Growth
Facing the Hostile Forces
Abstract
The hostile forces are a reality of everyday life. They are lurking everywhere and get invited by some chink in our nature. They rush in and drag us down whenever they find resonance. They love to infiltrate the growing soul. It requires sincerity and a strong will to rid ourselves of them. We need to watch our own impurities and immediately catch and expel them if they ever gain access inside. Constant realignment shields us from them. In Integral Yoga, the ultimate protection lies in the Mother’s loving arms.
Very few escape from the clutch of the hostile forces. They are universal and touch all our lives. Not many of us are actually aware of them, unless or until they make their presence tangibly obvious. They enter unseen and it is only their singular vibration which reveals their identity. However, if the individual consciousness is a stew, there is often little prospect of recognising, let alone removing it. Because of this, much of humanity unknowingly provides lodging for these entities inside.
Their presence is prompted. They always work under pretext and as they often enter through desire, they are usually invited and might stay inside for a lifetime and beyond. They swirl around in the world atmosphere and are self-generating. They will not shift until they fulfil their overall occult purpose.
On the surface, they may even appear very sweet, but if one is at all awake and they settle and linger, they will jar and cause a disturbing sense of dislocation. Otherwise, they will set about their ways unnoticed and compound the chaos that already exists inside. This is because they seek to cut our connection with the Divine. That is their only aim. Through them, we lose our balance and relinquish our well-being. Illnesses or accidents are often an inevitable consequence of their influence and for most victims, it is an unconscious process.
How they come
The adverse forces like to prey on the growing soul and look for any opportunities to infiltrate the being. They relish the challenge and hunt for openings. Wherever there is a chink in the armour, they will enter. So, it is through unknowingly calling them that we subconsciously invite their presence. The slightest aperture is often sufficient for these forces to intrude and create mischief.
The Mother, when asked why such attacks keep on recurring, even when one is successful in driving out the same force, replied:
“Because something was left inside. We have said that the force can attack only when there is something which responds in the nature — however slight it may be. There is a kind of affinity, something corresponding, there is a disorder or an imperfection which attracts the adverse force by responding to it. So, if the attack comes, you must keep perfectly quiet and send it back, but it does not necessarily follow that you have got rid of that small part in you which allows the attack to come (1).”
Awareness of the hostile forces with Integral Yoga
As soon as one embarks on the path of Integral Yoga, one becomes more sensitive to these malevolent influences. We are striving to attune to a totally new level of vibration and so the distinction can more easily be made. We become more conscious of them and learn to recognise the difference.
However, most people practising Integral Yoga are not the finished article, far from it. Their consciousness still jags back repeatedly to the surface and relinquishes whatever impetus has already been harnessed for the inside. There is still a surface personality, rife with duality, division and distortion. This invariably leaves cracks for these forces to enter. The growing soul Is always vulnerable and the consequences of succumbing to their influence are much more dire. The potential fall is more calamitous.
Anyone practising this yoga has to endure them. In the early hours, before sunrise, these malevolent entities used to congregate and visit me as I was lying in bed, leaving a cloud of depression or throngs of stressful thoughts. The time was perfect for these forces as there was little energy and capacity inside at the time for me to push them away. They worked by surprise and at times it was overwhelming. Clearly, something had been left inside for them to enter.
Quite a few years’ back, when I was just starting on Integral Yoga, late one night, while I was staying at a guest house by the shore here in Pondicherry, there was a temple parade passing below my window. I was lying in bed at the time and on the threshold of sleep. Consequently, I didn’t see what was happening, although I had witnessed these processions before and knew what to expect. They are common here.
The sound was deafening and everything seemed to be taking place right below my window! An accelerating and repetitive drum-beat was provoking a mad furore among the people outside. As the beats got faster, the noise grew and the surrounding crowd became possessed with a mad, feverish and chaotic dance. I was caught off-guard. A low thought passed through my being and I simultaneously felt something covert and sinister pierce its way into my drowsy consciousness. The next day, I didn’t feel right at all. I was unbalanced and in a state of semi-shock. It was the Mother’s Grace that, on that same day, I had a regular appointment with a friend who had the vision and knowledge to identify and expel this adverse vibration! And so, the entity was expelled.
The more one lives on the surface, the more vulnerable we become to these attacks. We have to constantly re-align ourselves inside. It is the best protection. Wherever the nature is chaotic, they rush in and seek possession. I once witnessed one such attack myself. It can happen very quickly. Even the body can be seized. It can happen on all levels. In this instance, in one moment, the victim was behaving hysterically and full of vital glee, the next he was turned upside-down. The entity forced its way into the victim’s body, rendering him incapable of expression or speech. It was very disturbing to witness. Only the Grace saved him. Mind, life and body can be captured in one fell swoop. There is always a subconscious invitation.
Humanity and the hostile forces
The bulk of humanity is prey to these forces. These forces are a reality. They are present on virtually every world stage. However, most people might go through their lives unaware of their influence and presence. Accidents, which are invariably triggered by them, are usually put down to negligence or bad luck. The contagions they spread, for instance of desire, are taken for granted. The storms of panic and fear they generate are never really scrutinised. Something much bigger is taking over and it is never addressed or questioned. The Mother says, “Fear is an invention of the hostile forces who have created it as the best means of dominating living beings, animals and men.
“Those who are pure — that is to say, exclusively under the Divine influence — have no fear (2).”
So, it would be true to say that most people unconsciously succumb to their influence. The forces are dispersive and thrive on an atmosphere of dispersion. These forces accumulate in large crowds and public places. Certain milieus are perpetually inhabited by them, particularly where there has been an unsavoury event in the past.
