The December issue of our Newsletter marks the passage of one more little cycle of the wheels of time rolling onwards. We cast a glance at the past year of experiences and continue making resolutions for changes in ourselves as we keep burning bright the flame of aspiration for Progress and Purification. Perhaps it is timely that this issue carries the light of Purification of the Vital, to keep us on track as we contemplate on the guiding words of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
The action of purification of the whole of one’s nature, let alone the vital nature calls for a few pre-requisites to be met. Firstly one needs an aim in life, an aim as high and uplifted and so will fall in place the need for purification of one’s nature. Secondly, a recognition of areas that need to be changed, by the mental and the vital being is necessary in order to effect in this life the needed change. This requires a truthful and persistent self-observation carried out every moment, if that is possible or at least during as many periods as is possible for the evolving consciousness. Thirdly, the will to effect the needed action, mentally or vitally, is needed, in order to bring about this change in one’s life. For example, if a certain negative thought pulls one down, this requires once again an observation of the inbuilt resistances and laxities that operate to make us slide down the ladder. Against this downward pull is needed the strong will to exceed oneself for the better. The Mother advises that it would be a great aid if one can admit one’s own mistakes instead of hiding them. If one observes keenly, one can sense a great resistance to admitting mistakes. However, once one is able to overcome this resistance, then the path opens wide before one. As The Mother says, “… it is open and strangely a flood of light enters, and then you feel so glad afterwards, so happy that you ask yourself, “Why from what foolishness did I resist so long?”” Lastly perhaps, is needed the patience to wait for the needed change in our nature, since the nature as it is, is composed of a complex mix of atavisms, inherited substance, conditioned reflexes since childhood, and dark seeds of psychological tendencies that work from the subconscient nature that need a longer or shorter period of treatment from higher forces working towards the change.
A vital purification calls for the awareness of and the eventual opening of vital workings to the divine, offering at His feet all that is in one that has to be strengthened and all that needs to be changed. The more consciously vehement the calling and sincere the offering, the faster the change would be, as the being wants the change and is psychologically prepared for it. An eventual metamorphosis of the being too is eminent, however long or short the duration. One alone can surmise the change that one undergoes. Within one, one knows the extent of progress.
How rejuvenating when one thinks of a vital purified and converted. As a milestone of the journey marking one’s progress in the purification of the vital, The Mother offers that the “… remarkable sign of the conversion of your vital, owing to Agni’s influence, is that you face your difficulties and obstacles with a smile. You do not sit any more in sackcloth and ashes, lamenting over your mistakes and feeling utterly crestfallen because you are not at the moment quite up to the mark. You simply chase away depression with a smile. A hundred mistakes do not matter to you: with a smile you recognise that you have erred and with a smile you resolve not to repeat the folly in the future.”
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