... force. If it is dark or obscure, or perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force. The Forces of the Lower Nature and the Hostile Forces There are [ at work in the world ] the higher forces of the Divine Nature—the forces of Light, Truth, divine Power, Peace, Ananda—there are the forces of the lower nature which belong either to a... difficulties, stumbles or falls. Yes, certainly [ there are hostile forces active in the outside world ]. Men are being constantly invaded by the hostiles and Page 757 there are great numbers of men who are partly or entirely under their influence. Some are possessed by them, others (a few) are incarnations of hostile beings. At the present moment they are very active all over the earth... certainly not [ a hostile power ]—it is part of the ordinary human nature, everybody has it. It has to be purified and transformed, the ego being replaced by the true vital being of which it is a distorted shadow. The forces of the lower nature are often rebellious and resist transformation out of attachment to the familiar movements of the Ignorance, desire, vanity, pride, lust, self-will etc., but they ...
... constant invocation of the grace and protection of the Divine Mother, etc. It is difficult for the ordinary sadhaka to acquire all these quali-ties in full in the early part of his spiritual career. So he cannot reasonably expect that he will never be troubled by any adverse forces or be the object of malice of the Hostile Beings. But if he is reasonably sincere and have faith and confidence in... matter: (i) What is meant by a hostile Force? (ii) Do hostile forces really exist? (iii) How do they act in the sadhaka' s consciousness? (iv) And how to frustrate their inimical action? Although not tangible to the normal consciousness of man, these adverse forces and beings do really exist and are very much active in the world. "The reality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and... mental plane. Rakshasas and Pishachas function in the lower vital. A few hostiles are active in the physical consciousness: the Theosophists call them 'obscure elementals''. But what is noteworthy is that the hostile beings and forces have absolutely no access to the spiritual plane. But why are these adverse forces and beings permitted by the Supreme to exist in the world and tempt and disturb the ...
... the hostile forces. Keep your aspiration strong and sincere and call in the Divine in each thing and at each moment for support and in all that you feel keep yourself open to us. That is the easiest way to the Divine. If you begin to concern yourself about the hostile forces, you will only make the path more difficult. Write to X that if he indulges these ideas about hostile beings etc., it... e. It is that weakness in the vital which enables them [ the hostile forces ] to keep up their attack. Instead of allowing the weakness, revive your will and aspiration and love and let them throw out this egoistic darkness. All these things, feelings, suggestions etc. [ depression, wanting to die ], are the workings of an adverse Force which wants to break up the Asram, upset or drive away... Difficulties in the Practice of the Integral Yoga Difficulties in the Practice of the Integral Yoga The Opposition of the Hostile Forces Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter III Dealing with Hostile Attacks Fear of Attacks Yes, the adverse forces take advantage of any perturbation of that kind [ mental anxiety and fear when something bad happens ]—for it opens ...
... obscure or perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force. The hostiles have themselves bodies though not of a gross physical kind—they see, but with a subtle seeing that includes not only bodies, but movements of forces, thoughts, feelings. Very great [ are the occult powers of the hostile beings ]—it is their occult powers... Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge Questions of Spiritual and Occult Knowledge The Divine and the Hostile Powers Letters on Yoga - I Chapter III The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings The Existence of the Hostile Forces The hostile forces exist and have been known to Yogic experience ever since the days of the Veda and Zoroaster in Asia (and... conquers. It [ the adverse force ] is the Power that keeps up ignorance and darkness in the world—it can only be destroyed when mankind is no longer in love with ignorance and darkness. Each sadhak has to push it out of contact with his being. When it has gone from him, then there will be no longer any serious difficulties in his sadhana. The hostile Forces are Powers of Darkness who ...
... about to be effected in the individual or the general consciousness. There are always hostile forces that try to stop or break the experience. If they come in, it is a sign that there is something in the being, vital or physical, that either responds or is too inert to oppose. The hostile forces do not need a cause for attacking—they attack whenever and whoever they can. What one has to... A progress made often stirs the adverse forces to activity, they want to diminish its effect as much as possible. When you get a decisive experience of this kind, you should remain concentrated and assimilate it—avoiding self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness. It is very often after a good experience or a decisive progress that the beings of the vital world try to attack... parts [ of the being ], but they seem to be subject still to a response to the suggestions of the hostile forces. Everybody gets these suggestions, but they ought not to be allowed to enter inside, especially in the heart, or to be accepted by the vital. Evidently, they enter through the physical mind (from the throat upwards means that) and affect the surface vital and emotional being. You must get ...
... your "what is all this". What is the connection between the inertia which is a static tamasic state and the hostile forces which are dynamic powerful things? The inertia simply prepares the ground — when there is the inert passivity, the adverse Force tries to take advantage of it to push in its own suggestions. "Surrender of oneself and all one is and... the Mother — for that will bring as its reaction a passive inert helplessness before the lower or hostile forces or suggestions, an unresisting or helplessly resisting acquiescence or sufferance of their inroads. A passive condition can bring much peace, quietude, joy even, but it disperses the being instead of concentrating it in wideness and the will becomes atrophied. Surrender must be luminous... always in a struggle with suggestions and forces. People very easily fall into this and make it a habit — the vital part takes a sort of gloomy satisfaction in crying out "I am attacked, overborne, suffering, miserable! How tragic is my fate! Why do you not help, O Divine? There is no help, no divine Grace! I am left to my misery and downfall etc. etc. etc." I do not want one more sadhak to fall into ...
... delirium, the cause of which is physical only—except in so far as all illness is an attack of lower forces of Nature, but these lower forces are not vital beings or what we call specifically hostile forces. They are simply performing their role in nature and of course there may be and probably is a being of some kind presiding over each kind of illness—in Bengal they give a special name to some of them... these are really Forces, not vital hostiles. As for the interest of vital beings in possessing men—beings of the vital world are not constituted like men—they take a delight in struggle and suffering and disorder—it is their natural atmosphere. They want besides to get the taste of the physical world without being under the obligation of taking on birth and developing the psychic being and evolving... Opposition of the Hostile Forces Letters on Yoga - IV Chapter IV Accidents, Possession, Madness Accidents There is no such thing as a mere accident. There is some—perhaps a very slight—unconsciousness in the physical and it is taken advantage of by these small beings of the vital physical plane—who are more mischievous than consciously hostile. It ...
... lower forces and the hostile attacks impose on me? How can you have peace and quiet when you are always thinking of "lower forces" and "attacks" and "possessions" etc. If you can look at things naturally and quietly, then only you can have quiet and peace. The worst thing for sadhana is to get into a morbid condition, always thinking of lower forces, attacks etc. If the... the least movement towards any such thing. After recovering from the critical period of darkness (attacks, depression, helplessness etc.) this fact comes out: I have exaggerated rather too much my difficulties. The adverse forces seem to have used a double method to regain their lost territory. First they got in by the back-door and when they Page 121 were... psychic love from developing, replacing it by the vital kind full of demand, ego, jealousy, revolt etc. and it has been the ruin of some. All that you had thrown out of the higher parts and quieted it elsewhere, but it remained sticking somewhere and when correspondence was suspended, the hostile forces took advantage of the fact that you were not allowed to write every day as before to raise up these ...
... way, the "outside" and the "inside". Théon, for his part, insisted very much on adverse forces, while Sri Aurobindo didn't talk about them. So when I came here I asked him, "But do hostile beings and adverse forces exist?" He said to me, "Yes, they exist, but in order to master them it's easier to regard them as being outside, rather than inside as a part of your nature." He insisted on the One: everything... distorted to a greater or lesser extent, even the "adverse" forces. What we call "adverse forces" are, at bottom, distortions of consciousness. When those distortions Page 48 predominate in a being, that is to say, when his nature obeys distorted influences and no longer responds to the divine influence, we may call it a "hostile being" (they do exist, God knows!). But here in India, they... February 15, 1967 ( The following conversation was noted down from memory. It occurred apropos of a young disciple who did not understand how everything—impulsions, desires, etc.—could come from "outside," from universal Nature, as Sri Aurobindo moreover declares, "I become what I see in myself." ) I told him once that he would begin to be intelligent when he could set all ...
... of contrary forces in Nature—but not always of what are specially called the Hostile Forces or intended to frustrate aspiration. A desire is an ordinary force of the lower Nature, though it may be used by the Hostile Forces. Hostile [ source of illness ] here means hostile to the Yoga. An illness which comes in the ordinary course as the result of physical causes—even though adverse universal... illness. Whatever force is sent is for cure. Increase of illness or physical suffering is not the result of the force. The Lower Nature, the Hostile Forces and Illness Attacks of illness are attacks of the lower nature or of adverse forces taking advantage of some weakness, opening or response in the nature,—like all other things that come and have got to be thrown away, they come from outside... universal forces are the first cause—is an ordinary illness. One brought by the forces hostile to Yoga to upset the system and prevent or disturb progress—without any adequate physical reason—is a hostile attack. It may have the appearance of a cold or any other illness, but to the eye which sees the action of forces and not only the outward symptoms or results, the difference is clear. These are waves ...
... thinking of forces which are hostile to us . These forces are not hostile to human beings, to their quietude or happiness, they are hostile to the divine Work. And usually I have heard many people speaking of "hostile forces"—for instance, "the hostile forces of illness which attack me". This is too personal a point of view, it may not be the result of hostile forces; you call them hostile because they... cataclysms, earthquakes and cyclones, tidal waves, engulfment of continents, volcanic eruptions, etc. Mother, are the hostile forces conscious of the function assigned to them, that is... No. He has said in the book that they have assigned it to themselves. He has said in the text: "The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function," that is, it is they who have decided to do this. But... asked whether the hostile forces were conscious of the function assigned to them. Because that would mean that the hostile forces help in the spiritual accomplishment. There is nothing that finally does not help. If they did it deliberately, they would no longer be hostile forces, they would be collaborators. For you must take care of one thing, you must not speak of "hostile forces" when thinking ...
... vision is open; if it develops things of a more definite kind will appear. Write to her again that if she wants to do sadhana, she must get rid of fear altogether; fear opens the door to the adverse forces. She should not listen to people who try to put fear in her. If ugly forms or sounds are seen and heard, one has not to fear but reject them and call in the Mother's protection. If she feels calmness... of the ignorance, a sense of danger with a violent vital reaction that replaces and usually prevents or distorts the intelligence of things. It might almost be considered as an invention of the hostile forces. Yes, fear creates imaginary terrors—even if there is real danger, fear does not help; it clouds the intelligence, takes away presence of mind and prevents one seeing the right thing to... look it in the face and overcome one's shrinking. One must learn to take one's foundation on the Divine and overcome the fear, relying on the help to carry one through all things even unpleasant and adverse. There is a Force that works even through them for the seeker and carries him towards his goal. You can write to her that to get rid of fear is the first necessity. Yoga can only be done on ...
... out from the thought and feeling also. And so with all other wrong movements. All these movements come from outside, from the universal lower nature, or are suggested or thrown upon you by adverse forces—adverse to your spiritual progress. Your method of taking them as your own is again a wrong method; for by doing that you increase their power to recur and take hold of you. If you take them as your... is a harmful and wasteful force, harmful both to the person himself and to the one on whom it is thrown. You are right in saying that it must be got rid of. Anger immediately opens the door to hostile forces; it is as if you were calling them. It [ a violent outburst of anger ] is obviously a surprise attack that took you off your guard. But you must throw off the tendency to anger with yourself... universal Nature; the human being forms in his superficial parts of being, mental, vital, physical, a habit of certain responses to these waves from outside. It is these responses that he takes as his own character (anger, desire, sex etc.) and thinks he cannot be otherwise. But that is not so; he can change. There is another consciousness deeper within him, his true inner being, which is his real self ...
... many forces—some were working for his sadhana, some were working for his ego and desires. There are besides powers which seek to make a man an instrument for purposes not his own without his knowing it. All of these may combine to bring about a particular result. These forces work each for the fulfilment of its own drive—they need not be at all what we call hostile forces,—they are simply forces of Nature... and memory. Some times there are things none present could know or remember; sometimes even, though that is rare, glimpses of the future. But usually these séances etc. put one into rapport with a very low world of vital beings and forces, themselves obscure, incoherent or tricky and it is dangerous to associate with them or to undergo any influence. Ouspensky and others must have gone Page 568... into the hands of the hostile influences and says, "This way I will go and no other. I want my ego, my greatness, my field of power and action", has not the Something the right to say, "I agree. Go and find it—if you can"? On the other hand, if the balance of forces is otherwise, Page 561 less on one side, the selection may be the other way, the saving element being present, and determine ...
... point of view, those adverse forces are very real, their action is very real, completely concrete, and their attitude towards the divine realisation is positively hostile. But as soon as you pass beyond this domain and enter in the spiritual world where there is nothing other than the Divine, who is everything, and where there is nothing that is not divine, these “adverse forces” become a part of the... spite of their distortion. The Hostile Forces This may be an occasion to bring the ‘hostile forces’ on the scene, including the ‘Titan kings’ and a numerous brood of lesser rank, so active in the wings of the visible world and of our inner theatre, and so powerful outside the fluctuating limitations of our tridimensional world that they can play with human beings as with marionettes. ‘As there... the total play and they can no longer be called adverse forces. It is only a posture that they have taken; to speak more exactly, it is only a posture that the Divine has taken in his play.’ 15 (We always return to our first premise: there is nothing but That.) All the same, it may be a play from the viewpoint of the Divine, but to the beings incarnated on the Earth, including the humans, that play ...
... those human beings who have allowed adverse forces to take hold of them and govern their lives, as soon as they leave their body, they are just swallowed up, that's all! They have already cut off the connection with their psychic being, so their psychic being often has gone somewhere far off already in other worlds... and so, their vital being, which is the receptacle for these forces, as soon as it... good. That won't make much difference in the world. It won't change things much. Sweet Mother, what will swallow them up? A still greater vital being! ( Laughter ) You see, they have in them an emanation of adverse vital forces, and the being or power which has emanated this force has done so in order to make Page 246 use of the body, to make it do in the material life exactly the... suddenly, it tells itself, "But I no longer have any power! I don't know any longer, can't do anything any longer, I am altogether an ordinary being!" And then, "But this is not at all good, it was much better before!" And Page 247 so, as these adverse forces are countless—these entities exist in thousands and thousands, you see, they are there swarming around people, only waiting for an opportunity ...
