The Three General Forms of Response to the Touches of Nature

0:01 Endurance can be trained and developed. There are entire philosophical programs that have developed to systematically help an individual face the pressures and circumstances of the world with a sense of equality and equanimity. Some of these disciplines rely on acclimating the body to handle increasing stress. One well known escape artist from the 20th century used to immerse himself in a bathtub of ice in order to prepare his body for extremely cold water during his performances. Others do systematic training to harden their bodies and prepare them for various extreme conditions.

0:43 But endurance is not just about the physical body and its reactions. It also has to do with both the vital beings reactions and the mind's responses to situations, circumstances, events and various forms of pressure or stress. There are many strategies that have been tried, including accustoming oneself to treat positive, negative and neutral touches equally without becoming excited or depressed. Some strategies try to reduce the influence of vital desire overall so that those things that would be normally attractive become less important, while those things that would be the subject of repulsion or concern are treated as of little or no importance.

1:32 There are others who simply try to minimize and avoid all such touch as possible and thereby not have to work at achieving equality or equanimity under pressure. This strategy is however shown to have its drawbacks if the individual ever has cause to enter into active life, as the springs of reaction remain in seed form and can come roaring to life when given the right circumstances. Some recognize that these are all simply waves of vibration, and in some cases it is the intensity of the wave that creates the difficulty, the inability to withstand or hold it without shrinking or breaking in some way.

2:18 In these cases the approach is either to work on widening the being to be able to handle a greater intensity, or strengthening the being so that it can handle more. The physical, vital and mental reactions are also very much influenced by the three gunas or qualities of nature, which keep changing all the time within each individual, so that now one is in the ascendant and at another time another one is in the ascendant. This implies that the same individual, confronted with two somewhat similar circumstances may respond differently depending on the guna which is at that moment driving his actions and reactions, Sri Aurobindo observes. Quote The principle of endurance relies on the strength of the spirit within us to bear all the contacts, impacts, suggestions of this phenomenal nature that besiege us on every side without being overborne by them and compelled to bear their emotional, sensational, dynamic, intellectual reactions. The outer mind and the lower nature has not this strength. Its strength is that of a limited force of consciousness, which has to do the best it can with all that comes in upon it or besieges it from the greater.

3:43 We're all of consciousness and energy which environs it on this plane of existence. That it can maintain itself at all and affirm its individual being in the universe is due indeed to the strength of the spirit within it. But it cannot bring forward the whole of that strength or the Infinity of that force to meet the attacks of life. If it could, it would be at once the equal and master of its world. In fact, it has to manage as it can. It meets certain impacts and is able to assimilate, equate or master them partially or completely, for a time or wholly.

4:27 And then it has in that degree the emotional and sensational reactions of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, liking, love, et cetera, or the intellectual and mental reactions of acceptance, approval, understanding, knowledge, preference. And on these its will ceases with attraction, desire, the attempt to prolong, to repeat, to create, to possess, to make them the pleasurable habits of its life. Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it, or too dissimilar and discordant, or too weak to give it satisfaction. These are things which it cannot bear, or cannot equate with itself, or cannot assimilate.

5:18 And it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission against them. It seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimize their recurrence. It has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to, and even invites the causes and therefore the results. For these impacts are part of life tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature.

6:15 Other impacts again, the normal mind succeeds in holding at Bay or neutralizing, and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility, or tolerance, which is neither positive acceptance and enjoyment nor rejection or suffering. To things, persons, happenings, ideas, workings, whatever presents itself to the mind, there are always these three kinds of reaction. At the same time, in spite of their generality, there is nothing absolute about them. They form a scheme for a habitual scale which is not precisely the same for all or even for the same mind at different times or in different conditions. The same impact may arouse in it at one time and another, the pleasurable or positive, the adverse or negative or the indifferent or neutral reactions. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 7 Attitude, pages 68 to 70.