Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 35
The Force Works under Conditions [4]
There has been no negligence on our part in putting the force for X’s change – the Mother has been doing that daily; nor is the trouble she has contracted one for which we are in any way responsible – it is not imposed as an ordeal or anything else. If there is so obstinate a persistence of her attachment and the demands it makes, it is because there is in her own vital a resistance to the Force that would remove it. If there were the complete consent in the being for giving it up (not only mental wish or prayer, however strong), it could not possibly last – at any rate in this form,– only at most for a time in fragments of the old habit. There is in her vital a certain violence of temperament – I do not mean merely a tendency to violence of speech or act, but an exaggerated intensity in the feelings and vital reactions, and this is the source of the trouble. For it is this that when asked to give up the claim and attachment, has reacted vehemently calling in an outside Force to support its resistance. When this rises, her mind also begins to justify the claim and demand, her vital feels very hurt and angry with the Mother because she does not support it. All that is proof of a very familiar kind of resistance which refuses to yield to the mind’s will or the soul’s aspiration. It is like that in X; it is so in many others here.
The Divine Force does not act now in an omnipotent ease regardless of conditions – it might do that if it were the pure supramental Force in its native action; but that is not yet. Here conditions have been created and it acts under those conditions. You speak of the Force acting in the case of the illnesses you have treated. No doubt, but here too it is under conditions – only, favourable conditions. For you believe and are conscious of the Force, your whole will is to cure, the patient’s will is to get well – the more he assents to the treatment, the more quickly the Force acts – the one obstacle is the force of the illness itself and the patient’s habitual subjection to it. But with everything else against it, that does not succeed in remaining. It 
is quite otherwise in these things where the consent of the being is far from being complete, where the mind often consents to and justifies the illness when it comes, even takes strongly sides with it, where the vital is there with its revolt and clamour and tempest. It is only if the sadhak’s resolution is firm and one-minded, not to assent to the attack when it comes, to refuse all mental justification of it, to detach himself from the vital movement in the very time of its action that the liberation can be done with the clarity and ease which you desire.
Otherwise, the only thing to be done is to keep up the pressure of the force quiet and strong and persistent until it gets into the vital itself and makes it reject its own movement. For that you must help by getting rid of the violence and impatience in your own nature and being yourself patient, firm and persistent. You are here to change your nature and the difficulty is no reason for throwing up the spiritual endeavour. All this talk of going away cannot help – it would be of no advantage to yourself or to X in any way – any more than her talk of going has any sense or is in any way reasonable. Keep firmly to your object, develop that calm and force in the vital as well as the mind which are the basis of the spiritual life. That will help more in getting X’s morbid rushes of excitement to subside and the control to come in her also.
9 August 1936