Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume IV - Part 4

Fragment ID: 15531

You ought to realise that these things [negative thoughts and feelings] are attacks which come on you from an adverse Force to which your nature was responsive because of vital desire and the vital ego – what you call selfishness. When it comes, you have to realise that it is an attack and refuse instead of accepting it – and in order to be able to do that you must always discourage desire and selfishness in you and all that comes from them such as jealousy, claim, anger etc. It is no use alleging that there are good reasons for their rising – even if all the alleged reasons were true, they would not justify your indulging them, for in a sadhak nothing can justify that. There is no need to understand – for there is only one thing that it is necessary to understand – that, reason or no reason, desire, selfishness, jealousy, demand, anger have no place in the spiritual life.

If you keep to what you have resolved, then all will be right – and the right knowledge will come not from the mind and its reasonings but from the soul and its true vision of things.