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Difficulties and obstacles, if properly understood and used, can turn out to be an unexpected source of strength. Gesar was the great warrior king of Tibet, whose escapades form the greatest epic of Tibetan literature. Gesar means “indomitable,” someone who can never be put down. From the moment Gesar was born, his evil uncle Trotung tried all kinds of means to kill him. But with each attempt Gesar only grew stronger and stronger.
For the Tibetans, Gesar is not only a martial warrior but also a spiritual one. To be a spiritual warrior means to develop a special kind of courage, one that is innately intelligent, gentle, and fearless. Spiritual warriors can still be frightened, but even so they are courageous enough to taste suffering, to relate clearly to their fundamental fear, and to draw out without evasion the lessons from difficulties.
Sogyal Rinpoche
Eén van de interessante onderdelen van esoterische training is het onderzoeken van de vele verschillende soorten van tegenwerking. De ziel heeft haar eigen doelstelling die vaak anders is dan die van de discipel in incarnatie. Pas bij de derde inwijding heeft de persoon, vanuit vrije wil, de strijd om de macht opgegeven en is het stadium bereikt dat de ziel en de persoonlijkheid werkelijk samenwerken. In het verleden werden deze mensen beschouwd als heiligen, ze zijn zeldzaam.
De tegenwerkende kracht is dus voor een deel het gevolg van allerlei bewuste of onbewuste gevechten die zich afspelen tussen de persoon (die vaak niet bereid is om te veranderen) en de ziel, die aandringt om de weg van vreugdevolle dienst aan de medemens te blijven volgen. Dit proces strekt zich uit over vele levens. Ervaringen en keuzes uit het verleden zorgen voor allerlei nieuwe soortgelijke ervaringen, waar de discipel mee wordt geconfronteerd, voor nader onderzoek en mogelijk andere keuzes. Dit alles is in de aura van de discipel aanwezig en er is dus geen ontkomen aan. De opgebouwde persoonlijkheid is het resultaat van het verleden en is de werkelijke wachter bij de poort naar de ziel.
De ziel probeert deze persoonlijkheid te bevrijden van eigenbelang, angst, illusies en isolement. Dit slaagt alleen met bewuste medewerking van de persoon zelf. Als de bewuste discipel zich blijft richten op het instromende licht van de ziel dan kan het denkvermogen uiteindelijk worden gevuld met de wijsheid van de ziel. Op deze manier wordt de persoonlijkheid omgevormd tot een kanaal van zuivere ziele werkzaamheid. Deze omvorming wordt ook wel bevrijding genoemd. Bij de vierde inwijding is de discipel volledig losgekomen van alles wat hem heeft vastgehouden in de menselijke samenleving. Er stroomt dan een geweldige hoeveelheid energie door de aura van de discipel. Zo iemand is wel in de wereld en tussen de mensen maar is niet "geboeid" door wat dan ook. De enige reden voor zijn aanwezigheid is dienst in het Plan. Er is dan geen weerstand meer van persoonlijke aard, die zijn werkzaamheden kunnen belemmeren. Toch blijft er altijd gevaar bestaan voor andere soorten van tegenwerking, die worden veroorzaakt door de tegenstanders van de witte loge.
Naarmate de discipel vordert op de weg naar bevrijding neemt ook de weerstand toe. In het begin van het pad worden vooral de emotionele reacties als hindernis ervaren. Later worden de eigen denkbeelden op het mentale gebied het actieve terrein van strijd. In een verder gevorderd stadium worden de onjuiste denkbeelden van de groep bestreden met de zuivere rede. Als de discipel weer dichter bij het licht is gekomen worden ook de leden van de zwarte loge duidelijker gekend en krijgt men directer met hun aanvallen te maken. Deze aanvallen zijn erop gericht de werkzaamheden van de discipel onmogelijk te maken of opgebouwd werk te vernietigen. Vaak wordt er door de zwarte loge gebruik gemaakt van mensen zonder onderscheidingsvermogen en met een gesloten hart. Ook binnen esoterische groepen wordt op deze manier veel schade aangericht door aangenomen discipelen, zonder dat deze zich bewust zijn van waar men voor wordt misbruikt. Het is raadzaam hier over na te denken.
