Sri Aurobindo:  Mistakes of action and thought and feeling naturally bring these outward reactions []; they are an obstinate part of human nature, but one has to outgrow them steadily.  If they recur, one must not get upset and brood over them; the aim must be to keep quiet and recover as quickly as possible — so that the Force can at once resume its work and not be held suspended by the mind’s preoccupation with mistakes and stumbles.     Difﬁculties and perplexities can never be got rid of by the mind brooding on them and trying in that way to get out of them; this habit of the mind only makes them recur without a solution and keeps up by brooding the persistent tangle.


Sri Aurobindo: It is from something above and outside the perplexities that the solution must come. The difﬁculty of the physical mind — not the true thinking intelligence — is that it does not want to believe in this larger consciousness outside itself because it is not aware of it; and it remains shut like a box in itself, not admitting the light that is all round it and pressing to get in. It is a subtle law of the action of consciousness that if you stress difﬁculties — you have to observe them, of course, but not stress them, they will quite sufﬁciently do that for themselves — the difﬁculties tend to stick or even increase; on the contrary, if you put your whole stress on faith and aspiration and concentrate steadily on what you aspire to, that will sooner or later tend towards realisation.  It is this change of stress, a change in the poise and attitude of the mind, that will be the more helpful process.  As for details, the method of the mind concentrating on details and trying to put them right is a slow and tardy one; it has to be done, but as a subordinate process, not the chief one.


Sri Aurobindo: If it succeeds at all, it is because after some period of struggle and stress, something is released and there is an opening and the larger consciousness of which I speak gets through and produces some general result. But the progress is much more rapid if one can make the opening the main thing and keep the dealing with details as something resultant and subordinate. When there is this opening, some essential (therefore general) progress can be made and, as you yourself say, “express and translate itself into details”. The mind is always trying to handle details and construct out of them some general result; but what is above mind and even the best powers of the higher ranges of mind


Sri Aurobindo: tend rather to bring about some change and make it or let it express itself, translate itself in the necessary details.  I may add, however, that one can feel the essential change without its expressing itself in details; e.g., one can feel a wide silent peace or a state of freedom and joy and rest silent and secure in it without needing to translate it into sundry details in order to feel the progress made.  It is not a theory but a constant experience and very tangible when it comes that there is above us, above the consciousness in the physical body, a great supporting extension as it were of peace, light, power, joy — that we can become aware of it, and bring it down into the physical consciousness and that that, at ﬁrst for a time, afterwards more frequently and for a longer time, in the end for good, can remain and change the whole basis of our daily consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: Even before we are aware of it above, we can suddenly feel it coming down and entering into us. The need is to have an aspiration towards it, make the mind quiet so that what we call the opening is rendered possible. A quieted mind (not necessarily motionless or silent, though it is good if one can have that at will) and a persistent aspiration in the heart are the two main keys of the Yoga. Activity of the mind is a much slower process and does not by itself lead to these decisive results. It is the difference between a straight road and an approach through constant circles, spirals or meanders.


Sri Aurobindo:   In your dealing with your difﬁculties and the wrong movements that assail you, you are probably making the mistake of identifying yourself with them too much and regarding them as part of your own nature. You should rather draw back from them, detach and dissociate yourself from them, regard them as movements of the universal lower imperfect and impure nature, forces that enter into you and try to make you their instrument for their self-expression. By so detaching and dissociating yourself it will be more possible for you to discover and to live more and more in a part of yourself, your inner or your psychic being, which is not attacked or troubled by these movements, ﬁnds them foreign to itself and automatically refuses assent to them and feels itself always turned to or in contact with the Divine Forces and the higher planes of consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: Find that part of your being and live in it; to be able to do so is the true foundation of the Yoga.  By so standing back it will be easier also for you to ﬁnd a quiet poise in yourself, behind the surface struggle, from which you can more effectively call in our help to deliver you. The Divine presence, calm, peace, purity, force, light, joy, wideness are above, waiting to descend in you. Find this quietude behind and your mind also will become quieter and through the quiet mind you can call down the descent ﬁrst of the purity and peace and then of the Divine Force. If you can feel this peace and purity descending into you, you can then call it down again and again till it begins to settle; you will feel too the Force working in you to change the movements and transform the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: In this working you will be aware of the presence and power of the Mother. Once that is done, all the rest will be a question of time and of the progressive evolution in you of your true and divine nature.    The statement is a general one and like all general statements subject to qualiﬁcation according to circumstances. What I meant was to discourage what some do which is to be always dwelling on their difﬁculties and shortcomings only, for that makes them turn for ever like squirrels in a cage always in the same circle of difﬁculties without the least breaking of light through the clouds.


Sri Aurobindo: The sentence would be more accurate or generally applicable if it were written “dwell too much” or “dwell solely”. Naturally, without rejection nothing can be done. And in hard periods or moments concentration on the difﬁculties is inevitable. Also in the early stages one has often to do a great amount of clearance work so that the road can be followed at all.   It [] came by being preoccupied too much with the difﬁculties of the nature.


Sri Aurobindo: It is always better to dwell on the good side of things in yourself — I do not mean in an egoistic way, but with faith and cheerful conﬁdence, calling down the positive experience of which the nature is already capable so that a constant positive growth can help in the rejection of all that has to be rejected.  But in fact one gets often projected into the vital difﬁculties at an early stage and then instead of going from the mind into the psychic (through the heart) one has to go through the disturbed vital.    It [] can be done, if you refuse to be preoccupied with the idea of your difﬁculties and concentrate on really helpful and positive things. Be more cheerful and conﬁdent.


Sri Aurobindo: Sex and Doubt and Co. are there, no doubt, but the Divine is there also inside you. Open your eyes and look and look till the veil is rent and you see Him or Her!     You are not asked to do anything that you are incapable of; it is something that you have done already and of which, therefore, you are capable — you are not asked to change your nature by your own effort but only to stand back from these ideas and thoughts, refuse to indulge them and remain quiet within and allow the Force you have repeatedly felt to change you.


Sri Aurobindo: To repeat constantly, “I am weak, I am unﬁt, I am bad” will lead you nowhere.  As to the obstacles, you should not do anything to call them up or increase their intensity or take pleasure in them. If they come of themselves, you have to surrender your being to the Mother and call in the Light and the psychic being to remove them.    The method you speak of is, I understand, that of raising up the difﬁculties in order to know and exhaust or destroy them.


Sri Aurobindo: It is inevitable once one enters into Yoga that the difﬁculties should rise up and they go on rising up so long as anything of them is left in the system at all. It may be thought then that it is better to raise them oneself in a mass so as to get the thing done once for all. But though this may succeed in some cases, it is not even in the mental and vital a safe or certain method. Exhaustion, of course, is impossible; the things that create the difﬁculties are cosmic forces, forces of the cosmic Ignorance, and cannot be exhausted. People talk of their getting exhausted because after a time they lose strength and dwindle, but that is only by force of the constant rejection by the Purusha and by force of a divine intervention aiding this rejection and dissolving or destroying the difﬁculty each time it shows its face.


Sri Aurobindo: Even so, the idea of getting rid of difﬁculties in a lump seldom works; something remains and returns until suddenly there comes a divine intervention which is ﬁnal or else a change of consciousness which makes the return of the difﬁculty impossible. Still, in the mental and vital it can be done.  In the physical it is much more dangerous, because here it is the physical adhar itself that is attacked and a too great mass of physical difﬁculties may destroy or disable or permanently injure. The only thing to do here is to get the physical consciousness (down to the most material parts) open to the Power, then to make it accustomed to respond and obey and to each physical difﬁculty as it arises, apply or call in the divine Power to throw out the attacking force. The physical nature is a thing of habits; it is out of habit that it responds to the forces of illness; one has to get into it the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only.


Sri Aurobindo: This of course so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness is impossible.   It is the old habit of the outer consciousness from which it refuses to be delivered. Until this will to repeat the old movements is thrown away, the Force works but under difﬁculties and behind instead of taking up the frontal consciousness as it would if the assent of the external nature were there. There is also the old persistent habit of raising up and stressing the difﬁculties instead of rejecting them — the wrong idea that accepting, approving and insisting on their presence is the only way of getting rid of them. I have told you that that is not the way and only prolongs the struggle.


Sri Aurobindo: There can be no doubt that you can go through — everyone has these struggles; what is needed to pass through is sincerity and perseverance.  There is no use in inviting these struggles, as many do, or even in accepting them when they come for the sake of ﬁghting them out, for they always repeat themselves. When they cannot be avoided then they must be faced — one cannot be altogether without them, especially in the earlier part of the Yoga; but if you can quietly evade them, that is already an advance. To become quiet and quietly to call back the true psychic state until it becomes normal and either eliminates or minimises the struggle, that is the best way to progress.   It is better [] to proceed by a quiet rejection and growth in consciousness — and not invite battle — though, if a struggle is forced on you, you must meet it with calm and courage.


