Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / The Essential Nature of the Inner Attitude in Relation to Meeting the Challenges or Deciding on the Direction of One's Life
Transcript
- 0:00In the Bhagwad Gita, Arjuna asks how one can identify a realized
- 0:05soul. His question indicates there
- 0:08should be some outward sign that can be observed.
- 0:11Sri Krishna, however, demurs and indicates it is not by any
- 0:17specific outward action or formation that such a soul can
- 0:22be recognized. Everything depends on the inner
- 0:25standpoint, or as the Mother calls it, the inner attitude.
- 0:32The mother observes quote. There are very many things one
- 0:36does and about which one is not in the habit of thinking
- 0:39beforehand. When the circumstance comes, one
- 0:42obeys it, so to say. And indeed these things, like
- 0:47almost everything one does in life, are not important in
- 0:51themselves. The only thing that matters is
- 0:55the attitude with which they are done, the fact that you do
- 0:59something because that action is present there before you for one
- 1:03reason or another, and that you are, so to say, always obliged
- 1:08to act as long as you are in the outer life.
- 1:11All this has a certain importance from the point of
- 1:14view of the management of life. If these acts are liable to have
- 1:18far reaching consequences in life, As for example, getting
- 1:22married, we're going to live in one place or another, we're
- 1:26taking up one occupation or another, these things are
- 1:30generally considered important, and they are so to a certain
- 1:35extent. But even for them, from the
- 1:38point of view of yoga, everything depends much more on
- 1:42the attitude 1 takes than on the thing itself.
- 1:47And so, above all, for all the very small actions of daily
- 1:52life, the importance is reduced to a minimum.
- 1:57One may try to find out what is the truest thing to do, but it
- 2:01is not by a mental discussion or a mental problem that these
- 2:06things can be resolved. It is in fact by an inner
- 2:10attitude which creates an atmosphere of harmony,
- 2:14progressive harmony, in which all one does will necessarily be
- 2:19the best thing that could be done in those particular
- 2:22circumstances. And the ideal would be an
- 2:26attitude complete enough for the action to be spontaneous,
- 2:31dictated by something other than an outer reason.
- 2:35But that's an ideal for which one must aspire and which one
- 2:39can realize after some time. Till then, to take care always
- 2:45to keep the true attitude, the true aspiration, is much more
- 2:50important than to decide whether one will do gymnastic marching
- 2:53or not, and whether one will go to a certain class or not,
- 2:58because these things have no real importance in themselves.
- 3:02They have only an altogether relative importance.
- 3:07The only important thing is just to keep the true orientation in
- 3:12one's aspiration and a living will for progress.
- 3:17End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother Looking from
- 3:23within, Chapter 1. Looking at Life and
- 3:27Circumstances, pages 8 to 9.