Dit alles maakt het werk van de Geestelijke Hiërarchie zwaar en moeilijk, vooral waar het gaat om het opbouwen van groepen. De tegenwerkende krachten vanuit de verschillende personen en de aanvallen van de tegenstanders van de witte loge zorgen voor een strijd met het nederdalende Licht. Uiteindelijk zal het licht zegevieren omdat dit vanuit het goddelijke wordt gevoed. De groep Emmanuël wordt geleid vanuit de Geestelijke Hiërarchie en werkt van boven naar beneden, niet andersom. Dit maakt haar zeer sterk en biedt de mogelijkheid om de hogere vermogens te manifesteren, ondanks alle mogelijke tegenwerkende krachten.
Welke methoden kunnen nu worden gebruikt om de werker in de wereld te beveiligen? Wat kan er gedaan worden om zijn veiligheid te verzekeren in de strijd van het heden en in de grote strijd van de komende eeuwen?
- Een besef dat zuiverheid van alle voertuigen (fysiek, emotioneel, mentaal, spiritueel) een eerste vereiste is. Indien een duistere broeder macht over een mens verkrijgt, blijkt hieruit dat die mens een of andere zwakke plek in zijn leven heeft. De deur welke toegang verleent, moet door de mens zelf zijn geopend; de opening waardoor een kwaadaardige kracht toegelaten kan worden, moet door de bewoner van de voertuigen zijn veroorzaakt.Vandaar de noodzaak van een kraakzindelijk stoffelijk lichaam, van eerlijke standvastige gevoelens in het stoffelijk lichaam en van zuiverheid van denken in het mentaal lichaam. Wanneer dit zo is, zullen de lagere voertuigen gecoördineerd zijn en zal de inwonende Denker zelf geen toegang verlenen.
- Alle angst uitschakelen. De krachten van evolutie trillen sneller dan die van involutie en in dat feit ligt een onmiskenbare veiligheid. Angst veroorzaakt zwakheid; zwakheid veroorzaakt ontbinding; de zwakke plek breekt open en er een ontstaat een gat, waardoor de boze kracht kan binnentreden. De factor waardoor toegang wordt verleend, is de angst van de mens zelf, die op die wijze de deur ontsluit.
- Stevig en onbewogen staan, ongeacht wat er moge gebeuren. Uw voeten kunnen ondergedompeld zijn in de modder der aarde, maar uw hoofd kan zich baden in de zonneschijn van de hogere gebieden. Erkenning van het aardse slijk houdt geen bezoedeling in.
- Een erkenning van het gebruik van gezond verstand en de toepassing van dat gezond verstand op de aangelegenheid in kwestie. Slaap veel en leer, terwijl gij slaapt, het lichaam positief te houden, blijf doorwerken op het emotioneel gebied en verwerf innerlijke kalmte. Doe niets waardoor het stoffelijk lichaam oververmoeid raakt, en ontspan u wanneer het mogelijk is. In uren van ontspanning komt de vereffening die latere gespannenheid voorkomt.
Bron: Occulte meditatie, Alice Bailey, blz. 127-28
DISCIPELSCHAP EN INWIJDING - Alice Bailey
Het pad van discipelschap is moeilijk te begaan en het pad van inwijding zelfs nog moeilijker; een ingewijde is slechts een strijder met in de strijd bekomen lidtekens, de overwinnaar in vele moeilijk gewonnen gevechten; hij spreekt niet over hetgeen hij bereikt heeft, want hij wordt tezeer in beslag genomen door het grote werk, dat hij bezig is te verrichten; hij maakt geen zinsspelingen op zichzelf of op al hetgeen hij heeft volbracht, behalve om te zeggen, dat er nog slechts weinig is gedaan. Desalniettemin is hij altijd voor de wereld een mens met grote invloed, die geestelijke kracht hanteert en idealen belichaamt, de werker voor de mensheid, die zeker resultaten tot stand brengt, die volgende generaties zullen herkennen. Hij is iemand, die zelden begrepen wordt door zijn eigen generatie, ondanks al het grote, wat hij volbracht heeft. Hij is dikwijls het mikpunt van het gepraat der mensen en vaak wordt alles wat hij doet verkeerd uitgelegd; hij legt alles wat hij heeft - tijd, geld, invloed, reputatie en alles, wat de wereld als de moeite waard beschouwt - op het altaar van altruïstische dienst en dikwijls brengt hij zijn eigen leven als laatste gave ten offer, alleen om te ervaren, dat degenen die hij gediend heeft, zijn gave naar zich terugwerpen, zijn zelfverloochening honen en hem met onsmakelijke namen betitelen. Maar de ingewijde geeft hier niet om, want hij bezit het voorrecht enigermate in de toekomst te kunnen zien en daardoor beseft hij, dat de kracht, die hij heeft opgewekt, het plan te zijner tijd in vervulling zal doen gaan; hij weet ook, dat zijn naam en zijn streven opgetekend worden in het archief van de Loge en dat de 'Zwijgende Wachter' over de aangelegenheden der mensen er nota van heeft genomen.
