Q: What is the ground of the repulsion that one instinctively feels towards certain animals, such as snakes and scorpions?
A: It is not an inevitable necessity that one should feel this or any other repulsion. To have no repulsion at all is one of the fundamental achievements of Yoga.
The repulsion you speak of comes from fear; if there were no fear, it would not exist. This fear is not based on reason, it is instinctive; it is not individual, but racial; it is a general suggestion and belongs to the consciousness of humanity as a whole. When one takes up the human body, one accepts along with it a mass of these general suggestions, race ideas, race feelings of mankind, associations, attractions, repulsions, fears.
But from another viewpoint there is something very personal in the nature of an attraction or repulsion; for these movements are not the same for everybody and depend mostly on the quality of vibration of the vital being in different people. There are men who not only do not feel any repulsion for creatures like snakes, but have even a liking for them, a vital attraction and preference.
(“Complete Works of The Mother”- Volume 22, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1972, published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Sri Aurobindo Ashram press, Pondicherry)
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