... body and pervades it in its descent. The Resistance of the Lower Vital In all it is the lower vital that is most full of ignorance and desire and therefore of falsehood. There is very commonly a gulf between the higher parts and the lower vital even in ordinary life—in Yoga it is apt to get emphasised until the lower vital changes, but if we can judge from the majority of people here,... le with continued satisfaction in a double nature. The Lower Vital Not Reasonable The lower vital is not a part that listens to reason. There is no why to its action; it acts in a particular way because it has long been accustomed to act in that way, and it goes on even if the doing brings a painful reaction. The lower vital is very slow in listening to reason—at least when reason is... one ground or another? That at least is what I have felt, every time we have tried to remove it. Aspiration and Offering in the Lower Vital Sometimes the aspiration is felt at the navel, but that is part of the larger vital. The lower vital is below. The lower vital aspires by offering all its small movements in the fire of purification, by calling for the light and power to descend into it and ...
... and the presence of the Divine. It may be that behind this persistence of the lower vital demand for satisfaction there was something not quite clear —in the obscurer part of the physical mind—in your mental attitude towards the Yoga. You seem to regard this demand for the replacement of the old lower vital satisfactions by other joys and pleasures as something quite legitimate; but joys... origin, they were not your own feelings at all, but rather ideas, impressions, impulses pushed into your lower vital from outside; your mistake has been to admit them and identify them as your own—from want of knowledge and experience in these matters. There are certain vital forces of this lower vital plane that are constantly wandering about the Ashram and trying to push their movements now on one, now... speak is there, as the persistency of these movements show but it is not in the heart —your heart is all right—but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and these ...
... consciousness into it is a very great necessity for your sadhana. Sex is strongly connected with the physical centre, but also with the lower vital—it is the lower vital that gives it most of its intensity and excitement. It can be disconnected from the lower vital and then it becomes a purely physical movement Page 518 of a mechanical kind which has no great force except for the more animal... the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error. ... away by force along with it. If it is driven also from the higher vital, from the heart and the dynamic possessive life force, it takes refuge in the lower vital and comes in the shape of smaller suggestions and urges there. Driven from the lower vital level, it goes down into the obscure inertly repetitive physical and comes as sensations in the sex-centre and a mechanical response to suggestion. Driven ...
... very doubtful or hard to seize. And when as often happens, there is a symbology of the lower vital using the terms of the normal external consciousness, its system which is quite clear and convincing to the lower vital itself, can seem very absurd, incoherent and unintelligible to the physical mind. For the lower vital uses the happenings, scenes, figures, persons of the physical life, but in defiance... Even the dreams of the lower vital and the subtle physical become entirely vivid, real, coherent, significant and expressive of a truth that one can at once recognise. The dream-experiences of the highest vital, the psychic and the mental or still higher planes have always this character, because when they can get through they impose themselves more than those of the lower vital realms and are less subject... old movement did come from habit, but at once you became conscious and rejected it. This is an encouraging sign and promises complete removal in a very short time. Subconscient dreams and lower vital dreams are usually incoherent. Higher vital dreams are usually and mental dreams are always coherent. Subconscient Dreams When one is in the physical consciousness, then the sleep is apt to ...
... instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power. The Lower Vital, the Physical Vital and the Material Vital Below the navel is the lower vital plane, which is ignorant and obscure, the seat of small desires, greeds, passions and enjoyments. As there is a physical mind, so there is a physical... this part is not converted and insists on its own way of satisfaction. Yes—they [ the lower vital, the physical vital and the material vital ] become very clear to the increasing consciousness. And the distinctions are necessary—otherwise one may influence or Page 195 control the lower vital or a part of the physical vital and then be astonished to find that something intangible but... , a means of expression of its inner will, not a thing of responses to the suggestions of the lower Nature. The strong distinction between the two practically disappears. The higher and lower [ vital ] are divisions of the ordinary vital and equally ignorant. It is the true vital that is in contact with the Divine. The true vital consciousness is one in which the vital makes full surrender ...
... the abdomen—Lower vital The lotus at the end of the spine (Muladhara)—Physical consciousness Page 229 In the process of our Yoga the centres have each a fixed psychological use and general function which base all their special powers and functionings. The mūlādhāra governs the physical down to the subconscient; the abdominal centre— svādhiṣṭhāna —governs the lower vital; the navel... all difficulties one would be on the point of Yogic perfection. Below the navel is the physical vital. The navel is the seat of the central vital, below it is the lower vital. It must have been the resistance of the lower vital to the fire that you felt. The feeling you have of coming down to the navel corresponds to the actual fact of a change of the centre of consciousness, which one... Chakra—(will, vision, dynamic thought). (3) Throat centre—externalising mind. (4) Heart-lotus—emotional centre. The psychic is behind it. (5) Navel—higher vital (proper). (6) Below navel—lower vital. (7) Muladhara—physical. All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are in the subtle body, sūkṣma deha ...
... and light is not brought into the subconscient, then there can be no change. For it is in the subconscient that there are the seeds of all the old lower vital instincts and movements and however much they may be cleared in the Page 611 lower vital itself, they may sprout up again from below. Also the subconscient is the secret basis of the bodily consciousness. The subconscient must admit... is in the subconscient, no longer in the vital or conscious physical that the resistance is all massed together. There is a close connection between the subconscient and the physical and lower vital parts; so long as the subconscient is not cleared, the seed you speak of remains. The material [ consciousness ] is for the most part subconscient—it depends upon the subtler parts for its... can easily come in the period when the subconscient is being dealt with—tamas, age, decay, illness, death, weakness, inertia, the mechanical play (as if the inevitable round of a machine) of the lower vital have their seeds in the subconscient and when the subconscient rises up in its native power, these threaten to rise with them. Never consent to the attack or allow the faith and the will to go down ...
... stronger vital longings and reactions, that is, ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies; last, the lower vital which is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as make the greater part of daily life, that is, food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise... when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power."4 * * * " I make the distinction (Between the lower vital movements and the emotions of the heart ) by noting where these things rise from. Anger, fear, jealousy touch the heart no doubt just as they touch the mind but they rise from the navel region... notes that his fear is felt primarily not in the heart but the stomach. Love, hope have their primary seat in the heart, so with pity etc."5 " But is it true that even anger which is of the lower vital and therefore close to the body, invariably produces these effects ? Of course the psychologist can't know that another man is angry unless he shows physical signs of it, but also he can't know ...
... the persistency of these movements [ of despondency ] shows, but it is not in the heart—your heart is all right—but in the lower vital nature. All your weaknesses are there; the rest of your being is quite strong enough for the spiritual life. But this inadequacy of the lower vital is not peculiar to you, it is present in almost every human being. This tendency to irrational sadness and despondency and... stic working of the lower vital nature. The only way to get rid of it is to meet it with a fixed resolution of the higher vital and the mind and psychic being to combat, reject and master it. As you were determined to master the sex impulse and the desire of the palate, so you Page 208 must determine to master this "irrational knot" of despondency in the lower vital nature. If you indulge... and music and certain experiences so that whenever your higher vital is active you are in good condition, full of delight and creativeness and open to experience; but it is the influence on the lower vital, for it is there as I have already told you that your difficulties are and that this vital depression recurs. It is quite unwarranted to say that you have been going in the wrong direction—going ...
... share in the higher consciousness, otherwise the old movements under various pretexts will continue. (2) You speak of rejecting the lower vital, but it is only the unregenerated lower vital movements that can be got rid of; you cannot get rid of the lower vital itself, for it is a necessary part of the manifested nature, like the higher vital or the mind. It has Page 143 to be changed... learn to recognise them and get rid of them by a quiet rejection and disuse. Page 133 It is not true that you cannot or will never be put right. It is what appears to you when your lower vital is restless or else your physical mind comes uppermost. Only it is true that if you could keep yourself always in that part of you which is in contact, the thing would be done sooner and with much... would not be these constant headaches and this less intense condition. If the physical consciousness is open the headaches should disappear or at least diminish in frequency and force, and if the lower vital is all right, the intensity ought to continue. But what do you want to do with all these obscure and useless vital movements that torment you, these wrong thoughts, suggestions, confusions ...
... pall on you and that was why you turned from it. No doubt, there were the joys of the intellect and of artistic creation, but a man cannot be an artist alone; there is the outer, quite human lower vital part and, in all but a few, it is the most clamorous and insistent part. But what was dissatisfied in you? It was the soul within, first of all, and through it the higher mind and the higher vital... answering to the demand of your own inner being and the higher parts of your nature. If you have so much difficulty and become restless, it is because you are still divided and something in your lower vital still regrets what it has lost or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation—a price to be immediately paid down to it—asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It refuses... despondency and what seemed to me unnecessary suffering. You can surely under stand that I do not like to see you suffer and, knowing from long experience that it is the cravings and imagination of the lower vital consciousness that cause men needlessly to torture Page 271 themselves, wanted you to get free from the cause. It was not the joy of seeing and talking with the Mother that I wanted ...
... speak) as an indispensable aid in that process. All went on well enough so long as the work was on the mental, psychic and higher vital levels. But as soon as it began in the lower vital, it appeared at once that the lower vital and physical nature of human beings (at least of those here) was too small, obscure and full of rebellious impurities to admit of so great a working. One after another failed... failed in the test and you were among the first to fall. The creation had to be postponed, the process changed, and, instead of doing all from above, it became necessary to come down into the lower vital and material nature for a long, slow, patient and difficult work of opening and change. 4 This is the sadhana that has been going on here. Are you prepared for this opening and change which needs... needs an absolute Page 275 sincerity and a work in which there is no room for pretence, self-deception or a half-hearted will? You are very evidently deep down in your lower vital and material self, "cooped up" there; but you seem to have been fairly content and self-satisfied in this dark and unswept lodging. Talk of surrender or a mere idea or tepid wish for integral consecration will not ...
