Changes

…there is...the whole weight of millennia of bad habits, which we could call pessimistic, that is,anticipating decay, anticipating catastrophe...that's the most difficult thing to purify, to clarify, to remove from the atmosphere. It's so INGRAINED that it's absolutely spontaneous. That is the great, great, great obstacle—that sort of sense of inevitable decay. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/june-24-1967#p37</ref>

…all the complications and miseries and misfortunes are...a bad habit, nothing more. And it's hard for us to change our habits. Yet THE TIME HAS COME to change habits. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/november-27-1962#p40</ref>

The time has come for the old habit of ruling through fear to be replaced with the rule of love. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/11/november-5-1970#p1</ref>

In our way of working we must not be the slaves of Nature; all these habits of trying and changing, doing and undoing and redoing again and again, wasting energy, labour, material and money, are Nature's way of action, not the Divine's. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/nature-and-the-forces-of-nature#p20</ref>

One lives by a kind of habit which is barely half-conscious—one lives, does not even objectify what one does, why one does it, how one does it. One does it by habit. All those who are born in a certain environment, a certain country, automatically take the habits of that environment, not only material habits but habits of thought, habits of feeling and habits of acting. They do it without watching themselves doing it, quite naturally, and if someone points this out to them they are astonished. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/20-february-1957#p11</ref>

===Habits of One’s Personality===

Your body…has certain reactions to cold, heat, hunger, and you are in the habit of having these reactions, and this habit has made a kind of formation in your physical nature, that is, a crease, a fixed crease of the body, and that's how it is. Formations are the result of habits. Similarly, there are "formations" of character; for instance, if you are in the habit of getting angry when things do not please you, the habit makes a sort of inner crease in your nature, and every time a thing doesn't please you, automatically, without any control, you will get angry. This is what is called a "formation", they are habits which have become like a part of your character.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-april-1951#p22</ref>

We have a certain habit of a particular logic of causes and effects, of the consequences of all things, the relation between all movements. It is for us a fact which we accept, even without thinking about it, because we have always lived inside it. But if we had not always lived inside it, we would see it in another way. And one can make this experiment: if one goes out of the determinism of the world as it is at present—this world which is a mixture of the physical, vital, mental and of something of a spiritual influence or infusion (quite veiled), everything that happens is the combination of all this—if we go out of all that (we can do it), if we rise above the physical, material world as it is, and enter another consciousness, we perceive things totally differently.

…the great habit of depending upon the will of others, the consciousness of others, the reactions of others (of others and of all things), this kind of universal comedy at which all play to all and everything plays to everything, ought to be replaced by an absolute, spontaneous sincerity of consecration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-april-1951#p25</ref>

... if you travel round the world, in every country people have different habits of sleeping, habits of eating, habits of dressing, habits for making their toilet. And quite naturally, they will tell you that the things they use are indispensable. But if you change countries you will realise that all these things are of no use for those people, because they make use of other things which are just as useful for them and seem to them indispensable. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/16-february-1955#p20</ref>

When you catch yourself in the act of doing something because someone else wanted it or because you are not very sure of what you want to do and are in the habit of doing what this one or that one or tradition or customs make you do—because, among the influences under which you live, there are collective suggestions, social traditions, many!

…"subconscient" means half conscious: not conscious and not unconscious. It is just between the two; it is like that, half-way; so things slide down into it, one doesn't know that they are there, and from there they act; and it is because one doesn't know that they are there that they can remain there. There are many things which one doesn't wish to keep and drives out from the active consciousness, but they go down there, hide there, and because it is subconscious one doesn't notice them; but they haven't gone out completely, and when they have a chance to come up again, they come up. For example, there are bad habits of the body, in the sense that the body is in the habit of upsetting its balance—we call that falling ill, you know; but still, the functioning becomes defective through a bad habit. You manage by concentrating the Force and applying it on this defect, to make it disappear but it doesn't disappear completely, it enters the subconscient. And then, when you are off your guard, when you stop paying attention properly and preventing it from showing itself, it rises up and comes out. You thought for months perhaps or even for years, you thought you were completely rid of a certain kind of illness which you suffered from, and you no longer paid any attention, and suddenly one day it returns as though it had never gone; it springs up again from the subconscient and unless one enters into this subconscient and changes things there, that is, unless one changes the subconscient into the conscient, it always happens like this. And the method is to change the subconscient into the conscient—if each thing that rises to the surface becomes conscious, at that moment it must be changed. There is a more direct method still: it is to enter the subconscient in one's full consciousness and work there, but this is difficult. Yet so long as this is not done, all the progress one has made—I mean physically, in one's body—can always be undone. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/11-may-1955#p7</ref>