Sri Aurobindo:   No objection — it is a very good thing to keep working in the higher consciousness. It is more effective than struggling all the time down below with the lower forces.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is no objection to doing the sadhana, but it must be done quietly without this constant struggle and disquietude — not minding if it takes time, not getting into a constant rhythm of struggling against difﬁculties. That is my point.     One must get a knack of remaining quiet and bringing into the quietude the play of the Presence, Force, Light, etc. which is the action of the Sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: A struggling effort brings only a minimum result at the price of much confusion and disorder.   From your last letter it is clear that it is not your own will that pushes you to go but something that has taken hold of your mind, a clutch of some Force which is using old movements of the outward mind and vital to drive the action. All the more reason to reject this action as contrary to the soul’s and heart’s true feeling. The pride that says, “I am one of those who can break but will not bend”, is a poor thing and conceals the fact that one is bending before forces and impulses that are ignorant and obscure. Its result is, as you yourself have seen at the end of your letter, that one bends to the lower forces of nature but refuses to bend to the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: If sadhana is a struggle between the higher will and the old forces of nature bringing suffering and inner torment, we do not want you to do that kind of sadhana. That is not the spirit of our Yoga. What we want you to do is to recover your quietude and go on in that. To have the basis of quietude and allow the Divine Force to work in you ﬁrmly and quietly is always the best method — it is not necessary to proceed through a big personal effort, disturbance and struggle. Come back to this — open yourself once more, as you did before — then you could get back sleep or health in a day or two and were growing inwardly without excessive trouble — and let the Mother’s Power and Grace lead you.


Sri Aurobindo: I shall do all to help you and pull you out, but that which has closed itself in you must open for the help to work quickly as it did before. Otherwise too it can pull you out, but if there is this strong obstruction that has to be undone, time is needed. A central change of attitude in your mind would, I believe, make all the difference — it has done so before.   He can continue his endeavour and let us know if there is any result. The difﬁculties that have risen in him are quite normal and a natural reaction to the effort he is making.


Sri Aurobindo: It is usual for these resistances to rise up, for they have to manifest themselves in order that they may be dealt with and thrown out. If he perseveres, that should happen sooner or later. But it is best not to struggle with the resistances but to stand back from them, observe as a witness, reject these movements and call on the Divine Power to remove them. Surrender of the nature is not an easy thing and may take a long time; surrender of the self, if one can do it, is easier and once that is done, that of the nature will come about sooner or later. But for that it is necessary to detach oneself from the action of the Prakriti and see oneself as separate.


Sri Aurobindo: That is why I asked whether he had any (major) realisation from his previous sadhana. To observe the movements as a witness without being discouraged or disturbed is the best way to effect the necessary detachment and separation. This also would help to increase the receptivity to any aid that may be given to him and to bring about the reliance,.  If he turns to us, we will of course give him whatever help he can just now consciously or subconsciously receive.  Suicide is an absurd solution; he is quite mistaken in thinking that it will give him peace.


Sri Aurobindo: He will only carry his difﬁculties with him, enter into a more miserable condition of existence beyond and bring them back to another life on earth. The only remedy is to shake off these morbid ideas and face life with a clear will for some deﬁnite work to be done as the life’s aim and with a quiet and active courage.    That is absurd! Dropping the body because of a difﬁculty does not enable one to come back with a better body.


Sri Aurobindo: One comes back with the same difﬁculty to solve.  People do not come here in order to throw off the body. If everybody here dropped his body because of acute difﬁculties, three quarters of the Asram would be dead by this time.    That is not right.


Sri Aurobindo: Throwing away the life does not improve the chances for the next time. It is in this life and body that one must get things done.    Sadhana has to be done in the body, it cannot be done by the soul without the body. When the body drops, the soul goes wandering in other worlds — and ﬁnally it comes back to another life and another body.


Sri Aurobindo: Then all the difﬁculties it had not solved meet it again in the new life. So what is the use of leaving the body?  Moreover if one throws away the body wilfully, one suffers much in the other worlds, and when one is born again, it is in worse, not in better conditions.  The only sensible thing is to face the difﬁculties in this life and this body and conquer them.


Sri Aurobindo:   Death is not a way to succeed in sadhana. If you die in that way [], you will only have the same difﬁculties again with probably less favourable circumstances.  The way to succeed in sadhana is to refuse to be discouraged, to aspire simply and sincerely so that the Mother’s force may work in you and bring down what is above. No man ever succeeded in this sadhana by his own merit.


Sri Aurobindo: To become open and plastic to the Mother is the one thing needed.     Despair is absurd and talking of suicide quite out of place. However a man may stumble, the Divine Grace will be there so long as he aspires for it and in the end lead him through.


Sri Aurobindo:   If she remains ﬁrm and calm and keeps an unshaken faith in the Divine Power, that will carry her through every trial. Suicide is no solution; it only injures the life of the soul and the problems and difﬁculties one tries to evade by it seize one again in another form in another life.


Sri Aurobindo: It [ ] can come from two sources.


Sri Aurobindo: (1) An old impression in the subconscient, usually from a past suicide in the family or surroundings. (2) An invasion from one of those around you. Many sadhaks have this suggestion and in some it takes the form of a periodic attack. One must never allow the suggestion to stick or in the least entertain it, otherwise it may fasten in the subconscient and give trouble.


Sri Aurobindo: It [] seems to me an excessive reaction considering that all that is in question is some habitual movements of the external being which do not affect the inner realisation. These external habits have to be changed, but you can do it quietly without allowing their presence to throw you into despondency and despair. It is best done by detaching yourself from them and calling in the Mother’s Force to act there and spread the deeper realisation into the outward parts.   Your reasoning about violently getting rid of the body in order to get a better one hereafter is entirely wrong.


Sri Aurobindo: For when one throws away the present life in that way instead of facing its difﬁculties one not only gets into blacker difﬁculties after death but in the next life all becomes not better but worse — an inferior embodiment with all the former difﬁculty from which you ﬂed renewed with less favourable circumstances. There is no way out there. Instead of indulging such feelings, you should put them away from you and turn to the Mother’s Grace which has not failed and which is not going to fail you for strength and succour. Recover your balance and develop the psychic progress you were already making so rapidly up to now.


Sri Aurobindo: Suicide is the worst way that anyone could take to get out of a spiritual difﬁculty. It only increases and prolongs the difﬁculty; for it continues it after death, the struggle, the suffering in an exaggerated form and it has to be faced again in another life. The dissolution of the physical elements into Nature would leave the mind and vital as they are, with all their problems present and unsolved. Surely you are not so ignorant as to think that you will cease to be merely by leaving the body?  When the Mother said that by doing that you would bring trouble to the Asram, it is not merely the entry of the police into the Asram, the inquiry and the immediate local scandal that she meant.


Sri Aurobindo: It would bring a general discredit on the Asram, the Yoga, myself and my work, arm all the numerous enemies here and outside against me, shake the whole Asram and create a terrible example and perhaps make the fulﬁlment of my work impossible for some years together. Nothing written by you could prevent that from happening — for it would be the natural, logical and inevitable result and it is what the hostile Inﬂuences intend when they put this suggestion into your mind or the mind of others. I write plainly because you must realise what would be the natural consequences of doing what is suggested to you by these Powers in your ﬁts of irrational despair.  In view of what it would mean for yourself and for me and the Divine Work, I ask you to give me your promise never again to yield to this suggestion or contemplate seriously its fulﬁlment.  I have promised you that, if you keep on, the transformation shall take place and it is not an idle promise that I have made.


Sri Aurobindo: If once you threw off this Inﬂuence, the one that gives you ﬁts like this, the transformation would not only be certain but swift and easy. But in any case, if you keep on aspiring for transformation and not for escape, as you wrote today, the transformation is bound to come.  P. S. I have written in the last paragraph above what I wanted to say in brief. I ask you to react more decisively against the old inﬂuence of vital darkness and confusion — to decide ﬁrmly not to let it prevail ever again to this extent.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not even transformation, but a chance that is needed for the true being that is in you, the being of love and radiance and harmony to come out from the clouds in a lasting way. Once it can do that, all trouble would be over.   I must remind you of your promise not to yield to sorrow and despair and to face your difﬁculties with fortitude and patience.  Suicide is not only a weak and unmanly evasion, but it is worse than useless since the same misery continues after death intensiﬁed in the consciousness which can think of nothing else and one has to come back to earth and face the same difﬁculties under worse conditions. The Gita has never said that suicide can under any circumstances lead to Nirvana; the death spoken of is a natural or a Yogic death with the mind concentrated with faith and absorption in the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: I am sure that Ramakrishna also never meant such a thing as that anyone dying under any circumstances would have his last wish satisﬁed. There is no escape by that kind of exit. I do not know either how you can say that you love me and at the same time deliberately decide to deal such a blow to me as your suicide would be. I do not speak of and others to whom you have still some obligations and what it would mean for them. It is also strange that you should think could be willing to receive your property or any money offered at such a price or ask to aid in such an arrangement.


Sri Aurobindo: You must have been very much clouded by your ﬁt of despair not to see that. All that apart, I must press on you not to allow these dark attacks with their morbid suggestions to carry you away. If you have the true yearning for the Divine, as you have undoubtedly in your soul, it is not by yielding to vital weakness that you will show it but by persisting, whatever the time and the difﬁculties, till it is achieved. You have promised to do that and I again recall you to your promise. Nirvana itself cannot be so achieved, but only by rising above all other desires and attachments until one has the supreme liberation and peace.


Sri Aurobindo: Ramana Maharshi himself would tell you that and I suppose you can believe him if you cannot believe me.  It is difﬁcult for me to say anything else since you have told me that no words of mine have any truth or value and that all my experiences also are subjective delusions without any truth or value. I suppose all spiritual or inner experiences can be denounced as merely subjective and delusive. But to the spiritual seeker even the smallest inner experience is a thing of value. I stand for the Truth I hold in me and I would still stand for it even if it had no chance whatever of outward fulﬁlment in this life.


