Q: Sweet Mother,
how can one draw on “the universal vital Force”?
The
Mother: One can
do it in many ways.
First of all, you must know that it exists
and that one can enter into contact with it. Secondly, you must try to make
this contact, to feel it circulating everywhere, through everything, in all
persons and all circumstances; to have this experience, for example, when you
are in the countryside among trees, to see it circulating in the whole of
Nature, in trees and things, and then commune with it, feel yourself close to
it, and each time you want to deal with it, recall that impression you had and
try to enter into contact.
Some people discover that with certain
movements, certain gestures, certain activities, they enter into contact more
closely. I knew people who gesticulated while walking… this truly gave them the
impression that they were in contact—certain gestures they made while walking…
But children do this spontaneously: when they give themselves completely in
their games, running, playing, jumping, shouting; when they spend all their
energies like that, they give themselves entirely, and in the joy of playing
and moving and running they put themselves in contact with this universal vital
force; they don’t know it, but they spend their vital force in a contact with
the universal vital force and that is why they can run without really feeling
very tired, except after a very long time. That is, they spend so much that if
they were not in contact with the universal force, they would be absolutely
exhausted, immediately. And that is why, besides, they grow up; it is also
because they receive more than they spend; they know how to receive more than
they spend. And this does not correspond to any knowledge. It is a natural,
spontaneous movement. It is the movement… a movement of joy in what they are
doing—of joyful expenditure. One can do many things with that.
I knew young people who had always lived in
cities—in a city and in those little rooms one has in the big cities in which
everyone is huddled. Now, they had come to spend their holidays in the
countryside, in the south of France, and there the sun is hot, naturally not as
here but all the same it is very hot (when we compare the sun of the
Mediterranean coasts with that of Paris, for example, it truly makes a
difference), and so, when they walked around the countryside the first few days
they really began to get a terrible headache and to feel absolutely uneasy
because of the sun; but they suddenly thought: “Why, if we make friends with
the sun it won’t harm us any more!” And they began to make a kind of inner
effort of friendship and trust in the sun, and when they were out in the sun,
instead of trying to bend double and tell themselves, “Oh! How hot it is, how
it burns!”, they said, “Oh, how full of force and joy and love the sun is!”
etc., they opened themselves like this (gesture), and not only did
they not suffer any longer but they felt so strong afterwards that they went
round telling everyone who said “It is hot”—telling them “Do as we do, you will
see how good it is.” And they could remain for hours in the full sun,
bare-headed and without feeling any discomfort. It is the same principle.
It is the same principle. They linked
themselves to the universal vital force which is in the sun and received this
force which took away all that was unpleasant to them.
When one is in the countryside, when one walks
under the trees and feels so close to Nature, to the trees, the sky, all the
leaves, all the branches, all the herbs, when one feels a great friendship with
these things and breathes that air which is so good, perfumed with all the
plants, then one opens oneself, and by opening oneself communes with the
universal forces. And for all things it is like that.
Can one do the same thing when it is
cold?
Yes, I think so. I think one can always do
the same thing in all cases.
The sun is a very powerful symbol in the organization
of Nature. So it is not altogether the same thing; it possesses in itself an
extraordinary condensation of energy. Cold seems to me a more negative thing:
it is an absence of something. But in any case, if one knows how to enter the rhythm
of the movements of Nature, one avoids many discomforts. What makes men suffer,
what disturbs the balance of the body is a narrowness, it is always a
narrowness. It happens because one is shut up in limits, and so there is, as
Sri Aurobindo writes here, a force which presses too strongly for these
limits—it upsets everything.
Q: How can one conquer the obscure vital? Rather, how is
it possible to change the obscure vital into a luminous vital?
The Mother: By
the surrender of the vital, its opening to the light, and by the growth of
consciousness.
Q: I have become very sensitive and get upset for
the slightest reason.
The Mother: These
are vital perturbations which show themselves in the course of the Sadhana and
have to be eliminated. They must not be regarded as natural movements justified
by the wrong actions of others and bound to continue so long as there is an
external cause. The real cause is internal and it can be got rid of by yogic
discipline, vigilance, self-detachment and a quiet but strict rejection.
(CWM, Volume 7&14, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Puducherry)
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