Anger Workshop

Introduction | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Workshop 5 - October 15th, 2000

It is really simply the recurrence of an old habit of the nature. Look at it and see how trifling is the occasion of the rising of this anger and its outburst it becomes more and more causeless and the absurdity of such movements itself. It would not really be difficult to get rid of it if, when it comes, you looked at it calmly for it is perfectly possible to stand back in one part of the being, observing in a detached equanimity even while the anger rises on the surface as if it were someone else in your being who had the anger. The difficulty is that you get alarmed and upset and that makes it easier for the thing to get hold of your mind which it should not do.

Help we are giving you stand back so as to be able to feel it and not this obsession of these surface movements.

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.24, p1410-1411.

It is indeed when the quietude comes down from above or comes out from the psychic that the vital becomes full of peace or of kindliness and goodwill. It is therefore that the inner psychic quietude first and afterwards the peace from above must occupy the whole being. Otherwise such things as anger in the vital can be controlled but it is difficult to get rid of them altogether without this occupation by the inner quietude and higher peace. That you should depend on the Mother for the sadhana is the best attitude, for it is indeed her Force that does the sadhana in you.

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.24, p1412.

That is the right thing that must happen always when anger or anything else rises. The psychic reply must become habitual pointing out that anger is neither right nor helpful and then the being must draw back from these outward things and take its stand in its inner self, detach from all these things and people. It is this detachment that is the first thing that must be gained by the sadhak he must cease to live in these outwards things and live in his inner being. The more that is done the more there is a release and peacefulness. Afterwards when one is secure in this inner being, the right thing to do, the right way to deal with men and things will begin to come.

- Sri Aurobindo

SABCL, Vol.24, p1411.

When it is in the head it is troublesome, because it is still more difficult to discover them, and one is so full of wrong ideas that it is very difficult to put any order in there.

Where it is easiest to find and cure is here (Mother shows the centre of the chest), but it is there that it hurts most; however it is the place where one finds it most easily and cures it most radically.

Lower down in the vital it is more obscure and entangled — it is quite muddled. It is all mixed up and there are many of these things — when they are there, there are many. You must put some order there first before finding them. There are some which are entangled like this (gesture).

For example, many people have the tendency to fly into a rage — suddenly it takes possession of them. Pouff! they get terribly angry. It is here that one must look for the cause; and here it is all entangled, like this, all mixed up, and one must go very deep and very fast, because this spreads with the swiftness of a flood; and when it has spread, it is quite a mass of ·like a black smoke which rises and burdens the consciousness, and it is very, very difficult to put any order in there. But when one feels that the fury is going to rise up, if one hurries there immediately like that in the vital centre, and goes there with a torch which lights up well, one can find the corner.

If one finds the corner, hop! one does this, gets hold of it, and it is finished, the anger falls instantaneously, even before one has had the time to say a word. I give this example, there are hundreds of others.

All affairs of feelings, vanity, ambition, passion — passion… yes, but still not only material passion… I mean (I don’t like to use the word because it is a travesty, but still) what men call love— all that, it is there one finds it, all attachments, all sentimentality, all this, it is in there.

- The Mother

CWM, Vol.7, p89-90.

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