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Read Summary of '''[[Perfection Summary|Perfection]]'''
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= What is Perfection? =
 
'''Perfection in General'''
 
Perfection is all that we want to become in our highest aspiration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/perfection#p10</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p5</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
The mundane perfection is sometimes conceived of as something outward, social, a thing of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men and our environment, a better and more efficient citizenship and discharge of duties, a better, richer, kindlier and happier way of living, with a more just and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence. By others again a more inner and subjective ideal is cherished, a clarifying and raising of the intelligence, will and reason, a heightening and ordering of power and capacity in the nature, a nobler ethical, a richer aesthetic, a finer emotional, a much healthier and better-governed vital and physical being. Sometimes one element is stressed, almost to the exclusion of the rest; sometimes, in wider and more well-balanced minds, the whole harmony is envisaged as a total perfection. A change of education and social institutions is the outward means adopted or an inner self-training and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. Or the two aims may be clearly united, the perfection of the inner individual, the perfection of the outer living. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p2</ref>
= What is '''Elements of Perfection? ='''
Perfection It is all , then, this spiritual fulfilment of the urge to individual perfection and an inner completeness of being that we want to become mean first when we speak of a divine life. It is the first essential condition of a perfected life on earth, and we are therefore right in making the utmost possible individual perfection our highest aspirationfirst supreme business. The perfection of the spiritual and pragmatic relation of the individual with all around him is our second preoccupation; the solution of this second desideratum lies in a complete universality and oneness with all life upon earth which is the other concomitant result of an evolution into the gnostic consciousness and nature. But there still remains the third desideratum, a new world, a change in the total life of humanity or, at the least, a new perfected collective life in the earth-nature. This calls for the appearance not only of isolated evolved individuals acting in the unevolved mass, but of many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life superior to the present individual and common existence. A collective life of this kind must obviously constitute itself on the same principle as the life of the gnostic individual. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1522/perfectionthe-divine-life#p10p19</ref>
The Divine is the perfection towards which we move. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-and-man#p8~</refcenter>
Perfection is something which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine in His entirety, which lacks nothing. The divine perfection is unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the Divine individual as a wholethe soul-channel and natural instrument, from whom nothing has been taken away—so it is just constitute the opposite! For essence of the moralists integral divine perfection means all of the virtues that they representhuman being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1024/aphorismthe-63integral-64-65#p24perfection?search=perfection</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 '''Where is the very meaning Power of progress. (The Mother, 30 December 1950) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p5</ref>Perfection?'''
Where in the radically imperfect shall we find the principle and power of perfection? Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to us, nor can life and the body which are the energy and the frame of dividing and limiting mind. The principle and power of perfection are there in the subconscient but wrapped up in the tegument or veil of the lower Maya, a mute premonition emerging as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they await, open, eternally realised, but still separated from us by the veil of our self-ignorance. It is above, then, and not either in our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling power and knowledge.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-problem-of-life#p12</ref>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p7</ref>'''Divine Perfection'''
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 The Divine is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought perfection towards 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 perfectionwe move. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1214/the-sciencedivine-ofand-livingman#p6p8</ref>
But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the spirit it is the spirit, the inner Reality, 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 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 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 mind and 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. 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, perfect. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p6~</refcenter>
A divine perfection of the human being is our aim. We must know then first what are the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection; secondly, what we mean by a divine as distinguished from a human perfection of our being. That man as a being is capable of self-development and of some approach at least to an ideal standard of perfection which his mind is able to conceive, fix before it and pursue, is common ground to all thinking humanity, though it may be only the minority who concern themselves with this possibility as providing the one most important aim of life.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-integral-perfection#p1</ref>
<center>~</center> The mundane 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 sometimes conceived the goal of as something outward, social, a thing Mind. The attainment of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men the eternal and our environment, a better the realisation of that which is the same in all things and more efficient citizenship and discharge of dutiesbeyond all things, a better, richer, kindlier equally blissful in universe and happier way of livingoutside it, with a more just untouched by the imperfections and more harmonious associated enjoyment limitations of the opportunities of existence. By others again a more inner forms and subjective ideal is cherishedactivities in which it dwells, a clarifying and raising are the glory of the intelligencespiritual life. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-threefold-life#p7</ref> <center>~</center> Man, will and reasonthe mental being, a heightening has an imperfect life because mind is not the first and ordering highest power of consciousness of power and capacity in the natureBeing; even if mind were perfected, a nobler ethicalthere would be still something yet to be realised, not yet manifested. For what is involved and emergent is not a richer aestheticMind, but a finer emotionalSpirit, a much healthier and better-governed vital and physical being. Sometimes one element mind is stressed, almost to not the exclusion native dynamism of consciousness of the restSpirit; sometimessupermind, in wider and more well-balanced mindsthe light of gnosis, the whole harmony is envisaged as its native dynamism. If then life has to become a total perfection. A change manifestation of education and social institutions the Spirit, it is the outward means adopted or an inner self-training manifestation of a spiritual being in us and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. Or the two aims may divine life of a perfected consciousness in a supramental or gnostic power of spiritual being that must be clearly united, the perfection of the inner individual, the perfection secret burden and intention of the outer livingevolutionary Nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2422/the-integraldivine-perfectionlife#p2p3</ref> <center>~</center>
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.<ref> http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/idealism-and-spirituality#p1</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
But always the whole foundation of the gnostic life must be by its very nature inward and not outward. In the life of the spirit it is the spirit, the inner Reality, 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 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 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 mind and 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. 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, perfect. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p6</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p6</ref>
==Perfection in the Mind==
ManThe ethical mind becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches itself from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, customary dictated action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make it the mental being, has an imperfect life because foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic mind is not perfected in proportion as it detaches itself from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional canons of the first aesthetic reason and discovers a self existent self and highest power spirit of consciousness pure and infinite Beauty and Delight which gives its own light and joy to the material of the Being; even if aesthesis. The mind were of knowledge is perfectedwhen it gets away from impression and dogma and opinion and discovers a light of self-knowledge and intuition which illumines all the workings of the sense and reason, there would be still something yet to be realised, not yet manifestedall self-experience and world-experience. For what The will is involved perfected when it gets away from and emergent behind its impulses and its customary ruts of effectuation and discovers an inner power of the Spirit which is not the source of an intuitive and luminous action and an original harmonious creation. The movement of perfection is away from all domination by the lower nature and towards a Mindpure and powerful reflection of the being, power, but a knowledge and delight of the Spirit, and mind Self in the buddhi.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will</ref> <center>~</center> The first need is not the native dynamism clarity and the purity of consciousness the intelligence. It must be freed from the claims of the Spirit; supermind, vital being which seeks to impose the light desire of gnosis, is its native dynamism. If then life has to become a manifestation the mind in place of the Spirittruth, it is from the manifestation claims of a spiritual the troubled emotional being in us which strives to colour, distort, limit and falsify the truth with the hue and shape of the divine life emotions. It must be free too from its own defect, inertia of a perfected consciousness the thought-power, obstructive narrowness and unwillingness to open to knowledge, intellectual unscrupulousness in thinking, prepossession and preference, self-will in a supramental or gnostic power the reason and false determination of spiritual being that the will to knowledge. Its sole will must be to make itself an unsullied mirror of the secret burden truth, its essence and its forms and measures and relations, a clear mirror, a just measure, a fine and intention subtle instrument of evolutionary Natureharmony, an integral intelligence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2224/the-divinepower-of-the-life#p3instruments</ref>
