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Read Summary of '''[[Perfection Summary|Perfection]]'''
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= What is Perfection? =
 = What is '''Perfection? =in General'''
Perfection is all that we want to become in our highest aspiration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/perfection#p10</ref>
The Divine is the perfection towards which we move. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-and-man#p8</ref> Perfection is something which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is the Divine in His entirety, which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is the Divine as a whole, from whom nothing has been taken away—so it is just the opposite! For the moralists divine perfection means all the virtues that they represent. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-63-64-65#p24~</refcenter>
Some people put perfection at the apex. It is generally thought that perfection is the maximum one can do. But I say that perfection is not the apex, it is not an extreme. There is no extreme—whatever you may do, there is always the possibility of something better, and it is exactly this possibility of something better which is the very meaning of progress. (The Mother, 30 December 1950) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p5</ref>
Where in the radically imperfect shall we find the principle and power of perfection? Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to us, nor can life and the body which are the energy and the frame of dividing and limiting mind. The principle and power of perfection are there in the subconscient but wrapped up in the tegument or veil of the lower Maya, a mute premonition emerging as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they await, open, eternally realised, but still separated from us by the veil of our self-ignorance. It is above, then, and not either in our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling power and knowledge.<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-problem-of-life#p12~</refcenter>
The mundane perfection is sometimes conceived of as something outward, social, a thing of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men and our environment, a better and more efficient citizenship and discharge of duties, a better, richer, kindlier and happier way of living, with a more just and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence. By others again a more inner and subjective ideal is cherished, a clarifying and raising of the intelligence, will and reason, a heightening and ordering of power and capacity in the nature, a nobler ethical, a richer aesthetic, a finer emotional, a much healthier and better-governed vital and physical being. Sometimes one element is stressed, almost to the exclusion of the rest; sometimes, in wider and more well-balanced minds, the whole harmony is envisaged as a total perfection. A change of education and social institutions is the outward means adopted or an inner self-training and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. Or the two aims may be clearly united, the perfection of the inner individual, the perfection of the outer living. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p2</ref>
The characteristic law '''Elements of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p7</ref>Perfection'''
==Perfection It is, then, this spiritual fulfilment of the urge to individual perfection and an inner completeness of being that we mean first when we speak of a divine life. It is the first essential condition of a perfected life on earth, and we are therefore right in making the utmost possible individual perfection our first supreme business. The perfection of the spiritual and pragmatic relation of the individual with all around him is our second preoccupation; the solution of this second desideratum lies in a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth which is the other concomitant result of an evolution into the gnostic consciousness and nature. But there still remains the third desideratum, a new world, a change in the total life of humanity or, at the least, a new perfected collective life in the earth-nature. This calls for the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved mass, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence. A collective life of this kind must obviously constitute itself on the same principle as the life of the gnostic individual. <ref>http://incarnateword.in /cwsa/22/the Mind==-divine-life#p19</ref>
But our mind is obscure, partial in its notions, misled by opposite surface appearances, divided between various possibilities; it is led in three different directions to any of which it may give an exclusive preference. Our mind, in its search for what must be, turns towards a concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection, on our own individual being and inner living; or it turns towards a concentration on an individual development of our surface nature, on the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic or practical action on the world, on some idealism of our personal relation with the world around us; or it turns rather towards a concentration on the outer world itself, on making it better, more suited to our ideas and temperament or to our conception of what should be. On one side there is the call of our spiritual being which is our true self, a transcendent reality, a being of the Divine Being, not created by the world, able to live in itself, to rise out of world to transcendence; on the other side there is the demand of the world around us which is a cosmic form, a formulation of the Divine Being, a power of the Reality in disguise. There is too the divided or double demand of our being of Nature which is poised between these two terms, depends on them and connects them; for it is apparently made by the world and yet, because its true creator is in ourselves and the world instrumentation that seems to make it is only the means first used, it is really a form, a disguised manifestation of a greater spiritual being within us. It is this demand that mediates between our preoccupation with an inward perfection or spiritual liberation and our preoccupation with the outer world and its formation, insists on a happier relation between the two terms and creates the ideal of a better individual in a better world. But it is within us that the Reality must be found and the source and foundation of a perfected life; no outward formation can replace it: there must be the true self realised within if there is to be the true life realised in world and Nature. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p7~</refcenter>
= How to Achieve PerfectionThese three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection? search=perfection</ref>
The Master of our works respects our nature even when he '''Where is transforming it; he works always through the nature and not by any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature of ours contains the materials of our perfection, but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together in disorder or a poor imperfect order. All this material has to be patiently perfected, purified, reorganised, new-moulded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by simple coercion and denial. This world and we who live in it are his creation and manifestation, and he deals with it and us in a way our narrow and ignorant mind cannot understand unless it falls silent and opens to a divine knowledge. In our errors is the substance of a truth which labours to reveal its meaning to our groping intelligence. The human intellect cuts out the error and the truth with it and replaces it by another half-truth half-error; but the Divine Wisdom suffers our mistakes to continue until we are able to arrive at the truth hidden and protected under every false cover. Our sins are the misdirected steps of a seeking Power that aims, not at sin, but at perfection, at something that we might call a divine virtue. Often they are the veils of a quality that has to be transformed and delivered out of this ugly disguise: otherwise, in the perfect providence of things, they would not have been suffered to exist or to continue. The Master of our works is neither a blunderer nor an indifferent witness nor a dallier with the luxury of unneeded evils. He is wiser than our reason and wiser than our virtue. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-master-of-the-work#p6</ref>Perfection?'''
==Prerequisites==Where in the radically imperfect shall we find the principle and power of perfection? Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to us, nor can life and the body which are the energy and the frame of dividing and limiting mind. The principle and power of perfection are there in the subconscient but wrapped up in the tegument or veil of the lower Maya, a mute premonition emerging as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they await, open, eternally realised, but still separated from us by the veil of our self-ignorance. It is above, then, and not either in our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling power and knowledge.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-problem-of-life#p12</ref>
'''Divine Perfection'''
The first necessity Divine is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the things, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise perfection towards which we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect equality, samatā. The self, spirit or Brahman is one in all and therefore one to all; it is, as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its experience on at least one side of equality, the equal Brahman, samaṁ brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage as to identify equality and yoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyate. That is to say, equality is the sign of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the Infinite. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it is the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic determinations of our nature, of our having conquered our enslaved response to the dualities, of our having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, of our having entered into the calm and peace of liberation. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreover, it is the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; the security and largeness of the cosmic action of the Infinite is based upon and never breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity. That too must be the character of the perfect spiritual action; to be equal and one to all things in spirit, understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness,—even in the most physical consciousness,—and to make all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and receptive side of equality, but there is also an active and possessive side, an equal bliss which can only come when the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullnessmove. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2414/the-elementsdivine-ofand-perfectionman#p2p8</ref>
The next necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of their power and capacity, śakti, at which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. For practical purposes we may take the understanding, the heart, the prana and the body as the four members of our nature which have thus to be prepared, and we have to find the constituent terms of their perfection. Also there is the dynamical force in us (vīrya) of the temperament, character and soul nature, svabhāva, which makes the power of our members effective in action and gives them their type and direction; this has to be freed from its limitations, enlarged, rounded so that the whole manhood in us may become the basis of a divine manhood, when the Purusha, the real Man in us, the divine Soul, shall act fully in this human instrument and shine fully through this human vessel. To divinise the perfected nature we have to call in the divine Power or Shakti to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy, daivī prakṛti, bhāgavatī śakti. This perfection will grow in the measure in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance and then to the direct action of that Power and of the Master of our being and our works to whom it belongs, and for this purpose faith is the essential, faith is the great motor-power of our being in our aspirations to perfection,—here, a faith in God and the Shakti which shall begin in the heart and understanding, but shall take possession of all our nature, all its consciousness, all its dynamic motive-force. These four things are the essentials of this second element of perfection, the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature, the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption of them into the action of the divine Power, and a perfect faith in all our members to call and support that assumption, śakti, vīrya, daivī prakṛti, śraddhā. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-of-perfection#p3~</refcenter>
==Process==A divine perfection of the human being is our aim. We must know then first what are the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection; secondly, what we mean by a divine as distinguished from a human perfection of our being. That man as a being is capable of self-development and of some approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, fix before it and pursue, is common ground to all thinking humanity, though it may be only the minority who concern themselves with this possibility as providing the one most important aim of life.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p1</ref>
"To work for your perfection the first step is to become conscious of yourself." (The Mother, 13 January 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/13-january-1951#p16~</refcenter>
To work for your The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection, and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the first step immortality which is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts aim of your being Life and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study perfection which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal goal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errsMind. For if we truly want to progress The attainment of the eternal and acquire the capacity realisation of knowing the truth of our being, that which is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, the same in a very regular all things and constant mannerbeyond all things, reject from us or eliminate equally blissful in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to universe and outside it. In this way, little untouched by little, all the parts, all imperfections and limitations of the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, forms and activities in order to accomplish which itdwells, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for are the success glory of our endeavourthe spiritual life.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1223/the-sciencethreefold-of-livinglife#p5p7</ref>
