Changes

=Why Does Laziness Occur?=

Indolence and inaction result in tamas which is a fall into inconscience and the very opposite of progress and light. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/aims-and-principles#p303</ref>

As soon as you enter the rajasic nature, you like effort. And at least the one advantage of rajasic people is that they are courageous, whereas tamasic people are cowards. It is the fear of effort which makes one cowardly. For once you have started, once you have taken the decision and begun the effort, you are interested. It is exactly the same thing which is the cause of some not liking to learn their lessons, not wanting to listen to the teacher; it is tamasic, it is to be asleep, it avoids the effort which must be made in order to catch the thing and then grasp it and keep it. It is half-somnolence. So it is the same thing physically, it is a somnolence of the being, an inertia. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/26-january-1955#p19</ref>

==In the Mental==

And so one conceals one's laziness behind fine reasons, the first of which says, "I can't, I don't know" or else, "I have tried and not succeeded" or "I don't know where to begin!" Any reason whatever, isn't that true? The first that comes to you. Or else, one doesn't practise because one doesn't find it worthwhile to make the effort—that is part of the laziness also, it asks for too much effort! But one can't live without effort! If one were to refuse to make any effort, one would not even be able to stand on one's legs or walk or even eat. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/12-september-1956#p5</ref>

==In the Vital==

When you feel unhappy like that, it means that you have a progress to make. You can say that we always need to progress, it is true. But at times our nature gives its consent to the needed change and then everything goes smoothly, even happily. On the contrary sometimes the part that has to progress refuses to move and clings to its old habits through inertia, ignorance, attachment or desire. Then, under the pressure of the perfecting force, the struggle starts translating itself into unhappiness or revolt or both together. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/depression#p26</ref>

It is not anything physical but a vital depression (in some part of the vital, not the whole) that prevents the body from recovering its elasticity. There was some part of the vital that was resisting a radical change and even, unknown to your mind, trying to go on as it was under cover of the change in the rest of your being. This has now, owing to this last affair, received a blow and got depressed and, when the vital is depressed like that, it affects the body. You say rightly that it is part of a change or turn that is taking place. But these effects of inertia and weakness need not continue; as soon as this vital part acquiesces gladly in the turn or change, the elasticity and energy will return. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p67</ref>

It is an inertia of the physical consciousness which allows these desires to come and does not react against the suggestions; it is that also which responds to the pains and suggestion of illness. But you must not accept the suggestion that you cannot react and be free,—the physical consciousness itself cannot as yet, but the will can if it is called on to act and made accustomed to act always. Not the struggling will, but a quiet will insisting on the quietude of the mind and vital and insisting on the rejection of these adverse things. That would soon prove sufficient to hold the ground for the Peace and Force to act and they would do the rest. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/levels-of-the-physical-being#p2,p5</ref>

==In the Physical==

A time comes when after a long preparation of the mind and vital being, it becomes necessary to open also the physical nature. But when that happens, very often the vital exaltation which can be very great when the experience is on its own plane, falls away and the obscure, obstructive physical and material consciousness appears in its unrelieved inertia. Inertia, tamas, stupidity, narrowness and limitation, an inability to progress, doubt, dullness, dryness, a constant forgetfulness of the spiritual experiences received are the characteristics of the unregenerated physical nature, when that is not pushed by the vital and is not supported either by the higher mental will and intelligence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-lower-vital-being#p35</ref>

The whole world is in a process of progressive transformation; if you take up the discipline of Yoga, you speed up in yourself this process. The work that would require years in the ordinary course, can be done by Yoga in a few days and even in a few hours. But it is your inner consciousness that obeys this accelerating impulse; for the higher parts of your being readily follow the swift and concentrated movement of Yoga and lend themselves more easily to the continuous adjustment and adaptation that it necessitates. The body, on the other hand, is ordinarily dense, inert and apathetic. And if you have in this part something that is not responsive, if there is a resistance here, the reason is that the body is incapable of moving as quickly as the rest of the being. It must take time, it must walk at its own pace as it does in ordinary life. What happens is as when grown-up people walk too fast for children in their company; they have to stop at times and wait till the child who is lagging behind comes up and overtakes them. This divergence between the progress in the inner being and the inertia of the body often creates a dislocation in the system, and that manifests itself as an illness. This is why people who take up Yoga frequently begin by suffering from some physical discomfort or disorder. That need not happen if they are on their guard and careful. Or if there is a greater and unusual receptivity in the body, then too they escape. But an unmixed receptivity making the physical parts closely follow the pace of the inner transformation is hardly possible, unless the body has already been prepared in the past for the processes of Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/16-june-1929#p6</ref>

''Q.Sri Aurobindo speaks of “the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature”.''

''A.''Because the physical consciousness and nature are closed up and rigid—they are shut up in their habits, they don’t want to change them, they accept only one regular routine. There is nothing more routine-bound than the body. If you change its habits in the least, it is quite bewildered, it doesn’t know any longer what to do, it says, “Excuse me, excuse me! but that’s not how one goes about living.” <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/28-april-1951#p10,p11</ref>

The character is made up of habits and it clings to them, is disposed to think them the very law of its being and it is a hard job to get it to change at all except under a strong pressure of circumstances. Especially in the physical parts, the body, the physical mind, the physical life movements, there is this resistance; the tamasic element in Nature is powerful there, what the Gita describes as ''aprakāśa'', absence of light, and ''apravṛtti'', a tendency to inertia, inactivity, unwillingness to make an effort and, as a result, even when the effort is made, a constant readiness to doubt, to despond and despair, to give up, renounce the aim and the endeavour, collapse. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-difficulties-of-yoga#p21</ref>

It [''the nature of the obstruction of the physical consciousness''] depends on the weak points of the individual and the stage of his progress. The main difficulty of the physical consciousness is that it is incapable, before it is transformed, of maintaining any tension of tapasya—it wants periods of assimilation, sinking back into the ordinary consciousness to rest,—also there is a constant forgetfulness of what has been done etc. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p8</ref>

The hold of inertia always increases when the working comes down into the physical and subconscient. Before that the inertia is overpowered though not eradicated by the action in mind and vital—afterwards it comes up in its natural force and has to be met in its own field.

The physical’s tendency to inertia is very great; even after the habit of living in the higher consciousness is there, some part may feel the pressure of the inertia—generally the outermost or most material parts. The inertia usually rises up from the subconscient. It does not abolish the higher consciousness in the physical, but dulls its action or else brings it down from a higher to a lower level, e.g. from the intuition to the higher mind or from the higher to the lower ranges of overmind. For some time it resists the completeness of the siddhi. It is only when the most material and the subconscient and the environmental consciousness are quite liberated that this retarding or lowering effect of the primal Inertia is entirely overcome. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p16,p17</ref>

=How to Cure Laziness?=

''Q. What are the defects in me that are coming in my way of spiritual as well as material progress?