Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

3. The Mother and the Practice of the Integral Yoga

Fragment ID: 19628

Is it true that earthquakes are inevitable phenomena in the process of the Divine Manifestation on the earth and the transformation of matter?

Not at all. The method of the Divine Manifestation is through calm and harmony, not through a catastrophic upheaval. The latter is the sign of a struggle, generally of conflicting vital forces, but at any rate a struggle on the inferior plane.

Have I been kept here, outside the Asram, so that I can, by constant surrender to the Mother, rise above the difficulties of this environment and control the adverse forces that now touch and move and affect my lower nature?

You think too much of adverse forces. That kind of preoccupation causes much unnecessary struggle. Fix your mind on the positive side – open to the Mother’s power, concentrate on her protection, call for light, calm and peace and purity and growth into the divine consciousness and knowledge.

Am I right in thinking that every bad movement in my life is the result of my past karma and takes place with the sanction of the Mother because she is testing me at every moment?

This idea of tests also is not a healthy idea and ought not to be pushed too far. Tests are applied not by the Divine but by the forces of the lower planes – mental, vital, physical – and allowed by the Divine because that is part of the soul’s training and helps it to know itself, its powers and the limitations it has to outgrow. The Mother is not testing you at every moment, but rather helping you at every moment to rise beyond the necessity of tests and difficulties which belong to the inferior consciousness. To be always conscious of that help will be your best safeguard against all attacks whether of adverse powers or of your own lower nature.

23 February 1931