…subconscient must be clearly distinguished from the subliminal parts of our being such as the inner or subtle physical consciousness, the inner vital or inner mental; for these are not at all obscure or incoherent or ill-organised, but only veiled from our surface consciousness. Our surface constantly receives something, inner touches, communications or influences, from these sources but does not know for the most part whence they come. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-subconscient-and-the-inconscient#p1</ref>

The vital and physical habits are largely formed by… submental memory. For this reason they can be changed to an indefinite extent by a more powerful action of conscious mind and will, when that can be developed and can find means to communicate to the subconscient chitta the will of the spirit for a new law of vital and physical action. Even, the whole constitution of our life and body may be described as a bundle of habits formed by the past evolution in Nature and held together by the persistent memory of this secret consciousness. For chitta, the primary stuff of consciousness, is like prana and body universal in Nature, but is subconscient and mechanical in nature of Matter.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-instruments-of-the-spirit#p6</ref>

==Habits of the Different Parts of the Being==

There are many [defects of the physical consciousness]—but mainly obscurity, inertia, tamas, a passive acceptance of the play of wrong forces, inability to change, attachment to habits, lack of plasticity, forgetfulness, loss of experiences or realisations gained, unwillingness to accept the Light or to follow it, incapacity (through tamas or through attachment or through passive reaction to accustomed forces) to do what it admits to be the Right and the Best. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/levels-of-the-physical-being#p2</ref>

All working of mind or spirit has its vibration in the physical consciousness, records itself there in a kind of subordinate corporeal notation and communicates itself to the material world partly at least through the physical machine. But the body of man has natural limitations in this capacity which it imposes on the play of the higher parts of his being. And, secondly, it has a subconscient consciousness of its own in which it keeps with an obstinate fidelity the past habits and past nature of the mental and vital being and which automatically opposes and obstructs any very great upward change or at least prevents it from becoming a radical transformation of the whole nature. …The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a transformation. As we must get ourselves a new life, new heart, new mind, so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-divine-shakti#p9</ref>

…the human race is still weighted by a certain gravitation towards the physical, it obeys still the pull of our yet unconquered earth-matter; it is dominated by the brain-mind, the physical intelligence: thus held back by many ties, it hesitates before the indication or falls back before the too tense demand of the spiritual effort. It has, too, still a great capacity for sceptical folly, an immense indolence, an enormous intellectual and spiritual timidity and conservatism when called out of the grooves of habit: even the constant evidence of life itself that where it chooses to conquer it can conquer,—witness the miracles of that quite inferior power, physical Science,—does not prevent it from doubting; it repels the new call and leaves the response to a few individuals. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-evolutionary-process-ascent-and-integration#p26</ref>

===Habits of the Vital===

...some people have the habit of getting into depression if the Mother does not comply with their desires—it does not follow that the Mother must comply with their desires in order to keep them jolly—they must learn to get rid of this habit of mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/appendix-to-questions-and-answers-1929#p74</ref>

…it is the habit of the vital to make a mask of the mind's arrangements about feelings and actions in order to conceal even from the self-observation of the doer the secret underlying motive or forces behind the speech, act or feelings. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-nature-of-the-vital#p14</ref>

===Habits of the Mind===

People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely, because there are very few people who can keep their thoughts under control. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/evil#p14</ref>

