3.5.2 Further points in common in the methodology and the elements of work
|
Along with the similarities described above in the methodology of The Mother and Ilse Middendorf concerning the importance of the abilities to sense, receptiveness and |
focusing, as well as surrender and conscious awareness, there are further interesting commonalities. |
|
One of those parallels is that both pursue a more “female“ path. In contrast all yoga routes basically possess a more “masculine” orientation, since they are goal-directed and search for God (in the spiritual heights of the spirit). From the teachings about the required processes of “purging”, the searcher could infer what is “wrong” and “right” – and the work involves a continual struggle “against” something (in general against the stirrings of the external Vital and Mind). The female knows no “wrong” and “right” . Just as things “are”, so |
are things and just as things will be, so they “will be”. – It is a fundamental experience in the work with the breath coming and going of its own accord, that in the breathing events there is nothing wrong or right. Just as the breath coming and going of its own accord flows, so it flows – it flows neither wrongly nor rightly, just as river finds its path through the earth – it flows neither wrongly nor rightly – so far as it is allowed to flow freely and isn’t straightened by people (in general by male engineering graduates). |
|
A further similarity consists therein that both stress the importance of working from “inner to outer”. The work with the Perceptible Breath begins as a result – apart from a short beginning phase – basically “inner” and has an effect on the “outer”. Mother expressed herself about this on the 26th of September 1956: “The usual mistake is to believe one has to begin on the outside and then goes towards the inside. One has to begin on the inside and then go towards the outer, if one is innerly ready.” – and 10 Years later, on the 3rd of September 1966: "And there is a small beginning of how that being which Sri Aurobindo calls "supramental" |
will be—the next creation. A small beginning. And it is, as Sri Aurobindo said, an explanation from within outward—the "outward," the surface, has only a quite secondary importance and it will come at the very end, when it's ready. But it begins from within outward, and it begins in a rather precise and interesting way.” Here again the difference between the male and female approaches: the male principle the male principle tries to take effect from the outside to the inside. The female works on the inner and lets this take its effect on the outside. – How wise it was of Sri Aurobindo, to entrust The Mother with the task of carrying out the practical work. |