<center>~</center>
But our mind is obscure, partial in its notions, misled by opposite surface appearances, divided between various possibilities; it is led in three different directions to any of which it may give an exclusive preference. Our mind, in its search for what must be, turns towards a concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection, on our own individual being and inner living; or it turns towards a concentration on an individual development of our surface nature, on the perfection of our thought and outer dynamic or practical action on the world, on some idealism of our personal relation with the world around us; or it turns rather towards a concentration on the outer world itself, on making it better, more suited to our ideas and temperament or to our conception of what should be. On one side there is the call of our spiritual being which is our true self, a transcendent reality, a being of the Divine Being, not created by the world, able to live in itself, to rise out of world to transcendence; on the other side there is the demand of the world around us which is a cosmic form, a formulation of the Divine Being, a power of the Reality in disguise. There is too the divided or double demand of our being of Nature which is poised between these two terms, depends on them and connects them; for it is apparently made by the world and yet, because its true creator is in ourselves and the world instrumentation that seems to make it is only the means first used, it is really a form, a disguised manifestation of a greater spiritual being within us. It is this demand that mediates between our preoccupation with an inward perfection or spiritual liberation and our preoccupation with the outer world and its formation, insists on a happier relation between the two terms and creates the ideal of a better individual in a better world. But it is within us that the Reality must be found and the source and foundation of a perfected life; no outward formation can replace it: there must be the true self realised within if there is to be the true life realised in world and Nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p7</ref>
 
==Perfection in the Vital==
Then again there is the psychic prana, pranic mind or desire soul; this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the first necessity is a fullness of the vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength and spring of energetic action on the fullness of the psychic prana. But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the psychic life-being. This dynamis must not be a troubled, perfervid, stormy, fitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but a clear and glad and pure energy, a seated and firmly supported pure rapture. And as a third condition of its perfection it must be poised in a complete equality.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
This heart and psychic being of man shot through with the threads of the life instincts is a thing of mixed inconstant colours of emotion and soul vibrations, bad and good, happy and unhappy, satisfied and unsatisfied, troubled and calm, intense and dull. Thus agitated and invaded it is unacquainted with any real peace, incapable of a steady perfection of all its powers. By purification, by equality, by the light of knowledge, by a harmonising of the will it can be brought to a tranquil intensity and perfection.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
The other side of perfection is a self-contained and calm and unegoistic Rudra-power armed with psychic force, the energy of the strong heart which is capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent, an outwardly austere or even, where need is, a violent action.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
== Perfection in the Body ==
When the body has learned the art of constantly progressing towards an increasing perfection, we shall be well on the way to overcoming the inevitability of death. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/16-january-1972#p1</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/illness-and-health#p57</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
 
The physical being of man has always been felt by the seekers of perfection to be a great impediment and it has been the habit to turn from it with contempt, denial or aversion and a desire to suppress altogether or as far as may be the body and the physical life. But this cannot be the right method for the integral Yoga. The body is given us as one instrument necessary to the totality of our works and it is to be used, not neglected, hurt, suppressed or abolished. If it is imperfect, recalcitrant, obstinate, so are also the other members, the vital being, heart and mind and reason. It has like them to be changed and perfected and to undergo a transformation. As we must get ourselves a new life, new heart, new mind, so we have in a certain sense to build for ourselves a new body.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-power-of-the-instruments</ref>
 
<center>~</center>
Transformation and the Body : The supramental perfection means that the body becomes conscious, is filled with consciousness and that as this is the Truth consciousness all its actions, functionings etc. become by the power of the consciousness within it harmonious, luminous, right and true—without ignorance or disorder. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/transformation-and-the-body#p3</ref>
<center>~</center> This is one of the things one discovers gradually as the body becomes ready for transformations. It is quite a remarkable instrument in the see that it can experience two contraries at the same time. There is a certain state of body-consciousness which brings things together, 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 and the mind, a development sufficient for harmonising opposites (that of course, is quite indispensable), when one has succeeded in doing this, there are moments when it alternates, you see, one thing comes after the other, while what is remarkable in the consciousness of the body is that it can feel ("feel", can we say "feel"?—"experience"—the word "aware" expresses it best) all things simultaneously, as though you were hot and cold at once, as though you were active and passive at once, and everything becomes like that. Then you begin to grasp the totality of movements in the cells. It is something much more concrete naturally, but much more perfect in the body than in any other part of the being. This means that if things continue in this way, it will be proved that the physical, material instrument is the most perfect of all. That is why perhaps it is the most difficult to transform, to perfect. But of all, it is the one most capable of perfection. (The Mother, 21 April 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p31</ref>
As for <center>~</center> It is precisely because the question about the illnessbody decays, perfection declines and ends in a complete degradation that death becomes necessary. But if the body followed the physical plane is indeed part progressive movement of the ideal inner being, if it had the same sense of progress and perfection as the Yogapsychic being, but there would be no necessity for it to die. One year added 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 the last item andcause of death. One can foresee quite well, so long as on the fundamental change has not been made in contrary, that the material consciousness to movement for perfection which is at the body belongsbeginning of life might continue under another form. I have already told you that one does not foresee an uninterrupted growth, one for that would need changing the height of the houses after some time! But this growth in height may have be changed into a certain growth in perfection on other planes without having immunity : the perfection of the form. All the imperfections 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 bodyhabit of seeing things otherwise. But there is no reason why this should not happen. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3105/illness17-andjune-health1953#p57p36</ref>
When the body has learned the art of constantly progressing towards an increasing perfection, we shall be well on the way to overcoming the inevitability of death. (The Mother, 16 January 1972) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/16-january-1972#p1</ref>= Why Do We Need Perfection? =
It is precisely because == For Discovering the body decays, declines and ends in a complete degradation that death becomes necessary. But if the body followed the progressive movement of the inner being, if it had the same sense of progress and perfection as the psychic being, there would be no necessity for it to die. One year added 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 the cause of death. One can foresee quite well, on the contrary, that the movement for perfection which is at the beginning of life might continue under another form. I have already told you that one does not foresee an uninterrupted growth, for that would need changing the height of the houses after some time! But this growth in height may be changed into a growth in perfection: the perfection of the form. All the imperfections 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 Truth of seeing things otherwise. But there is no reason why this should not happen. (The Mother, 17 June 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/17-june-1953#p36</ref>Living==
= How For the awakened individual the realisation of his truth of being and his inner liberation and perfection must be his primary seeking,—first, because that is the call of the Spirit within him, but also because it is only by liberation and perfection and realisation of the truth of being that man can arrive at truth of living. A perfected community also can exist only by the perfection of its individuals, and perfection can come only by the discovery and affirmation in life by each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity and a resultant life unity. There can 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 Achieve Perfection? =it oneness, 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 nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p37</ref>
