244—If God did not take upon Himself the burden of tempting men, the world would very soon go to perdition.
245—Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.
246—If you leave it to God to purify, He will exhaust the evil in you subjectively; but if you insist on guiding yourself, you will fall into much outward sin and suffering.
The Aphorism you mention ‘Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities’ is part ofa series of Aphorisms by Sri Aurobindo that show us the paradoxes through which the Divine leads us. Our mind splits life into good and bad, punya and paap and thereby tries to avoid all that it considers bad. That is the path of the moralist. But the ways of working of the Lord are different. Often He raises in us certain tendencies that were otherwise hidden carefully inside us. When these things that we consider morally bad and evil rise up within us then it gives us a chance to consciously reject them. This conscious rejection is different from mere merely unconsciously repressing it and believing oneself to be a good person. The Divine instead shows us what is hidden inside and then removes it with the active collaboration of our will.
Hope it is clear.
Affectionately,
Alok da
