Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

The Vital Being

      It is said that we must be quiet, vigilant and conscious even in our vital being. What does this mean?

      It means to observe the vital movements, and not allow them to catch hold of you or force you into action, not to be careless and let them come in you — not to let the vital get excited or depressed — to keep it calm always.

      Please tell me if it is possible to make my surrender to the Mother complete before my vital is cleaned?

      It is not possible to make it complete before — but if you do not do it at all, how will the vital be cleaned? Who will do it for you?

      What do you exactly mean by "cleaning the vital"

      To be straightforward, sincere and without false hood and unclean desires.

      Will not the lower movements fall off naturally when one begins to live in the higher consciousness?

      Not when one begins, but when the higher consciousness has fixed itself in the vital and physical. But meanwhile, if dealt with by the higher Light, they

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can be pushed out and can no longer occupy an important place.

      The other day I became a bit more conscious. I felt I had overcome everything and asked directly for the divine consciousness! If one wave of the higher consciousness makes me so proud, what will happen when the whole thing comes down? I would like very much to know how a mere wave coloured my ideas so much — so that next time I may not make myself so absurd.

       It is again the vital mind. It has no sense of proportion or measure and is eager to be or achieve something big at once.

      There is an idea that one should allow an impulse to have some play instead of suppressing it, and that this is the best way of getting rid of it.

       If you do that, the impulse may spread so far as to take hold of you and master you. If a wrong impulse comes, you must reject it as soon as you become aware of it.

      How are we to distinguish between our needs and desires? The vital can easily cheat the mind and show its desires as needs.

      You have to develop discrimination so that it becomes impossible for the vital to deceive you.

      Why is there no place for even good desires in the spiritual life?

      If there are good desires, bad desires will come also. There is a place for will and aspiration, not for

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desire. If there is desire, there will be attachment, demand, craving, want of equanimity, sorrow at not getting, all that is unyogic.

      If our desires are to be rejected, why does the Mother sometimes satisfy them?

      It is you who have to get rid of them. If the Mother does not satisfy at all and the sadhaka keeps them, they will get stronger by suggestion from outside. Each one has to deal with them from within.

      Does a desire recur in one even when it has been satisfied?

      It recurs in another form — it is the principle of desire that is maintained in the being by indulgence — unless or until there is detachment from the desire.

      I have been given the following method of rejecting impulses and desires: "First recognise that it is the vital that has sent the thought or the impulse. Then dissociate yourself from the thought or impulse, as if you had no real connection with it. Finally, throw it away." Is this method correct?

      Yes, it is the recognised method of getting the desire out of the system.

      What is meant by "vital consecration"?

      Consecration means offering and making sacred to the Mother so that the whole vital nature may belong to her and not to the lower nature.

      In the vital itself everything is not necessarily untrue.

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      What would be the nature of a transformed vital?

      Calm, strong, wide, obedient only to the Divine will. It (the vital) is weak or strong according to the person or the occasion — but its strength is rajasic and narrow and ignorant and imperfect, not divine. Wide means not narrow or limited or shut up in a small consciousness as all human consciousness, mental, vital or physical always is.

      Yesterday X was explaining to me Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar. I felt in such sympathy with Antony and such pity for Caesar that tears began to roll from my eyes. How did this emotional outburst happen even though the separative consciousness felt the movement to be stupid?

      It is the sentimental part of the vital identifying itself with imaginary sorrow. It is its nature and habit to take delight in joy and suffering.

      The people who do not feel sorrow or joy have their sentimental feelings dried up, I suppose.

      It is not a question of feeling sorrow or joy or any other emotion, everybody does that who has not overcome the ordinary Nature. That is not sentimental but emotional. Sentimentalism comes in when you take pleasure either in indulging or in displaying the feelings or when you have them for no reason or without sufficient reason.

      When one breaks or does not consciously obey the rule or law of the Guru one feels depressed. Is it not a proper reaction?

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      Not depression, but a stronger aspiration.

     Why is the vital depression condemned so much? What is its effect?

      All depression is bad as it lowers the consciousness, spends the energy, opens to adverse forces.

      Could this feeling be correct that even my vital wants me to do nothing against the Mother's will?