The Master of our works respects our nature even when he is transforming it; he works always through the nature and not by any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature of ours contains the materials of our perfection, but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together in disorder or a poor imperfect order. All this material has to be patiently perfected, purified, reorganised, new-moulded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by simple coercion and denial. This world and we who live in it are his creation and manifestation, and he deals with it and us in a way our narrow and ignorant mind cannot understand unless it falls silent and opens to a divine knowledge. In our errors is the substance of a truth which labours to reveal its meaning to our groping intelligence. The human intellect cuts out the error and the truth with it and replaces it by another half-truth half-error; but the Divine Wisdom suffers our mistakes to continue until we are able to arrive at the truth hidden and protected under every false cover. Our sins are the misdirected steps of a seeking Power that aims, not at sin, but at perfection, at something that we might call a divine virtue. Often they are the veils of a quality that has to be transformed and delivered out of this ugly disguise: otherwise, in the perfect providence of things, they would not have been suffered to exist or to continue. The Master of our works is neither a blunderer nor an indifferent witness nor a dallier with the luxury of unneeded evils. He is wiser than our reason and wiser than our virtue. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-master-of-the-work#p6~</refcenter>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p36</ref>
==For Self-perfection, Progress and Fulfillment==
==Prerequisites==In the Dhammapada: a supreme disinterestedness and a supreme liberation is to follow the discipline of self-perfection, the march of progress, not with a precise end in view but because this march of progress is the profound law and the purpose of earthly life, the truth of universal existence and because you put yourself in harmony with it, spontaneously, whatever the result may be. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-brahmin#p43</ref>
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The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both For one who wants to grow in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the thingsself-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, impacts none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and workings of Nature. This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect equality, samatāself-mastery. The self, spirit or Brahman It is said that one only does well what one is interested in all and therefore one to all; it doing. This istrue, as but it is said truer still that one can learn to find interest in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its experience on at least everything one side of equalitydoes, the equal Brahman, samaṁ brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage as what appear to identify equality and yoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyatebe the most insignificant chores. That is to say, equality is the sign The secret of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being this attainment lies in the Infiniteurge towards self-perfection. 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 Whatever occupation or task falls to the dualities, of our having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, of our having entered into the calm and peace of liberation. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreoveryour lot, you must do it is the condition of with a securely and perfectly divine actionwill to progress; 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 whatever one does, one must be the character of the perfect spiritual action; not only do it as best one can but strive to be equal do it better and one to all things better in spirita constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness,—even in from the most physical consciousness,—and to make all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation material chore to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the divine equality most artistic and calm must be its inmost principleintellectual work. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and receptive side of equality, but there The scope for progress is also an active infinite and possessive side, an equal bliss which can only come when be applied to the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullnesssmallest thing. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2412/the-elementsfour-ofausterities-and-the-four-perfectionliberations#p2p17</ref>
The next necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of their power and capacity, śakti, at which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. For practical purposes we may take the understanding, the heart, the prana and the body as the four members of our nature which have thus to be prepared, and we have to find the constituent terms of their perfection. Also there is the dynamical force in us (vīrya) of the temperament, character and soul nature, svabhāva, which makes the power of our members effective in action and gives them their type and direction; this has to be freed from its limitations, enlarged, rounded so that the whole manhood in us may become the basis of a divine manhood, when the Purusha, the real Man in us, the divine Soul, shall act fully in this human instrument and shine fully through this human vessel. To divinise the perfected nature we have to call in the divine Power or Shakti to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy, daivī prakṛti, bhāgavatī śakti. This perfection will grow in the measure in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance and then to the direct action of that Power and of the Master of our being and our works to whom it belongs, and for this purpose faith is the essential, faith is the great motor-power of our being in our aspirations to perfection,—here, a faith in God and the Shakti which shall begin in the heart and understanding, but shall take possession of all our nature, all its consciousness, all its dynamic motive-force. These four things are the essentials of this second element of perfection, the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature, the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption of them into the action of the divine Power, and a perfect faith in all our members to call and support that assumption, śakti, vīrya, daivī prakṛti, śraddhā. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-of-perfection#p3~</refcenter>
==Process==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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/30-december-1950#p19</ref>
"To work for your perfection the first step is to become conscious of yourself." (The Mother, 13 January 1951) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/13-january-1951#p16~</refcenter>
To work for your perfection, the first step All life is to become conscious of yourselfa secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the different parts of your being discovery 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 fulfilment of the movements that occur divine principle hidden in youher which becomes progressively less obscure, the many impulses, reactions more self-conscient and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's natureluminous, especially more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his mental natureinstruments of knowledge, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinkswill, feelsaction, says life to the Spirit within him and doesin the world. It is only by observing these movements with great careMind, by bringing themlife, as it werebody, before all the tribunal forms 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 nature are the capacity means of knowing the truth of our beingthis growth, that is but they find their last perfection only by opening out to saysomething beyond them, what we first, because they 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 not the truth whole of our existence, whatever what man is opposed to it. In this way, little by littlesecondly, all the partsbecause that other something which he is, all is the elements key 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 his completeness and endurance, with brings a determination light which discovers to prolong our life as long as necessary for him the success whole high and large reality of our endeavourhis being.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1224/the-scienceintegral-of-living#p5perfection?search=perfection</ref>
If in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His self-manifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature.<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destiny-of-the-individual#p9~</refcenter>
But we can attain to Our soul's dissatisfaction with imperfection as a law of life upon earth, its aspiration towards the highest without blotting ourselves out elimination of all imperfections from the cosmic extension. Brahman preserves always Its two terms of liberty within our nature, not only in a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible to be imperfect, but here and now in a life where perfection has to be conquered by evolution and of formation withoutstruggle, are as much a law of expression and of freedom from the expression. We alsoour being as that against which they revolt; they too are divine, being That—a divine dissatisfaction, can attain to the same a divine self-possessionaspiration. The harmony In them is the inherent light of a power within which maintains them in us so that the two tendencies is Divine may not only be there as a hidden Reality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the condition evolution of all life that aims at being really divineNature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destinydivine-ofand-the-individualundivine#p18p8</ref>
