The Inner Voice
By Karmayogi
It is in obedience to His inner voice that Sri Aurobindo had arrived at Pondicherry.
Not all are
endowed with that faculty. It is called vani, asariri. There was a university
teacher who had that voice speaking from inside. For some inexplicable reason,
he lost it. Once he visited a relative who was on his way to Sri
Aurobindo's Samadhi. He also accompanied him without any discernible
thought. At the Samadhi, the university teacher also sat, as his relative did.
He had not come for samadhi darsan and the visit had no meaning for him. Months
later, the lecturer started coming to Samadhi regularly and accompanied his
relative. Now that the lecturer too had become a devotee, the relative ventured
to ask him what his experience had been during his first unintended visit.
‘‘I had an inner voice which was lost. At my first visit, it came
back,'' said the lecturer. The inner voice is a rare faculty.
Venuganam is another spiritual endowment rarely found amongst us. There was a
devotee who ardently took interest in the people who came to him for any
reason. Once a visitor came back several times and the devotee was anxious to
be of use to him. ‘‘Is there anything you have in mind?''
asked the devotee. The visitor replied, 'Each time I come to you, you
speak exactly what I came to ask you before I express it. Even today you did
so.‘‘ New faculties that are spiritual faculties form when one
takes to this Force. Call it Mother, the Spirit, the Force, the Divine or
whatever you will.
The Spirit is invisible to our naked eyes. It rarely acts in the lives of
ordinary men. When it acts, people see the results, not the Spirit, as we do
not see the electricity that operates each piece of equipment we have. We see
the fan running, the bulb burning, etc., but we do not see the electricity that
operates them. This Force I speak of can awaken the Spirit in us, bring it to
the surface of our lives, even make us see the Spirit in action. It is felt as
sandal fragrance, a sweet tune of music, a sudden sense of sweetness in the
mouth, a live figure emerging from the picture of a God, etc. Inner voice is
one such manifestation. Man recognises the Spirit easily as luck, a fulfilment
of his own unspoken desires deeply buried in him.