Yoga of Self-Giving
By Karmayogi
Sri Aurobindo discarded the usual
methods of yoga and advocated Surrender as the only desirable method. Surrender
is all-inclusive. The main strand of surrender is Self-giving. It is
interesting to know the ways of Self-giving. Its ways are peculiar. One of them
is when someone wants to deprive you of something, he presses the key of
Self-giving in the atmosphere. The atmosphere gives you the same thing in a
greater measure. This is a kind of transformation of evil into good. In the
life of devotees, such instances are legion. Apart from giving some examples, I
wish I could communicate to the reader the logic of life forces or the
mechanism through which this force works.
Education is a discipline and exams are bitter pills. When you tell a story
which can educate the child, the child avidly listens. It is easy for us to
understand that the child is eager to listen to a story and a little education
comes through that. How to understand that one man's ill will ends up in
my life as another man's good will? What happens, where, how? He who
invokes the Spirit is enveloped in an atmosphere of GOOD will. Good will can
only do good. Your boss activates that atmosphere by being angry at you, and
desires to punish you. The atmosphere around you is activated. It moves only in
one way. It can do good. It does. The punishment the boss wants to give changes
into a present.
A mean boss deprived his subordinate the use of the office cycle to go home and
return. It was a facility the subordinate had enjoyed for a long time. Now the
boss decided to deprive him of it. The subordinate's neighbour offered to
take him to the office and back on his motorbike. Everyone in the office offered
the man their two-wheeler. It so happened that on a few days he was brought to
the office in somebody's car. In ordinary life, this does happen, but
very rarely. When it does happen, it happens once. In the lives of the
devotees, this is a permanent feature. It will be a rich yogic knowledge if we
can disregard the convenience and SEE how the Force works. It is a Force of
Self-giving. It can only be benevolent even when the intention of the prime
mover is evil. A further understanding awaits us. It is the exact means by
which the atmosphere changes evil into good.