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The Influence of Unseen, Unperceived Beings and Forces in Our World · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  When we can once appreciate and accept the fact that forces
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  unseen by us, unperceived by our senses, can and do act on us,
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  pushing us to act in certain ways, pressing on us to move in
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  certain directions, it is but a small step to recognize that
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  there are beings who inhabit these unseen and unperceived
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  regions, and that they have their own goals, objectives,
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  agendas, which they carry out but in their own sphere and in
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  their action upon the physical world.
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  As we develop ever more precise ways to capture and measure
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  unseen forces, we begin to understand more clearly that we
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  do not live isolated in our physical world, apart from the
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  spiritual, mental, vital and subtle physical forces that
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  together make up the action of our external lives.
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  We did not know until fairly recently that activity of the
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  Sun in the form of solar flares could be disruptive to our
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  lives, our ability to communicate, our GPS signals,
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  and the very framework of modern life in its technology.
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  Now we understand that these solar events can have a massive
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  impact on our world. We did not appreciate until
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  recently that various disease states were transmitted by
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  unseen organisms that have a life of their own that can enter
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  into our vital and physical bodies and create conditions
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  under which we suffer. Now we understand that viruses
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  and bacteria and mold spores, fungus and other unseen yet
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  nevertheless present organisms can dramatically impact our
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  lives and our health and disrupt the society in dramatic ways in
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  the form of pandemics and other upheavals caused by widespread
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  disease and the impacts it creates in the world.
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  We did not understand until fairly recently in human
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  existence that an unseen force we call electricity could be
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  harnessed to power our modern industrial and technological
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  development. We did not understand until
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  fairly recently that other unseen forces, such as the force
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  of gravity, controlled much of our ability to live and act.
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  We did not understand the ability of plants to capture
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  solar radiation and convert it into material forms which could
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  provide food sustenance to our bodies.
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  We now understand that there is a spectrum of wavelengths of
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  which we can perceive only a small portion, but nevertheless
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  the unseen unperceived portions still impact us.
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  We are beginning to recognize that other things, which we
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  could not explain through any perceptible cause, have their
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  origin in a vital mental or spiritual realm that coexists
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  with us, albeit at a different vibrational level, and that to
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  some degree these beings and forms inhabiting those realms
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  can influence and project their action into our world.
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  In fact, our world is an amalgam of physical, vital, mental and
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  spiritual forces, interwoven tightly with one another,
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  impacting one another, and together creating what we know
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  of as our existence, Shriorobindo notes quote.
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  If we scrutinize the intimations of superphysical world realities
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  which we receive in our inner experience, and compare with it
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  the account of such intimations that has continued to come down
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  to us from the beginnings of human knowledge.
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  And if we attempt an interpretation and a summarized
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  order, we shall find that what this inner experience most
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  intimately conveys to us is the existence and action upon us of
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  larger planes of being and consciousness than the purely
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  material plane with its restricted existence and action
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  of which we are aware in our narrow terrestrial formula.
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  These domains of larger being are not altogether remote and
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  separate from our own being and consciousness.
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  For though they subsist in themselves and have their own
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  play and process and formulations of existence and
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  experience, yet at the same time they penetrate and envelope the
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  physical plane with their invisible presence and
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  influences. And their powers seem to be here
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  in the material world itself, behind its action and objects.
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  There are two main orders of experience in our contact with
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  them. One is purely subjective, though
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  in its subjectivity sufficiently vivid and palpable.
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  The other is more objective. In the subjective order we find
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  that what shapes itself to us as a life, intention, life,
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  impulse, life formulation here already exists in a larger, more
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  subtle, more plastic range of possibilities.
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  And these pre existent forces and formulations are pressing
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  upon us to realize themselves in the physical world also.
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  But only a part succeeds in getting through, and even that
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  emerges partially in a form and circumstance more proper to the
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  system of terrestrial law and sequence.
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  This precipitation takes place normally without our knowledge.
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  We are not aware of the action of these powers, forces and
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  influences upon us, but take them as formations of our own
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  life and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them
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  and strives not to be mastered. But when we go inwards, away
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  from the restricted surface consciousness, and develop a
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  subtler sense and deeper awareness, we begin to get an
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  intimation of the origin of these and are able to watch
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  their action and process, to accept or reject or modify, to
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  allow them passage and use of our mind and will and our life
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  and members or refuse it. In the same way we become aware
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  of larger domains of mind, a play experience, formation of a
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  greater plasticity, a teeming profusion of all possible mental
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  formulations, and we feel their contacts with us and their
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  powers and influences acting upon our parts of mind in the
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  same occult manner as those others act upon our parts of
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  life. This kind of experience is
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  primarily of a purely subjective character, a pressure of ideas,
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  suggestions, emotional formations, impulsions to
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  sensation, action, dynamic experience, however large a part
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  of this pressure may be traced to our own subliminal self, or
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  to the siege of universal mind forces or life forces belonging
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  to our own world. There is an element which bears
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  the stamp of another origin, an insistent supra terrestrial
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  character. End Quote Reference Shriorobindo
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  and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter 6 Hidden
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  Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pages 136 to 137.