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Read Summary of '''[[Perfection Summary|Perfection]]'''

 = What is '''Perfection? =in General'''

The Divine is the perfection towards which we move. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-and-man#p8~</refcenter>

Perfection Some people put perfection at the apex. It is something which lacks nothinggenerally thought that perfection is the maximum one can do. The divine But I say that perfection is not the Divine in His entiretyapex, which lacks nothingit is not an extreme. The divine perfection There is no extreme—whatever you may do, there is always the Divine as a wholepossibility of something better, from whom nothing has been taken away—so and it is just the opposite! For the moralists divine perfection means all exactly this possibility of something better which is the virtues that they representvery meaning of progress. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1004/aphorism-6330-64december-651950#p24p5</ref>

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) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p5~</refcenter>

Where in the radically imperfect shall we find the principle 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 power discharge of perfection? Mind rooted in division duties, a better, richer, kindlier and limitation cannot provide it to ushappier way of living, nor can life with a more just and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the body which are the energy opportunities of existence. By others again a more inner and subjective ideal is cherished, a clarifying and raising of the frame of dividing intelligence, will and limiting mind. The principle reason, a heightening and ordering of power of perfection are there and capacity in the subconscient but wrapped up in 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 tegument or veil exclusion of the lower Mayarest; sometimes, a mute premonition emerging as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they await, open, eternally realisedwider and more well-balanced minds, but still separated from us by the veil whole harmony is envisaged as a total perfection. A change of our education and social institutions is the outward means adopted or an inner self-ignorancetraining and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. It is aboveOr the two aims may be clearly united, thenthe perfection of the inner individual, and not either in our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling power and knowledgeperfection of the outer living.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-problemintegral-of-lifeperfection#p12p2</ref>

= How to Achieve '''Elements of Perfection? ='''

The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the thingsThese three elements, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise 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, union with the equal Brahmansupreme Divine, 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 Brahmanuniversal Self, 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 supramental life action from this transcendent origin and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreoverthrough this universality, it is but still with the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; individual as 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 soul-channel and natural consciousness,—even in the most physical consciousness,—and to make all their workingsinstrument, whatever their outward adaptation to constitute the thing to be done, always and imminuably full essence of the integral divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and receptive side perfection 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 fullnesshuman being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-ofintegral-perfection#p2?search=perfection</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 '''Where 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-of-perfection#p3</ref>Perfection?'''

To work for your perfection, the first step The Divine is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being 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 towards 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 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 errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our 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 our existence, whatever is opposed to itmove. 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 order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1214/the-sciencedivine-ofand-livingman#p5p8</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 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 can attain to the highest without blotting ourselves out mean by a divine as distinguished from the cosmic extensiona human perfection of our being. Brahman preserves always Its two terms That man as a being is capable of liberty within self-development and of formation withoutsome approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, of expression fix before it and of freedom from the expression. We alsopursue, being Thatis common ground to all thinking humanity, can attain to though it may be only the same divine self-possession. The harmony of the two tendencies is minority who concern themselves with this possibility as providing the condition one most important aim of all life that aims at being really divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-destiny-of-theintegral-individualperfection#p18p1</ref>

An integral Yoga includes as a vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim the conversion The characteristic law of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness Spirit is self-existent perfection and a larger divine existenceimmutable infinity. Our parts of will It possesses always and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek in its own right the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. But man's present nature is limited, divided, unequal,—it immortality which is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part aim of his being Life 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 perfection which is the sea goal of the Divine InfinityMind. Some therefore must choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or The attainment of the mind's one-pointedness to find eternal and the eternal reality realisation of that which is the Self same in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic all things 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 beyond all by their surrender of their will into its infinitythings, guided equally blissful in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master universe and mover of all their energies of thoughtoutside it, feeling, act, becoming untouched 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 imperfections and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level limitations of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self forms 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 activities in which the Divine Realityit dwells, fully manifested, no longer works with are the instrumentation glory 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 movement of the 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, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yogalife.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-supermindthreefold-and-the-yoga-of-workslife#p1p7</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 yourselfMan, my childrenthe mental being, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express has an imperfect life because mind is not the divine Will in first and highest power of consciousness of the world"Being; even if mind were perfected, then for this instrument there would be still something yet to be perfectrealised, it must be cultivatednot yet manifested. For what is involved and emergent is not a Mind, educatedbut a Spirit, trained. It must and mind is not be left like a shapeless piece the native dynamism of consciousness of stone. When you want to build with a stone you chisel itthe Spirit; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamondsupermind, you chisel it. Wellthe light of gnosis, it is the same thingits native dynamism. When with your brain and body you want If then life has to make become a beautiful instrument for manifestation of the Divine, you must cultivate itSpirit, sharpen it, refine it, complete what is missing, perfect what is therethe 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 Nature. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0522/13the-maydivine-1953life#p18p3</ref>

