Changes

=Recommended Practices=

The best thing to do is to distinguish in oneself the origin of all one's movements—those that come from the light of truth and those that come from the old inertia and falsehood—in order to accept the first and to refuse or reject the others. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-january-1965#p3</ref>

With practice one learns to distinguish more and more clearly, but one can establish as a general rule that all that tends towards disharmony, disorder and inertia comes from the falsehood and all that favours union, harmony, order and consciousness comes from the Truth.

When you have found something which has the power to help you in gaining a victory over your unconsciousness and inertia, you must, till you reach the final result, exhaust all the effects produced by that word or phrase before you look for others. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-thousands#p20</ref>

...it is to try at each moment, each second, in each movement to express only the highest truth one can perceive, and at the same time know that this perception has to be progressive and that what seems to you the most true now will no longer be so tomorrow, and that a higher truth will have to be expressed more and more through you. This leaves no room any longer for sleeping in a comfortable tamas; one must be always awake—I am not speaking of physical sleep—one must be always awake, always conscious and always full of an enlightened receptivity and of goodwill. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/31-august-1955#p18</ref>

Two things are necessary. First of all, nothing in your being, no part of your being should want to die. That does not happen often. You have always a defeatist in you somewhere: something that is tired, something that is disgusted, something that has had enough of it, something that is lazy, something that does not want to struggle and says: "Well! Ah! Let it be finished, so much the better." That is sufficient, you are dead. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/1-july-1953#p34</ref>

Then I said to myself: that's how it is, there must be a certain tamas—an uncomprehending tamas—which in order to change needs to be violently shaken up. With illnesses, it's the same thing, in the sense that only when things really seem about to topple over on the wrong side... I go out of my body deliberately, hovering over all things, and the body recovers—now it takes very little time: a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/october-19-1963#p12</ref>

Whatever the path we may follow, the subject we may study, we always reach the same result. The most important thing for an individual is to unify himself around his divine center; that way he becomes a real individual, master of himself and of his destiny. Otherwise, he is a plaything of the forces, which toss him about like a cork in a stream. He goes where he doesn't want to, is made to do what he doesn't want to, and finally he gets lost in a hole without any way to stop himself doing so. But if you are consciously organized, unified around the divine center, governed and led by it, you are the master of your destiny. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/09/september-7-1968#p21</ref>

Concentration is very helpful and necessary—the more one concentrates (of course in the limits of the body's capacity without straining it), the more the force of the Yoga grows.There are different causes for it. But it is mostly something physical that interferes, either the need of the body to take time to assimilate what has come or been done or sometimes inertia or dullness due to causes such as those you mention or others. The best thing is to remain quiet and not get nervous or dejected—till the force acts again. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p94</ref>

==Guidance through the Divine Grace==

...with the full assent of the sadhak. To learn to give that full assent is the whole meaning of the sadhana. It may take time either because of ideas in the mind, desires in the vital or inertia in the physical consciousness, but these things have to be and can be removed with the aid or by calling in the action of the Divine Force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p11</ref>

You were able to go up because the Peace descended. You were not able to remain above because the Peace could not occupy sufficiently the physical and the Force did not descend sufficiently. Meanwhile the inertia arose, you got troubled more and more because of the vital suggestions in the outer nature and the rush of inertia, so you were unable to keep detached and let the Force descend more and more or call it down more and more. Hence the coming down into the physical consciousness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-to-the-higher-planes#p41</ref>

When the Force is there at work, the imperfections and weaknesses of the nature will necessarily arise for change, but one need not fight with them; one can look on them quietly as a surface instrumentation that has to be changed...

Detachment means that one stands back from them, does not identify oneself with them or get upset or troubled because they are there, but rather looks on them as something foreign to one's true consciousness and true self, rejects them and calls in the Mother's Force into these movements to eliminate them and bring the true consciousness and its movements there. The firm will of rejection must be there, the pressure to get rid of them, but not any wrestling or struggle. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p12</ref>

The first is that of control by physical immobility, the second is that of power by immobility. The power of physical immobility is as important in Hathayoga as the power of mental immobility in the Yoga of knowledge, and for parallel reasons.

The body, accustomed to work off superfluous energy by movement, is at first ill able to bear this increase and this retained inner action and betrays it by violent tremblings; afterwards it habituates itself and, when the Asana is conquered, then it finds as much ease in the posture, however originally difficult or unusual to it, as in its easiest attitudes sedentary or recumbent. It becomes increasingly capable of holding whatever amount of increased vital energy is brought to bear upon it without needing to spill it out in movement, and this increase is so enormous as to seem illimitable, so that the body of the perfected Hathayogin is capable of feats of endurance, force, unfatigued expenditure of energy of which the normal physical powers of man at their highest would be incapable…

The life energy, thus occupying and operating in a powerful, unified movement on the tranquil and passive body, freed from the restless balancing between the continent power and the contained, becomes a much greater and more effective force. In fact, it seems then rather to contain and possess and use the body than to be contained, possessed and used by it,—just as the restless active mind seems to seize on and use irregularly and imperfectly whatever spiritual force comes into it, but the tranquillised mind is held, possessed and used by the spiritual force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>

==Spiritual Evolution==

The way of the Spirit is the way of peace and light and harmony; if it has to battle it is precisely because of the presence of such forces which seek either to extinguish or to pervert the spiritual light. In the spiritual change inertia has to be replaced by the divine peace and calm, the rajasic troubled energy by a tranquil and potent, pure and liberated dynamis, while the mind must be kept plastic for the workings of a higher Light of Knowledge… <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/spiritual-evolution-and-the-supramental#p6</ref>

...the vital disturbance the physical inertia with all its symptoms is an attack of the hostile forces intended to cut short and prevent the higher opening. The ideas that arise to justify it are of no value—it is not true that physical work is of an inferior value to mental culture, it is the arrogance of the intellect that makes the claim. All work done for the Divine is equally divine; manual labour done for the Divine is more divine than mental culture done for one's own development, fame or mental satisfaction. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/work-and-yoga#p67</ref>

The vision of the Light and the vision of the Lord in the form of Jagannath are both of them indications that he has the capacity for Yoga experience and that there is a call of the Divine on his inner being. But capacity is not enough; there must be also the will to seek after the Divine and courage and persistence in following the path. Fear is the first thing that must be thrown away and, secondly, the inertia of the outer being which has prevented him from responding to the call. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-call-and-the-capacity#p34</ref>

=Other Movements which Give rise to Tamas/Inertia: =

For the dissatisfaction of the vital, the only remedy is rejection and refusal to identify yourself with it. For the inertia the remedy is not to absorb yourself in thoughts about it, but to turn upwards and call the Light and Force to come into it. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/wrong-movements-of-the-vital#p46</ref>