Extra info & guidelines by Sri Aurobindo [English]
The hostile Forces are Powers of Darkness who are in revolt against the Light and the Truth and want to keep this world under their rule in darkness and ignorance. Whenever anyone wants to reach the Truth, to realise the Divine, they stand in the way as much as possible. But what they are specially against is the work the Mother and myself are doing, to bring down the Light here into the earth and establish the Truth—that would mean their own expulsion. So they always try to destroy the work as a whole and to spoil the sadhana of each sadhak. It is not only you who are attacked: all are attacked more or less—especially when there is a great progress, these forces try to interfere.
The only way to avoid it is to be entirely turned towards the Mother and to refuse any opportunity to these Forces.
[...]
Sometimes they possess men in order to act through them, sometimes they take birth in a human body. When their use in the play is over, they will either change or disappear or no longer seek to intervene in the earth-play.
[...]
These things [such as temptation by Apsaras] are possible but they do not usually happen—because it is difficult for beings of the subtle worlds to materialise to such an extent or for a long time. They prefer to act by influencing human beings, using them as instruments or taking possession of a human mind and body.
[...]
There are two kinds of Asuras—one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine: they are spoken of in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purposes of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so.
These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pisachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don’t change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectualised mind; but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital and not mental, at the service of his desire and not of truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or a soul.
[...]
Yes. Some kinds of Asuras are very religious, very fanatical about their religion, very strict about rules of ethical conduct. Others of course are just the opposite. There are others who use spiritual ideas without believing in them to give them a perverted twist and delude the sadhaka. It is what Shakespeare described as the Devil quoting Scripture for his own purpose. At present what they are most doing is to try to raise up the obscurity and weakness of the most physical mind, vital, material parts to prevent the progress or fulfilment of the sadhana.
[...]
The Asuras are really the dark side of the mental, ormore strictly, of the vital mind plane. This mind is the very field of the Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego. On the lower vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshasas which represent violent passions and influences. There are also other kinds of beings on the vital plane which are called the Pisachas and Pramathas. They manifest more or less in the physico-vital. On the physical plane the corresponding forces are obscure beings, more forces than beings, what the Theosophists call the elementals. They are not strongly individualised beings like the Rakshasas and Asuras, but ignorant and obscure forces working in the subtle physical plane. What we in Sanskrit call the Bhutas mostly come under this class. But there are two kinds of elementals, the one mischievous and the other not. There are no Asuras on the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense—“the Divine in its strength”. The mental and vital Asuras are only a deviation of that power.
[...]
The Gandharvas are of the vital plane but they are vital Gods, not Asuras. Many Asuras are beautiful in appearance and can carry even a splendour or light with them. It is the Rakshasas, Pisachas, etc. who are ugly or evil in appearance.
[...]
Some of the vital beings are very intelligent—but they do not make friends with the Light—they only try to avoid destruction and wait their time.
[...]
The hostile forces exist and have been known to Yogic experience ever since the days of the Veda and Zoroaster in Asia (and the mysteries of Egypt and Chaldea and the Cabbala) and in Europe also from old times. These things of course cannot be felt or known so long as one lives in the ordinary mind and its ideas and perceptions—for there there are only two categories of influences recognisable, the ideas and feelings and actions of oneself and others and the play of environment and physical forces. But once one begins to get the inner view of things, it is different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical which play upon our nature—and these are conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working and it is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one’s own sole and independent personality.
You yourself have at one time written that your crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves out without your being able to determine or put an end to them. That means an action of universal forces and not merely an independent action of your own personality, though it is something in your nature of which they make use. But you are not conscious, and others also, of this intervention and pressure at its source for the reason I state. Those in the Asram who have developed the inner view of things on the vital plane have plenty of experience of the hostile forces. However, you need not personally concern yourself with them so long as they remain incognito.
[...]
It is true that all comes from the Divine and it is true also that a Divine Presence and a Divine Will is behind all that happens and leads the world towards a divine goal.
At the same time it is also taught in the Gita that this world is a world of obscurity and ignorance and to attain to the Divine one must overcome certain forces of Nature, such as Desire, which the Gita calls the enemy difficult to overcome. It is in this sense that we speak of hostile forces—those which stand in the way of coming out of the Ignorance and attaining to the consciousness of the Divine.
