you must not give up spiritual aspiration; but if you want to become an integral divine being on earth, take good care not to let go of the other end, and make your body the best possible instrument.
It is a disease of the ordinary human intellect – which comes, moreover, from separation, division – to make a thing always either this or that. If you choose this, you turn your back on that; if you choose that, you turn your back on this.
It is an impoverishment. One must know how to take up everything, combine everything, synthesise everything. And then one has an integral realisation.
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Chapter II
Control of the Body
Words of the Mother
It might be better to remind you that we are here for a special work, a work which is done nowhere else.
We want to come in contact with the supreme consciousness, the universal consciousness, we want to bring it down in ourselves and to manifest it. But for that we must have a very solid base; our base is our physical being, our body. Therefore we have to build up a body solid, healthy, enduring, skilful, agile and strong, ready for everything. There is no better way to prepare the body than physical exercise: sports, athletics, gymnastics, and all games are the best means to develop and strengthen the body.
*
Words of the Mother
...to master one’s ego is the first indispensable step for doing yoga. And this is what can make sports a powerful aid for the realisation of the Divine.
Very few people understand this, and generally those who are against this outer discipline of sports, this concentration on the material realisation, are people who completely lack control over their physical being. And to realise the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo the control of one’s body is a first indispensable step. Those who despise physical activities are people who won’t be able to take a single step on the true path of integral yoga, unless they first get rid of their contempt. Control of the body in all its forms is an indispensable basis. A body which dominates you is an enemy, it is a disorder you cannot accept. It is the enlightened will in the mind which should govern the body, and not the body which should impose its law on the mind. When one knows that a thing is bad, one must be capable of not doing it. When one wants something to be realised, one must be able to do it and not be stopped at every step by the body’s inability or ill-will or lack of collaboration; and for that one must follow a physical discipline and become master in one’s own home.
It is very fine to escape into meditation and from the height of one’s so-called grandeur look down on material things, but one who is not master in his own home is a slave.
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