... then it can be overcome. Rejecting Wrong Movements of the Lower Vital The lower vital in most human beings is full of grave defects and of movements that respond to hostile forces. A constant psychic opening, a persistent rejection of these influences, a separation of oneself from all hostile suggestions and the inflow of the calm, light, peace, purity of the Mother's power would eventually free... obstacles and the hostile forces, it cannot become integral, it cannot remain unmixed or unspoilt or continue to be effective so long as the lower vital and the external personality have not accepted the Light and consented to change. It was inevitable that in the course of the sadhana these inferior parts of the nature should be brought forward in order that like the rest of the being they may make... way of calling in hostile forces into the general work or of vitiating and exposing to their influence one's own sadhana. On a smaller scale these defects of vanity, arrogance and rajasic violence are present in most human natures. They take other forms, but are then also a great obstacle to any true spiritual change. 2) Disobedience and indiscipline. This lower part of the being is always random ...
... usually considered a field where human beings forget their miseries and sufferings. Don't you think people get the impulse of dying because their minds are not sufficiently preoccupied with work? Those who get this are doing plenty of work. It is not the attempt at sadhana that makes them like that, but a want of vital balance which the adverse forces use. Even if they were doing no sadhana... sadhana it would be the same. About 'loss of balance' and the adverse forces using it in some sadhikas here: Will you kindly elaborate your statement? Loss of balance produces disorder in the consciousness and the adverse forces use that loss of balance for attacking and wholly upsetting the system and doing their work. That is why people become hysterical or mad or filled... to another without harmony or order. What produces the loss of mental balance? The loss of mental balance is due to...exaggerated ego, exaggerated sex, acceptance of a hostile force etc. Page 82 ...
... passage. It is here that the hostile forces playing on the weaknesses of the past nature strive to prevent the rapidity of the progress and to postpone the fulfilment. Those who fell, fell not because of the attacks of the vital forces, but because they put themselves on the side of the hostile Force and preferred a vital ambition or desire (ambition, vanity, lust, etc.) to the spiritual siddhi. ... enough to be free, it is the slave of the forces that act on or in his vital and physical nature. In the case of Socrates the will is so far free that it stands above the play of these forces and he determines by his mental idea and resolve what he shall or shall not do. The question remains whether the will of Socrates is only free in this sense, itself being actually determined by something larger... shall not accept—the conscious being has begun to impose itself on the forces that act on it. This mastery has become Page 513 so complete that he can largely determine his own actions and can even within certain limits not only forecast but fix the results—so that what he wants shall happen sooner or later. As for the Superman, that is the conscious being whose emancipation is complete ...
... submission to the Divine becoming hostile. It is men who are under the influence of truly hostile beings who become like that. The hostile beings generally attack, then make some way in, lay siege and create conditions for invasion and ultimately lead or compel the human being to fall. I am quite aware of the way in which the unconverted hostile beings, who have a hostile intention, get inside—there... said that she never upheld the hostile forces, nor was she their Mother. The hostile forces are upheld not by the Mother but by something in the sadhaks themselves which opens the doors to them by concentrated egoism, mental arrogance, vital revolt and many other things, e.g. lying, sex etc. I remember how I was suddenly betrayed into the hands of the hostile forces when I came to the Budhi house... The influence of the hostile Forces was on them as on all human beings in a less or greater degree, and so long as they open themselves to that influence, it works on them as on the world,—it is only by a perfect sincerity and by a perfect opening to the Light that it can disappear. In that sense the presence of these forces is a test and the world that has to be changed being what it is and their ...
... wound by the hostile forces? If they are sufficiently open to the Divine it can be done—but most sadhaks have too much egoism and lack of faith and obscurity and self-will and vital desires,—it is that that shuts them to the Mother and calls in the action of the hostile forces. Those who cannot reject their lower nature fully are made to suffer at the hands of the hostile forces and get wounded... decisive push. But in most cases desire or will behind the thought-force would be necessary. 26 August 1936 Page 619 In Conversations the Mother says about the hostile forces: "If you have overlooked in your own being even a single detail, they will come and put their touch upon that neglected spot and make it so painfully evident that you will be forced to change" [ p. 66 ]. When sadhaks... Page 614 Does it mean the cosmic Divine or the transcendental Divine or both? It means the Divine seen outside in things, beings, events etc. etc. Was Jeanne d'Arc's nature transformed even a little because of her relation with the two archangels, the two beings of the Overmind? [ pp. 17-18 ] I don't see how the question of transformation comes in. Jeanne d'Arc was not practising Yoga ...
... action shows it etc. Very often they think this even when she smiles on them most kindly. It is a purely subjective feeling generated by some difficulty in themselves. The Page 543 Mother is not displeased with people because they have difficulties; it is only a reason for giving more of her help and support. All these ideas you speak of are suggestions generated by the adverse pressure on... the actions of the sadhak is when there is some great betrayal or a violent breach of the main rules of spiritual life such as an act of sexual intercourse or when the sadhak has become pointedly hostile to the Mother and the Yoga. But then it is not a special show of displeasure at Page 546 Pranam, but a withdrawal of the gift of grace which is quite a different matter. ... the fact that now the Mother has little time to rest or sleep—and when it is like that she goes easily into trance at Pranam and when in trance she may in her body forget to smile or give the blessing etc. It is why I have had to warn people that they must not misinterpret these things. 19 November 1933 Yesterday and this morning after Pranam the idea came that the Mother was displeased with me ...
... like that, that he thinks like that, feels like that, acts like that, etc." At the first opportunity I shall show you a little example dangling before your eyes. That will not fail. It will come one of these days. Quite soon. Voilà . "The power of money is at present under the influence or in the hands of the forces and beings of the vital world. It is because of this influence that you never see... see money going in any considerable amount to the cause of Truth. Always it goes astray, because it is in the clutch of the hostile forces and one of the principal means by which they keep their grip upon the earth. The hold of the hostile forces upon money-power is powerfully, completely and thoroughly organised and to extract anything out of this compact organisation is a most difficult task. Each... built around you and which prevent your opening to the Light and the Truth." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 19 May 1929 ) When we come to the spiritual life with an aspiration, can the adverse forces attack us? Everybody, without exception. Even though they look very nice? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes these are the most dangerous. But how can we know? Ah! The easiest way, when ...
... exaggerated sensations out of all proportion to the reality of the roga behind. This is always a sign of failing power & approaching exhaustion; for the hostile forces, conscious of the failure, gather up & exhaust in an illegitimate endeavour all the forces which, properly used, might last for a longer season than that actually allotted to them. The Maheshwari patience is still needed to support these tyrannies... chatusthayas have been reserved for a swifter movement and a more powerful divine action. At present there is no sign of any new swiftness or power. The Mahakali Tapas is being farther strengthened and confirmed by the test of adverse experience. Dakshina Maghoni, the discernment in its fullness, is now at work; it is evident that all the suggestions given to the mind are satyam & ritam; only the exact... chatusthayas & the higher Amrita in which all limitation is removed & Death, etc entirely cease. Only the first will in this life be entirely accomplished. 1ˢᵗ & 2ᵈ Ch. Faith Iswarabhava Abhayam Premakama Hasyam This is the condition now being established Mukti Bhukti Discomfort of sensation is now being brought forward in order to be removed. All the indriyas are now free ...
... There are forces, and subliminal experience seems to show that there are supraphysical beings embodying those forces, that are attached in their root-nature to ignorance, to darkness of consciousness, to misuse of force, to perversity of delight, to all the causes and consequences of the things that we call evil. These powers, beings or forces are active to impose their adverse constructions upon... Cosmic and Universal Forces The Hidden Forces of Life Nature and Action of Universal Forces Universal forces means all forces good or bad, favourable or hostile, of light or of darkness that move in the cosmos. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - III: The Universal or Cosmic Forces They [the cosmic forces] act on everyone, according to the person‘s... acceptation of material being as the only reality. As there is a cosmic Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so too there is a cosmic Force that moves all things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action. Whatever is formulated in the universe has a Force or Forces that support it, seek ...
... Will + individual self-determination + play of forces + Karma + x + y + z + a + b + c ad infinitum. Suicides and accidents are supposed to be due to hostile Forces. Not Forces hostile to our work, but hostile to the suicide and to the accidented fellow. She died because "she was hostile to the Divine". So it can't be the action of hostile Forces, for it would be in their interest to keep her... Shall we put A on Sudarshan powder? All right. Try some Force please, A is getting disgusted, it seems! Only getting? He is chronically disgusted, to my experience. The hostile forces have made my life unbearable, sucking away every drop of blood gained after much pain and expense. Can't sit outside, even for a minute, under the breezy, starry sky. Their breeding place is in... it indispensable. Civilisation is good, but not at all points for everyone. I can't decide if he should be given any work, but if he sits all the time at home, that may act adversely. It will certainly act adversely. At any rate, his wandering work has to be stopped. On the contrary, to move in the open is surely one of the best things for him—provided it is not under the rain. He has ...
... usually pushes the seeker on a path which Page 574 may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers. The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order... subtle means on the supraphysical planes etc. are natural activities for the Yogi. But these powers are not sought after, they come naturally, and they have not the astral character. Also, they have to be used on purely spiritual lines, that is by the Divine Will and the Divine Force, as an instrument, but never as an instrumentation of the forces and beings of the vital plane. To seek their aid for... attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of conscious ness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces or allow oneself to be led by ...
... it reaches the harbour. 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. You must keep the faith always that however the lower nature may rise or hostile forces attack, victory will be yours and the transformation is sure. Keep firm faith in the victory of the Light and... chooses; it works through all these beings, through the forces at play in the world and the law of these forces and their results. It is only when we open ourselves and get out of the ordinary consciousness that we can feel it intervening as an independent power and overriding the ordinary play of the forces. Then too we can see that even in the play of the forces and in spite of their distortions... can be distorted by our own ignorance, weaknesses and mistakes, and by the clash of conflicting forces. That is why faith and equanimity are indispensable. Page 90 We have to have the faith that in spite of our ignorance and errors and weaknesses and in spite of the attacks of hostile forces and in spite of any immediate appearance of failure the Divine Will is leading us, through every ...
... Mother came to the door when those on the list were finished. She could not go back because it was extremely late and it had been a long and exhausting morning spent in a continual struggle with adverse forces and she had to come in, do what still she had to do and come to me to report what had happened. But even if she had intended it for some reason not known to you, your reaction was not the right... excited and hostile that it put its own imagined words and interpretations and tried to support and justify its hostility by its own inventions and inferences. This trick of putting into the Mother's mouth words that she had not spoken—often the very reverse of what she had said,—or of twisting her words and acts to mean something that she had never intended, is a constant habit of the forces of falsehood... away from peace and light and the true psychic condition? You were constantly doing that before and it was the cause of all your troubles, putting yourself on the side of the obscure and false and hostile forces. If you want to get free, you must cease listening to them, justifying them, throwing them against the Mother. We are perfectly ready to correct you and have no intention of leaving you to your ...
... vital world and escape its influence; there are no hostile forces or beings there. But there are others—and they are many—that can be touched or penetrated by the vital forces." Questions and Answers 1929 ( 26 May ) Which mental plane are you speaking of? Of the physical mind. Certainly not of the higher mind, for there are no adverse forces there. The reference is to the mind that deals... these beings, speak to them, even make an appointment with them for the next time! Can they exercise their influence on a human being, as the beings of the vital worlds do? Many mental formations try to realise themselves upon earth, but these are generally created by human beings; they then continue to work in the mental world with the intention of influencing the mind of human beings. But... that we usually have at our disposal—there are many others. Actually, for the physical being—note that I say the physical being—to be fully developed, it must have twelve senses. It is one of these senses which gives you the kind of perception I was speaking of. You cannot say that it is taste, smell, hearing, etc., but it is something which gives you a very precise impression of the difference of quality ...
... delight of his experiences, he can easily wander far from the highest way. But the Forces and Beings that are behind them are sometimes adverse Forces, sometimes the lesser Gods of the mental and vital planes. In either case they try to occupy and use the instrument, but for their own purpose, for the play of the Ideas and Forces they represent, not the highest Truth. There are only three safeguards for the... can be done. Or, rather, nothing will be done; for the attempt in such circumstances might lead to a breaking rather than a divine building of the nature, or even there might be a reception of hostile forces instead of the true light and power. This is the law of the relation on the spiritual plane: the consent of the disciple must be at every moment free, but his confidence, if given, must be complete... an almost insane fury and sent word that she was staying here in order to crush me and destroy my work, that with the help of the Page 395 British consul she would get me sent to prison etc. Her present campaign is her way of realising this programme. Her other allegations, mostly sheer inventions or grotesque distortions mixed with her own fancies, hardly need an answer. As to the charge ...
... Never believe that I do not want to see you. It is a suggestion from the hostile forces — a falsehood. 25 February 1930 The Mother Chinmayi, The Mother has told me what you said to her. In other circumstances I would have asked you to stay on in the confidence that, however sharp the struggle might be, the inner being in you aided by the Divine Force would prevail over the other and foreign... discouraged; if you persevere, there can be doubt that the permanent change will come. But be more resolute hereafter not to listen to the suggestions of these forces whom you know to the enemies of your own soul and of your quiet and happiness, no 1 hostile to you than to us and our work; especially, do not shut yourself the Mother's help for any reason whatever, and never do what these for tell you to do;... that makes more than half the trouble. There is no true reason why you should not overcome this defect of your external beings as many others have done. It is only a part of your vital nature that is affected, even though it often over clouds the rest the other parts of your being can be easily made the fit instruments of the divine possibility of which I have spoken. Especially, you have a clear and ...
