Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
13. Opposition of the Hostile Forces
Fragment ID: 4015
He is quite right in saying that the heaviness of these
attacks was due to the fact that you had taken up the sadhana in earnest and
were approaching, as one might say, the gates of the Kingdom of Light. That
always makes these forces rage and they strain every nerve and use or create
every opportunity to turn the sadhak back or, if possible, drive him out of the
path altogether by their suggestions, their violent influences and their
exploitation of all kinds of incidents that always crop up more and more when
these conditions prevail, so that he may not reach the gates. I have written to
you more than once alluding to these forces, but I did not press the point
because I saw that like most people whose minds have been rationalised by a
modern European education you were not inclined to believe in or at least to
attach any importance to this knowledge. People nowadays seek the explanation
for everything in their ignorant reason, their surface experience and in outside
happenings. They do not see the hidden forces and inner causes which were
well-known and visualised in the traditional Indian and yogic knowledge. Of
course, these forces find their point d’appui in the sadhak himself, in
the ignorant parts of his consciousness and its assent to their suggestions and
influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any
success. In your case the chief points d’appui have been the extreme
sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness
with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual
reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas and associations, its
obstinate doubts and its maintaining these things as a wall of obstruction and
opposition to the larger light. This activity of the physical mind is what
people call intellect and reason, although it is only the turning of a machine
in a circle of mental habits and is very different from the true and free
reason,
the higher Buddhi, which is capable of enlightenment and still more from the
higher spiritual light or that insight and tact of the psychic consciousness
which sees at once what is true and right and distinguishes it from what is
wrong and false. This insight you had very constantly whenever you were in a
good condition and especially whenever Bhakti became strong in you. When the
sadhak comes down into the physical consciousness, leaving the mental and higher
vital ranges on which he had first turned towards the Divine, these opposite
things become very strong and sticky and, as one’s more helpful states and
experiences draw back behind the veil and one can hardly realise that one ever
had them, it becomes difficult to get out of this condition. The only thing
then, as X has told you and I also have insisted, is to stick it out. If once
one can get and keep the resolution to refuse to accept the suggestions of these
forces, however plausible they may seem, then either quickly or gradually this
condition can diminish and will be overpassed and cease. To give up yoga is no
solution.