... of habit in the vital. It can come up at any time so long as the habitual movement has not been entirely disallowed." Or was Page 71 it due to the Force entering the lower vital to change it and the latter bringing out its resistance? It may have been — but very often the lower Nature pushes these things across an experience in opposition to the working of... to hopelessness. When you say that you have not become hopeless it means that the higher being in you has not, but something in you has broken up the attitude all the same. The lower vital has begun to hate the yoga. It prefers ordinary life to sadhana. But I don't care for its preferences and shall teach it what is to be hated and what is to be loved. Could I be informed how far the... long and laborious toil all in vain? Part of the vital was still open to the suggestions and demands of the vital Nature, but your mind and higher vital were not accepting them. The lower vital was divided. All that was not useless. But if your mind consents to the outer vital invading and coercing and dominating the rest, it will do so, until you throw off this inertia and complete the ...
... coercion that is the way, but an inner change, in which the lower vital is led, enlightened and transformed by a higher consciousness which is detached from the objects of vital desire. But in order to let this grow an attitude has to be taken in which a decreasing importance has to be attached to the satisfaction of the claims of the lower vital, a certain mastery, saṁyama , being above any clamour of... The lower vital has its place, it is not to be crushed or killed, but it has to be changed, "caught hold of by both ends", at the upper end a mastery and control, at the lower end a right use. The main thing is to get rid of attachment and desire; it is then that an entirely right use becomes possible. By what actual steps, in what order, through what processus this mastery of the lower vital shall... and fits his case; but supposing a sadhak with a different (coarse) vital nature unlike X 's were in question, I might say to him something that might seem the very opposite, "Sit tight on your lower vital propensities, throw out your greed for food,—it is standing as a serious obstacle in your way: it would be better for you to be ascetic in your habits than vulgarly animal in this part as you are ...
... progress who were stagnant for years together. There is a loss account but a gain account also. 8 June 1935 They say that you are now handling the lower vital and so the general trouble. True? Subconscient vital physical—the lower vital is irrational, but not so utterly "without reason" as that. 8 July 1935 Page 343 Some time back you wrote to me: "Never has there been such... stage. At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established. Other things can come in their proper time. What is the real need now is not insistence on physical nearness, which is one of those other things, but the psychic... her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness. The power used was not that of the Supermind, but of the Overmind, but it was sufficient for what was being done. Afterwards because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers through which she was doing the action behind a veil and come down into the physical human ...
... or to carry out the ideas of one's own mind, but exists only for the service of the Divine and as an instrument of the Divine. The seat of desire is not so much in the emotional as in the lower vital—but the desires rise up from there into the emotional part and even into the thinking mind. It is always the habit of the vital being to find out things by which it persuades the mind and... reflex action. You should not therefore be discouraged by the difficulty, but go on with the necessary perseverance of the will to press it out of existence. It is the small habits of the lower vital being which gather all their strength to resist eviction and try to occupy the consciousness. Page 256 When they come you must learn to detach your inner consciousness from them entirely... demand within you, conscious or subconscious, that gets excited and revolts against its not being satisfied. The best way is to be conscious of it, face it calmly and steadily throw it out. If the lower vital (not the mind only) could permanently make up its mind that all desire and demand are contrary to the Truth and no longer call for them, these things would lose very soon their force of return. ...
... the difficulties of the ignorant and obstructing physical consciousness with its obscure and mistaken ideas, habitual reactions, irresponsive obstructions, doubts and objections and the small lower vital nature with its ego-centric reactions and revolts and disturbances. This condition is not fundamental either in your case or that of the others and it is not a proof of radical unfitness for the... when the facts may be partially correct it misinterprets them, attributes the wrong causes and motives, draws the wrong inferences and makes of them an unreal picture. The ego-centric’s small lower vital makes use of that to justify its revolts or its despondencies and despairs and its assertions of a failure final and irrevocable. It is not true, for instance, that I have become more and more... inferences, then they can have a field-day until the true mind reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that case one has to discover these openings in one’s nature and learn to close them permanently to such attacks or else to throw out ...
... emotional being (love, hatred, etc.); the second at the level of the navel, which controls our impulses for domination, possession and conquest, as well as our ambitions, etc.; and a third, the lower vital, between the navel and the sex center, at the level of the mesenteric plexus, which controls the lowest vibrations: jealousy, Page 49 envy, desire, greed, anger. (4) The Physical and... centers do not even fully open until much later. This process has a distinct advantage if we appreciate that each center corresponds to a universal mode of consciousness or energy. To open the lower vital or subconscious centers at the beginning is to run the risk of being flooded not only by our own small personal problems, but by torrents of universal mud; we are automatically in contact with the... integration rapidly becomes imperative if we wish to control circumstances here, there, and everywhere. Page 118 For example, when we leave our body and go into the regions of the lower Vital (corresponding to the area of the navel and sex centers), the part of our being that is exteriorized in this region often goes through very unpleasant experiences; it is attacked by all sorts of ...
... descent of the Supramental] from above through the mind and the higher vital,’ as we have seen in the previous chapter, ‘but it could not be because the Sadhaks were not ready to follow — their lower vital and physical refused to share in what was coming down or else misused it and became full of exaggerated and violent reactions. Since then the sadhana as a whole has come down along with us into the... One ceaselessly manifests ‘typal’ worlds out of himself which are the concretizations of his inherent qualities, from the highest — Existence, Consciousness, Bliss — down to the lowest, i.e. the lower vital worlds. All those worlds exist in their own gradation of substance, but the (gross) substance we know of and are made of, and which we call ‘matter’, is a product of the Inconscient and therefore... typal worlds are immortal and on their level fully satisfied with their existence, this according to the basic principle of the omnipresent divine Ananda or Bliss. So too are the beings of the lower vital worlds, who for the most part are vicious little mischief-makers; their nasty games and tricks are a source of inexhaustible fun for themselves, but they are very bothersome to us, humans, when we ...
... everything made easy. The Physical Mind and the Lower Vital Formerly the mental will and the higher vital and the psychic were active, so their consent was sufficient for the lower vital to be kept down or to be influenced. But now it is the physical mind that is active in you and the physical mind gives a value and therefore a power to the lower vital which it did not have before. What you... itself. We shall put our Page 37 Force persistently for the removal of these two difficulties till it is done. No, there is a limit to the resistance [ of the physical mind and the lower vital ]. At any rate a time comes when the fundamental resistance is broken for good and there is only left a dealing with details which is not troublesome. The Physical Mind and the Psychic It [ ...
... subjection to ego and demand. But that needs a will which will master the instinctive movements of the lower vital. If the middle vital accepts the right attitude, will there still be depression? If the middle vital accepts it, the depression ought to diminish. If the lower vital accepts it, then there will be no depression. Could medical treatment cure the vital depression... there be any real difficulty in changing one's nature? There will be changes that have to be made, but they will not present themselves as almost insuperable difficulties. The lower vital does not like egolessness - it wants always its own personal satisfaction. What is the inner reason that the vital gets depressed? The original nature of the vital - selfish... My vital gets restless by its own restlessness. Of course, because it is the habit of its nature to be restless. Have you started any higher action directly on the lower vital to remove the particular difficulty there? Page 88 The only action has been for bringing down the Force of the Higher Consciousness into the lower being. The ...
... first region he enters into is an unpleasant one which the Mother has named "domaine de la Mort", "the domain of death". This region lies on the border between the subtle physical plane and the lower vital world. The Mother has spoken extensively about this "Death-domain" in two of her evening conversations, those of March 10, 1954 and December 29,1954. Readers are advised to go through the relevant... unconscious,... one always goes out into the same domain to begin with - unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself.... All men when they leave their body are flung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing particularly pleasant about it." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 449) "Generally, 'domain of death' is the name given to a certain region of the most material vital into which one is projected... subconscient of the "medium" and of those who attend a planchette seance. Besides, as we have had occasion to point out before, many small vital entities of dubious intentions are swarming in the lower vital world of the supraphysical regions. These entities may grab at times the fragments and residues of the discarded mind and vital of the dead person, and covering themselves up with these instrumental ...
... must share in the higher consciousness, otherwise the old movements under various pretexts will intervene. You speak of rejecting the lower vital, but it is only the unregenerated lower vital movements that can be got rid of, you cannot get rid of the lower vital itself, for it is a necessary part of the manifested nature, like the higher vital or the mind. It has to be changed in the power of the... would not be these constant headaches and this less intense condition. If the physical consciousness is open the headaches should disappear or at least diminish in frequency and force, and if the lower vital is all right, the intensity ought to continue. Certainly you should go on writing and tell Mother everything that is happening in you. My not answering was due to want of time. (6.5.32) ...
... children. Page 216 × "This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements; when the lower vital manifests certain desires and impulses, the more material mind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious explanations and reasonings and excuses."... ) × "This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements; when the lower vital manifests certain desires and impulses, the more material mind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious explanations and reasonings and excuses." ...
... asiddhi , sometimes complete disaster. It is for this reason that we discourage this lower vital way of human love and would like people to reject and eliminate these elements as soon as may be from their nature. Love should be a flowering of joy and union and confidence and self-giving and Ananda,—but this lower vital way is only a source of suffering, trouble, disappointment, disillusion and disunion... made a foundation for divine love. There has been too much of this kind in the relations of the sadhaks with the Mother—approaching her, I suppose, as a human mother with all the reactions of the lower vital nature. For a long time it was perforce tolerated—and this was the concession made to human weakness—even accepted in the beginning as a thing too prominent in the human being not to be there to... far, but a love absolutely intense, intimate and full of unity, closeness and rapture using all the nature for its expression. Certainly, it is without the confusions and disorders of the present lower vital nature which it will change into something entirely warm, deep and intense; but that is no reason for supposing that it will lose anything that is true and happy in the elements of love. Love ...
