Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

First Series

Fragment ID: 20509

Equality is the chief support of the true spiritual consciousness and it is this from which a Sadhaka deviates when he allows a vital movement to carry him away in feeling or speech or action. Equality is not the same thing as forbearance,– though undoubtedly a settled equality immensely extends, even inimitably, a man’s power of endurance and forbearance.

Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital, it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand. what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them, what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them, it means self-mastery over the vital movements,– anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,– not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit. It is not easy to have this equality in any full perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one’s inner state and outer movements.

Equality means another thing – to have an equal view of men and their nature and acts and the forces that move them; it helps one to see truth about them by pushing away from the mind all personal feeling in one’s seeing and judgement and even all the mental bias. Personal feeling always distorts and makes one see in men’s actions, not only the actions themselves, but things behind them which, more often than not, are not there. Misunderstanding, misjudgement which could have been avoided are the result; things of small consequence assume larger proportions. I have seen that more than half of the untoward happenings of this kind in life are due to this cause. But in ordinary life personal feeling and sensitiveness are a constant part of human nature and may be needed there for self-defence, although, I think, even there, a strong, large and equal attitude towards men and things would be a much better line of defence. But for a Sadhaka, to surmount them and live rather in the calm strength of the spirit is an essential part of his progress.

The first condition of inner progress is to recognise whatever is or has been a wrong movement in any part of the nature,– wrong idea, wrong feeling, wrong speech, wrong action,– and by wrong is meant what departs from the truth, from the higher consciousness and higher self, from the way of the Divine. Once recognised it is admitted, not glossed over or defended,– and it is offered to the Divine for the Light and Grace to descend and substitute for it the right movement of the true Consciousness.