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An integral Yoga includes as It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a vital nature of true being and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim true life that the conversion result can be a perfection of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness ourselves and our existence, a larger divine existence. Our parts life of will and actiontrue being, our parts a life of knowledgeunity, our thinking beingmutuality, our emotional beingharmony, our being a life of lifetrue happiness, all our self a harmonious and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternalbeautiful life. But man's present If our nature is limitedfixed in what it is, dividedwhat it has already become, unequalthen no perfection,—it no real and enduring happiness is easiest for him to concentrate possible in the strongest part of his being earthly life; we must seek it not at all and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have do 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 best we can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divinewith our imperfections, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these or we must seek it is best to centre themselves elsewhere, in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinitya supraterrestrial hereafter, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master we must go beyond all such seeking and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming transcend life by this enlargement an extinction of being selfless nature and universal, they can reach by works ego in some first fullness Absolute from which this strange and unsatisfactory being of a spiritual statusours has come into existence. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed if in the end through us there is a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the spiritual being which is emerging and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level our present state is only an imperfection of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, willhalf-emergence, emotion, the perfection of the self and if 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 Inconscient is a Truthstarting-Consciousness point containing in itself the potency of a superconscience and supernature which the Divine Realityhas to evolve, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth veil of status of being apparent Nescience in which that greater consciousness is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy concealed and activity from which it has to unfold itself, if an evolution of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there the law, then what we are seeking for is a movement not only possible but part of the self-aware truth eventual necessity of Divine Being things. It is our spiritual destiny to manifest and every part become that supernature,—for it is in entire harmony with the nature of our true self, our still occult, because unevolved, wholebeing. Even the most limited and finite action is in the TruthA nature of unity will then bring inevitably its life-Consciousness a movement result of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infiniteunity, mutuality, harmony. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual inner life awakened to a full consciousness and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent full power of this Light and Truth into consciousness will bear its inevitable fruit in all our who have it, self-knowledge, a perfected existence, the joy of a satisfied 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 happiness of this Yogaa fulfilled nature.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2322/the-superminddivine-and-the-yoga-of-workslife#p1p23</ref>
Fundamentally, whatever be == To Grow in 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) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/12-may-1954#p34</ref>Spiritual Oneness==
If you said to yourselfHis physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, my childrenhis mind with the cosmic mind, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine Will knowledge and will both in the world", then for this instrument to be perfect, itself and as it must be cultivatedpours itself through these channels, educated, trainedhis spirit with the one spirit in all beings. It must not All the variety of cosmic existence will be left like a shapeless piece changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of stoneits spiritual significance. When you want to build For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it. Well, it That which is the same thingorigin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. When with your brain and body you want to make a beautiful instrument for This will be the Divine, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, refine it, complete what is missing, perfect what is therehighest reach of self-perfection. (The Mother, 13 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0524/13the-elements-mayof-1953#p18perfection</ref>
There is a world of ideas without form and it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in 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 two, you will 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 centre of expression. (The Mother, 26 May 1929) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p21~</refcenter>
The seeker of So long as he remains in the integral state of knowledge world-existence, this perfection must be free radiate out 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 surmountedhim, and if —for that habit is found growing on the nature, the will necessity of his oneness with the Purusha must be used to dismiss it. Eventuallyuniverse and its beings, a state arrives when the life —in an influence and the body perform as mere instruments the will action which help all around who are capable of it to rise to or advance towards the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachmentsame perfection, without their putting themselves into and for the rest in an influence and action with that inferiorwhich help, eager and often feverish energy which is the nature of their ordinary working; they come to work as forces of Nature work without only the fret self-ruler and toil and reaction characteristic of life master man can help, in leading the body when it is not yet master of the physical. When we attain to human race forward spiritually towards this perfection, then action consummation and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom towards some image of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise a greater divine truth in the Selftheir personal and communal existence. But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga He becomes a light and till then the law power 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 Truth to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which he has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty. Still, periods of absolute calm, solitude climbed and cessation from works are highly desirable and should be secured as often as possible a means for that recession of the soul into itself which is indispensable to knowledgeothers’ ascension. <ref>httpttp://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2324/the-releaseperfection-fromof-subjectionthe-tomental-the-body#p8being?search=perfection</ref>
The 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 = How to us or injustice, everything that ordinarily affects the mind. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces and happenings, and if besides we can feel that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-action-of-equality#p5</ref>Achieve Perfection? =
This power The Master of the soul over its our works respects our nature even when he is of transforming it; he works always through the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection; if it did nature and not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature of ours contains the fixed groove materials of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, we should have to wait for Nature to effect it but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together in her own slow disorder or swift process of evolutiona poor imperfect order. In the lower forms of being the soul accepts All this complete subjection material has to Naturebe patiently perfected, purified, but as it rises higher in the scalereorganised, it awakes to a sense of something in itself which can command Nature; but it is only when it arrives at selfnew-knowledge that this free will moulded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and control becomes a complete reality. The change effects itself through process of natureslain or mutilated, not therefore obliterated by any capricious magic, but an ordered development simple coercion and intelligible processdenial. When complete mastery is gained, then the process by its self-effective rapidity may seem a miracle to the intelligence, but This world and we who live in it still proceeds by law of the truth of Spiritare his creation and manifestation,—when the Divine within us by close union of our will and being he deals with him takes up the Yoga it and acts as the omnipotent master of the nature. For the Divine is us in a way our highest Self narrow and the self of all Nature, the eternal ignorant mind cannot understand unless it falls silent and universal Purushaopens to a divine knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2423/the-psychologymaster-of-selfthe-perfectionwork#p8p6</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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-synthesis-of-the-systems#p19</ref>==Prerequisites==
The way to attain to this first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the things, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect consciousness equality, samatā. The self, spirit or Brahman is one in all and therefore one to increase your actual consciousness beyond all; it is, as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its present grooves experience on at least one side of equality, the equal Brahman, samaṁ brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage as to identify equality and limitsyoga, samatvaṁ yoga ucyate. That is to educate say, equality is the sign of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the Infinite. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated; for itis the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic determinations of our nature, of our having conquered our enslaved response to open the dualities, of our having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, of our having entered into the calm and peace of liberation. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreover, it to is the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; the Divine Light security and to let largeness of the cosmic action of the Divine Light work in it fully Infinite is based upon and freelynever breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity. But That too must be the character of the Light can do its full perfect spiritual action; to be equal and unhindered work only when you have got rid of one to all craving things in spirit, understanding, mind, heart and fearnatural consciousness, when you have no mental prejudices—even in the most physical consciousness, no vital preferences—and to make all their workings, no physical apprehensions or attractions whatever their outward adaptation to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to obscure be the passive or bind youbasic, the fundamental and receptive side of equality, but there is also an active and possessive side, an equal bliss which can only come when the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullness. (The Mother, 30 June 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/0324/30the-juneelements-of-1929perfection#p8p2</ref>