... quiet and steadily open yourself will prevent any long obscuration. These oscillations [ of consciousness ] always come. The universal lower Nature tries to come back and resume its hold—the lower vital or the physical consciousness responds, not always because Page 60 it wants or likes to do so but because the old habit of response is still so strong that it cannot help it. The first... first necessity is to detach yourself, not to regard it as your own, to learn to feel it as something foreign and refuse to be touched or upset. Then it will become easier for the lower vital or physical itself to reject and refuse to admit it. These fluctuations in the force of the aspiration and the power of the sadhana are unavoidable and common to all sadhaks until the whole being has been... been made ready for the transformation. When the psychic is in front or active and the mind and vital consent, then there is the intensity. When the psychic is less prominent and the lower vital has its ordinary movements or the mind its ignorant action, then the opposing forces can come in unless the sadhak is very vigilant. Inertia comes usually from the ordinary physical consciousness, especially ...
... At present my subnature is still resisting and it is difficult to bring it under permanent control. But why does this difficulty hold on when my lower vital has already put itself in the Mother's hands? Yes, but it is not enough that the lower vital should put itself into the Mother's hands. The whole physical and subconscient and everything else must do likewise. 4 January 1935 Page 146... be determined by his mind and his vital desires. This is the thing you have to remember. Your psychic being is capable of giving itself to the Mother and living and growing in the Truth; but your lower vital being has been full of attachments and sanskaras and an impure movement of desire and your external physical mind was not able to shake off its ignorant ideas and habits and open to the Truth. That... mental turn of giving up all reserve—interpreted not as a complete surrender to the Divine Shakti, but as giving yourself up to anything that came, which might very well be a wrong movement of the lower vital Nature or even a hostile force. I have repeatedly said that this kind of passivity is not the meaning of surrender. You cannot surrender at the same time to the Divine Shakti and to the movements ...
... and quietly persistent to overcome it. How is it that now the lower vital is able to surge up after it has once stopped troubling? Now it is the physical mind that is active in you and the Page 26 physical mind gives a value and therefore a power to the lower vital which it did not have before. It is the physical consciousness that... Very good. Page 27 My lower vital is putting itself into the Mother's hands. However, the subconscient still resists. I find it very difficult to bring it under a permanent control. But with the cooperation of the vital the process will now be easier. Yes, but it is not enough that the lower vital should put itself into the Mother's hands. The whole physical ...
... heard but felt as an experience, "A Light is dawning on the lower vital (for transformation) and we can sleep no longer." The voice awoke me at once and I felt profoundly that most of my lower vital difficulties had been ended by the Mother during the night — and then I felt myself free and full of delight and as if a thing like the lower vital existed no longer in my being! It was at about... on the vital plane — but they are not more important than what happens here because it is here we have to realise and what happens on the vital is only a help. Subconscient dreams and lower vital dreams are usually incoherent. Higher vital dreams are usually and mental dreams are always coherent. Page 220 It was a sexual formation probably rising from the subconscient ...
... higher vital level. But with the present experience it came further down, descending into the lower vital, and the physical. The work that was to be done had to be taken up and it could not have been stopped, that I should have first got ready for the descent. They know what is the best. Up to the lower vital there was not much difficulty. But as far as the physical is concerned, I could hardly feel... environmental consciousness. It was very difficult to stir and move out from there . The column which was there until then is not there now. It is not there now. Even the resistance in the lower vital-physical is also not there. Interesting things are happening, very interesting. 17:12:1994 Long ago, more than a year back, I was meditating in the evening, as usual. There ...
... dynamic thought). 3. Throat centre — externalising mind. 4. Heart-lotus — emotional centre. The psychic is behind it. 5. Navel — higher vital (proper). 6. Below navel — lower vital. 7. Muladhara — physical Page 406 "All these centres are in the middle of the body; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are... and general function which base all their special powers and functionings. The mūlādbāra governs the physical down to the subconscient; the abdominal centre — svādhiṣṭhāna — governs the lower vital; the navel centre — nābhipadma or maṇipūra — governs the larger vital; the heart centre — hrt-padma or anāhata — governs the emotional being; the throat centre — viśuddha — governs the... vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. lower vital: made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity ...
... our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too — the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes... ss and, in a way, supporting it from beneath or else drawing the consciousness down towards itself. The subconscient is the main support of all habitual movements, especially the physical and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason ...
... Divine and towards others the attitude must be one of quiet goodwill without any demand or expectation. If one can't arrive at this yet, one must always endeavour to arrive at that and not feed the lower vital movement by brooding on these other things. To depend on letters from me for getting free from depression will only create a habit of depression, demand for a tonic in the shape of a letter, then... and there could be no effective liberation in life and action till these were liberated. The thinking mind and higher vital can accept without too much difficulty, but the difficulty is with the lower vital and physical and especially with the most external parts of them; for these are entirely creatures of habit, recurring movement, an obstinate repetition of the same movement always. This habit is... for a long time. These things [ little expressions of egoism ] either fade slowly out by constant rejection or else they drop off when the higher consciousness gets steadily down into the lower vital and, as it were, swallows it up. A sudden extinction is perhaps possible—at least there are reported cases of it—but usually they linger and go slowly, losing gradually force as if worn out. ...
... such friendships can exist and have always existed. All that is needed is that the lower vital should not look in at the back door or be permitted to enter. There is often a harmony between a masculine and a feminine nature, an attraction or an affinity which rests on something other than any open or covert lower vital (sexual) basis—it depends sometimes predominantly on the mental or on the psychic... direction and marriage lies in quite another and opposite. All talk about a complementary soul is a camouflage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you. But it must not expect a sanction ...
... other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one's own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed... this kind [ too weak to restrain its desires for pleasure ], except in a few who are indifferent to sex or to food desire or to both, by temperament and nature. There is always something in the lower vital which is recalcitrant and takes a pleasure in following its own way and disregarding the higher dictate, and there are always external forces hostile to the Yoga which try to take advantage of its ...
... The portion below the navel is the lower vital,—in your case it has become very sensitive to the condition of the same part in others or perhaps even to their general condition—so that it gives a sort of reflection or an appropriate reaction to that. It is a Page 211 phase in the development that must be overpassed, because the lower vital must get a perfect peace in it and even if... things or too many sides at a time. The other rises from a lack of control and too much impulse. It [ failure in whatever one tries to do ] usually comes from a certain instability in the lower vital which does not give a consistent support to the Will, but is restless and fluctuates from one interest to another. It does not mean an incapacity for success—usually one who has that could succeed ...
... is not jealous if one has the true love. Jealousy is the common movement of the human egoistic lower vital with its grasping possessive instinct and it cannot be anything else. I thought it better to make this clear so that there might be no misleading impression that such movements of the lower vital nature have any sanction or support in the truth of the soul; they belong to the vital Ignorance... to you if it is not satisfied. That is precisely the kind of attitude of the vital which prevents the inner progress and drags back the consciousness Page 390 from the psychic to the lower vital level. Full trust with humility and devotion, that is the psychic poise and for nothing should it be lost. No satisfaction of vital desire can replace it. 6 January 1937 X 's letter is all ...
... to do and I have repeatedly told you what it is—I have told you not to go down into the lower vital unless you can go there with the Mother's Force and Light supporting you. If you are pushed or fall into the lower vital confusion, then to remain quiet (not discussing or consenting to whirl round in the lower vital chaos), to reject the vital suggestions and experiences and open yourself calling down ...
... not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science... lly impure than before. It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know,—and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,—is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal... justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital ...
... strongly supported by the vital, it sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind. When the vital rejects it, it sinks from the higher to the lower vital. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams... world of music, in my dreams. Last night I heard a professional female singer singing and playing. It was so distinct that even when it ceased, the music was ringing in my ears. I thought it was a lower vital enjoyment. The other day I heard songs about you—a higher vital enjoyment, I believe. Yes, these are excursions into the vital world (lower or higher) or rather worlds, for there are any number ...
... physical. The mind proper is divided into three parts—thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalising Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their _____________ ¹ Ibid., p.... the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. The lower vital is occupied with small desires and feelings, such a food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kinds—and a numberless... things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by the idea and reason. The emotional vital and the central vital are sometimes taken together and referred to as the higher vital, in contrast to the lower vital which is concerned with the bottom movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital-physical. The vital-physical is the vital at the service of the physical. It is the nervous being ...
... have a lot of things in your chaddar as you said in a book... ? [Sri Aurobindo put a big question mark.] They say that you are now handling the lower vital and so the general trouble. True? Subconscient vital physical—the lower vital is irrational, but not so utterly "without reasons" as that. July 8, 1935 J says he has no personal difficulties; he has to suffer for the sake... wallowing and bear the cross because something in them chooses to suffer. So? July 20, 1935 Why am [feeling so disturbed? Life seems to be a washout. Have I fallen again into the blessed lower vital dungeon? I suppose so. It is the vital that refuses to leave its movements and yet at the same [time] can't enjoy them (i.e. why life seems to be a washout). I am more and more relapsing ...
... Is it bad for our sadhana to think much about the rhymes, words and ideas of these poems? But I find this a wonderful escape from the prison of thoughts of the lower vital. It is certainly better than being occupied with the lower vital. August 29, 1933 Mother, I had been expecting that after getting your touch, I would sit down to write poetry; but I failed to secure the thing I was... thoughts How to get rid of them? To think too much of sex even for suppressing it, makes it worse. You have to open more to positive experience. To spend all the time struggling with the lower vital is a very slow method. August 24, 1933 How to open oneself to positive experience? Please tell me. By remaining quiet and aspiring for it—knowing that it is waiting there above. ...
