Aspiration is one of the twelve attributes of the Mother.
Aspiration is a turning upward of the inner being with a call, yearning, prayer for the Divine, for the Truth, for the Consciousness, Peace, Ananda, Knowledge, descent of Divine Force or whatever else is the aim of one’s endeavour.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters On Yoga – II: CWSA, Vol. 29, pp.56 – 57
…. Aspiration should be not a form of desire, but the feeling of an inner soul’s need, and a quiet settled will to turn towards the Divine and seek the Divine….
Sri Aurobindo – Letters On Yoga – II: CWSA, Vol. 29, pp.60 – 61
Beyond words, above thoughts the flame of an intense aspiration must always burn, steady and bright.
The Mother – Words of The Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 74
There are two powers that alone can effect in their conjunction the great and difficult thing which is the aim of our endeavour, a fixed and unfailing aspiration that calls from below and a supreme Grace from above that answers.
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on The Mother: CWSA, Vol. 32, p.3
What is exactly meant by a sincere aspiration?
An aspiration which is not mixed with any interested and egoistic calculation.
The Mother – Words of The Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 72
What is the difference between mental aspiration, vital aspiration and spiritual aspiration?
A mental aspiration means that the thought-power aspires to have knowledge, for instance, or else to have the power to express itself well or have clear ideas, a logical reasoning. One may aspire for many things; that all the faculties and capacities of the mind may be developed and placed at the service of the Divine. This is a mental aspiration.
Or you may have an aspiration in the vital; if you have desires or troubles, storms, inner difficulties, you may aspire for peace, to be quite impartial, without desire or preference, to be a good docile instrument without any personal whims, always at the Divine’s disposal. This is a vital aspiration.
You may have a physical aspiration also; that the body may feel the need to acquire a kind of equipoise in which all the parts of the being will be well balanced, and that you may have the power to hold off illness at a distance or overcome it fast when it enters trickily, and that the body may always function normally, harmoniously, in perfect health. That is a physical aspiration.
A spiritual aspiration means having an intense need to unite with the Divine, to give oneself totally to the Divine, not to live outside the divine Consciousness so that the Divine may be everything for you in your integral being, and you feel the need of a constant communion with Him, of the sense of his presence, of his guidance in all that you do, and of his harmonising all the movements of the being. That is a spiritual aspiration.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 5, pp. 292 – 93
Sri Aurobindo says here, “…The aspiration and tapasya needed are too constant…”
Yes, one cannot do the yoga if one does not take it seriously. For one must be very serious to have a constant aspiration and do tapasya. If one is not serious, for five minutes one has an aspiration and for ten hours one hasn’t; for one day there is a great urge and for a month nothing, and so on. Well, one can’t do yoga in these conditions. It must be a continuous, constant thing which does not flag. If one forgets or slackens, one cannot do yoga.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 4, p. 342
One has only to aspire sincerely and keep oneself as open as possible to the Mother’s Force. Then whatever difficulties come, they will be overcome—it may take some time, but the result is sure.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters On Yoga – III: CWSA, Vol. 29, p.55
We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find… that Something which will change the whole significance of life, reply to all our questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it, to that Reality which alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 9, p. 374
Aspiration is like an arrow, like this (gesture). So you aspire, want very earnestly to understand, know, enter into the truth. Yes? And then with that aspiration you do this (gesture). Your aspiration rises, rises, rises, rises straight up, very strong and then it strikes against a kind of… how to put it?… lid which is there, hard like iron and extremely thick, and it does not pass through. And then you say, “See, what’s the use of aspiring? It brings nothing at all. I meet with something hard and cannot pass!” But you know about the drop of water which falls on the rock, it ends up by making a chasm: it cuts the rock from top to bottom. Your aspiration is a drop of water which, instead of falling, rises. So, by dint of rising, it beats, beats, beats, and one day it makes a hole, by dint of rising; and when it makes the hole suddenly it springs out from this lid and enters an immensity of light, and you say, “Ah, now I understand.”
It’s like that.
So one must be very persistent, very stubborn and have an aspiration which rises straight upwards, that is, which does not go roaming around here and there, seeking all kinds of things.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 7, p. 235
…. It depends a great deal on the intensity of the inner aspiration. If you are in a state of conscious aspiration and very sincere, well, everything around you will be arranged in order to help in your aspiration, whether directly or indirectly, that is, either to make you progress, put you in touch with something new or to eliminate from your nature something that has to disappear. This is something quite remarkable. If you are truly in a state of intensity of aspiration, there is not a circumstance which does not come to help you to realise this aspiration. Everything comes, everything, as though there were a perfect and absolute consciousness organising around you all things, and you yourself in your outer ignorance may not recognise it and may protest at first against the circumstances as they show themselves, may complain, may try to change them; but after a while, when you have become wiser, and there is a certain distance between you and the event, well, you will realise that it was just what you needed to do to make the necessary progress. And, you know, it is a will, a supreme goodwill which arranges all things around you, and even when you complain and protest instead of accepting, it is exactly at such moments that it acts most effectively.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 6, p. 176
What is the difference between aspiration and a demand?
When you have experienced both, you can easily make the distinction. In aspiration there is what I might call an unselfish flame which is not present in desire. Your aspiration is not a turning back upon self—desire is always a turning back upon oneself. From the purely psychological point of view, aspiration is a self-giving, always, while desire is always something which one draws to oneself; aspiration is something which gives itself, not necessarily in the form of thought but in the movement, in the vibration, in the vital impulse.
True aspiration does not come from the head; even when it is formulated by a thought, it springs up like a flame from the heart. … When the aspiration is formulated, this is done categorically, absolutely, without any possibility of change. And it is always something that springs up and gives itself, whereas the very nature of desire is to pull things to oneself.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 4, pp. 135 – 36
Awake to his hidden possibility,
Awake to all that slept within his heart
And all that Nature meant when earth was formed
And the Spirit made this ignorant world his home,
He shall aspire to Truth and God and Bliss.
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 34, Book Eleven, p709
Aspiration
Innumerable, obstinate, repeating itself tirelessly.
Nyctanthes arbor-tristis
Night jasmine, Tree of sadness
Small fragrant salverform flower with a prominent orange corolla tube and a flat abruptly expanding white limb divided into five to eight irregular lobes; borne in few-flowered terminal cymes. A medium-sized shrub or small tree with flowers that open at night and fall by early morning carpeting the ground
The Mother – Flowers and Their Messages
Surrender