The most material consciousness, the most material mind, is in the habit of having to be whipped into acting, into making effort and moving forward, otherwise it's tames. So then, if it imagines, it always imagines the difficulty—always the obstacle, always the opposition, always the difficulty... and that slows down the movement terribly. So it needs very concrete, very tangible and VERY REPEATED experiences to be convinced that behind all its difficulties, there is a Grace; behind all its failures, there is the Victory; behind all its pain and suffering and contradictions, there is Ananda. Of all the efforts, this is the one that has to be repeated most often: you are constantly forced to stop, put an end to, drive away, convert a pessimism, a doubt or a totally defeatist imagination. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/october-7-1964#p22</ref>

To forget the past and to lose habits of thinking is indeed a difficult thing and generally requires a strong "tapasya". But if you have faith in the Divine's Grace and you implore it full-heartedly, you will succeed more easily. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-past#p23</ref>

Repetition is the habit of the mental physical—it is not the true thinking mind that behaves like this, it is the mental physical or else the lowest part of the physical mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p58</ref>

…[the physical mind] has no reason except its whims, its habits or an inclination to be tamasic.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p54</ref>

The physical mind is in the habit of observing things with or without use. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p55</ref>

It is usually the habit of the mind and vital to associate happiness or interest only with activity, but the spiritual consciousness has no such limitations. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/emptiness-voidness-blankness-and-silence#p24</ref>

=Why? The Need to Break from Grooves of Habits=

The accomplished sense of Unity is not that in which all are regarded as parts of one whole, waves of one sea, but that in which each as well as the All is regarded wholly as the Divine, wholly as our Self in a supreme identity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-modes-of-the-self#p2</ref>

...one should look at all that [difficulties, bad habits] with the smile of someone who says, "I am not that. Oh, this was put on me!... Oh, that was added...." And you know, it was added...because it's one of the victories you must win. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/november-20-1963#p89</ref>

But that is not so; he can change. There is another consciousness deeper within him, his true inner being, which is his real self, but is covered over by the superficial nature… As the consciousness of this inner being increases by sadhana, the surface nature and its responses are pushed out and can be got rid of altogether. But the ignorant universal Nature does not want to let go and throws the old movements on the sadhak and tries to get them inside him again; owing to a habit the superficial nature gives the old responses. If one can get the firm knowledge that these things are from outside and not a real part of oneself, then it is easier for the sadhak to repel such returns, or if they lay hold, he can get rid of them sooner. That is why I say repeatedly that these things rise not in yourself, but from outside. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/anger-and-violence#p28</ref>

In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; … the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow formation.

In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action;… the vital man, concerned with self-affirmation, self aggrandisement, life-enlargement, satisfaction of ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle, inner and outer adventure: all else is incidental or subordinated to this movement and building and expression of the vital ego. But still in the vital man too there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or spiritual character, even if these happen to be less developed than his life-personality and life-power. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p10</ref>

==Freedom from Slavery of Habits==

Unless we break with the habits and beliefs of the past, there is little hope of advancing rapidly towards the future. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-past#p21</ref>

One is free only when it is the Divine who makes decisions in each of us, otherwise men are the slaves of their desires, their habits, of all conventions, all laws, all rules.... And the more they think themselves free, the more bound they are! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/11/february-7-1970#p75</ref>

…one must know how to avoid becoming a slave to one's habits, however good they may be; the greatest flexibility must be maintained so that one may change them each time it becomes necessary to do so. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p13</ref>

…the slavery of habits—that's a horrible thing. To be the slave of one's habits is disgusting. ..To do things that way because the habit is to do them that way is no argument to me—free, free, free! The taste for freedom. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/november-15-1965#p6</ref>

===Will Power===

It is of course a fluctuation of the mental will that often prevents a knowledge gained from being put into steady practice. If the will is not strong enough, then the greater Will behind which is the will of the Mother, her conscious Force in which knowledge and will are united, must be called in to strengthen and support it. Very often, however, even if the will as well as the knowledge are there, the habit of the vital nature brings in the old reactions. This can only be overcome by a steady undiscouraged aspiration which will bring out more and more of the psychic and its true movements to push out and displace the wrong ones. The gradual and steady replacement of the old ignorant consciousness and its movements by the true psychic and spiritual consciousness is the nature of the transformation that is to be accomplished in the Yoga.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p33</ref>

