Choice helps to invoke the spirit
By Karmayogi
The Spirit that I want people to evoke is not the Soul, the witness
Purusha, aimed at by the yoga of knowledge. Sri Aurobindo calls it the
Psychic Being, the evolving soul. Tradition conceived of the Spirit as
immutable, unchanging, having no origin of birth or end of death. That
was what the Rishis spoke of and attained. More or less, it is like a
king. He rules and all the others obey. After him, the throne goes to
his son. The TRUTH is neither the throne nor the Spirit is inherited. It
has to be won. A doctor’s son must qualify himself to be a doctor. He
cannot inherit it from his father.
In a democracy, there is no king, but an elected president. Everyone has
the right to become the president. The king is like the witness Purusha.
The Psychic Being is like the voter who can evolve himself to become the
president. Democracy gives him the right, the potential, NOT the post of
the president. All those who have the aspiration to evoke the evolving
SOUL into their life can do so by making the right choices in daily
life. You can be expansively pleasant to a child or put up a cold,
silent formality. It is a choice. There is no act, however small it is,
without such a choice. To evoke the Spirit all the time is yoga. To
evoke the Spirit in particular acts is prayer, only that this prayer
gives more than what you asked for. It gives what you have not prayed
for and gives what you do not know as a possibility. Do it for one full
day in all acts, or in all parts of an act that is a self-contained
whole, in one isolated assignment, say in one sale or exam or purchase
or job seeking. By insulating the effort in one act, what is otherwise
formidable becomes possible.
There are deciding events which can decide your future. Either you get
this job now or are relegated to the lower level. Either you win this
case or are ruined. Such occasions are suited to invoking the Spirit. If
you succeed, you survive. There are those who are beset with innumerable
such events. The Spirit helps them to survive. When they emerge
successful, they do not merely survive, but soar high in the sky. The
key is the right choice maintained throughout the SINGLE act they have
chosen.