Rejection Summary

Read more about Rejection from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

The power to say "No" is indispensable in life and still more so in sadhana.

What is Rejection’s Role in Integral Yoga?

In Integral Yoga, the effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, rejection and surrender. The goal of Integral Yoga is transformation. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that withstands it."

So if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we 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 the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre.

What to Reject and Why?

Rejection means rejection of the movements of the lower nature—rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind,—rejection of the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being,—rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine.

Here there are a few important points to note, to reject rightly.

How do we know what to reject? All that cannot be transformed or refuses to be part of a divine consciousness we must abandon without hesitation, but not from any preconceived prejudgment of its unfitness or its incapacity to be an element of the new inner life. There can be no fixed mental test or principle for these things; we will therefore follow no unalterable rule, but accept or repel an activity of the mind according to our feeling, insight or experience until the greater Power and Light are there to turn their unerring scrutiny on all that is below and choose or reject their material out of what the human evolution has prepared for the divine labour.

With practice one learns to distinguish more and more clearly, but one can establish as a general rule that all that tends towards disharmony, disorder and inertia comes from the falsehood and all that favours union, harmony, order and consciousness comes from the Truth.

Reject Ignorance, not God’s Manifestation

Rejection does not mean the rejection or renunciation of Nature as in some traditional paths of Yoga. It is not by rejecting God's manifestation, but by rejecting our own ignorance of it and the results of our ignorance, that we can best lift up and offer the whole of our being and consciousness and energy and joy of being into the Divine Existence.

What is Not in Accord With Aspiration?

Another way to evaluate what to reject is to present in the consciousness each thought, each feeling, each sensation, each impulse, each reaction, as it manifests, to the central being or its aspiration. What is in accord is accepted; what is not in accord is refused, rejected or transformed.

How to Reject?

The process of Rejection proceeds by many steps. To see [imperfections and impurities] clearly and acknowledge them is the first step, to have the firm will to reject them is the next, to separate yourself from them entirely so that if they enter at all it will be as foreign elements, no longer parts of your normal nature but suggestions from outside, brings their last state; even, once seen and rejected, they may automatically fall away and disappear; but for most the process takes time.

Each step is explained in more detail below:

Be Conscious of Yourself

The first step is to be conscious of yourself, you must awake to your nature and movements, you must know why and how you do things or feel or think them; you must understand your motives and impulses, the forces, hidden and apparent, that move you; in fact, you must, as it were, take to pieces the entire machinery of your being. Once you are conscious, it means that you can distinguish and sift things, you can see which are the forces that pull you down and which help you on. And when you know the right from the wrong, the true from the false, the divine from the undivine, you are to act strictly up to your knowledge; that is to say, resolutely reject one and accept the other.

What accepts or rejects must be neither mind nor open or camouflaged vital will of desire nor ethical sense, but the insistence of the psychic being, the command of the Divine Guide of the Yoga, the vision of the higher Self or Spirit, the illumined guidance of the Master.

Refuse to Express

If you do not accept certain movements, then naturally, when they find that they can't manifest, gradually they diminish in force and stop occurring. If you refuse to express everything that is of a lower kind, little by little the very thing disappears, and the consciousness is emptied of lower things. It is by refusing to give expression— not only in action but also in thought, in feeling. When impulses, thoughts, emotion come, if you refuse to express them, if you push them aside and remain in a state of inner aspiration and calm, then gradually they lose their force and stop coming. So the consciousness is emptied of its lower movements.

Detach

Stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, one becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us—inner mental, inner vital, inner physical—silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature.

Process of Rejection

Rejection often follows a process. What we reject from the mind may go to the vital, rejected by the vital, to the physical, rejected by the physical to the subconscient. Rejected from the subconscient also, it can still linger in the environmental consciousness—but there it has no longer any possession of the being and can be thrown away altogether.

Some Helpful Practices

The concentration in the heart is what brings about the opening of the psychic which is your principal need. If the concentration has brought about a feeling which makes you judge clearly all the other movements and see their nature, then the psychic is already in action. For this is the psychic feeling which brings with it a clear insight into the nature of all movements that come and makes it easy to reject what has to be rejected and keep the right attitude and perception.

Positive Effort

It is also important to remember that though the defects should be noticed and rejected, the concentration should be positive—on what you are to be, i.e., on the development of the new consciousness rather than on this negative side of what to reject.

Surrender

Rejection is intimately linked to surrender. If one’s surrender is truly sincere and there is this constant attitude in the being, this total self-giving to the Divine, “Thy Will be done”, in this way, one can, without knowing, without understanding, instinctively, choose the thing that should be done and reject the one that should not, but this becomes an instinct, a sort of automatic thing, if your surrender is perfect.

Not Repulsion, Dislike, Hatred

Rejection should not come with any judgement or ill-feeling. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.

Content Curated by Neel

Read more about Rejection from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.