It is again true that those who have a complete and living faith in the Divine and a perfect sincerity in their vision of the Divine everywhere and a pure sattwic nature need not trouble themselves about the hostile forces—for from them the forces of the Ignorance fall back and cannot take possession of their nature.
The teaching about the hostile forces (Asuri Rakshasi forces) is necessary for those who have a divided consciousness or a more rajasic temperament—for if they are not on their guard they may fall into the control of undesirable forces of Desire and Ego.
[...]
The psychic being, if allowed to manifest from the first in Life and lead the evolution instead of being relegated behind the veil, would have been the principle of a harmonious outflowering; everyone who has felt the psychic at work within him, freed from the vital intervention, can at once see that this would be its effect because of its unerring perception, true choice, harmonic action. If it has not been so, it is because the dark Powers have made Life a claimant instead of an instrument. The reality of the Hostiles and the nature of their role and trend of their endeavour cannot be doubted by anyone who has had his inner vision unsealed and made their unpleasant acquaintance.
[...]
It is likely that as the supramental principle evolved itself the evolution would more and more take on another aspect—the Daivic nature would predominate, the Asuro-Rakshaso-Pishachic prakriti which now holds so large a place would more and more recede and lose its power. A principle of greater unity, harmony and light would emerge everywhere. It is not that the creation in the Ignorance would be altogether abolished, but it would begin to lose much of its elements of pain and falsehood and would be more a progression from lesser to higher Truth, from a lesser to a higher harmony, from a lesser to a higher Light, than the reign of chaos and struggle, of darkness and error that we now perceive.
For according to all occult teaching the evolutionary creation could have been such but for the intervention of the Powers of Darkness—all traditions including that of the Veda and Upanishads point under different figures to the same thing. In the Upanishads it is the Daityas that smite with evil all that the gods create, in the Zoroastrian tradition it is Ahriman coming across the work of Ahura Mazda, the Chaldean tradition uses a different figure. But the significance is the same; it is the perception of something that has struck across the harmonious development of creation and brought in the principle of darkness and disorder. The occult tradition also foresees the elimination of this disturbing element by the descent of a divine Principle or Power on earth, but gives to it usually a sudden and dramatic form. I conceive that the supramental descent would effect the same event by a progressive elimination of the darkness and evolution of the Light, but with what rate of rapidity it would be rash to try to forecast or prefigure.
[...]
When there is a pressure on the vital world due to the preparing Descent from above, that world usually precipitates something of itself into the human. The vital world is very large and far exceeds the human in extent. But usually it dominates by influence not by descent. Of course the effort of this part of the vital world is always to maintain humanity under its sway and prevent the higher Light.
The vital descent cannot prevent the supramental—still less can the possessed nations do it by their material power, since the supramental descent is primarily a spiritual fact which will bear its necessary outward consequences. What previous vital descents have done is to falsify the Light that came down as in the history of Christianity where it took possession of the teaching and distorted it and deprived it of any widespread fulfilment. But the supermind is by definition a Light that cannot be distorted if it acts in its own right and by its own presence. It is only when it holds itself back and allows inferior Powers of consciousness to use a diminished and already deflected Truth that the knowledge can be seized by the vital Forces and made to serve their own purpose.
[...]
Ignorance means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life that flows from it and all that is natural to the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of Supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth,—truth of being, truth of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a result instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half truth, half error.
It is this that some of the ancient thinkers like Shankara, not perceiving the greater Truth-Force behind, stigmatised as Maya and thought to be the highest creative power of the Divine. All in the consciousness of this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half knowledge. Therefore it is called the Ignorance.
Falsehood, on the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the truth of things, that is the Falsehood.
[...]
These are the forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes)who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers who have fallen towards the Darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos. The word “Appearances” refers to the forms they take in order to rule the world, forms often false and always incarnating falsehood, sometimes pseudo-divine.
[...]
Yes, they [the hostile forces] have their own world and, if they kept to it, there could be no objection to their existence. There is a world that is natural to them and has its own rhythm, its own dharma—just as the lesser gods have theirs. But, they want to dominate the evolution and for that purpose they have taken their station in the vital worlds which influence the earth nature and give it its materials for life.