... hands of the adverse forces, Mammon or Amrita's grand Titan. The favourable force can only come in waves which must be realised at once, otherwise the adverse forces will intervene and create all difficulties. Also it will not do to relax effort or turn it elsewhere when things seem to promise favourably,—the promise is likely to be deceptive because that is just the moment for the hostile intervention... suggestions and they are now almost the only positively hostile forces of which I am aware in the Yoga, the rest being merely the normal obstructions of nature. In my own atmosphere I am able to make their suggestions abortive and minimise their play pending their elimination. But in your case they seem to be moved by some more powerful force which not being able to act directly on you is using them as agents... during the meditation (I mean the vital being must not go out, the mental can always do it) or psychically out of the circle. But there is one thing that must be noticed. That if the manifestations occur in spite of all there must be no fear in the minds of those who become aware of them. It is by creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent the Sadhaka from crossing over ...
... play of Nature-forces but without recognizing the conscious intention which we call hostile." But Knowledge, too, has its disadvantages — as I was to discover soon enough — especially when it leads one to glimpse the world of occult forces, however fugitively. To give a typical instance, in my pre-yogic days, whenever I flirted with a wrong suggestion I never dreamt of its virus being cultured somewhere... moreover, you want to expel them out of your very being which has been their habitat for years and years, won't they get furious and attack from sheer fear of becoming homeless refugees?" This in itself would not have been so cataclysmic, if I may exploit such a purple word, had not these forces of Nature found the too-willing support of the hostile forces which are sworn to oppose God-seekers everywhere... down as they do here — with the veritable downrush of a deluge or the cataclysm of an avalanche. The reason is that in ordinary life these hostile forces do not need to be as active or organised as they are in Yoga — their Page 59 métier being to thwart all Godward endeavours, and in ordinary life people are seldom concentrated on such a task. But when the God-seeker wants to clamber ...
... necessarily effective. One can observe and understand, but not allow them to influence the mind; for often adverse forces try to influence the mind by suggestion through these dream experiences. Your experience of the peace in the body was a very good one. As for the bad dream, it was a hostile formation from the vital world—a suggestion in a dream form intended to upset you. These things should... real man who comes on another plane—sometimes it is a thought, force etc. that puts on his appearance by some trick of association or other reason. These figures and intimations in dream may be due to three different causes— (1) Beings whom you meet in the supraphysical world and who interest themselves in you. (2) Forces of Nature, mind nature or vital nature, that take these human appearances... fear of being submerged by the greater consciousness—a fear which in some may amount at the first contact to something like a panic alarm or terror. These dreams are quite symbolical of the vital forces that come and attack you. If you face them with courage they are reduced to helplessness. I don't think it is at all your father and brother that you meet—although something of their hostile feelings ...
... there is some part in you that does not respond to the protection; or even there may be something there that almost willingly and wilfully calls in the adverse forces. It is enough if there is a slight movement of this kind in you; the hostile forces are at once upon you and their attack takes often the form of illness." Questions and Answers 1929-1931 ( 19 May 1929 ) "Some part in you that... the being"? You understand very well, don't you, what "being under protection" means? You understand also "going out of the protection"? If you do something contrary, for example, if you are under the protection of the Divine and for a moment you have a thought of doubt or ill-will or revolt, immediately you go out of the protection. So the protection acts around you to prevent adverse forces from... even your lack of consciousness will not produce a bad result immediately. But if you go out of the protection and are not all the time vigilant, then either you will be attacked by the adverse forces or an accident will happen. But those who are not conscious? Those who are not conscious? But there, too, I have said that I was not speaking of ordinary people. I am not speaking of ordinary ...
... 40 Adverse Forces* Besides internal factors related to the constitutional make-up of the individual, yoga psychology speaks of certain external forces which are involved in some of the psychological disturbances, especially those of a more serious or psychiatric nature. These are spoken of in Integral Yoga as Adverse Forces or Beings of the vital * These forces have been well... earlier - constitutes a state of psychological well-being because it is not only free to disturbances of the physical, the vital, the mental, the subconscient and ego-consciousness, but also immune to the action of the Adverse Forces. REFERENCES 1. Collected Works of the Mother, Vol. 14 (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1978), p. 292. 2. The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo Birth... al weaknesses create an opening by which a person is influenced, attacked or even possessed by such vital Forces, leading to different types of psychiatric disturbances as explained in the following statements: "Loss of balance produces disorder in the consciousness and the adverse forces use that loss of balance for attacking and wholly upsetting the system and doing their work. That is why people ...
... body and its acceptance of illness. But, when the whole head is affected by the pains, sciatica, cold etc. how can there be any separation? There can. I do not agree. It is part of the tamas in you that you allow yourself to be obscured and overwhelmed by illness and naturally the hostile Force takes advantage of it. My brother says that during sleep I put my hands on... that it cannot resist the force quietly and persistently applied. Other illnesses can resist, but sciatica being entirely tamasic cannot. The application of Force does not yet, probably, come natural to you, so it brings a sense of struggle, not of quiet domination, hence the restlessness etc. You must arrive at a complete separation of your consciousness from these feelings of the... the sadhana. Could you kindly tell me what makes the sciatica appear so suddenly and also withdraw automatically? Page 45 It is quite usual for an adverse Force once it gets hold to take up a rhythm like that. How is it that the sciatica persists so much in spite of the application of the Force? It is evident that the ...
... Page 211 that the hostile forces had gained a great victory. Dr. Manilal asked in his somewhat childlike manner, "Sir, why did it happen to you?" And Sri Aurobindo shot back, in a similar tone, "Why shouldn't it happen to me ?" ( Laughter) But the surface explanation He gave was that He had not believed or thought that these adverse, hostile forces would dare to touch Him, so He had... very roots, and changed the course of world events without our least knowledge. One is the accident, the second is Sri Aurobindo's passing away. The accident was a great victory on the part of adverse forces. Nolini-da gave an explanation of it, saying that, at that time, in 1938, there was a war-cloud threatening the world. Sri Aurobindo told us later that, for some reason, Mother and He did not... you speak of: your Anahata, Nabbipadma, 262 etc.? Where are all these? I have dissected so many bodies, I've found none, and I'm a renowned surgeon!" So there you are! But I suppose that, about the semblance, the mask that we know as 'Sri Aurobindo', I could mumble a few words. Our association with Him is something unique, something unparalleled, rarely to be found in spiritual history ...
... whole supramental adventure altogether. On the contrary, the recent apparently heightened activity of the adverse forces was itself an Page 275 XII indication of the progress of the Yoga pursued in the Ashram: ... wherever Yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual... have weaknesses of the lower nature is one thing - to call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter .. .is going towards the opposite camp - for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection... genuinely concerned, for quite obviously this was the result of an insidious attack by an adverse Force that was on the prowl in the Ashram, like the Serpent in prelapsarian Eden. Sri Aurobindo accordingly wrote to Dilip in a tone of urgency and deep seriousness: It is certainly the force hostile to Yoga and the divine realisation upon earth that is acting upon you at the present moment ...
... vital fell into depression and adverse suggestions came. I took them as a test. But from where do such tests come and why are they necessary? Your description is too vague. From what you wrote it may just as well be the reaction that frequently follows an experience; the adverse Force coming in with a contrary movement. Tests come sometimes from the hostile forces, sometimes in the course of Nature... Nature. I suppose they must be necessary, since they always come in sadhana. Do you mean that an experience is followed sometimes by a movement of the hostile or adverse forces? Very often. The stress of the inertia is the general obstacle; it may be overcome in one thing, it may not be overcome in another. Your physical mind applies conceptions in a much too stiff and... for a time, but if the force is strong, quiet and persistent, it will get the better of the resistance - unless something in the consciousness supports the illness or is open too much to the adverse Forces, for in that case the struggle may be a long one. Why could I not succeed in opening my self for the cure of the eyes as much as for the sciatica? Because it is more material ...
... Supramental and letting through a greater Light and Power. For so long as the Overmind intervenes (the principle of the Overmind being a play of forces, each trying to realise itself as the Truth) the law of struggle remains and with it the opportunity for the adverse Forces. 10 November 1933 You say [in the preceding letter] that the Overmind, as a result of a pressure of the Supramental, is... but this would have been sufficient for the work of opening the way for the highest action, if it had not been for the irruption of these wrong forces on the yet unconquered lower (physical) vital and material plane. The interference was creating adverse possibilities which could not be allowed to continue. The Mother would not have retired otherwise; and even as it is it is not meant as an abandonment... scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer down to the field of earth and Matter. If I believe in the probability and not only the possibility, if I feel practically certain ...
... the 'Hostiles' take a hand" [p. 90]. Two questions arise: (1) Whether the Hostiles are something quite different from the waves of Nature? (2) Whether, during the process you describe (the "return" of the forces and so forth), it was not the Hostiles attacking all the time. There are some who are never touched by the hostile forces. The normal resistance of the lower Nature in human beings and... an army of forces or spiritual beings who surround you and live upon your experiences and enjoyments" [ p. 1377 ]. What are these "spiritual beings"? They are powers, forces or beings of the mental, vital or subtle physical worlds. There are some that simply want to utilise, there are others that want to possess, oppose or destroy and are known by us as "the hostile forces". 14 April 1936... perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood, in the Yogic sense, mithyā, moha . Page 103 (2) Powers and Appearances These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they ...
... intimate to yourself to which part of your being is naturally responsive. That is shown by the inability to catch what the being who manifested wanted to convey to you. It seems to have been an onslaught, as you say, an attempted invasion by force and ruse. It is quite true that when there is the opening to the Light, the adverse Forces as well as the lower forces become active when they can do so. The... one comes easily into contact with forces and beings of a darker nature and one needs a great power and light and purity—one's own or a helping Power's—to face them and overcome. There are also deficiencies or errors in one's own nature which can open the door to these beings. But the best is if one can have nothing to do with them; for the conquest of the forces of the lower nature is a sufficiently... the parts of our being are quite separate and clearly distinct from each other. We feel them indeed as different beings in us, and just as two people in a group can do, they too are seen to observe, criticise, help or oppose and restrain each other; it is as if we were a group-being, each member of the group with its separate place and function, and all directed by a central being who is sometimes ...
... the adverse forces, they will exact more and more and will never be satisfied. Y told me that very often he becomes an instrument of the adverse forces. Much of this is his own imagination ; if he thought less of these so-called vital beings, most of them would be immediately dissolved. If I can remain peaceful in the face of all circumstances, I can be sure that the hostile force... it is always the same trap of the adverse forces; if, instead of expressing their advice under cleverly perverted forms, they were to speak of things as they are, it would come to something like this: "Continue to drink in order to stop being a drunkard" or better: "Continue to kill to stop being a murderer!" One must never be afraid, and if the adverse forces try to lodge themselves in your lower... Page 184 My beloved Mother, can the adverse forces act effectively against the terrestrial evolution without using a human being as an intermediary? It is not impossible, but it is easier for them to find a human instrument. It is good to be confident and to have a living and steady faith. But in the matter of the adverse forces, it is good to be always vigilant and sincere. ...
... darshan and is obviously a suggestion of forces that want to disturb you and give you a bad birthday or bad darshan. You must get rid of the idea that it is in any way helpful for sadhana, e.g. makes you remember the Divine etc.—if it does it makes you remember the Divine in the wrong way and in addition brings up the weakness, also depression, self-distrust etc. etc. À quoi bon cheerfulness? It puts... hold of this or that excuse but really it comes for its own satisfaction and not for any particular reason. All depression is bad as it lowers the consciousness, spends the energy, opens to adverse forces. After you went from here it seems that the vital difficulties which you were emerging from here came back with your return to the atmosphere and that was the cause of the violent depression... The depression again was the cause why everything went wrong and the arrangements made fell through or took a wrong turn. For depression prevents the Force from flowing through and calls in the adverse forces and gives them a chance to destroy the helpful formations that are made. All the trouble and difficulty you have had will disappear or be minimised if you shake off this tendency to depression ...
... overcomes it, naturally one progresses, but that is a different thing from letting alien forces or influences enter into the conscious being. No one need invite that,—they are only too ready to do it without being invited. One can look at and become conscious of all forces, even the worst, darkest and most hostile, provided one remains on guard and refuses all credence or support to their suggestions... falling silent and becoming quiet. The thinking mind is sure to follow. The Drawing of Vital Forces by Others When people mix together there is generally some interchange of vital forces which is quite involuntary. X himself suffers from physical weakness and he complains of his vital forces being drawn out of him without knowing why it happens. Vampirising is a special phenomenon—a person who... change, but not reject life. It is true that one has to try to keep the inner condition under all circumstances, even the most adverse; but that does not mean that one has to accept, unnecessarily, unfavourable conditions when there is no good reason for their being allowed to go on. Especially, the nervous system and the physical cannot bear an excessive strain as well as the mind and higher vital; ...
... was in such a state of fearful terror that it was truly painful to see it. And all these people believe this is something holy! But it is a web of the hostile vital forces which use all this to feed upon. Besides, in the invisible world hardly any beings love to be worshipped, except those of the vital. These, as I said, are quite pleased by it. And then, it gives them importance. They are puffed up with... materially—and nothing but the contact of a link remain, you understand, it is a kind of link like a thread of light joining the being that has gone out with the one that remain behind—if this link is protected, nothing happens. But if it is not protected, there may be adverse forces, not only full of mischief but with much ill-will also, which could come and cut it. And then, once it is cut, you Page... submission of which the hostile forces have taken a dreadful advantage. The period of denial, positivism, is from this viewpoint quite indispensable in order to free men from superstition. It is only when one comes out of that and the abject submission to monstrous vital forces that one can rise to truly spiritual heights and there become the collaborator and true instrument of the forces of Truth, the real ...
