(On Hostile Forces)
I have noticed that in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is an excuse people give to themselves. I have seen that practically, in the case of almost all the people who write to me saying, 'I am being violently attacked by hostile forces,' it's an excuse they are giving. It means that certain things in their nature do not want to yield, so they put all the blame on the hostile forces.
As a matter of fact, my tendency is more and more towards something in which the role of these hostile forces will be reduced to that of an examiner - which means that they are there to test the sincerity of your spiritual quest. These elements have a reality in their action and for the work - this is their great reality - but when you go beyond a certain region, it all grows dim to such a degree that it is no longer so well defined, so distinct. In the occult world, or rather if you look at the world from the occult point of view, these hostile forces are very real, their action is very real, quite concrete, and their attitude towards the divine realization is positively hostile; but as soon as you go beyond this region and enter into the spiritual world where there is no longer anything but the Divine in all things, and where there is nothing undivine, then these 'hostile forces' become part of the total play and can no longer be called 'hostile forces': it is only an attitude that they have adopted - or more precisely, it is only an attitude adopted by the Divine in his play.
This again belongs to the dualities that Sri Aurobindo speaks of in The Synthesis of Yoga, these dualities that are being reabsorbed. I don't know if he spoke of this particular one; I don't think so, but it's the same thing. It's again a certain way of seeing. He has written of the Personal-Impersonal duality, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti ... but there is still one more: Divine and anti-divine.
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