Developing a Strong Power of Knowledge and Will To Manage and Control the Vital Nature

While a reaction may seem to be taking place instantaneously, it is always conditioned by prior acts or events, the chain of cause and effect, dependent origination or the law of karma, however one wants to term it. By adopting the standpoint of the witness consciousness, observing the exte
al nature of the body-life-mind complex, one creates a space of distance that allows one to not be so absorbed in the motion that one cannot see the links and the antecedents.

Once we can observe the potential causes that lead to these “instant” reactions, we can begin to defuse them before they erupt, anticipate their eruption when we see the signs and work to prevent their manifestation at that time, or change the situation entirely using processes such as visualization.

It should be noted that top athletes have, in recent years, recognised that preparing themselves by mentally visualizing the event and one’s participation in it, helps them to prepare and thereby succeed. A similar process can be utilized to visualize the path that these reactions tend to follow and determine how one would change one’s reaction from a new standpoint. Thus, the reaction-patte
can be ‘rewired’. When the actual situations arise that would ordinarily trigger such a reaction, the new, rewired response would be waiting to replace the otherwise expected habit of the past. It is through such actions as noted here that the higher force of consciousness is able to be brought to bear on the habits of body, life and mind.

What this does not cover is the influence of beings or forces that occupy other planes of existence but pressure us to move in specific directions, as they tend to ‘feed’ off of the energy and emotions thus released by us. Resisting their influence requires a strong and focused aspiration, a connection to the higher force and a will to carry out only the divine intention and not that of any other being or force.

A disciple asks: “Mother, there are mistakes… one knows they are mistakes, but still it as though one were pushed into make them. Then?”

The Mother observes: “Pushed by what? Ah, this is exactly what happens! It is the lower nature, the instincts of the subconscient which goven you and make you do things you should not do. And so it is a choice between your will and accepting submission. There is always a moment when one can decide. It goes to the point where… there is even a moment when one can decide to be ill or not to be ill. It even goes so far that a moment comes when one can decide to die or not to die. But for that one must have an extremely awakened consciousness because this speck is infinitesimal in time and like the hundredth part of a second, and because before it can do nothing and after it can do nothing; but at the moment one can. And if one is absolutely awake, one can, at that moment, take the decision.”

“But for ordinary things, as for example, giving way before an impulse or refusing it, it is not a space, not even the space of a second; one has plenty of time before him, one centainly has several minutes. And it is a choice between weak submission and a controlling will. And if the will is clear, if it is based on truth, if truly it obeys the truth and is clear, it always has the power to refuse the wrong movement. It is an excuse you give yourself when you say, ‘I could not’. It is not true. It is that truly you have not wanted it in the right way. For there is always the choice between saying ‘yes’ and saying ‘no’. But one chooses to be weak and later gives oneself this excuse, saying, ‘It is not my fault; it was stronger tha
I.’ It is your fault if the thing was stronger than you. Because you are not these impulses, you are a conscious soul and an intelligent will, and your duty is to see that this is what governs you and not the impulses from below.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp.80-81