Your experience of the peace in the body was
a very good one. As for the bad dream, it was
a hostile formation from the vital world—a
suggestion in a dream form intended to upset
you. These things should be dismissed—you
should say in yourself “It is false—no
such thing can happen” and throw it away
as you
would a wrong suggestion in the waking state.
These things that come to frighten you are merely
impressions thrown on you by small vital forces
which want to prevent you (by making you nervous)
pushing on the sadhana. They can really do nothing
to you, only you must reject all fear. Keep
always this thought when these things come “The
Mother's protection is with me, nothing bad
can happen”,—for when there is the
psychic opening and one puts one's faith in
the Mother, that is sufficient to ward these
things off. Many sadhaks learn, when they have
alarming dreams, to call the Mother's name in
the dream itself and then the things that menace
them become helpless or cease. You must therefore
refuse to be intimidated and reject these impressions
with contempt. If there is anything frightening,
call down the Mother's protection.
The
heat you felt was probably due to some difficulty
in the force coming down below the centre between
the eyes where it has been working up till now.
When such sensations or the unease you once
felt or similar things come, you must not be
alarmed, but remain quiet and let the difficulty
pass.
What
you had before that, the moonlight in the forehead
was this working on the centre there between
the eyebrows, the centre of the inner mind,
will and vision. The moonlight you saw is the
light of spirituality and it was this that was
entering into your mind through the centre,
with the effect of the widening in the heart
like a sky filled with moonlight. Afterwards
came some endeavour to prepare the lower part
of the mind whose centre is in the throat and
join it with the inner mind and make it open;
but there was some difficulty, as is very usually
the case, which caused the heat. It was probably
the fire of tapas, Agni, trying to open the
way to this centre.
The
experience of being taken up into the sky is
a very common one and it means an ascent of
the consciousness into a higher world of light
and peace.
The
idea that you must go more and more within and
turn wholly to the Mother is quite right. It
is when there is no attachment to outward things
for their own sake and all is only for the Mother
and the life through the inner psychic being
is centred in her that the best condition
is created for the spiritual realisation.
The
dream was of a kind one often has in the vital
plane—in which one gets into inextricable
difficulties till suddenly one finds the way
out. Gujerat in the dream
was not Gujerat, but only a symbol of one part
of the vital world which is opposed to the spiritual
life and full of vital powers that come in the
way either by fraud or by force. These dreams
are indications of certain parts of vital nature
(not one's own, but the general vital Nature)
which stand in the way of spiritual fulfilment.
When one goes there and masters them, then one
is free from any intervention of these parts
of Nature in the sadhana.
These
dreams are quite symbolical of the vital forces
that come and attack you. If you face them with
courage they are reduced to helplessness. I
don't think that it is at all your father and
brother that you meet—although something
of their hostile feelings may be taken advantage
of by those forces to take their
figures—also they may do it in order to
create sympathy in you and prevent you from
acting against them. But apart from that the
figures of the physical mother
and father and relatives are very often symbolical
of the physical or the hereditary nature or
generally of the ordinary nature in which we
are born.
In
these dreams the parents or relatives mean the
ordinary forces of the physical consciousness
(the old nature).
These
dreams are of the vital plane. Those about going
home come from a part of the vital which still
keeps the memory of the past relations and goes
there during the sleep. The dreams about the
Mother record meetings with her on the vital
plane. For the first you should throw them away
when you awake and not let your vital keep their
impress. The experiences you had there (of the
Mother coming in the heart and telling you)
were psychic in character, not of the vital
dream kind.
The
difficulty you have in sadhana may come from
the vital or physical mind becoming active.
That often happens after the first experiences
of calm and silence. One has to detach oneself
from these activities in meditation as a witness
and call down the original calm into these parts
also. But this may take time. If one can in
meditation sufficiently isolate oneself from
the surroundings and go inside, the quietude
comes more quickly.
When
you practise yoga, the consciousness opens and
you become aware—especially in sleep—of
things, scenes, beings, happenings of other
(not physical) worlds and yourself in sleep
go there and act there. Very often these things
have an importance for the sadhana. So you need
not regret seeing all this when you sleep or
meditate.
But
in no case should you fear. The fact that you
were able to destroy the beings that fought
with you (these were beings of a hostile vital
world) is very
good, for it shows that in your vital nature
somewhere there is strength and courage. Moreover,
using the Mother's name and having her protection,
you should fear nothing.
