Human beings love subjecting others to practical jokes. But very likely, we are not the only beings who suffer from this malady. Many people have had the experience related here by the Mother about searching for things, sometimes looking in the place where those things are, but not finding them. Then later, they suddenly become visible again.
We could interpret this to be inattention of some sort, or a lack of thoroughness in the search, or a distraction at the time of the search or even a fading in and out of existence of these things, but the Mother had her own experience which brought her to understand that there are in fact some small vital entities who live in close proximity to our world and who take joy in hiding things from our view and then revealing them later.
The Mother notes: “One of the most common activities of these intolerable little entities which are in the human physical atmosphere and amuse themselves at men’s expense, is to blind you to such an extent that when you look for something, and the thing is staring you in the face, you do not see it! This happens very often. You search in vain, you turn everything over, you look into all possible corners, but you don’t find the thing. Then you give up the problem and some time later (precisely when ‘the hand over the eyes’ is removed), you come back to the same place and it is exactly there where you have looked, quietly lying there, it had not stirred! Only you were unconscious, you did not see. This is a very, very frequent amusement of these little entities. They also take pleasure in removing things, then they put them back, but at times they also don’t put them back! They displace them, indeed they have all sorts of little diversions. They are intolerable. Madame Blavatsky made much use of them, but I don’t know how she managed to make them so amiable, because generally they are quite unpleasant.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch. 5 Occult Forces, pp. 112-113
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast located at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky
He is author of 20 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.
Video presentations, interviews and podcast episodes are all available on the YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@santoshkrinsky871
More information about Sri Aurobindo can be found at www.aurobindo.net
The US editions and links to e-book editions of Sri Aurobindo’s writings can be found at Lotus Press www.lotuspress.com