If in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His self-manifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature.<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destiny-of-the-individual#p9~</refcenter>
But we can attain to Man, the mental being, has an imperfect life because mind is not the first and highest without blotting ourselves out from power of consciousness of the cosmic extensionBeing; even if mind were perfected, there would be still something yet to be realised, not yet manifested. Brahman preserves always Its two terms of liberty within For what is involved and of formation withoutemergent is not a Mind, but a Spirit, and mind is not the native dynamism of expression and consciousness of freedom from the expression. We alsoSpirit; supermind, being Thatthe light of gnosis, can attain is its native dynamism. If then life has to the same divine self-possession. The harmony become a manifestation of the two tendencies Spirit, it is the condition manifestation of all a spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that aims at being really divinemust be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2122/the-destinydivine-of-the-individuallife#p18p3</ref>
<center>~</center>
An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being Perfection of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But man's present nature kinds is limitedindeed good, divided, unequal,—it as it is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part sign of his being and follow a definite line the pressure of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into consciousness in the sea of the Divine Infinity. Some therefore must choose as a startingmaterial world towards full self-point a concentration expression in thought this or contemplation that limit, on this or the mind's one-pointedness to find the eternal reality that level. In a certain sense it is an urge of the Self Divine itself hidden in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves forms that tends in the will and enlarge their being through workslesser degrees of consciousness towards its own increasing self-revelation. United with the Self and source Perfection of all by their surrender an object or a scene in inanimate Nature, animate perfection of their will into its infinitystrength, speed, physical beauty, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within courage or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover animal fidelity, affection, intelligence, perfection of all their energies of thoughtart, feelingmusic, actpoetry, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universalliterature, they can reach by works some first fullness —perfection of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point intellect in any kind of startingmental activity, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledgeperfect statesman, warrior, emotionartist, will of dynamic actioncraftsman, perfection of the being —perfection in vital force and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousnesscapacity, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledgeperfection in ethical qualities, willcharacter, emotiontemperament, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to —all have their perfect harmony and fusion with each otherhigh value, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness their place as rungs in which the Divine Realityladder of evolution, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation seried steps of the Ignorancespirit's emergence. If one likes to call that spiritual because of this hidden urge behind it one can do so; it can at least be regarded as a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy preparation for the secret spirit's emergence. But thought and activity of knowledge can only proceed by making the being which necessary distinctions. Much confusion is self-existent created by neglecting them. This mental idealism, ethical development, religious piety and perfect. Every movement there is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being fervour, occult powers and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited feats have all been taken as spirituality and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of spiritual evolution kept tied to the Eternal and Infinite and partakes moorings of the inherent absoluteness and perfection planes of lesser consciousness which do indeed prepare the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into soul by experience for the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to but are not themselves that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of For perfection can only become truly spiritual when it is founded on the Divine Truth, an element awakened spiritual consciousness and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yogatakes on its peculiar essence.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2328/the-supermindidealism-and-the-yoga-of-worksspirituality#p1</ref>
Fundamentally, whatever be the path one follows—whether the path of surrender, consecration, knowledge—if one wants it to be perfect, it is always equally difficult, and there is but one way, one only, I know of only one: that is perfect sincerity, but perfect sincerity! (The Mother, 12 May 1954) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/12-may-1954#p34~</refcenter>
If you said to yourselfBut always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the spirit it is the spirit, the inner Reality, my childrenthat has built up and uses the mind, "We want to be vital being and body as perfect instruments as possible its instrumentation; thought, feeling and action do not exist for themselves, they are not an object, but the means; they serve to express the manifested divine Will Reality within us: otherwise, without this inwardness, this spiritual origination, in a too externalised consciousness or by only external means, no greater or divine life is possible. In our present life of Nature, in our externalised surface existence, it is the world", then for this instrument that seems to create us; but in the turn to be perfect, the spiritual life it is we who must create ourselves and our world. In this new formula of creation, the inner life becomes of the first importance and the rest can be cultivatedonly its expression and outcome. It is this, educatedindeed, trainedthat is indicated by our own strivings towards perfection, the perfection of our own soul and mind and life and the perfection of the life of the race. It must not For we are given a world which is obscure, ignorant, material, imperfect, and our external conscious being is itself created by the energies, the pressure, the moulding operations of this vast mute obscurity, by physical birth, by environment, by a training through the impacts and shocks of life; and yet we are vaguely aware of something that is there in us or seeking to be left like , something other than what has been thus made, a shapeless piece spirit self-existent, self-determining, pushing the nature towards the creation of stonean image of its own occult perfection or Idea of perfection. When you want There is something that grows in us in answer to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want this demand, that strives to make become the image of a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel itdivine. WellSomewhat, it and is impelled also to labour at the same thing. When with your brain world outside that has been given to it and body you want to make remake that too in a beautiful instrument for greater image, in the Divineimage of its own spiritual and mental and vital growth, you must cultivate itto make our world too something created according to our own mind and self-conceiving spirit, sharpen it, refine itsomething new, complete what is missingharmonious, perfect what is there. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0522/13the-maydivine-1953life#p18p6</ref>
==Difficulties==<center>~</center>
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p6</ref>
No man is perfect; the vital is there and the ego is there to prevent it. It is only when there is the total transformation of the external and the internal being down to the very subconscient, that perfection is possible. Till then imperfection will remain as our common heritage. <ref>http://incarnateword.==Perfection in/cwsa/31/the-subconscient-and-the-integral-yoga#p2</ref>Mind==
= Why =The ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches itself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, customary dictated action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make it the foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self existent self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when it gets away from impression and dogma and opinion and discovers a light of self-knowledge and intuition which illumines all the workings of the sense and reason, all self-experience and world-experience. The will is perfected when it gets away from and behind its impulses and its customary ruts of effectuation and discovers an inner power of the Spirit which is the source of an intuitive and luminous action and an original harmonious creation. The movement of perfection is away from all domination by the lower nature and towards a pure and powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and delight of the Spirit and Self in the buddhi.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will</ref>
<center>~</center>
But if you remain in that consciousness The first need is the clarity and look the purity of the intelligence. It must be freed from there, then you begin the claims of the vital being which seeks to understand something impose the desire of the mind in place of the truth. And this consciousness has , from the claims of the troubled emotional being which strives to be so totalcolour, that even if things come directly against youdistort, even limit and falsify the truth with the physical movement hue and shape of someone coming to beat you (you the emotions. It must not allow him to kill yoube free too from its own defect, inertia of the thought-power, no; you have perhaps obstructive narrowness and unwillingness to do what is necessary not open to get killed)knowledge, but if you are yourself intellectual unscrupulousness in this perfect consciousness thinking, prepossession and have no personal reactionpreference, well, I give you self-will in the guarantee reason and false determination of the other cannot kill you. He will not be able to, even if he triesknowledge. He Its sole will not must be able to beat youmake itself an unsullied mirror of the truth, even if he tries. Onlyits essence and its forms and measures and relations, you must not have a single violent or wrong vibrationclear mirror, you understand? Even if there is a just measure, a little false vibration, that opens the door fine and the thing enters and all goes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the full knowledgesubtle instrument of harmony, the perfect mastery over everything, the clear vision of the Truth—and perfect peacean integral intelligence. (The Mother, 20 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0524/20the-maypower-of-the-1953#p54instruments</ref>
… one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention—the least intervention—of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent: it simply looks on and listens in order to register things, it does not act. (The Mother, 23 December 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/23-december-1953#p8~</refcenter>
Perfection But our mind is not a static stateobscure, partial in its notions, misled by opposite surface appearances, divided between various possibilities; it is led in three different directions to any of which it may give an equilibriumexclusive preference. But Our mind, in its search for what must be, turns towards a concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection, on our own individual being and inner living; or it turns towards a progressiveconcentration on an individual development of our surface nature, on the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic equilibrium. One may go from perfection to perfection. There can come or practical action on the world, on some idealism of our personal relation with the world around us; or it turns rather towards a state from which concentration on the outer world itself, on making it would not be necessary better, more suited to descend our ideas and temperament or to a lower rung in order to go farther; at our conception of what should be. On one side there is the moment the march call of Nature our spiritual being which is like thatour true self, but in this new statea transcendent reality, instead a being of being obliged to go back to be the Divine Being, not created by the world, able to start againlive in itself, one can walk always forward, without ever stopping. As things are, one comes to rise out of world to transcendence; on the other side there is the demand of the world around us which is a certain point andcosmic form, as human beings as they are at present cannot progress indefinitelya formulation of the Divine Being, one must pass to a higher species or leave power of the present species and create anotherReality in disguise. The human being as he There is at too the moment cannot attain perfection unless he gets out divided or double demand of our being of himself—man Nature which is a transitional being. In ordinary language poised between these two terms, depends on them and connects them; for it may be said: "Ohis apparently made by the world and yet, this man because its true creator is in ourselves and the world instrumentation that seems to make it is perfect"only the means first used, but that it is really a form, a literary figure. The maximum disguised manifestation of a human greater spiritual being can attain just now within us. It is this demand that mediates between our preoccupation with an equilibrium which inward perfection or spiritual liberation and our preoccupation with the outer world and its formation, insists on a happier relation between the two terms and creates the ideal of a better individual in a better world. But it is not progressive. He may attain perhaps within us that the Reality must be found and the source and foundation of a static equilibrium but all that perfected life; no outward formation can replace it: there must be the true self realised within if there is static can to be broken for lack of progressthe true life realised in world and Nature. (The Mother, 30 December 1950) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0422/30the-decemberdivine-1950life#p19p7</ref>
