Aspiration is the theme for this month’s scrutiny. Mother refers to Aspiration as one of the cornerstones of integral yoga or an important aid. She refers to it as the “taste for supreme adventure.” The aspire to aspire is something probably everyone of us, almost without fail can attempt, to a smaller or greater degree of perfection. How is aspiration different from a desire? Sri Aurobindo has described it as “an inner soul’s need, and quiet settled will to turn towards the Divine and seek the Divine”. A quiet examination of our tendencies of wants and needs and aspirations using such a parameter may help. For very often when we feel desirous of something, there is an excitement and a vehemence within, unsettling the quietness therein. However, an aspiration, on the contrary, is simple, sincere and “not mixed with any interested and egoistic calculation.”
In reality, when one looks at aspiration, one realizes that it shuns anything mediocre, mundane, ordinary and limited. It leaps towards the higher and sublime possibilities from within, hoping to transcend the earthbound lower nature. Sri Aurobindo symbolizes aspiration, it appears in these line of the poem, A Tree:
A tree beside the sandy river-beach
Holds up its topmost boughs
Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,
Earth-bound, heaven amorous.
Man could be one special being as he, perhaps, more than all other creatures of this earth, is the only one on earth, who can recognize his limitations and aspire! Sri Aurobindo writes, “Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him…”
The Mother says that it is aspiration, sincere, strong and unflinching, that can attract towards it favourable conditions which would ultimately lead to the realization of the aspiration. And here is evident why in this yoga, a clear, sincere aspiration is one of the most important aids in sadhana. In this state, “Everything comes, everything as though there were a perfect and absolute consciousness organizing around you all things…”
The month of August is special as we anticipate Sri Aurobindo’s 143rd birth Anniversary and the 68th Independence Day of India. To bring to mind a little the life that Sri Aurobindo lived, the sadhana that he accomplished while in his body on this earth, kindles a deep reverence for this son of Bharatam. That he would share the same date with the Independence of India has been noted to be of an occult significance.
May all our challenging moments kindle the mystic Fire from our depths and initiate the certain march towards the golden dawns that Sri Aurobindo promised:
Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,
Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,
We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,
Make the abysm a road for Heaven's descent,
Acquaint our depths with the supernal Ray
And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.
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