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 goes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the full knowledge, the perfect mastery over everything, the clear vision of the Truth—and perfect peace. (The Mother, 20 May 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/20-may-1953#p54~</refcenter>

… one may act with a perfect knowledge But always the whole foundation of what should the gnostic life must be doneby its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the spirit it is the spirit, the inner Reality, 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 intervention—the least intervention—of 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 that seems to create us; but in the turn to the spiritual life it is we who must create ourselves and our world. In this new formula of creation, the reasoning inner life becomes of the first importance and the rest can be only its expression and outcome. It is this, indeed, that is indicated by our own strivings towards perfection, the perfection of our own soul and mindand life and the perfection of the 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 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, something other than what has been thus made, a spirit self-existent, self-determining, pushing 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. The mind Somewhat, and is silent: impelled also to labour at the world outside that has been given to it simply looks on and listens to remake that too in order a greater image, in the image of its own spiritual and mental and vital growth, to register thingsmake our world too something created according to our own mind and self-conceiving spirit, it does not actsomething new, harmonious, perfect. (The Mother, 23 December 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0522/23the-decemberdivine-1953life#p8p6</ref>

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, 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) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p19~</refcenter>

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 ==Perfection 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) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-april-1929#p14</ref>Mind==

All life that has still this Inconscience for its basis is stamped with the mark of a radical imperfection; for even if The ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it is satisfied with its own typedetaches itself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, it is a satisfaction with something incomplete customary dictated action and inharmonious, discovers a patchwork self of discords: on Right, Love, Strength and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make it the contrary, even a purely mental or vital life might be perfect within foundation of all its limits if actions. The aesthetic mind is perfected in proportion as it were based on detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a restricted but harmonious self-power existent self and self-knowledge. It is this bondage to a perpetual stamp spirit of imperfection pure and disharmony that is infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the mark material of the undivine; a divine life, on the contrary, even if progressing aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when it gets away from the little to the more, would be at each stage harmonious in its principle impression and dogma and opinion and detail: it would be discovers a secure ground upon light of self-knowledge and intuition which freedom and perfection could naturally flower or grow towards their highest stature, refine and expand into their most subtle opulence. All imperfections, illumines all perfections have to be taken into view in our consideration the workings of the difference between an undivine sense and a divine existence: but ordinarilyreason, all self-experience and world-experience. The will is perfected when we make the distinction, we do it as human beings struggling under the pressure of life gets away from and the difficulties of our conduct amidst behind its immediate problems impulses and perplexities; most of all we are thinking its customary ruts of the distinction we are obliged to make between good effectuation and evil or of that along with its kindred problem discovers an inner power of the duality, Spirit which is the blend in us source of happiness an intuitive and sufferingluminous action and an original harmonious creation. When we seek intellectually for a divine presence in things, a divine origin The movement of perfection is away from all domination by the world, lower nature and towards a divine government pure and powerful reflection of its workings, the presence of evilbeing, the insistence on sufferingpower, the large, the enormous part offered to pain, grief knowledge and affliction in the economy delight of Nature are the cruel phenomena which baffle our reason Spirit and overcome Self in the instinctive faith of mankind in such an origin and government or in an all-seeing, all-determining and omnipresent Divine Immanencebuddhi. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/thepurification-divineintelligence-and-the-undivine#p2will</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 first need is the clarity and the purity of life upon earth, its aspiration towards the elimination intelligence. It must be freed from the claims of all imperfections from our nature, not only in a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible the vital being which seeks to be imperfect, but here and now impose the desire of the mind in a life where perfection has to be conquered by evolution and struggleplace of the truth, are as much a law from the claims of our the troubled emotional being as that against which they revolt; they too are divinestrives to colour,—a divine dissatisfactiondistort, a divine aspirationlimit and falsify the truth with the hue and shape of the emotions. In them is It must be free too from its own defect, inertia of the inherent light of a thought-power within which maintains them , obstructive narrowness and unwillingness to open to knowledge, intellectual unscrupulousness in thinking, prepossession and preference, self-will in us so that the Divine may not only reason and false determination of the will to knowledge. Its sole will must be there as a hidden Reality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold to make itself in an unsullied mirror of the evolution truth, its essence and its forms and measures and relations, a clear mirror, a just measure, a fine and subtle instrument of Natureharmony, an integral intelligence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-divinepower-andof-the-undivine#p8instruments</ref>