Begin with a small thing, not something very essential to the being, but a small detail. And then, if, for instance, it is something you are in the habit of doing, you insist on it with the same regularity, you see, either not to do it or to do it—you insist on it and compel yourself to do it as you compel yourself to lift a weight—it's the same thing. You make the same kind of effort, but it is more of an inner effort. And after having taken little things like this—things relatively easy, you know—after taking these and succeeding with them, you can unite with a greater force and try a more complicated experiment. And gradually, if you do this regularly, you will end up by acquiring an independent and very strong will. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-november-1954#p17</ref>

===Surrender to Divine===

All sincere effort to progress and get rid of dangerous habits is answered and supported by an active help from the Grace―but the effort must be steady and the aspiration must be sincere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/steady-effort#p18</ref>

…if one generously makes an offering of one's defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-june-1960-1#p4</ref>

It is not by taking a mere mental attitude that this can be done or even by any number of inner experiences which leave the outer man as he was. It is this outer man who has to open, to surrender and to change. His every least movement, habit, action has to be surrendered, seen, held up and exposed to the divine Light, offered to the divine Force for its old forms and motives to be destroyed and the divine Truth and the action of the transforming consciousness of the Divine Mother to take their place. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/surrender#p68</ref>

===Rejection===

Reject―the pull of the old human habits. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/sincerity#p35</ref>

It is obvious that things which are a long habit cannot go at once. Especially the speech is a thing which in most people is largely automatic and not under their control. It is the vigilance that establishes the control, so one must be on guard against the danger of which you speak, the slacking of the vigilance. Only the more it can be a quiet and unmixed, not an anxious vigilance, the better. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p35</ref>

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p4</ref>

The disabilities of your past character and mind and vital habits need not discourage you...It may not be easy to get rid of them altogether and it may take time; but if you persist and refuse all justification and all possibility of return to these things, you are bound in the end to conquer. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p11</ref>

…when one begins, one has no reason to stop, one begins with one hour a day, but this becomes a kind of necessity, a habit and one continues quite naturally. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p22</ref>

It is difficult to get rid of all habits. They must be faced with a steady determination.

...the later one begins, the more one must be prepared to meet bad habits that have to be corrected, rigidities to be made supple, malformations to be rectified. And this preparatory work will require much patience and perseverance before one can start on a constructive programme for the harmonisation of the form and its movements. But if you keep alive within you the ideal of beauty that is to be realised, sooner or later you are sure to reach the goal you have set yourself. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/physical-education#p13</ref>

===Plasticity===

What is needed is a general plasticity of the mind, the vital, the physical consciousness, a readiness to give up all attachment to these things, to accept whatever the higher consciousness brings down with it however contrary to one's own received ideas, feelings, habits of nature. The greater the plasticity in any part of the nature, the less the resistance there. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-vital-being-and-vital-consciousness#p15</ref>

===Detachment===

To cling to what you think you know, to cling to what you feel, to cling to what you like, to cling to your habits, to cling to your so-called needs, to cling to the world as it is, that's what binds you hand and foot. You must undo all that, one thing after the other. Undo all the bonds. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/05/october-7-1964#p44</ref>

…when we cease to reason and go deep into ourselves, into that secrecy where the activity of mind is stilled, that this other consciousness becomes really manifest to us—however imperfectly owing to our long habit of mental reaction and mental limitation. Then we can know surely in an increasing illumination that which we had uncertainly conceived by the pale and flickering light of Reason. Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-maya#p19</ref>

Higher Mind is one of the planes of the spiritual mind, the first and lowest of them; it is above the normal mental level. Inner mind is that which lies behind the surface mind (our ordinary mentality) and can only be directly experienced (apart from its vrittis in the surface mind such as philosophy, poetry, idealism etc.) by sadhana, by breaking down the habit of being on the surface and by going deeper within. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/classification-of-the-parts-of-the-being#p12</ref>

