Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
Therapeutic Force and Healing
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