The Master of our works respects our nature even when he ==Perfection in the Vital==Then again there is transforming itthe psychic prana, pranic mind or desire soul; he works always through this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the nature and not by any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature first necessity is a fullness of ours contains the materials vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our perfection, but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together inner psychic life for fulfilment in disorder or a poor imperfect order. All this material has existence, to hold them and to be patiently perfecteda means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, purifiedperfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, reorganisedcourage, newwill-moulded and transformedpower effective in life, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by simple coercion and denial. This world and all the elements of what we who live in it are his creation now call force of character and manifestationforce of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength 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 spring of energetic action on the substance fullness of a truth which labours to reveal its meaning to our groping intelligencethe psychic prana. The human intellect cuts out the error But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the truth with it and replaces it by another halfpsychic life-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 coverbeing. Our sins are the misdirected steps of This dynamis must not be a seeking Power that aimstroubled, perfervid, stormy, not at sinfitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but at perfectiona clear and glad and pure energy, at something that we might call a divine virtueseated and firmly supported pure rapture. Often they are the veils And as a third condition of a quality that has to its perfection it must be transformed and delivered out of this ugly disguise: otherwise, poised 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 virtuecomplete equality. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2324/the-masterpower-of-the-work#p6instruments</ref>

In this light we can admit that all works perfectly towards a divine end by a divine wisdom This heart and therefore each thing is in that sense perfectly fitted in its place; but we say that that is not psychic being of man shot through with the whole threads of the divine purpose. For what life instincts is is only justifiablea thing of mixed inconstant colours of emotion and soul vibrations, finds its perfect sense bad and satisfaction by what can good, happy and will be. There isunhappy, no doubt, a key in the divine reason that would justify things as they are by revealing their right significance satisfied and true secret as otherunsatisfied, subtler, deeper than their outward meaning troubled and phenomenal appearance which is all that can normally be caught by our present intelligence: but we cannot be content with that beliefcalm, to search for intense and find the spiritual key of things is the law of our beingdull. The sign of the finding is not a philosophic intellectual recognition Thus agitated and a resigned or sage acceptance of things as they are because of some divine sense and purpose in them which invaded it is beyond us; the unacquainted with any real sign is an elevation towards the spiritual knowledge and power which will transform the law and phenomena and external forms peace, incapable of our life nearer to a true image steady perfection of that divine sense and purposeall its powers. It is right and reasonable to endure with equanimity suffering and subjection to defect as the immediate will of GodBy purification, a present law of imperfection laid on our membersby equality, but on condition that we recognise it also as by the will light of God in us to transcend evil and sufferingknowledge, to transform imperfection into perfection, to rise into by a higher law harmonising of Divine Nature. In our human consciousness there is the image of an ideal truth of being, a divine nature, an incipient godhead: in relation to that higher truth our present state of imperfection will it can be relatively described as an undivine life and the conditions of the world from which we start as undivine conditions; the imperfections are the indication given brought to us that they are there as first disguises, not as the intended expression of the divine being and the divine nature. It is a Power within us, the concealed Divinity, that has lit the flame of aspiration, pictures the image of the ideal, keeps alive our discontent tranquil intensity and pushes us to throw off the disguise and to reveal or, in the Vedic phrase, to form and disclose the Godhead in the manifest spirit, mind, life and body of this terrestrial creature. Our present nature can only be transitional, our imperfect status a starting-point and opportunity for the achievement of another higher, wider and greater that shall be divine and perfect not only by the secret spirit within it but in its manifest and most outward form of existenceperfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2124/the-divinepower-andof-the-undivine#p9instruments</ref>

