Setbacks in Sadhana Due to Incomplete Purification of the Nature

With careful observation we can understand that an individual’s greatest weaknesses and difficulties represent the opportunity and specific need for progress for spiritual growth. Each individual faces his own unique challenges. In many cases, the confluence of the soul’s pressure, the outer societal expectations and framework, the circumstances into which one is born, even physical hereditary factors, will create for the soul the specific focus that needs to be delved into for substantive, long-term progress to take place.

The progress has both its dynamic, developmental aspect and its integration and consolidation phase. The developmental aspect represents the spiritual experiences, the progress, the inner growth, the aspiration of the individual soul. The consolidation effort needs to incorporate the insights, the progress, the aspiration into the rest of the being and stabilise it there. This can only be done if the effort is made to review and clear out old habits, predilections, instincts and reactions from the outer being. This is the process of purification that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother describe.

The Mother writes: “I have known people (many, not only a few, I mean among those who do yoga), I have known many who, every time they had a fine aspiration, and their aspiration was very strong and they received an answer to this aspiration, every time, the very same day or at the latest the next day, they had a complete setback of consciousness and were facing the exact opposite of their aspiration. Such things happen almost constantly. Well, these people have developed only the positive side. They make a kind of discipline of aspiration, they ask for help, they try to come into contact with higher forces, they succeed in this, they have experiences; but they have completely neglected cleaning their room; it has remained dirty as ever, and so, naturally, when the experience has gone, this dirt becomes still more repulsive than before.”

“One must never neglect to clean one’s room, it is very important; inner cleanliness is at least as important as outer cleanliness.”

“Vivekananda has written (I don’t know the original, I have only read the French translation): ‘One must every morning clean one’s soul and one’s body, but if you don’t have time for both, it is better to clean the soul than clean the body.’ “

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter IV Growth of Consciousness First Steps and Foundation, pp. 66-67