==Perfection in the Vital==
Then again there is the psychic prana, pranic mind or desire soul; this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the first necessity is a fullness of the vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength and spring of energetic action on the fullness of the psychic prana. But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the psychic life-being. This dynamis must not be a troubled, perfervid, stormy, fitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but a clear and glad and pure energy, a seated and firmly supported pure rapture. And as a third condition of its perfection it must be poised in a complete equality.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
The condition to be aimed at, the real achievement of Yoga, the final perfection and attainment, for which all else is only a preparation, is a consciousness in which it is impossible to do anything without the Divine; for then, if you are without the Divine, the very source of your action disappears; knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel that the powers you use are your own, you will not miss the Divine support. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-april-1929#p14~</refcenter>
All life that has still this Inconscience for its basis is stamped This heart and psychic being of man shot through with the mark of a radical imperfection; for even if it is satisfied with its own type, it is a satisfaction with something incomplete and inharmonious, a patchwork threads of discords: on the contrary, even a purely mental or vital life might be perfect within its limits if it were based on a restricted but harmonious self-power and self-knowledge. It instincts is this bondage to a perpetual stamp thing of mixed inconstant colours of imperfection emotion and disharmony that is the mark of the undivine; a divine lifesoul vibrations, on the contrarybad and good, even if progressing from the little to the morehappy and unhappy, would be at each stage harmonious in its principle satisfied and detail: it would be a secure ground upon which freedom unsatisfied, troubled and perfection could naturally flower or grow towards their highest staturecalm, refine intense and expand into their most subtle opulencedull. All imperfectionsThus agitated and invaded it is unacquainted with any real peace, all perfections have to be taken into view in our consideration incapable of the difference between an undivine and a divine existence: but ordinarily, when we make the distinction, we do it as human beings struggling under the pressure of life and the difficulties of our conduct amidst its immediate problems and perplexities; most steady perfection of all we are thinking of the distinction we are obliged to make between good and evil or of that along with its kindred problem of the dualitypowers. By purification, by equality, by the blend in us light of happiness and suffering. When we seek intellectually for a divine presence in thingsknowledge, by a divine origin harmonising of the world, will it can be brought to a divine government of its workings, the presence of evil, the insistence on suffering, the large, the enormous part offered to pain, grief tranquil intensity and affliction in the economy of Nature are the cruel phenomena which baffle our reason and overcome the instinctive faith of mankind in such an origin and government or in an all-seeing, all-determining and omnipresent Divine Immanenceperfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-divinepower-andof-the-undivine#p2instruments</ref>
It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true being, a life of unity, mutuality, harmony, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life. If our nature is fixed in what it is, what it has already become, then no perfection, no real and enduring happiness is possible in earthly life; we must seek it not at all and do the best we can with our imperfections, or we must seek it elsewhere, in a supraterrestrial hereafter, or we must go beyond all such seeking and transcend life by an extinction of nature and ego in some Absolute from which this strange and unsatisfactory being of ours has come into existence. But if in us there is a spiritual being which is emerging and our present state is only an imperfection of half-emergence, if the Inconscient is a starting-point containing in itself the potency of a superconscience and supernature which has to evolve, a veil of apparent Nescience in which that greater consciousness is concealed and from which it has to unfold itself, if an evolution of being is the law, then what we are seeking for is not only possible but part of the eventual necessity of things. It is our spiritual destiny to manifest and become that supernature,—for it is the nature of our true self, our still occult, because unevolved, whole being. A nature of unity will then bring inevitably its life-result of unity, mutuality, harmony. An inner life awakened to a full consciousness and to a full power of consciousness will bear its inevitable fruit in all who have it, self-knowledge, a perfected existence, the joy of a satisfied being, the happiness of a fulfilled nature. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p23~</refcenter>
Our soul's dissatisfaction with imperfection as a law The other side of life upon earth, its aspiration towards the elimination of all imperfections from our nature, not only in perfection is a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible to be imperfect, but here self-contained and now in a life where perfection has to be conquered by evolution calm and struggleunegoistic Rudra-power armed with psychic force, are as much a law the energy of our being as that against the strong heart which they revolt; they too are divineis capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent,—a divine dissatisfactionan outwardly austere or even, a divine aspiration. In them where need is the inherent light of , a power within which maintains them in us so that the Divine may not only be there as a hidden Reality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the evolution of Natureviolent action. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-divinepower-andof-the-undivine#p8instruments</ref>
== Perfection in the Body ==
For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that one can learn to find interest in everything one does, even in what appear to be When the body has learned the most insignificant chores. The secret art of this attainment lies in the urge constantly progressing towards self-an increasing perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot, you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this we shall be well on the way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to overcoming the most artistic and intellectual workinevitability of death. (The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing. Mother, 16 January 1972) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1216/the-four-austerities-and-the16-fourjanuary-liberations1972#p17p1</ref>
= Mind and Perfection =<center>~</center>
== Mind’s Way As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and Perfect Understanding ==, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p57</ref>
<center>~</center>
The physical being of man has always been felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. 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-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
<center>~</center>
There is a world of ideas without form Transformation and it is there the Body : The supramental perfection means that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one anotherbody becomes conscious, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned filled with consciousness and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there as this is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies Truth consciousness all its own significanceactions, functionings etc. I use a word in a certain sense or shade become by the power of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in consciousness within itharmonious, you must be able to read it in the mind's silence; you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the twoluminous, you will have entirely missed their real sense right and powertrue—without ignorance or disorder. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression. (The Mother, 26 May 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0328/26transformation-mayand-the-1929body#p21p3</ref>
== Mind’s Endeavour to Perfection ==<center>~</center>
For here there This is one of the same process of evolution things one discovers gradually as in the rest of the movement of Nature; there body becomes ready for transformations. It is quite a heightening and widening of remarkable instrument in the consciousness, an ascent to a new level and a taking up of the lower levels, an assumption and new integration of the existence by a superior power of Being which imposes its own way of action and its character and force of substance energy on as much as see that it can reach of experience two contraries at the previously evolved parts of naturesame time. The demand for integration becomes at this highest stage of Nature's workings There is a point certain state of cardinal importance. In the lower grades of the ascension the new assumptionbody-consciousness which brings things together, the integration into a higher principle totalises things that in other states of consciousnessalternate or even in certain others oppose each other. But if one has reached up there, remains incomplete: the mind cannot wholly mentalise life and matter; there are considerable parts of the life being and the body which remain in the realm of the submental vital and the subconscient or inconscient. This is one serious obstacle to the mind's endeavour towards the perfection of the nature; , a development sufficient for the continued share harmonising opposites (that of the submentalcourse, is quite indispensable), the subconscient and inconscient when one has succeeded in doing this, there are moments when it alternates, you see, one thing comes after the government of the activitiesother, by bringing while what is remarkable in another law than that of the mental being, enables the conscious vital and the physical consciousness also to reject the law laid upon them by the mind and to follow their own impulses and instincts in defiance of the mental reason and the rational will of the developed intelligence. This makes body is that it difficult for the mind to go beyond itselfcan feel ("feel", to exceed its own level and spiritualise the nature; for what can we say "feel"?—"experience"—the word "aware" expresses it cannot even make fully consciousbest) all things simultaneously, cannot securely mentalise as though you were hot and rationalisecold at once, it cannot spiritualiseas though you were active and passive at once, since spiritualisation is a greater and more difficult integrationeverything becomes like that. No doubt, by calling in Then you begin to grasp the spiritual force, it can establish an influence and a preliminary change totality of movements in some parts of the naturecells. It is something much more concrete naturally, especially but much more perfect in the thinking mind itself and body than in any other part of the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits and what it does achieve is rare and difficultbeing. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior This means andthat if things continue in this way, even though it brings in a divine light into will be proved that the mindphysical, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the life, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for material instrument is the most part it can only regulate or check the lower action perfect of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformationall. For that That is why perhaps it is necessary the most difficult to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native transform, to the spiritual consciousness and by which, thereforeperfect. But of all, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon is the membersone most capable of perfection. (The Mother, 21 April 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2206/the-ascent21-towardsapril-supermind1954#p16p31</ref>
In your meditation the first imperative need is a state of perfect and absolute sincerity in all the consciousness. It is indispensable that you should not deceive yourself or deceive or be deceived by others. Often people have a wish, a mental preference or vital desire; they want the experience to happen in a particular way or to take a turn that satisfies their ideas or desires or preferences; they do not keep themselves blank and unprejudiced and simply and sincerely observe what happens. Then if you do not like what happens, it is easy to deceive yourself; you will see one thing, but give it a little twist and make it something else, or you will distort something simple and straightforward or magnify it into an extraordinary experience. When you sit in meditation you must be as candid and simple as a child, not interfering by your external mind, expecting nothing, insisting on nothing. Once this condition is there, all the rest depends upon the aspiration deep within you. If you ask from within for peace, it will come; if for strength, for power, for knowledge, they too will come, but all in the measure of your capacity to receive it. And if you call upon the Divine, then too—always admitting that the Divine is open to your call, and that means your call is pure enough and strong enough to reach him,—you will have the answer. (The Mother, 23 June 1929) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p23~</refcenter>