The more perfect the contact, the greater the power. (The Mother, 20 June 1956) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p11~</refcenter>

There The other side of perfection is nothing you cannot understand if you give your brain a self-contained and calm and unegoistic Rudra-power armed with psychic force, the time to widen and perfect itselfenergy of the strong heart which is capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent, an outwardly austere or even, where need is, a violent action. (The Mother, 12 December 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0824/12the-power-of-decemberthe-1956#p15instruments</ref>

For one who wants to grow == Perfection 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 the most insignificant chores. The secret of this attainment lies in the urge towards self-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 way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p17</ref>Body ==

And, finally, a word When the body has learned the art of advice: be more concerned with your own faults than with those of others. If each one worked seriously at his own self-constantly progressing towards an increasing perfection, we shall be well on the way to overcoming the perfection inevitability of the whole would follow automaticallydeath. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1316/aims16-andjanuary-principles1972#p147p1</ref>

It is all right to see the imperfections and deficiencies but only on condition it brings a greater courage for a new progress, an increase of energy in the determination and a stronger certitude of victory and future perfection. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/mistakes-no-torment-worry-or-sadness#p12~</refcenter>

= Mind 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 Perfection =, 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>

But our mind is obscure, partial in its notions, misled The physical being of man has always been felt by opposite surface appearances, divided between various possibilities; it is led in three different directions the seekers of perfection 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 great impediment 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 has been the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic or practical action on the worldhabit to turn from it with contempt, on some idealism of our personal relation with the world around us; denial or it turns rather towards aversion and a concentration on the outer world itself, on making it better, more suited desire to our ideas and temperament suppress altogether or to our conception of what should as far as may be. On one side there is the call of our spiritual being which is our true self, a transcendent reality, a being of body and the Divine Being, not created by physical life. But this cannot be the world, able to live in itself, to rise out of world to transcendence; on right method for the other side there integral Yoga. The body is the demand of the world around given us which is a cosmic form, a formulation of the Divine Being, a power of the Reality in disguise. There is too as one instrument necessary to the divided or double demand totality of our being of Nature which is poised between these two terms, depends on them works 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 be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is really a formimperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, 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 so are also the outer world and its formationother members, insists on a happier relation between the two terms vital being, heart and creates the ideal of a better individual in a better worldmind and reason. But it is within us that the Reality must It has like them to be found changed and the source perfected and foundation of to undergo a perfected life; no outward formation can replace it: there transformation. As we must be the true self realised within if there is to be the true get ourselves a new life realised , new heart, new mind, so we have in world and Naturea certain sense to build for ourselves a new body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2224/the-divinepower-of-the-life#p7instruments</ref>

The characteristic law 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. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p7~</refcenter>

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>

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. <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. Especially must any tendency to mere inertia It is only a habit of Nature. 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 the life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in on 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2305/the17-releasejune-from-subjection-to-the-body1953#p8p36</ref>

== 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>

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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p19</ref>

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>=

== 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-april-1929#p14</ref>

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.When you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it.. that we are trying much more than thisWell, that it is only one of the movements of our sadhana, you seesame thing. We are busy When with many other things besides this... one thing among many others... your brain 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 body you want to make everything go forward together to a commonbeautiful instrument for the Divine, integral perfection. And these things have their place and importanceyou must cultivate it, but they don't have an exclusive place and importance. Thereforesharpen it, from the external point of viewrefine it, one may criticise and find something to say and all that; but it complete what is not thatmissing, the true point of view. Inwardly, it perfect what is wellthere. (The Mother, 30 November 1955) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0705/3013-novembermay-19551953#p28p18</ref>

The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. 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 through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, 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 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 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 integral Yoga. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p19~</refcenter>

== 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 Kinds ==all craving and fear, when you have no mental prejudices, no vital preferences, no physical apprehensions or attractions to obscure or bind you. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p8</ref>