Sri Aurobindo: I should go on with it even if all here abandoned and repudiated me and denounced it to the world as a delusion and a folly. I have never disguised from myself the difﬁculties of what I have undertaken, it is not difﬁculties or the threat of failure that can deter me.  I hope however that you will get over this attack and see things one day as all the past seekers of the Divine have seen it, viz. that what one seeks is so precious and such a supreme thing that a whole lifetime of effort however arduous or painful is not by any means too much to give to it. I say nothing else since you say that words of encouragement from me can have no value for you.


Sri Aurobindo: But this at least is a thing that is true and that others whose spiritual experience and greatness cannot be disputed would tell you.  If you have the love for me you speak of — I will say nothing of mine for you, since you do not seem to believe much in it — you will listen to what I say and renew and carry out your promise to go through with your quest to the end with patience and courage.   To characterise suicide as a willed withdrawal from life is the most astounding statement that would not bear a moment’s scrutiny. Suicide is accompanied in most cases by a morbid feeling of disappointment with life, a violent revolt against what is considered the imposition of an unjust providence or an adverse malignant fate. It has nothing of the sense of freedom behind it, no knowledge of the play of forces behind the exterior life, no means of mastering them or using them as stepping-stones to a higher freedom, a greater destiny.


Sri Aurobindo: The calm poise of the soul, the peace that surpasseth understanding are not his. He is moved by dark forces who hold him completely in their grip.  The sense of freedom of which he vaunts is the conjuring trick of the black magician by which he is deluded and dragged to a greater degradation. That is why it is said in the Upanishads that those who slay themselves enter into blind worlds of darkness.  A violent exit by suicide is an act of excessive egoism, not of freedom.


Sri Aurobindo: The true freedom is found in unity with God and in the abiding sense of immortality, when the soul has risen above the bondage of his lower nature, and from the spirit heights of his being can survey his actions seated in a calm, untouched, unmoved by happenings in Time.    Suicide is never the right thing to do, but its psychic consequences can be mitigated by the spirit in which it is done or if some feeling of sacriﬁce or self-offering enters into it as in the case of the Sati. It is always possible to help departed souls in their passage if one has the necessary psychic feeling towards them and the psychic force to make it effective. Contact can also be maintained so long as this passage does not carry them beyond the borders of the communication possible or into the region of psychic sleep or trance in which they remain within themselves and prepare their new birth in future.


Sri Aurobindo: The experiences related are of a high character and show an advanced state of the consciousness. The overhead station especially is not common and is usually attained only after a considerable psychic and spiritual growth. It is always possible indeed to ascend and descend in the consciousness reaching very high in planes above the head but usually one does not stay there.  There are always two things possible for the spiritual seeker, remain among others and then they can act, as she puts it, as a ferment, the other to congregate together and even to form a separate body for a common sadhana or for a common work or both as in this Ashram. Which is to be done depends on the urge of the spirit within or on a call from above.


Sri Aurobindo:   Well, that [] is not the right kind of quietude. The peace of Nirvana would have some meaning in it, but death into the quietness of exhausted Prakriti is no release at all.


Sri Aurobindo:   The real rest is in the inner life founded in peace and silence and absence of desire. There is no other rest — for without that the machine goes on whether one is interested in it or not. The inner mukti is the only remedy.  Whenever anything has to be done, there are always forces that want to interfere.


Sri Aurobindo: I suppose they want to show that smooth walking and the “wide unbarred and thornless path” belong only to the Vedic Ritam satyam brihat and we must get up there — if we can.    What occult secret? It is a fact always known to all Yogis and occultists since the beginning of time, in Europe and Africa as in India, that wherever Yoga or Yajna is done, there the hostile forces gather together to stop it by any means. It is known that there is a lower nature and a higher spiritual nature — it is known that they pull different ways and the lower is strongest at ﬁrst and the higher afterwards.


Sri Aurobindo: It is known that the hostile forces take advantage of the movements of the lower nature and try to spoil through them, smash or retard the siddhi. It has been said as long ago as the Upanishads, “Hard is this path to tread, sharp like a razor’s edge”; it was said later by Christ, “Hard is the way and narrow the gate by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven” and also “Many are called, few chosen” — because of these difﬁculties. But it has also always been known that those who are sincere and faithful in heart and remain so and those who rely on the Divine will arrive in spite of all difﬁculties, stumbles or falls.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, certainly [ ]. Men are being constantly invaded by the hostiles and there are great numbers of men who are partly or entirely under their inﬂuence. Some are possessed by them, others (a few) are incarnations of hostile beings. At the present moment they are very active all over the earth. Of course in the outside world there is no consciousness such as is developed in Yoga, by which they can either become aware of or consciously repel the attacks — the struggle in them between the psychic and the hostile force goes on mostly behind the veil or so far as it is on the surface is not understood by the mind.


Sri Aurobindo:   Yes, of course, there is always a ﬁght between the forces of Light and Darkness.   In sadhana it becomes concentrated and conscious to us.


Sri Aurobindo: As for the hostile beings, they are always in battle with each other; but they make common cause against the Truth and Light.  The hostile forces have a certain self-chosen function: it is to test the condition of the individual, of the work, of the earth itself and their readiness for the spiritual descent and fulﬁlment.  At every step of the journey, they are there attacking furiously, criticising, suggesting, imposing despondency or inciting to revolt, raising unbelief, amassing difﬁculties. No doubt, they put a very exaggerated interpretation on the rights given them by their function, making mountains even out of what seems to us a mole-hill. A little triﬂing false step or mistake and they appear on the road and clap a whole Himalaya as a barrier across it.


Sri Aurobindo: But this opposition has been permitted from of old not merely as a test or ordeal, but as a compulsion on us to seek a greater strength, a more perfect self-knowledge, an intenser purity and force of aspiration, a faith that nothing can crush, a more powerful descent of the Divine Grace.     The purpose they [] serve is to give a full chance to the possibilities of the Inconscience and Ignorance — for this world was meant to be a working out of these possibilities with the supramental harmonisation as its eventual outcome. The life, the work developing here in the Asram has to deal with the world problem and had therefore to meet, it could not avoid, the conﬂict with the working of the hostile Powers in the human being.


Sri Aurobindo:   The hostile forces make it their function to attack and disturb the sadhaks, but if there were no wrong movement and no imperfection and weakness, they would not be disturbed.     It happens so with everybody [ ] so long as there is not the positive siddhi of transformation by which it becomes contrary to the very nature of the instrument to respond to these vibrations — because they have become foreign to it.


Sri Aurobindo: Till then all depends on the vigilance of the consciousness and its will. The repetition of the response does not increase the difﬁculty — it only retards the clearing out of the invading forces.


Sri Aurobindo: Whatever point the adverse forces choose for attack, however small it may seem to the external human mind, becomes a crucial point and to yield it up may be to yield to them one of the keys of the fortress. Even if it is a small postern door, it is enough for them if they can enter.  Nothing is really small and unimportant in the Great Path.  Especially when the struggle has come down to the physical level, these distinctions cease to have any value; for there “small” things have a not easily calculable index value and are of great importance. On that level to lose a small post may be to make certain the loss of the big battle.


Sri Aurobindo: All have had to pass through the ordeal and test through which you are passing. We would have avoided it for you if it had been possible, but since it has come we look to you to  persist and conquer . Patience, quiet endurance, calm resolution to go through to the end and triumph, these are the qualities now required of you — the less spectacular but more substantial of the warrior virtues.


Sri Aurobindo: Also perspicacity and vigilance. Do not shut your eyes to the difﬁculty in you or turn away from it, but also let it not discourage you. Victory is certain if we persevere and what price of difﬁculty and endeavour can be too great for such a conquest?    Hostile forces attack every sadhak; some are conscious, others are not.


Sri Aurobindo: Their object is either to inﬂuence the person or to use him or to spoil the sadhana or the work or any other motive of the kind. Their object is not to test — but their attack may be used by the guiding Power as a test.     Your description [] is too vague.


Sri Aurobindo: From what you write it may just as well be the reaction that frequently follows an experience; the adverse Force coming in with a contrary movement. Tests come sometimes from the hostile forces, sometimes in the course of Nature. I suppose they must be necessary, since they always come in sadhana.    The method of the Divine Manifestation is through calm and harmony, not through a catastrophic upheaval.


Sri Aurobindo: The latter is the sign of a struggle, generally of conﬂicting vital forces, but at any rate a struggle on the inferior plane.  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.  This idea of tests also is not a healthy idea and ought not to be pushed too far.


Sri Aurobindo: 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.  If one knows how to proﬁt by experience, even the Hostile Forces and their attacks can be useful — although of course that does not mean that the attacks should be invited. What they do is to press with all their force upon some weak point of our nature and if we are vigilant, we can see and throw away that weakness.