They were created or rather manifested like other orders of being as a type or several types expressing some cosmic stress, some possibility in the Infinite, the expression of a certain kind of consciousness and force. When the work that they are permitted to do on earth, the work of negation, perversion, miscreation is finished they will be destroyed here, but there is no reason to suppose that they may not exist in their own universe, as it were, outside the system here. For here their presence is an Adharma, a disturbance of the true harmony and natural evolution there should be on the earth plane; it is an intrusion and not a natural presence.
How did the Ignorance come into being out of Sachchidananda? Or ego? The Hostile Forces in their own world embody ego self-fulfilled and having its own free play—ego on earth is not self-fulfilled and not meant to be, it is in conflict with a cosmic Force greater than itself and is only a temporary expedient for bringing forth individuality out of the indeterminateness of just conscient life and inconscient Matter.
[...]
If there were no hostile forces and there were still the evolutionary world, there could be ignorance still but not perversity in the ignorance. All would be a partial truth acting through imperfect instruments but for the best purposes of this or that stage in a progressive manifestation.
[...]
The mere intensity of the force does not show that it is a bad power; the Divine Force often works with a great intensity. Everything depends on the nature of the force and its working; what does it do, what seems to be its purpose? If it works to purify or open the system, or brings with it light or peace or prepares the change of the thought, ideas, feelings, character in the sense of a turning towards a higher consciousness, then it is the right force. If it is dark or obscure or perturbs the being with rajasic or egoistic suggestions or excites the lower nature, then it is an adverse Force.
[...]
The hostiles have themselves bodies though not of a gross physical kind—they see, but with a subtle seeing that includes not only bodies, but movements of forces, thoughts, feelings.
[...]
Very great [are the occult powers of the hostile beings]—it is their occult powers and knowledge of occult processes that make them so strong and effective.
[...]
The lesser forces of Light are usually too much insistent on seeking for Truth to make effectivity their logic or their rule—the hostiles are too pragmatic to care for Truth, they want only success. As for the greater Forces (e.g. Overmind) they are dynamic and try always to make consciousness effective, but they insist on consciousness, while the hostiles care nothing for that—the more unconscious you are and their automatic tool, the better they are pleased—for it is unconsciousness that gives them their chance.
[...]
The universe is certainly or has been up to now in appearance a rough and wasteful game with the dice of chance loaded in favour of the Powers of darkness, the Lords of obscurity, falsehood, death and suffering. But we have to take it as it is and find out—if we reject the way out of the old sages—the way to conquer. Spiritual experience shows that there is behind it all a wide terrain of equality, peace, calm, freedom, and it is only by getting into it that we can have the eye that sees and hope to gain the power that conquers.
[...]
It [the adverse force] is the Power that keeps up ignorance and darkness in the world—it can only be destroyed when mankind is no longer in love with ignorance and darkness. Each sadhak has to push it out of contact with his being. When it has gone from him, then there will be no longer any serious difficulties in his sadhana.
[...]
The evil forces are perversions of the Truth by the Ignorance—in any complete transformation they must disappear and the Truth behind them be delivered. In this way they can be said to be transformed by destruction.
[...]
The Gods are Personalities or Powers put forth by the Divine—they are therefore in front limited Emanations, although the full Divine is behind each of them.
Of course, the gods exist—that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and transmit the divine workings. It is the physical mind which believes only in what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds—gods and Asuras etc.
There are Gods everywhere on all the planes.
[...]
While the Gods cannot be transformed, for they are typal and not evolutionary beings, they can come for conversion—that is to say, to give up their own ideas and outlook on things and conform themselves to the higher Will and supramental Truth of the Divine.
The higher beings are not likely to be in disharmony with each other as they are not subject to the lower ignorance.
The Gods have their own enjoyments, though they may not be of a material character.
[...]
The natives of the Overmind are Gods. Naturally the Gods rule the cosmos.
The Overmind is the world of the Gods and the Gods are not merely Powers, but have Forms also.
In the Overmind the Gods are still separated existences.
The Formateurs of the Overmind have shaped nothing evil—it is the lower forces that receive from the Overmind and distort its forces.
[...]
As far as I can see, once the supramental is established in Matter, the transformation will be possible undermuch less troublesome conditions than now are there. These bad conditions are due to the fact that the Ignorance is in possession and the hostile Powers an established authority, as it were, who do not care to give up their hold and there is no full force of Light established in the earth consciousness which would not only meet but outweigh their full force of darkness.
It is the darkest nights that prepare the greatest dawns—and it is so because it is into the deep inconscience of material life that we have to bring, not an intermediate glimmer, but the full glory of the divine Light.
[...]
