DISCUSSION QUESTION 2
How would someone with equality face a situation which was evil?
Response by Learner NJ
This equality can come by protracted ordeal or patient self discipline against desires. One has to start with endurance (Titiksha), should confront, and assimilate all contacts. Each fiber in us has to be taught not to wince away from painful or pleasurable. We have to accept, bear, face, and conquer everything that comes to us. There is a stoical period of preparation of equality. It is followed by a period of high seated impartiality – soul becomes free from exultation and depression. All is regarded from above by spirit that is intact and immutable and is not disturbed by things. The soul gains peace which can be sustained against all ups and downs. This is a philosophical period. Finally in third stage there is greater spiritual equality and tranquil passion of delight, it is rapturous, all understanding and all possessing.
Response by Learner MD
In the last stage of Equality he would probably feel only an acceleration or intensification of the Ananda in which he dwells already. His perfected soul would only have to become anew the divine it already is, revisit or reapply itself to the Divinity that seeks to manifest in this new “evil” situation. This final spiritual Equality can only be felt intuitively by most of us and therefore, it is very difficult to find the right words or even know what will actually happen.
But in the first two stages which are more familiar to our efforts and aspirations one is likely to go through the following internal process. The first thing would be to disassociate with the emotional, mental or physical suffering the “evil” situation might have brought about although someone who has achieved even the first level of equality or has any real spiritual aspiration would never call the situation “evil” and is unlikely to “suffer” in the usual sense of the word.
Next he would step back, withdraw and make the inner connection if it does not already exist as a constant. Some kind of Equality is bound to come about and with it the unshaken knowledge that all is only the Divine and all that happens moves unmistakably only in That direction. With the knowledge comes the strength to be unmoved and face the situation with equal soul and with complete Trust. And when the thrust is thus turned inward the inner drishti opens up and one sees and knows why this has come and the Divine Will behind it.
Even if this knowledge does not come about at least one is able to act in complete Faith and surrender, waiting quietly for the Divine to reveal itself and give more strength and knowledge. That is all. The rest is anyway not in our hands, although Sri Aurobindo says that it is our business to know the Will of the Divine and to second it, and I find this phrase so inspiring and so energizing, so utterly transforming. So typical of the Integral Yoga!!!
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“…this discipline or this growth into equality of spirit has its necessary epochs and stages. Ordinarily we have to begin with a period of endurance; for we must learn to confront, to suffer and to assimilate all contacts. Each fibre in us must be taught not to wince away from that which pains and repels and not to run eagerly towards that which pleases and attracts, but rather to accept, to face, to bear and to conquer.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, CWSA, vol 23-24, pp. 226