Sri Aurobindo: Only the attack method of these Forces is too violent and upheaving and endangers the good things in one also, faith and peace etc. — so one has to be careful to keep these against all attacks.     There is no use of testing [] at all — whatever test is needed, comes of itself in the ordinary way in the very use of the capacity and in the very steps of the progress — no other is needed. Beyond that the tests that come are from the hostile forces — but their way of testing is to take advantage of any point of weakness and push with all their force at that point to break down the sadhana or else to hurl all the adverse forces on the consciousness while it is still in process of transition and not yet mature so as to shatter all that has been done.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not a true test but mere destruction replacing the constructive method. By unnecessary “testing” one dangerously invites this hostile pressure and raises up things which one has to banish. To be conscious is necessary, but quiet self-examination is sufﬁcient  for that — raising up difﬁculties under plan of testing is quite the wrong method.  Do you not know the story of the Elephant Brahman?


Sri Aurobindo: All is Brahman, but in action you have to treat the elephant as the Elephant Brahman and the Asura as the Asura Brahman and neither as merely Brahman pure and simple. One has either to avoid the Rakshasa or overcome him; otherwise the Rakshasa may eat up the man, all Brahman though both be. The Brahman realisation is an inner static realisation, until one has become the dynamic instrument of the Divine Consciousness and Force — then the problem of the elephant and the Rakshasa won’t arise, for the Divine Consciousness will know and the Divine Force will execute what is to be done in each case. There is no need to have inside, but to be friendly with the Rakshasa is not prudent, as the Rakshasa is impervious to that kind of thing — he will take advantage of it to farther his own purpose.   Your description of the “Golden One” was the description of an Asura — how can that be the Divine? — “efﬁciently cruel” etc. etc.


Sri Aurobindo: And, taken in that way, submission to such a Power so conceived would justify a yielding to anything coming with sufﬁcient force from the lower Nature on the ground that it is  who is making you do it.  There is a right and discriminating use of the Vedantic Knowledge that all is One and there is a wrong and undiscriminating use. The latter is more dangerous than complete ignorance. Especially at this moment sadhaks must be on their guard against the subtle intrusion of this error (the undiscriminating acceptance of all as coming from the Divine) — for more than one has fallen a victim to it and got badly hurt.


Sri Aurobindo: Your statement about the Shakti. The mere intensity of the force does not show that it is a bad power; the Divine Force often works with a great intensity. Everything depends on the nature of the force and its working; what does it do, what seems to be its purpose? If it works to purify or open the system, or brings with it light or peace or prepares the change of the thoughts, ideas, feelings, character in the sense of a turning towards a higher consciousness, then it is the right force. If it is dark or obscure, or perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force.


Sri Aurobindo: There are [] the higher forces of the Divine Nature — the forces of Light, Truth, divine Power, Peace, Ananda — there are the forces of the lower nature which belong either to a lower truth or to ignorance and error — there are also the hostile forces whose whole aim is to maintain the reign of Darkness, Falsehood, Death and Suffering as the law of life.   The lower nature is ignorant and undivine, not in itself hostile but shut to the Light and Truth. The hostile forces are antidivine, not merely undivine; they make use of the lower nature, pervert it, ﬁll it with distorted movements and by that means inﬂuence man and even try to enter and possess or at least entirely control him.   Free yourself from all exaggerated self-depreciation and the habit of getting depressed by the sense of sin, difﬁculty or failure.


Sri Aurobindo: These feelings do not really help, on the contrary, they are an immense obstacle and hamper the progress. They belong to the religious, not to the Yogic mentality. The Yogin should look on all the defects of the nature as movements of the lower prakriti common to all and reject them calmly, ﬁrmly and persistently with full conﬁdence in the Divine Power — without weakness or depression or negligence and without excitement, impatience or violence.


Sri Aurobindo: No, [] certainly not [] — it is part of the ordinary human nature, everybody has it. It has to be puriﬁed and transformed, the ego being replaced by the true vital being of which it is a distorted shadow. The forces of the lower nature are often rebellious and resist transformation out of attachment to the familiar movements of the Ignorance, desire, vanity, pride, lust, self-will etc., but they are not in their nature hostile. The hostile Forces are those whose very raison d’ˆetre is revolt against the Divine, against the Light and Truth and enmity to the Divine Work.


Sri Aurobindo:   Normal human defects are one thing — they are the working of the lower nature of the Ignorance. The action of the hostile forces is a special intervention creating violent inner conﬂicts, abnormal depressions, thoughts and impulses of a kind which can be easily recognised as suggestions, e.g. leaving the Asram, abandoning the Yoga, revolt against the Divine, suggestions of calamity and catastrophe apparently irresistible, irrational impulses and so on. It is a different order from the usual human weaknesses.   The defects of the nature are nothing, they can be dealt with progressively.


Sri Aurobindo: It is these outward attacks, these suggestions and throwing in of wrong forces to which the sadhak must shut himself altogether.    To have weaknesses of the lower nature is one thing — to call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter, takes his risk. He is going towards the opposite camp — for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and rejection of the Eternal.


Sri Aurobindo:   There are some who are never touched by the hostile forces.  The normal resistance of the lower Nature in human beings and the action of the Hostiles are two quite different things.  The former is natural and occurs in everybody; the latter is an intervention from the non-human world.


Sri Aurobindo: But this intervention can come in two forms. (1) They use and press on the lower Nature forces making them resist where they would otherwise be quiescent, making the resistance strong or violent where it would be otherwise slight or moderate, exaggerating its violence when it is violent. There is besides a malignant cleverness, a conscious plan and combination when the Hostiles act on these forces which is not evident in the normal resistance of the forces. (2) They sometimes invade with their own forces.  When this happens there is often a temporary possession or at least an irresistible inﬂuence which makes the thoughts, feelings, actions of the person abnormal — a black clouding of the brain, a whirl in the vital, all acts as if the person could not help himself and were driven by an overmastering force.


Sri Aurobindo: On the other hand instead of a possession there may be only a strong inﬂuence; there the symptoms are less marked, but it is easy for anyone acquainted with the ways of these forces to see what has happened. Finally it may be only an attack, not possession or inﬂuence; the person then is separate, is not overcome, resists.     It is difﬁcult to observe the difference between the action of the hostile Force and the pressure of the lower Nature because it is the latter that the Force takes hold of for its purpose.


Sri Aurobindo: But there is in the Force a suggestive character, a conscious arrangement of the attack so as to upset or destroy the sadhana which there is not in the ordinary movement of the lower Nature — for that only comes to satisfy itself and then ceases. In your case the tactical use of a suggestion, the sudden rush clouding the knowledge, the rhythmic character of the periodic return, the attempt to bring despondency and hopelessness and push to departure — all these are clear signs of the hostile attack. People like and who are moving forward in a leisurely way, are not usually subjected to the hostile pressure. One with an intense and sensitive vital nature is more open; also those who have some vital proclivity in a very developed or exaggerated form e.g. pride, ambition, jealousy, sexuality etc. A complete surrender from the beginning does protect — suggestions may come, but they have no power to develop into a crisis.


Sri Aurobindo:  There is a natural movement of the ordinary human nature in the material consciousness which takes time to get rid of. Of course we call them forces of the lower nature but one must not regard them as hostile, but only ordinary. They have to be changed but it usually takes time and it can be done quietly. One must be more occupied with the positive side of the sadhana than with them. If one is always thinking of them as hostile things, getting disturbed when they come, considering as hostile possessions, then it is not good.


Sri Aurobindo: The things that are really hostile are few and must be distinguished from the ordinary movements of the nature. The ﬁrst must be repelled, the second dealt with quietly and without getting troubled or discouraged by their appearance.


Sri Aurobindo: They [ ] are not hostile forces, they are simply the forces of the ordinary Nature. The hostile forces are those which try to pervert everything and are in revolt against the Divine and opposed to the Yoga.


Sri Aurobindo:   The forces of the Ignorance are a perversion of the earth-nature and the adverse Powers make use of them. They do not give up their control of men without a struggle.    There is a pressure on the forces of the lower nature to change — through that the pressure is felt by the hostiles; but whether they change or are destroyed seems to be left very much to them to choose.


Sri Aurobindo: There are almost always some parts of the being that are either unwilling or feel an incapacity for the effort demanded of them.  It is the psychic and the mind and the higher vital usually that join together for the Yoga — for if these three do not join, it is difﬁcult to do any Yoga at all beyond getting a few experiences from time to time. But in the lower vital there is almost always something recalcitrant and there is much of the physical that is too obscure. If the sadhak were left to himself this could be remedied without much difﬁculty, but it is here that the hostility in the universal (lower) forces comes in — they want to keep their reign over the being.


Sri Aurobindo: The result is an exacerbation of the resistance of the lower vital and an exaggeration of the obstruction (inertia, passive resistance) in the physical which then admit these suggestions of self-destruction, depression or despair.     It is more the lack of sleep that is responsible [ ], I think; also the excess of struggle which the constant pressure of the vital disturbances and the physical tamas bring in and by that weaken the nerves.  Like the vital disturbance the physical inertia with all its symptoms is an attack of the hostile forces intended to cut short and prevent the higher opening.


Sri Aurobindo: The ideas that arise to justify it are of no value — it is not true that physical work is of an inferior value to mental culture, it is the arrogance of the intellect that makes the claim. All work done for the Divine is equally divine, manual labour done for the Divine is more divine than mental culture done for one’s own development, fame or mental satisfaction.  This inertia, numbness, pain should be thrown off with the same resolution as the vital disturbances. The only peculiarity of it in your case is the persistent violence of the attack as in the case of the vital — otherwise it is what others get also; but each time they reject, call on the Mother and get free, after a little time if the attack is violent, at once if it is of a lesser character.  If there is temporary physical inability, one can take rest, but solely for the purpose of recovering the physical energy.


