Two Methods for Achieving Equality of Feelings with Others

What causes an individual to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ someone they meet. Some obvious reasons include similarities or differences in temperament, responses to situations, idea-sets, lifestyle, and, based on acculturation, accidental characteristics such as religion, social standing, career, or economic condition, as well as potential biases based on skin color, sexual orientation, gender, or appearance. Much of this, however, is what we may calll ‘learned’ response.

There is however another level of response that is purely vital in nature, which provides an immediate, almost automatic, affinity or disliking of one person for another. Just as we hear of cases of ‘love at first sight’, there are also instances of ‘hate at first sight’ that arise out of some vital incompatibility, some energetic disharmony between person and person. In such cases, one can enter a room and find a perfect stranger who either strikes one positively or negatively, without in fact, the individual knowing anything at all about the person they come into contact with. Some of this results from subtle signals, even in some cases pheromones, operative at a level that is not consciously perceived, but nevertheless, experienced. In other instances, there may be some karmic ‘history’ at work!

The spiritual aspirant, however, must discover how to move beyond these affinities or their opposite, and find a way to respond that is not conditioned by the reactions and habits of the physical, vital and mental nature. These reactions may still arise, but the spiritual aspirant needs to be able to observe, and override them, through the action of the psychic or the spiritual consciousness.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The inequality of feelings towards others, liking and disliking, is ingrained in the nature of the human vital. This is because some harmonise with one’s own vital temperament, others do not; also there is the vital ego which gets displeased when it is hurt or when things do not go or people do not act according to its preferences or its idea of what they should do. In the self above there is a spiritual calm and equality, a goodwill to all or at a certain stage a quiet indifference to all except the Divine; in the psychic there is an equal kindness or love to all fundamentally, but there may be special relations with one — but the vital is always unequal and full of likes and dislikes. By the sadhana the vital must be quieted down; it must receive from the self above its quiet goodwill and equality to all things and from the psychic its general kindness or love. This will come, but it may take time to come.”

“There are two attitudes that a sadhak can have: either a quiet equality to all regardless of their friendliness or hostility or a general goodwill.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 11, Human Relationships in Yoga, Harmony with Others, pp. 339-342