Chapter 78Natural Disasters, Adverse Forces and the Mother’s · Helping Others and the Mother’s Help

listen to them; one must reply as you have done and dismiss them summarily from the consciousness. If one takes this simple stand, “I have come for the Yoga — I will allow nothing to divert me from my aim; I have the demand of the soul within and the longer approach or approach in vain.

I am glad you have the aspiration and the push awake; it is always bound to revive after every interval and to carry you farther. Keep it and progress.

17 March 1934

*

A few sadhaks here are supposed to be using the occult process. But when it is done to harm a fellow sadhak, is this not an egoistic use of occult power, more like the use of black magic? I told X that when occult power is used, without asking Mother, to satisfy one’s like or dislike, a clash may occur on the vital plane and some disembodied being there may give a dangerous hit. He said it is not really like this — rather it happens naturally as the result of a play of forces on the vital plane.

It is obviously a wholly Asuric thing to do when it is turned to egoistic purposes or against fellow sadhaks. It is certainly not a natural play of forces over which one has no control. Anybody doing that may get a serious back-blow, especially if it is done against people protected by the Mother — for, knocking against a wall of protection the force put out may automatically recoil on the sender.

10 September 1934

* It will not do to yield to these attacks which are without reason and obviously are only waves from outside. You should recog-nise them as such, things not your own but forced on you by a call the Mother’s force to liberate you.

15 July 1936

Natural Disasters, Adverse Forces

and the Mother’s Help

Is it true that earthquakes are inevitable phenomena in the process of the Divine Manifestation on the earth and the transformation of matter?

Not at all. 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.

Have I been kept here, outside the Asram, so that I can, by constant surrender to the Mother, rise above the difficulties of this environment and control the adverse forces that now touch and move and affect my lower nature?

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.

Am I right in thinking that every bad movement in my life is the result of my past karma and takes place with the sanction of the Mother because she is testing me at every moment?

This 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 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.

23 February 1931