His nature’s impulses are now his lords.
Once quelled or wearing specious names and vests
Infernal elements, demon powers are there.
Man’s lower nature hides these awful guests.
Their vast contagion grips sometimes man’s world.
An awful insurgence overpowers man’s soul.
In house and house the huge uprising grows:
Hell’s companies are loosed to do their work,
Into the earth-ways they break out from all doors,
Invade with blood-lust and the will to slay
And fill with horror and carnage God’s fair world.
Death and his hunters stalk a victim earth;
The terrible Angel smites at every door:
An awful laughter mocks at the world’s pain
And massacre and torture grin at Heaven:
All is the prey of the destroying force;
Creation rocks and tremble top and base.
This evil Nature housed in human hearts,
A foreign inhabitant, a dangerous guest:
The soul that harbours it it can dislodge,
Expel the householder, possess the house.
An opposite potency contradicting God,
A momentary Evil’s almightiness
Has straddled the straight path of Nature’s acts.
It imitates the Godhead it denies,
Puts on his figure and assumes his face.
A Manichean creator and destroyer,
This can abolish man, annul his world.
But there is a guardian power, there are Hands that save,
Calm eyes divine regard the human scene.
Sri Aurobindo
Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, page 481 – 482
To give the worst one has is much more useful…
Mother, when we come to you, we try to be at our best possible, that is, to have very good thoughts; but often, on the contrary, all the bad impulses, bad thoughts we had during the day come forward.
That is perhaps so that you can get rid of them.
If they come, one can offer them and ask to be rid of them.
That perhaps is the reason, it is because the Consciousness acts for purification. It is no use at all hiding things and pushing them behind, like this, and imagining they are not there because one has put a veil in front. It is much better to see oneself as one is — provided one is ready to give up this way of being. If you come allowing all the bad movements to rise to the surface, to show themselves; if you offer them, if you say, “Well, this is how I am”, and if at the same time you have the aspiration to be different, then this second of presence is extremely useful; you can, yes, in a few seconds receive the help you need to get rid of them; while if you come like a little saint and go away content, without having received anything, it is not very useful.
Automatically the Consciousness acts like that, it is like the ray that brings light where there wasn’t any. Only, what is needed is to be in a state where one wants to give up the thing, to get rid of it — not to cling to it and keep it. If one sincerely wants to pull it out of oneself, make it disappear, then it is very useful.
(Silence)
Indeed, I could ask a question myself: Why — I don’t know if it is common, but still — why, when you come to me, do you want to have good thoughts and be at your best? For what reason?
To have bad movements before you is very ugly! (Laughter)
If you want to keep them, yes, it is very ugly, but if you want to get rid of them!… It is perhaps a chance to get rid of them. It is surely even an opportunity to get rid of them, because before me they appear exactly as they are; while far from me they are coloured with all sorts of brilliant and false lights, so that you take them for what they are not. If the movement is nasty and you see it in my atmosphere, it appears exactly as it is. Then that is the time to get rid of it.
(Silence)
To give the best one has is very fine and is much appreciated; but to give the worst one has is much more useful; and perhaps this offering is even more appreciated — on condition that it is given in order to get rid of it, not to take it back afterwards!
The Mother, Questions and Answers 1956, CWM volume 8, pages 307 – 309.