Perfection of all kinds is indeed good, as 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 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 Nature, 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 is created by neglecting them. This mental idealism, 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. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/idealism-and-spirituality#p1~</refcenter>

"The supramental world has to Fundamentally, whatever be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as path one follows—whether the result path of a constant expansion surrender, consecration, knowledge—if one wants it to be perfect, it is always equally difficult, and self-perfecting." (The Motherthere is but one way, one only, I know of only one: that is perfect sincerity, 27 June 1956) but perfect sincerity! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0806/2712-junemay-19561954#p31p34</ref>

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) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p8~</refcenter>

Ignorance To work for your perfection, the first step is dispelled by a growing consciousness; what to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being 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 need to action. It is consciousness an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and always more consciousnesssincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a consciousness purefavourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, simple says and luminousdoes. In It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the light tribunal of this perfected consciousnessour highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, things appear as they are and not as they want that we can hope to appear. It is like form in ourselves a screen faithfully recording all things as they passdiscernment that never errs. You see there what is luminous For if we truly want to progress and what acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is darkto say, what is straight and we are truly created for, what is crooked. Your consciousness becomes we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a screen very regular and constant manner, reject from us or mirror; but this is when you are eliminate in a state us whatever contradicts the truth of contemplationour existence, a mere observer; when you are activewhatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, it is like all the elements of our being can be organised into a searchlighthomogeneous whole around our psychic centre. You have only This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to turn accomplish it on, if you want we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to see luminously and examine penetratingly anything in any placeprolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour. (The Mother, 30 June 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0312/30the-science-juneof-1929living#p7p5</ref>

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 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 is our highest Self and the self of all Nature, the eternal and universal Purusha. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-psychology-of-self-perfection#p8~</refcenter>

A child should never In the process of this change there must be scoldedby the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. I am accused First, there will be the personal endeavour of speaking ill the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of parents! But I have seen them at work, you seethis divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and I know to get rid of all in him that ninety per cent of parents snub a child who comes spontaneously belongs to confess a mistake: "You are very naughty. Go awaylower working, I am busy"—instead of listening all that stands in the way of his opening to the child with patience spiritual truth and explaining its power, so as to him where possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his fault lies, how he ought to have acted. And 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 action of the nature into the childhands of this greater Power, who had come with good intentionsa substitution of its influence, goes away quite hurtpossession and working for the personal effort, with until the feeling: "Why am I treated thus?" Then Divine to whom we aspire becomes the child sees his parents are not perfect—which is obviously true direct master of them today—he sees that they are wrong the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and says to himself: "Why does he scold me, he is like me!" (The Mother, 8 January 1951) ideal conversion of the being.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0424/8the-januaryintegral-1951#p31perfection?search=perfection</ref>

In the Dhammapada: a supreme disinterestedness But if you remain in that consciousness and a supreme liberation is look from there, then you begin to follow understand something of the discipline of self-perfectiontruth. And this consciousness has to be so total, that even if things come directly against you, even the march physical movement of progresssomeone coming to beat you (you must not allow him to kill you, no; you have perhaps to do what is necessary not with a precise end to get killed), but if you are yourself in view but because this march of progress 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 profound law door and the purpose of earthly lifething enters and all goes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the truth of universal existence and because you put yourself in harmony with itfull knowledge, spontaneouslythe perfect mastery over everything, whatever the result may beclear vision of the Truth—and perfect peace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0305/the20-may-brahmin1953#p43p54</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 This power of the soul over its nature is, then, this spiritual fulfilment of the urge to individual utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection ; if it did not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and an inner completeness of being that we mean first when we speak aspiration out of a divine life. It is the first essential condition fixed groove of a perfected life on earthour present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, and we are therefore right should have to wait for Nature to effect it in making the utmost possible individual perfection our first supreme businessher own slow or swift process of evolution. The perfection of In the spiritual and pragmatic relation lower forms of being the individual with all around him is our second preoccupation; soul accepts this complete subjection to Nature, but as it rises higher in the solution scale, it awakes to a sense of this second desideratum lies something in a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth itself which can command Nature; but it is the other concomitant result of an evolution into the gnostic consciousness only when it arrives at self-knowledge that this free will and naturecontrol becomes a complete reality. But there still remains the third desideratum, a new world, a The change in the total life effects itself through process of humanity ornature, not therefore by any capricious magic, at the leastbut an ordered development and intelligible process. When complete mastery is gained, a new perfected collective life in then the earthprocess by its self-nature. This calls for effective rapidity may seem a miracle to the appearance not only intelligence, but it still proceeds by law of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved masstruth of Spirit, but —when the Divine within us by close union of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings our will and a new common life superior to being with him takes up the present individual Yoga and common existenceacts as the omnipotent master of the nature. A collective life of this kind must obviously constitute itself on For the same principle as Divine is our highest Self and the life self of all Nature, the gnostic individualeternal and universal Purusha. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2224/the-divinepsychology-lifeof-self-perfection#p19p8</ref>

