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The main purpose of the WORKSHOP is to cleanse ourselves from within, and a special effort is required to participate in it, a serious priority is to be given by the self. Nobody else can do it for us, time doesn't stop for us, it is flowing continuously. Just take a moment, think for a moment and see the life we are in, it is beautiful, but ask WHAT HAVE WE ACHIEVED?...............

11:45 - 12 noon: Meditation in the Shrine Room
12:05 - 1:30: Workshop in the New Creation Hall

The theme for this workshop is "Tamas, Inertia and Laziness". The following quotes have been selected for discussion by a number of devotees:
 

Even for those who have never been in trance, it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words; I do not mean an intellectual significance, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And its effect on the body is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate... and quietly you let yourself go, as though you wanted to go to sleep. The body vibrates more and more, more and more, more and more, and away you go. That is the cure for tamas.

It is tamas which causes bad sleep. There are two kinds of bad sleep: the sleep that makes you heavy, dull, as if you lost all the effect of the effort you put in during the preceding day; and the sleep that exhausts you as if you had passed your time infighting. I have noticed that if you cut your sleep into slices (it is a habit one can form), the nights become better. That is to say, you must be able to come back to your normal consciousness and normal aspiration at fixed intervals — come back at the call of the consciousness.
The Mother, Words of The Mother III, CWM volume 15, page 380.

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You tell me to observe silence and to go into the solitude of my psychic being, but how can I do that? Only You can put me in that state.

This is a completely tamasic reply. My consciousness is always at work, but you on your side must exert your will and make an effort.
The Mother, More Answers from the Mother, CWM volume 17, page 99.

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Are mental indifference and lack of curiosity a sort of mental inertia?

Usually they are due to mental inertia, unless one has obtained calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which the good and bad, the pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind.

How can one get out of this mental laziness and inertia?

By wanting to, with persistence and obstinacy. By doing daily a mental exercise of reading, organisation and development.
    This must alternate in the course of the day with exercises of mental silence in concentration.
The Mother, On Education, CWM volume 12, page 398.

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In the ordinary condition of the body if you oblige the body to do too much work, it can do with the support of vital force. But as soon as the work is done, the vital force withdraws and then the body feels fatigue. If this is done too much and for too long a time, there may be a breakdown of health and strength under the overstrain. Rest is then needed for recovery.
    If however the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother’s Force, they are then supported by the Force and may even be fully filled with it — the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after. But even then, unless the body itself is open and can absorb and keep the Force, sufficient rest in between the work is absolutely necessary. Otherwise although the body may go on for a very long time, yet in the end there can be a danger of a collapse.
    The body can be sustained for a long time when there is the full influence and there is a single-minded faith and call in the mind and the vital; but if the mind or the vital is disturbed by other influences or opens itself to forces which are not the Mother’s, then there will be a mixed condition and there will be sometimes strength, sometimes fatigue, exhaustion or illness or a mixture of the two at the same time.
    Finally, if not only the mind and the vital, but the body also is open and can absorb the Force, it can do extraordinary things in the way of work without breaking down. Still, even then rest is necessary. That is why we insist on those who have the impulse of work keeping a proper balance between rest and labour.
    A complete freedom from fatigue is possible, but that comes only when there is a complete transformation of the law of the body by the full descent of a supramental Force into the earth-nature.
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother with Letters on the Mother, CWSA volume 32, pages 257 - 258.

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You have written in Words of Long Ago that we justify all our weaknesses when we lack self-confidence. Why do we do this?

Um! So! We justify all our weaknesses? It is not a positive want of self-confidence; it is a lack of confidence in what the divine Grace can do for us. To justify one’s weaknesses is a kind of laziness and inertia.
    Well, when one doesn’t want to make an effort to correct oneself, one says, “Oh, it is impossible, I can’t do it, I don’t have the strength, I am not made of that stuff, I don’t have the necessary qualities, I could never do it.” It is absolute laziness, it is in order to avoid the required effort. When you are asked to make progress: “Oh, it is beyond my capacity, I am a poor creature, I can do nothing!” That’s all. It is almost ill-will. It is extreme laziness, a refusal to make any effort. One accepts all one’s defects and incapacities in order not to have to make the necessary effort to overcome them. One says, “I am like that, I can’t be otherwise!” It is a refusal to let the divine Grace work in you. It is a justification of your own ill-will.
The Mother, Questions and Answers 1954, CWM volume 6, page 267.

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What is “physical tamas”?

You don’t know that, you don’t? Then, congratulations! For instance, does it never happen to you that being seated you don’t want to get up, that having something to do you say, “Oh! I have to do all that!”?

Is it the same thing as laziness?

Not quite. Of course, laziness is a kind of tamas, but in laziness there is an ill-will, a refusal to make an effort — while tamas is inertia: one wants to do something, but one can’t.
    I remember, a long time ago, having been among some young people, and they remarked that when I decided to get up I used to get up with a jump, without any difficulty. They asked me, “How do you do it? We, when we want to get up, have to make an effort of will to be able to do it.” They were so surprised! And I was surprised by the opposite. I used to tell myself, “How does it happen? When one has decided to get up, one gets up.” No, the body was there, like that, and it was necessary to put a will into it, to push this body for it to get up and act. It is like that, this is tamas. Tamas is a purely material thing; it is very rare to have a vital or mental tamas (it may occur but through contagion), I believe it is more a tamas of the nerves or the brain than vital or mental tamas. But laziness is everywhere, in the physical, the vital, the mind. Generally lazy people are not always lazy, not in all things. If you propose something that pleases them, amuses them, they are quite ready to make an effort. There is much ill-will in laziness.
The Mother, Questions and Answers 1950 - 1951, CWM volume 4, pages 365 - 366.



 

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