... physical. Sri Aurobindo speaks of three parts of the mind, — thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalizing Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness or corporeal consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right... longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, Page 30 desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. The lower vital is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings and disliking, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame, little wishes of all kind — and a ... things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by idea and reason. The emotional vital and the central vital are sometimes taken together and referred to as the higher vital, in contrast to the lower vital which is concerned with the bottom movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital-physical. The vital-physical is the vital at the service of the physical. It is the nervous being ...
... "Creator of this game of ray and shade" who "...by the swift vibration of a nerve Links its mechanic throbs to light and love." This divine Presence behind the working of the lower vital force drives the course of evolution towards, first, the finite loves and lusts and, then, "The will to conquer and have, to seize and keep, To enlarge life's room and scope and pleasure's... of their veils And held up in his vision's sun-white blaze." He saw in that light motley creatures, innumerable in their multitudes, spirits, imps, goblins, genii, all kinds of lower vital beings who were "Ignorant and dangerous wills but armed with power, Half-animal, half-god their mood, their shape." It is these beings who were seen by him to act upon the... Aswapathy made his way through the astral chaos, not knowing whether he was treading on firm soil or shifting sands. He was surrounded on all sides by the huge obstruction of this unlit lower vital world. He felt as if he was travelling in a cave and only light which he had was the flame of his own spirit. Page 186 ...
... The second is an inertia of the lower vital and physical consciousness which prevent it from throwing off the lassitude, from reacting against the attacks and from opening steadily to the Force which would remove these things. All that is due to the breakdown of the poise that you had for so long, the vital trouble that caused it and the reaction of the lower vital to the insistence on throwing out... reaction seems to have been a restlessness at losing the things of which it was still holding — such a reaction always brings the inertia of the physical consciousness while the right reaction in the lower vital brings on the contrary a sense of peace, release, quietude which definitely opens the lowest physical parts to the higher consciousness and force. If you can get over this and get back the old poise ...
... capture our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too—the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes... more open to the Truth and in direct touch with the universal. The subconscient is not the whole foundation of our nature; it is only the lower basis of the Ignorance and governs mostly the lower vital and physical exterior consciousness and these again affect the higher parts of the nature. While it is necessary to see what it is and how it acts, one must not be too preoccupied with this dark ...
... The second is an inertia of the lower vital and physical consciousness which prevents it from throwing off the lassitude, from reacting against the attacks and from opening steadily to the Force which would remove these things. All that is due to the breakdown of the poise that you had for so long, the vital trouble that caused it and the reaction of the lower vital to the insistence on throwing out... reaction seems to have been a listlessness at losing the things to which it was still holding—such a reaction always brings the inertia of the physical consciousness, while the right reaction in the lower vital brings on the contrary a sense of peace, release, quietude which definitely opens the lowest physical parts to the higher consciousness and force. If you can get over this and get back the old poise ...
... despondency and what seemed to me unnecessary suffering. You can surely understand that I do not like to see you suffer and, knowing from long experience that it is the cravings and imaginations of the lower vital consciousness that cause men needlessly to torture themselves, wanted you to get free from the Page 44 cause. It was not the joy of seeing and talking with the Mother that I wanted you... others to yourself, etc., etc. However, I will not insist; I will wait for these disturbances to pass away from you in the due course of the Yoga, as the inner being develops and takes charge of the lower vital nature.... Finally, I will call your attention to what I have said very plainly that you have in no degree contributed to bring about the Mother's illness; why then persist in thinking that... you yourself were beginning to take notice. The next step is for the sadhaks themselves to take; they must make it possible (by their change of attitude, by their resolution to rise on the lower vital and physical plane into the true consciousness) for a union with the Mother on that plane in the right way and with the right result to become possible. More I cannot say just now; but I fully ...
... পারি না? উ: ইহা মনের স্বভাব সে যাহা করে তাতেই মগ্ন থাকে – সাধনার অভ্যাসের বলে মনের এই সাধারণ গতি অতিক্রম করা যায় ৷ সমস্ত সত্তা সব detailএ খােলা ও সম্পূর্ণ সমর্পিত হতে সময় লাগে – বিশেষ lower vital ও physicalএ (নাভির নীচে ও পায়ের তল পৰ্য্যন্ত) উপরের চৈতন্য নামতে সময় লাগে ৷ তােমার higher vital বেশ খােলা আছে, নিম্ন প্রাণ ও শরীরচেতনা খুলছে – কিন্তু সম্পূর্ণ খােলে নি, সেই জন্য এখনও বাধা আছে –... নিয়ে ব্যস্ত থাকে ৷ মাথার নিম্নভাগ আর মুখ তার অধিকারে রয়েছে ৷ এই মন যদি উপরের চেতনা বা ভিতরের সঙ্গে সংশ্লিষ্ট হয়, এগুলােকে ব্যক্ত করে, তবে ভাল ৷ কিন্তু তার আরাে ঘনিষ্ঠ সম্বন্ধ – নিম্ন অংশের সঙ্গে, lower vital ও physical consciousness (যার কেন্দ্র মূলাধার) তার সঙ্গে ৷ এই জন্য এ রকম হয় ৷ সেই জন্য বাককে সংযত করার সাধনায় বড় প্রয়ােজন, যাতে সে উপরের ও ভিতরের চেতনাকে ব্যক্ত করতে অভ্যস্ত হয়, নিম্নের বা বাহিরের... অনুপযুক্তের কথা হচ্ছে না, সাধনায় এই সব কথার বিশেষ কোন অর্থ নাই, মায়ের কাছে খুলতে পারলেই সব হয় ৷ মাথায় যা অনুভব কর, তাহা বাহিরের মন (physical mind) আর নাভির নীচ থেকে যা অনুভব কর তা হল (lower vital) নিম্ন প্রাণ ৷ মাথায় এইরূপ হওয়ার অর্থ এই যে মন সম্পূর্ণ খুলেছে ও উপরের চেতনা ৷ receive করেছে ৷ হ্যাঁ,যখন ঘুম সচেতন হয়, তখন এইরূপই হয় – যেমন জাগ্রতে তেমনই ঘুমে সাধনা অনবরত চলে ৷ ...
... it's the lower vital, I mean the lower vital OF MATTER, the vital subdegree OF MATTER. It's on the way to transformation, this is where the work is being done materially. But all those emotions have rather unpleasant repercussions.... Even, when I looked at it in detail, I came to think that there must be something analogous in you; you must be open to certain currents of force in the lower vital, and ...
... do it because the work could not be otherwise done. We had tried to do it from above through the mind and higher vital, but it could not be because the sadhaks were not ready to follow - their lower vital and physical refused to share in what was coming down or else misused it and became full of exaggerated and violent reactions. Since then the sadhana as a whole has come down along with us into... and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness. The power used was not that of the Supermind but of the Overmind, but it was sufficient for what was being done. Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers, through which she was doing the action, behind a veil and came down into the physical... Aurobindo brought the Overmind's power into action not only on the mind and the life-force's higher level where "brilliant experiences, big push, energy" resulted from the action, but also on the lower vital and the physical consciousness. Seeking - while poised on these recalcitrant inferior planes and especially on the latter - the power of total transformation, he looked for the real starting-point ...
... such friendships can exist and have always existed. All that is needed is that the lower vital should not look in at the back door or be permitted to enter. There is often a harmony between a masculine and a feminine nature, an attraction or an affinity which rests on something other than any open or covert lower vital (sexual) basis—it depends sometimes predominantly on the mental or on the psychic... here also. Glad to hear about the dream being stopped—that is always a sign of some control beginning even in sleep—so we may hope that the thing is on its last legs indeed. Anyhow, if the lower vital is beginning to reject it, the rest is only a matter of some time. July 24,1936 I suppose the real secret of it is there that you go out of the Tagorian orbit too far and completely ...
... high poetry, but put it in prose and it sounds insane." (10) Poetry of the lower vital: AK: Here is a poem which seems to me an expression of the lower vital - to use our yogic classification - lashed to imaginative fury. Any real possibilities along this line? Sri Aurobindo: An expression of the lower vital lashed to imaginative fury is likely to produce not poetry but simply 'sound and ...
... easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate with yoga. It takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science... impure than before. It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, — and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, — is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the ...
... to their suggestions and influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any success. In your case the chief points d' appui have been the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas and associations, its... and inferences, then they can have a field day until the true mind reasserts itself and blows the clouds away. Another device of theirs is to awake some hurt or rankling sense of grievance in the lower vital parts and keep them hurt or rankling as long as possible. In that case one has to discover these openings in one's nature and learn to close them permanently to such attacks or to throw out the intruders ...
... to pall on you and that was why you turned from it. No doubt, there were the joys of the intellect and of artistic creation, but a man cannot be an artist alone; there is the outer, quite human, lower vital part and, in all but a few, it is the most clamourous and insistent part. But what was dissatisfied in you? It was the soul within, first of all, and through it the higher mind and the higher vital... simply answering to the demand of your inner being and the higher parts of your nature. If you have so much difficulty and become restless, it is because you are still divided and something in your lower vital still regrets what it has lost, or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation — price to be immediately paid down to it — asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It ...
... still greater purity to manifest and to live. When I go deep down and analyse myself, I find the lower vital impulses, the animal impulses of ordinary human life and its instincts. These things have no strength to make me act physically but I understand now that they creep in and govern the lower vital nature in a very subtle polished form. Yes, these things were to be seen. It is good that you ...
... world, where it rests ‘in a kind of beatific contemplation’ between two incarnations and assimilates its experiences from the former life. The beings of the vital worlds, more specifically the lower vital worlds, are the vicious entities we call demons or hostile forces. As these worlds are the first the departing soul has to traverse, it must in almost all cases confront those beings unprepared,... ‘hell’ go back. The Mother explained: ‘Generally, one calls the “domain of death” a certain region of the most material vital into which one is projected at the moment one leaves the body.’ This lower vital region, this material vital world, is obscure and full of small, vampire-like beings who feed on everything they can swallow, including the vital substance of the deceased person who, because of ...