      If that were so, transformation would be easy. It could mean that nothing would want to go its own way and so nothing would happen in you except what was in conformity with the Mother's will. You mean that the conscious part of the vital does not want to do anything contrary to the Mother's will — but that is a different thing.

      Our physical has to depend on the vital's help  for action. Will it have always to do so — even in its true nature?

      Yes. The spirit itself if it wants to manifest in matter must use the vital. It is so that things are arranged.

      Once when I asked you if an old desire was again rising up in me owing to a previous insufficient rejection, you said that it had remained in the physical vital. What does the "physical vital" mean?

      I think I said it was left in the subconscient part of the physical vital. As there is a physical mind, so there is a physical vital — a vital turned entirely upon physical things, full of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.

      Has the vital any connection with the play of sex?

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      Of course, it is the vital that gives it its intensity and power to hold the consciousness.

      The other night I could not get sleep till three o'clock! In the morning the body was aching and I looked like a sick man without, any illness! Did not this state have some inner cause?

      It is rather an outside influence. Do not open so much to those you mix with.

      How does "an outside influence" affect my physical and deprive me of the necessary sleep?

      Why should it not? What is there to prevent it from doing that? An outside influence can bring depression, disturbance, doubts, everything else. It can affect the health, the sleep, anything.

      There are people you mix with who have doubts, suggestions, depression, jealousies, dissatifaction with the Mother's action. They can easily throw that on you without intending it. These influences are all around in the atmosphere, so it is not sufficient to avoid this or that person. You have to be on guard and self-contained.

      What is the lower vital and its movements? How does it differ from the central vital?

      It is the small vital that brings small desires, greeds, jealousies, angers etc.

      The other is a larger movement of ambition, power, play of forces, effectuation of work etc.

      What are doubts and hesitations? From where do they pay us an uninvited visit and how to get the

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upper hand over them? Such things arise in me frequently. I do not want them to rule over me.

      You have some faith as well as doubts, I suppose. Refuse to let your mind dwell on the doubts and think always of the faith.

      They come from the ignorance of physical Nature. You have to reject them and replace them by faith.

      When one reads pages and pages of a novel one does not get tired. But studying lessons even for an hour exhausts one. Why so?

      Because one is amusement and the other is work — the lazy physical does not like work unless it is supported and driven by the vital. But the lower vital is more attracted by amusement than by work.

      How is it that the good condition of consciousness so often disappears?

      There is no stability in the early stages. Conditions come and go. You have to persevere till you get a stable basis.

      I see that every evening some being throws false suggestions upon me, saying, "The Divine does not like you." Lately their force of insistence has increased. I try my best to reject them but without any success. May the Mother prevent this being from approaching me ever! What is that being? From some vital world?

      Yes, it is a being of falsehood from the vital world which tries to make one take its false suggestions for the truth and disturb the consciousness, and

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get it to leave the straight path and either get depressed or turned against the Mother. If you reject and refuse to listen or believe always, it will disappear.

      Do the beings of the vital world have shapes and moulds (subtle, of course) just as human beings have?

      Yes — but they can change their shapes at will.

      Is each person surrounded by a particular number of vital beings or are there different vital beings entangling him at each attack?

      There is no particular number — but sometimes there are particular vital beings that attach themselves to a man if he accepts them.

      Do not the Gods of the vital world indulge in their own powers, and with a view to reign on the earth? Are they not individualised?

      Some are — but often the Forces play of themselves. I suppose by the Gods you mean the vital beings. But they are not Gods — they are Asuras, Rak-shasas or other undivine Powers.

      I am again feeling depressed; I can't understand the reason for it.

      Often waves of depression come from the general Nature — the mind finds out inner or external reasons for them when there are none. That may be the reason why the reasons are not clear. On the other hand it may be due to some part of the being getting discouraged or fatigued or unwilling to follow the movement either of work or sadhana. If it is something

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in the vital being, it may hide itself so as not to be exposed or cleared; if a part of the physical, it may be simply dumb and obscure, unable to express itself. Finally it may come up from the subconscient. These are various cases in which there is what seems a causeless depression. One has to see for oneself which it is.

