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At the Feet of The Mother

Pseudo-Occultism

Guidance from Sri Aurobindo

 

I was surprised to learn that Y is going away. I thought he was progressing well.

He was not progressing at all. He was full of pseudo-occult delusions and “sufferings”. So he is going with our approval to see if he cannot shake them off by a change of atmosphere.

He opened himself to wrong suggestions and influences in his desire to get occult powers and be able to figure as a great Yogi. It was these forces that made him feel all sorts of pains and sufferings in his body caused by a distracted state of his nerves, while his mind and vital became clouded and tortured by the struggle between these influences and the Truth pressing upon him.

I thought he was living in his inner being.

What do you mean by the inner being? Y was not living in his psychic but in his vital.

X did the same. It is one thing to live within with the Mother and with the Truth in the psychic being and another to live in the vital with delusions and false voices that mislead and obscure.

He [Y] had too much ego, ambition, sex and he brought these into his sadhana, accepted them as part of it — when he tried to free himself from the delusions, the vital brought them back because the ego could not free itself from its ambition.

Could not occultism be turned into a help in the sadhana?

How can falsehood (his occultism was a false occultism, an interchange with wrong vital forces) help the sadhana?

Going away was necessary, because staying here he was moved always to do sadhana and sadhana had come for him to mean this occultism. He could not get back to the right track without getting back to the normal mind and living in the ordinary consciousness so as to begin with a blank page. This he failed to do here.

It is not for vital satisfaction that he goes, but to get out of this wrong groove.

The Ashram is the best place for getting rid of wrong movements. Is not the Guru’s physical presence the best means for doing it?

That is only true if one can open oneself to the Mother. To be here and shut up to it and under another control does not help.