Sri Aurobindo: The idea of giving up physical work for mental self-development is a creation of the mental ego.   The inertia gives room and power for the hostile forces to act.  No, they [] do not create universal forces; they are themselves moved by them and move them.  From the higher mind upwards, all is free from the action of the hostile forces. For they [] all belong to the spiritual consciousness though with varying degrees of light and power and completeness.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not see how I could say that you were not ﬁt for this Yoga when you had and still get the experiences that are characteristic of the Yoga. The obstacles in the consciousness and the attacks are no proof that a man is not ﬁt for Yoga. There is no one practising Yoga who does not get them. Even those who have become great siddha Yogis had them during their time of sadhana.  There is not only yourself or who have been touched, but others have been violently affected.


Sri Aurobindo: The attack has been extremely serious this time — as these attacks always are at the moment when something is about to be effected in the individual or the general consciousness.    There are always hostile forces that try to stop or break the experience. If they come in, it is a sign that there is something in the being, vital or physical, that either responds or is too inert to oppose.


Sri Aurobindo:  The hostile forces do not need a cause for attacking — they attack whenever and whoever they can. What one has to see is that nothing responds or admits them.     There is always this critical hostile voice in everybody’s nature, questioning, reasoning, denying the experience itself, suggesting doubt of oneself and doubt of the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: One has to recognise it as the voice of the Adversary trying to prevent the progress and refuse credence to it altogether.     It is not a fact that the Rajayogin or others are not attacked by environmental forces. Whether moksha or transformation be the aim, all are attacked — because the vital forces want neither liberation nor transformation.


Sri Aurobindo: Only the Yogins speak of it in general terms as Rakshasi Maya or the attacks of,, , — they don’t trace these things to their sources or watch how they come in — but the thing itself is known to all.     Naturally, the hostile forces are always on the watch to rob what they can of the things received by the sadhak — not that they proﬁt by them, but they prevent them from being used to build up the divine in life.  It often happens like that.


Sri Aurobindo: When a progress has been made (here it is the opening of the inner vision) the hostiles attack in a fury.  You must be especially on your guard when you are making a progress — so as to check the attack before it can get in.   It is a fact that the lower forces always attack when they see that a sadhak is making too much progress for their taste. But they can do nothing against a clear and steady will and a faithful perseverance.


Sri Aurobindo:    A progress made often stirs the adverse forces to activity, they want to diminish its effect as much as possible. When you get a decisive experience of this kind, you should remain concentrated and assimilate it — avoiding self-dispersion and all externalising of the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo:    It is very often after a good experience or a decisive progress that the beings of the vital world try to attack and threaten.  The being who took the form of was one of these. They have always the hope that they can turn back the sadhak from his path by attacks and menaces.


Sri Aurobindo:    About the attacks and the action of the cosmic forces — these attacks very ordinarily become violent when the progress is becoming rapid and on the way to be deﬁnite — especially if they ﬁnd they cannot carry out an effective aggression into the inner being, they try to shake by outside assaults. One must take it as a trial of strength, a call for gathering all one’s capacities of calm and openness to the Light and Power so as to make oneself an instrument for the victory of the Divine over the undivine, of the Light over the darkness in the world tangle.


Sri Aurobindo: It is in this spirit that you must face these difﬁculties till the higher things are so conﬁrmed in you that these forces can attack no longer.     There is always a struggle going on between the forces of Light and the opposing forces — when there is a true movement and progress the latter try to throw a wrong movement across to stop or delay the progress. Sometimes they do this by raising up old movements in yourself that have still the power to recur; sometimes they use movements or thoughts in the atmosphere, things said by others to disturb the consciousness.


Sri Aurobindo: When a settled peace and working of the Power and self-giving of the being can be ﬁxed in the physical, then there comes a secure basis — there are no more ﬂuctuations of this kind, though superﬁcial difﬁculties may continue.     That is right []. The rest is the remnant of the attack — such an attack, sudden and violent, as sometimes, indeed often comes when one is making full progress to the straight and open way.


Sri Aurobindo: It cannot permanently deﬂect the progress and, when it disappears, there is usually a chance of going on more ﬁrmly and swiftly towards the goal.  That is what we must do now.    Krishnaprem’s letter is admirable from start to ﬁnish and every sentence hits the truth with great point and force. He has evidently an accurate knowledge both of the psychological and the occult forces that act in Yoga; all he says is in agreement with my own experience and I concur.


Sri Aurobindo: His account of the rationale of your present difﬁculties is quite correct and no other explanation is needed — except what I was writing in my unﬁnished letter about the descent of the sadhana into the plane of the physical consciousness and that does not disaccord with but only completes what he says. He is quite right in saying that the heaviness of these attacks was due to the fact that you had taken up the sadhana in earnest and were approaching, as one might say, the gates of the Kingdom of Light. That always makes these forces rage and they strain every nerve and use or create every opportunity to turn the sadhak back or, if possible, drive him out of the path altogether by their suggestions, their violent inﬂuences and their exploitation of all kinds of incidents that always crop up more and more when these conditions prevail, so that he may not reach the gates. I have written to you more than once alluding to these forces, but I did not press the point because I saw that like most people whose minds have been rationalised by a modern European education you were not inclined to believe in or at least to attach any importance to this knowledge. People nowadays seek the explanation for everything in their ignorant reason, their surface experience and in outside happenings.


Sri Aurobindo: They do not see the hidden forces and inner causes which were well-known and visualised in the traditional Indian and Yogic knowledge.  Of course, these forces ﬁnd their in the sadhak himself, in the ignorant parts of his consciousness and its assent to their suggestions and inﬂuences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any success. In your case the chief  have been the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness with all its ﬁxed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas and associations, its obstinate doubts and its maintaining these things as a wall of obstruction and opposition to the larger light. This activity of the physical mind is what people call intellect and reason, although it is only the turning of a machine in a circle of mental habits and is very different from the true and free reason, the higher Buddhi which is capable of enlightenment and still more from the higher spiritual light or that insight and tact of the psychic consciousness which sees at once what is true and right and distinguishes it from what is wrong and false. This insight you had very constantly whenever you were in a good condition and especially whenever Bhakti became strong in you.


Sri Aurobindo: When the sadhak comes down into the physical consciousness, leaving the mental and higher vital ranges on which he had ﬁrst turned towards the Divine, these opposite things become very strong and sticky and, as one’s more helpful states and experiences draw back behind the veil and one can hardly realise that one ever had them, it becomes difﬁcult to get out of this condition. The only thing then, as Krishnaprem has told you and I also have insisted, is to stick it out. If once one can get and keep the resolution to refuse to accept the suggestions of these forces, however plausible they may seem, then either quickly or gradually this condition can diminish and will be overpassed and cease. To give up Yoga is no solution; you could not successfully do it as both Krishnaprem and I have told you and as your own mind tells you when it is clear. A temporary absence from the Asram for relief from the struggle is a different matter.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not think, however, that residence in the Ramana Asram would be eventually helpful except for bringing back some peace of mind; Ramana Maharshi is a great Yogi and his realisation very high on its own line; but it does not seem to me that it is a line which you could successfully follow as you certainly can follow the path of Bhakti if you stick to it, and there might then be the danger of your falling between two stools, losing your own path and not being able to follow the path of another nature.   The main obstacle in your sadhana has been a weak part in the vital which does not know how to bear suffering or disappointment or delay or temporary failure. When these things come, it winces away from them, revolts, cries out, makes a scene within, calls in despondency, despair, unbelief, darkness of the mind, denial — begins to think of abandonment of the effort or death as the only way out of its trouble. It is the very opposite of that equanimity, fortitude, self-mastery which is always recommended as the proper attitude of the Yogi. This has been


Sri Aurobindo: seized upon by the forces adverse to the sadhana with their usual cleverness to prevent you from making the steady and ﬁnally decisive progress which would put all the trouble behind you.  Their method is very simple. You make the effort and get perhaps some of these experiences which are not decisive but which if continued and followed up may lead to something decisive or at least you begin to have that peace, poise and hopefulness which are the favourable condition for progress — provided they can be kept steady. Immediately they give a blow to that part of the vital — or arrange things so that it shall get a blow or what it thinks to be a blow and sets it in motion with its round of sadness, suffering, outcry and despair. It clouds the mind with its sorrow and then gets that clouded mind to ﬁnd justiﬁcations for its attitude — it has established a ﬁxed formation, a certain round of ideas, arguments, feelings which it always repeats like a mechanism that once set in motion goes its round till it stops or something intervenes to stop it.


Sri Aurobindo: This justiﬁcation by the mind gives it strength to assert itself and remain or, when thrown back, to recur. For if these reasonings were not there, you would at once see the situation and disengage yourself from it or at any rate would perceive that such a course of feeling and conduct is not worthy of you and draw back from it at its very inception.  But as it is you have to spend days getting out of the phase and getting back into your normal self. Then when you are back to your right walk and stature they wait a little and strike again and the whole thing repeats itself with a mechanical regularity. It takes time, steadfast endeavour, long continued aspiration and a calm perseverance to get anywhere in Yoga; that time you do not give yourself because of these recurrent swingings away from the right attitude.


