Understanding the Higher Guidance That Directs Our Actions Towards Our Spiritual Destiny

When we rely on our surface impressions, which are very much based on and influenced by our background, family, society and the values inculcated into us by those relationships, we only are able to truly understand a fraction of what is actually occurring, and generally this is conditioned by our desires, wishes and preconceived ideas based on our ego-consciousness. It is thus, necessarily, not truly possible to get a real sense of the larger perspective that encompasses our growth, and the developmental trend that is working itself out within us and in our environs. We are somewhat like the famous anecdote of the 5 blind men who are asked to describe an element. One man, who takes hold of the tail, says an elephant is like a rope. Another who grabs hold of an ear says an elephant is like a fan. Yet a third who grabs the trunk believes an elephant is like a hose. None of them can actually describe the reality of the elephant, just the very small part that they are able to experience directly at the moment.

The question then is how can we separate ourselves from this surface awareness and experience a truer, more comprehensive view of our lives and our development. The sages in India developed a methodology of separation of the witness consciousness from the active nature, the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, in order to try to gain a standpoint from which they could be less ‘involved’ and thus able to gain a new perspective that would help them gain this more complete view of things.

As long as we are inundated with the ‘noise’ of our surface awareness, we find it difficult, if not impossible, to consciously receive any higher guidance or comprehend the intention behind it. This does not mean that the guidance is not there, at work; rather, it means that we are simply not aware of its action. In some cases, long after an event, we reflect back and see how it was pivotal in our development and how it was potentially interpreted negatively at the time, or not recognised for the seminal impact it would have on our growth and the development of our lives.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The true sense of the guidance becomes clearer when we can go deep within and see from there more intimately the play of the forces and receive intimations of the Will behind them. The surface mind can get only an imperfect glimpse. When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended, without our knowing it, towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made, — not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but also the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals. But with each person the guidance works differently according to his nature, the conditions of his life, his cast of consciousness, his stage of development, his need of further experience. We are not automata but conscious beings and our mentality, our will and its decisions, our attitude to life and demand on it, our motives and movements help to determine our course: they may lead to much suffering and evil, but through it all, the guidance makes use of them for our growth in experience and consequently the development of our being and consciousness. All advance, by however devious ways, even in spite of what seems a going backwards or going astray, gathering whatever experience is necessary for the soul’s destiny. When we are in close contact with the Divine, a protection can come which helps or directly guides or moves us: it does not throw aside all difficulties, sufferings or dangers, but it carries us through them and out of them — except where for a special purpose there is need of the opposite.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pp. 25-26