... human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. "The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative 1 The expression—"the vital"—in this sentence is a special term of Sri Aurobindo's and must not be taken as one lacking by oversight a noun... habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his thought, too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightforwardness ...
... or au point . It was only a brief interlude of a few lines formerly, but I had been lengthening it out afterwards with much difficulty in getting it right. I have now got the subtle physical and lower vital worlds into some kind of order, but the big dark Asuric vital and the vital heavens are still roaming about in a state of half solid incompleteness. Still I suppose as I am taking my vacation (from... sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve Page 318 the dryness of much of his thought, too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightforwardness ...
... action of the mental physical which, left to itself, would only repeat customary ideas and record the natural reflexes of the physical consciousness to the contacts of outward life and things. The lower vital as distinguished from the higher is concerned only with the small greeds, small desires, small passions etc. which make up the daily stuff of life for the ordinary sensational man—while the vital... rush in, if one is not on one's guard, or else a kind of mechanical physical or random subconscient mind can begin to come up and act; these are the chief disturbers of the silence. Or else the lower vital mind can try to disturb; that brings up the ego and passions and their play. All these are signs of elements that have to be got rid of, because if they remain and other of the higher powers begin ...
... there is an opening of the inner doors to the Divine. If one does not encourage the devotion of the emotional being merely because the lower vital is not yet under control and acts differently, then how is the devotion to grow and how is the lower vital to change? Until the final clarification and harmonising of the nature there are always contradictions in the being, but that is not a reason ...
... The lion means vital force, strength, courage—here full of the light, illumined by the spiritual consciousness. 1 The lion indicates force and courage, strength and power. The lower vital is not lionlike. Tiger It all depends on the attitude of the tiger. If fierce and hostile, it may be a form of an adverse force, otherwise it is simply a power of vital nature which may be... it means for you. It may mean for you success or successful formations. White Ants Obviously it [ white ants seen in a dream ] must have been symbolic of small but destructive forces in the lower vital or physical. Flies Something small in the smaller vital. Page 176 × In the correspondent's vision ...
... obscurity or disharmony in the lower vital or the physical mind or elsewhere. It is very good if one can get rid of illness entirely by faith and Yoga-power or the influx of the Divine Force. But very often this is not altogether possible, because the whole nature is not open or able to respond to the Force. The mind may have faith and respond, but the lower vital and the body may not follow. Or ...
... to take place. The opposite experience of dryness, despair etc. comes from the resistance of the ordinary lower nature (lower vital, physical consciousness, especially). This resistance is to be got rid of—and one condition of that is never to indulge the desires of the lower vital and the body. You must turn them on the contrary wholly to the Divine. The descent of the Silence is not usually ...
... dealt with what rises from below. Why do you regard what rises and shows itself ( hīnatā, kṣudratā, āsakti, lobha ) as if it were peculiar to yourself? They are part of the very substance of the lower vital of the human being and there is no one who is without them. So their presence does not at all mean that you cannot reach the Mother. When the mind and soul have chosen the goal, the rest is bound... come when the waves no longer rise. The real reason of the difficulty and the constant alternation is the struggle between the veiled true being within and the outer nature, especially the lower vital full of desires and the physical mind full of obscurity and ignorance. This struggle is inevitable in human nature and no sadhak escapes it; everyone has to deal with that obscurity and resistance ...
... physical life without an order and rhythm. When this order is changed it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external novelty. It is only a certain part of the surface lower vital nature which seeks always external change and novelty for its own sake. It is by a constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other... been very glad to get your letters with the details which prove how great and rapid a progress you have made in sadhana. All that you write shows a clear consciousness and a new orientation in the lower vital. To have seen clearly the instinct of domination and the pride of the instrument there means that that part of the being is on the right way to change—these defects must now be replaced by their ...
... movements come back. It is natural for the lower vital to be made up of feelings, impulses and desires and to be attached to outer things—but that is only a part of you. There is also the psychic and the higher mind and higher vital which only need quietude and the help of the Force and Peace behind them to come forward more strongly and dominate over the lower vital and help to change it. You are ...
... knows it—but he has not made any real attempt to control his tongue as yet. Talk—of the usual kind—does very easily disperse or bring down the inner condition because it usually comes out of the lower vital and the physical mind only and expresses that part of the consciousness—it has a tendency to externalise the being. That is of course why so many Yogis take refuge in silence. Talking and Fatigue... and for inner sadhana. It is something very external that takes pleasure in light talk, and it is only when the quietude and with it a certain spontaneous self-control is established in the lower vital nature that this tendency can be entirely conquered in those who have it—i.e. in most people. All these things will be worked out in time. What is most important is to get down the quietude into ...
... acceptance the soul opens, the mind clarifies, the vital is purified and enlightened and a spiritual change becomes possible. 3 May 1932 What you have felt is a revival or return on you of the lower vital with its demands and desires. Its suggestion is, "I am doing the Yoga, but for a price. I have abandoned the life of vital desire and satisfaction, but in order to get intimacy with the Mother—instead... and as I want it, why should I give up the old things?" And as a natural result the old things start again—" X and Y and Y and X and the wrongs of Z ." You must see this machinery of the lower vital and dismiss it. It is only by the full psychic relation of self-giving that unity and closeness with the Divine can be maintained—the other is part of the vital ego movement and can only bring a ...
... origin, these were not your own feelings at all, but rather ideas, impressions, impulses pushed into your lower vital from outside; your mistake has been to admit them and identify them as your own—from want of knowledge and experience in these matters. There are certain vital forces of this lower vital plane that are constantly wandering about the Asram and trying to push their movements now on one, now ...
... thing? No, you can't do tapasya without aspiration. Aspiration is first, the will to attain something. Tapasya is the process—there is indeed a process, a method. Page 343 Isn't the lower vital conscious of the work going on in it? Then, if it is logical and well-meaning, it ought to admit the presence of the Divine. You understand, it is a vicious circle; it does not want the Divine... instruments or judge by its puerile standards; in spite of all opposition this is pressing down for manifestation in the physical consciousness and the material life. On the other side is this lower vital nature with all its pretentious arrogance, ignorance, obscurity, dullness or incompetent turbulence, standing for its own prolongation, standing against the descent, refusing to believe in any real ...
... back to it. Ah, that's all? Sweet Mother, what does the error of the lower vital mean? You are asking what it is? All desires, all impulses, all egoistical, obscure, ignorant, Page 69 passionate, violent movements—in fact most of the movements one makes every day. This is the error of the lower vital. It wants to have everything for itself. It wants to be the master of the whole ...
... 'dikpala'-s of ancient Indian tradition. But that is not all. Apart from these principal supraphysical beings, there are numerous types of elemental beings swarming in the subtle-physical and the lower vital planes bordering the atmosphere of the earth itself. The list of their names is quite a long one: gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, undines, dryads, salamanders, brownies, elves, imps, and so many others.... perhaps still more profound than in the physical world, to be able to know what is happening there, to have relations with the beings who live there. Another point: if you learn to leave the lower vital world in close proximity to the earthly physical world and make your progressive ascension, you will find that as you mount, you will encounter beings whose forms and consciousness are more and more ...
... tamas shall be conquered most easily and effectively? Yes. I am sorry, today I have not kept the distinction between what is truly of my self and what is of the lower vital. The distinction must be kept not only clear but entire — for the least blurring of it gives the opportunity for the vital of the nature to pull out the consciousness from its higher... being for loving in the right way." Somewhere else you write that the higher experiences leave the exterior nature as it is and that mere rising above or getting experiences brings no change in the lower vital, ego etc. Well? Page 261 I am not speaking of mere rising above. The rising above has to be followed by the descent of the higher consciousness into the different parts of ...
... parts of the being they begin to aspire for the Divine. In my case, its influence seems to be spreading to the lower vital with the result that the latter is making demands on the Divine. Is that the usual movement? Yes, so long as the psychic ha? not transformed the lower vital. Page 190 You wrote, "The heart is the seat not only of the psychic, but also ...
... something like a short review of the present state of the sadhana. I cannot say more than what I have said already. In its descent the peace and silence met with a resistance in the lower vital (probably mostly the vital-physical) and the physical combined which instead of receiving the peace and silence and the release and joy it brings replied with inertia. This inertia gave an opportunity... something going on strongly between the navel and the sex centre? What is it? I suppose the Power is working there to clear a way for a stronger descent of the higher things into the lower vital and physical. You wrote: "I suppose the most material consciousness has come up or you have gone into it." Has this stage (of dealing with the most material consciousness) come ...
... Aspiration for devotion, and refusal of egoistic movement. When the psychic touches there is an intensification of love but the lower vital mixes up the love with all sorts of demands. You speak of the psychic transforming the lower vital. Can it do so completely or is it the higher consciousness that does it? I mean here a preliminary transformation turning it ...
... 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... 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 ...
... surrender, for it is under the influence of the mind and sometimes even of the psychic; it understands them more easily. It is less difficult than the lower vital, for the latter is essentially the stronghold of desires and blind impulsions. The lower vital, even when it surrenders, when it does what it is asked to do, is not wholly happy, it suffers Page 125 and only pushes down the impulse ...
... violences, mighty hungers, intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravings—all urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the " body and move to gross physical satisfactions. But always... and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region. All this is comprised within what we term the Higher or the Middle Vital. In the lower vital, we have said, consciousness has become still more circumscribed, dark, ignorantly obstinate, disparately disintegrated. It is the seed-bed of lust and cruelty, of all that is small and petty and ...