      How am I to maintain the Mother's inner contact when I am in a prolonged state of depression?

      If you want the Mother's contact always, you must get rid of depression and the mental imaginations that bring it. Nothing comes more in the way than that.

      Why does our vital being desire outer and superficial things from the Mother instead of Ananda, Light, Force?

      It is the small physical vital that desires and wants to deal in the same way with these things as it did with the outward desires. It is not so easy for it to open to invisible things — that is more easy for the higher vital.

      What is the nature of the higher vital?

       Emotion, the larger desires, creative or executive life forces.

      The mind has its divine equivalent above: the Supermind. What is the equivalent of the vital?

      Mind - Supermind 

      Emotional being (heart) - Ananda

      Vital - Tapas

      Matter - Sat

      These are correspondences — but the Supermind is

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a sufficient instrument for divinising the vital.

      I do not understand the meaning of Tapas.

      Chit Tapas — the second plane of the Divine Consciousness.

      My vital is very much affected by all sorts of things, good and bad.

      It is an excessive vital sensitiveness which sometimes comes with a growing openness in the consciousness. It has to be rejected. The consciousness must be open to the right things, but not to the wrong ones.

      I do not know what exactly you mean here by the right or wrong things. If for example some one insults me for a fault not committed by me, is it wrong for me to feel insulted?

      If feeling insulted is to be considered the right thing, then there is no use in doing Yoga. Yoga is based on equanimity, not on the ordinary vital reactions.

      You once spoke of two kinds of causes — a psychological cause and a rational one. Will you please tell me when depression can be attributed to the former and when to the latter?

      If you imagine that the Mother is displeased because she does not do what you would like her to do and begin to be depressed and sorrowful, the psychological cause is the vital, its egoism, its demand, its turn for being miserable. If you had been smoking and the Mother were really displeased, that would be a

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rational cause.

      Why does our vital being sometimes love to be miserable even when its desires are satisfied?

      It is its nature to get depressed and miserable. Something in it enjoys the play of it, as one enjoys a drama.

     When the vital aspires, the aspiration becomes so intense that I feel as if it would break the being. Is this the effect of the true vital's activity?

      If it is the true vital, there is no feeling of breaking the being. That is a rajasic mixture.

EMERGENCE OF THE TRUE VITAL BEING

      Once I had a fear that if the vital aspired it would break the body (because of its powerful intensity). Now I see that it was an imaginary fear. The intensity of its aspiration is such that it carries away in its momentum even my tamasic physical! Consequently my breathing becomes more rapid. And my body feels an extra energy in all its movements.

      It is good there should be the energy — vital aspiration always brings energy. But the rapid breathing is not necessary, though it sometimes takes place.

      When I feel the vital aspiration, is it my psychic being which projects out into the vital and

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either itself aspires or makes the vital aspire?

       It may also be the vital itself that aspires.

      When the vital cooperates, are its aspirations always so intense, deep and full of power?

      Not always — but the participation of the vital does usually help to bring a greater force and intensity.

      I noticed my vital rising to my head — as if to aspire and go upward. What was it that really happened?

      The vital can rise to the head in two ways — one to cloud the mind with the vital impulses, the other to aspire and join with the higher consciousness. If you noticed the aspiration, it was evidently the latter movement.

      The ascending movement is often felt. What does the vital do in joining with the higher consciousness?

      It comes under its influence first — afterwards it develops into the true vital, which is an extension of the higher conscionsness.

      By this time, I feel my vital tranquillised, pure, empty of ordinary movements. All this to some extent, and waiting for the descent of the higher consciousness to transform it still more. Is it quite so?

      There is no reason to suppose your feeling is not correct. It has to remain like that.

      If my above statement is correct, does that mean that my vital is psychicised?

      It is under the psychic influence.

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      Up to now I had to deal only with the mind, vital and physical. But today I found for the first time that my heart took certain things very deeply. I don't know how to keep it under the psychic control?

      The heart is part of the vital — it has to be controlled in the same way as the rest, by rejection of the wrong movements, by acceptance of the true psychic surrender which prevents all demand and clamour, by calling in the higher light and knowledge.

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