Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 2

WILL TO OVERCOME DIFFICULTIES

      What makes good conditions for sadhana?

Aspiration, untiring will, steady calm and detachment, make the best conditions.

      Today I could control for a while the lower forces that were bothering me, but later on they prevailed over me.

      It is the nature of the sadhana. The forces of the Ignorance are a perversion of the earth-nature and the adverse Powers make use of them. They do not give up their control of men without a struggle.

      The one thing wrong would be to allow yourself to be overcome by them. If you remain steady in yourself, you can repel the attack or else it will exhaust itself and pass. In such circumstances you have to be like a cliff attacked by a stormy sea but never submerged by it.

      What part of my being responds to the difficulty?

      As I have written there must be something in your consciousness (probably the vital physical) in which these things can still find a response, otherwise they could be felt but they would not stop all sadhana.

      The thing you can do is not to remain passive, to refuse to identify any part of your being with these things and to reject it all with decision and force and to call in constantly the Mother's Power.

      Keep your faith, refuse the suggestions, use your own will, call in the Mothers Power.

      People say that when will-power is used on the fatigue,

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the fatigue sometimes increases.

      It is not the right kind of will-power then, probably they use some fighting or effortful will-power instead of the quiet but strong will that calls down the higher consciousness and force.

      The adverse forces feel that there is something in you that is discontented and restive because of the continuance of the inertia and they hope that by pressing more and more they will create a revolt. What is important for you in these circumstances is to make your faith, surrender and samata¹ absolute. That is as great and essential a progress as to have high experiences etc.

      You have said, "It is a matter of the most external consciousness being sufficiently fortified so that there should be no disturbance even there." Could you say in what way it has been fortified, if at all?

      I meant that it has to be fortified — it is the faith, surrender, equality that bring the strength into it, if they can be made complete everywhere.

      They (faith, surrender and samata) have to be put into every part and atom of the being so that there may be no possibility of a contrary vibration anywhere.

      Even a simple aspiration is not easy — could you kindly point out some active means to overcome the present difficulty?

      What do you mean by active means? The power to refuse, to reject is always there in the being and to go on rejecting till the rejection is effective.

1 equality.

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      Nothing can obstruct a quiet aspiration except one's own acquiescence in the inertia.

      My present condition has become very shaky, restless and too passive. Certain things have surged up which were not there before.

      What are these certain things? This kind of restlessness will not do. You must exert your will to throw it aside.

      I think you would agree that the going down of my consciousness into a still lower and darker plane is due to the need of the sadhana. It is to open and expose my lowest nature for the Mother's Force to transform it.

      That is not enough by itself; there must also be the steady will for transformation.

      You said that it is the ordinary oscillations of the consciousness between two forces — the higher power and the physical inertia. On what do these oscillations depend? At times when the peace and silence are in front, it is not because I have aspired for them. When the inertia is prominent, it is not that I have wanted it.

      Of course not. It depends on the play of forces in the consciousness itself.

      If the play of forces does not depend on us, what is the use of our aspirations?

      It does depend on you — your consent or refusal which has to be developed till it is master of the forces.

      The struggle between the higher and the lower forces goes on within in the same way. Even when the mind is detached I

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find no difference. What to do then?

      Nothing can be done except to keep yourself detached, unless you can recover the use of the knowledge and the will or else bring down the Mother's Force.

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