Sri Aurobindo: It is not vanity or intellectual questioning that is the real obstacle — they are only impedimenta, — but they could well be overcome or one could pass beyond in spite of them if this part of the vital were not there or were not so strong to intervene. If I have many times urged upon you equanimity, steadfast patience, cheerfulness or whatever is contrary to this spirit, it is because I wanted you to recover your true inner vital self and get rid of this intruder. If you give it rein, it is extremely difﬁcult to get on to anywhere. It must go, — its going is much more urgently required than the going of the intellectual doubt.  How you got to this condition is another matter.


Sri Aurobindo: When you came it was not apparent and for a long time did not manifest itself. When Mother ﬁrst saw you in the verandah of the old house she said, “That is a man with a large and strong vital”  and it was true, nor do I think it has at all gone, but you have  pushed it to the back and it turns up only when you are in good condition.


Sri Aurobindo: The other, this small vital which is taking so much space now, must have been there but latent, perhaps because you had had a strong and successful life and it had no occasion to be active. But at a certain moment here it began to be impatient for immediate results, to fret at the amount of tapasya or effort to control its habits and indulgences and the absence of immediate return for the trouble. At a later stage it has tried to justify and prolong itself by appealing to your penchant for the Vaishnava attitude. But the emotional outbreaks of the Vaishnava — or such impulses as Vivekananda’s — spring from a tremendous one-minded, one-hearted passion for the Divine or for the goal which tries to throw itself headlong forward at any cost. It was another part of your vital that would have liked to take that attitude, but this smaller part prevented it and brought in a confusion and a mixture which was rather used by the adverse forces to turn you away from belief in or hope of the goal.


Sri Aurobindo: This confusion of mind and vital you must get rid of — you must call in the true reason and the higher vital to cast out these movements. A higher reason must refuse to listen to its self-justiﬁcations and tell it that nothing, however plausible, can justify these motives in a sadhak; your higher vital must refuse to accept them, telling it, “I do not want these alien things; I do not recognise them as part of myself or my nature.”  The hostiles when they cannot break the Yoga by positive means, by positive temptations or vital outbreaks, are quite willing to do it negatively; ﬁrst by depression, then by refusal at once of ordinary life and of sadhana.  Indirect attacks are not of this kind, a violent rush and covering by hostile forces — they are done through covert suggestions, half-truth, half-falsehood, attempts to represent the falsehood in the garb of the Divine Truth or to mix the lower consciousness cleverly with the higher. Their attempt is to mislead by guile rather than to conquer by force.


Sri Aurobindo:   When the vital forces or beings throw an inﬂuence, they give it certain forms of thought-action and put them in the minds and vital of people so that they feel, think, act, speak in a particular way. Whoever opens to the inﬂuence acts according to this formation, perhaps with variations due to his own vital temperament.


Sri Aurobindo:   Always refuse your assent to these forces and their suggestions and movements — that is the one imperative rule. It is not that you cannot understand the Truth, you understand the Truth perfectly well — but once you begin listening they confuse your mind, cover up the understanding and then torment you with their false suggestions. Always remain quiet, always open to the help of the Force, always call for the peace.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not allow these suggestions to prevail. Each time these powers attack, if you hold them at bay, you gain an added force for progress. They attack and suggest to you a wrong understanding in the hope that, if you accept, their power to return on you will last a little longer. Do not allow them to prevail for however short a time.


Sri Aurobindo: I do not see what reasons can be so subtle as to justify or even appear to justify something that opposes and tries to destroy the sadhana. Whatever stands in the way of spiritual progress, must be a falsehood whatever reasons it gives in its own favour. The best thing is not to listen to its reasons.


Sri Aurobindo: There is no issue out in such persistence in a wrong mood and a false attitude. It is the old foolish idea that the ignorance is the truth for you because you are still ignorant in your external consciousness and that if the divine Light and Truth are not perfectly established in the ignorance, then the Light and Truth are false and the ignorance is the only truth and that to believe in the Truth and the Divine is a pretence. Nothing can be more irrational than these arguments of the dark Forces to which your external vital so foolishly lends its adherence. The Truth remains the Truth in spite of all denial and it is to that you will have to give your assent and allegiance, not to confusion and darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: But when the suggestions come, surely it is possible to know from their very character what they are and that itself shows that they must come from wrong vital Forces. The only thing is that they must be at once rejected and the entry into your own mind and vital refused to them — i.e. they must not be accepted or allowed to inﬂuence. Very few have the direct occult perception of the Forces behind the suggestion — at least until the cosmic consciousness fully opens, for then direct perception becomes more easily possible, — but the mental understanding can be used with good effect.


Sri Aurobindo: Vital forces can attack the mind and do. Many receive suggestions from them through the brain, so it is quite possible that it may be felt as coming in through the head from above. That does not mean that it came from regions above the mind (higher Mind, intuition or Overmind). Correct reasoning means no more than coherent argument from a certain standpoint and does not validate a ﬁt of anger or indicate for it a non-adverse source.


Sri Aurobindo:   It [ ] must have been an indication of the source and location of the suggestion or inﬂuence. Either thoughts or vibrations or some pressure of wrong force can be felt being thrown or sent in a very concrete way when the consciousness is open. When it is not, they come in without being noticed, only the result is felt.


Sri Aurobindo:   There has been progress in all these parts [], but they seem to be subject still to a response to the suggestions of the hostile forces. Everybody gets these suggestions, but they ought not to be allowed to enter inside, especially in the heart, or to be accepted by the vital. Evidently, they enter through the physical mind (from the throat upwards means that) and affect the surface vital and emotional being. You must get the power to reject them from there by a constant and steady denial and refusal of their suggestions.


Sri Aurobindo: So long as anything in you says “yes” or accepts, there is always the possibility of a return.     These [] are the usual suggestions that come when there is the attack of the hostile forces. You should know that they have no value and reject.


Sri Aurobindo: The spiritual perfection, the full transformation of the nature is not a thing that can come without long and steady endeavour. Movements like these have many refuges in different parts of the being and it is not till they are driven out of all and out of the environmental consciousness that one can be free from their recurrence. One must learn to be inﬂexible, ﬁxed in one’s aim and not discouraged by the recurring difﬁculties of the nature, for they have been long ingrained in the vital and physical of the human being  and they are also in the play of the universal forces — so if it takes long to get them out, as it does even with the best sadhaks, that is no proof that one is not ﬁt for the sadhana. Reject all that and go on steadily — aim always at getting more of the higher consciousness down, that is the cure for all these things.


Sri Aurobindo:  What is there in you is the capacity for response to these suggestions [] that still remains owing to the stamp of the past habit on the physical, especially the subconscient physical. I have explained to you what happens — that these things when rejected by the mind and vital descend into the subconscient or else go out into the environmental consciousness and from there they can return when pushed by the hostile forces. It is in these two ways that the hostiles try to recover their hold. But the rising from the subconscient is not so important except for its long persistence — it comes up in dream or it is, in the waking consciousness, fragmentary.


Sri Aurobindo: But when it comes from the environmental consciousness then it can be a strong attack  and it is evidently that which is taking place now.  I think what lends force to these attacks and tends to upset you, is a feeling of impatience somewhere that things are not going forward, progress of a deﬁnite kind is not being made and that these things are not done with already for ever. A period of apparent halt is not necessarily an adverse thing, it can be a preparation for a fresh progress of a more decisive character — that often happens in the sadhana — but you have to keep vigilantly the advance gained in spite of attacks. The next progress ought to be the descent of the full spiritual calm and peace from above — an opening of the consciousness into wideness.


Sri Aurobindo: Till it comes, keep yourself ﬁrm and do not allow these attacks to shake your basis.     They [] are felt as suggestions, or a touch on the surface mind, vital, physical or as movements in the atmosphere (the personal or the general environmental consciousness) — but for the inner being it is like gusts or storms outside. If they penetrate by chance into the house, they are immediately ejected and the doors and windows banged on them — there is nothing that accepts or tolerates them inside.


Sri Aurobindo: All these difﬁculties [] should be faced in a more quiet and less egoistic spirit.  This Yoga is a spiritual battle; its very attempt raises all sorts of adverse forces and one must be ready to face difﬁculties, sufferings, reverses of all sorts in a calm unﬂinching spirit.  The difﬁculties that come are ordeals and tests and if one meets them in the right spirit, one comes out stronger and spiritually purer and greater.


Sri Aurobindo: No misfortune can come, the adverse forces cannot touch or be victorious unless there is some defect in oneself, some impurity, weakness or at the very least ignorance. One should then seek out this weakness in oneself and correct it.  When there is an attack from the human instruments of adverse forces, one should try to overcome it not in a spirit of personal hatred or anger or wounded egoism, but with a calm spirit of strength and equanimity and a call to the Divine Force to act. Success or failure lies with the Divine.  In dealing with others there is a way of speaking and doing which gives most offence and opens one most to misunderstanding and there is also a way which is quiet and ﬁrm but conciliatory to those who can be conciliated — all who are not absolutely of bad will.


Sri Aurobindo: It is better to use the latter than the former. No weakness, no arrogance or violence, this should be the spirit.    The attack of illness after seeing the woman is very evidently the result of an adverse Force leaping upon you. There are men and women who are the vehicles of these adverse Forces and if you come in contact with them when you are off your guard and have a movement (in this case a sexual movement) which gives them an opportunity for a grip, then some adverse Force can leap upon you and hold, and the attack takes either the form of a mental unsettling, a moral disturbance (loss of character etc.), a vital upheaval or nervous breakdown or, as in this case, a physical illness.


