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

Sustaining the Yogic Endeavour in the Unique Challenges Posed by the Integral Yoga

For those individuals called to take up the integral yoga, there is a unique opportunity and a unique set of concerns that arise.

Those paths of yoga which aim at liberation have their own difficulties. It is not simple to escape the lures of the external life, or even to undertake one-pointed concentration to the exclusion of anything else. Yet there are methods, and there are defined results, and at the end, with sufficient determination and practice, the seeker in the traditional paths of yoga can reach his objective.

The integral yoga, however, does not seek escape from the external world, but rather, the integration of new powers of consciousness that are involved, but not yet expressed, in order to uplift and transform the outer existence. This implies that escape from that existence, avoidance of its various pressures, is not the method for this yoga.

When an individual chooses the solitary path of focusing on liberation from the world, he does not present a risk or challenge to the established order, the powers that be, in terms of the physical, vital and mental forces and their objectives at work in the world. Things go on as normal. When an individual accepts the idea that the entire current existence needs to be observed, changed and infused with a new force that will change the status quo, he is suddenly confronted with the opposition, internally and externally, to everything he is attempting to do.

Even without active opposition, any attempt to address embedded instincts, habits and trained responses is a complex and extraordinarily difficult endeavour. When the conscious forces behind the existing organisation of life are brought into the picture, they add active opposition to the issues. They raise up desires, they push to expose flaws, they raise up doubts about the objective, the path, the guidance and the individual’s own capacity. The integral yoga is thus one that requires an extraordinary measure of persistence, an incredible amount of patience, and an immovable faith and willingness to work for long periods of time without even, in many cases, any clear sign of forward movement, and a devotion to the long-term objective that will only be fully realized by humanity many generations in the future.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Whatever method is used, persistence and perseverance are essential. For whatever method is used, the complexity of the natural resistance will be there to combat it.”

The difficulties have to be faced and the more cheerfully they are faced, the sooner they will be overcome. The one thing to do is to keep the mantra of success, the determination of victory, the fixed resolve, ‘Have it I must and have it I will.’ Impossible? There is no such thing as impossibility — there are difficulties and things of longue haleine, but no impossibilities. What one is determined fixedly to do will get done now or later — it becomes possible. Drive out dark despair and go bravely on with your yoga. As the darkness disappears, the inner doors will open.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 137

The Need for Patience and Perseverance

Scientists tell us that human beings diverged from chimpanzees somewhere between 4 and 8 million years ago. Somewhere around 2 million years ago, the line of development that led to human beings appeared and our current formation, Homo sapiens, came on the scenes around 300,000 years ago. Each stage led to expression of new physical, vital and mental traits that coalesced around the current status of what we understand to be human capabilities today. While there may be some debate about the exactness of these calculations, there remains the underlying fact that development of any stage of consciousness from a preceding stage does not happen ‘overnight’.

We are now engaged with the development and expression of the next term of the evolution of consciousness, beyond the mental level developed in the human being. How long will this take? If we look back at each prior stage of development, the vital consciousness developing out of the material consciousness, the mental consciousness developing out of the vital consciousness, the higher mental consciousness developing out of the rudimentary mental consciousness, we see a time frame of millions of years in the normal processes of Nature.

This background and perspective is of utmost importance for the spiritual seeker who takes up the work needed to bring about the changes in human nature that can prepare and develop the next stage of evolution of consciousness.

Human beings tend to be impatient. We want to see instant results, have instant success. Anything that does not happen quickly, within the framework of our very short human lifetimes (in relation to the time scales noted above) is a cause for questioning, doubt and expression of impatience. How do we reconcile the time needed by Nature with the human time frame? We need to adjust our expectations and develop imperturbable patience so that we can persevere without the kind of instant gratification that we generally desire.

Patience does not imply indolence. There should be the focus and energy concentrated to continue the progress, while at the same time, the understanding and view that these changes may take many human lifetimes. First Nations’ people speak of looking at consequences down to 7 generations in the future, to provide a better perspective of the impact of our actions. The development of a new stage of conscious evolution is a far longer process than just 7 generations. We thus look at this as a disinterested work, without personal desire, without personal expectation, without personal gratification of instant success, as part of the larger intentions of the divine manifestation. The individual may, and likely will, experience changes that are real and palpable along the way. These changes help create the incremental readiness for human development beyond the mental level, with all of the requirements for such a change, and all of the receptivity and capacities in place to accept such a change and integrate it into the expression of Nature over time.

It is important to note that the expression of each further stage of consciousness has proceeded an ‘order of magnitude’ faster than the preceding stage. What took billions of years to occur in the expression of the vital consciousness out of the material consciousness, was truncated down to just hundreds of thousands of years for the development of the human mental capacities out of the level seen in primates generally at that time. Several additional elements look to speed up the process for the next stage, as Sri Aurobindo has explained. There is the introduction of the supramental force into the physical consciousness that begins to prepare the way and introduce its own aspects of preparation for the transformation. The conscious participation of awake individuals also represents a qualitative change in the way Nature has done this in the past, and this can speed up the entire development enormously. With an ‘order of magnitude’ change and this conscious focus and participation, what Nature might take tens of thousands of years to do, could conceivably be done in a much shorter time frame. That does not, however, imply ‘overnight’. What can start to become visible are incremental changes in our physical, vital and mental existence as the higher force that is working to manifest this next phase embeds itself in the earth-nature and begins to ‘prepare the ground’ for its full expression over time.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “It is certain that an ardent aspiration helps to progress, but patience is also needed. For it is a very big change that has to be made and, although there can be moments of great rapidity, it is never all the time like that. Old things try to stick as much as possible; the new that come have to develop and the consciousness takes time to assimilate them and make them normal to the nature.”

The Mother adds: “You must arm yourself with an endless patience and endurance. You do a thing once, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times if necessary, but you do it till it gets done. And not done only here and there, but everywhere and everywhere at the same time. This is the great problem one sets oneself. That is why, to those who come to tell me very light-heartedly, ‘I want to do yoga’, I reply, ‘Think it over, one may do the yoga for a number of years without noticing the least result. But if you want to do it, you must persist and persist with such a will that you should be ready to do it for ten lifetimes, a hundred lifetimes if necessary, in order to succeed.’ I do not say it will be like that, but the attitude must be like that.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 136