==Difficulties==<center>~</center>
The next necessity of perfection is to raise all the active parts of the human nature to that highest condition and working pitch of their power and capacity, ''śakti'', at which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. For practical purposes we may take the understanding, the heart, the prana and the body as the four members of our nature which have thus to be prepared, and we have to find the constituent terms of their perfection. Also there is the dynamical force in us (vīrya) of the temperament, character and soul nature, ''svabhāva'', which makes the power of our members effective in action and gives them their type and direction; this has to be freed from its limitations, enlarged, rounded so that the whole manhood in us may become the basis of a divine manhood, when the Purusha, the real Man in us, the divine Soul, shall act fully in this human instrument and shine fully through this human vessel. To divinise the perfected nature we have to call in the divine Power or Shakti to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy, ''daivī prakṛti, bhāgavatī śakti''. This perfection will grow in the measure in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance and then to the direct action of that Power and of the Master of our being and our works to whom it belongs, and for this purpose faith is the essential, faith is the great motor-power of our being in our aspirations to perfection,—here, a faith in God and the Shakti which shall begin in the heart and understanding, but shall take possession of all our nature, all its consciousness, all its dynamic motive-force. These four things are the essentials of this second element of perfection, the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature, the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption of them into the action of the divine Power, and a perfect faith in all our members to call and support that assumption, ''śakti, vīrya, daivī prakṛti, śraddhā''. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-elements-of-perfection#p3</ref>
No man is perfect; the vital is there and the ego is there to prevent it. It is only when there is the total transformation of the external and the internal being down to the very subconscient, that perfection is possible. Till then imperfection will remain as our common heritage. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-subconscient-and-the-integral-yoga#p2~</refcenter>
In ...perfection of our instrumental nature... the lower grades perfection of the ascension the new assumptionintelligence, heart, the integration into a higher principle of vital consciousness, 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 perfection of the submental and the subconscient or inconscient. This is one serious obstacle to the mind's endeavour towards fundamental soul powers, the perfection of the nature; for the continued share surrender of our instruments and action to the submentaldivine Shakti, the subconscient depend at every moment of their progression on a... power that is covertly and inconscient in overtly the government pivot of the activitiesall endeavour and action, faith, by bringing in another law than that ''śraddhā''. The perfect faith is an assent of the mental whole being, enables the conscious vital and the physical consciousness also to reject the law laid upon them truth seen by the mind and to follow their own impulses and instincts in defiance of the mental reason and the rational will of the developed intelligence. This makes it difficult for the mind to go beyond itself, or offered to exceed its own level and spiritualise the nature; for what it cannot even make fully consciousacceptance, cannot securely mentalise and rationalise, it cannot spiritualise, since spiritualisation its central working is a greater and more difficult integration. No doubt, by calling in the spiritual force, it can establish an influence and a preliminary change in some parts faith of the nature, especially in the thinking mind itself and soul in the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits will to be and attain and become and what it does achieve is rare its idea of self and difficult. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means things andits knowledge, even though it brings in a divine light into of which the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon belief of the lifeintellect, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for the most part it can only regulate or check heart’s consent and the lower action desire of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native mind to the spiritual consciousness possess and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and impose them upon realise are the membersoutward figures. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2224/thefaith-ascentand-towards-supermind#p16shakti?search=perfection</ref>
The egoism of the instrument can condition to be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than aimed at, the egoism real achievement of Yoga, the doer. The ego-sense final perfection and attainment, for which all else is contrary to spiritual realisationonly a preparation, so how can any kind of ego be is a thing consciousness in which it is impossible to be encouraged? As do anything without the Divine; for then, if you are without the magnified egoDivine, it is one the very source of your action disappears; knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel that the most perilous obstacles to release and perfection. There should be no big Ipowers you use are your own, you will not even a small onemiss the Divine support. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/3103/ego-and28-itsapril-forms1929#p54p14</ref>
= Why =Process==
===By Education and Training===
But if If you remain said to yourself, my children, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express the divine Will in that consciousness and look from therethe world", then you begin to understand something of the truth. And for this consciousness has instrument to be so totalperfect, it must be cultivated, that even if things come directly against youeducated, even the physical movement trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of someone coming to beat you (stone. When you must not allow him want to kill build with a stone you, nochisel it; when you have perhaps want to do what is necessary not to get killed)make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, but if you are yourself in this perfect consciousness and have no personal reactionchisel it. Well, well, I give you it is the guarantee the other cannot kill same thing. When with your brain and body you. He will not be able want tomake a beautiful instrument for the Divine, even if he tries. He will not be able to beat youmust cultivate it, even if he tries. Onlysharpen it, you must not have a single violent or wrong vibrationrefine it, you understand? Even if there complete what is just a little false vibration, that opens the door and the thing enters and all goes wrong. You must be fully consciousmissing, have the full knowledge, the perfect mastery over everything, the clear vision of the Truth—and perfect peacewhat is there. (The Mother, 20 May 1953) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/2013-may-1953#p54p18</ref>
… one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention—the least intervention—of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent: it simply looks on and listens in order to register things, it does not act. (The Mother, 23 December 1953) <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/23-december-1953#p8~</refcenter>
Perfection The way to attain to this perfect consciousness is not a static stateto increase your actual consciousness beyond its present grooves and limits, to educate it is an equilibrium. But a progressive, dynamic equilibrium. One may go from perfection to perfection. There can come a state from which open 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 Divine Light and, as human beings as they are at present cannot progress indefinitely, one must pass to a higher species or leave let the present species Divine Light work in it fully and create anotherfreely. The human being as he is at But the moment cannot attain perfection unless he gets out Light can do its full and unhindered work only when you have got rid of himself—man is a transitional being. In ordinary language it may be said: "Ohall craving and fear, when you have no mental prejudices, this man is perfect"no vital preferences, but that is a literary figure. The maximum a human being can attain just now is an equilibrium which is not progressiveno physical apprehensions or attractions to obscure or bind you. He may attain perhaps a static equilibrium but all that is static can be broken for lack of progress. (The Mother, 30 December 1950) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0403/30-decemberjune-19501929#p19p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
The condition to Fundamentally, whatever be aimed at, the real achievement path one follows—whether the path of Yogasurrender, consecration, the final perfection and attainmentknowledge—if one wants it to be perfect, for which all else it is only a preparationalways equally difficult, and there is a consciousness in which it is impossible to do anything without the Divine; for thenbut one way, if you are without the Divineone only, the very source I know of your action disappears; knowledge, power, all are gone. But so long as you feel only one: that the powers you use are your own, you will not miss the Divine support. (The Motheris perfect sincerity, 28 April 1929) but perfect sincerity! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/0306/2812-aprilmay-19291954#p14p34</ref>
All life that has still this Inconscience for its basis is stamped with the mark ===By Becoming Conscious of a radical imperfection; for even if it is satisfied with its own type, it is a satisfaction with something incomplete and inharmonious, a patchwork of discords: on the contrary, even a purely mental or vital life might be perfect within its limits if it were based on a restricted but harmonious self-power and self-knowledge. It is this bondage to a perpetual stamp of imperfection and disharmony that is the mark of the undivine; a divine life, on the contrary, even if progressing from the little to the more, would be at each stage harmonious in its principle and detail: it would be a secure ground upon which freedom and perfection could naturally flower or grow towards their highest stature, refine and expand into their most subtle opulence. All imperfections, all perfections have to be taken into view in our consideration of the difference between an undivine and a divine existence: but ordinarily, when we make the distinction, we do it as human beings struggling under the pressure of life and the difficulties of our conduct amidst its immediate problems and perplexities; most of all we are thinking of the distinction we are obliged to make between good and evil or of that along with its kindred problem of the duality, the blend in us of happiness and suffering. When we seek intellectually for a divine presence in things, a divine origin of the world, a divine government of its workings, the presence of evil, the insistence on suffering, the large, the enormous part offered to pain, grief and affliction in the economy of Nature are the cruel phenomena which baffle our reason and overcome the instinctive faith of mankind in such an origin and government or in an all-seeing, all-determining and omnipresent Divine Immanence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-and-the-undivine#p2</ref>Oneself===