At It is precisely because the same time it must be added body decays, declines and ends in a complete degradation that death becomes necessary. But if the body followed the power is enough; progressive movement of the abstention from all physical action is not indispensableinner being, if it had the aversion to action mental or corporeal is not desirable. The seeker same sense of progress and perfection as the integral state of knowledge must psychic being, there would be free from attachment no necessity for it to action and equally free from attachment die. One year added to inactionanother need not bring a deterioration. It is only a habit of Nature. Especially must any tendency to mere inertia It is only a habit of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if what is happening at this moment. And that habit is found growing on the nature, exactly the will cause of the Purusha must be used to dismiss itdeath. EventuallyOne can foresee quite well, a state arrives when on the life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachmentcontrary, without their putting themselves into that the action with that inferior, eager and often feverish energy movement for perfection which is at the nature of their ordinary working; they come to work as forces of Nature work without the fret and toil and reaction characteristic beginning of life in the body when it is might continue under another form. I have already told you that one does not yet master of the physical. When we attain to this perfectionforesee an uninterrupted growth, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with for that would need changing the freedom height of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. houses after some time! But this state of growth in height may be changed into a growth in perfection arrives later in : the Yoga and till then the law perfection of moderation laid down by the Gita is form. All the best for us; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon imperfections of the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to form may be surmounted with difficulty. Stillgradually corrected, periods of absolute calmall the weaknesses replaced by strength, solitude and cessation from works are highly desirable and all the incapacities by skill. Why should it not be secured as often as possible for like this? You do not think in that recession way because you have the habit of the soul into itself which seeing things otherwise. But there is indispensable to knowledgeno reason why this should not happen. (The Mother, 17 June 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2305/the17-releasejune-from-subjection-to-the-body1953#p8p36</ref>
Mind finds fully its force and action only when it casts itself upon life and accepts equally its possibilities and its resistances as the means of a greater self-perfection. In the struggle with the difficulties of the material world the ethical development of the individual is firmly shaped and the great schools of conduct are formed; by contact with the facts of life Art attains to vitality, Thought assures its abstractions, the generalisations of the philosopher base themselves on a stable foundation of science and experience. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p18</ref>= Why Do We Need Perfection? =
== Highest Perfection For Discovering the Truth of Living==
The calm established in For the awakened individual the whole realisation of his truth of being must remain the same whatever happens, in health and disease, in pleasure his inner liberation and in painperfection must be his primary seeking, even in the strongest physical pain—first, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or because that is the call of those we lovethe Spirit within him, in success but also because it is only by liberation and failure, honour perfection and insult, praise and blame, justice done to us or injustice, everything realisation of the truth of being that ordinarily affects the mindman can arrive at truth of living. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes A perfected community also can exist only by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game perfection of life as well as our friendsits individuals, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as perfection can come only by the powers that favour discovery and assist, affirmation in life by each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all energies of their spiritual unity and forces and happenings, and if besides we a resultant life unity. There can feel that all is undivided from be no real perfection for us except by our inner self, and truth of spiritual existence taking up all truth of the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart instrumental existence into itself and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power giving to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of itoneness, alpam api asya dharmasyaintegration, harmony. As our only real freedom is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality within us, so our only means of liberated true perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance sovereignty and self-effectuation of a rapid progress the spiritual Reality in all the other members elements of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignoranceour nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2422/the-actiondivine-of-equalitylife#p5p37</ref>
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p6~</refcenter>
=== SoulThere is a Reality, Mind a truth of all existence which is greater and Perfection ===more abiding than all its formations and manifestations; to find that truth and Reality and live in it, achieve the most perfect manifestation and formation possible of it, must be the secret of perfection whether of individual or communal being. This Reality is there within each thing and gives to each of its formations its power of being and value of being. The universe is a manifestation of the Reality, and there is a truth of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic being, an all-self or world-spirit. Humanity is a formation or manifestation of the Reality in the universe, and there is a truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p36</ref>
The character of these higher states of the soul and their greater worlds of spiritual Nature is necessarily difficult to seize. Even the Upanishads and the Veda only shadow them out by figures, hints and symbols. Yet it is necessary to attempt some account of their principles and practical effect so far as they can be grasped by the mind that stands on the border of the two hemispheres. The passage beyond that border would be the culmination, the completeness of the Yoga of self-transcendence by self==For Self-knowledge. The soul that aspires to perfection, draws back and upward, says the Upanishad, from the physical into the vital and from the vital into the mental Purusha, from the mental into the knowledge-soul and from that self of knowledge into the bliss Purusha. This self of bliss is the conscious foundation of perfect Sachchidananda and to pass into it completes the soul's ascension. The mind therefore must try to give to itself some account of this decisive transformation of the embodied consciousness, this radiant transfiguration Progress and self-exceeding of our ever aspiring nature. The description mind can arrive at, can never be adequate to the thing itself, but it may point at least to some indicative shadow of it or perhaps some half-luminous image. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ladder-of-self-transcendence#p13</ref>Fulfillment==
But always In the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward Dhammapada: a supreme disinterestedness and not outward. In a supreme liberation is to follow the life discipline of the spirit it is the spiritself-perfection, the inner Realitymarch of progress, that has built up and uses the mind, vital being and body as its instrumentation; thought, feeling and action do not exist for themselves, they are not an object, but the means; they serve to express the manifested divine Reality within us: otherwise, without this inwardness, this spiritual origination, in with a too externalised consciousness or by only external means, no greater or divine life is possible. In our present life of Nature, precise end in our externalised surface existence, it is the world that seems to create us; view but in the turn to the spiritual life it is we who must create ourselves and our world. In because this new formula of creation, the inner life becomes march of the first importance and the rest can be only its expression and outcome. It progress is this, indeed, that is indicated by our own strivings towards perfection, the perfection of our own soul and mind and life profound law and the perfection purpose of the earthly life of the race. For we are given a world which is obscure, ignorant, material, imperfect, and our external conscious being is itself created by the energies, the pressure, the moulding operations truth of this vast mute obscurity, by physical birth, by environment, by a training through the impacts and shocks of life; universal existence and yet we are vaguely aware of something that is there because you put yourself in us or seeking to beharmony with it, something other than what has been thus madespontaneously, a spirit self-existent, self-determining, pushing whatever the nature towards the creation of an image of its own occult perfection or Idea of perfection. There is something that grows in us in answer to this demand, that strives to become the image of a divine. Somewhat, and is impelled also to labour at the world outside that has been given to it and to remake that too in a greater image, in the image of its own spiritual and mental and vital growth, to make our world too something created according to our own mind and self-conceiving spirit, something new, harmonious, perfectresult may be. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2203/the-divine-lifebrahmin#p6p43</ref>
== Supermind ==<center>~</center>
If consciousness is the central secretFor one who wants to grow in self-perfection, life is the outward indicationthere are no great or small tasks, the effective power of being in Matternone that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that which liberates consciousness and gives it its form or embodiment of force and its effectuation one can learn to find interest in material act. If some revelation or effectuation of itself everything one does, even in Matter is what appear to be the ultimate aim most insignificant chores. The secret of the evolving Being this attainment lies in its birth, life is the exterior and dynamic sign and index of that revelation and effectuationurge towards self-perfection. But life alsoWhatever occupation or task falls to your lot, as you must do it is nowwith a will to progress; whatever one does, is imperfect and evolving; one must not only do it evolves through growth of consciousness even as consciousness evolves through greater organisation best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection of life: a greater consciousness means a greater life. ManIn this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the mental being, has an imperfect life because mind is not most material chore to the first most artistic and highest power of consciousness of the Being; even if mind were perfected, there would be still something yet to be realised, not yet manifestedintellectual work. For what The scope for progress is involved infinite and emergent is not a Mind, but a Spirit, and mind is not the native dynamism of consciousness of the Spirit; supermind, the light of gnosis, is its native dynamism. If then life has can be applied to become a manifestation of the Spirit, it is the manifestation of a spiritual being in us and the divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that must be the secret burden and intention of evolutionary Naturesmallest thing. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2212/the-divinefour-austerities-and-the-four-lifeliberations#p3p17</ref>
These are the first major results of the spiritual transformation that follow as a necessary consequence of the nature of Supermind. But if there is to be not only a perfection of the inner existence, of the consciousness, of an inner delight of existence, but a perfection of the life and action, two other questions present themselves from our mental view-point which have to our human thought about our life and its dynamisms a considerable, even a premier importance. First, there is the place of personality in the gnostic being,—whether the status, the building of the being will be quite other than what we experience as the form and life of the person or similar. If there is a personality and it is in any way responsible for its actions, there intervenes, next, the question of the place of the ethical element and its perfection and fulfilment in the gnostic nature. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-gnostic-being#p28~</refcenter>
= Body Perfection is not a static state, it is an equilibrium. But a progressive, dynamic equilibrium. One may go from perfection to perfection. There can come a state from which it would not be necessary to descend to a lower rung in order to go farther; at the moment the march of Nature is like that, but in this new state, instead of being obliged to go back to be able to start again, one can walk always forward, without ever stopping. As things are, one comes to a certain point and Perfection =, as human beings as they are at present cannot progress indefinitely, one must pass to a higher species or leave the present species and create another. The human being as he is at the moment cannot attain perfection unless he gets out of himself—man is a transitional being. In ordinary language it may be said: "Oh, this man is perfect", but that is a literary figure. The maximum a human being can attain just now is an equilibrium which is not progressive. He may attain perhaps a static equilibrium but all that is static can be broken for lack of progress. (The Mother, 30 December 1950) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p19</ref>
== Perfecting the Body ==<center>~</center>
This All life is one a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the things one discovers gradually as discovery and fulfilment of the body becomes ready for transformations. It is quite a remarkable instrument divine principle hidden in the see that it can experience two contraries at the same time. There is a certain state of body-consciousness her which brings things togetherbecomes progressively less obscure, totalises things that in other states of consciousness alternate or even in certain others oppose each other. But if one has reached up there, in the vital more self-conscient and the mindluminous, a development sufficient for harmonising opposites (that of course, is quite indispensable), when one has succeeded more self-possessed in doing this, there are moments when it alternates, you see, one thing comes after the other, while what is remarkable in human being by the consciousness opening of the body is that it can feel ("feel", can we say "feel"?—"experience"—the word "aware" expresses it best) all things simultaneouslyhis instruments of knowledge, as though you were hot and cold at oncewill, as though you were active and passive at onceaction, and everything becomes like that. Then you begin life to grasp the totality of movements Spirit within him and in the cellsworld. It is something much more concrete naturallyMind, life, body, but much more perfect in all the body than in any other part forms of our nature are the being. This means that if things continue in of this waygrowth, but they find their last perfection only by opening out to something beyond them, it will be proved that the physicalfirst, material instrument is because they are not the most perfect whole of all. That what man is, secondly, because that other something which he is why perhaps it , is the most difficult to transform, key of his completeness and brings a light which discovers to perfect. But of all, it is him the one most capable whole high and large reality of perfectionhis being. (The Mother, 21 April 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0624/21the-aprilintegral-1954#p31perfection?search=perfection</ref>