Sri Aurobindo: These things are well known to all who are acquainted with the working of occult forces and the details in the letter are quite unmistakable signs; such attacks are always happening to people, but most are unconscious and feel only the results but not the movements that attended the attack or their causes. When the consciousness has opened by Yoga one becomes aware and it is easy to ﬁx the source of the attack and its nature. The illness can only be cured for good by the throwing out or the departure of the force that causes it; a certain quiet will has to be exercised or else a calling in of the Yoga-force or the Divine Sanction for the removal; there should be no struggle but a very tranquil pressure. The greater the faith, the easier it is for the action to be successful.


Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it was an attack — the hostile forces often take the form of this or that person so as to get through the physical associations a more concrete grip on the physical consciousness.  Yes, the adverse forces take advantage of any perturbation of that kind [ ] — for it opens as it were a passage to their action. Fear is the one thing that one must never feel in face of them, for it makes them bold and aggressive. Moreover fear, as you justly say, calls the thing feared — it must therefore be thrown out altogether.


Sri Aurobindo:  If you are afraid of the hostile forces when they try to come, you expose yourself to their power.  The worst thing for sadhana is to get into a morbid condition, always thinking of “lower forces, attacks” etc. If the sadhana has stopped for a time, then let it stop, remain quiet, do ordinary things, rest when rest is needed — wait till the physical consciousness is ready. My own sadhana when it was far more advanced than yours used to stop for half a year together. I did not make a fuss about it, but remained quiet till the empty or dull period was over.


Sri Aurobindo:   How can you have peace and quiet when you are always thinking of “lower forces” and “attacks” and “possessions” etc.? If you can look at things naturally and quietly, then only you can have quiet and peace.


Sri Aurobindo: Do not think too much of the hostile Force. The only thing you have to do with it is to dismiss it and even the suggestion of it when it comes.     It is quite true.


Sri Aurobindo: To talk of one’s experiences to others tends to diminish the power of the experience. Also to think too much of the hostile Powers is to bring in their atmosphere. One has to recognise them when they come and repel them, but to think much about them, to fear, to be expecting or looking out for them is a mistake.   It is so that they [] must be regarded — without interest, with indifference. That removes the necessity for constant struggle which is itself a form of interest, and it is as discouraging and more to these suggestions.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is better not to trouble about the hostile forces. Keep your aspiration strong and sincere and call in the Divine in each thing and at each moment for support and in all that you feel keep yourself open to us. That is the easiest way to the Divine. If you begin to concern yourself about the hostile forces, you will only make the path more difﬁcult.


Sri Aurobindo:   Write to that if he indulges these ideas about hostile beings etc., it will be a serious hindrance to his sadhana. It only puts him and others around him in undesirably close relations with the adverse vital world and its forces. These beings can have no “important part” to play in the life and sadhana. The only part they can play is to attack and interfere with the sadhana.


Sri Aurobindo: When that happens, their suggestions and approaches have to be rejected, at once and summarily, and the power of the Mother called on to clear the nature or the atmosphere. But they must not be dwelt upon by the mind or any kind of relation admitted or any imaginations about themselves that they suggest entertained or encouraged.  These attacks should not discourage you. There are always moments — so long as there is not the complete basis in the physical when old movements seem to revive. But so long as it is only a rush of an outside force churning up the subconscient and it does not last, it does not at all mean that the progress is not there.


Sri Aurobindo: We have to deal with all the complexity of the human consciousness in its hidden parts as well as on its surface — and there are layers on layers of the consciousness in which something may lurk of the old reactions, but each conquest makes the control stronger and brings the full puriﬁcation nearer.     You need not be upset about the matter; it is sufﬁcient if you note movements like these and are vigilant that they should ﬁnd no ground in you again. The cause is probably to be found in the contact with the outside world renewing some possibilities of the old Adam in you.


Sri Aurobindo: When there is some lowering or diminution of the consciousness or some impairing of it at one place or another, the Adversary — or the Censor — who is always on the watch presses with all his might wherever there is a weak point lying covered from your own view, and suddenly a wrong movement leaps up with unexpected force. Become conscious and cast out the possibility of its renewal, that is all that is to be done.    It is certainly the force hostile to the Yoga and the divine realisation upon earth that is acting upon you at the present moment. It is the force (one force and not many) which is here in the Asram and has been going about from one to another.


Sri Aurobindo: With some as with, and it has succeeded; others have cast it from them and have been able to liberate the light of their soul; open in that light to the nearness and constant presence of the Mother, feel her working in them and move forward in a constant spiritual progress. Some are still struggling, but in spite of the bitterness of the struggle have been able to keep faithfully to the divine call that brought them here.  That it is the same hostile force would be shown, even if its presence were not for us visible and palpable, by the fact that the suggestions it makes to the minds of its victims are always the same. Its one master sign is always this impulse to get away from the Asram, away from myself and the Mother, out of this atmosphere, and. For the force does not want to give time for reﬂection, for resistance, for the saving Power to be felt and act.


Sri Aurobindo: Its other signs are doubt; tamasic depression; an exaggerated sense of impurity and unﬁtness; the idea that the Mother is remote, does not care for one, is not giving what she ought to give, is not divine, with other similar suggestions accompanied by an inability to feel her presence or her help; a feeling that the Yoga is not possible or is not going to be done in this life; the desire to go away and do something in the ordinary world — the thing itself suggested varying according to the personal mind. If it were not this one invariable hostile force acting, there would not be this exact similarity in all the cases. In each case it is the same obscurities thrown on the intelligence, the same subconscious movements of the vital brought to the surface, the same irrational impulses pushing to the same action, — departure, renunciation of the soul’s truth, refusal of the Divine Love and the Divine Call.  It is the vital crisis, the test, the ordeal for you as for others — a test and ordeal which we would willingly spare to those who are with us but which they call on themselves by persistence in some wrong line of movement or some falsiﬁcation of the inner attitude. If you reject entirely the falsehood that this force casts upon the sadhaka, if you remain faithful to the Light that called you here, you conquer and, even if serious difﬁculties still remain, the ﬁnal victory is sure and the divine triumph of the soul over the Ignorance and the darkness.


Sri Aurobindo: The opportunity for these forces is given when the sadhaka descends in the inevitable course of the sadhana from the mental or higher vital plane to the physical consciousness. Always this is accompanied by a fading of the ﬁrst deep experiences and a descent to the neutral obscure inertia which is the bedrock of the unredeemed physical nature. It is there that the Light, the Power, the Ananda of the Divine has to descend and transform everything, driving away for ever all obscurity and all inertia and establishing the radiant Energy, the perfect Light and the unchanging Bliss. There and not in the mind or the higher vital is all the difﬁculty, but there too must be the victory and the foundation of the new world. I do not wish to disguise from you the difﬁculty of this great and tremendous change or the possibility that you may have a long and hard work before you; but are you really unwilling to face it and take your share in the great work?


Sri Aurobindo: Will you reject the greatness of this endeavour to follow a mad irrational impulse towards some more exciting work of the hour or the moment for which you have no true call in any part of your nature?  There is no true reason for despondency; in nothing that has passed in you or which you have written do I ﬁnd any good ground for it. The difﬁculties you experience are nothing to those that others have felt and yet conquered them, others who were not stronger than you. All that has happened is that by this descent into the physical consciousness, the ordinary external human nature has come to the front with its elementary imperfections and subconscient unsatisﬁed impulses and it is to these that the contrary force is appealing. The mind and the higher vital have put away from them the ideas and illusions which gave them a sanction and an illusion of legitimacy and even nobility in their satisfaction.


Sri Aurobindo: But the root of them, their inherent irrational push for satisfaction, has not yet gone — this for instance is the reason for the sexual movements which you have recently felt in sleep or in waking. This was inevitable. All that is needed is for your psychic being to come forward and open you to the direct and real and constant inner contact of myself and the Mother. Hitherto your soul has expressed itself through the mind and its ideals and admirations or through the vital and its higher joys and aspirations; but that is not sufﬁcient  to conquer the physical difﬁculty and enlighten and transform Matter.


Sri Aurobindo: It is your soul in itself, your psychic being that must come in front, awaken entirely and make the fundamental change. The psychic being will not need the support of intellectual ideas or outer signs and helps. It is that alone that can give you the direct feeling of the Divine, the constant nearness, the inner support and aid. You will not then feel the Mother remote or have any farther doubt about the realisation; for the mind thinks and the vital craves, but the soul feels and knows the Divine.


Sri Aurobindo: Cast away from you these movements of doubt, depression and the rest which are no part of your true and higher nature.  Reject these suggestions of inability, unﬁtness and all these irrational movements of an alien force. Remain faithful to the Light of your soul even when it is hidden by clouds. My help and the Mother’s will be there working behind even in the moments when you cannot feel it. The one need for you and for all is to be, even in the darkness of the powers of obscurity of the physical consciousness, stubbornly faithful to your soul and to the remembrance of the Divine Call.


Sri Aurobindo: Be faithful and you will conquer.  They [] come because they were freely permitted in the past — so they want to renew and continue their action.   An entire rejection and a complete turning to the Divine are the way to meet them.


