Page 5 - NAMAH-Oct-2016

The atmosphere of protection*

When Sri Aurobindo says that illness comes from outside, what exactly is it that comes?

It is a kind of vibration made up of a mental suggestion, a vital force of disorder and
certain physical elements which are the materialisation of the mental suggestion and the
vital vibration. And these physical elements can be what we have agreed to call germs,
microbes, this and that and many other things.

It may be accompanied by a sensation, may be accompanied by a taste, also by a smell, if
one has very developed subtle senses. There are these formations of illness which give a
special taste to the air, a special smell or a slight special sensation.

People have many senses which are asleep. They are terribly tamasic. If all the senses they
possess were awake, there are many things they would perceive, which can just pass by
without anyone suspecting anything.

For example, many people have a certain kind of influenza at the moment. It is very wide-
spread. Well, when it comes close, it has a special taste, a special smell, and it brings you a
certain contact (naturally not like a blow), something a little more subtle, a certain contact,
exactly as when you pass your hand over something, backwards over some material... You
have never done that? The material has a grain, you know; when you pass your hand in the
right direction or when you pass it like this (gesture) well, it makes you... it is something
that passes over your skin, like this, backwards. But naturally, I can tell you, it doesn’t
come like a staggering blow. It is very subtle but very clear. So if you see that, you can very
easily...

Besides, there is always a way of isolating oneself by an atmosphere of protection, if one
knows how to have an extremely quiet vibration, so quiet that it makes almost a kind of
wall around you. — But all the time, all the time one is vibrating in response to vibrations
which come from outside. If you become aware of this, all the time there is something
which does this (gesture) like this, like this, like this (gestures) which responds to all the
vibrations coming from outside. You are never in an absolutely quiet atmosphere which
emanates from you, that is, which comes from inside outward (not something which
comes from outside within), something which is like an envelope around you, very quiet,
like this — and you can go anywhere at all and these vibrations which come from outside
do not begin to do this (gesture) around your atmosphere.

If you could see that kind of dance, the dance of vibrations which is there around you all

*Heading provided by the Editor

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