We all know about haunted houses. They are not a fiction. If the collective atmosphere in the house is already dispersed, the situation becomes graver. Most households simply do not have the resources to drive them away. There has to be some spiritual stability. If you have any disturbing presence in your home, repeatedly chant the word ‘Aum’ at the top of your voice throughout the house. Better still, exclaim Mother’s mantric words in order to drive them away for good:
“In the name of The Mother
For the sake of The Mother
By the power of The Mother
With the strength of The Mother
To all adverse harmful being or force I order to quit this place at once and forever (3).”
Go about your home repeating the Mother’s name and the vibration around you will stabilise and become sublime:
“When you repeat the name of the Mother, it begins to echo in all your consciousness, outside as well as inside you (4).”
Resonance
It is a state of resonance which attracts these forces.
“You have something in you which attracts this force; take, for example (it is one of the most frequent things), the force of depression, that kind of attack of a wave of depression that falls upon you: you lose confidence, you lose hope, you have the feeling you will never be able to do anything, you are cast down. It means there is in your vital being something which is naturally egoistic, surely a little vain, which needs encouragement to remain in a good state. So it is like a little signal for those forces which intimates to them: ‘You can come, the door is open.’ But there is another part in the being that was watching when these forces arrived; instead of allowing them to enter, the part which sees clearly, which knows, which has power, which resists, says: ‘No, I do not want that, it is not true, I do not want it’, and sends them back. But you have not necessarily been cured of the little thing within you which permitted them to come. You must go very deep within, work within you persistently to be able to efface all possibility of calling. And so long as you have not completely effaced it, the attack will recur almost unexpectedly. You push it back — it is like a ball you throw against the wall, back it returns; you push it back once again and again it returns — until the moment there is no longer anything to attract it. Then it does not return again.
Therefore, the most important thing to do when you are attacked by an adverse force, is to say to yourself: ‘Yes, the force comes from outside and the attack is there, but there must certainly be a correspondence in my nature, otherwise it could not have attacked me. Well, I am going to look and find within me what allows this force to come and I am going to send it back or transform it or put the light of consciousness upon it so that it may be converted, or drive it away so that it remains no longer within me….” There is a way, you see? When the force comes, the adverse force, when it attacks, the part which corresponds rushes out to meet it, it goes forward. A kind of meeting takes place. If at that time, instead of being altogether overwhelmed or taken by surprise and off your guard, you observe very closely what it was within you that vibrated (it makes the sound tat, tat, tat: another thing has entered), then you can catch it. At that moment, you catch it and say to it: ‘Get out with your friends, I don’t want you any longer!’ You send away the two together, the part that attracted and the thing it attracted; they are sent away and you are absolutely clear.
For that, you must be very vigilant and have a little courage, in the sense that at times you have to grip it hard and then pull it out — it hurts a little — and then you throw it out along with the forces you send away. After that, it is finished (5).”
We have to embark on the path of purification if we intend to forestall these forces for good. One then gets clarity on why the adverse forces are around in the first place. In the scheme of things, they dovetail perfectly into the divine Plan. They are the perfect reminder that our work is not complete. Even if the hostiles were absent, we would still have to purify ourselves in order to progress and ultimately transform. In a sense, they act as a catalyst for our purification.
For that, we must open our entire nature to the radiating influence of our innermost being, the psychic itself. We work in stages, inviting our inner being to step forward first. Only when it is fully developed, can the full majesty of the psychic being step forward. Ultimately, it is the transformation that will witness the complete annihilation of these forces. Until then, they are sanctioned. It is a long process, and the forces will cling on and on to their raison d’etre.
The Mother’s Cocoon
We are not helpless though. How can we be, when we have the Mother by our side? You can envision yourself nestling in her arms, surrounded by her cocoon of white light. This is the Mother’s impregnable bubble, which guards us against all adverse happenings. There can be no greater protection than to live inside her cocoon:
“I am constantly enveloping you, as it were, in a cocoon of peace (6).”
“I will try to make a cocoon for you. Before you go to sleep, when you lie down, you must summon the white Light, my white light, and then I will be listening. Wrapped like that: a cocoon, a nice little cocoon, all white. That way you can sleep peacefully (7).”
“You have the white light that automatically dissolves all ill will. And I did experience it: I saw beings crumble into dust. So you take that, picture that, and you build a cocoon around yourself — you know, just as insects build their own cocoons — you build a cocoon before falling asleep. I will do it here, but your ‘picturing’ is to help it be better adapted, better adjusted. You build a cocoon, and when you are quite wrapped in that white cocoon, when the enemies cannot get through it, you let yourself go into sleep. Then all that comes from outside with a manifest ill will cannot get in. That’s certain (8).”
As you lie in bed tonight, close your eyes and remember to call the Mother. Witness Her building this cocoon around you: your body and your whole being. See yourself wrapped In her cocoon; feel yourself protected by this shield of white light. Nothing harmful can penetrate it. Be grateful to the Mother.
As you awake in the following morning, immediately become conscious that this cocoon is still surrounding you. Feel yourself living inside it throughout the day. Keep the poise of gratitude throughout your daily activities, as you go about your offering in the divine Work until, once more, you lie down for the night. Nothing can harm you because this white light completely engulfs you!
References
1. The Mother. The Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 5. 2nd ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Trust; 1998, p. 93.
2. The Mother. Collected Works, Volume 16; 2003, p. 329.
3. The Mother. New Words of the Mother. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 2024, p. 393 (to be published).
4. Sri Aurobindo. The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Volume 32. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust; 2012, pp. 478-79.
5. The Mother. Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 93-95.
6. The Mother. Mother’s Agenda, Volume 6. Paris: Institut de Recherches Évolutives; (English transl.) 1980 p. 21.
7. Ibid., p. 172.
8. Ibid., pp. 174-75.
James Anderson is a member of SAIIIHR and coordinating editor of NAMAH.
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