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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Mental Imbalance
22 December 1954

Could I ask you another question? Is mental imbalance due to the same cause, Sweet Mother?

(Pavitra, repeating) Is mental imbalance due to the same cause?

Very often, but not always. Mental imbalance can be due to many different causes. One of them may be simply a physical structure which is defective, a cerebral insufficiency. Now, one may say that this cerebral insufficiency is probably the expression of an inner vital imbalance. But in the case of cerebral insufficiency it is usually hereditary or organic, still... that is, something produced at the time of conception. So one can't say that it is due to an additional influence: it was an influence which acted before birth, and the one who suffers from this mental imbalance is not necessarily under a direct adverse influence. It can be a consequence of malformation.

Now, when people are divided in their mind, and in one part of their mind aspire for the truth and transformation and in another don't want them, and not only resist but revolt--which happens often--this indeed creates a terrible inner cerebral struggle, first mental and then cerebral, and this may bring about a serious mental imbalance.

There are cases in which it is precisely the opening to a suggestion, an adverse influence, an opening which is the result of a wrong movement--a movement of revolt or of hatred or of violent desire. One can, in a wrong movement, open himself--in a rage, for example--one can open to an adverse force and bring in an influence which could terminate by a possession. At the beginning these things are relatively easy to cure if there is a conscious part of the being and a very strong will to get rid of this bad movement and this influence. One succeeds easily enough, relatively speaking, if the aspiration is sincere; but if one looks on the thing with complacency and tells himself, "Ah, it is like that, it can't be otherwise", then this becomes dangerous. One must not tolerate the enemy in the place. As soon as one notices his presence, one must throw him out very far, as far as one can, pitilessly.