When people do sadhana, there is a higher Nature that works within, the psychic and spiritual, and they have to put their nature under the influence of the psychic being and the higher spiritual self or of the Divine. Not only the vital and the body but the mind also has to learn the Divine Truth and obey the divine rule. But because of the lower nature and its continued hold on them, they are unable at first and for a long time to prevent their nature from following the old ways—even when they know or are told from within what to do or what not to do. It is only by persistent sadhana, by getting into the higher spiritual consciousness and spiritual nature that this difficulty can be overcome; but even for the strongest and best sadhaks it takes a long time.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 251
If one is not master of one’s desires, one cannot be master of one’s thoughts.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 255
It is always the habit of the vital being to find out things by which it persuades the mind and justifies its desires; and circumstances usually shape themselves to justify it still farther. For what we have within us creates the circumstances outside us.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 255
To conquer a desire brings more joy than to satisfy it.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 256
You must not mistake desire for will. Desire is an impulse: it seizes you, you know, it clings to you, holds you. And then, if you let desire do what it likes, well, it makes you do anything at all, and it makes use of your will. But usually, a desire is something violent, passionate and transient. Rarely is it very sustained; it does not have the stuff, the organisation of a sustained effort. When a desire seizes you, it can make you do anything whatever—but impulsively, not methodically.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 6, p. 411
Then lest a human cry should spoil the Truth
He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place.
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 33 , Book Three, p. 318
To want what the Divine wants in all sincerity is the essential condition for peace and joy in life. Almost all human miseries come from the fact that human beings are almost always persuaded they know better than the Divine what they need and what life is supposed to bring them. The majority of human beings want other human beings to behave according to their own expectations and life circumstances to follow their own desires, hence they suffer and are unhappy.
Only by giving oneself in all sincerity to the Divine Will does one gain the peace and calm joy that arises from the abolition of desires.
The psychic being knows this definitely. Thus, by uniting with our psychic being, we can know it, too. But the first condition is not to be the slave of personal desires and mistake them for the truth of one’s being.
The Mother – Agenda: Vol. 13, p. 54
Never forget that, as much outside as in the Ashram, if you want to lead a happy life, you must be the master of your lower nature and control your desires and vital impulses; otherwise there is no end to the miseries and the troubles.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 255
Mother, when we come to you, we try to be at our best possible, that is, to have very good thoughts; but often, on the contrary, all the bad impulses, bad thoughts we had during the day come forward.
That is perhaps so that you can get rid of them.
If they come, one can offer them and ask to be rid of them.
That perhaps is the reason, it is because the Consciousness acts for purification. It is no use at all hiding things and pushing them behind, like this, and imagining they are not there because one has put a veil in front. It is much better to see oneself as one is – provided one is ready to give up this way of being. If you come allowing all the bad movements to rise to the surface, to show themselves; if you offer them, if you say, “Well, this is how I am”, and if at the same time you have the aspiration to be different, then this second of presence is extremely useful; you can, yes, in a few seconds receive the help you need to get rid of them ; while if you come like a little saint and go away content, without having received anything, it is not very useful.
Automatically the Consciousness acts like that, it is like the ray that brings light where there wasn’t any. Only, what is needed is to be in a state where one wants to give up the thing, to get rid of it – not to cling to it and keep it. If one sincerely wants to pull it out of oneself, make it disappear, then it is very useful.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 8, pp. 307 – 308
What does “inner tapasya” mean, exactly?
Inner tapasya? It means the tapasya for the character, and for changing the psychological movements of the being, precisely to conquer the desires, conquer the passions, overcome egoism, get rid of fears. This is the inner tapasya.
Outer tapasya is all the ascetic or hathayogic methods; to make use of physical means for one’s yoga is an outer tapasya But inner tapasya consists of attending to one’s character and trying to change it.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 6, pp. 409 – 10
To yield to depression when things go wrong is the worst way of meeting the difficulty. There must be some desire or demand within you, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisfied. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out.