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 "To work for your 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 first step 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 conscious of a fulfilled natureyourself. " <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2204/the13-divinejanuary-life1951#p23p16</ref>
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 be imperfect, but here and now in a life where perfection has to be conquered by evolution and struggle, 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 only be there as a hidden Reality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the evolution of Nature. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-and-the-undivine#p8~</refcenter>
For To work for your perfection, the first step 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 who wants to grow from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in self-perfectionyou, there are no great or small tasksthe many impulses, none reactions and conflicting wills that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for one who aspires for progress everything he thinks, feels, says and self-masterydoes. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is trueby observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, but as it is truer still were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that one we can learn hope to find interest form in everything one does, even in what appear ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to be progress and acquire the most insignificant chores. The secret capacity of this attainment lies in knowing the urge towards self-perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls truth of our being, that is to your lotsay, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, you then we must do it with , in a will to progress; very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever one doescontradicts the truth of our existence, one must not only do it as best one can but strive whatever is opposed to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from little by little, all the most material chore to parts, all the most artistic and intellectual elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This workof unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. The scope for progress is infinite Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and can be applied endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the smallest thingsuccess of our endeavour. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-fourscience-austerities-and-the-fourof-liberationsliving#p17p5</ref>
In the Dhammapada: a supreme disinterestedness and a supreme liberation is to follow the discipline of self-perfection, the march of progress, not with a precise end in view but because this march of progress is the profound law and the purpose of earthly life, the truth of universal existence and because you put yourself in harmony with it, spontaneously, whatever the result may be. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-brahmin#p43~</refcenter>
= Individual Perfection =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.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-destiny-of-the-individual#p9</ref>
== Perfection in Work ==<center>~</center>
You In the process of this change there must be by the very necessity of the effort two stages of its working. First, there will become more be the personal endeavour of the human being, as soon as he becomes aware by his soul, mind, heart of this divine possibility and turns towards it as the true object of life, to prepare himself for it and more perfect to get rid of all in him that belongs to a lower working, of all that stands in your work the way of his opening to the spiritual truth and its power, so as to possess by this liberation his spiritual being and turn all his natural movements into free means of its self-expression… The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the consciousness growsaction of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, increasesa substitution of its influence, widens possession and is enlightenedworking for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-andintegral-perfection-in-work#p1?search=perfection</ref>
In But if you remain in that consciousness and look from there, then you begin to understand something of the truth. And this consciousness has to be so total, that even if things come directly against you, even the physical movement of someone coming to beat you (you must not allow him to kill you, no; you have perhaps to do what is necessary not to get killed), but if you are yourself in this perfect consciousness and have no personal reaction, well, I give you the guarantee the other cannot kill you. He will not be able to, even if he tries. He will not be able to beat you, even if he tries. Only, you must not have a single violent or wrong vibration, you understand? Even if there is just a little false vibration, that opens the door and the thing enters and all actiongoes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the full knowledge, all work donethe perfect mastery over everything, the degree clear vision of perfection depends upon the degree of consciousnessTruth—and perfect peace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/1405/progress20-and-perfection-inmay-work1953#p3p54</ref>
Perfection in the work must be the aim, but it is only by a very patient effort that this can be obtained. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p19~</refcenter>
Open yourself more This power of the soul over its nature is of the utmost importance in the Yoga of self-perfection; if it did not exist, we could never get by conscious endeavour and aspiration out of the fixed groove of our present imperfect human being; if any greater perfection were intended, we should have to wait for Nature to effect it in her own slow or swift process of evolution. In the lower forms of being the soul accepts this complete subjection to Nature, but as it rises higher in the scale, it awakes to a sense of something in itself which can command Nature; but it is only when it arrives at self-knowledge that this free will and control becomes a complete reality. The change effects itself through process of nature, not therefore by any capricious magic, but an ordered development and more intelligible process. When complete mastery is gained, then the process by its self-effective rapidity may seem a miracle to the intelligence, but it still proceeds by law of the truth of Spirit,—when the Divine within us by close union of our will and being with him takes up the Yoga and acts as the omnipotent master of the nature. For the Divine's force is our highest Self and the self of all Nature, the eternal and your work will progress steadily towards perfectionuniversal Purusha. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-andpsychology-perfectionof-inself-workperfection#p21p8</ref>
Let nothing short of perfection be your ideal in work and you are sure to become a true instrument of the Divine. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p25~</refcenter>
There must be order An integral Yoga includes as a vital and harmony indispensable element in workits total and ultimate aim the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. Our parts of will and action, our parts of knowledge, our thinking being, our emotional being, our being of life, all our self and nature must seek the Divine, enter into the Infinite, unite with the Eternal. Even what But man's present nature is limited, divided, unequal,—it is apparently easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being and follow a definite line of progress proper to his nature: only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the most insignificant thing Divine Infinity. Some therefore must be done choose as a starting-point a concentration in thought or contemplation or the mind's one-pointedness to find the eternal reality of the Self in them; others can more easily withdraw into the heart to meet there the Divine, the Eternal: yet others are predominantly dynamic and active; for these it is best to centre themselves in the will and enlarge their being through works. United with the Self and source of all by their surrender of their will into its infinity, guided in their works by the secret Divinity within or surrendered to the Lord of the cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling, act, becoming by this enlargement of being selfless and universal, they can reach by works some first fullness of a spiritual status. But the path, whatever its point of starting, must debouch into a vaster dominion; it must proceed in the end through a totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature. In the supramental consciousness, on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate; there knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the self and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself and all to their perfect harmony and fusion with each other, to a divine integrality, a divine perfection. For the supermind is a Truth-Consciousness in which the Divine Reality, fully manifested, no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance; a truth of status of being which is absolute becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being which is self-existent and perfect. Every movement there is a sense movement of cleanlinessthe self-aware truth of Divine Being and every part is in entire harmony with the whole. Even the most limited and finite action is in the Truth-Consciousness a movement of the Eternal and Infinite and partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth not only raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height but brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth, beauty, harmony an element and means of the supreme union and oneness; this ascent and orderdescent must be therefore an ultimate aim of this Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1423/progressthe-supermind-and-perfectionthe-yoga-inof-workworks#p26p1</ref>
The perfection of the work done is much more important than its bulk or the bigness of its scope. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p38</ref>===By Learning to be a Witness===
