Cheerfulness: a joyous smile of Nature.
Cheerful endeavour: the joy that one finds in the effort towards the Divine.
Mental cheerfulness: it knows how to take delight in everything.
Keep a cheerful mind and a peaceful heart. Let nothing disturb your equanimity and make every day the necessary progress to advance with me steadily towards the goal.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 179
It is that cheerfulness that we want to be always there in you. It is the happiness of the psychic that has found its way and, whatever difficulties come, is sure that it will be led forward and reach the goal. When a sadhak has that constantly, we know that he has got over the worst difficulty and that he is now firmly on the safe path.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters On Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 173
Generally speaking, man is an animal who takes himself terribly seriously. To know how to smile at oneself in all circumstances, to smile at one’s sorrows and disillusions, ambitions and sufferings, indignation and revolt―what a powerful weapon with which to overcome oneself!
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 177
…. the more you advance, the more vigilant must you become. And the most essential quality is perseverance, endurance, and a… what shall I call it?—a kind of inner good humour which helps you not to get discouraged, not to become sad, and to face all difficulties with a smile. There is an English word which expresses this very well—cheerfulness. If you can keep this within you, you fight much better, resist much better, in the light, these bad influences which try to hinder you from progressing.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 08, p. 23
Cheerfulness is the salt of sadhana. It is a thousand times better than gloominess.
….There is nothing spiritually wrong in being glad and cheerful, on the contrary it is the right thing. As for struggles and aspiration, struggles are really not indispensable to progress and there are many people who get so habituated to the struggling attitude that they have all the time struggles and very little else. That is not desirable. There is a sunlit path as well as a gloomy one and it is the better of the two—a path in which one goes forward in absolute reliance on the Mother, fearing nothing, sorrowing over nothing. Aspiration is needed but there can be a sunlit aspiration full of light and faith and confidence and joy. If difficulty comes, even that can be faced with a smile.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 173
The cheerfulness [of joking and hilarity] is vital. I do not say that it should not be there, but there is a deeper cheerfulness, an inner sukhahāsya which is the spiritual condition of cheerfulness.
It is an inner joy and cheerfulness that helps, but this [light joking] is merely a vital bubbling on the surface. It is all right in ordinary life, but in Yoga it merely expends the vital force for nothing.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 174
My word to you is: Do not cherish suffering and suffering will leave you altogether. Suffering is far from being indispensable to progress. The greatest progress is made through a steady and cheerful equanimity.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 247
Never grumble. All sorts of forces enter you when you grumble and they pull you down. Keep smiling. I seem always to be joking but it is not mere joking. It is a confidence born from the psychic. A smile expresses the faith that nothing can stand against the Divine and that everything will come out all right in the end.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 221
All in me is proceeding towards the Mother’s love, devotion and purity. Why then am I not going up in my consciousness and getting higher experience?
The power of experience is not gone—but what is most important now is to develop the psychic condition of surrender, devotion, love and cheerful confidence in the Mother, an unshaken faith and a constant inner closeness, and also to bring down from above the peace, wideness, purity etc. of the higher Self which is that of the Mother’s consciousness. It is these things that are the basis of the siddhi in this Yoga—other experiences are only a help, not the basis.
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on The Mother: CWSA, Vol. 32, p. 332-33
I spoke of strange ideas in connection with what you said about peace and cheerfulness being obstacles in the Yoga because they are incompatible with an ardent longing for realisation. Peace was the very first thing that the Yogins and seekers of old asked for and it was a quiet and silent mind—and that always brings peace—that they declared to be the best condition for realising the Divine. A cheerful and sunlit heart is the fit vessel for the Ananda and who shall say that Ananda or what prepares it is an obstacle to the divine union? As for despondency, it is surely a terrible burden to carry on the way. One has to pass through it sometimes, like Christian of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ through the Slough of Despond, but its constant reiteration cannot be anything but an obstacle. The Gita specially says, “Practise the Yoga with an undespondent heart”, anirviṇṇacetasā.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 681
Link to stories told by the Mother on Cheerfulness: Words of Long Ago Volume-02
