Consecration is a process by which one trains the consciousness to give itself to the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – II: CWSA,Vol. 29, p. 103
Consecration is the consummation, when the Light has illuminated all the parts of your being, with a central will acting on the feelings, impulses, thoughts, emotions, activities, directing them always towards the Divine and when you move no more from darkness to light or from falsehood to truth or from misery to happiness but from light to more light, from truth to greater truth, from happiness to increasing happiness.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p.99
A sincere consecration of all you are and all you do is for the sadhana much more effective than meditation.
True love and consecration lead much quicker to the Divine than an arduous Tapasya.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p.100
Dear Mother,
This subject was given for composition in our French class—
Develop this thought:
Consecration to the Divine is the secret of existence; a perpetual renewal of force comes from communion with the Infinite.
My dear little smile,
It is very simple, as you will see.
1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The individual is a battery, a storage cell which runs down after use. Consecration is the wire that connects the individual battery to the infinite reserve of forces.
Or
2) The Infinite is the river that flows without cease; the individual is the little pond that dries up slowly in the sun. Consecration is the canal that connects the river to the pond and prevents the pond from drying up.
With these two images, I think you will understand.
Tender love.
The Mother – Some Answers from the Mother: CWM,Vol. 16, p. 61
Sometimes when I sit in meditation, I say “Ma—Ma—Ma.” Then everything becomes quiet and I feel great peace inside and outside me. Even in the atmosphere around me, I hear “Ma—Ma—Ma.” Is this real or is it only echoes?
The atmosphere you carry around you is part of your consciousness as much as the rest that you feel inside you. When you repeat the name of the Mother, it begins to echo in all your consciousness, outside as well as inside you. What you experience therefore is quite true and it is a good experience.
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on the Mother: CWSA, Vol. 32, pp. 478 – 79
When I asked what attitude I should hold during the silence of the mind, you replied, “Consecration.” Please explain this to me in a wider sense.
It means the devoting of all that comes to you, all your experiences and progress to the Mother.
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on the Mother: CWSA, Vol. 32, p. 479
There is also the consecration of the thoughts to the Divine. In its inception this is the attempt to fix the mind on the object of adoration…. As in the other Yogas, so in this, one comes to see the Divine everywhere and in all and to pour out the realisation of the Divine in all one’s inner activities and outward actions. But all is supported here by the primary force of the emotional union: for it is by love that the entire self-consecration and the entire possession is accomplished, and thought and action become shapes and figures of the divine love which possesses the spirit and its members.
Sri Aurobindo – The Synthesis of Yoga – II: CWSA, Vol. 24, pp. 574 – 75
You told me, “The truth is this: your consecration to the Divine should be so complete that you no longer attach any importance to these relations with others.” How can I apply this in practice?
You should concern yourself more with strengthening your consecration to the Divine than with working out the details of your relations with people.
The Mother – More Answers from the Mother: CWM,Vol. 17, p. 32
One who has given himself to the Divine has no longer any other duty than to make that consecration more and more perfect. The world and those who live in it have always wanted to put human—social and family—duty before duty to the Divine, which they have stigmatised as egoism. How indeed could they judge otherwise, they who have no experience of the reality of the Divine? But for the divine regard their opinion has no value, their will has no force. These are movements of ignorance, nothing more. You should not attempt to convince; above all, you should not let yourself be touched or shaken. You must shut yourself carefully within your ivory tower of consecration and await from the Divine alone help, protection, guidance and approbation. To be condemned by the whole world is nothing to him who knows that he has the approval of the Divine and his support.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p.286
Every day, every moment should be an occasion for a new and completer consecration, and not one of those enthusiastic and flurried consecrations, over-active, full of illusions about the work, but a deep and silent consecration which is not necessarily visible but penetrates and transfigures all action. Our mind, solitary and peaceful, should always repose in Thee and from that pure summit have the exact perception of realities, of the sole and eternal Reality behind all unstable and fleeting appearances.
The Mother – Prayers and Meditations: CWM, Vol. 1, p.80
Every morning, O Lord, an innumerable salutation rises towards Thee, a salutation from all the states of being and from all the multitude of their elements. And it is a daily consecration of all things to the All, a call from ignorance and egoism to Thy light and love. And Thy answer comes constant and is integrally perceived: All is light, all is love, ignorance and egoism are but vain phantoms, they can be dissolved.
And over all things spreads Thy sovereign peace, Thy fecund calmness.
The Mother – Prayers and Meditations: CWM, Vol. 1, p.169
You must take this illness as a sign that in spite of all your convictions, perhaps even resolutions, you have to do sadhana and to add to your outer consecration in work the inner consecration of deep understanding and psychological transformation and make use of your seclusion for that purpose.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – III: CWM, Vol. 15, p.137
Well, I always say the same thing: a life consecrated to union with the Divine is the only life worth living…. A life consecrated to the Divine is the only life worth living.