... "Do not judge by the telepathy". This command to the nature is now being brought home to the mind by the continual demonstration of the uselessness of the telepathy unsupported by viveka & intuition for the decision of actual eventualities. Telepathy only brings to the knowledge actual forces, thoughts, states, tendencies, intentions etc; when it goes beyond and gives the event, as it can & does give... is seen & determined, they must not be dismissed from consideration, nor from use. The Will therefore is now working with this knowledge of the forces as its medium, making use of those that are favourable to its intention, discouraging those that are adverse. In this working it is generally successful, sooner or later, except when the object passes out of the field of operation & the idea or hope of... activity or else attempt to preserve the fragments of the old intellectual reasoning or of the undercurrent of habitual mentality. This defect is now being steadily mended; ideal interpretation is being applied to the material of telepathy, lipi, rupa, samadhi etc; but until this process is complete, the positive defects of knowledge, as opposed to mere occasional inactivity, incompleteness or limitation ...
... of the Force in that condition of the physical being, then the vital-physical difficulty can be faced. The effort to do it by personal tapasya can carry one to a certain point, it can throw out sex etc., Page 513 but for most it does not prevent all coming back by attack—unless the force of tapasya is so great and continuous that these forces get no chance. But the elimination of these things... the physical and, being a habit only, though a strong one, can be changed. It [ touch ] is vital-physical. All sex movement has a vital element in it, but the mere vital movement is not directly interested in touching or the sex act. It is interested more in the play of the emotions, domination and subjection, quarrels, reconciliations, the interchange of vital forces etc. It is the vital-physical... moved by mental forces. There is a vital love, a physical love. It is possible for the vital to desire a woman for various vital reasons without love—in order to satisfy the instinct of domination or possession, in order to draw in the vital forces of a woman so as to feed one's own vital or for the exchange of vital forces, to satisfy vanity, the hunter's instinct of the chase etc. etc. 2 This is ...
... things of the lower nature and is subject to the passions, anger, sex etc. If the higher part is dominant, then the lower is kept under control and does not give much trouble. But often the latter is supported by outer forces and powers of the lower Nature in the universe and sometimes these intrude and give the coarse part of the being a separate personality and independence of its own. This may be the... wanting to take you there. The plea from inability to do the sadhana has no value whatever. It is merely a plea put forward by the opposing elements in the vital and strengthened by the suggestion of adverse forces. If you say that you find your attachment to husband and son or others is so strong that your soul and your aspiration can do nothing against it and home is the real place for you, then of course... things and grow in knowledge and happiness and true feeling. The external nature is being changed by the influence of the inner being, but what is pushed out returns constantly from old habit—and then you feel this old nature as if it were yourself. This external nature has been like that of almost all human beings, like that of most of the sadhaks here, selfish and full of desires and wanting its ...
... results. Not being an allopathic doctor, I can't ignore a fact like that. Some symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. may be caused by many diseases, such as brain-tumour, syphilis, high blood pressure, etc. If you tell me that a homeopathic medicine for headache, vomiting etc. will be a panacea for all these diseases, it will be difficult for me to accept it. Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities... physical care of a patient also there are adverse periods when the resistance is great and obstinate and there seems to be more swinging back than going forwards or a persistent recurrence of the trouble. Faith persisting and the call bring down after a time sufficient Force to overcome the obstacle. 11 August 1936 The Force Acts on a Complex Nexus of Forces I have not yet written about the Force... here because he was in ignorance of the full facts about the menstrual trouble. 3 October 1936 Why didn't your Force prove decisive in this case? About the Supermind and its failure over hostile forces, I give you a chance to bombard me or else I will! What has the Supermind to do here? Who told you that I was using the supramental Force? I have said all along that it was not the supramental ...
... journals until his passing in 1993. ( The disciple wrote to the Mother about rumours being spread against him. ) My dear child, For the last months you have been fast progressing spiritually, and I would like you to take all these attacks as an outward expression of the usual tests that the adverse forces make to fortify and intensify the sadhana. It is teaching you to have an absolute faith... Supreme Divine, and the obstacle will be removed. Page 400 The adverse forces are allowed to act only in order to compel us to make ourselves pure and receptive enough for the descent and the union. With love and blessings. 30 December 1964 X is a poor man who comes here practically every week, meditates near the Samadhi and offers money very regularly. He feels the Mother's Presence... but only of the Divine. Blessings. 2 March 1964 Sweet Mother, When they speak of a heart-attack or stroke, is there really an attack or stroke from outside by the hostile Page 385 forces, or is it a failure or wrong functioning of the system? Each case is different. It is often a blow from outside, more often a failure in the material body. Sometimes both together ...
... the most material plane on which blows can still be given by the adverse forces, it is necessary to make a change which can best be done by a change in the inner attitude of the Sadhaks .... 11 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother - the Mother even more than Sri Aurobindo - had to be at the centre of a struggle with adverse forces, and of a work of change and transformation of the old into a... and this set-back seemed to cast a question-mark on the entire future of the Yoga of change and transformation of human and earth nature. It asked for all their dual tapasya to beat back the hostile forces, and not only retrieve the lost ground, but also to start the march again towards the supramental horizons. In the Mother's spiritual diary, Prayers and Meditations, there are but a few entries... e states - and a few had occasional nightmares. It was as though the divine and the anti-divine forces were invisibly caught in an intestine conflict which was also reflected in the life of the sensitive Ashram community. The nucleus of a New World was being fashioned in the Ashram, and the forces of the Old World were up in arms against it! Anilbaran Roy has recorded how one night (12 December ...
... the being that can truly say they are helpless: the physical (material) consciousness, especially, is inert in its nature and moved either by the mental and vital or by the higher forces. But one has always the power to put the mental will or vital push at the service of the Divine. One cannot be sure of the immediate result, for the obstruction of the lower Nature or the pressure of the adverse forces... to the Mother—for that will bring as its reaction a passive inert helplessness before the lower or hostile forces or suggestions, an unresisting or helplessly resisting acquiescence or sufferance of these inroads. A passive condition can bring much peace, quietude, joy even, but it disperses the being instead of concentrating it in wideness and the will becomes atrophied. Surrender Page 79 ... always in a struggle with suggestions and forces. People very easily fall into this and make it a habit—the vital part takes a sort of glowing satisfaction in crying out, "I am attacked, overborne, suffering, miserable! How tragic is my fate! Why do you not help, O Divine? There is no help, nor divine Grace? I am left to my misery and downfall etc. etc. etc." I do not want one more sadhak to fall into ...
... more an automatic response of the material to the higher consciousness. 4) It gives less covert and less passage to the suggestions of the hostile forces. 5) It is more easy to be conscious in sleep and to have higher forms of dream experience. Hostile dreams—e.g. sexsuggestions can be met and stopped in the dream itself and any result like emission prevented. 6) A waking will put on the dream... around him, outside his body, even when he is not aware of it,—by which he is in touch with others and with the universal forces. It is through this that the thoughts, feelings etc. of others pass to enter into one—it is through this also that waves of the universal force—desire, sex, etc.—come in and take possession of the mind, vital or body. When these things [ base feelings such as jealousy ]... down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even ...
... scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field of earth and Matter. 94 * * * May, 1933 ... But what a floundering confusion the intellect of... question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting forces. For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve something with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is, however, certain... But here there is a work to be done, a Truth to be established against which immense forces are arrayed, invisible forces which can use visible things and persons and actions for their instruments. If one is among the disciples, the seekers of this Truth, one has to take sides for the Truth, to stand against the forces that attack it and seek to stifle it. Arjuna wanted not to stand for either side, to ...
... habits. Page 487 Veda — The perception of the Gods, (Vayu, Agni, Indra etc) which was formerly occasional, is now regularising itself, all the gods being seen as Krishna, & again as personalities of the Four who throw themselves out in all. There was some loss of faith later in the day owing to adverse pressure in the body & in the kriti & the failure of confirmed decisive results in... but these are failing powers of negation. Only in the last adverse tendency is there yet any serious strength for anything but retardation. Therefore the Force is now being applied to the body. It has been proved that mental power can be applied to the modification of the lines of the figure or of particular parts of the body, to the hair etc; but the working has been slow, intermittent & except in... must certainly become dominant. But it is the impersonal Power that has to prevail by taking possession of the hostile forces. It is for this reason that the gradual process is so prolonged & that even now the hampering of the full rapidity is permitted. The Karma of Sahitya is being maintained, but too much in one groove. As soon as the October work is finished, a freer movement must be allowed ...
... rare and not varied in hue. 22 February 1918 The intelligence is being pushed aside as the judge and recipient; it still persists, but is being dominated. It is the intuitive mind that is taking its place, while in the thought etc it is mostly the ideality itself that is the judge and recipient. Lipi trikaldrishti is now being constantly fulfilled. After taking up telepathies into the intuitive... of them is becoming wider, subtler, more accurate, though far yet from being perfect and complete. Meanwhile T³ is suspended. T² is postponed. The hostile powers are attempting, as they are no longer able to prevent directly the continuity of the a. k. [ahaituka kamananda], to Page 1024 turn it into a neutral vishaya with extremities of acuteness turning to discomfort, so that this may... confusion was formerly the law. It is noticeable that as the samadhi gets deeper, vividness and stability increase. The interpretation of the lipi is now being done entirely by the vijnana; but definite trikaldrishti with time, circumstance etc is still to seek, except as regards the sadhana. In T³ there has been today a throw back to the intellectuality which is still attempting to judge what ...
... cholera, plague etc. are supposed to outbreak by contamination. If the contrary Force is strong in the body, one can move in the midst of plague and cholera and never get contaminated. Plague too, rats dying all around, people passing into Hades. I have seen that myself in Baroda. You will say then that flies, bugs etc. that contaminate food, are sent to people by these forces and they were meant... have had that here and elsewhere but no one got into a panic or nervous upset. N told me that Mother didn't approve of Y's staying at D's place... Up to that, it is correct. ...because adverse forces may act on D also and harm him. This must be N's own interpretation. The Mother said nothing to that effect. D had already got into a depression by J's visit, next Y's upset, finally something... that is the beginning of some kind of samadhi. And if some forces were to invade at that moment—this was my fear. Why the hell should they? But if there is any chance of that, call the Mother's protection around you. But do you say that স্তব্ধতা is empty of other presences? Certainly. Isn't it a fact that some adverse force may come and try to attack us in meditation? In meditation ...
... suggestions and they are now almost the only positively hostile forces of which I am aware in the Yoga, the rest being merely obstructions of nature. In my own atmosphere I am able to make their suggestions abortive and minimise their play pending their elimination. But in your case they seem to be moved by some more powerful force which not being able to act on you directly is using them as agents. Probably... of those who become aware of them. It is by creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent the Sadhaka from crossing over the threshold between the physical and vital world and it is also by creating fear and alarm that they are able to break in on the vital being of the body. Courage and unalterable confidence are the first necessity of the Sadhaks. I observe that... what I have written, that he should live as a householder, resume his relations with his wife etc., or that he should not be left mostly to quiet and solitude, if that is what he likes. What I mean is that he must come gradually, if not at first, to deal with those around him as a human being with human beings without his present nervous shrinkings and abnormal repulsions. The spiritual attitude I have ...
... dealing with the force of instincts and impulses, what is available to most human beings is the force of mental will. When one undertakes the practice of a spiritual discipline such as yoga, one comes to battle with not only the forces Page 124 of one's own personal nature, but also with corresponding forces of a universal nature which obstruct or attack the practitioner to subvert the... it is then that we must make a supreme act of faith and know that the Grace will never fail us." 10 "... in spite of our ignorance and errors and weaknesses and in spite of the attacks of hostile forces and in spite of any immediate appearance of failure the Divine Will is leading us, through every circumstance, towards the final Realisation." 11 "There is a return for all the trials and... predominates in one's consciousness depends upon the part of one's being with which one is most identified. Most human beings usually identify themselves predominantly with one or another part of the outer being - the body, or the vital (consisting of life energy, impulses, desires, feelings), or the mind. Each of these parts of the being has its own characteristic consciousness and attitudes. The physical ...
... of an unjust providence or an adverse malignant fate. It has nothing of the sense of freedom behind it, no knowledge of the play of forces behind the exterior life, no means of mastering them or using them as stepping-stones to a higher freedom, a greater destiny. The calm poise of the soul, the peace that surpasseth understanding are not his. He is moved by dark forces who hold him completely in their... better [ in dealing with the hostile forces ] to proceed by a quiet rejection and growth in consciousness—and not invite battle—though, if a struggle is forced on you, you must meet it with calm and courage. No objection—it is a very good thing to keep working in the higher consciousness. It is more effective than struggling all the time down below with the lower forces. There is no objection... them as movements of the universal lower imperfect and impure nature, forces that enter into you and try to make you their instrument for their self-expression. By so detaching and dissociating yourself it will be more possible for you to discover and to live more and more in a part of yourself, your inner or your psychic being, which is not attacked or troubled by these movements, finds them foreign ...
... dreams come from a hostile vital plane which is opposed to the sadhana. From there also comes the renewal of the agitation, the disinclination and resistance to the sadhana. This is not a going back to the old condition, but the result of a pressure of the Yoga-Force on the vital for change to which there is a resistance. It is this descent of the sadhana to free the vital being that made you feel... identify oneself with the psychic and spiritual being and through them receive the higher consciousness which will change the vital nature. The Intuition and the Vital The vital controlled and transformed by the Intuition has the spontaneous right sense of things instead of groping and getting things by the wrong end due to passion, desire etc. The Psychic and the Vital Your former sadhana... lives mainly in the surface consciousness one can only know them by their results—one can see that this or that is or must be a movement of the vital etc.; but the direct concrete experience comes only when one begins to live deeper down in the inner being. Page 128 × The correspondent had asked to see the Mother ...
... written in an oft-quoted letter of his: "I call no one in the world, nor am I here to convert anybody" etc.? In the end I wrote: "Such being your published views, why do you object to the path of vairagya which I propose to take especially when I feel deeply discouraged by all sorts of adverse suggestions?" To this he replied, once again, with his characteristic understanding and solicitude:... bring myself to believe in his fantastic doctrine of the "hostile forces". I challenged him to prove his thesis and mocked at the idea of invisible phantom forces, such as he posited, swaying sensible (?) men like us. This time, I imagine, Gurudev wrote without a smile of irony. "Dilip," he repeated, "it is certainly the force hostile to Yoga and the divine realisation upon earth that is acting... comradeship, the dark ocean on whose waves we toss for a brief hour. From the great night without, a chill blast breaks Page 26 in upon our refuge; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated upon the individual soul which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory ...