In works...we find ourselves to be not the mind, aspiration towards Perfection but a mental being who stands behind the action of the embodied mind, not a mental and vital personality,—personality is true spiritualitya composition of Nature,—but a mental Person,manomaya puruṣa. We become aware of a being within who takes his stand upon mind for self-knowledge and world-knowledge and thinks of himself as an individual for self-experience and world-experience, for an inward action and an outward-going action, but is yet different from mind, life and body. First, he has the intuition of himself as someone observing the action of the mind; it is something which is going on in him and yet before him as an object of his regarding knowledge. This self-awareness is the intuitive sense of the witness Purusha, ''sākṣī''. Witness Purusha is a pure consciousness who watches Nature and sees it as an action reflected upon the consciousness and enlightened by that consciousness, but in itself other than it.To enter into identity with that Spirit must then be his way to control and lordship. He can do it passively by a sort of reflection and receiving in his mental consciousness, but then he is only a mould, channel or instrument, not a possessor or participant in the power. He can arrive at identity by an absorption of his mentality in inner spiritual being, but then the conscious action ceases in a trance of identity. To be active master of the nature he must evidently rise to some higher supramental poise where there is possible not only a passive, but an active identity with the controlling spirit. To find the way of rising to this greater poise and be self-ruler, Swarat, is a condition of his perfection.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1424/progressthe-perfection-andof-perfectionthe-inmental-work#p45being?search=perfection</ref>
=== Practical Tips for Perfection in Work By Developing Detachment===
Do not worry about mistakes in workThe seeker of the integral state of knowledge must be free from attachment to action and equally free from attachment to inaction. Often you imagine Especially must any tendency to mere inertia of mind or vitality or body be surmounted, and if that things are badly done by you habit is found growing on the nature, the will of the Purusha must be used to dismiss it. Eventually, a state arrives when really you have done them very well; but even if there are mistakesthe life and the body perform as mere instruments the will of the Purusha in the mind without any strain or attachment, without their putting themselves into the action with that inferior, it eager and often feverish energy which is nothing the nature of their ordinary working; they come to be sad about. Let work as forces of Nature work without the consciousness grow—only fret and toil and reaction characteristic of life in the divine consciousness body when it is there an entire perfectionnot yet master of the physical. The more you surrender When we attain to this perfection, then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the Divine, soul or draws it away from its urge towards the more will there be Self or its poise in the possibility Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in youthe Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental or physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty. Still, periods of absolute calm, solitude and cessation from works are highly desirable and should be secured as often as possible for that recession of the soul into itself which is indispensable to knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2923/practicalthe-release-from-subjection-concernsto-inthe-workbody#p39p8</ref>
Someone who is learning to paint or play music or write and does not like to have his mistakes pointed out by those who already know—how is he to learn at all or reach any perfection of technique? <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/practical-concerns-in-work#p45</ref>===By Developing Equality===
== Perfection The calm established in the whole being must remain the same whatever happens, in health and Interdisease, in pleasure and in pain, even in the strongest physical pain, in good fortune and misfortune, our own or that of those we love, in success and failure, honour and insult, praise and blame, justice done to us or injustice, everything that ordinarily affects the mind. If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by the divine will, see God in all, in our enemies or rather our opponents in the game of life as well as our friends, in the powers that oppose and resist us as well as the powers that favour and assist, in all energies and forces and happenings, and if besides we can feel that all is undivided from our self, all the world one with us within our universal being, then this attitude becomes much easier to the heart and mind. But even before we can attain or are firmly seated in that universal vision, we have by all the means in our power to insist on this receptive and active equality and calm. Even something of it, alpam api asya dharmasya, is a great step towards perfection; a first firmness in it is the beginning of liberated perfection; its completeness is the perfect assurance of a rapid progress in all the other members of perfection. For without it we can have no solid basis; and by the pronounced lack of it we shall be constantly falling back to the lower status of desire, ego, duality, ignorance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-action-of-relation with Others ==equality#p5</ref>
...man is separated in his mind, his life, his body from the universal and therefore, even as he does not know himself, is equally and even more incapable ===By Purification of knowing his fellow-creatures. He forms by inferences, theories, observations and a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy a rough mental construction about them; but this is not knowledge. Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge,—existence aware of itself. We know what we are so far as we are consciously aware of ourself, the rest is hidden; so also we can come really to know that with which we become one in our consciousness, but only so far as we can become one with it. If the means of knowledge are indirect and imperfect, the knowledge attained will also be indirect and imperfect. It will enable us to work out with a certain precarious clumsiness but still perfectly enough from our mental standpoint certain limited practical aims, necessities, conveniences, a certain imperfect and insecure harmony of our relations with that which we know; but only by a conscious unity with it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we must arrive at a conscious unity with our fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will always be the knowledge of their superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and unmastered from the subconscient or the subliminal in them and us. But this conscious oneness can only be established by entering into that in which we are one with them, the universal and the fullness of the universal exists consciently only in that which is superconscient to us, in the Supermind: for here in our normal being the greater part of it is subconscient and therefore in this normal poise of mind, life and body it cannot be possessed. The lower conscious nature is bound down to ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-problem-of-life#p9</ref>Nature===
To make the effort for one's own ...purification is an essential means towards self-perfection . All these impurities and inadequacies result in various kinds of limitation and bondage: but there are two or three primary knots of the bondage,—ego is the principal knot,—from which the others derive. These bonds must be got rid of; purification is not complete till it brings about liberation. Besides, after a certain purification and liberation has been effected, there is still the conversion of the purified instruments to be disturbed by any mistake 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 others /cwsa/24/the-perfection-of-the-mental-being?search=perfection</ref><center>~</center>The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but reply by 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 silent certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will for their perfection in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also is always can be attained by the right attitudeintegral Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/3123/problemsthe-insynthesis-of-humanthe-relationssystems#p9p19</ref>
You stop short at the perfection that others should realise 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 is given to you, that is to say, realise what you have to do and do not concern yourself with what others do, because, after all, it is not your business. And the best way to the true attitude is simply to say, "All those around me, all the circumstances of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must make. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself." <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-8#p15</ref>===By Cultivating Faith===
And perhaps if There is one carried true perfection 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 oneselfus and the world, a faith that all in the world is the working of one would discover it more often 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 the Divine and to his Shakti in othersus we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory and perfection. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1024/aphorismfaith-8#p16and-shakti?search=perfection</ref>
For ===By Silencing the awakened individual the realisation of his truth of being and his inner liberation and perfection must be his primary seeking,—first, because that is the call of the Spirit within him, but also because it is only by liberation and perfection and realisation of the truth of being that man can arrive at truth of living. A perfected community also can exist only by the perfection of its individuals, and perfection can come only by the discovery and affirmation in life by each of his own spiritual being and the discovery by all of their spiritual unity and a resultant life unity. There can 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 oneness, 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 nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p37</ref>Mind===