Be on your guard against the wrath of the body. Control your actions, and leaving behind wrong ways of acting, practise perfect conduct in action. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/anger#p10~</refcenter>
One who aspires Our soul's dissatisfaction with imperfection as a law of life upon earth, its aspiration towards the elimination of all imperfections from our nature, not only in a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible to the ineffable Peacebe imperfect, one whose mind is awakenedbut here and now in a life where perfection has to be conquered by evolution and struggle, whose thoughts are as much a law of our being as that against which they revolt; they too are divine,—a divine dissatisfaction, a divine aspiration. In them is the inherent light of a power within which maintains them in us so that the Divine may not entangled only be there as a hidden Reality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the net evolution of desire, that one is said to be "bound upstream" (towards perfection)Nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0321/pleasurethe-divine-and-the-undivine#p10p8</ref>
As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p57~</refcenter>
Transformation It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the Body : The supramental result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true being, a life of unity, mutuality, harmony, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life. If our nature is fixed in what it is, what it has already become, then no perfection means that the body becomes conscious, no real and enduring happiness is filled possible in earthly life; we must seek it not at all and do the best we can with consciousness our imperfections, or we must seek it elsewhere, in a supraterrestrial hereafter, or we must go beyond all such seeking and transcend life by an extinction of nature and that as ego in some Absolute from which this strange and unsatisfactory being of ours has come into existence. But if in us there is a spiritual being which is emerging and our present state is only an imperfection of half-emergence, if the Truth Inconscient is a starting-point containing in itself the potency of a superconscience and supernature which has to evolve, a veil of apparent Nescience in which that greater consciousness all its actionsis concealed and from which it has to unfold itself, if an evolution of being is the law, functionings etcthen what we are seeking for is not only possible but part of the eventual necessity of things. It is our spiritual destiny to manifest and become by that supernature,—for it is the nature of our true self, our still occult, because unevolved, whole being. A nature of unity will then bring inevitably its life-result of unity, mutuality, harmony. An inner life awakened to a full consciousness and to a full power of the consciousness within will bear its inevitable fruit in all who have it harmonious, luminousself-knowledge, a perfected existence, the joy of a satisfied being, right and true—without ignorance or disorderthe happiness of a fulfilled nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2822/transformation-andthe-thedivine-bodylife#p3p23</ref>
== Body Perfection or Immortality To Grow in the Spiritual Oneness==
When His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the body has learned life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the art secret of constantly progressing towards an increasing perfection, we shall its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be well on one with That which is the way to overcoming origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. This will be the inevitability highest reach of deathself-perfection. (The Mother, 16 January 1972) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1624/16the-elements-januaryof-1972#p1perfection</ref>
We are on earth in order to progress and to perfect ourselves in the course of many successive lives. What we cannot do this time, we shall do next time; and every progress we make this time will help us then. (The Mother, 15 November 1971) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/15-november-1971#p1~</refcenter>
Ah! No. You are looking from So long as he remains in the wrong side. They could escape dying only if their body did not decay. It is just because their body decays that they die. It is because their body becomes useless that they die. If they are not to dieworld-existence, their body should not become useless. This is just the contrary. It is precisely because the body decaysthis perfection must radiate out from him, declines and ends in a complete degradation —for that death becomes necessary. But if is the body followed the progressive movement necessity of his oneness with the inner beinguniverse and its beings, if it had the same sense —in an influence and action which help all around who are capable of progress and perfection as the psychic being, there would be no necessity for it to die. One year added rise to another need not bring a deterioration. It is only a habit of Nature. It is only a habit of what is happening at this moment. And that is exactly or advance towards the cause of death. One can foresee quite wellsame perfection, on the contrary, that the movement and for perfection which is at the beginning of life might continue under another form. I have already told you that one does not foresee rest in an uninterrupted growthinfluence and action which help, for that would need changing as only the height of self-ruler and master man can help, in leading the houses after human race forward spiritually towards this consummation and towards some time! But this growth in height may be changed into image of a growth greater divine truth in perfection: the perfection of the formtheir personal and communal existence. All the imperfections He becomes a light and power of the form may be gradually corrected, all the weaknesses replaced by strength, all the incapacities by skill. Why should it not be like this? You do not think in that way because you have the habit of seeing things otherwiseTruth to which he has climbed and a means for others’ ascension. But there is no reason why this should not happen. (The Mother, 17 June 1953) <ref>httpttp://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0524/17the-juneperfection-1953#p36of-the-mental-being?search=perfection</ref>
But, you see, when our little humanity says three hundred years with the same body, you say: "Why! when I am fifty it already begins to decompose, so at three hundred it will be a horrible thing!" But it is not like that. If it is three hundred years with a body that goes on perfecting itself from year to year, perhaps when the three hundredth year is reached one will say: "Oh! I still need three or four hundred more to be what I want to be." If each year that passes represents a progress, a transformation, one would like to have more and more years in order = How to be able to transform oneself more and more. When something is not exactly as you want it to be—take, for example, simply one of the things I have just described, say, plasticity or lightness or elasticity or luminosity, and none of them is exactly as you want it, then you will still need at least two hundred years more so that it may be accomplished, but you never think: "How is itAchieve Perfection? It is still going to last two hundred years more!" On the contrary, you say: "Two hundred years more are absolutely necessary so that it may be truly done." And then, when all is done, when all is perfect, then there is no longer any question of years, for you are immortal. (The Mother, 20 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/20-may-1953#p44</ref>=
= Integral Perfection =The Master of our works respects our nature even when he is transforming it; he works always through the nature and not by any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature of ours contains the materials of our perfection, but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together in disorder or a poor imperfect order. All this material has to be patiently perfected, purified, reorganised, new-moulded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by simple coercion and denial. This world and we who live in it are his creation and manifestation, and he deals with it and us in a way our narrow and ignorant mind cannot understand unless it falls silent and opens to a divine knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-master-of-the-work#p6</ref>
== Ego and Perfection Prerequisites==
Why do you say that sensitivity The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the sign things, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a strong ego? It does not seem perfect equality, samatā. The self, spirit or Brahman is one in all and therefore one to be evident all; it is, as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its experience on at allleast one side of equality, the equal Brahman, samaṁ brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage as to identify equality and yoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyate. That is to say, equality is the sign of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the Infinite. MoreoverIts importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it is the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic determinations of our nature, of our having conquered our enslaved response to the dualities, there are many different kinds of sensitivity: some stem from weaknessour having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, others—the best—are of our having entered into the result calm and peace of refinementliberation. The ego generally governs Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the development eternal tranquillity of the individualInfinite. Moreover, but it is the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; the security and largeness of the most developed individualities are not necessarily those in whom cosmic action of the ego Infinite is strongest—on based upon and never breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity. That too must be the character of the contrary. As perfect spiritual action; to be equal and one to all things in spirit, understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness,—even in the individuality perfects itselfmost physical consciousness, —and to make all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation to the power thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the ego diminishesdivine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and indeed it receptive side of equality, but there is by perfecting himself that also an active and possessive side, an equal bliss which can only come when the individual arrives at that state peace of divinisation equality is founded and which liberates him from is the egobeatific flower of its fullness. (The Mother, 2 September 1964) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1624/2the-septemberelements-of-1964perfection#p3p2</ref>
Never forget that here it is for the perfection of the work that we are striving, not for the satisfaction of the ego. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/organisation-and-work#p55~</refcenter>
The egoism next necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the instrument can be as dangerous or more dangerous human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of their power and capacity, śakti, at which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual progress than and divine action. For practical purposes we may take the understanding, the heart, the egoism prana and the body as the four members of our nature which have thus to be prepared, and we have to find the doerconstituent terms of their perfection. The ego-sense Also there is contrary the dynamical force in us (vīrya) of the temperament, character and soul nature, svabhāva, which makes the power of our members effective in action and gives them their type and direction; this has to spiritual realisationbe freed from its limitations, enlarged, rounded so how can any kind that the whole manhood in us may become the basis of ego a divine manhood, when the Purusha, the real Man in us, the divine Soul, shall act fully in this human instrument and shine fully through this human vessel. To divinise the perfected nature we have to call in the divine Power or Shakti to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a thing greater infinite energy, daivī prakṛti, bhāgavatī śakti. This perfection will grow in the measure in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance and then to the direct action of that Power and of the Master of our being and our works to be encouraged? As whom it belongs, and for this purpose faith is the magnified egoessential, it faith is one the great motor-power of our being in our aspirations to perfection,—here, a faith in God and the most perilous obstacles to release Shakti which shall begin in the heart and understanding, but shall take possession of all our nature, all its consciousness, all its dynamic motive-force. These four things are the essentials of this second element of perfection. There should be no big I, not even the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature, the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption of them into the action of the divine Power, and a small oneperfect faith in all our members to call and support that assumption, śakti, vīrya, daivī prakṛti, śraddhā. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3124/egothe-andelements-itsof-formsperfection#p54p3</ref>
If you think there is no ego or desire in you, only pure devotion, that shows a great unconsciousness. To be free from ego and desire is a condition which needs a high siddhi in Yoga—even many Yogis of a great spiritual attainment are not free from it. For a sadhak at your stage of development to think he is free from ego and desire is to blind himself and prevent the clear perception of one's own nature movements which is necessary for progress towards spiritual perfection. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/ego-and-its-forms#p74~</refcenter>