... to marry again because you needed someone to nurse you when ill, etc. etc. These are good reasons for keeping a servant, not for marrying. 30 September 1929 If she has the true call to the Yoga and not only an impulse due to the influence of others, the necessary conditions will be created. Even if the circumstances seem adverse, it will be only a test or ordeal and she will come through in the... pretty dangerous, however, if they did contact it. Sex (occult) stands on a fair level of equality with ambition etc. from the point of view of danger, only its action is usually less ostensible i.e. the Hostiles don't put it forward so openly as a thing to be followed after in the spiritual life. They did that more in the beginning, e.g. X and others. 28 February 1935 Touching is quite common... passions, but through the purification and transformation of the forces which these movements pervert and misuse. Not these human and animal demands, but the divine Ananda which is above and beyond them and which the indulgence of these degraded forms would prevent from descending, is the great thing that the aspiration of the vital being must demand in the sadhaka. The other question was about your ...
... of the Sraddha; but the forward impulse has ceased & in sharira & karma the adverse forces seem to be triumphant. Asamata of satyasatya which hitherto gave such acute trouble has disappeared. Asamata of siddhi asiddhi has revived and is the sole asamata remaining; but it is neither absorbing, nor violent. It is being rapidly killed. 17 May 1915 The reaction has deepened & injured without... the objective the adverse forces still hold most of the ground except in the physical Ananda, where victory is now assured. 20 May 1915 Dasyam is now becoming all-pervading and intense Sraddha Bhagavati is almost complete; sraddha swashaktyam is still deficient. The sraddha bhagavati is hampered by the inability to have complete confidence in the Vani; all vanis are now being taken up by the... finite). The adverse movement continues throughout the day,—reactions which are not taken up by the Ananda, voices, thoughts, suggestions which are not taken up by the Ishwara nor proceed from him, absence normally of the Krishnadarshana replaced by the Saguna-Nirguna Brahman, impaired Ananda of the vishaya of sight, failing faith, absence of udasinata & nati etc. Trikaldrishti, aishwarya etc act, but ...
... attitude must be like that. Nothing must discourage you; for there are all the difficulties of ignorance Page 251 of the different states of being, to which are added the endless malice and the unbounded cunning of the hostile forces in the world.... They are there, do you know why? They have been tolerated, do you know why?—simply to see how long one can last out and how great is the... flame. That is enough. And it is around this nucleus that one organises oneself, slowly, slowly, progressively. And once it is there it never disappears. It is only if you have made a pact with the adverse forces and make a considerable effort to break the contact and not notice its existence, that you may believe it has disappeared. And yet a single flash suffices for it to come back. If you have had... never could the creation become aware of the Consciousness. To transform the vital one must have will, perseverance, sincerity, etc.... But in what part of the being are all these things found? The source of sincerity, of will, of perseverance is in the psychic being, but this translates itself differently in different people. Generally it is in the higher part of the mind that this begins to take ...
... and suggestions and they are almost the only positively hostile forces of which I am aware in the Yoga, the rest being merely obstructions of nature. In my own atmosphere I am able to make their suggestions abortive and minimise their play pending their elimination. But in your case they seem to be moved by some more powerful force which not being able to act on you directly is using them as agents. Probably... of those who become aware of them. It is by creating fear through terrible forms and menaces that the hostile beings prevent the Sadhaka from crossing over the threshold between the physical and vital world and it is also by creating fear and alarm that they are able to break in on the vital being of the body. Courage and unalterable confidence are the first necessity of the Sadhaks. I observe that... equally by a bad one, or being brought about by the former, it can be misused or attacked by the latter. If there had been a protection about him exercised by one who had knowledge and confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced by the cries, grimaces etc., would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me add that these are not forces of our lower universal but ...
... incarnated in order to accomplish this very job. Any spiritual effort is as much as possible thwarted by the hostile forces. These beings exist on all lower levels of existence, as well on what is for us “inside” as on what we experience as “outside”. In fact, the ignorant human being is to them what the mouse is to the cat, for everything that to us is occult is their domain. Western man hardly... constructive forces of the ascending evolution, of a more and more perfect and divine realisation, and the ever more destructive – wildly destructive, forces of a madness beyond all control – is more and more evident, noticeable, visible, and it is a kind of race or of a struggle as to which [of the two sides] will reach its goal first. It would seem that all the adverse, antidivine forces, the forces of the... Mother said: “It is the last hope of the adverse forces to triumph against the present Realisation. If we [i.e. the people who practise the Integral Yoga] can stand firm during these months, they won’t be able to do much afterwards, their resistance will crumble. This is what it is about: it is the essential conflict of the adverse forces, of the antidivine forces, who are trying to push back the divine ...
... old devices the old nirananda. Hitherto there has been no success except in the external touches. The nearest approach to success has been secured by the return to the old tapatya & struggle with adverse forces to bring about the Aishwarya; this is always attended by confusion of knowledge & then by nirananda, physical discomfort of the struggle in the mind and the failure leading to emotional pain &... object, only as something possessing & enjoying it so that grief, discomfort etc, while keeping their nature, are yet movements of Ananda. But the personal Anandamaya Purusha is only occasionally manifest. 7 April 1914 The Anandamaya Saguna becomes more & more immanent in all objects, & what is more difficult in all beings, to the conscious vision. The vision of all movements of sensation as forms... temper of doing all things as paropakara, even apparent injury being done for an ultimate good to the individual & the world. As the Ananda of defeat, of the asundara, of the ashiva is insisted on, there begins to be finally settled in the knowledge & mental consciousness a more luminous sense of the necessity & meaning of the adverse movements in the siddhi & the life. The whole environmental nature ...
... cases, when one is master of one's concentration and knows where one goes—still this already requires a fairly great discipline—it may be that it is a particular attack of adverse forces, of bad wills, coming either from certain beings or from certain domains; but it is not necessarily attacks; it can simply be that one has opened one's consciousness in a place that's not very desirable or else sometimes... long—it is always the same work. This is why life upon earth for a psychic being is the opportunity to progress. The duration of earthly life is the time of progress. Outside earthly life there is, so to say, no progress. It is in earthly life that there is the possibility and the means of progress. But for all conscious beings it is the same thing, not only for those you call incarnated. It is for... don't control your thoughts and your vital reactions and if someone has displeased you for some reason or other, if that person has done or said something which you do not like, and you consider him hostile and so the spontaneous reaction is to want to punish him in some way or other or if one is still more primitive—if I may say so—to want to take vengeance or hope that something bad will happen to him ...
... again with rapidity, the general thought being already totally enlightened. All this is still in the secondary ideality suffused with the light of the tertiary gnosis. Certitude in trikaldrishti is now being enforced; the telepathies that give the wrong stresses are being enlightened in those stresses, they are being turned into the truth of idea-forces of being, each with its own provisional certitude... drishti, of tendency, force, intention, possibility and probability to masquerade as certain result, is being eliminated from T³. The same movement is being rapidly applied to Page 1100 the forces of the vital rajasic and mental sattwic planes which stand behind the mechanism of forces of the physical plane. This will complete the present trikaldrishti, except for the right perception of... of lipi etc. In the deeper nidra a more forcibly imposed and sometimes broken ideality. Coherence has set in; the incoherence is chiefly in incompleteness and fragmentation; the thing begun goes on well enough, but is suddenly broken off and another lipi etc starts in its place; but the chaotic entire incoherence was only occasional and immediately tended to change to coherence. Dream is being regularised ...
... the assistance of Prince Rama to checkmate and destroy those hostile forces. It then becomes a part of Rama's avatar-function to respond to the Rishi's appeal, fight and destroy the Rakshasas, and felicitate the completion of the sacrifice. Always when the conscious upward drive is countered by the play and pull of the riot of adverse forces, the call to Divine Grace is alone the sovereign remedy. ... the sadhak has to face in addition a set of hostile undivine forces as well. To strive of set purpose to move from the lower egoistic to the higher spiritual life is to provoke these hostile forces, and unless one has the strength to defeat them, the progress in the sadhana must be retarded or rendered impossible. With reference to these 'hostile' forces, Sri Aurobindo writes in the course of some... action of the hostile forces is a special intervention creating violent inner conflicts, abnormal depressions, thoughts and impulses of a kind which can be easily recognised as suggestion e.g. leaving the Ashram, abandoning the yoga, revolt against the Divine.... The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are anti-divine ...
... Otherwise the use of the Force, if accompanied by ego-reactions, may raise a corresponding ego-resistance and a struggle. The increase of samata is only a first condition [ for attacks by adverse forces to become impossible in one's work ]. It is when on the basis of samata an understanding Force can be used to make their attacks nugatory that the attacks will become impossible. The Impersonal... that it is the Divine Power to which all work belongs, is a means of self-dedication through Karma. Like the vital disturbance the physical inertia with all its symptoms is an attack of the hostile forces intended to cut short and prevent the higher opening. The ideas that arise to justify it are of no value—it is not true that physical work is of an inferior value to mental culture, it is the arrogance... one's own but as the Mother's, to do it according to rule, discipline, impersonal arrangement, even if conditions are not favourable to do the Page 244 best according to the conditions etc. etc. The impersonal worker puts his best capacity, zeal, industry into the work, but not his personal ambitions, vanity, passions. He has always something in view that is greater than his little personality ...
... Supramental and letting through a greater Light and Power. For so long as the Overmind intervenes (the principle of the Overmind being a play of forces, each trying to realise itself as the Truth) the law of struggle remains and with it the opportunity for the adverse Forces. It is not immortality of the body, but the consciousness of immortality in the body that can come with the descent... of higher beings as you suggest may be envisaged as a part of the process of the change. But the main part of the change will be the appearance of the supramental being and the organisation of a supramental nature here, as a mental being has appeared and a mental nature organised itself during the last stage of the evolution. I prefer nowadays not to speak of the descent of the higher beings because... sages and devotees and Yogis and sadhaks throughout the ages would have been supramental beings and all I have written about the supermind would be so much superfluous stuff, useless and otiose. Anybody who had spiritual experiences would then be a supramental being; the Asram would be chock-full of supramental beings and every other Asram in India also. Spiritual experiences can fix them selves in the ...
... This month has been a reassertion of the Dwayavin consciousness ending in the possession of a world unity in which two forces of the same Being are at strife, both directed by the Ishwara. The attitude of continual struggle with the adverse forces is Page 814 being established in the consciousness. Tapatya is constant against a heavy obstruction. St. विश्र्वस्यैकं परिवेष... other elements, tamasic suggestion etc, but these are less important. Tapasic suggestion more & more frequently fulfils itself in the end, though baffled at the moment. Tamasic suggestion fulfils itself chiefly at the moment, though still often in the finality. Tapas is at present depressed and occurs as a rule only in the finality, but often ends in an adverse movement. Ananda also is depressed... of the beginnings of organised Vijnana. [ Half a page left blank. ] 25 February 1915 The record has been suspended because of an almost entire suspension of all progress in which the hostile forces have seemed to take possession and only the literary & intellectual activity has continued to progress. In this field the perceptive intuition & creative interpretation grow in force. Roga has ...
... a psychological, almost a spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective conception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. No doubt it failed, but that was not due to any falsity in its inspiration, but rather due to the strength of a hostile pressure and the weakness still left... e purposes by man, and finally, after a struggle enduring through millenniums, has triumphed. And, as usually happens when she is thus opposed by her own mental and human material, it is the most adverse circumstances that the subconscious worker has turned into her most successful instruments. The beginnings of the centripetal tendency in India go back to the earliest times of which we have record... quarters there is the idea that Sri Aurobindo's political standpoint was entirely pacifist, that he was opposed in principle and in practice to all violence and that he denounced terrorism, insurrection, etc., as entirely forbidden by the spirit and letter of the Hindu gospel of Ahimsa. This is quite incorrect. Sri Aurobindo is neither an impotent moralist nor a weak pacifist. The rule of confining ...
... the letter cause so much difficulty? It is because the idea came from a wrong source and was an attempt of the wrong forces to enter and disturb. It was not so much the idea in itself, but the idea as an expression of dissatisfaction and impatience. Immediately the hostiles took hold of it as a line of entry for all the old movements once associated with this kind of dissatisfaction and impatience... out of the higher parts, and quieted it elsewhere, but it remained sticking somewhere and when correspondence was suspended, the hostile forces took advantage of the fact that you were not allowed to write every day as before to raise up these feelings and you did not repel them with sufficient force to put an end to the attack. Hence they continue. 25 February 1935 I find great difficulty in... you—apart from that which I always send you at all times. It is an adverse suggestion and influence which wants you to stop writing, because it wishes to cut the connection established through the book so that you might find it more difficult to feel my help coming to you. It is absurd to break off because you are for the time being unsuccessful in keeping up an uninterrupted progress; the interruptions ...
... transformation can be done. It is for more and more consciousness and more and more strength for consecration that he must ask. 1 December 1929 You can write to him that, if he is in the grip of adverse forces, it is not a condition in which to come to the Asram. Only those are called here and allowed to stay who are ready to profit by the Asram atmosphere. What he can do, if he likes, is to come for... readiness for his stay here. Page 566 (2) If he comes here, unready, the pressure of the forces at the centre is likely to be injurious rather than beneficial to his sadhana. The illness from which he has suffered, may return or regain force; the peace he is gaining may be disturbed etc. He is mistaken in thinking that to stay here will necessarily make his sadhana easier; it may make it... in them that negates the Yoga. If one follows one's psychic being and higher mental call, no amount of pressure of Yoga can produce such results. People talk as if the Yoga had some maleficent force in it which produces these results. It is on the contrary the resistance to Yoga that does it. 11 May 1933 It feels as though some hostile force is trying to pull me back. But I have no desire to return ...
