Consecration

This is a short essay by M.P. Pandit, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the value of consecration

Artist: Priti Ghosh (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry)

 

It is not difficult to enter the spiritual path by some means, to give up the ordinary life and to take the spiritual.  The entry may be caused by some relation with, or admiration or fascination exercised by, a teacher or an advanced seeker.  It may come by reading something that creates interest in the truth that is propounded,and one wishes to realise it.  One may get a shock from a death or some disaster, it suddenly cuts the knot tying you to the lower life and you are freed.  There are many other ways in which one may turn to spiritual life.

It is a universal experience that when one does turn to yoga, to spiritual life of any kind, there is a sense of elation, a sense of newness.  And one feels inspired, open to waves of bliss, to the touch of peace, to the throb of power, and much more.

But after this initial period of enthusiasm passes, there is an interregnum of depression, difficulty, troubles.  That is because usually the decision to live a higher life is taken by only one part of the being: it may be the awakened mind, it may be the emotional heart which flows towards the teacher or the ideal embodied in the teacher,it may be just an idea that captures the imagination.  But unless steps are taken to extend the area of this spiritual living, the other parts of our being rise in revolt, they go on strike and insist on returning  to their petty rounds.

One has to take the trouble in the earlier stages to train the other parts of the being to collaborate with the central part that has chosen. One has to read favourable literature, accustom the mind to the higher vibrations and train the heart to expand itself, to extend its emotions and love, train the life-energies to dedicate themselves in the cause of the divine, train the very body to look upon itself as a pedestal for the edifice of God under erection.

Unless this step is taken to follow up the initial choice, things get bogged down.  This process of working out in detail the decision to surrender to a higher power is called CONSECRATION.  Consecration is a detailed working out of the will for surrender that has been effected in the central part of the being.

(M.P Pandit in the Yoga of Works which is based on Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga)

See also

• How to awaken the soul (psychic being)?
• Early mystic experiences of Sri Aurobindo
• Identifying the signs of spiritual progress
• Surmounting the unpleasant images and negative thoughts which occur during meditation
• Dharana Shakti : the capacity to sustain spiritual experiences
• How does the brain absorb new ideas?
• Signs of readiness for the spiritual path
• How to distinguish between right and wrong
• Distinguishing between stilling the mind and dynamizing meditation
• Anything that shocks you is the very thing you carry in yourself – The Mother.