Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. On Three Works of the Mother

Fragment ID: 20249

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 overlook even a single detail on the path of transformation, is it not possible that the Divine will make them conscious of it rather than becoming conscious through a painful 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 by them. What is the best means for them to go forward?

Faith in the Mother and complete surrender.

“This illusion of action is one of the greatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you the necessity of rushing always into some excited movement” [p. 67]. What is meant by “illusion of action”?

Illusion means that they think their action is all-important and its egoistic objects are the truth that must be followed.

17 June 1933