Question: Often when I know I am coming to meditation, I develop a swollen gland or a headache. Is there a connection between this and my looking forward to this occasion?

Sri Chinmoy: The hostile forces attack us because deep inside our being, our consecration to the Supreme is not yet complete. We are not yet sure of what we actually want. When we have not yet fully decided what we are going to eat — either a mango or some other fruit — the hostile forces come and stand between our desire and our aspiration. Aspiration brings us to the goal, to the reality. Desire immediately makes friends with something that we don’t want either for God or for our own inner being. Hostile forces are always on the alert. If there is any opening in the mind, vital, physical or subtle physical, then the hostile forces will attack us. They want to separate us from our aspiration. They bring desire and try to kill aspiration. Many times they succeed, but a spiritually alert person will take aspiration and enter into desire in order to kill it. If desire enters into aspiration, aspiration is ruined. If aspiration enters into desire, then desire is transformed.

When you want to come here you become a victim to the hostile attacks. These attacks come primarily for two reasons. The first reason is that the physical is mercilessly opposed to the heart’s psychic aspiration. Your inner aspiration is running much faster than your physical capacity or necessity. The physical is constantly playing the part of a robber. The soul is gaining something for you and the physical is robbing it and squandering it. When we receive something from the soul, we should feed our aspiration with the soul’s light. Instead, when we receive light from the soul, the physical throws it all away without utilising it for its own illumination.

The second reason for these hostile attacks is uncertainty. You have jumped into the sea of Infinity; on the other hand there is a feeling of uncertainty. You want to know what you are going to get from the sea of Infinity. From the ocean of Infinity you will get infinite wealth and that infinite wealth is the immortalised Consciousness which pervades the entire universe. You are going towards what your soul wants, but your physical mind is afraid of it. When there is an iota of fear in us, the hostile forces feel that they have every right to enter into us. But the moment Infinity is accepted as something of our own, something we have forgotten but which we will one day become, there can be no fear and the hostile forces will leave us alone.