Mental imbalance
(Mother to Satprem:) “You know, mon petit, you really must have your feet on the ground, be very solid, firmly balanced, and not get carried away!”[1]
(Shyam Sunder's notes from meeting with Mother 31.3.71:) “There have been cases of mental imbalance in Auroville. Rob was looked after by Wil and Brigitte by Svetlana. Wil and Svetlana have proposed that such cases are not cases for mere doctors, but there should be a suitable place for their rehabilitation.
Mother agrees that there should be a separate house. She says that the house should be at the outskirts of the city and not at the centre. And it should be large enough to give the impression that one can move about freely and at the same time that one cannot get out.”[2]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “Vital forces can attack the mind and do. Many receive suggestions from them through the brain, so it is quite possible that it may be felt as coming in through the head from above. That does not mean that it came from regions above the mind (higher Mind, intuition or Overmind).”[3]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “One sees the negative side only during the attack, because the first thing the attack or obstruction does is to try to cloud the mind’s intelligence. If it cannot do that, it is difficult for it to prevail altogether for the time being. For if the mind remains alert and clings to the truth, then the attack can only upheave the vital and, though this may be painful enough, yet the right attitude of the mind acts as a corrective and makes it easier to recover the balance and the true condition of the vital comes back more quickly.”[4]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “Certain things can illuminate some people (I have clearly seen it) and drive others utterly mad — completely destroy their balance.”[5]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “Loss of balance produces disorder in the consciousness and the adverse forces use that loss of balance for attacking and wholly upsetting the system and doing their work. That is why people become hysterical or mad or filled with the desire to die or go away.”[6]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “More easily [a loss of balance] occurs in the women than in the men but in some of the latter also. What produces the loss of balance is an inability to control the vital movements by the reason and an instability of the vital itself so that it sways from one feeling to another, one impulse to another without harmony or order.”[7]
(Sri Aurobindo:) “I may observe that X does not seem to me to be mad — there is no sign of a dislocation of the thinking mind due to lesion or accident or illness. What there is is a fixed idea and what is called folie de persécution, but that is not due to insanity — people have it who have otherwise an acute and perfectly well-ordered intelligence. X from his photograph appears to have had a mediumistic element in him and to have by some ill-chance entered into contact with powers of the vital plane which were able to put their suggestions in him — in that part of the consciousness which we call the vital mind — so that he is unable to ascertain things in their proper light and is tormented by the suggestions that have driven their furrows there in the form of habitual ideas that tyrannise over him and which he is unable to embrace or refuse. Unfortunately this is a malady of the consciousness, which it is very difficult to cure because the patient himself gives no assistance, as he clings to his fixed idea and even when the influence is taken away, calls it back upon him. Certainly he could be told from here that he is not mad and is not cursed of God — but that of itself might not be sufficient to cure him.”[8]
- “Even if he escapes the fiercest fires,
- Even if the world breaks not in, a drowning sea,
- Only by hard sacrifice is high heaven earned:
- He must face the fight, the pang who would conquer Hell.
- A dark concealed hostility is lodged
- In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time
- That claims the right to change and mar God’s work.
- A secret enmity ambushes the world’s march;
- It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act:
- It stamps stain and defect on all things done;
- Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth.
- There is no visible foe, but the unseen
- Is round us, forces intangible besiege,
- Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own
- Overtake us and compel the erring heart;
- Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net.
- An adversary Force was born of old:
- Invader of the life of mortal man,
- It hides from him the straight immortal path.
- A power came in to veil the eternal Light,
- A power opposed to the eternal will
- Diverts the messages of the infallible Word,
- Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan:
- A whisper lures to evil the human heart,
- It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard,
- It is the origin of our suffering here,
- It binds earth to calamity and pain.
- This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.
- This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
- Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.
- This is the inner war without escape.”[9]
- ↑ Mother's Agenda 1961, 18 April 1961
- ↑ Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala, Down Memory Lane, p.112
- ↑ Letters on Yoga – IV, p.778
- ↑ Ibid., p.797
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Letters on Yoga, p.806
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Ibid., p.807
- ↑ Savitri, p.446, “The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain”
See also