This vairagya, or loss ...perfection of zest, as you have yourself said, began before you came hereour instrumental nature... I have indeed laid some stress on the conquest perfection of sexthe intelligence, for obvious reasons; but I have hardly laid a compulsory stress on anything else. Certainlyheart, I have not encouraged you to lose joy in vital creativeness; I have only held up consciousness and body, the ideal perfection of turning it towards the Divine and away from fundamental soul powers, the ego. To keep perfection of the vital full surrender of life and energy our instruments and to trust mainly action to the inner growth divine Shakti, depend at every moment of their progression on a... power that is covertly and overtly the descent pivot of a higher consciousness for a changeall endeavour and action, using the will too but for self-masteryfaith, not for suppression, but for subordination śraddhā. The perfect faith is an assent of the lower whole being to the higher, has been my teaching. The turn truth seen by it or offered to vairagyaits acceptance, to tapasya of an ascetic kind was the impulse of something in your own nature; it insisted on and its necessity just as central working is a part faith of the vital insisted on soul in its opposite: even it condemned my suggestion of something less grim own will to be and attain and become and strenuous as an easy-going absence its idea of aspiration etc. I do not say that vairagya self and tapasya are not ways to reach the Divine, but done like that they are painful ways things and long; if one takes themits knowledge, one must be determined and go through. For one part to push all zest out of which the vital and for belief of the other to regret and sayintellect, why did I ever do it, will never do. And it is in this kind of tapasya that perfection or at least perfect purification is demanded before there can be any realisation. I have never said that for my Yoga; the only thing I insist upon is some faith, inner surrender heart’s consent and opening the desire of oneself to receive,—not absolute, but just sufficient. Experience has the life mind to begin long before perfect purification possess and from experience to experience one comes to realisation and through realisation to more and more perfection; anything that can be called real perfection can only come at realise are the end. But there is something in you that is impatient of gradualness, of small mercies; its motto seems to be all or nothingoutward figures. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2924/asceticismfaith-and-the-integral-yoga#p9shakti?search=perfection</ref>
== The Mundane condition to be aimed at, the real achievement of Yoga, the final perfection and attainment, for which all else is only a preparation, is a consciousness in which it is impossible to do anything without the Divine Perfection ==; for then, if you are without the Divine, the very source of your action disappears; knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel that the powers you use are your own, you will not miss the Divine support. (The Mother, 28 April 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-april-1929#p14</ref>
A divine perfection of the human being is our aim. We must know then first what are the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection; secondly, what we mean by a divine as distinguished from a human perfection of our being. That man as a being is capable of self-development and of some approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, fix before it and pursue, is common ground to all thinking humanity, though it may be only the minority who concern themselves with this possibility as providing the one most important aim of life. But by some the ideal is conceived as a mundane change, by others as a religious conversion. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p1</ref>==Process==
The mundane perfection is sometimes conceived of as something outward, social, a thing of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men and our environment, a better and more efficient citizenship and discharge of duties, a better, richer, kindlier and happier way of living, with a more just and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence. ===By others again a more inner and subjective ideal is cherished, a clarifying and raising of the intelligence, will and reason, a heightening and ordering of power and capacity in the nature, a nobler ethical, a richer aesthetic, a finer emotional, a much healthier and better-governed vital and physical being. Sometimes one element is stressed, almost to the exclusion of the rest; sometimes, in wider and more well-balanced minds, the whole harmony is envisaged as a total perfection. A change of education and social institutions is the outward means adopted or an inner self-training Education and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. Or the two aims may be clearly united, the perfection of the inner individual, the perfection of the outer living. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p2</ref>Training===
We know, we have If you said this many a time, that all work is a prayer made with the body and that the true attitude in work is an offering to the Divine. Wellyourself, this was satisfied with the way the thing was done. For I was looking onmy children, "We want to see, be as I said, if there were things which were not perfect instruments as they should have been. But possible to express the divine Will in any casethe world", then for this instrument to the eye of this consciousness which was looking onbe perfect, it was satisfying. Materiallymust be cultivated, you seeeducated, I said, "In the outer human consciousness this can be done much bettertrained." That of course is understood, we haven't reached the height of perfection, far from that, but it It must also not be said that it is only left like a very small part shapeless piece of our activitystone... that we are trying much more than this, that When you want to build with a stone you chisel it is only one of the movements of our sadhana, ; when you see. We are busy with many other things besides this... one thing among many others... and to put up something like this according to the accomplishment which the laws of human perfection demand, infinitely more time, infinitely more work and infinitely more means would have been necessary. But we are not seeking an exclusive perfection in one thing or another, we are trying want to make everything go forward together to a commonformless block into a beautiful diamond, integral perfection. And these things have their place and importance, but they don't have an exclusive place and importance. Therefore, from the external point of view, one may criticise and find something to say and all that; but you chisel it is not that, the true point of view. InwardlyWell, it is well. (The Mother, 30 November 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/30-november-1955#p28</ref> The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfectionsame thing. An integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves When with your brain and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex body you want to make a beautiful instrument we are in our outer parts, is for the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitudeDivine, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ananda of that which is not-world. And you must cultivate it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of beingsharpen it, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p19</ref> == Perfection of All Kinds == Perfection of all kinds is indeed good, as refine it is the sign of the pressure of the consciousness in the material world towards full self-expression in this or that limit, on this or that level. In a certain sense it complete what is an urge of the Divine itself hidden in forms that tends in the lesser degrees of consciousness towards its own increasing self-revelation. Perfection of an object or a scene in inanimate Naturemissing, animate perfection of strength, speed, physical beauty, courage or animal fidelity, affection, intelligence, perfection of art, music, poetry, literature,—perfection of the intellect in any kind of mental activity, the perfect statesman, warrior, artist, craftsman,—perfection in vital force and capacity, perfection in ethical qualities, character, temperament,—all have their high value, their place as rungs in the ladder of evolution, the seried steps of the spirit's emergence. If one likes to call that spiritual because of this hidden urge behind it one can do so; it can at least be regarded as a preparation for the secret spirit's emergence. But thought and knowledge can only proceed by making the necessary distinctions. Much confusion what is created by neglecting themthere. This mental idealism(The Mother, ethical development, religious piety and fervour, occult powers and feats have all been taken as spirituality and the spiritual evolution kept tied to the moorings of the planes of lesser consciousness which do indeed prepare the soul by experience for the spiritual consciousness but are not themselves that. For perfection can only become truly spiritual when it is founded on the awakened spiritual consciousness and takes on its peculiar essence. 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2805/idealism13-andmay-spirituality1953#p1p18</ref>
"The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting." (The Mother, 27 June 1956) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/27-june-1956#p31</ref> Moral perfection is to have all the qualities that are considered moral: to have no defects, never to make a mistake, never to err, to be always what one conceives to be the best, to have all the virtues. (The Mother, 1 October 1958) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/1-october-1958#p3~</refcenter> == Consciousness and Perfection ==
The way to attain to this perfect consciousness is to increase your actual consciousness beyond its present grooves and limits, to educate it, to open it to the Divine Light and to let the Divine Light work in it fully and freely. But the Light can do its full and unhindered work only when you have got rid of all craving and fear, when you have no mental prejudices, no vital preferences, no physical apprehensions or attractions to obscure or bind you. (The Mother, 30 June 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p8</ref>
Ignorance is dispelled by a growing consciousness; what you need is consciousness and always more consciousness, a consciousness pure, simple and luminous. In the light of this perfected consciousness, things appear as they are and not as they want to appear. It is like a screen faithfully recording all things as they pass. You see there what is luminous and what is dark, what is straight and what is crooked. Your consciousness becomes a screen or mirror; but this is when you are in a state of contemplation, a mere observer; when you are active, it is like a searchlight. You have only to turn it on, if you want to see luminously and examine penetratingly anything in any place. (The Mother, 30 June 1929) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7~</refcenter>
This power of the soul over its nature is of Fundamentally, whatever be the utmost importance in path one follows—whether the Yoga path of self-perfection; if it did not existsurrender, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out of the fixed groove of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intendedconsecration, we should have to wait for Nature to effect knowledge—if one wants it in her own slow or swift process of evolution. In the lower forms of being the soul accepts this complete subjection to Nature, but as it rises higher in the scalebe perfect, it awakes to a sense of something in itself which can command Nature; but it is only when it arrives at self-knowledge that this free will and control becomes a complete reality. The change effects itself through process of naturealways equally difficult, not therefore by any capricious magic, but an ordered development and intelligible process. When complete mastery there is gainedbut one way, then the process by its self-effective rapidity may seem a miracle to the intelligenceone only, but it still proceeds by law I know of the truth of Spiritonly one: that is perfect sincerity,—when the Divine within us by close union of our will and being with him takes up the Yoga and acts as the omnipotent master of the nature. For the Divine is our highest Self and the self of all Naturebut perfect sincerity! (The Mother, the eternal and universal Purusha. 12 May 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2406/the12-psychology-of-selfmay-perfection1954#p8p34</ref>
= Individual Perfection ==By Becoming Conscious of Oneself===
== Perfect Individual =="To work for your perfection the first step is to become conscious of yourself." (The Mother, 13 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/13-january-1951#p16</ref>
A child should never be scolded. I am accused of speaking ill of parents! But I have seen them at work, you see, and I know that ninety per cent of parents snub a child who comes spontaneously to confess a mistake: "You are very naughty. Go away, I am busy"—instead of listening to the child with patience and explaining to him where his fault lies, how he ought to have acted. And the child, who had come with good intentions, goes away quite hurt, with the feeling: "Why am I treated thus?" Then the child sees his parents are not perfect—which is obviously true of them today—he sees that they are wrong and says to himself: "Why does he scold me, he is like me!" (The Mother, 8 January 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-january-1951#p31~</refcenter>
In To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the Dhammapada: a supreme disinterestedness different parts of your being and a supreme liberation is their respective activities. You must learn to follow distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the discipline origin of self-perfectionthe movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the march tribunal of progressour highest ideal, not with a precise end sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in view but because this march of ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress is and acquire the profound law and capacity of knowing the purpose truth of earthly lifeour being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of universal our existence and because you put yourself , whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in harmony with order to accomplish it, spontaneouslywe must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, whatever with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the result may besuccess of our endeavour. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0312/the-brahminscience-of-living#p43p5</ref>