... divine; on the other hand there is an outcry of disappointment, bewilderment, distrust, perhaps indignation, if there are human difficulties, if there is strain in the body, a swaying struggle with adverse forces, obstacles, checks, illness, and some begin to say, "Oh, there is nothing divine here!"—as if one could remain, vitally and physically, in the Page 480 untransformed undivinised human... Follow after Krishna by all means, but follow with the determination to arrive: don't do it with the expectation of failure or admit any possibility of breaking off half-way. As for the "hostile forces", it is quite true that to persuade the sadhak to cut off outer contact with us on the plea of solitude and intense sadhana, is a favourite device of theirs and has often led to disaster. It gives... respects, learning, external sanctity etc. etc., can easily follow after Krishna and reach him; that seems to me the sense of the symbol of the Gopis. There are many other significances, of course—that is only one among the many. Page 493 Radha is the personification of the absolute love for the Divine, total and integral in all parts of the being from the highest spiritual to the physical ...
... struggle is made more acute on account of the hostile forces. It is always safer to avoid such conflicts. (After a pause) If I were to put force on Y probably the first result would be that he would be more mad, because those forces that posses him now would naturally get angry. In the case of Z also the difficulty was that he was completely possessed by the hostile force. Page 177 26-9-1925... never the way to conquer death. Nature is not so mechanical, she is a conscious being. If you try to circumvent her in one way she circumvents you in another. All this sanitation and hygiene etc. of yours can deal with is the physical circumstances of health. But they cannot Page 178 get at the vital forces which are behind and of which the physical circumstances arc mere instruments... in the past. Can it be said in your case that the accident was the result of "Utkata-Karma?” Sri Aurobindo : I don't think so. For me it is a part of the fight against forces of ignorance and against hostile forces. Disciple : Your foot slipped on the tiger-skin. Now, suppose you had beaten a tiger in your past life with a stick, then it may give you a fractured leg this time. ...
... live." There is in human nature a secret enmity to the Divine that impedes Gods' work on earth. "Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth." Man is, in a way, an instrument of those hostile forces: "forces intangible besiege", "thoughts not our own," "touches from alien realms" come to man. This adversary Force hides from man "the straight immortal path". It twists everything divine and turns... front of Nature's march, His single being excels the works of Time". He is "A living knot of golden Paradise "A star of splendour or a rose of bliss". Page 294 In him Soul and Nature are perfectly balanced. There is in him an aspiration for the immortals air. He is a "godhead quarried from the stones of life." But there is an adverse Fate, "Twelve swift-winged months... inevitable hand of Fate and her quietude was disturbed. She became, for the time being, the voice of human grief: "She bore the common lot of men," "Passionate like sorrow questioning heaven" she spoke. She brought in her utterance the full burden of suffering that is in the world's dumb heart: "By what pitiless adverse Necessity", "by what random accident or governed Chance", came "the dire mystery ...
... materially by time and space. 3.1.1968 How is it that ordinarily, the richer a man is {materially), the more dishonest he is? It is because material wealth is controlled by the adverse forces —and because they have not yet been converted to the Divine Influence, although the work has begun. That victory will form part of the triumph of Truth. Wealth should not be a personal... identified, when one turns towards the creation, one sees and knows that the Divine alone exists both in the Essence and in the manifestation. 16.10.1968 Is immunity to the attack of adverse forces possible without transformation? Immunity does not come automatically from transformation. One has to cut off all connection with the manifested world in order to be immune. ... Divine, it is more out of ignorance than out of wickedness? Isn't it so? It is undoubtedly out of ignorance and fear of what he doesn't know. It is only the Asuras and a few great hostile beings who refuse or oppose the Divine even though they know what He is. 21.11.1968 Your child Shyam Sundar must accomplish the three "S": Sincerity, Surrender and Spontaneity. Very ...
... should Page 773 we—those of us who live outside the Ashram—do? The Mother has made an arrangement with a view to all the occult forces and the best possible conditions for the protection of the sadhaks from certain forces of death and disease etc. It cannot work perfectly because the sadhaks themselves have not the right attitude towards food and kindred vital-physical things. But still... a ploughshare, so I substituted fountain-pens. 20 July 1937 Death I firmly believed that death was impossible here. Since the death of S 4 shows that it is possible, it means that hostile forces have become victorious. There have been three deaths since the Asram began—one, of a child in a house that was not then part of the Asram and the other of a visitor. This is the first death... There are many men who are very pious, but they will give only to traditional institutions, temples, dharamshalas etc. Unless they are convinced, interested or somehow touched, they may not be so ready to give to the Asram. But the attempt can always be made. 13 March 1933 The vital forces who hold the money power do not want to give or yield anything except for vital purposes, it is only under compulsion ...
... oneself, direct an idea so that it shall enter somebody's head in America etc. etc. It is simply that you became conscious of the inner being and the inner world and rose up to a higher plane of being where the outer difficulties do not exist. The object of Yoga is to establish the inner consciousness and the higher being in you and by their strength change the outer existence. Page 231 ... universal nature; the human being forms in his superficial parts of being, mental, vital, physical a habit of certain responses to these waves from outside. It is these responses that he takes as his own character (anger, desire, sex etc.) and thinks he cannot be otherwise. But that is not so; he can change. There is another consciousness deeper within him, his true inner being, which is his real self... increases. Living Within There is an inner being in man of which he is not usually conscious; he lives in a superficial consciousness which he calls himself and which is normally concerned with outer things; one is aware of the inner being either not at all or only as something Page 225 behind from which feelings, ideas, impulses, imperatives etc. come occasionally into the outer. When one ...
... your plummet into the deep and perhaps you shall find it—or perhaps you will hit something that has nothing at all to do with it. 9 June 1935 No Partiality The worst suggestion of the hostile forces is that you are partial in your dealings. When this is accepted a wall comes between you and the sadhak and there is a revolt and then there may be an end of the sadhana! Yes, that is their... intervention to destroy the doubt, and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes Page 439 usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation or sanskara, and so the adverse force finds it easy to throw it upon you, to bring back the suggestion. You must have a steady working will to repel it whenever... his vital into revolt. Then by a stroke of good luck I succeed unexpectedly in making a sort of psychic opening. Decides to try surrender, purification of the heart, rejection of ego, true humility etc.—tries a little of it and is really progressing. After two months finds that Krishna is not appearing—gets disgusted and drops the beastly thing. And after all that he is always telling me "What an impotent ...
... of faith and firm will to achieve the Divine has to manifest in conditions which are the most adverse , to that manifestation. It can be done, but you cannot expect to be easily done. February 1935? I did not at all mean that Krishnaprem himself was used by the hostile forces. These forces can use anything for their Purpose by combining it with others to make part of a total suggestion... are worth striving for with so much suffering and straining and seclusion from life, whether in this world created as it is such a citadel of bliss and light, etc., was not, when all was said, at the mercy of what you call the hostile forces and what we see to be the fabric and texture of the world, Still I repeated Mother's name and prayed on. I fell asleep, and then suddenly felt keenly conscious... and independent personality. Page 226 You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent action of your own personality, though it is something in your nature of which they make ...
... replaced by the large in order that the movements now being effected may fulfil themselves. Samadhi The siddhi (lipi, stable rupa etc) 11 continues to take a firmer hold of the akasha in swapna-samadhi. But as yet the hold is not entirely firm. Sharira There is a general adverse movement in Sharira, all the physical anandas being depressed & only intermittent in action & the subjective... the triloka, (thrice seven), in the forces & purushas that constitute it. There is finality in the perception of the brihat satyam, without finality in the ritam. Satyam means truth of being, in thought, force, tendency etc, not truth of fact in actual eventuality. The finality of illuminated thought & ritam is Page 643 being prepared. When it is complete, there... tendency of deviation (ineffective besides) the movements willed. Another (human being) has done it with a little delay in spite of the intervention of hostile circumstances dispersed rapidly by the Will. Another performed the requisite movement, immediately & in full; three others with difficulty & not in full. (Human beings). Another (a goat) performed in full, so far as allowed by physical intervention ...
... the pressure. 14 Obviously it seems to have been a time of rich realisations and even richer possibilities; but also of delusions and wrong movements, resulting in the unleashing of adverse forces in the yet unvanquished lower nature. Like men a little intoxicated, and unable to stand it! Sri Aurobindo and the Mother accordingly decided that the Overmind-power was too upsetting in... this as part of the sadhana, but some few started grousing, and letters of remonstrance flew to Sri Aurobindo or the Mother or both. It was all symptomatic of the Divine struggle with the adverse forces that invariably made entry through the chinks in the psychological armour of the sadhaks. To infect faith with doubt, aspiration with tamasic negation, service to the Divine with rajasic... inject feelings of egoistic self-importance, jealousy, defeatism; to create the itch for questioning the very foundations of the Yoga and the Ashram - these were the stock-intrade of the hostile forces. The sadhaks couldn't apparently help the plight they were in, and accordingly the Master (in consultation with the Mother) answered the letters with a mixture of persuasion and firmness ...
... correct perspective. Firstly, the “hostile beings” were very real to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. They belong mainly to the vital worlds, but also partially to mental worlds, and are dominating the earth in its present state. This dominion they want to keep, and as their nature is sheer ego, their methods and actions are ruthless. Compared with the great hostiles, Asuras for instance, the popular... the tiers of being. For vital beings exist in vital substance, mental beings in mental substance, supramental beings in supramental substance. “[Matter] is a fit and noble material out of which He weaves constantly His garbs, builds recurrently the unending series of His mansions.” 4 The Upanishads describe the physical universe of gross matter “as the external body of the Divine Being”. 5 Therefore... popular idea of the devil in Christianity is but a grotesque caricature. Hostile beings influence our lives constantly, unseen and unawares, and are the cause of all evil, corruption and perversion, for that is what they revel in. They resist every effort to change the world or oneself for the better as that goes against their interests. This means that they are the arch-enemies of any kind of spiritual ...
... there, a few of which she recounted in later years. These may be found among her writings. They reveal the existence of realms of consciousness, beings and forces which we ordinarily cannot even conceive of, and also how it is possible to bring such forces under control. However, the Mother always said that occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, both for the one who... difficulties were only an outer sign of the larger struggle against anti-divine forces which had ranged themselves to thwart Sri Aurobindo's sadhana. In Sri Aurobindo's view, money is a universal force which in its origin and true action belongs to the Divine but it has been usurped for the purposes of ego and held by hostile influences and perverted to their purpose. In the course of a conversation Sri... Sri Aurobindo once said: 'As the money-power today is in the hands of the hostile forces, naturally, we have to fight them. Whenever they see that you are trying to oust them they will try to thwart your efforts. You have to bring a higher power than these and put them down.' After reaching Japan it seems that the Mother wrote to Sri Aurobindo mentioning some difficulties or recoils in a particular ...
... Page 19 Would you please tell me the reason for the cyclone? The cyclone was the result of a violent attack of hostile forces. 18 December 1933 Do you think that solely through an intense aspiration one can gain silence of the whole being and do sadhana by that silence? Yes. Can all the impurities of the mind, vital and physical disappear by the descent of this... "that which"? The force, the power, the consciousness, the knowledge, the love, etc., etc. 7 April 1936 Page 181 "But the religious being turns to Thee, O Lord, in a great aspiration of love, and implores Thy help." (24 June 1914) What do You mean by "the religious being"? The being which has religious, devotional feelings. 2 April 1936 "What wisdom is... physically until there is no demand left in me. This is a hostile suggestion which is completely false and you must immediately reject it. 1 June 1935 Page 100 Nowhere in this world can I find a quiet and peaceful life. And yet a part of my being enjoys the evolution of the world. Certainly a part of your being is in harmony with the psychic life of the universe. 4 June ...
... submission of which the hostile forces have taken a dreadful advantage. The period of denial, positivism, is from this viewpoint quite indispensable in order to free men from superstition. It is only when one comes out of that and the abject submission to monstrous vital forces that one can rise to truly spiritual heights and there become the collaborator and true instrument of the forces of Truth, the real... possible. Once you have done all this, you may add either a prayer or an aspiration in accordance with your nature, to ask for the consciousness and peace and to be protected against all the adverse forces throughout the sleep, to be in a concentration of quiet aspiration and in the protection; ask the Grace to watch over your sleep; and then go to sleep. This is to sleep in the best possible conditions... selfishness; the result, you see, is that instead of being able to withdraw in a slightly higher consciousness which will protect him in his exit, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner battle to free himself from both his body and his attachments. Source Religious Ceremony ...in the invisible world hardly any beings love to be worshipped, except those of the vital ...
... she was helping to change – and through them of the hostile forces that, threatened in their existence, used the sadhaks to attack her. You must have practised a yogic discipline to know how, as soon as you take it up, everything contrary and adverse to it in yourself and around you will lift its head. The powers that rule the world do not like being questioned, contradicted or threatened; and as they... to an occult fact all spiritual endeavours have to reckon with – especially an endeavour undertaken to bring to an end the realm of these hostile beings. It is little realized that an important aspect of the sadhana of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother consisted in acquiring and exerting the power to protect the cradle of their New Creation in Matter and all who became involved in it. ‘The Ashram is a first... to allow itself to be counteracted by exterior forces, by exterior life movements, can these people meet. This is a profound truth of reality. There are large families of beings who work for the same cause, who have been together before in various numbers, and who come down [into the world] in groups as it were.’ 25 As such a ‘family of beings’ is formed by a higher Force in view of a particular ...
... akash is still troubled & occupied by hostile forces. Today's experience has thrown a clear light on many expressions in the Veda especially in relation to Indra and the Rudras. There is a movement in the rupadrishti, perfect lifeimages, eg a butterfly, a squirrel, indistinguishable to the eye from the real object, dashing into the full sthula akasha or being glimpsed leaping through it; but there... happens that seems to be adverse, must be accepted as a means towards success & fruition. (Note. This last direction is as yet very imperfectly fulfilled; the acceptance is there, but the outer mental parts are uneasy & cannot entirely resist the old reaction of distrust.) The Avaranam from the trikaldrishti has been removed, & all its parts are again functioning as before & being continually proved... bhasha, vyakarana etc are now progressing normally of themselves, without any sadhan or use of will-power for the purpose, the defects reoccurring, falling away, diminishing & thus passing out by a natural & quiet elimination,—the way in which the first two chatusthayas have been or are being finally perfected. It is only the rupadrishti in the third chatusthaya that is still being pushed forward against ...
