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Will to Progress Compilation (view source)
Revision as of 17:28, 3 February 2021
, 17:28, 3 February 2021→What is Will Power / Will to progress
Will: power of consciousness turned towards effectuation.
<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/will#p1 </ref>
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We reserved the word will to express what in the individual consciousness is the expression of an order or impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual—his true being, his true self, you understand. That we call will.
<ref> https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/12-december-1956#p30 </ref><center>~</center>
Most people always put the little bit of will that's at their disposal at the service of their desires. But will is a force with a power of organisation and it can be put at the service of any purpose whatever. It is something that, when one has will-power, one has to a definite purpose. This is will.
<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/24-november-1954#p10 </ref>
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Power to reject adverse suggestions: the power which comes from the conscious union with the Divine. <ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-divines-help-to-man#p9 </ref>
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In the forehead between the eyes but a little above is the Ajnachakra, the centre of the inner will, also of the inner vision, the dynamic mind etc. (This is not the ordinary outer mental will and sight, but something more powerful, belonging to the inner being.) When this centre opens and the Force there is active, then there is the opening of a greater will, power of decision, formation, effectiveness beyond what the ordinary mind can achieve. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-system-of-the-chakras#p54</ref>
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Shakti, Will, Power is the driver of the worlds and, whether it be Knowledge-Force or Love-Force or Life-Force or Action-Force or Body-Force, is always spiritual in its origin and divine in its native character. <ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p19 </ref>
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Agni is the will for progress, the flame of purification that burns up all obstacles and difficulties. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/15-october-1936#p2</ref>
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...this inner flame of aspiration is what you call the Divine; this inner flame of aspiration which never dies out, which always burns, burns more and more; what in India is called Agni, you know, the will to progress, the power of aspiration; this is what you call the Divine. It is an aspect of the Divine, that's true, but it is not the Divine. It is only one aspect, that is, a divine way of being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/16-november-1955#p52 </ref>
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Man is able to use a reason and will, a self-observing, thinking and all-observing, an intelligently willing mind which is no longer involved in the sense-mind, but acts from above and behind it in its own right, with a certain separateness and freedom. He is reflective, has a certain relative freedom of intelligent will. He has liberated in himself and has formed into a separate power the buddhi.
But what is this buddhi? From the point of view of Yogic knowledge we may say that it is that instrument of the soul, of the inner conscious being in nature, of the Purusha, by which it comes into some kind of conscious and ordered possession both of itself and its surroundings. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p4</ref>
The central will? It depends on the divine Will.
It is the individualised expression of the divine Will; and the divine Will is the expression of the divine Consciousness seeking to manifest itself, to realise itself. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-december-1954#p18,p19 </ref>
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...Prakriti, an inert and mechanical self-driven operation, inconscient or conscient only by the light of Purusha, elevated by various degrees, vital, mental, supramental, of his soul-illumination of her workings. If we look at her on her other internal side where she moves nearer to unity with Purusha, she is Maya, will of being and becoming or of cessation from being and becoming with all their results, apparent to the consciousness, of involution and evolution, existing and non-existing, self-concealment of spirit and self-discovery of spirit. Both are sides of one and the same thing, Shakti, power of being of the spirit which operates, whether superconsciously or consciously or subconsciously in a seeming inconscience,—in fact all these motions coexist at the same time and in the same soul,—as the spirit's power of knowledge, power of will, power of process and action, ''jñāna-śakti, icchā-śakti, kriyā-śakti''. By this power the spirit creates all things in itself, hides and discovers all itself in the form and behind the veil of its manifestation. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-psychology-of-self-perfection#p6</ref>
==Will power in Evolution==
Even in the Inconscient there seems to be at least an urge of inherent necessity producing the evolution of forms and in the forms a developing Consciousness, and it may well be held that this urge is the evolutionary will of a secret Conscious Being and its push of progressive manifestation the evidence of an innate intention in the evolution.This is a teleological element and it is not irrational to admit it: for the conscious or even the inconscient nisus arises from a truth of conscious being that has become dynamic and set out to fulfil itself in an automatic process of material Nature; the teleology, the element of purpose in the nisus is the translation of self-operative Truth of Being into terms of self-effective Will-Power of that Being, and, if consciousness is there, such a Will-Power must also be there and the translation is normal and inevitable. Truth of being inevitably fulfilling itself would be the fundamental fact of the evolution, but Will and its purpose must be there as part of the instrumentation, as an element in the operative principle.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/man-and-the-evolution#p13</ref>
==Will Power of Supramental Being==
