Page 19 - All India Magazine May-2025

What Prevents the Force from Descending?

The restless activity of the mind
“What the sadhak has to be specially warned against in the
wrong processes of the intellect is, first, any mistaking of mental
ideas and impressions or intellectual conclusions for realisation;
secondly, the restless activity of the mere mind, cañcalaṁ manaṁ,
which disturbs the spontaneous accuracy of psychic and spiritual
experience and gives no room for the descent of the true illumi-
nating knowledge or else deforms it as soon as it touches or even
before it fully touches the human mental plane.
(CWSA 31: 14)

If the consciousness is always busy with small mental movements,
— especially accompanied, as they usually are, by a host of vital
movements, desires, prepossessions and all else that vitiates hu-
man thinking, even apart from the native insufficiency of reason,—
what room can there be for a new order of knowledge, for funda-
mental experiences or for those deep and stupendous upsurgings
or descents of the Spirit? It is indeed possible for the mind in
the midst of its activities to be suddenly taken by surprise, over-
whelmed, swept aside while all is flooded with a sudden inrush
of spiritual experience. But if afterwards it begins questioning,
doubting, theorising, surmising what this might be and whether it
is true or not, what else can the spiritual Power do but retire and
wait for the bubbles of the mind to cease?
(CWSA 28: 340) Sri Aurobindo

Lack of receptivity in some part can cause disequilibrium
You have been told: “Open yourself, you will receive the Force.”
You have been told: “Have faith, be of goodwill and you will be pro-
tected.” And indeed you are bathed in the Consciousness, bathed
in the Force, bathed in the Protection and to the extent you have

All India Magazine, May 2025 19