... from adverse forces. I was imagining that Mother will throw away this book in disgust, or that Sri Aurobindo will write two pages asking me to quit the Ashram or at least to stop work from tomorrow. Mother will say: this is the effect of indulging himself so much in the morning! He deserves to be kicked out. And so on. The usual nonsense. By the way, I don't find that the Hostile Forces... merely saying: "nothing will happen" that an accident can be avoided. Your mental formation may be strong, but the contrary formation is at least as strong as yours—and we must never tempt the adverse forces. Page 14 I ask you to discard all obstinacy and to be perfectly sincere . Go and see with no preconceived idea. Go and see honestly, carefully, all round the place; consider that... because it was not supported by Sweet Mother, and I firmly believe that nothing whatever can hold true or be effective unless it is supported by Sweet Mother. When we are in the presence of hostile forces, only the purity of an absolute truth can conquer them. This is the argument, almost word for word, that upset me, and I still haven't found the answer to this problem. Enlighten me, Sweet ...
... outside that can really harm us, so long as there is none within us to respond to it. But, it may be asked, are there not forces hostile to us and to our spiritual progress, which attack us from outside? It must be admitted at once that there are, no doubt, many such forces in the world, and that they do strive to delude or thwart us; but if we oppose them with a calm and resolute rejection, fortified... life and experiences of the Mother. Here we are concerned only with their general import and universal applicability. Page 298 hindrance. Very often the buffet of adverse circumstances fires the being into a more intensive effort and induces an integration of its parts which would have otherwise remained either dully apathetic or feebly responsive to the call of the Spirit. The... the greater perfection of the being. ”¹ In regard to the difficulties we encounter in work, the Mother says, "The difficulties in work come not from circumstances or outer petty occurrences, they come from something in the inner attitude (especially in the vital attitude) which is wrong,—egoism, ambition, fixity of the mental conceptions regarding work, etc., etc. And it is always better to look ...
... materially by time and space. 3 January 1968 How is it that ordinarily the richer one is (materially), the more dishonest one is? It is because material wealth is controlled by the adverse forces—and because they have not yet been converted to the Divine Influence, though the work has begun. That victory will form part of the triumph of Truth. Wealth should not be a personal property... identified, when one turns towards the creation, one sees and knows that the Divine alone exists both in the Essence and in the manifestation. 16 October 1968 Is immunity to the attack of adverse forces possible without transformation? Immunity does not come automatically from transformation. One has to cut off all connection with the manifested world in order to be immune. But in any... accept the Divine, it is more out of ignorance than out of wickedness. Isn't it so? It is undoubtedly out of ignorance and fear of what he doesn't know. It is only the Asuras and a few great hostile beings who refuse and oppose the Divine even though they know who He is. 21 November 1968 It seems to me, Mother, that the flame that calls and the flame that responds are one and the same. ...
... language? Speech more direct, more realistic cannot be conceived; but of course the directness is from deep within a being who is not circumscribed by the pass-ing body of one brief existence lit by the surface-gazing of a small human mind—and, the realism includes Titan forces, the dark Inconscient and the Ancient of the worlds no less than the slow ages and Time's enormous sea and the days of... another. This is what I have tried to do. The critic or reader will judge for himself whether I have succeeded or failed; but if he has seen nothing and understood nothing, it does not follow that his adverse judgment is sure to be the right and true one, there is at least a chance that he may so conclude, not because there is nothing to see and nothing to understand, only poor pseudo-stuff or a rhetorical... vinegar would also have seeped into the Introduction as smacking of "young modern poets". But, for all the hostility meant to find a reflex there, the Introduction cannot be regarded as fundamentally hostile to Sri Aurobindo: when it speaks in its own voice it does not echo Mr. Lal or anticipate Mr. Ezekiel. How can it, indeed, when the compiler could pick out from both these progressive poets no very ...
... this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world … Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again... got!” The different pieces from different parts of the bodies represented different desires and feelings – lust, greed, hatred, jealousy, etc. And the beings who took the pieces and some of who started eating them were themselves representatives of the same desires and feelings. Each got what corresponded to his own nature. All were enjoying themselves over the hold they had on humans. Many of the corpses... zed in part of their personality, even without their surface consciousness being aware of it. After death we carry with us what we are inwardly. It may be assumed that people who are in part supramentalized are fully mature souls, sufficiently developed to dwell in the supramental world(s), and that the former human beings now with Sri Aurobindo, and ready to come down with him as the first supermen ...
... that the adverse forces Won their first victory. Or it could be understood in the Page 211 sense that Sri Aurobindo took upon himself the first impact of these forces and thus saved the earth. (28) I ndia became free in 1947. All around the country there was celebration: fireworks, illuminations, singing processions in the morning, parades, etc. During... spiritual significance Mother had given to this flower: Peace in the Vital, the result of abolition of desires. Now I understand how Mother and Sri Aurobindo eliminate and disperse all obscurity and hostile feelings in this silent, imperceptible, secret way through the light of their Grace and Love. This is perhaps what is called Divine Alchemy. (25) W hen I was about seven... gamcha (a light Indian towel) tightly tied round the waist. They used to carry a stick glistening with oil. They would show all kinds of lathi-play and other movements with spears, daggers, swords, etc. Two opponents would stand facing each other holding lathis. The drum would sound and to the beat of drums they would move their feet and with a shout "Hara-ra-ra-ra" they would alternately advance and ...
... only way out of its trouble. It is the very opposite of that equanimity, fortitude, self- mastery which is always recommended as the proper attitude of the Yogi. This has been seized upon by the forces adverse to the sadhana with [heir usual cleverness to prevent you from making the steady and finally decisive progress which would put all the trouble behind you. Their method is very simple. You make... cost. It was another part of your vital that would have liked to take that attitude, but this smaller part prevented it and brought in a confusion and a mixture which was rather used by the adverse forces to turn you away from belief in or hope of the goal. This confusion of mind and vital you must get rid of— you must call in the true reason and the higher vital to cast out these movements. A... expect a divine intervention to destroy the doubt, and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation or samskar, and so the adverse force finds it easy to throw it upon you, to bring back the suggestion. You must have a steady working will to repel it whenever ...
... them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weakness to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked Yogis so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of the Yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user. "But it is mostly people who live much in the vital that so fall; with a strong and free and calm mind and... Of course the first thing is to believe, aspire and, with the true urge within, make the endeavour."* I need hardly comment further on the phenomena, the less so because being ignorant of the working of occult forces impinging on our world of senses, I prefer to keep my ignorance from speculating about things beyond my ken. So I shall attempt now what I know and understand a little better... published in my Anami — recanted his faith in the Divine, having been overwhelmed by the modem craze for Humanity with a big H, he asked me almost with a motherly solicitude not to criticize Tagore adversely for his volte face. "I do not think," he wrote, "that we should hastily conclude that Tagore's passing over to the opposite camp is a certitude. He is sensitive and perhaps a little affected ...
... writings of Vivekananda, Ramatirtha, etc. I have said that it is not good to make this khichri [mixture]. Better don't put Mother's things. Is it all right? Page 218 You are quite right. About 1962 I hear that you have flu—that won't do. You must rest —but a rest of concentrated force , not of diluted non-resistance to the adverse forces. A rest that is a power , not the... I am told that the recent violence against the Ashram was the result of Mahakali's wrath and you are supposed to have said that this was not the last. I thought that it was an act of the hostile forces. If truly it is Mahakali's work, then is it to be welcomed? People always deform what I say. It is better not to listen to them. But I have written something on the subject and will send a... for drying things) was thrown about two metres by the cyclone and all the glass is broken. The storm had a special love for the Ashram and Pondicherry, it seems. May be. The forces behind the cyclone were not hostile but full of a transforming power. You did the right thing, and I can assure you that to go inward and to receive the force is more helpful than to throw oneself into an agitated action ...
... ordinariness into the atmosphere—also as the adverse forces know that something is to be attempted at this period they become active to stop it. Don't lay too much stress on the 15th which is after all more a general than a personal occasion— for the individual any day in the year may be the 15th—that is the birthday or a birthday of something in the inner being. It is with that feeling that one should... What have I become ? But there it is starting in another disguise. Cry halt! 0 thou Fiend Despond. It is going about now-a-days that black forces are in a great glee and victoriously pouring and that it will be worse and worse, death, madness, etc. being their signs and many will have to fly who won't die or go mad. I fear I am included in this category as I haven't the least feeling of impending... into contact with a world of beings which is of a very deceptive or self-deceptive illusory nature. Many of these come and claim to be the departed souls of relatives, acquaintances, well-known men, famous personalities, etc. There are also beings who pick up the discarded feelings and memories of the dead and masquerade with them. There are a great number of beings who come to such séances only ...
... what it is about: it is essentially the conflict of the adverse forces, of the anti-divine forces, who are trying to push back the divine Realization as much as they can – they hope for thousands of years. ‘It is this conflict which has reached its climax. It is their last chance. And as those who are behind their action are very conscious beings, they know very well that it is their last chance, and... ‘Generally – [for] the world, India, the Ashram and individuals. For everyone according to his manner of being, naturally, not in the same way for all. Some things will seem easier than others. But generally speaking it is … If you want I can tell you: it is the last hope of the adverse forces to triumph against the present Realization. If we are able to hold on during these [fourteen] months, afterwards... nothing about the inner battle, or battles, she must have been fighting with the hostile forces in those fourteen months. Only years later did the Mother mention in passing, in one of the conversations constituting Mother’s Agenda , that the beginning of February 1956 had been a terrible time, with all the asuric forces of destruction on the offensive. 6 Knowing that she, like Sri Aurobindo, was ...
... s leg. Sri Aurobindo: 'I was more occupied with guarding the Mother and... I didn't think the hostiles would attack me.' This Darshan and the next have to be cancelled. 1939 Apr 24 Anniversary of her second and final coming - 'the tangible sign of the sure Victory over the adverse forces' - becomes henceforth the fourth Darshan day. - Jul 9 'It is not as a Guru that I love and bless... failures there is the Victory, behind all its pains, its sufferings, its contradictions, there is Ananda.' 1965 Jan 12 'There has been... particularly since the 1st... a kind of bombardment of adverse forces - a fury' on her body. But, she adds, 'it is not a higher intervention that will change it, it is... from within', by putting in the physical mind 'a Peace which acts directly in this material... the feasibility of working out a new state of being in which Page 861 one 'will transform his consciousness sufficiently to belong in his realisation and activity to... a race of supermen.' Predicts, that this 'transitional species will discover the means of producing new beings without going through the old animal method, and these beings will constitute the elements of the supramental ...
... perhaps inevitable development of things, for which I do not hold anyone responsible, but now that the sadhana has come down to the most material plane on which blows can still be given by the adverse forces it is necessary to make a change which can best be done by a change in the inner attitude of the sadhaks, for that alone Page 120 now can make—until the decisive descent of the ... them into a support for arrogance, conceit, ambition or any other of the amiable weaknesses to which human nature is prone. It is because half-baked yogins so often fall into these traps of the hostile forces that the use of yogic powers is sometimes discouraged as harmful to the user. But it is mostly people who live much in the vital that so fall; with a strong and free and calm mind and a psychic... the parts of our being are quite separate and clearly distinct from each other. We feel them indeed as different beings in us, and just as two people in a group can do, they too are seen to observe, criticise, help or oppose and strain each other; it is as if we were a group-being, each member of the group with its separate place and function, and all directed by a central being who is sometimes ...
... body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces, modify events, etc., etc., we would not speak of it as we do. Moreover, it is not only in its results but in its movements that the Force is tangible and concrete. When I speak of feeling Force or Power, I do not mean simply having a vague sense of it, but feeling it concretely and consequently being able to direct it, manipulate it, watch its movement... full power and Ananda. And that means the raising of the whole of earthly life to its full power and Ananda. 3. If there were not a resistance in vital human nature, a pressure of forces adverse to the change, forces which delight in imperfection and even in perversion, this change would effect itself without difficulty by a natural and painless flowering—as, for example, your own powers of poetry... Divine; on the other hand, there is an outcry of disappointment, bewilderment, distrust, perhaps indignation, if there are human difficulties, if there is strain in the body, a swaying struggle with adverse forces, obstacles, checks, illness—and some begin to say, "Oh, there is nothing Divine here!" As if one could remain vitally and physically ln the untransformed individual human consciousness, in unchanged ...
... spontaneously. 3 November 1965 Page 328 Sweet Mother, Why does one feel afraid? Where does fear come from? Fear is an invention of the hostile forces who have created it as the best means of dominating living beings, animals and men. Those who are pure —that is to say, exclusively under the Divine influence—have no fear. 10 November 1965 Sweet Mother, You... change of the whole nature which You have predicted? The descent of the forerunners of the supramental forces is a fact (not a prediction). The incapacity of the vast majority of human beings to become conscious of it is a fact which can in no way affect the fact of the advent of these forces and powers in the physical world. The "supreme and radical" change of the whole nature can only come... sort of disequilibrium and chaos. Does this mean that it is preparing for the manifestation of a new force, for the descent of the Truth, or is it the result of the action Page 326 of hostile forces in revolt against this descent? And what place does India occupy in all this? It is both at the same time—a chaotic means of preparation. India ought to be the spiritual guide who explains what ...
... e.g. about miracles, the limits of judgments by sense-data etc. I have avoided as much as possible writing about these subjects because I would have to propound things that cannot be understood except by reference to data other than those of the physical senses or of reason founded on these alone. I might have to speak of the laws and forces not recognised by reason or physical science. In my public... and here is the crux of the problem — how can a human, being human, follow such an utterly divine lead as yours so disconcertingly alien to reason and far from feasible, besides? There is a saying in English that you can catch a swallow if you put salt on its tail. You seem to prescribe similarly: 'detach yourself, don't lend your ears to hostile suggestions, open yourself and go on doing it all the... human vital clings to it and almost needs it as part of the dramas, of life. So also, I have never said that sex, anger, jealousy etc. were easy to overcome. I have said it was difficult because they were ingrained in the human vital and even if thrown out were always being brought back into it either by its own habit or by the invasion of the general Nature and the resurgence of its old response. Your ...