If the lower vital (not the mind only) could permanently make up its mind that all desire and demand are contrary to the Truth and no longer call for them, these things would lose very soon their force of return.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 259
As for love, the love must be turned singly towards the Divine. What men call by that name is a vital interchange for mutual satisfaction of desire, vital impulse or physical pleasure. There must be nothing of this interchange between sadhaks; for to seek for it or indulge this kind of impulse only leads away from the sadhana.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 265
Desire always takes a long time to get rid of entirely. But, if you can once get it out of the nature and realise it as a force coming from outside and putting its claws into the vital and physical, it will be easier to get rid of the invader. You are too accustomed to feel it as part of yourself or planted in you—that makes it more difficult for you to deal with its movements and dismiss its ancient control over you.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 262
…. If one cherishes desires, there is bound to be disappointment and suffering, especially if at the same time one does Yoga and takes up the spiritual life. For such desires, demand for vital affection and love from men and demand for physical comforts are not consistent with the spirit of Yoga in which one must turn one’s heart to the Divine and be vitally pure and in physical things must be content with what one gets and equal-minded in all conditions.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 258
It is the small habits of the lower vital being which gather all their strength to resist eviction and try to occupy the consciousness. When they come you must learn to detach your inner consciousness from them entirely so that even when they strongly come they will not be able to occupy the consciousness or get any assent.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, pp. 256 – 57
Desire is a psychological movement, and it can attach itself to a “true need” as well as to things that are not true needs. One must approach even true needs without desire. If one does not get them, one must feel nothing.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 257
….Vital desire grows by being indulged, it does not become satisfied. If your desire were
indulged, it would begin to grow more and more and ask for more and more.
Desire and envy have to be thrown out of the consciousness—there is no other way to deal with them.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 261
…. No one can easily get rid of desires. What has first to be done is to exteriorise them, to push them out on the surface and get the inner parts quiet and clear. Afterwards they can be thrown out and replaced by the true thing, a happy and luminous will one with the Divine’s.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, pp. 262 – 63
When the psychic being is in front, then also to get rid of desire becomes easy; for the psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspirations and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine. The constant prominence of the psychic being tends of itself to bring out the true consciousness and set right almost automatically the movements of the nature.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 265
It is true that the mere suppression or holding down of desire is not enough, not by itself truly effective, but that does not mean that desires are to be indulged; it means that desires have not merely to be suppressed, but to be rejected from the nature. In place of desire there must be a single-minded aspiration towards the Divine.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 265
The difference between suppression (nigraha) and self-control (saṁyama) is that one says, “I cannot help desiring but I will not satisfy my desire”, while the other says, “I refuse the desire as well as the satisfaction of the desire”.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 266
…if you want to do Yoga, you must take more and more in all matters, small or great, the Yogic attitude. In our path that attitude is not one of forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression stands on the same level as free indulgence; in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one’s own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going on outside you, and must be allowed to pass, rejected from the consciousness, and the true movement, the true consciousness steadily put in its place.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Himself and the Ashram: CWSA, Vol. 35, pp. 771 – 72
…. It is no part of this Yoga to suppress taste, rasa altogether; so, if you found the ice-cream pleasant, that does not by itself invalidate the completeness of your progress. What is to be got rid of is vital desire and attachment, the greed of food, being overjoyed at getting the food you like, sorry and discontented when you do not have it, giving an undue importance to it…. Equality is here the test as in so many other matters. If you can take the Ashram food with satisfaction or at least without dissatisfaction, that is already a sign that attachment and predilection are losing their old place in the nature.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV: CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 424
Sexual desires do not come from eating well but from thinking wrongly and concentrating on that. The less you think about it, the better it is. You should not concentrate on what you do not want to be, but on the contrary on what you want to become.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II: CWM, Vol. 14, p. 128
There is a kind of inner communion with the psychic being which takes place when one willingly gives up a desire, and because of this one feels a much greater joy than if he had satisfied his desire….
Naturally you must not pretend to give up desire and keep it in a comer, because then one becomes very unhappy. You must do it sincerely.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 7, p. 40
….If through an effort of inner consciousness and knowledge, you can truly overcome in yourself a desire, that is to say, dissolve and abolish it, and if through inner goodwill, through consciousness, light, knowledge, you are able to dissolve the desire, you will be, first of all in yourself personally, a hundred times happier than if you had satisfied this desire, and then it will have a marvellous effect. It will have a repercussion in the world of which you have no idea. It will spread forth. For the vibrations you have created will continue to spread. These things grow larger like the snow-ball. The victory you win in your character, however small it be, is one which can be gained in the whole world….
If you really want to do something good, the best thing you can do is to win your small victories in all sincerity, one after another, and thus you will do for the world the maximum you are able to.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 5, p. 19 – 20
….I would like to recommend something to you. In your desire for progress and your aspiration for realisation, take great care not to attempt to pull the forces towards you. Give yourself, open yourself with as much disinterestedness as you can attain through a constant self-forgetfulness, increase your receptivity to the utmost, but never try to pull the Force towards you, for wanting to pull is already a dangerous egoism. You may aspire, you may open yourself, you may give yourself, but never seek to take. When things go wrong, people blame the Force, but it is not the Force that is responsible: it is ambition, egoism, ignorance and the weakness of the vessel.
Give yourself generously and with a perfect disinterestedness and from the deeper point of view nothing bad will ever happen to you. Try to take and you will be on the brink of the abyss.
The Mother – Questions and Answers: CWM, Vol. 9, p. 241 – 42
