How to Proceed: Three
Stages of Progress
"... our entire nature and its environment,
all our personal and all our universal self, are full of habits
and of influences that are opposed to our spiritual rebirth..."
(Sri Aurobindo: The Synthesis of Yoga)
... I have often told you, haven't I?,
that the first state of your being is a state of an almost total
mixture with all things from outside, and that there is almost
no individualisation, that is, specialisation which makes you
a different being. You are moved - a kind of form which is your
physical being is moved - by all the common universal forces,
vital forces or mental forces, which go through your form and
put it in motion. ...
And all that you have wrested from this general semiconsciousness,
and have crystallised into a more or less independent being, conscious
of itself and having its own qualities, all this is your individual
being. And this individual being is full of all the movements
of obscurity, unconsciousness, and of the limitations of ordinary
life, and that's... and that's what you must gradually open to
the divine influence and bring to the consciousness and understanding
of things. ...
In fact, the first victory is to create an individuality. And
then later, the second victory is to give this individuality to
the Divine. And the third victory is that the Divine changes your
individuality into a divine being.
There are three stages: the first is to become an individual;
the second is to consecrate the individual, that he may surrender
entirely to the Divine and be identified with Him; and the third
is that the Divine takes possession of this individual and changes
him into a being in His own image, that is, he too becomes divine.
Generally, all the yogas stopped at the second. When one had succeeded
in surrendering the individual and giving him without reserve
to the Divine to be identified with Him, one considered that his
work was finished, that all was accomplished.
But we begin there, and we say, "No, this is only a beginning.
We want this Divine with whom we are identified to enter our individuality
and make it into a divine personality acting in a divine world."
And this is what we call transformation. But the other precedes
it, must precede it. If that is not done, there is no possibility
of doing the third. One can't go from the first to the third;
one must pass through the second.
Q: Mother, the third depends entirely on
the Divine, whether He wills to take possession or not.
In fact everything depends entirely on
the Divine. It is only the consciousness you have of it which
is different. So in the third stage, obviously, one becomes conscious
that it is the Divine who does everything; so it depends entirely
on the Divine.
When you say this, the part of your consciousness which is still
convinced of its separation and its own existence is looking at
the other and saying, "Ah, good! Now I shall no longer have
to do anything." But if it no longer exists, if it becomes
conscious that it is the Divine, then it can't have this impression.
It does the work, continues to do it, but with the true consciousness,
instead of having the distorted consciousness.
The Mother