This aim suggested to you seems to be part of a seeking for occult powers; such a seeking is looked on with disfavour for the most part by spiritual teachers in India because it belongs to the inferior planes and usually pushes the seeker on a path which may lead him very far from the Divine. Especially, a contact with the forces and beings of the astral (or, as we term it, the vital) plane is attended with great dangers.
The beings of this plane are often hostile to the true aim of spiritual life and establish contact with the seeker and offer him powers and occult experiences only in order that they may lead him away from the spiritual path or else that they may establish their own control over him or take possession of him for their own purpose. Often, representing themselves as divine powers, they mislead, give erring suggestions and impulsions and pervert the inner life.
Many are those who, attracted by these powers and beings of the vital plane, have ended in a definitive spiritual fall or in mental and physical perversion and disorder. One comes inevitably into contact with the vital plane and enters into it in the expansion of consciousness which results from an inner opening, but one ought never to put oneself into the hands of these beings and forces or allow oneself to be led by their suggestions and impulsions. This is one of the chief dangers of the spiritual life and to be on one’s guard against it is a necessity for the seeker if he wishes to arrive at his goal.
[...]
Ordinarily, all the more inward and all the abnormal psychological experiences are called psychic. I use the word psychic for the soul as distinguished from the mind and vital. All movements and experiences of the soul would in that sense be called psychic, those which rise from or directly touch the psychic being; where mind and vital predominate, the experience would be called psychological (surface or occult). “Spiritual” has nothing to do with the Absolute, except that the experience of the Absolute is spiritual. All contacts with self, the higher consciousness, the Divine above are spiritual. There are others that could not be so sharply classified and set off against each other.
The spiritual realisation is of primary importance and indispensable. I would consider it best to have the spiritual and psychic development first and have it with the same fullness before entering the occult regions. Those who enter the latter first may find their spiritual realisation much delayed—others fall into the mazy traps of the occult and do not come out in this life. Some no doubt can carry on both together, the occult and the spiritual, and make them help each other; but the process I suggest is the safer.
The governing factors for us must be the spirit and the psychic being united with the Divine—the occult laws and phenomena have to be known but only as an instrumentation, not as the governing principles. The occult is a vast field and complicated and not without its dangers. It need not be abandoned but it should not be given the first place.
[...]
A sincere heart is worth all the extraordinary powers in the world.
Sri Aurobindo
More info : [English] - http://www.sentforlife.com/thepath.htm
And with love also on its philanthropic side the gain will be great; so much more can be done for man from that plane than from the physical. Physical activities make a great fuss, and have comparatively small results. You see a man running about making laws, and doing this and that in the world of the state and of society, and you think how great is his work, how wonderful are his results. But how small and petty they are in comparison with the results which flow from unseen labour done in quietness and silence, without speech of tongue, without effort of the physical body, done by the working of the mind in the subtler medium which affects men’s thoughts more than their bodies, which influences their minds more than their outward frames. When humanity rises on to that higher plane, then this influence will be far more widely spread than it is today, and misery, crime and wretchedness will be met by working on the minds of men, purifying them and raising them, and thus lifting them above the possibilities that engulf them now. Do you realize, you to whom I am now speaking, that every one of you who generates an impure or revengeful or angry or sordid thought, sends out that thought into the world of society as a living force, as an active entity, which plays upon society, which is taken in by the weakest, by the most receptive, by the least developed, so that out of those thoughts of so-called respectable men there are scattered the seeds of crime through the lower masses of the people, and the sins of these which show out in actions belong very largely to the Karma of those whose thoughts have given them birth. That is not known as widely as it should be known. It is not believed as it should be believed. Every man who feels revenge sends out into the astral world a power for destruction; and when some weak creature comes along with a bad Karma behind him, and bad circumstances surrounding him, with impulses which are not under his control and passions which are stronger than his mind, these evil thoughts come down upon him, all these angry thoughts from men living in respectable conditions in society, and if he be stimulated by some wrong, maddened by some injury, these impel him to strike a blow which we call murder; though he holds the knife in his physical hand, the blow is largely struck by the thoughts of many men whose revengeful feelings are of the essence of murder, although they appear not in outward form. You will not get rid of crimes in the lower strata of society until you purify the thoughts of the higher classes, of those who are educated and can understand the nature of things. And when all this is seen and known, when the astral world lies open to men’s vision, there will be a new force available to help and to raise mankind; for men will no longer disbelieve in the power of thought, they will then appreciate their responsibility for the thoughts they generate, and will send out loving and helping influences instead of the degrading influences that go out so often today.
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