Sri Aurobindo:   It is sufﬁcient if you can keep in touch with the Force and reject any strong attack of the confusion. The rest will be done by the Force itself — for no one is really strong enough to change himself, it is the Divine Force called down that does it.


Sri Aurobindo:   This kind of attack is always possible. What one has to have is an inner condition which at once throws them off and a faith in the Mother’s power and name which is quite sufﬁcient to dissolve these Rakshasi Maya formations.    This state which tries to come upon you and seize is not part of your true self, but a foreign inﬂuence.


Sri Aurobindo: To yield to it and to express it would therefore be not sincerity, but the expression of something false to your true being, something that will grow more and more foreign to you as you progress. Always reject it, when it comes, even if you feel strongly its touch; open in your mind and soul to the Mother, keep your will and faith and you will ﬁnd it receding. Even if it returns obstinately, be equally and more obstinate against it, ﬁrm in rejection — that will discourage and wear it out and ﬁnally it will grow weak, a shadow of itself and disappear.  Be true to your true self always — that is the real sincerity.  Persist and conquer.


Sri Aurobindo:   You ought to realise that these things [ ] 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.


Sri Aurobindo: 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.   You must throw this black poison [] out of you at once instead of dallying with it and giving it expression as if it were your own feelings and as if such an attitude could ever be justiﬁable. It is that weakness in the vital which enables them [] to keep up their attack.  Instead of allowing the weakness, revive your will and aspiration and love and let them throw out this egoistic darkness.


Sri Aurobindo:    All these things, feelings, suggestions etc. [ ], are the workings of an adverse Force which wants to break up the Asram, upset or drive away the workers and prevent the Truth and Light which are descending from having any fruition. There is no truth behind it, it is a Force of the Devil or Falsehood — there is no rational ground for the feelings of despair it suggests, but it throws itself with fury on the mind and vital and tries to possess them, ousting the Truth and the Divine Presence.


Sri Aurobindo: Even the strongest have felt its attacks. You must understand what it is and, the moment it comes, oppose it with a resolute No. For the more the Truth descends, the more furious this adverse Force becomes. It is making desperate attacks and putting out all its force in the hope of snatching the victory before the full Truth can come down. Remain ﬁrm, understand what it is and give it no admission — to reject it, to drive it out of his atmosphere is the greatest help any sadhak can give to the Mother.


Sri Aurobindo:   All naturally in these difﬁculties has its original roots in the vital and its expectations of all kinds. When one wants to get rid of them, the vital resists and is unwilling to part with them, but this by itself would not be anything more than a work of change, adjustment, rearrangement which might take time but not cause serious conﬂicts and upheavals. For once the mind and inner will are settled to be rid of these movements, the will of the higher vital would also come into line and the rest which is more obstinate against change because it is a thing of habitual movements, supported on the subconscient and not governed by reason or knowledge, would yet be unable to resist permanently or vehemently the pressure from the higher will of the being.


Sri Aurobindo: Its force of resistance would diminish and the habitual reactions wear out or fall away. But the prolongation of the difﬁculty and its acuteness come from the fact that there are Forces in Nature, not personal or individual but universal, which live upon these movements and through them have long controlled the individual nature. These do not want to lose their rule and so when these movements are thrown out, they throw them back on the sadhak in strong waves or with great violence. Or they create in the vital a great depression, discouragement, despair — that is their favourite weapon — because it is losing its former ﬁeld of desires and has not yet in any continuity something that would replace it, the assured continuous psychic or spiritual condition or experience. To prevent that is the whole effort of these Forces.  So they create these upheavals and the vital admits them because of its old habit of response to the lower Forces.


Sri Aurobindo: At the same time they put in suggestions to the mind so as to make it also accept the disturbance, discouragement and depression. That is what I meant by saying that these are attacks from outside and must be rejected. If they cannot be rejected altogether, yet one must try to keep a part of the mind conscious which will refuse to admit the suggestions or share in the depression and trouble, — which will say ﬁrmly, “I know what this is and I know that it will pass and I shall resume my way to the goal which nothing can prevent me from reaching, since my soul’s will is and will always be for that.” You have to reach the point where you can do that always; then the power of the Forces to disturb will begin to diminish and fall away. Our Force is there with you and will not fail to support and strengthen you.


Sri Aurobindo: The suggestion that we are indifferent is obviously nothing but a suggestion, intended to help and fortify the depression. As such you should regard it and not accept it as true or as your own thought; for it could not possibly be true. Your success in reaching peace and light is as much our concern as yours and even more so.   In your letter you write that you are very tired, restlessness and tamas prevail in the physical, there is a constant struggle more or less intense between the psychic being and the physical nature.  Now this was exactly your condition in the last months when you were here.


Sri Aurobindo: Then you wanted to go because the pressure was too great, because the struggle with the restless and tamasic physical nature and the Asuric inﬂuence was too hard and continuous, because you felt very tired and needed to go away for a rest, for respite, to recover.  How then can you come back in the same condition? The pressure will be still greater than before, the struggle constant; you are likely to be still more tired and depressed than you were. And it will be harder for you to bear because the personal position will entirely be changed. You will have no special place, no authority delegated, no work entrusted to you; you will not be near the Mother but at a distance among the others.


Sri Aurobindo: The Asuric nature in you which had become an intolerable hindrance to the work and dangerous to yourself and to others will be given no kind of indulgence. It is clear that you would ﬁnd the conditions unbearable unless you had undergone in the meantime a fundamental change. Therefore you must not ask to come here until you have acquired a stable quiet and peace both within you and in your external atmosphere.  Wherever you are, we shall always be near to your psychic being and ready to help it to conquer. As things are with you now, that help is likely to act better at a distance than when you were near and were at every moment repelling it by your wrong inner movements and reactions and your wrong speech and acts.


Sri Aurobindo: But to proﬁt by our help you will have to do what you have never yet really done, at least in your external being. You will have in your physical nature itself resolutely to turn from the Asura and his ways and refuse to indulge him on any pretext in any thought, feeling, speech or action which would help him still to possess your instruments and determine or inﬂuence your attitude and your acts. To become quiet and quietly and simply to maintain this persistent and patient rejection with our help, without rajasic struggle, sincerely and in fact and in every detail, not merely in wish and idea, is what you need to do. To be divided, to aspire in one part of your being and to indulge and justify and cherish the wrong movements with another part can lead to nothing but endless struggle and fatigue. Only by this turn and change will the struggle and fatigue pass away and purity come.


Sri Aurobindo:  Either to reject by dynamic means or to remain unaffected and let it pass are the two usual ways of dealing with these attacks.  Yes, the difﬁculty is always that something in the nature gives a hold to the attack. It either still indulges it and likes it or even, if wanting to be free, is too accustomed to receive and respond to the old feelings, thoughts, suggestions and does not yet know how to respond. The ﬁrst thing is for the mental being to stand back, refuse to accept, say “This is no longer mine.”


Sri Aurobindo: Then, even if the vital feeling responds to the attack, one part of the nature can be free and observe and discourage it. The next thing is for this free part to impose the same will of detachment on the vital so that after a time this also when the attack comes feels that it is something foreign, not its own, — as if a stranger had come into the room and was trying to impose his ideas or his will on the inmates. After that it becomes more easy to get rid of it altogether. Of course, there is the Mother’s Force working, but this kind of assent from the mind and vital makes the result quick and easy — otherwise it takes time and more labour and struggle.  You can dissolve a thought formation which is made of subtle mental stuff — why not then a mental Asura?


Sri Aurobindo: There are Asuras who are mental — who live in the false Idea and can even be vitally ascetic and appear to men as great Tapaswis.  All the same there is a stern and violent vital as the effective instrument of their nature.  The one thing wrong [] would be to allow yourself to be overcome by them. If you remain steady in yourself, you can repel the attack or else it will exhaust itself and pass. In such circumstances you have to be like a cliff attacked by a stormy sea but never submerged by it.


Sri Aurobindo:   Very glad to know that you are able to keep up your wicket so well. These bodyline attacks are always a nasty trick of the retiring hostiles and they go on with it as long as they just can, for they are unrelenting and obstinate even in defeat; but one has only to be as stiff to them as possible and their action will get more and more tired until it stops altogether.   They [] hope by persistence to tire you out or to get in by sheer obstinacy — or at least to delay the realisation by their attacks.


Sri Aurobindo: That is always their method. If they can shake the faith, the peace and, they think themselves richly recompensed.  If you can feel even in these attacks that part in you in which there is constant Peace even amidst the pains and darkness, and if you can keep it always, that is an immense gain. The something in you which does not always feel it, which remains half way, undecided, must also now take the step of complete surrender.  It is only a part of your physical mind that does not understand, that receives back the old ideas — that must be converted.


Sri Aurobindo: It does not matter about the weakness and incapacities — when the full peace and Power is there in the physical, they will be removed.  The new birth in you is certain to come — the ﬁrst touch of it is already there in the awakened psychic — the rest cannot fail to come.    Vital purity is very necessary, but it is not easy to make it immune from attack unless the wideness is there along with a solid  purity and peace descending in the wideness. Of course, wideness is not sufﬁcient.


Sri Aurobindo: If the faith and surrender are complete in all parts of the being then there can be no attack. If there is a strong central faith and surrender at all times, then there can be attacks but the attacks will have no chance of success.     There are no sadhaks who are never attacked by wrong forces — but if one has a complete faith and self-consecration, one can throw off the attack without too much difﬁculty.