Page 42 - NAMAH-Jan-2018

Namah Vol. 28, Issue 4, 15th January 2021

abolishing all desires and all useless external
activities, living a more intense inner life, and
separating yourself from ordinary things,
ordinary thoughts, ordinary reactions, ordinary
actions; then you create a kind of atmosphere
around you.

“For example, instead of reading any odd thing
and chatting and doing anything whatever, if
you read only what helps you to follow the path, if Environmental emissions are pressing on
you act only in conformity with what can lead you us continuously. Through social media and
to the divine realisation, if you abolish all desires digital communication, the influences never
and impulses turned towards external things, if cease and at times there seems to be no escape.
you calm your mental being, appease your vital But in a very real sense we are architects of
being, if you shut yourself against suggestions our own destiny. The state of consciousness
coming from outside and become immune to the we dwell in will refine or poison this air
action of people surrounding you, you create and its surroundings. It is the within that
such a spiritual atmosphere that nothing can will shape us and influence everything we
touch it, and it no longer depends at all on touch. Ultimately it is the psychic influence
circumstances or on whom you live with or which determines our atmosphere, if we open
on the conditions you live in, because you are ourselves to it, we become torchbearers for
enclosed in your own spiritual atmosphere. humanity. There can be no greater service
And that is how one obtains it: by turning one’s to Her than that.
attention solely to the spiritual life, by reading
only what can help in the spiritual life, by doing References
only what leads you to the spiritual life, and
so on. Then you create your own atmosphere 1. The Mother. Mother’s Agenda, Volume 6. Paris:
But naturally, if you open all the doors, listen Institut des Recherches EEvolutives; (English
to what people tell you, follow the advice of translation, 1993, p. 172).
this one and the inspirations of that one, and
are full of desires for outside things, you cannot 2. Sri Aurobindo. Birth Centenary Library, Volume
create a spiritual atmosphere for yourself. You 23. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram; 1970,
will have an ordinary atmosphere like everyone p. 651.
else (3).”
3. The Mother. The Collected Works of the Mother,
The conditions for creating this atmosphere in Volume 6. 2 ed. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2003,
nd
today’s world are more challenging than ever. pp. 356-7.

James Anderson is a member of SAIIIHR and coordinating editor of NAMAH.

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