You 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 become 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. But man's present nature is limited, divided, unequal,—it is 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 Divine Infinity. Some therefore must 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 more perfect source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in your work 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 grows, increaseson 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, widens 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 movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is enlightenedin 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, an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and descent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1423/progressthe-supermind-and-perfectionthe-yoga-inof-workworks#p1</ref>

Perfection ...we find ourselves to be not the mind, but a mental being who stands behind the action of the embodied mind, not a mental and vital personality,—personality is a 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 work 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 aimpower. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but it 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 by a very patient effort that passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this can greater poise and be obtainedself-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-perfection-andof-perfectionthe-inmental-work#p19being?search=perfection</ref>

Let nothing short The seeker of perfection the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. Especially must any tendency to mere inertia of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if that habit is found growing on the nature, the will of the Purusha must be your ideal used to dismiss it. Eventually, a state arrives when the 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, eager and often feverish energy which is the nature of their ordinary working; they come to work as forces of Nature work without the fret and you are sure toil and reaction characteristic of life in the body when it is not yet master of the physical. When we attain to this perfection, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in the 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 true instrument 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 Divinesoul into itself which is indispensable to knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1423/progressthe-andrelease-from-subjection-perfectionto-inthe-workbody#p25p8</ref>

The perfection calm established in the whole being must remain the same whatever happens, in health and disease, 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 work done 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 more important than its bulk 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 bigness 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 scopecompleteness 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/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-andaction-perfection-inof-workequality#p38p5</ref>

...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 the law of a higher object and utility, a large, real and perfect order of action. By the conversion man can arrive at a 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 is a large and perfected delight of being, Ananda.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-perfection-of-the-mental-being?search=== Practical Tips for Perfection perfection</ref><center>~</center>The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. 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 through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, 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 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 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 integral Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in Work ===/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p19</ref>

Someone who There is learning one kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may be described as faith in God and the Shakti, faith in the presence and power of the Divine in us and the world, a faith that all in the world is the working of one divine Shakti, that all the steps of the Yoga, its strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and that by a firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to paint or play music or write the Divine and does not like to have his mistakes pointed out by those who already know—how is he Shakti in us we can attain to learn at all or reach any oneness and freedom and victory and perfection of technique? .<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2924/practicalfaith-concernsand-in-work#p45shakti?search=perfection</ref>

