Qualities for a Good Life

It is an error or superstition to believe that an external thing or circumstance can be the cause of anything. All things and circumstances are the accompanying results of a Force that acts from behind the veil.

The Force acts and each thing reacts according to its own nature.

One must not take consequences for causes.

Never take physical happenings at their face value. They are always a clumsy attempt to express something else, the true thing which escapes your superficial understanding.

Do not mind the apparent contradictions. There is a truth to be found behind.

(Someone asked for sympathy regarding his circumstances at the time)

I am full of sympathy but unshakably convinced that each one meets in this life the circumstances which he has, inwardly and outwardly, built for himself.

People keep lamenting about their lot and feel that their troubles and their unhappy reactions would go if other people and things were changed. Do you share my doubt about this feeling?

Each one is the artisan of his own miseries.

It is always a mistake to complain about the circumstances of our life, for they are the outward expression of what we are ourselves.

Satisfaction does not depend on outer circumstances but on an inner condition.

People think that their condition depends on circumstances. But that is all false. If somebody is a “nervous wreck”, he thinks that if circumstances are favourable he will improve. But, actually, even if they are favourable he will remain what he is. All think they are feeling weak and tired because people are not nice to them. This is rubbish. It is not the circumstances that have to be changed: what is required is an inner change.

If you feel that a change is needed, it can be in the attitude, giving importance to what is to be said and realised and using the past as a preparation for the future. This is not a very difficult thing to do—and I am quite sure that you will easily do it.

Those who are confident go through life with a triumphant march. But to be confident means what? What is the deeper source of this virtue?

A laugh of self-confidence and of faith in the Divine is the most shattering strength possible—it disrupts the enemy’s front, spreads havoc in his ranks and carries you triumphantly onwards.

…. belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and confidence is quite different. Confidence—one can have confidence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one’s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do.

…. those who have this smiling confidence within them, do not question, do not ask themselves whether they will have it or not have it, whether the Divine will answer or not—the question does not arise, it is something understood… “What I need will be given to me; if I pray I shall have an answer; if I am in a difficulty and ask for help, the help will come—and not only will it come but it will manage everything.”

There are very few people who carry with them an atmosphere which irradiates joy, peace, confidence; it is very rare. But these are truly benefactors of humanity.

There is a great power in the simple confidence of a child.

When a child lives in normal conditions, it has a spontaneous confidence that all it needs will be given to it. This confidence should persist, unshaken, throughout life; but the limited idea, ignorant and superficial, of its needs which a child has, must be replaced progressively by a wider, deeper and truer conception which culminates in the perfect conception of needs in accordance with the supreme wisdom, until we realise that the Divine alone knows what our true needs are and rely upon Him for everything.

Be confident, you will become what you have to be and achieve what you have to do.

I have just said that we always look upon ourselves with great indulgence, and I think in fact that our defects very often appear to us to be full of charm and that we justify all our weaknesses. But to tell the truth, this is because we lack self-confidence. Does this surprise you?… Yes, I repeat, we lack confidence, not in what we are at the present moment, not in our ephemeral and ever-changing outer being—this being always finds favour in our eyes—but we lack confidence in what we can become through effort, we have no faith in the integral and profound transformation which will be the work of our true self, of the eternal, the divine who is in all beings, if we surrender like children to its supremely luminous and far-seeing guidance.

So let us not confuse complacency with confidence—and let us return to our subject.

The only way to fail in your battle with the hostile forces is not to have a true confidence in the divine help.

One gets cured nine times out of ten, one gets cured very quickly with this confidence: “It is nothing; what is it after all? Just an accident, it will pass off, it is nothing.”

To be generous is to be benevolent towards everyone ­not only materially but also in the heart and in the mind. It means always to have good feelings towards all. Even in the mind there must never be any bad thoughts about anybody or anything.

To have a generous heart is to be always joyful and happy in the happiness and joy of others and to remain in harmony with all and to approach them with kindness. This attitude helps much to widen the consciousness and to open the hear and the mind to the Divine’s influence and thus you get joy and happiness from everything.

