Oct

Oct. 1, 1998

The Secret of Values

There are many practical values of VALUES. The greatest of these is abundant success, possibly extending to unfailing success.

There are many spiritual values of VALUES. The greatest of these is, it helps to reveal the divine in matter or events.

Values are spiritual skills.

It is Sri Aurobindo’s assumption that every aspect of life is intimately as well as infinitely related with every other aspect of life.

So, values can be evaluated in terms of energy, force, power, skills, results, enjoyment, accomplishment, progress, Time, Space, matter, life, mind, spirit, the twelve aspects of the Spirit and every known aspect of life.

Each thing has a personality of its own. We call the material personality use value, vital personality enjoyment value, mental personality value of understanding, spiritual personality value of progressing towards the Divine.

As we relate to the different personalities, so the object yields the result.

The material personality of a chair serves us with sitting comfort. Its vital personality gives us an enjoyment of possession and a sentiment of relationship. The mental personality of the chair, when understood, gives us a rare comfort in sitting. An uncomfortable chair that gives back pain to everyone, gives the pleasure of sitting to one who tries to understand its contours in terms of his own physical shape. The spiritual personality of the chair, when communed with, permits us to touch the Divine each time we use it. To do this, we need spiritual skills which are values.

What are spiritual skills? How do we acquire them and use them in daily life in so mundane an act as sitting in a chair?

The spirit is benevolence and sweetness. Its twelve or more attributes are Truth, Goodness, Knowledge, Will, Power, Force, Beauty, Love, Ananda, Joy, Peace, Silence, Infinity, Eternity, and Light.

The truth of a chair is it is used for sitting, not as a stool to get on to reach the picture on the wall.

Goodness is to carefully handle it.

Knowledge of a chair is knowledge of where it is broken or bent so that in our use of it we take that factor into account.

Will here is a determination to consider the chair as a spiritual personality.

Power will be to reach the chair more fully so that in sitting we relate to all of its points more fully.

Force is that which controls our act of sitting in an elegant way.

Beauty is that which the poise of sitting gives to the poise of the chair.

Though every aspect can be similarly described, it is seen clearly that we need a psychological skill to elicit this response from the object. That skill is what we call value. It is a spiritual skill.

It is our theme that VALUES will lead to unfailing success when coupled with the view of the whole. We can see that values themselves help one to acquire that view of the whole.

The attitude that helps us acquire VALUES is the attitude that there lies a SPIRIT behind everything.

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