If this is our evolutionary destiny, it remains for us to see where we stand at this juncture in the evolutionary progression,—a progression which has been cyclic or spiral rather than in a straight line or has at least journeyed in a very zigzag swinging curve of advance,—and what prospect there is of any turn towards a decisive step in the near or measurable future. In our human aspiration towards a personal perfection and the perfection of the life of the race the elements of the future evolution are foreshadowed and striven after, but in a confusion of half-enlightened knowledge; there is a discord between the necessary elements, an opposing emphasis, a profusion of rudimentary unsatisfying and ill-accorded solutions. These sway between the three principal preoccupations of our idealism,—the complete single development of the human being in himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relations of individual with individual and society and of community with community. An exclusive or dominant emphasis is laid sometimes on the individual, sometimes on the collectivity or society, sometimes on a right and balanced relation between the individual and the collective human whole. One idea holds up the growing life, freedom or perfection of the human individual as the true object of our existence,—whether the ideal be merely a free self-expression of the personal being or a self-governed whole of complete mind, fine and ample life and perfect body, or a spiritual perfection and liberation. In this view society is there only as a field of activity and growth for the individual man and serves best its function when it gives as far as possible a wide room, ample means, a sufficient freedom or guidance of development to his thought, his action, his growth, his possibility of fullness of being. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p34~</refcenter>
It isIf in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, then, this spiritual fulfilment of if in reaching the urge to individual perfection and an inner completeness of being that mental life we mean first when we speak of a divine cast away or belittle the physical life. It which is our basis, or if we reject the first essential condition of a perfected life on earth, mental and we are therefore right physical in making the utmost possible individual perfection our first supreme business. The perfection of attraction to the spiritual and pragmatic relation of the individual with all around him is our second preoccupation; , we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the solution conditions of this second desideratum lies in a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth which is the other concomitant result of an evolution into the gnostic consciousness and natureHis self-manifestation. But there still remains the third desideratumWe do not become perfect, a new world, a change in but only shift the total life field of humanity our imperfection or, at the leastmost attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, a new perfected collective life in even though it be to the earthNon-natureBeing itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. This calls for Not to abandon the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved masslower to itself, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life superior to transfigure it in the present individual and common existence. A collective life light of this kind must obviously constitute itself on the same principle as the life higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of the gnostic individualnature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2221/the-divinedestiny-of-lifethe-individual#p19p9</ref>
== Perfection in Work ==<center>~</center>
You In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will become more be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and more perfect to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in your work the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression… The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the consciousness growsaction of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, increasesa substitution of its influence, widens possession and is enlightenedworking for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-andintegral-perfection-in-work#p1?search=perfection</ref>
In But if you remain in that consciousness and look from there, then you begin to understand something of the truth. And this consciousness has to be so total, that even if things come directly against you, even the physical movement of someone coming to beat you (you must not allow him to kill you, no; you have perhaps to do what is necessary not to get killed), but if you are yourself in this perfect consciousness and have no personal reaction, well, I give you the guarantee the other cannot kill you. He will not be able to, even if he tries. He will not be able to beat you, even if he tries. Only, you must not have a single violent or wrong vibration, you understand? Even if there is just a little false vibration, that opens the door and the thing enters and all actiongoes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the full knowledge, all work donethe perfect mastery over everything, the degree clear vision of perfection depends upon the degree of consciousnessTruth—and perfect peace. (The Mother, 20 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1405/progress20-and-perfection-inmay-work1953#p3p54</ref>
Perfection in the work must be the aim, but it is only by a very patient effort that this can be obtained. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p19~</refcenter>
Open yourself more This power of the soul over its nature is of the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection; if it did not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out of the fixed groove of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, we should have to wait for Nature to effect it in her own slow or swift process of evolution. In the lower forms of being the soul accepts this complete subjection to Nature, but as it rises higher in the scale, it awakes to a sense of something in itself which can command Nature; but it is only when it arrives at self-knowledge that this free will and control becomes a complete reality. The change effects itself through process of nature, not therefore by any capricious magic, but an ordered development and more intelligible process. When complete mastery is gained, then the process by its self-effective rapidity may seem a miracle to the intelligence, but it still proceeds by law of the truth of Spirit,—when the Divine within us by close union of our will and being with him takes up the Yoga and acts as the omnipotent master of the nature. For the Divine's force is our highest Self and the self of all Nature, the eternal and your work will progress steadily towards perfectionuniversal Purusha. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-andpsychology-perfectionof-inself-workperfection#p21p8</ref>
Let nothing short of perfection be your ideal in work and you are sure to become a true instrument of the Divine. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p25~</refcenter>
There must be order An integral Yoga includes as a vital and harmony indispensable element in workits total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. Even what But man's present nature is limited, divided, unequal,—it is apparently easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the most insignificant thing Divine Infinity. Some therefore must be done choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the mind's one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a sense movement of cleanlinessthe self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, beauty, harmony an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and orderdescent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1423/progressthe-supermind-and-perfectionthe-yoga-inof-workworks#p26p1</ref>
The perfection of the work done is much more important than its bulk or the bigness of its scope. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p38</ref>===By Learning to be a Witness===
In works...we find ourselves to be not the mind, aspiration towards Perfection but a mental being who stands behind the action of the embodied mind, not a mental and vital personality,—personality is true spiritualitya composition of Nature,—but a mental Person,manomaya puruṣa. We become aware of a being within who takes his stand upon mind for self-knowledge and world-knowledge and thinks of himself as an individual for self-experience and world-experience, for an inward action and an outward-going action, but is yet different from mind, life and body. First, he has the intuition of himself as someone observing the action of the mind; it is something which is going on in him and yet before him as an object of his regarding knowledge. This self-awareness is the intuitive sense of the witness Purusha, sākṣī. Witness Purusha is a pure consciousness who watches Nature and sees it as an action reflected upon the consciousness and enlightened by that consciousness, but in itself other than it.To enter into identity with that Spirit must then be his way to control and lordship. He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-perfection-andof-perfectionthe-inmental-work#p45being?search=perfection</ref>
=== Practical Tips for Perfection in Work By Developing Detachment===
Do not worry about mistakes in workThe seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. Often you imagine Especially must any tendency to mere inertia of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if that things are badly done by you habit is found growing on the nature, the will of the Purusha must be used to dismiss it. Eventually, a state arrives when really you have done them very well; but even if there are mistakesthe life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachment, without their putting themselves into the action with that inferior, it eager and often feverish energy which is nothing the nature of their ordinary working; they come to be sad about. Let work as forces of Nature work without the consciousness grow—only fret and toil and reaction characteristic of life in the divine consciousness body when it is there an entire perfectionnot yet master of the physical. The more you surrender When we attain to this perfection, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the Divine, soul or draws it away from its urge towards the more will there be Self or its poise in the possibility Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in youthe Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty. Still, periods of absolute calm, solitude and cessation from works are highly desirable and should be secured as often as possible for that recession of the soul into itself which is indispensable to knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2923/practicalthe-release-from-subjection-concernsto-inthe-workbody#p39p8</ref>
Someone who is learning to paint or play music or write and does not like to have his mistakes pointed out by those who already know—how is he to learn at all or reach any perfection of technique? <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/practical-concerns-in-work#p45</ref>===By Developing Equality===
== Perfection The calm established in the whole being must remain the same whatever happens, in health and Interdisease, in pleasure and in pain, even in the strongest physical pain, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or that of those we love, in success and failure, honour and insult, praise and blame, justice done to us or injustice, everything that ordinarily affects the mind. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces and happenings, and if besides we can feel that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-action-of-relation with Others ==equality#p5</ref>
...man is separated in his mind, his life, his body from the universal and therefore, even as he does not know himself, is equally and even more incapable ===By Purification of knowing his fellow-creatures. He forms by inferences, theories, observations and a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy a rough mental construction about them; but this is not knowledge. Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge,—existence aware of itself. We know what we are so far as we are consciously aware of ourself, the rest is hidden; so also we can come really to know that with which we become one in our consciousness, but only so far as we can become one with it. If the means of knowledge are indirect and imperfect, the knowledge attained will also be indirect and imperfect. It will enable us to work out with a certain precarious clumsiness but still perfectly enough from our mental standpoint certain limited practical aims, necessities, conveniences, a certain imperfect and insecure harmony of our relations with that which we know; but only by a conscious unity with it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the subconscient or the subliminal in them and us. But this conscious oneness can only be established by entering into that in which we are one with them, the universal and the fullness of the universal exists consciently only in that which is superconscient to us, in the Supermind: for here in our normal being the greater part of it is subconscient and therefore in this normal poise of mind, life and body it cannot be possessed. The lower conscious nature is bound down to ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-problem-of-life#p9</ref>Nature===
To make the effort for one's own ...purification is an essential means towards self-perfection . All these impurities and inadequacies result in various kinds of limitation and bondage: but there are two or three primary knots of the bondage,—ego is the principal knot,—from which the others derive. These bonds must be got rid of; purification is not complete till it brings about liberation. Besides, after a certain purification and liberation has been effected, there is still the conversion of the purified instruments to be disturbed by any mistake in others but reply by the law of a higher object and utility, a large, real and perfect order of action. By the conversion man can arrive at a silent will for their certain perfection of fullness of being, calm, power and knowledge, even a greater vital action and more perfect physical existence. One result of this perfection also is always the right attitudea large and perfected delight of being, Ananda. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3124/problemsthe-perfection-of-inthe-humanmental-relations#p9being?search=perfection</ref>