... of this envelope, if you make a hole in this armour and through that the adverse forces can enter into you; if you do an act involuntarily, whatever it may be, you cross over its line of action, it is this, it is in this way that you make a hole without even knowing it. But if you have made a hole or else you invite the forces to penetrate, it is like this that you commit a stupid thing. This is what... comes down, it purifies the atmosphere of all the negative formations that we throw in the air and the harmful forces that constantly try to destroy us. It makes the atmosphere clear and limpid and in a way cleanses the atmosphere of all these impurities. There are also the hostile forces who live in the atmosphere and they are afraid of water, and as soon as it rains they flee, and if they cannot... takes refuge in this light — my white light — then he has a protection or an incomparable help, he can conquer everything without letting anything touch him. Because, when one is in this light, the hostile forces, as soon as they come in contact, disappear immediately. Not a single contrary force can stay in this white light. Then one is in the Divine’s hand, enveloped by Him. It is the highest possible… ...
... life-soul and life-forces and life-values to which Homer had no access. In Valmiki and Vyas there is the constant presence of great Idea-Forces and Ideals supporting life and its movements which were beyond the scope of Homer and Shakespeare. And beyond the Ideals and Idea-Forces even there are other presences, more inner or inmost realities, a soul behind things and beings, the spirit and its... scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer down to the field of earth and Matter. If I believe in the probability and not only the possibility, if I feel practically certain... personality, the character that is of the first importance in rebirth—it is the psychic being who stands behind the evolution of the nature and evolves with it. What the Mother said was not that Hector and Horace were psychic beings—which neither of them predominantly were, but that she saw in you the psychic being that had stood behind the personalities of Horace and Hector. The psychic when it departs ...
... of a world almost as vast as the Superconscient, with many levels, forces, beings (or being-forces, if we prefer). It is our immediate as well as distant evolutionary past, with all the impressions of our present life and all those of our past lives, just as the Superconscient is our evolutionary future. All the residues and forces that have presided over our evolutionary ascent from inanimate matter... and to remember Itself here on earth. The method for dealing with these adverse forces is the same as for the other vibrations: silence, inner stillness that lets the storm blow over. We may not succeed the first time in dissolving these attacks, but more and more they will seem to take place on the surface of our being; we may be shaken, upset, yet deep down we will feel the "Witness" in us, unscathed... the same thing everywhere, in all beings and in all things; we can communicate directly, as if everything were the same, without separation. We have touched something within us that is not the mere puppet of universal forces, not the narrow and dry "I think, therefore I am," but the fundamental reality of our being, our true self, true center, warmth and being, consciousness and force. 51 As ...
... sure Victory over the adverse forces,’ which seems to confirm that Paul Richard had in fact been an important factor which caused her departure from Pondicherry and Sri Aurobindo six years before. Richard’s relationship with Mirra and with Sri Aurobindo now reached a critical point. Mirra and Sri Aurobindo had done everything within their power to give him the chance of being converted, but without... Human beings have an individual consciousness, developed in various degrees, but animals have a collective consciousness that is mostly called instinct and centered in the ‘king’ of their species – which goes to show how much truth there actually is in legends and folktales. The ‘king of cats’ is a being from the vital world, which means that the members of his species incarnate vital forces. Cats... Supermind is a divine level of existence above everything we, mental beings, normally are and can be aware of. It is even above the levels of the Overmind, i.e. the worlds of the Gods, who dominate the manifestation at present, although, as the reader will recall, fiercely challenged by the Antigods or Asuric forces – and Forces are always beings. The Supermind belongs to the higher hemisphere of the global ...
... exposed to such recoils; ours is so complex and many-sided and embraces such large aims that we cannot expect any smooth progress until we near the completion of an effort, – especially as all the hostile forces in the spiritual world are in a constant state of opposition and beseige our gains; for the complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among them. In fact by our own unaided... behind. If it were a certainty on the mental plane then the thing would have been achieved. When there is the certainty there is no room for struggle. Till now it was not done, probably because the hostile forces were very strong." ¹ 4 April. Talk on the supramental yoga. 5 April. Talk on Bahaism; descent of the Supermind into the physical; powers of disembodied spirits. 9 April. Talk on Mahatma... May. A reference in a letter to the atmosphere in Pondicherry: "The condition here is not very good. I am at present fighting the difficulties on the physical plane," in other words, the forces of disease etc. 20 June. At the request of the Bombay Chronicle , Sri Aurobindo sent a message on the death of C. R. Das, which was published in their issue of 22 June: "Chittaranjan's death is a supreme ...
... vibration of the supramental forces. The concern of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, also of all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to worry about what the consequences will be. What has to be, in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation, will... astonishing prediction, as we shall see presently. The difficulties the Mother spoke about were of course intended to harass and if possible to block the work of the Yoga, and were caused by the forces hostile to it. Of the battles she has fought at that time we know nothing, but as the situation seems to have become critical because the Yoga was about to reach its main objective, they must have been... would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth-nature.” Her comment, now wholly understandable and of obvious importance: “This was certainly what he expected of us, what he conceived of as the overman [surhomme], who must be the intermediate being between humanity as it is and the supramental being created in the supramental way, in other ...
... of the cosmic Law Erected its bronze pylons of misrule. 64 And the second image is a very similar one: An iron decree in crooked uncials written Imposed a law of sin and adverse fate. 65 In another place there is still one more image that resembles the foregoing two. This is only one image in a series of dozens of superb images applied to human Reason: On the... images will be found to be in their proper place here. The first one is in 58 pp.74-75. 59 p. 75. 60 p. 76. 61 p. 76. 62 p. 25. Page 367 connection with "A hostile and perverting Mind at work" 63 in the dark world of Night. It captured the oracles of the occult gods, Effaced the signposts of Life's pilgrimage, Cancelled the firm rock-edicts... unseen heights. 41 Leaving mathematics we now come to the most prosaic of things, from where one would least expect images could be drawn. They are business, commerce, economics, banking, etc. For all we have acquired soon loses worth, An old disvalued credit in Time's bank, Imperfection's cheque drawn on the Inconscient. 42 A similar idea but expressed in an entirely ...
... proper word, because it is not a passing thing leaving behind some luminous trail; it is a change in my being. It is yet too early and not advisable to speak of it, and it is linked in some way to our recent journey out of India. The change of atmosphere with its usual whirl of hostile forces targeted on me has helped to clarify a number of things — this journey was beneficial, though very tiring... on the right as well as on the wrong side. Well. ..... Z [a worker from the Institute who is complaining]? Yes.... It is "the fault of the adverse forces," it is so easy. The Agenda will hammer him until he understands that the adverse forces are the Lord who wants us to progress and break through our little walls — or break our foot, if we refuse to toe the line. And all those stories... plan for Auroville has become a mocking in the hands of hostile forces and if you have read Agenda VII dated September 21, 1966, you must have realized the vastness of Mother's plan for Auroville as an occult means to avoid another world war and divert the forces of destruction. Then we understand what is at stake there and the real forces behind Navajata & Co. This handful of people simply block ...
... moved. And if I needed room, some of them even tried to stir a little. But when human beings are involved, I believe that visions take on a special form — it’s a special image. Not an inundation like this. That was very, very impersonal. They were forces. A feeling of floodgates bursting open, of something being held back, retained or prevented, then suddenly ... The vehicle and the forward movement... all in white), such a pinched face, very ... (how can I express it?) emaciated, as though you were suffering. (Mother remains silent for a long while, then replies:) Quite evidently, the adverse forces are not only trying to convince everyone but me too, that this is how it’s going to turn out. But I have as yet had no indications. I have asked to be forewarned, not for reasons of... It... question in my friends’ consciousnesses — they are sincere, devoted, they believe me, love me, but there is a question. It is subconscious, not even formulated, but it is exactly the field of the adverse forces: the physical Mind, the suggestion, medical or whatever it may be, which sticks and sticks. You can say what you want, you can believe, love and know in your clear and awakened consciousness ...
... destruction, no harmony except by a poise of contending forces won out of many actual and potential discords, but also no continued existence of life except by a constant self-feeding and devouring of other life. Our very bodily life is a constant dying and being reborn, the body itself a beleaguered city attacked by assailing, protected by defending forces whose business is to devour each other.... It... them, it would be supporting an alien law of being and a false political life. People now want to spiritualise politics—Gandhi, for instance—but they can't get hold of the right way. What is Gandhi doing? Making a hodgepodge called satyāgraha out of ahimsā paramo dharmah [non-violence is the highest law], Jainism, hartal, passive resistance, etc.; bringing a sort of Indianised Tolstoyism into... greatness in humanity. This erring race of human beings dreams always of perfecting their environment by the machinery of government and society; but it is only by the perfection of the soul within that the outer environment can be perfected. What thou art within, that outside thee thou shalt enjoy; no machinery can rescue thee from the law of thy being. Europe prides herself on her practical and ...
... will be able to control these everywhere, in all men), 'that person will have the right of entry.' In other words, these forces cannot prevent him from entering." Mother said ponderingly: "If what the serpent said was right, if this is truly what will overcome the adverse forces that rule over money, well then, the condition has not been fulfilled." She remarked: "It's an affair between the Asuras... d: Truth to sensation, Light governs all, etc. But Truth and Light were Mirra's natural elements. No truth, no reality escaped her. Mirra, we have seen, was someone who observed, who studied. As Mother puts it: "There was an intense vital 1 development during this period 1. Vital: Sri Aurobindo and Mother have made a classification of the being. Roughly, the vital comprises all our sensations... birds. Mother said reflectively: "But what's strange is that they are beings — beings of the vital world —but Page 140 aware of what is happening in the physical world. 1 knew nothing, neither the person nor the story, nor about her head sticking out she wanted me to pull her out of there." These beings sense the atmosphere; but what they understand best is vital power. We can ...
... executive Nature-Force at work within him and understand its action; he must learn by this separation to recognise the play of her universal forces, distinguish her interweaving of light and night, the divine and the undivine, and detect her formidable Powers and Beings that use the ignorant human creature. Nature works in us, says the Gita, through the triple quality of Prakriti, the quality of light and... living the fullest, strongest, sanest, deepest life. I was not seeking them. What I was seeking, with resolute determination, was to live more intensely my own life, as against what I knew would be the adverse judgment of the world. It was in the most real seasons that the Real Presence came, and I was aware that I was immersed in the infinite ocean of God.4 Even the least mystical of you must by this... beheld all these dear friends and kindred facing each other in war, his heart was besieged with utter pity and failed him, and he said, "O Krishna, I behold these kinsmen and friends arrayed in hostile arms and my limbs sink beneath me and my face grows dry, and there are shudderings in my body, and my hair stands on end, Gandeva falls from my hand and my very skin is on fire. Yea, I cannot stand ...
... exposed to such recoils; ours is so complex and many-sided and embraces such large aims that we cannot expect any smooth progress until we near the completion of our effort, - especially as all the hostile forces in the spiritual world are in a constant state of opposition and beseige our gains; for the complete victory of a single one of us would mean a general downfall among them. In fact by our own unaided... distributed." 19 Immune against all hostile force, fraud and blandishment and led by the Divine Light, Sri Aurobindo's Yoga rushed on like a torrential stream bounding over rocks that threatened to impede its course. We have seen that Sri Aurobindo was in a state of total surrender to the Mother when he was staying at Chandernagore. On being asked by Motilal Roy, he explained and even... he aspires and attains. There is a Consciousness which, being transcendent, is yet the universe and all that the universe contains. Into that consciousness he enlarges his limited ego; he becomes one with all beings and all inanimate objects in a single self-awareness, love, delight, all-embracing energy. There is a consciousness which, being both transcendental and universal, yet accepts the apparent ...
... background picture of mystics who are part of a warrior group from abroad throwing itself violently upon a hostile people pledged to another cult which in the eyes of these mystics is demoniac? That is to say: the near-certainty of the undeniably demoniac non-human Dāsa-Dasyus of the Rigveda being as much an image of outer conditions as the luminous cows, magical horses, supernatural chariots, divine... which we regard as typical of Iranian, one of them being an extensive substitution of "Ha" for "Sa". 165 At this stage it had interaction, as in the current pattern of linguistic development, with a particular fellow-tribe's speech - namely, Greek, which exhibits a tendency towards the same substitution along with some closeness to Indo-Iranian forms, etc. 166 Afterwards a section of its speakers... "Indra sacrificing well brought to birth the Dawns and Swar." For, this Swar has three luminous realms, trīni rocanā (cf. 1,102,8; 2,27,9; 4,53,5, etc.) and Indra's lordship of them would give a triple aspect to his role as the Bull. Swar and the Dawns being linked, he as the triple Bull could bring about the three dawns of which the Rigveda speaks in 3,17,3 and 8,41,3. Thus to see him as the begetter ...
... Jesus is Page 58 said to have triumphed over the 'cosmic powers' - the 'principalities and powers, the world-rulers of this present darkness'. These would correspond with the 'hostile forces' working in the world today with which Sri Aurobindo was conscious of contending. This means that these powers have been conquered in principle, but we still have to contend with them until we... luminous uninvolved presence of the self-being of God, mamaātmā, which is in constant relation with the becoming and brings all its existences into manifestation by his simple presence. Therefore it is that we have these terms of Being and becoming, existence in itself, ātman, and existences dependent upon it, bhūtāni, mutable beings and immutable being. But the highest truth of these two relations... "Queen of Heaven". It is very easy to understand this transference as well as that up-raising. The legend-milieu of early Christianity was chockful of divine beings impregnating human women no less than of cultic goddesses: Isis, Astarte, Anahita, etc. The Christian transference was a very refined act which isolated from the mixture of spiritual and physical impregnations current in Egyptian and Greek myths ...
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