Letters On Yoga - Part 4

Opposition of the Hostile Forces - IV

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.

It is very often after a good experience or a decisive progress

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that the beings of the vital world try to attack and threaten.... They have always the hope that they can turn back the sadhak from his path by attacks and menaces.

It often happens like that. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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

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are no more fluctuations of this kind, though superficial difficulties may continue.

Either the higher consciousness has to descend into the vital and physical or else by the psychic consciousness coming forward one has to detect whatever imperfection is in the vital and reject it.

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.

Your description is too vague. 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.

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. 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.

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

You think too much of the 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.

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

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. 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.

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.

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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.

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 and speak in a particular way. Whoever opens to their influence acts according to this formation, perhaps with variations due to his own vital temperament.

There is no particular number—but sometimes there are particular vital beings that attach themselves to a man if he accepts them.