Champaklal Speaks

6 June 1935

I talk as little as possible; I avoid going out. This is why I feel these things arise from within myself.

Quite wrong. I have explained how they come.

Why do I rejoice only when Mother smiles at me or gives a special opportunity? I ought to rejoice in all situations. If after living so many years near you and her I still feel this—I am not worthy of being here.

It is a very strange logic. Even among those who have made the most progress or been always the closest to the Mother, this or similar feelings still recur. It is not that they have not to be overcome, but to argue from their persistence that one is unfit to stay here is to make a large conclusion on a very small basis. This is again the kind of suggestion that comes in from the surrounding physical Ignorance. Things like these last so obstinately because they have become habits or recurrent feelings in the external physical being; they will disappear when the external being becomes filled with the Mother's light.

Sri Aurobindo

A vital reaction means a response of the vital to the touch or pressure of an idea, action, event, person or thing, e.g. if someone speaks something you do not like and you get angry, that is a vital reaction. Or if a woman passes and you feel sexual desire, that is a vital reaction. Or if something unpleasant happens and you get a depression, that is a vital reaction. Most disturbances of the consciousness are due to vital reactions, though the mind may assist by wrong thoughts and judgments and misinterpretations. There can be good vital reactions as well as bad, but the term is usually applied to those that are undesirable and have to be surmounted by the sadhak.

The ideal condition is that of a calm, clear, strong vital free from the reactions of the vital ego and responding with true and high feelings only that are acceptable to the spiritual will and the psychic being.

6.6.1935

Sri Aurobindo