Causes and Avoidance of Accidents

0:01 An accident avoided an individual related the following incident. He was driving with a passenger through Yellowstone National Park in the USA some years ago during the summer season. In a van late in the afternoon, he had a sense or feeling of an impending accident involving a bison, although there were no bison insight anywhere. So he was driving extremely slowly and cautiously. A park Ranger driving behind him was visibly impatient, but he did not change his driving speed. The Ranger passed him and speed down the road.

0:45 A couple of miles later. Suddenly a massive bison ran in front of the vehicle he was driving and he slammed on the brakes. It was a near miss. That the Bison looking into the windshield of the van from only a few inches away. Had he been driving any faster, an accident would have been unavoidable. As it turned out, the pressure on his vital envelope that created the feeling protected him from what would likely have been a fatal accident, a disciple inquires.

1:27 What are the causes of accidents? Are they due to a disequilibrium? The mother responds. Quote if one answers deeply, outwardly. There are many causes, but there is a deeper cause which is always there. I said the other day that if the nervous envelope is intact, accidents can be avoided and even if there is an accident, it won't have any consequences. As soon as there is a scratch or a defect in the nervous envelope of the being, and according to the nature of this scratch, if one may say so, its place, its character, there will be an accident which will correspond to the diminution of resistance in the envelope.

2:17 I believe almost everybody is psychologically aware of one thing. That accidents occur when one has a sort of uncomfortable feeling when one is not fully conscious and selfpossessed when one feels uneasy in any case. Generally people have a feeling that they are not fully themselves, not fully aware of what they are doing. If one were fully conscious, the consciousness wide awake accidents would not occur. One would make just the right gesture, the necessary movement to avoid the accident.

2:58 Hence, in an almost absolute way, it is a flagging of consciousness. Or quite possibly it may be that the consciousness is fixed in a higher domain, for example, not to speak of spiritual things, a man who is busy solving a mental problem and is very concentrated upon his mental problem. Becomes inattentive to physical things and if he happens to be in a street or in a crowd, his attention fixed upon his problem, he will not make the movement necessary to avoid the accident and the accident will occur.

3:40 It is the same for sports, For games you can observe this easily. There's always a flagging of the consciousness when accidents occur. Or a lack of attention a little. Absent mindedness, suddenly one thinks of something else. The attention is drawn elsewhere. 1 is not fully conscious of what one is doing, and the accident happens, as I was telling you at the beginning, if for some reason or other, for example, lack of sleep, lack of rest, or an absorbing preoccupation. Or all sorts of things which tire you, that is to say, when you are not above them. If the vital envelope is a little damaged, it does not function perfectly, and any current of force whatever which passes through is enough to produce an accident. In the final analysis, the accident comes always from that. It is what one may call inattentiveness. Or a slackening of consciousness. There are days when one feels quite not exactly uneasy, but as though when we're trying to catch something which escapes. One can't hold together.

5:03 One is as though half diluted. These are the days of accidents. You must be attentive. Naturally, this is not to tell you to shut yourself up in your room. And not to stir out when you feel like that, This is not what I mean. Rather, I mean that you must watch all the more attentively, be all the more on your guard, not allow precisely this inattentiveness, this slackening of consciousness to come in end, quote reference Sriorobindo and the mother. How are many cells Practical?

5:45 Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pages 18 to 20.