... violences, mighty hungers, intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravings—all urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the body and move to gross physical satisfactions. But always... and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region. All this is comprised within what we term the Higher or the Middle Vital. In the lower vital, we have said, consciousness has become still more circumscribed, dark, ignorantly obstinate, disparately disintegrated. It is the seed-bed of lust and cruelty, of all that is small and petty and ...
... surrender, for it is under the influence of the mind and sometimes even of the psychic; it understands them more easily. It is less difficult than the lower vital, for the latter is essentially the stronghold of desires and blind impulsions. The lower vital, even when it surrenders, when it does what it is asked to do, is not wholly happy, it suffers and only pushes down the impulse to revolt, it obeys ...
... physical. The mind proper is divided into three parts thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalising Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness and to the physical body. The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right. It reasons and perceives... things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by idea and reason. The emotional vital and the central vital are sometimes taken together and referred to as the higher vital, in contrast to the lower vital which is concerned with the bottom movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital-physical. The vital-physical is the vital at the service of the physical. It is the nervous being ...
... the spine, coiled like a serpent, what Sri Aurobindo has called "Coiled Energy" or the kundalini power. Swadhistana is below the abdomen, the chakra of the lower vital. Manipura is at the navel-centre where the lower vital ends. Anahata is our heart-centre which is the seat of the psychic and the higher vital. Vishuddha is at the throat-centre, the centre of speech. Ajna chakra ...
... experience are the creative elements of Indian art. What modernist art is trying to do – at least what it began with – is to convey the vital sensation of the object, very often it happens to be the lower vital sensation. But it is the first effort to get behind the physical form. Disciple : Yes, it was Cézanne who began the modernist movement. It was fortunate that he had not to depend on his art... gone down. When these artists go further in the application of their theories then they become absurd. And what they mean by ''inner" truth of the object is most often the "subconscient" or "lower vital". There Page 227 is no objection to suppressing the non-essentials of a form in a work of art. In fact all great artists do it. But the work that you produce must have aesthetic ...
... let there be no cutting of anybody — that would be again a vital movement and would take away the spiritual value of your movement which should be only for concentration and the conquest of this lower vital nature. No, the Mother is not angry with you. It is naturally a matter of regret that this disturbance which was on the point of falling quiet should have been prolonged by each one doing just... will not help. Sleep is the main thing, sufficient food and at any rate take some fresh air in one way or other. No date Whatever the truth be, this inquisitiveness belongs to the lower vital and you should get rid of it altogether. Something of the old habitual feeling must have entered into it, even if there was no pain or jealousy, because otherwise surely you would not have lost sleep ...
... all hold on the lower vital and physical of the sadhaks—the sooner the better. For the moment they are still able to resist and to keep up the disharmony in this part of Nature. It is only when they do so no more that the capital difficulty in the general sadhana will be over. 9 May 1936 Retirement and Progress in Yoga Would not rejection of the problems of the lower vital be better done in ...
... drew her hand back, and I felt something being taken away. But when I woke up, I did not know if it was a good or bad thing Mother took away. What was it? It was certainly a true dream of the lower vital or perhaps subtle physical plane, where the laziness, indifference, frivolity of the sadhaks is a fact and the chief obstacle to the supramental descent into Matter. Because in your inner physical... physical you were sincere and aspiring, the Mother's blessing came upon you and removed something there that was in the way. There is no indication in the dream as to what it was, but something in the lower vital or physical connected with this general defect. Page 282 ...
... Sweet Mother? It is what he describes later. He explains afterwards that what is in the mind is thrown out into the vital, what is in the higher vital is thrown out into the lower vital, and what is in the lower vital is thrown out into the physical, and what is in the physical is thrown out into the subconscient. He says it—all this. But I thought there was a procedure for rejection? No ...
... then and there create all the circumstances, the outer experiences necessary for the psychic being to attain its maturity in this very life. ( Long silence ) Do people who roam about in the lower vital domain during the night suffer much after death? Not necessarily more than those who don't do it. Because by the very fact that they roam there, they are a little more armed, they are a little... with—unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself, but that, you know, is so rare a case that one can't consider it. All men when they leave their body are flung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing particularly pleasant about it. And strange, there is still another thing I was speaking about today. The most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness ...
... is under the influence of the mind and at times even of the psychic; so it understands more easily. It is much easier to convert this than the lower vital which is essentially the vital of desires and impulses. So, you see, what he means is that the lower vital can submit, it agrees to obey, to do what it is asked, but it is not at all satisfied. It is not happy; sometimes it even suffers; it pushes ...
... other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression. It is only when one stands back, separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one's own, and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed ...
... an after result of the ravage on the organism created by the Kalazar. In most cases it indicates a weakness in the vital being which opens it to pressure from hostile influences belonging to the lower vital worlds. [3] I had given Barin an answer to your former letter, but it may either not have been sent or else delayed or lost owing to the railway strike. A paper of the kind you are undertaking... delicacy of your vital nature, I hesitate to do so, because I do not know whether you would be able vitally and physically to be at ease amidst this fierce struggle of forces on the physical and lower vital plane. On the other hand I am not fixed as to what climate or surroundings would suit you elsewhere or of any place where you could have what is necessary for me. If you could let me have some i ...
... down in each sadhak, with the Mother's presence always there. Along with this experience there must have been an attempt at surrender or an initial answer in the lower vital, but as a reaction the nervous disturbance came back—the old lower vital nature not being ready to give up possession reasserted its disturbances which were about to abate. 6 November 1934 Sometimes when I sit in meditation ...
... movement than the true mind and it is very much under the sway of the vital world and the hostile forces. This physical mind is usually in a kind of alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements; when the lower vital manifests certain desires and impulses, this more material mind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious explanations and reasonings and excuses. ...
... physical illness etc. Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness Yes—they [the lower vital, the physical vital and the material vital] become very clear to the increasing consciousness. And the distinctions are necessary—otherwise one may influence or control the lower vital or a part of the physical vital and then be astonished to find that something intangible but apparently ...
... beginning to pall on you and that was why you turned from it. No doubt, there were the joys of the intellect and of artistic creation, but a man cannot be an artist alone; there is the outer quite human lower vital part and, in all but a few, it is the most clamorous and insistent part. But what was dissatisfied in you? It was the soul within, first of all, and through it the higher mind and the higher vital... answering to the demand of your own inner being and the higher parts of your nature. If you have so much difficulty and become restless, it is because you are still divided and something in your lower vital still regrets what it has lost or, as a price for its adhesion or a compensation—a price to be immediately paid down to it,—asks for something similar and equivalent in the spiritual life. It refuses ...
... over and over again and many similar phenomena. (3) A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality and appears and acts in the form and perhaps with the surface thoughts and memories of that person. (4) A being of the lower vital plane who by the medium of a living human being or by some other means ...
... has already built a deep inner life, Yogic and spiritual, which is veiled only because of some strong outward turn the education and past activities have given to the thinking mind and lower Page 218 vital parts. It is precisely to correct this outward orientation and take away the veil that he has to practise more strenuously the Yoga. Once the inner being has manifested strongly whether... the things inside begin to be seen vividly and clearly, but the inner mind not being active, either their coherence is not seen or the consciousness lingers in the confused experiences of the lower vital plane and does not get through to the deeper, more coherent and significant experiences. A development of the inner consciousness is needed—when that development takes place, then all will become ...
... movements. It is plain. The lower being (vital and physical) was receiving an influence (mental light, yellow) from the thinking mind and higher vital which was clearing it of the old habitual lower vital reactions: very often in the sadhana one feels the inner being speaking to the outer or the mind or higher vital speaking to the lower so as to enlighten it. These things that come [ in dreams... even below it. The navel-centre ( nābhi-padma ) is the main seat of the centralised vital consciousness (dynamic centre) which ranges from the heart level (emotional) to the centre below the navel (lower vital, sensational desire centre). These three mark the domain of the vital being. It is therefore Page 196 clear that it was your inner vital being which had this experience, and its intensity ...
... established through the psychic—for the psychic is behind the heart. It is there above the head that the consciousness has to ascend and remain, while it also descends into the head and heart and lower vital and physical and brings there its wideness, light, peace and freedom. It is the union of the consciousness above with the awakened psychic being that makes the true connection between what... and largest possibilities—it does not alter its essential nature. Page 387 The psychic when sufficiently developed can be strong enough to make the preliminary clearance [ of the lower vital ]. It is the supramental alone that can transform the material being, but the physical mind and physical vital can be very much changed by the action of the psychic and of the overmind. The entire ...
... 642 of the thinking mind and higher (emotional, larger dynamic) vital that is open to the psychic and cleaves to the soul's aims and admits the higher experiences and on the other hand the lower vital and the physical or external being (external mind and vital included) which are attached to the ignorant personality and nature and do not want to change. It is the conflict between these two that... to the Divine Light and Force and the Mother's presence a dynamic action of sadhana is constantly maintained which steadily pushes out the movements of the ignorance and substitutes even in the lower vital and physical being the movements of the inner and higher nature. There is then no struggle any longer, but an automatic growth of the divine elements and fading out of the undivine. The devotion ...
... cannot take place. It is good that the higher consciousness and its powers are descending into the parts below the head and heart. That is absolutely necessary for the transformation, since the lower vital and the body must also be changed into stuff of the higher consciousness. For this Yoga these divisions [ the classifications of samadhi in Vedanta ] are not so important. Samadhi and the... and something touches whether from within or without. The Trance of Mediums The medium trance is of a different kind—they get not into touch with Sachchidananda but with the beings of the lower vital plane. To develop the power of going into this higher kind of trance, one must have done some sadhana. As to purification, entire purification is not necessary, but some part of the being must have ...