== Perfection and Inter-relation with Others =By Silencing the Mind===

...man There is separated in his mind, his life, his body from the universal a world of ideas without form and therefore, even as he does not know himself, it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is equally and even more incapable of knowing his fellow-creaturesbehind the words. He So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms by inferencesof words, theories, observations and a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy a rough mental construction you are likely to fall into much confusion about themthe true sense; but this is not knowledge. Knowledge if in a silence of your mind you can only come by conscious identityrise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, for that is at once the only true knowledge,—existence aware of itselfreal understanding comes. We know what we If you are so far as we are consciously aware to be sure of ourselfunderstanding one another, the rest you must be able to understand in silence. There is hidden; a condition in which your minds are so also we can come really to know well attuned and harmonised together that with which we become one in our consciousness, but only so far as we can become one with it. If perceives the thought of the means other without any necessity of knowledge are indirect and imperfectwords. But if there is not this attunement, the knowledge attained there will also always be indirect and imperfectsome deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. It will enable us to work out with I use a word in a certain precarious clumsiness but still perfectly enough from our mental standpoint certain limited practical aimssense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, necessitiesyou will understand, conveniencesnot my exact meaning in it, a certain imperfect and insecure harmony but what the word means to you. This is true not of our relations with that which we know; speech only, but only by of reading also. If you want to understand a conscious unity book with a deep teaching in it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we , you must be able to read it in the mind's silence; you must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings wait and not merely at let the sympathy created by love or 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 created by mental knowledge. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the two, which you will always have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the knowledge centre of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect expression. <ref>http://incarnateword.in itself /cwm/03/26-may-1929#p21</ref><center>~</center>Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and subject to denial passivity of the Brahman and frustration supports by it with the uprush of same divine tolerance and the unknown same divine bliss a free and unmastered inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the subconscient or perennial supply of the subliminal energies that work in them and usthe universe. But this conscious oneness can only be established by entering into that in which we are one with themIt is not, therefore, the universal and the fullness truth of the universal exists consciently only in Silence to say that which it is superconscient to us, in its nature a rejection of the Supermind: for here in our normal being cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility of the greater part of it two states is subconscient and therefore in this normal poise an error of mindthe limited Mind which, life accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and body it cannot be possessed. The lower conscious nature is bound down passing suddenly from one pole to ego in all its activitiesthe other, chained triply is unable to the stake conceive of differentiated individualitya comprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversitySilence 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/21/the-problem-ofreality-lifeomnipresent#p9p5</ref>

To make =Difficulties on the effort for one's own perfection and not Path to be disturbed by any mistake in others but reply by a silent will for their perfection also is always the right attitude. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/problems-in-human-relations#p9</ref>Perfection=

You stop short at No man is perfect; the perfection that others should realise vital is there and you are seldom conscious of the goal you should be pursuing yourself. If you are conscious of it, well then, begin with the work which ego is given there to you, that is to say, realise what you have to do and do not concern yourself with what others do, because, after all, prevent it . It is not your business. And the best way to the true attitude only when there is simply to say, "All those around me, all the circumstances total transformation of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by external and the Divine Consciousness internal being down to show me the progress I must makevery subconscient, that perfection is possible. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myselfTill then imperfection will remain as our common heritage." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1031/aphorismthe-subconscient-and-the-integral-8yoga#p15p2</ref>

And perhaps if one carried true perfection in oneself, one would discover it more often in others. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-8#p16~</refcenter>

For The egoism of the awakened individual the realisation of his truth of being and his inner liberation and perfection must instrument can be his primary seeking,—first, because that is as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than the call egoism of the Spirit within him, but also because it doer. The ego-sense is only by liberation and perfection and contrary to spiritual realisation of the truth of being that man , so how can arrive at truth any kind of living. A perfected community also can exist only by ego be a thing to be encouraged? As for the perfection of its individualsmagnified ego, and perfection can come only by the discovery and affirmation in life by each it is one of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity most perilous obstacles to release and a resultant life unityperfection. There can should be no real perfection for us except by our inner self and truth of spiritual existence taking up all truth of the instrumental existence into itself and giving to it onenessbig I, integration, harmony. As our only real freedom is the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality within us, so our only means of true perfection is the sovereignty and self-effectuation of the spiritual Reality in all the elements of our naturenot even a small one. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2231/theego-and-divineits-lifeforms#p37p54</ref>

We have to recognise once more that 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. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p30~</refcenter>

The best way thing to which he has given his assent and set his mind and heart and will to achieve, the divine perfection of helping others the whole human being, is apparently an impossibility to transform oneself. Be perfect the normal intelligence, since it is opposed to the actual facts of life and you will for long be contradicted by immediate experience, as happens with all far-off and difficult ends, and 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 position to bring heavenly perfection to or the worldrelease of extinction. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/helping-othersfaith-and-the-world#p12shakti?search=perfection</ref>

There is a Reality, a truth of all existence which is greater and 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. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p36~</refcenter>

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=== Morality, Diversity and Perfection === 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 '''Content Curated 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) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p6</ref> === Conflicts and Perfection === 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-operate with the Divine and not placidly think that whatever happens is always the best. All depends upon the personal attitude. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divine-the-divine-will-in-the-world#p5</ref> === Perfection and Harmony === 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 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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