The Mother – Agenda: Vol. 12, p. 45
The signs of the consecration of the vital in action are these among others:
The feeling (not merely the idea or the aspiration) that all the life and the work are the Mother’s and a strong joy of the vital nature in this consecration and surrender. A consequent calm content and disappearance of egoistic attachment to the work and its personal results, but at the same time a great joy in the work and in the use of the capacities for the divine purpose.
The feeling that the Divine Force is working behind one’s actions and leading at every moment.
A persistent faith which no circumstance or event can break. If difficulties occur, they raise not mental doubts or an inert acquiescence, but the firm belief that, with sincere consecration, the Divine Shakti will remove the difficulties, and with this belief a greater turning to her and dependence on her for that purpose. When there is full faith and consecration, there comes also a receptivity to the Force which makes one do the right thing and take the right means and then circumstances adapt themselves and the result is visible.
To arrive at this condition the important thing is a persistent aspiration, call and self-offering, and a will to reject all in oneself or around that stands in the way. Difficulties there will always be at the beginning and for as long a time as is necessary for the change; but they are bound to disappear if they are met by a settled faith, will and patience.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – II: CWSA,Vol. 29, pp. 233 – 34
Because the least detail of life and action, each movement of thought, even of sensation, of feeling, which is normally of little importance, becomes different the moment you look at it asking yourself, “Did I think this as an offering to the Divine, did I feel this as an offering to the Divine?…” If you recall this every moment of your life, the attitude becomes quite different from what it was before. It becomes very wide; it is a chain of innumerable little things each having its own place, whilst formerly you used to let them go by without being aware of them. That widens the field of consciousness. If you take a half-hour of your life and think of it, putting to yourself this question: “Is it a consecration to the Divine?” you will see that the small things become a big thing and you will have the impression that life becomes rich and luminous.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM,Vol. 4, p. 133
There should be two parallel movements in the evolution of an individual; and it is because he generally neglects one or the other of these movements in order to concentrate on one alone, that his progress is so halting and so unbalanced.
One of these movements is to become conscious of all the constituent elements of the being, material and sensory as well as intellectual and spiritual; we must become acquainted with the mechanism of the life within us, with all its tendencies, qualities, faculties and varied activities, very impartially, that is, without any preconceived idea of good or evil, without any absolute or arbitrary judgment (for our judgments are inevitably lacking in clear-sightedness) about what should subsist and what should disappear, what should be encouraged and what should be suppressed. Our vision of what we are must be objective, without bias, if we want it to be sincere and integral: we are faced with a universe which we must explore down to its smallest details, know in its most obscure and infinitesimal elements, with a scientific attitude of perfect mental impersonality, that is, without any a priori judgments.
Whatever we may think, this work of observation, analysis and introspection is never completed. At all events, as long as we are on earth in a physical body, we should always study the immensely complex being that we are, so that no element may elude our knowledge and therefore our control: for we can only master what we know and command what we have mastered.
This brings us to the second movement which should exist parallel to and simultaneous with the first. It is the consecration, the constant and constantly repeated surrender of all the elements subject to our control to the Supreme and Divine Law.
Each element that has become conscious of itself, each tendency, each faculty, must surrender to the Sovereign Guidance of the Eternal Essence of Being, with the simple trust of a child; She will order, classify and utilise all these elements in the right way; She and She alone can separate what can be used from what cannot, what must be encouraged from what must be eliminated; and, no doubt, as before Her all is of equal value, all can be used, since by Her all is transformed, illumined, transfigured: all that becomes conscious of Her and gives itself to Her becomes Herself and thus escapes all notions of good and evil, which are purely external and human.
One of these movements, one of these attitudes without the other is incomplete and one-sided. To consecrate our being in one block to the Supreme Essence is not enough: all the elements that we do not know and have not mastered elude this consecration and therefore follow their own law instead of conforming to the Eternal Law, and become the source of every disturbance, every unexpected revolt in one who had yet thought himself to be entirely a servant of The Law. But he was forgetful of all the unknown nooks in his being which also have a claim to life and activity and which are manifested in their turn, but in an activity that is disorderly and disharmonious relative to the being as a whole, since they elude the central will.
On the other hand, to become conscious of ourselves in our smallest details is vain and sterile, even dangerous, if it is not done for the sake of order, so that the Divine Essence can be made the Omnipotent ruler of all these elements, if we do not secure their unreserved surrender to Her supreme guidance, to The Sovereign Law.
Only in the balanced union of these two attitudes can one truly, integrally, call oneself a Servant of the Eternal.
The Mother – Words of Long Ago: CWM, Vol. 2, pp. 132 – 33
Purity Arising from Perfect Consecration
If one lives only for the Divine and by the Divine, the result is perfect purity.
Lilium candidum:
Annunciation lily, Easter lily, Madonna lily
Large fragrant waxy pearl white trumpet-shaped flower with gently recurved segments and prominent golden anthers; borne on tall many- flowered racemes. A bulbous perennial herb with lanceolate leaves.
The Mother – Spiritual significance of flowers
