The Link Between Inner Defects and External Attacks of Adverse Forces

In order for any force or action to affect an individual, there must be something that links them together, attracting the energy that is external to the receiving station nexus of the individual body-life-mind complex. For purely material forces,, obviously, this connection is existence in the material world. Thus, any embodied individual can be impacted by severe weather or earthquakes or volcanos if they are within the area of the activity. The more subtle forces, those of the vital or mental realms, can impact an individual from a further distance. For instance, there are cases of family members, who have an emotional bond with one another, experiencing emotional shock and pain at the moment a loved one is harmed or killed thousands of miles away. The ideas we accept on the mental level are very much aligned with those for which we are receptive. Quantum physics even shows that particles which are “quantum entangled” with each other will react precisely the same way even though there is no visible physical connection and they are distant from one another. The power of consciousness itself is not bound by limits of space or time, which implies that once one becomes receptive to pure consciousness, the action of that power is direct and immediate.

We understand from radio and tv technology that there are different frequencies of transmission and in order to experience a particular channel, the receiving instrument must be tuned to that frequency.

It is thus similarly true that if one has an experience or an attack of forces hostile to one’s aspiration, that there must be something within oneself that is receptive to and tuned to that particular frequency or vibration. The solution, then, to such attacks, is to understand the aspect of one’s being that is open to and tuned to that particular vibratory energy and ‘change the channel’. Human beings have a general capacity to tune to a relatively wide range of energies, linked to the vibratory capacity of the various energy centers, chakras, in the subtle being. Thus, we are constantly subjected to energies, which, if we allow them to have access and free play within us, can be disruptive and can be seen as an attack. The effective response to such attacks is not to set the entire being in motion through the energy of the attacking force, but to practice detachment, to isolate the vibration and location and then work to change the channel or at least the response to the stimulus.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “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.”

“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.”

Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 10, Difficulties in Transforming the Nature, Difficulties Due to the Hostile Forces, pp. 280-286