The Influence of the Awakened Consciousness on the Circumstances of the Exte al Being and Life

Have you ever wondered how some people seem to go through various situations without a problem while others go through similar situations and have to undergo tremendous challenges and suffering? If someone escapes a harrowing incident once, we tend to call it “luck”. But if it happens repeatedly in the course of an individual’s life, we have to look for some causative factor that is at work. Similarly, if someone has a bad experience, we will tend to call it ‘bad luck’. When it happens repeatedly through an individual’s life, again we have to look for a causative factor. The Chinese use the term “joss” to designate this undefined factor that leads to how individuals come through difficult situations, for good or ill.

The concept of ‘past karma’ is frequently cited as an explanation, although this does not explain much about how an individual comes through an experience that their past impressions may have brought forward to them. It only explains that the circumstance arises, not the response or the outcome of that circumstance, unless we are willing to accept absolute predestination as the cause.

A disciple asks: “One can make it afterwards? (laughter)

The Mother notes: “No. Afterwards there is yet another moment…. One has fallen, one is already hurt; but there is still a moment when one can change things for the better or worse, so that it may be something very fugitive the bad effects of which will quickly disappear or something which becomes as serious, as grave as it can be. I don’t know if you have noticed that there are people who never miss the opportunity of an accident! Every time there is the possibility of an accident, they have it. And never is their accident ordinary. Every time the accident can be serious it is serious. Well, usually in life one says: ‘Oh! he is unlucky, he is unfortunate, indeed he has no luck.’ But all that is ignorance. It depends absolutely on the working of his consciousness. I could give you examples — only I would have to speak about certain people and I don’t want to. But I could give you striking examples! And this — this is the sort of thing one sees all the time, all the time here! There are people who could have been killed and who come out of it unscathed; there are others for whom it was not serious, and it becomes serious.”

“But that does not depend on thought, on the working of the ordinary thought. They may apparently have thoughts as good as the others — it is not that. It is the second of the choice — people knowing how to react in just the right way at the right time. I could give you hundreds of examples. It is quite interesting.”

“This depends absolutely on character. Some have such an awakened consciousness, so alert, that they are not asleep, they are awake within. Just at the second it is required they call the help. Or they invoke the divine Force. But just at the second it is needed. So the danger is averted, nothing happens. They could have been killed: they come out of it absolutely unhurt. Others, on the contrary, as soon as they have the least little scratch, something gets dislocated in their being: a sort of fright or pessimism or defeatism in their consciousness which automatically comes up — it was nothing, they had just twisted their leg and the next minute they break it. There is no reason for it. They could very well have not broken their leg.”

“There are others who climb up to a first floor on a ladder which gives way under them. They could have collapsed — they come out of that without the least hurt. How did they manage it? Apparently this seems wonderful, and still this is how things happen to them. They find themselves lying on the ground in an altogether fine state; nothing has happened to them. I could give you the names, I am telling you exact facts.”

“So, on what does this depend? It depends on whether one is sufficiently awake for the second of the choice to… And note that it is not at all mental, it is not that: it is an attitude of the being, it is the consciousness reacting in the right way. It goes quite far, very far, it is formidable, the power of this attitude. But as it is just a fraction of a second, it implies an altogether awakened consciousness which never sleeps, never enters the inconscient. For one does not know when these things are going to happen, isn’t that so? Hence, one does not have the time to wake up. One must be awake.”

“I knew someone who, indeed, should have died and did not die because of this. For his consciousness reacted very fast. He had taken poison by mistake: instead of taking one dose of a certain medicine, he had taken twelve and it was a poison; he should have died, the heart should have stopped (it was many years ago) and he is still quite alive! He reacted in the right way.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter VII Attitude, pp. 73-75