrying the desire impulse to the being. Another frequently used method is what is called ‘nadi shuddhi’, the purification of the nerve channels through the use of focused breathing techniques, pranayama. Eventually a new habit can be built up to not accept the desire-impulse, or to substitute it with a devotional, spiritual or psycho-spiritual alternative.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Your theory is a mistaken one. The free expression of a passion may relieve the vital for a time, but at the same time it gives it a right to return always. It is not reduced at all. Suppression with inner indulgence in subtle forms is not a cure, but expression in outer indulgence is still less a cure. It is perfectly possible to go on without manifestation if one is resolute to arrive at a complete control, the control being not a mere suppression but an inner and outer rejection.”

“Vital desire grows by being indulged, it does not become satisfied. If your desire were indulged, it would begin to grow more and more and ask for more and more. That has been our constant experience with the sadhaks and it confirms what has always been known about desire. Desire and envy have to be thrown out of the consciousness — there is no other way to deal with them.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 154