You stop short at The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection that others should realise . An integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and you are seldom conscious through the right functioning of the goal you should be pursuing yourself. If you complex instrument we are conscious of itin our outer parts, well then, begin with is the work which condition of an integral liberty. Its result is given to youan integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ananda of all that is to say, realise what you have to do in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and do not concern yourself with what others do, because, after all, it the Ananda of that which is not your business-world. And it prepares the best way to integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the true attitude is simply to say, "All those around me, all Divine in the circumstances conditions of my life, all the people near mehuman manifestation, are a mirror held up to me perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must makeintegral Yoga. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1023/aphorismthe-synthesis-of-the-8systems#p15p19</ref>
And perhaps if one carried true perfection in oneself, one would discover it more often in others. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-8#p16</ref>===By Cultivating Faith===
For There is one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the awakened individual the realisation of his truth of being integral Yoga and his inner liberation that may be described as faith in God and perfection must be his primary seekingthe Shakti,—first, because that is faith in the call presence and power of the Spirit within himDivine in us and the world, but also because it a faith that all in the world is only by liberation and perfection and realisation of the truth working of being one divine Shakti, that man can arrive at truth all the steps of living. A perfected community also can exist only by the perfection of Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its individuals, successes and satisfactions and perfection can come only by the discovery victories are utilities and affirmation in life by each necessities of his own spiritual being her workings and the discovery that by all of their spiritual unity a firm and strong dependence on and a resultant life unity. There can be no real perfection for us except by our inner total self and truth of spiritual existence taking up all truth of -surrender to the instrumental existence into itself Divine and giving to it his Shakti in us we can attain to oneness, integration, harmony. As our only real and freedom is the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality within us, so our only means of true victory and perfection is the sovereignty and self-effectuation of the spiritual Reality in all the elements of our nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2224/thefaith-divineand-life#p37shakti?search=perfection</ref>
We have to recognise once more that ===By Silencing the individual exists not in himself alone but in the collectivity and that individual perfection and liberation are not the whole sense of God's intention in the world. The free use of our liberty includes also the liberation of others and of mankind; the perfect utility of our perfection is, having realised in ourselves the divine symbol, to reproduce, multiply and ultimately universalise it in others. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p30</ref>Mind===
The best way There is a world of helping others ideas without form and it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to transform oneselfbe sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. Be perfect There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in a position the mind's silence; you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to bring perfection your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the worldunexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression. (The Mother, 26 May 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1403/helping-others-and26-themay-world1929#p12p21</ref>
There is a RealityMan, too, a truth of all existence which is greater and more abiding than all its formations and manifestations; to find becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that truth absolute calm and Reality passivity of the Brahman and live in supports by it, achieve with the most perfect manifestation same divine tolerance and formation possible of it, must be the secret of perfection whether of individual or communal beingsame divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. This Reality is there Those who have thus possessed the Calm within each thing and gives to each of can perceive always welling out from its formations its power silence the perennial supply of being and value of beingthe energies that work in the universe. The universe It is a manifestation not, therefore, the truth of the Reality, and there Silence to say that it is in its nature a truth rejection of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic being, an all-self or world-spiritactivity. Humanity The apparent incompatibility of the two states is a formation or manifestation an error of the Reality in limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to the universeother, and there is unable to conceive of a truth comprehensive consciousness vast and self of humanity, strong enough to include both in a human spirit, a destiny of human lifesimultaneous embrace. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the activity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all action. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2221/the-divinereality-lifeomnipresent#p36p5</ref>
=== When Man Becomes Perfect… ==Difficulties on the Path to Perfection=
Man, too, becomes No man is perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm ; the vital is there and passivity of the Brahman and supports by ego is there to prevent it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that work in the universe. It is not, therefore, the truth of the Silence to say that it only when there is in its nature a rejection of the cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility total transformation of the two states is an error of external and the limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole internal being down to the othervery subconscient, that perfection is unable to conceive of a comprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embracepossible. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the activity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all actionTill then imperfection will remain as our common heritage. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/realitythe-subconscient-and-the-integral-omnipresentyoga#p5p2</ref>
= More on Perfection... =<center>~</center>
=== EaseThe egoism of the instrument can be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than the egoism of the doer. The ego-sense is contrary to spiritual realisation, Difficulty so how can any kind of ego be a thing to be encouraged? As for the magnified ego, it is one of the most perilous obstacles to release and perfection. There should be no big I, not even a small one. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/ego-and Perfection ===-its-forms#p54</ref>
You must not cherish the illusion that if you want to follow the straight path, if you are modest, if you seek purity, if you are disinterested, if you want to lead a solitary existence and have a clear judgment, things will become easy.... It is quite the contrary! When you begin to advance towards inner and outer perfection, the difficulties start at the same time. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p29~</refcenter>
=== MoralityThe thing to which he has given his assent and set his mind and heart and will to achieve, the divine perfection of the whole human being, is apparently an impossibility to the normal intelligence, since it is opposed to the actual facts of life and will for long be contradicted by immediate experience, as happens with all far-off and difficult ends, Diversity and Perfection ==it is denied too by many who have spiritual experience but believe that our present nature is the sole possible nature of man in the body and that it is only by throwing off the earthly life or even all individual existence that we can arrive at either a heavenly perfection or the release of extinction.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/faith-and-shakti?search=perfection</ref>
If you have understood this, you will be ready to understand the difference, the great difference between spirituality and morality, two things that are constantly confused with each other. The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting of the Divine; it raises the character of each personality to its full value and brings it to its maximum expression; for this is part of the Divine plan. Morality proceeds by a mental construction and, with a few ideas of what is good and what is not, sets up an ideal type into which all must force themselves. This moral ideal differs in its constituents and its ensemble at different times and different places. And yet it proclaims itself as a unique type, a categoric absolute; it admits of none other outside itself; it does not even admit a variation within itself. All are to be moulded according to its single ideal pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. (The Mother, 4 August 1929) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p6~</refcenter>
=== Conflicts In the lower grades of the ascension the new assumption, the integration into a higher principle of consciousness, remains incomplete: the mind cannot wholly mentalise life and Perfection ===matter; there are considerable parts of the life being and the body which remain in the realm of the submental and the subconscient or inconscient. This is one serious obstacle to the mind's endeavour towards the perfection of the nature; for the continued share of the submental, the subconscient and inconscient in the government of the activities, by bringing in another law than that of the mental being, enables the conscious vital and the physical consciousness also to reject the law laid upon them by the mind and to follow their own impulses and instincts in defiance of the mental reason and the rational will of the developed intelligence. This makes it difficult for the mind to go beyond itself, to exceed its own level and spiritualise the nature; for what it cannot even make fully conscious, cannot securely mentalise and rationalise, it cannot spiritualise, since spiritualisation is a greater and more difficult integration. No doubt, by calling in the spiritual force, it can establish an influence and a preliminary change in some parts of the nature, especially in the thinking mind itself and in the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits and what it does achieve is rare and difficult. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means and, even though it brings in a divine light into the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the life, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for the most part it can only regulate or check the lower action of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native to the spiritual consciousness and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon the members. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p16</ref>
If there were no such resistance, there would be nothing whatever to conquer in the world, for the world would be harmonious, a constant passage from one perfection to another instead of the conflict which it is—a game of hazards and various possibilities in which the Divine faces real opposition, real difficulty and often real temporary defeat on the way to the final victory. It is just this reality of the whole play that makes it no mere jest. The Divine Will actually suffers distortion the moment it touches the hostile forces in the Ignorance. Hence we must never slacken our efforts to change the world and bring about a different order. We must be vigilant to co<div style="text-operate with the Divine and not placidly think that whatever happens is always the best. All depends upon the personal attitude. <ref>httpalign://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divine-the-divine-will-in-the-world#p5</refcenter;">
=== Perfection and Harmony ===One man’s perfection still can save the world.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/the-finding-of-the-soul</ref></div>
It is possible to escape from the problem otherwise; for, admitting always the essential Presence, we can endeavour to justify the divinity of the manifestation '''Content Curated by correcting the human view of perfection or putting it aside as a too limited mental standard. We may say that not only is the Spirit in things absolutely perfect and divine, but each thing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself, in its expression of what it has to express of the possibilities of existence, in its assumption of its proper place in the complete manifestation. Each thing is divine in itself because each is a fact and idea of the divine being, knowledge and will fulfilling itself infallibly in accordance with the law of that particular manifestation. Each being is possessed of the knowledge, the force, the measure and kind of delight of existence precisely proper to its own nature; each works in the gradations of experience decreed by a secret inherent will, a native law, an intrinsic power of the self, an occult significance. It is thus perfect in the relation of its phenomena to the law of its being; for all are in harmony with that, spring out of it, adapt themselves to its purpose according to the infallibility of the divine Will and Knowledge at work within the creature. It is perfect and divine also in relation to the whole, in its proper place in the whole; to that totality it is necessary and in it it fulfils a part by which the perfection actual and progressive of the universal harmony, the adaptation of all in it to its whole purpose and its whole sense is helped and completed. If to us things appear undivine, if we hasten to condemn this or that phenomenon as inconsistent with the nature of a divine being, it is because we are ignorant of the sense and purpose of the Divine in the world in its entirety. Because we see only parts and fragments, we judge of each by itself as if it were the whole, judge also the external phenomena without knowing their secret sense; but by doing so we vitiate our valuation of things, put on it the stamp of an initial and fundamental error. Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its separateness, for that separateness is an illusion; perfection is the perfection of the total divine harmony. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-and-the-undivine#p6</ref>Prema Sankar'''
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Read Summary of '''[[Perfection Summary|Perfection]]'''  Dear reader, if you notice any error in the paragraph numbers in the hyperlinks, please let us know by dropping an email at integral.edu.in@gmail.com
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==References==
= References =
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