The
running away [in dream] is a symbol of the inertia
in part of the being which allows the forces
to invade, drawing back from them and losing
ground instead
of facing and destroying them.
It
is evident that X's experience was only what
is called a nightmare—an attack in sleep
from some force of the vital world, to which
he probably opened himself in some way, it may
be by answering to the man from the street who
carried the worst vital atmosphere around him.
The figure of the woman was only a form given
by his subconscient mind to this force. These
forces are around everywhere, not only in one
particular room or house, and if one opens the
door to them, they come in wherever you are.
It would have no importance
but for the nervous reaction of irrational terror
indulged in by X. One who wants to do sadhana
has no business to indulge in such panics; it
is a weakness
incompatible with the demands of the yoga and,
if one cannot throw it aside, it is safer not
to try the yoga.
The depression coming on you in sleep must have
been due to one of two causes. It might have
been the trace left by an unpleasant experience
in some
disagreeable quarter of the vital worlds, and
there are places in plenty of that kind there.
It can hardly have been an attack, for that
would surely have left a more distinct impression
of something having happened, even if there
was no actual memory of it; but merely to enter
into certain places or meet their inhabitants
or enter into contact with their atmosphere
can have, unless one is a born fighter and takes
an aggressive pleasure in facing and conquering
these ordeals, a depressing and exhausting effect.
If that is the cause, then it is a question
of either avoiding these places, which can be
done by an effort of will, once one knows that
it is this which happens, or putting around
you a special protection against the touch of
that atmosphere. The other possible cause is
a plunge into a too obscure and subconscient
sleep—that has sometimes the effect you
describe. In any case, do not allow yourself
to be discouraged when these things happen;
they are common phenomena one cannot fail to
meet with as soon as one begins to penetrate
behind the veil and touch the occult causes
of the psychological happenings within us. One
has to learn the causes, note and face the difficulty
and always react—never accept the depression
thrown on one, but react as you did the first
time. If
there are always forces around which are concerned
to depress and discourage, there are always
forces above and around us which we can draw
upon,—draw into ourselves to restore, to
fill up again with strength and faith and joy
and the power that perseveres and conquers.
It is really a habit that one has to get of
opening to these helpful forces and either passively
receiving them or actively drawing upon them—for
one can do either. It is easier if you have
the conception of them above and around you
and the faith and the will to receive them—for
that brings the experience and concrete sense
of them and the capacity to receive at need
or at will. It is a question of habituating
your consciousness to get into touch and keep
in touch with these helpful forces—and
for that you must accustom yourself to reject
the impressions forced on you by the others,
depression, self-distrust, repining and all
similar disturbances.
As
for the actual mastery of a situation by occult
powers, it can only come by use and experiment—as
one develops strength by exercises or develops
a
process in the laboratory by finding out through
the actual use of a power how it can and ought
to be applied to the field in which it operates.
It is of no use
waiting for the strength before one tries; the
strength will come with repeated trials. Neither
must you fear failure or be discouraged by failure—for
these things
do not always succeed at once. These are things
one has to learn by personal experiences, how
to get into touch with the cosmic forces, how
to relate or equate our individual action with
theirs, how to become an instrument of the Master
Consciousness which we call the Divine.
There
is something a little too personal in your attitude—I
mean the insistence on personal strength or
weakness as the determining factor. After all,
for the
greatest as for the smallest of us our strength
is not our own but given to us for the game
that has to be played, the work that we have
to do. The strength may be formed in us, but
its present formation is not final,—neither
formation of power nor formation of weakness.
At any moment the formation may change—at
any moment one sees, especially under the pressure
of yoga, weakness changing into power, the incapable
becoming capable, suddenly or slowly the instrumental
consciousness rising to a new stature or developing
its
latent powers. Above us, within us, around us
is the All-Strength and it is that that we have
to rely on for our work, our development, our
transforming change. If we proceed with the
faith in the work, in our instrumentality for
the work, in the Power that missions us, then
in the very act of trial, of facing and surmounting
difficulties and failures, the strength will
come and we shall find our capacity to contain
as much as we need of the All-Strength of which
we grow more and
more perfect vessels.
-
Sri Aurobindo