The supramental being sees things from above in large spaces and at the highest from the spaces of the infinite. His view is not limited to the standpoint of the present but can see in the continuities of time or from above time in the indivisibilities of the Spirit. He sees truth in its proper order first in the essence, secondly in the potentialities that derive from it and only last in the actualities.The essential truths are to his sight self-existent, self-seen, not dependent for their proof on this or that actuality; the potential truths are truths of the power of being in itself and in things, truths of the infinity of force and real apart from their past or present realisation in this or that actuality or the habitual surface forms that we take for the whole of Nature; the actualities are only a selection from the potential truths he sees, dependent on them, limited and mutable. The tyranny of the present, of the actual, of the immediate range of facts, of the immediate urge and demand of action has no power over his thought and his will and he is therefore able to have a larger will-power founded on a larger knowledge. He sees things not as one on the levels surrounded by the jungle of present facts and phenomena but from above, not from outside and judged by their surfaces, but from within and viewed from the truth of their centre; therefore he is nearer the divine omniscience. He wills and acts from a dominating height and with a longer movement in time and a larger range of potencies, therefore he is nearer to the divine omnipotence. His being is not shut into the succession of the moments, but has the full power of the past and ranges seeingly through the future: not shut in the limiting ego and personal mind, but lives in the freedom of the universal, in God and in all beings and all things; not in the dull density of the physical mind, but in the light of the self and the infinity of the spirit.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-thought-and-knowledge#p18 </ref><center>~</center>The Gods, who in their highest secret entity are powers of this Supermind, born of it, seated in it as in their proper home, are in their knowledge "truth-conscious" and in their action possessed of the "seer-will". Their conscious-force turned towards works and creation is possessed and guided by a perfect and direct knowledge of the thing to be done and its essence and its law,—a knowledge which determines a wholly effective will-power that does not deviate or falter in its process or in its result, but expresses and fulfils spontaneously and inevitably in the act that which has been seen in the vision. Light is here one with Force, the vibrations of knowledge with the rhythm of the will and both are one, perfectly and without seeking, groping or effort, with the assured result.<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-supermind-as-creator#p5 </ref>
==Will to Progress in Different Parts of the Being==
...you see, as soon as one feels a wave of physical disequilibrium, of ill health coming, well, to concentrate in the right spirit is to concentrate in an inner calm, a trust in the divine Grace, and a will to remain in physical equilibrium and good health. This is the right spirit. In another case, one may feel a wave of anger or a fit of temper coming from outside; then one should withdraw into an inner calm, a detachment from superficial things, with a will to express only what comes from above and always be submissive to the divine Will. This is the right spirit. And in each case it is something like that. Naturally it always comes back to the same thing, that one must remember the Divine and put oneself at His service and will what He wills. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/29-september-1954#p7 </ref>
===Will to Progress in Physical===
In the body there are invaluable and unknown treasures. In all its cells, there is an intensity of life, of aspiration, of the will to progress, which one does not usually even realise. The body-consciousness would have to be completely warped by the action of the mind and vital for it not to have an immediate will to re-establish the equilibrium. When this will is not there, it means that the entire body-consciousness has been spoilt by the intervention of the mind and vital… The body, if left to itself, is remarkable, for, not only does it aspire for equilibrium and well-being but it is capable of restoring the balance. If one leaves one's body alone without intervening with all those thoughts, all the vital reactions, all the depressions, and also all the so-called knowledge and mental constructions and fears—if one leaves the body to itself, spontaneously it will do what is necessary to set itself right again.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/19-may-1954#p42 </ref>
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Wake up in yourself a will to conquer. Not a mere will in the mind but a will in the very cells of your body. Without that you can't do anything; you may take a hundred medicines but they won't cure you unless you have a will to overcome the physical illness. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/will-to-conquer-illness#p1 </ref>
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Even the best sadhaks have these periods of suspension of the sadhana, of nothing happening, of the absence of the urge of the inner being. It is when some difficulty arises in the physical nature that has to be dealt with or when a pause has to be made for a veiled preparation, or for some similar reason. Even when the working of the sadhana is in the mind or vital which are more plastic such periods are frequent—when the physical is concerned they must necessarily come and are usually marked not so much by any apparent struggle but by an immobility and an inertia of the energies that were at work before. This is very troublesome to the mind because it suggests entire cessation, incapacity to progress or unfitness. But it is not really so. One must be quiet and go on opening oneself to the working or keeping the will to do so—afterwards there will be a greater progress. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/variations-in-the-intensity-of-experience#p47</ref>
===Will to Progress in Vital===
And here [psychic] is the centre of the energies of progress. This is what is called the seat of Agni, but it is the energies of progress, the will to progress, that are here.
<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/24-march-1954#p9 </ref>
==Misconceptions about Will==
And all the impulses, actions, movements arising in the being which are not that, we said were willings. And I told you in fact that without knowing it or at times even knowing it, you are moved by influences coming from outside which enter in without your even being aware of them and arouse in you what you call the will that a certain thing may happen or another may not, etc. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/12-december-1956#p30</ref>
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There is no such thing as an inert passive will. Will is dynamic in its nature. Even if it does not struggle or endeavour its very presence is dynamic and acts dynamically on the resistance. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p38</ref>
===Ownership of the Will===
The individual being, and particularly the mind in it, have an instinctive repulsion to admitting that it's another force than their own small personal one which does things. There is a kind of instinct which makes you feel absolutely convinced that the effort of aspiration, the will to progress are things belonging to you by your own right and, therefore, that you have all the merit….
I knew people who had truly made a lot of progress, who were very close to the moment when one emerges into the truth of things, and who were held back simply by this. Because this need to be the source of the action, to have the merit of the effort, this need is so deeply rooted that they cannot take the last step. Sometimes it takes years. If they are told, "No, it isn't you, this energy which is in you, this will which is in you, this knowledge which is in you, all this is the Divine; it is not what you call yourself", this makes them so miserable that they can't do anything any more.
<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/9-november-1955#p5 </ref>
===Effort===
It is not the right kind of will-power then [''if it increases fatigue'']—probably they use some fighting or effortful will-power instead of the quiet but strong will that calls down the higher consciousness and force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p44 </ref>
=Why Will (Power/ to progress) is Important?=