­It is in that way that generosity can put an end to most difficulties.

[Mother, You Said So by Huta, pg.22-23]

I shall not speak here of material generosity which naturally consists in giving others what one has. But even this virtue is not very widespread, for as soon as one becomes rich one thinks more often of keeping one’s wealth than of giving it away. The more men possess, the less are they generous.

I want to speak of moral generosity. To feel happy, for example, when a comrade is successful. An act of courage, of unselfishness, a fine sacrifice have a beauty in them which gives you joy. It may be said that moral generosity consists in being able to recognise the true worth and superiority of others.

When you no longer have this generosity in your movements, you receive much less and this is one of the reasons—one of the chief reasons—why physical progress stops.

One can see, when one studies oneself very attentively…. For example, if you observe yourself, you see that one day you are very generous. Let us take this, it is easy to understand. Very generous: generous in your feelings, generous in your sensations, generous in your thoughts and even in material things; that is, you understand the faults of others, their intentions, weaknesses, even nasty movements. You see all this, and you are full of good feelings, of generosity. You tell yourself, “Well… everyone does the best he can!”—like that.

233 – Nobleness and generosity are the soul’s ethereal firmament; without them, one looks at an insect in a dungeon.

[Thoughts and Aphorisms by Sri Aurobindo]

Generosity is to find one’s own satisfaction in the satisfaction of others.

For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will protect him from many base and perverse movements.

The leaders must always set the example, the leaders must always practice the virtues they demand from those who are in their care; they must be understanding, patient, enduring, full of sympathy and warm and friendly goodwill, not out of egoism to win friends for themselves, but out of generosity to be able to understand and help others.

What are the rules of conduct You consider indispensable in our community?

Patience, perseverance, generosity, broad-mindedness, insight, calm and understanding firmness, and control over the ego until it is completely mastered or even abolished.

Psychic generosity gives for the joy of giving.

Generosity in the vital gives itself unstintingly.

Generosity gives and gives itself without bargaining.

What makes one grow old?

It is not the number of years you have lived that makes you grow old. You become old when you stop progressing.

As soon as you feel you have done what you had to do, as soon as you think you know what you ought to know, as soon as you want to sit and enjoy the results of your effort, with the feeling you have worked enough in life, then at once you become old and begin to decline.

When, on the contrary, you are convinced that what you know is nothing compared to all which remains to be known, when you feel that what you have done is just the starting-point of what remains to be done, when you see the future like an attractive sun shining with the innumerable possibilities yet to be achieved, then you are young, however many are the years you have passed upon earth, young and rich with all the realisations of tomorrow.

And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength.

If the growth of consciousness were considered as the principal goal of life, many difficulties would find their solution.

The best way of not becoming old is to make progress the goal of our life.

To be young is to live in the future.

To be young is to be always ready to give up what we are in order to become what we must be.

To be young is never to accept the irreparable.

Youth does not depend on the small number of years one has lived, but on the capacity to grow and progress. To grow is to increase one’s potentialities, one’s capacities; to progress is to make constantly more perfect the capacities that one already possesses. Old age does not come from a great number of years but from the incapacity or the refusal to continue to grow and progress. I have known old people of twenty and young people of seventy. As soon as one wants to settle down in life and reap the benefits of one’s past efforts, as soon as one thinks that one has done what one had to do and accomplished what one had to accomplish, in short, as soon as one ceases to progress, to advance along the road of perfection, one is sure to fall back and become old.

There are young people who are old and there are old people who are young. If you carry in you this flame for progress and transformation, if you are ready to leave everything behind so that you may advance with an alert step, if you are always open to a new progress, a new improvement, a new transformation, then you are eternally young.

The definition of youth: we can say that youth is constant growth and perpetual progress—and the growth of capacities, possibilities, of the field of action and range of consciousness, and progress in the working out of details.