We There is a world of ideas without form and it is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words. So long as you have to recognise 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 more that the individual exists not real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in himself alone but silence. There is a condition in the collectivity which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that individual perfection and liberation are one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the whole other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of God's intention 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 worldword means to you. The free use This is true not of speech only, but of our liberty includes reading also . If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, 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 two, you will 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 liberation centre of others expression. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p21</ref><center>~</center>Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of mankind; the perfect utility Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of our perfection the energies that work in the universe. It isnot, having realised therefore, the truth of the Silence to say that it is in ourselves its nature a rejection of the cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility of the divine symboltwo states is an error of the limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to reproducethe other, multiply is unable to conceive of a comprehensive consciousness vast and ultimately universalise strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it in others. 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/2321/the-threefoldreality-lifeomnipresent#p30p5</ref>
The best way of helping others is =Difficulties on the Path to transform oneself. Be perfect and you will be in a position to bring perfection to the world. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/helping-others-and-the-world#p12</ref>Perfection=
There No man is a Reality, a truth of all existence which is greater and more abiding than all its formations and manifestationsperfect; to find that truth and Reality and live in it, achieve the most perfect manifestation vital is there and formation possible of it, must be the secret of perfection whether of individual or communal being. This Reality ego is there within each thing and gives to each of its formations its power of being and value of beingprevent it. The universe It is a manifestation only when there is the total transformation of the Reality, external and there is a truth of the universal existence, a Power of cosmic internal being, an all-self or world-spirit. Humanity is a formation or manifestation of the Reality in down to the universevery subconscient, and there that perfection is a truth and self of humanity, a human spirit, a destiny of human lifepossible. Till then imperfection will remain as our common heritage. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2231/the-divinesubconscient-and-the-integral-lifeyoga#p36p2</ref>
=== When Man Becomes Perfect… ===<center>~</center>
Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity The egoism of the Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within instrument can perceive always welling out from its silence be as dangerous or more dangerous to spiritual progress than the perennial supply egoism of the energies that work in the universedoer. It The ego-sense is notcontrary to spiritual realisation, therefore, the truth so how can any kind of ego be a thing to be encouraged? As for the Silence to say that magnified ego, it is in its nature a rejection one of the cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility of the two states is an error of the limited Mind which, accustomed most perilous obstacles to trenchant oppositions of affirmation release and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to the otherperfection. There should be no big I, is unable to conceive of a comprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the activity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all actiona small one. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/realityego-and-its-omnipresentforms#p5p54</ref>
= More on Perfection... =<center>~</center>
=== EaseThe thing to which he has given his assent and set his mind and heart and will to achieve, the divine perfection of the whole human being, is apparently an impossibility to the normal intelligence, since it is opposed to the actual facts of life and will for long be contradicted by immediate experience, as happens with all far-off and difficult ends, Difficulty and Perfection ==it is denied too by many who have spiritual experience but believe that our present nature is the sole possible nature of man in the body and that it is only by throwing off the earthly life or even all individual existence that we can arrive at either a heavenly perfection or the release of extinction.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/faith-and-shakti?search=perfection</ref>
You must not cherish the illusion that if you want to follow the straight path, if you are modest, if you seek purity, if you are disinterested, if you want to lead a solitary existence and have a clear judgment, things will become easy.... It is quite the contrary! When you begin to advance towards inner and outer perfection, the difficulties start at the same time. <refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p29~</refcenter>
=== MoralityIn the lower grades of the ascension the new assumption, Diversity the integration into a higher principle of consciousness, 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 and the subconscient or inconscient. This is one serious obstacle to the mind's endeavour towards the perfection of the nature; for the continued share of the submental, the subconscient and inconscient in the government of the activities, by bringing in another law than that of the mental being, enables the conscious vital and the physical consciousness also to reject the law laid upon them by the mind and to follow their own impulses and instincts in defiance of the mental reason and the rational will of the developed intelligence. This makes it difficult for the mind to go beyond itself, to exceed its own level and spiritualise the nature; for what it cannot even make fully conscious, cannot securely mentalise and rationalise, it cannot spiritualise, since spiritualisation is a greater and more difficult integration. No doubt, by calling in the spiritual force, it can establish an influence and a preliminary change in some parts of the nature, especially in the thinking mind itself and in the heart which is nearest to its own province: but this change is not often a total perfection even within limits and what it does achieve is rare and difficult. The spiritual consciousness using the mind is employing an inferior means and, even though it brings in a divine light into the mind, a divine purity, passion, ardour into the heart or imposes a spiritual law upon the life, this new consciousness has to work within restrictions; for the most part it can only regulate or check the lower action of the life and rigorously control the body, but these members, even if refined or mastered, do not receive their spiritual fulfilment or undergo a perfection and transformation. For that it is necessary to bring in a higher dynamic principle which is native to the spiritual consciousness and by which, therefore, it can act in its own law and completer natural light and power and Perfection ===impose them upon the members. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p16</ref>
If you have understood this, you will be ready to understand the difference, the great difference between spirituality and morality, two things that are constantly confused with each other. The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting of the Divine; it raises the character of each personality to its full value and brings it to its maximum expression; for this is part of the Divine plan. Morality proceeds by a mental construction and, with a few ideas of what is good and what is not, sets up an ideal type into which all must force themselves. This moral ideal differs in its constituents and its ensemble at different times and different places. And yet it proclaims itself as a unique type, a categoric absolute; it admits of none other outside itself; it does not even admit a variation within itself. All are to be moulded according to its single ideal pattern, everybody is to be made uniformly and faultlessly the same. It is because morality is of this rigid unreal nature that it is in its principle and its working the contrary of the spiritual life. The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. (The Mother, 4 August 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p6</ref>
<div style=== Conflicts and Perfection ==="text-align: center;">
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 One man’s 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 still can save 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/cwmcwsa/0334/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divinefinding-the-divine-will-inof-the-world#p5soul</ref></div>
=== 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 '''Content Curated by correcting the human view of perfection or putting it aside as a too limited mental standard. We may say that not only is the Spirit in things absolutely perfect and divine, but each thing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself, in its expression of what it has to express of the possibilities of existence, in its assumption of its proper place in the complete manifestation. Each thing is divine in itself because each is a fact and idea of the divine being, knowledge and will fulfilling itself infallibly in accordance with the law of that particular manifestation. Each being is possessed of the knowledge, the force, the measure and kind of delight of existence precisely proper to its own nature; each works in the gradations of experience decreed by a secret inherent will, a native law, an intrinsic power of the self, an occult significance. It is thus perfect in the relation of its phenomena to the law of its being; for all are in harmony with that, spring out of it, adapt themselves to its purpose according to the infallibility of the divine Will and Knowledge at work within the creature. It is perfect and divine also in relation to the whole, in its proper place in the whole; to that totality it is necessary and in it it fulfils a part by which the perfection actual and progressive of the universal harmony, the adaptation of all in it to its whole purpose and its whole sense is helped and completed. If to us things appear undivine, if we hasten to condemn this or that phenomenon as inconsistent with the nature of a divine being, it is because we are ignorant of the sense and purpose of the Divine in the world in its entirety. Because we see only parts and fragments, we judge of each by itself as if it were the whole, judge also the external phenomena without knowing their secret sense; but by doing so we vitiate our valuation of things, put on it the stamp of an initial and fundamental error. Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its separateness, for that separateness is an illusion; perfection is the perfection of the total divine harmony. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-and-the-undivine#p6</ref>Prema Sankar'''
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==References==
= References =
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