===Calling Upon the Psychic Guide Within===

...the Lord…doesn't conform to the ordinary habit! …the minute He just tries to take possession of one function or another, even partially (not totally), all the interrelationships, all the movements are changed instantly—panic. Panic at the particular spot...Wait patiently until that small number or large number of cells, that little spot of consciousness, has learned its lesson…It takes a little while, then they understand.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/january-9-1963#p12</ref>

The physical consciousness is full of inertia—it wants not to move but to be moved by whatever forces and that is its habit. This inertia has to be cured by putting it into contact with the right forces from above…aspire for the higher wideness, purity and peace, so that that may occupy the physical and the true Force work instead of these invading ideas and impulses. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p20</ref>

The physical is the slave of certain forces which create a habit and drive it through the mechanical force of the habit. So long as the mind gives consent, you do not notice the slavery; but if the mind withdraws its consent, then you feel the servitude, you feel a force pushing you in spite of the mind's will. It is very obstinate and repeats itself till the habit—the inner habit revealing itself in the outward act—is broken. It is like a machine which once set in motion repeats the same movement. You need not be alarmed or distressed; a quiet persistent aspiration will bring you to the point where the habit breaks and you are free. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p79</ref>

Insist always on the quietude, the peace, the consciousness of the force. Persistently reject the restlessness; it comes always because the physical has the habit of receiving it, accepting it as its own real nature. Always deny it, always reject the unrest; gradually if not immediately, the physical will follow your will and change its habit and its notions.

…in his physical consciousness the human being is always weak and unable to get rid of or resist its habitual movements. There are three things that help him to do so (apart from his mental will which is not always strong enough to do it). There is first the psychic being; ... The second is the inner consciousness always awake… Lastly, the Mother's force always there and receiving also a response at once from the physical consciousness. These three things together can do anything.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/levels-of-the-physical-being#p62</ref>

===Habits of Vital===

…for the change in the vital…form the habit of remaining in your higher consciousness where all these petty things and movements are worthless. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-vital#p41</ref>

===Habits of Mental===

The important thing is to get rid of the habit of the invasion of troubling thoughts, wrong feelings, confusion of ideas, unhappy movements… when the mind is quiet and at peace, the Force can work more easily. It should be possible to see things that have to be changed in you without being upset or depressed; the change is the more easily done.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p18</ref>

===Habits of Subconscient===

Mostly human speech and thought go on mechanically in certain grooves that always repeat themselves and it is not really the mind that controls or dictates them. That is why this habit can go on for some time even after the conscious mind has withdrawn its support and consent and resolved to do otherwise. But if one perseveres, this subconscious mechanical habit runs down like all machinery that is not kept wound up to go on again. Then one can form the opposite habit in the subconscient of admitting only what the inner being consents to think or speak. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p16</ref>

For all things, first you must understand, will, and then begin to practise—begin by just a very little... Social habits are something terrible; your consciousness is stuffed with them from the time you are quite small; when a baby you are already told: "This should be done, that should not be done, you must do this in this way, you must not do it in that way", and all that; these are ideas which usually parents or teachers have received in the same way when they were very young and to which they are accustomed and submit by habit; these are the most dangerous influences because they are subtle, they are not expressed outwardly by words; your head was stuffed with them and your feelings and reactions, when you were very small, and it is only later, much later, when you begin to reflect and try to know what the truth is... as soon as you understand that there is something which must be put above all the rest, that there is something which can truly teach you to live, which must form your character, rule your movements... when you understand that, you can look at yourself doing, objectivise@241@ yourself, laugh a little at all those multiple small bondages of habit, traditions, the education you have received, and then put the light, consciousness, aspiration for surrender to the Divine on these things, and try to receive the divine inspiration to do things as it's necessary, not according to habits, not according to one's vital impulses, not according to all the vital impulses and personal wills which one receives from others and which push him to do things which perhaps he would not have done without all that. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/20-july-1955#p9</ref>