... influence of the higher consciousness reaches down to the heart (emotional being with the psychic behind it), but does not yet reach below in the lower vital and physical—but it is dissolving the knot in the heart centre which prevents the descent into the lower vital and physical centres. The joy in the śānta svarūpa is indeed a sign of the release of the heart centre. But the phrase in the Upanishads ...
... time and see. The hostiles have a habit of trying their strength when they hear anything like that; they want to show you that it is not so. But is it true that even anger which is of the lower vital and therefore close to the body, invariably produces these effects? 1 Of course the psychologist can't know that another man is angry Page 270 unless he shows physical signs of it... psychic that rules all the movements of the being, then it [ anger ] completely disappears and when the equanimity of the higher consciousness takes complete possession of the Page 274 lower vital. Till then one can establish a control, diminish and reduce it to a touch that has no outward effect or a wave that passes without self-expression. That [ inner detachment ] is the right thing ...
... you and feel that it would be terribly boring to have nothing but joy and Ananda and peace—many even have said it. The gloom and other difficulties come from a resistance of inertia in the lower vital and physical consciousness. What you have to do is to prepare the consciousness by getting rid of the inertia. A sattwic gladness and calm and confidence is the proper temperament for this Yoga;... in the way of the opening, unless the tears are the psychic weeping of release or adoration or a moved love and bhakti. The progress made in controlling the sex and other rajasic movements of the lower vital is a good preparation, but not enough; by itself it is only the negative side, though indispensable. Aspire for a positive sattwic opening for strength, for light, for peace and do not worry or repine ...
... But in the lower vital there is almost always something recalcitrant and there is much of the physical that is too obscure. If the sadhak were left to himself this could be remedied without much difficulty, but it is here that the hostility in the universal (lower) forces comes in—they want to keep their reign over the being. The result is an exacerbation of the resistance of the lower vital and an e ...
... of the lower vital, has been explored by Sri Aurobindo and described by him in “The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds,” in his epic Savitri . As this endless scale of worlds is, each of them, the expression of Existence and Consciousness, it is also the expression of Ananda , and all their beings enjoy therefore perfect satisfaction and happiness as they are, even those of the lower vital which ...
... regions into the psychic world, to rest there and to assimilate the experiences from the recently concluded life. The lower vital worlds are inhabited by the malicious beings we have already met and who in the West are called devils. The temporary passage of the soul through those lower vital worlds is the rationale of the various types of hell in the religions. Far from being an eternal punishment with ...
... essence; but our consciousness is veiled and our forces totally inadequate. Yesterday was unsatisfactory, today is a problem, tomorrow is an intimidating uncertainty. The earthly presence of the lower vital forces, those of the diabolical kind, has become much more widespread because of the wars. War is hell for us but it is an amusement park for those beings, and who will chase them away once they... damage for meager results.’ 18 Kali is the goddess who destroys to bring the world faster to its divine goal by a new creation. There is however a whole hierarchy of Kalis, from those in the lower vital up to Mahakali, the Great Kali, who is one of the four aspects or direct emanations of the Mother. The lower Kalis are as depicted in the Indian iconography: naked, black, with bulging eyes, the ...
... things is that they have to be extruded outside the Page 388 individual consciousness. Rejected by the mind and higher vital, they still try to hold on to the lower vital and physical. Rejected from the lower vital, they still hold the body by a physical desire. Rejected from the body, they retire into the environmental consciousness (sometimes into the subconsient also, rising in dreams)—I ...
... that the ugly little brat was an exteriorisation of his lower-vital being of lust and concupiscence and possessiveness. "Do you understand now," he wrote, "why you are not allowed to stay here? It is this formation of your life in the past. He wants food which is wholly denied here. That is why you have to depart again and again. Your lower vital being is still too much alive and kicking to let you stay ...
... following a very sound method in his practice and has attained some good results. The first step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and finally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he reaches something like its end. I would not wish to deflect him from that in any way. What I had in... their suggestions and influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any success. In your case the chief points d’appui have been the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas and associations ...
... sustained, alert contemplation of that Sublime Reality. Page 24 How and why does this pressure come? If you mean the pressure of inert passivity, it comes from the resistance of the lower vital and the obscurity of the material nature. It can be overcome by an untiring will and aspiration. 12 February 1934 Mother, may I know something about this depression—how did it come? ... mountain out of such a little thing; later you will laugh at this affair—which you are taking so tragically now— Page 134 when a little more light and consciousness have penetrated into your lower vital. 6 July 1936 X sent me a letter and I replied. But do You like us to communicate in this way? Do You want me to stop speaking to her altogether and refuse to visit her? I see no point ...
... t in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the coarseness of the material creation... creation which it Page 32 alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error." 8 Sri Aurobindo × The day Satprem wrote this letter, Mother saw him as if seated between the two violet ...
... too can get veiled by what are termed "lower vital movements", but these can stand also in the way of the Yogic mind. The difference is that as soon as they cease the Yogic heart's spontaneity breaks forth easily whereas the Yogic mind takes time to set its course again. This advantage of the former should not lead us to take those upsurges of the lower vital lightly. A habitual recurrence of them ...
... stronger vital longings and reactions, e.g. ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies; last, the lower vital which is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as make the greater part of daily life, e.g. food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger... to the greater objects of Nature. In the second arrangement, the emotional being stands at the top of the vital nature and the two together make the higher vital. As against them stands the lower vital which is concerned with the pettier movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital physical where it supports the life of the more external activities and all physical sensations ...
... the psychic had acted in a flash. With the flash I woke up and felt a release in the consciousness. A gate long shut had burst open. A tiny lamp of God had been lit in the unchartered chaos of the lower vital. The morning did not appreciably differ from other mornings. Some aspiration was going on, but nothing unusual. Then I went to the Samadhi. There a strong opening took place. The psychic started... extent and the sense of blessedness came to a finer focus than during the afternoon. I have a feeling that tonight will be the most beautiful of all the nights. Last night some part of the lower vital seemed to get worked out, exhausted, and then rejected from the system, leaving the system freer and fresher. P.S. There was one little disappointment this morning. The Mother did not like the ...
... between two human beings and not as between a man and a woman. (vii)One should not seek to establish relationships in order to satisfy the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. (viii)No relationship should be formed with a craving for the gratification of unchastened emotional desires or physical passions. Here are Sri Aurobindo's guidelines for safe human... produce perturbations. But there is no impossibility of friendship between man and woman pure of this element; such friendships can exist and have always existed. All that is needed is that the lower vital should not look in at the back door or be permitted to enter." (Ibid., p. 817) (7)"In a general way the only method for succeeding in having between a man and a woman the free and natural ...
... centre. Is there any possibility of the lower vital misusing this flow? It can be misused on a large scale only if there is a strong and vehement vital ego not accustomed to correction or else a vital full of the kamavasana (sexual desire). On a small scale it can be misused by the small selfishnesses, vanities, ambitions, demands of the lower vital supporting themselves upon it. If you are ...
... knowledge for the mind to take them rightly, otherwise there is the danger of an ignorant resistance. Unfortunately I miss that knowledge. These are suggestions of the physical mind and lower vital. Nobody has a special knowledge from the beginning. Is the physical mind right in thinking that I should not write to you about the usual wrong reactions of the outer being? ... the outer vital needs long years of practice and an arduous sadhana. It is sufficient in the beginning to stabilise it in the inner vital. This will bring as a result a calm aloofness from all the lower vital movements, actions and thoughts. * * * Is all this correct? Perfectly correct. ...
... the Vedantic attitude is often made an excuse for yielding to the hostile forces. "All this is Maya, illusion, there is no virtue, no sin, no good, no evil," they say and give themselves up to lower vital forces. Disciple : But are the lower movements of nature themselves not hostile ? Sri Aurobindo : No, but they offer an opening to the hostile forces and the hostile forces use these... nature-part. It is this idea of realisation that gave the belief that one who realises the Brahman acts like bāla , (a child), jada , (inert), unmatta , (a mad man), or pisāch , (one possessed by lower vital forces). Disciple : It is very easy to become jadavat – like one inert. Sri Aurobindo : I don't think it is so easy. I think the only man who came very near to it was Jada Bharat ...
... violences, mighty hungers, and intense arrogances. The physical seat of this movement is, as perhaps the Tantras would say, the domain ranging between the heart and the navel. Lower down ranges the Lower Vital which consists of small desires, petty hankerings, blind cravings-all urges and impulses that are more or less linked up with the body and move to gross physical satisfactions. But always the... seraphs and cherubs dwell here. In fact, the mythological heaven for the most part can be located in this region. All this is comprised within what we term the Higher or the Middle Vital. In the lower vital, we have said, consciousness has become still more circumscribed, dark, ignorantly obstinate, disparately disintegrated. It is the seed-bed of lust and cruelty, of all that is small and petty and ...
... We had tried to do it [the sadhana] from above through the mind and higher Page 589 vital, but it could not be because the Sadhaks were not ready to follow - their lower vital and physical refused to share in what was coming down or else misused it and became full of exaggerated and violent reactions. Since then the Sadhana as a whole has come down along with us into... physical life without an order and-rhythm. When this order is changed, it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external novelty. It is only a certain part of the surface lower vital nature which seeks always external change and novelty for its own sake. It is by a constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. 69 ...
... of the spine, coiled like a serpent, what Sri Aurobindo has called "Coiled Energy" or the kundalini power. Swadhishthana is below the abdomen, the chakra of the lower vital. Manipura is at the navel-centre where the lower vital ends. Anahata is our heart-centre which is the seat of the psychic and the higher vital. Vishuddha is at the throat-centre, the centre of speech. Ajna ...
