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The Forces of Light and the Forces of Darkness Grapple for Supremacy in the World · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  In Paradise Lost, John Milton describes at great length the
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  intentions and motivations of the fallen angels as described
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  by the Christian tradition and their attempt and need to
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  influence and control the human world, and thereby to defeat
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  God's intention and plan for humanity.
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  This story is in fact, not unique to the Christian
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  tradition. Each culture, each tradition,
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  addresses the fight between those forces that have a vested
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  interest in maintaining and perpetuating darkness,
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  ignorance, and death, and opposing the advent and growth
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  of light, knowledge, and life. These universal tales arise from
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  actual experiences that occurred to individuals who clothe these
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  experiences in the symbols and images of their own background.
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  An example occurred in the mid 1970s, as privately reported and
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  memorialized in writing contemporaneously with the
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  event. An individual, a spiritual
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  seeker dedicated to practice of yoga and focused on the growth
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  of consciousness in the light, awoke from a vivid real dream
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  experience in a cold sweat and in a state of utter exhaustion.
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  He recounted how he had been confronted in what was more than
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  a dream but a real experience by a being who took the shape and
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  form and image of Adolf Hitler. The being apparently was not
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  destroyed by Hitler's demise, but simply abandoned Hitler and
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  migrated into new forms and took up its project in new places,
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  primarily in the United States, the victor in the Second World
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  War. They had a dispute and a long
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  battle ensued. Eventually the battle was won
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  and the formation was defeated. That experience was so vivid
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  that it stayed with the seeker for decades afterwards, and he
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  recognized that it was a transcription of an ongoing
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  battle that would take place in his lifetime, and of which he
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  would necessarily be a participant to confront the
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  force of darkness that was appearing in that form.
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  He in fact sees corresponding elements in the Hitler force
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  working still in today's world, and feels like this battle is
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  still ongoing. Forces seeking domination, which
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  use intimidation, bullying, tactics, falsehood and
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  propaganda to gain ascendancy, are active in many parts of the
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  world, seeking to undermine and control the world's resources
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  regardless of the impact on huge numbers of people and the
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  environment itself, and revelling in the creation of
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  suffering, fear and pain, Shriorobindo notes quote.
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  The theory of this traditional knowledge is perfectly rational
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  and verifiable by inner experience, and it imposes
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  itself if we admit the supra physical and do not cabin
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  ourselves in the acceptation of material being as the only
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  reality. As there is a Cosmic Self and
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  spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so
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  too there is a cosmic force that moves all things, and on this
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  original Cosmic force depend enact many cosmic forces that
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  are its powers or arise as forms of its universal action.
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  Whatever is formulated in the universe, has a force or forces
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  that support it, seek to fulfill or further it, find their
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  foundation in its functioning, their account of success in its
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  success and growth and domination, their self
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  fulfillment, or their prolongation of being in its
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  victory or survival. As there are powers of knowledge
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  or forces of the light, so there are powers of ignorance and
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  tenebrous forces of the darkness whose work is to prolong the
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  reign of ignorance. And in conscience.
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  As there are forces of truth, so there are forces that live by
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  the falsehood and support it and work for its victory.
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  As there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the
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  existence, the idea, and the impulse of good, so there are
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  forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea
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  and the impulse of evil. It is this truth of the cosmic
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  invisible that was symbolized by the ancient belief of a struggle
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  between the powers of light and darkness, good and evil, for the
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  possession of the world and the government of the life of man.
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  This was the significance of the contest between the Vedic gods
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  and their opponents. Sons of darkness and division
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  figured in a later tradition as Titan and Jayan and demon Asura
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  Rakshasa Pisacha. The same tradition is found in
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  the Zoroastrian double principle and the later Semitic opposition
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  of God and his angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on
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  the other. Invisible personalities and
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  powers that draw man to the divine light and truth and good,
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  or lure him into subjection to the undivined principle of
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  darkness and falsehood and evil. Modern thought is aware of no
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  invisible forces other than those revealed or constructed by
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  science. It does not believe that nature
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  is capable of creating any other beings than those around us in
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  the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes,
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  insects, germs, and animalculi. But if there are invisible
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  cosmic forces physical in their nature, that act upon the body
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  of inanimate objects, there is no valid reason why there should
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  not be invisible cosmic forces, mental and vital in their
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  nature, that act upon his mind and his life force.
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  And if mind and life impersonal forces form conscious beings, or
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  use persons to embody them in physical forms and in a physical
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  world, and can act upon matter and through matter, it is not
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  impossible that on their own planes they should form
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  conscious beings whose subtler substance is invisible to us, or
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  that they should be able to act from those planes on beings in
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  physical nature, whatever reality or mythical unreality we
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  may attach to the traditional figures of past human belief or
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  experience, they would then be representations of things that
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  are true in principle. In that case the first source of
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  good and evil would be not in terrestrial life or in the
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  evolution from the inconscience, but in life itself.
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  Their source would be supra physical, and they would be
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  reflected here from a large supra physical nature.
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  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The
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  Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter 4, Cosmic and Universal Forces,
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  pages 87 to 89.