The Individual Sadhak and His Relation to the Movement of Universal Forces

Forces that operate in the world are not necessarily ‘hostile’ even if their effect on any particular individual appears to be extremely negative. These forces operate on a large scale to carry out their own role and fulfillment, without specific regard to who may be impacted. When an earthquake or a tsunami strikes for instance, it is not aimed at a particular person who happens to be among those affected. Similarly, large scale vital forces, such as the fear that spreads as part of a pandemic, are also not generally directed at specific individuals, but are simply vibrating at their own frequency and spreading out. Those who are receptive to the vibration then feel it, and in many cases, they take up and resonate with that vibration.

Because we tend to identify ourselves with the specific ego-personality within which we are living and acting, we take the impacts ‘personally’. In many cases, if we are unable to observe the movement of these energies from outside, we attribute them to something that belongs to us, that we create within ourselves. When we try to address the consequences and impacts of these energies, we then struggle with them as we treat them as somehow part of ourselves, rather than recognising that they are part of a much larger play of forces that are constantly moving through the manifested creation.

There are, of course, also highly conscious beings who live and act primarily at different frequency levels than we are capable of within our human range of perception. In some cases they can ‘overlap’ our frequencies and create energies and harvest energies that ordinarily are part of our range of perception and action. In some cases, they have a specific agenda, sometimes to harvest energy that they use for their sustenance, and even, in some cases, they may exercise purely constructive or destructive energies for their own enjoyment or to carry out their agenda. This is not dissimilar to the way humans capture other species and hold them captive and make them perform for our enjoyment. The harm we cause to these species and the restriction of their lives is rarely a conce
for us when we undertake these acts; similarly conscious beings at a different level of manifestation may find their enjoyment in making us react and respond to their prodding.

From a practical standpoint, for the sadhak attempting to make progress in his spiritual pursuit, it is always best to distance oneself from whatever forces or energies arise, so as to not struggle as if it is an embedded part of oneseslf. Thus, we see the benefit of attaining the poise associated with the witness consciousness observing the exte
al nature, even at the level of the individual. Whether or not one can observe the movement of the force from outside oneself, from this standpoint, all active energies are treated as outside oneself.

A disciple asks: “Don't these hostile forces generally come from outside or inside?”

The Mother observes: “If you think or feel that they come from inside, you have possibly opened yourself to them and they have settled in you unnoticed. The true nature of things is one of harmony; but there is a distortion in certain worlds that brings in perversion and hostility. If you have a strong affinity for these worlds of distortion, you can become friends with the beings that are there and answer fully to them. That happens, but it is not a very happy condition. The consciousness is at once blinded and you cannot distinguish the true from the false, you cannot even tell what is a lie and what is not.”

“In any case, when an attack comes the wisest attitude is to consider that it comes from outside and to say, ‘This is not myself and I will have nothing to do with it.’ You have to deal in the same way with all lower impulses and desires and all doubts and questionings in the mind. If you identify yourself with them, the difficulty in fighting them becomes all the greater; for then you have the feeling that youa re facing the never easy task of overcoming your own nature. But once you are able to say, ‘No, this is not myself, I will have nothing to do with it’, it becomes much easier to disperse them.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp.92-93