Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
It is quite impossible for the descent of the Divine Grace to produce nausea and nervousness and a general disturbance like that – to think so is self-contradictory and foolish. Sometimes when one has pulled or strained, there is a headache or sensation as if of headache or if one pulls down too much force then there may be a giddiness, but one has only to remain quiet and that sets itself right by an assimilation of what has come down or otherwise. There is never any adverse or troublesome after-consequence. What seems to have happened is that Saurin’s finding the Force he had called down much more than what he was accustomed to, got nervous and went from nervousness into a panic – with the result of an upsetting of his stomach and circulation. If it is not that then it must have been an attack of illness which he associated with the descent, but the attack seems to be of a nervous character. Probably if he had had the experience of this increased descent sometime ago, he would not have been frightened and nothing would have happened, but the madness of Premshankar following on the death of Dahi Lakshmi1 has created a panic and at the least thing each person thinks he is going to go mad or die. As nothing upsets the organism more than fear, they create by this general atmosphere of panic danger, where there was none.
The idea that Premshankar was sent mad by a descent of Divine Force is an absurdity and an irrational superstition. People go mad because they have a physical predisposition due either to heredity (as in the case of Premshankar and T.) or to some kind of organic cause or secret illness, syphilis gone to the head or colon bacillis similarly misdirected or brain lesion or other material cause, the action being often brought up by some psychological factor (ambition turning to megalomania, hypochondria, melancholia, etc.) or on the contrary itself bringing these to the surface. All that happens in ordinary life and not only in Yoga; the same causes work 
here. The one thing is that there may be an invasion of an alien Force bringing about the upsetting, but it is not the divine Force, it is a vital Force that invades. The Divine Force cannot by its descent be the cause of madness any more than it can be of apoplexy or any other physical illness. If there is no predisposition, one may have all kinds of attacks from vital or other forces or from one’s own movements of the lower nature, as violent as possible, but there will be no madness.