Between the extreme of an individual who has fully and perfectly realised all he had conceived and that of one who has been incapable of realising anything at all, there is, of course, an almost unlimited range of intermediate cases; this range is remarkably complex, because not only is there a difference in the degree of realisation of the ideal, but there is also a difference between the varied qualities of the ideal itself. There are ambitions which pursue mere personal interests, material, sentimental or intellectual, others which have more general, more collective or higher aims, and yet others which are superhuman, so to say, and strive to scale the peaks that open on the splendours of eternal Truth, eternal Consciousness and eternal Peace. It is easy to understand that the power of one’s effort and renunciation must be commensurate with the breadth and height of the goal one has chosen.

There are innumerable categories of “successful” people; these categories are determined by the greater or lesser breadth, nobility, complexity, purity and luminosity of their ideal. One may “succeed” as a rag-picker or “succeed” as master of the world or even as a perfect ascetic; in all three cases, although on very different levels, it is one’s more or less integral and extensive self-mastery which makes the “success” possible.

On the other hand, there is only one way of being a “failure”; and that happens to the greatest, to the most sovereign intelligence, as well as to the smallest, the most limited, to all those who are unable to subordinate the sensation of the present moment to the ideal they wish to achieve, but without having the strength to take up the path-identical for all in nature if not in extent and complexity-that leads to this achievement.

At any level, from the most modest to the most transcendent, one rarely finds a perfect balance between the sum of self-control, the power of sacrifice available to the individual who has chosen a goal, and the sum of renunciations of every kind and nature which the goal requires.

When the constitution of an individual permits this perfect balance, then his earthly existence yields its utmost possible result.

As soon as you think that you have succeeded in a certain thing, the adverse forces make it a point to attack and spoil it. Moreover, when you think of success, you relax your aspiration and the slightest relaxation is sufficient to spoil the game. The best thing is not to think of it but to go on doing your duty. But sometimes when you go on thinking of your shortcomings and failures and you get depressed, then you have to put the success before your nose and say, “Look at this.”

So long as one insist on success, one is doing the work partly at least for the ego; difficulties and outward failures come to warn one that it is so and to bring complete equality. This does not mean that the power of victory is not to be aquired, but it is not the success in the immediate work that is all important; it is the power to receive and transmit a greater and greater correct vision and inner Force that has to be developed and this must be done quite coooly and patiently without being elated or disturbed by immediate victory or failure.

This is the right inner attitude of equality – to remain unmoved whatever may outwardly happen. But what is needed for sucsess in the outward field (if you do not use human means, diplomacy or tactics) is the power to transmit calmly a Force that can change men’s attitude and the circumstances and make any outward action at once the right thing to do and effective.

Power of success: the power of those who know how to continue their effort.

One must never try for the sake of succeeding.

Success depends entirely on the sincerity.

To judge from appearances and apparent success is precisely an act of complete ignorance. Even for the most hardened man, for whom everything has apparently been successful, even for him there is always a counterpart. And this kind of hardening of the being which is produced, this veil which is formed, a thicker and thicker veil, between the outer consciousness and the inner truth, becomes, one day or another, altogether intolerable. It is usually paid for very dearly — outer success.

One must be very great, very pure, have a very high and very disinterested spiritual consciousness in order to be successful without being affected by it. Nothing is more difficult than being successful. This, indeed, is the true test of life!

How is Time a friend?

It depends on how you look at it. Everything depends on the relation you have with it. If you take it as a friend, it becomes a friend. If you consider it as an enemy, it becomes your enemy.

But that’s not what you are asking. What you are asking is how one feels when it is an enemy and how when it is a friend. Well, when you become impatient and tell yourself,

“Oh, I must succeed in doing this and why don’t I succeed in doing it?” and when you don’t succeed immediately in doing it and fall into despair, then it is your enemy. But when you tell yourself, “It is all right, I didn’t succeed this time, I shall succeed next time, and I am sure one day or another I shall do it”, then it becomes your friend.