Personal Effort Needed in Spiritual Practice and the Action of the Divine Force

The spiritual seeker starts out from the standpoint of the human individual, the ego-consciousness. The process of spiritual development involves a systematic shift of the standpoint to the divine standpoint. This process does not occur ove
ight, and does not proceed ‘automatically’ but requires some effort on the part of the individual. Without this effort, the human nature remains essentially unchanged, locked into the ego-personality and unable to fully integrate the higher powers of conscousness.

In his book, The Mother, Sri Aurobindo devotes several chapters to this process, the steps along the way and the needed personal effort, both in terms of what it needs to be, and the rationale for such effort. “The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender …. In proportion as the surrender and self-consecration progress the Sadhaka becomes conscious of the Divine Shakti doing the Sadhana, pouring into him more and more of herself, founding in him the freedom and perfection of the Divine Nature. The more this conscious process replaces his own effort, the more rapid and true becomes his progress. But it cannot completely replace the necessity of personal effort until the surrender and consecration are pure and comlete from top to bottom. … Note that a tamasic surrender refusing to fulfil the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection.”

He goes on in this same text to outline the nature and detailed steps of the aspiration, the rejection and the surrender. It becomes quickly obvious that as long as one still is based in the ego, there is a need to tune the aspiration to the higher powers, to remove the obstructions and static in the reception of the higher forces into one’s being and to then allow those higher forces to act to transform the mental, vital and physical aspects of the being.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once — and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia.”

“The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mother’s. There will be a sort of transfer, a taking up of the forces at work in the personal Adhar — a transfer not suddenly complete but progressive.”

“But the psychic poise is necessary: the discrimination must develop which sees accurately what is the Divine Force, what is the element of personal effort, and what is brought in as a mixture from the lower cosmic forces. And until the transfer is complete which always takes time, there must always be as a personal contribution, a constant consent to the true Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture.”

“At present to give up personal effort is not what is wanted, but to call in more and more the Divine Power and govern and guide by it the personal endeavour.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 2, Faith — Aspiration — Surrender, pp. 28-29