=More on Habits=

There is nobody here, even among the best, who is ready to give up all his habits, conveniences and preferences to win the final victory, even if he has to break his neck on the way. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/general-2#p15</ref>

Good habits are indispensable so long as one acts out of habit. But to attain the supreme goal of yoga, one must abandon all ties, whatever they may be. And good habits are also a tie which must one day be abandoned when one wants to obey and is able to obey nothing but the one supreme impulse, the Will of the Supreme. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/14-april-1965#p3</ref>

==Purusha, The Soul, The Transcendent==

...all the parts of our being must assent and surrender to the law of the spiritual Truth; all has to learn to obey the government of the conscious Divine Power in the members. There are obstinate difficulties in our being born of its evolutionary constitution which militate against this assent. For some of these parts are still subject to the inconscience and subconscience and to the lower automatism of habit or so-called law of the nature,—mechanical habit of mind, habit of life, habit of instinct, habit of personality, habit of character, the ingrained mental, vital, physical needs, impulses, desires of the natural man, the old functionings of all kinds that are rooted there so deep that it would seem as if we had to dig to abysmal foundations in order to get them out: these parts refuse to give up their response to the lower law founded in the Inconscient; they continually send up to the conscious mind and life the old reactions and seek to reaffirm them there as the eternal rule of Nature. Other parts of the being are less obscure and mechanical and rooted in inconscience, but all are imperfect and attached to their imperfection and have their own obstinate reactions; the vital part is wedded to the law of self-affirmation and desire, the mind is attached to its own formed movements, and both are willingly obedient to the inferior law of the Ignorance. And yet the law of participation and the law of surrender are imperative; at each step of the transition the assent of the Purusha is needed and there must be too the consent of each part of the nature to the action of the higher power for its change. There must be then a conscious self-direction of the mental being in us towards this change, this substitution of Supernature for the old nature, this transcendence. The rule of conscious obedience to the higher truth of the spirit, the surrender of the whole being to the light and power that come from the Supernature, is a second condition which has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty by the being itself before the supramental transformation can become at all possible.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p11</ref>

The Purusha, the soul that knows and commands has got himself involved in the workings of his executive conscious force, so that he mistakes this physical working of it which we call the body for himself; he forgets his own nature as the soul that knows and commands; he believes his mind and soul to be subject to the law and working of the body; he forgets that he is so much else besides that is greater than the physical form; he forgets that the mind is really greater than Matter and ought not to submit to its obscurations, reactions, habit of inertia, habit of incapacity; he forgets that he is more even than the mind, a Power which can raise the mental being above itself; that he is the Master, the Transcendent and it is not fit the Master should be enslaved to his own workings, the Transcendent imprisoned in a form which exists only as a trifle in its own being. All this forgetfulness has to be cured by the Purusha remembering his own true nature and first by his remembering that the body is only a working and only one working of Prakriti. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#p1</ref>

Finally, the mind will come to know the Purusha in the mind as the master of Nature whose sanction is necessary to her movements. It will find that as the giver of the sanction he can withdraw the original fiat from the previous habits of Nature and that eventually the habit will cease or change in the direction indicated by the will of the Purusha; not at once, for the old sanction persists as an obstinate consequence of the past Karma of Nature until that is exhausted, and a good deal also depends on the force of the habit and the idea of fundamental necessity which the mind had previously attached to it; but if it is not one of the fundamental habits Nature has established for the relation of the mind, life and body and if the old sanction is not renewed by the mind or the habit willingly indulged, then eventually the change will come. Even the habit of hunger and thirst can be minimised, inhibited, put away; the habit of disease can be similarly minimised and gradually eliminated and in the meantime the power of the mind to set right the disorders of the body whether by conscious manipulation of vital force or by simple mental fiat will immensely increase. By a similar process the habit by which the bodily nature associates certain forms and degrees of activity with strain, fatigue, incapacity can be rectified and the power, freedom, swiftness, effectiveness of the work whether physical or mental which can be done with this bodily instrument marvellously increased, doubled, tripled, decupled. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-subjection-to-the-body#p5</ref>

==True Connection with Divine==