... regions of the intuitive, the inspirational, the revelatory and the spiritual consciousness. The modernist is attracted by the subliminal, the subconscient and the abnormal of the vital and the lower vital regions of human consciousness by a kind of false subjectivism. But the real fulfilment of his efforts; the highest strains of his expression Page 69 would be attained when he would... Sri Aurobindo's poetical expression taken as a whole, the movement towards a universal subjectivism gets released from the entanglements of intellectual theories, the uncanny attraction of the lower vital and the distorted view of the abnormal and flies steadily into the region of the higher inspirational consciousness and from there, views the whole of the cosmos including man, other Cosmic Powers ...
... come under control; the upshot is that my mind is shattered. I am carrying my own self like a burden — a lifeless corpse. SRI AUROBINDO: What you have felt is a revival or return on you of the lower vital with its demands and desires. Its suggestion is “I am doing the Yoga but for a price. I have abandoned the life of vital desire and satisfaction but in order to get intimacy with the Mother — instead... y and as I want it, why should I give up the old things.” And as a natural result the old things start again — “X and Y and Y and X and the wrongs of Sahana.” You must see this machinery of the lower vital and dismiss it. It is only by the full psychic relation of self-giving that unity and closeness with the Divine can be maintained — the other is part of the vital ego movement and can only bring ...
... of aspiring humanity symbolised in Aswapati, the Lord of manifested Life, first descends from his human consciousness into nether regions of unconsciousness and materiality, the regions of the lower vital, its heaven and its hell, as a conscious witness. He then ascends to the regions of Heavens of the higher Vital and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. After soaring into regions above ...
... ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness — energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies ...
... physical and easiest to remain. One does enter the higher planes but either the transit there is brief or one does not remember. For in returning to the waking consciousness it is again through the lower vital and subtle physical that one passes and as these are the last dreams they are more easily remembered. The other dreams are remembered only if (1) they are strongly impressed on the recording ...
... habits, is largely due to a subconscient support. The subconscient is full of irrational habits." 28 "The subconscient is the main support of all habitual movements, especially the physical and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason ...
... (e)Certain experiences rooted in the unconscious tend to be re-enacted repeatedly in a compulsive way - what Freud termed "repetition compulsion". However, according to Sri Aurobindo, "the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know,-and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,-is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal ...
... back, separates oneself from the lower, refusing to regard its desires and clamours as one's own and cultivates an entire equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to them that the lower vital itself becomes gradually purified and itself also calm and equal. Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed, as quietly and with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something going ...
... sapiens has inherited the animal characteristics of the primates, physically as well as in his sub-rational psychological make-up. This animal part of his constitution is dominated mainly by the lower vital and the subconscious. How badly rational man, the reasoning being, had overrated himself during the Age of Reason was appallingly proven by some of the main events of the 20th century. Until now ...
... as we know, real and conscious beings. They exist in a double hierarchy. There is, on the one hand, the hierarchy descending from the Asuras (mental and higher vital) downwards via the Rakshasas (lower vital) to the Pishachas (lowest vital); there are, on the other hand, the hierarchies descending in uncountable strata of beings cascading, as it were, from the main forces in each of the three categories ...
... move about in our vital and mental bodies. It is the sojourn after death in the vital body, which then has to pass through kindred vital worlds, that is the origin of the belief in “hell”, for the lower vital worlds and the beings dwelling in those worlds can truly be infernal. When the vital body too is discarded, the soul still has to pass through mental worlds before it can enter the soul world, where ...
... intrinsically sexless, however, in the species beyond man it will manifest in a sexless supramental body. The sexes are a phenomenon of the lower hemisphere of Existence from the gods down to the lower vital creatures. ‘The concept that has come from below,’ as the Mother said, has therefore been projected from the lower hemisphere of division on the higher hemisphere of divine Unity. ‘It is a concept ...
... and all such things.’ 8 She especially made it clear that most of the occult phenomena were caused by little vital beings, the ‘elementals,’ of which we have already heard as denizens of the lower vital world and who find their amusement in making fools of the by-and-large ignorant and defenceless human beings. ‘Those who indulge in this kind of practice [e.g. table-turning or automatic writing] ...
... The Power used was not that of the supermind, but of the Overmind, but it was sufficient for what was that of the overmind but lt was sufficient for what was being done. Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow , the mother had to push the Devine personalities and Powers through which she doing the action behind a veil and come down into the Physical human ...
... assent to their suggestions and influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any success. In your case the chief points d'appui have been the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas and associations, its ...
... concerned with creation, with power and force and conquest, with giving and self-giving... throwing itself out in the wider movements of life, responsive to the greater objects of Nature The lower vital by which he implies "the pettier movements of action and desire" such as "all physical sensations, hungers, cravings, satisfactions ... lust, greed of all kinds, vanity, small ambitions, petty anger ...
... grow enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with total dedication – with a generosity that is not found, for instance, in the mental or in the physical domain.’ 24 To master the lower vital impulses and activate and enrich the higher ones, three faculties have to be cultivated. The first one is the will; the second, the capacity for attention and concentration; the third, the refinement ...
... habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his thought too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightf ...
... answers to questions or to letters, and only as much is circulated as is considered apposite or of general interest or use from the point of view of sadhana. These movements obviously belong to the lower vital and physical consciousness. It is the petty love of gossip and the pleasure in small talk and scandal and fault-finding and the rest that are responsible. These are activities that, I believe, are ...
... spiritual consciousness that is growing behind all vicissitudes to attempt the control of Matter and turn it towards the Divine, as the Tantriks and Vaishnavas tried to do with the emotional and lower vital nature, not contenting themselves with the Vedantic turning of the mind towards the Supreme. But it is difficult to go farther than that or to hold that this materialism is itself a spiritual thing ...
... ss and try to act from there, but then they are no longer part of one's own consciousness and are not felt as such but as something trying to come in from outside. One can be free [ from lower vital movements ], but one cannot say that the freedom has been made absolutely complete or secure until the complete transformation takes place. For these things always remain in the environmental co ...
... 6 July 1933 Page 729 Novel-Reading and Sadhana Reading novels is always distracting if you are deep in sadhana. It is better to avoid it now. 12 May 1933 If novels touch the lower vital or raise it, they ought not to be read by the sadhak. One can read them only if one can look at them from the literary point of view as a picture of human life and nature which one can observe, as ...
... universes. Ours is only one of many. The Planes and the Body The heavenly worlds are above the body. What the parts of the body correspond to are planes—subtle physical, higher, middle and lower vital, mental.. Each plane is in communication with various worlds that belong to it. The appearance of the being in other planes is not the same necessarily as that of the physical body. Very often ...
... (not only father and mother but all the ancestors), partly of what they bring with them. The part they get from the ancestors is called hereditary—it is part (not the whole) of the physical and lower vital consciousness, sometimes a little of the external mind also—it is a small portion of the external being, but although small, it is sometimes very persistent and active. The rest of the being, inner ...
... has in view. In his choice it is always Nature itself that should be his guide. But here it must be Nature at her highest and widest in him, not at her lowest or in some limiting movement. In her lower vital activities it is desire that Nature takes as her most powerful leverage; but the distinct character of man is that he is a mental being, not a merely vital creature. As he can use his thinking mind ...
... be also invisible Forces in Life-Nature that belong to the same plane of Consciousness Force as this part of our being, Forces that move according to the same plan or the same power-motive as our lower vital nature. It can be often observed that when a self-assertive vital egoism goes on trampling on its way without restraint or scruple all that op poses its will or desire, it raises a mass of reactions ...
... the vital mental: in the inner heart the psychic centre 5) The navel centre. The larger vital proper; life-force centre. 6) The centre intermediate between the navel and the Muladhara. The lower vital; it connects all the above centres with the physical 7) The last centre or Muladhara. Material support of the vital; initiation of the physical. All below is the subconscient physical. ...
... habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his thought, too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions untransformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightforwardness ...
... but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. Page 5 The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses ...
... whole vital and physical being regarded as a vessel or jar which can be filled with honey or water or poison. Nothing vulgar in that. 30 January 1937 Erotic Poetry An expression of the lower vital lashed to imaginative fury is likely to produce not poetry but simply "sound and fury",—"tearing a passion to tatters"—and in its full furiousness may even rise to rant and fustian. Erotic poetry ...
... being—a similar opening and emptiness or wideness here is the sign of the mind being freed into the Universal. From the throat to the stomach is the higher vital or emotional region. Below is the lower vital plane. It is of course the inner wideness in which you were absorbed so that outward things went on of themselves without engaging the interest. In the meditation it was the same descent into ...
... are there, one must keep one's sense of measure. Work is a means of self-dedication to the Divine, but it must be done with the necessary inner consciousness in which Page 382 the lower vital and physical must also share. A lazy body is certainly not a proper instrument for Yoga, it must stop being lazy. But a fatigued and unwilling body also cannot receive properly or be a good instrument ...
... only the calm, disinterested, dispassionate, all-compassionate and all-loving Spirit that can judge and see rightly the strength and the weakness in each being. Yes, all that is true. The lower vital takes a mean and petty pleasure in picking out the faults of others and thereby one hampers both one's own progress and that of the subject of the criticism. If you find fault with anybody ...
... it will be felt as an underlying quietude and confidence or a fixed spirit of surrender. The demands were there already—when the psychic touches there is an intensification of love but the lower vital mixes up the love with all sorts of demands. The soft feeling [ in the head and below ] must be that of the psychic being spreading itself through the higher centres. Faithfulness is one of ...
... assent to their suggestions and influences; otherwise they could not act or at least could not act with any success. In your case the chief points d'appui have been the extreme sensitiveness of the lower vital ego and now also the physical consciousness with all its fixed or standing opinions, prejudices, prejudgments, habitual Page 772 reactions, personal preferences, clinging to old ideas ...
... concentrate on a fixed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence of the Contact and the confusion. You have surely had enough of this kind of experience already ...
... everywhere (not in this or that person only) will then come of themselves. It is when the true contact and the Light and Force can be steadily brought down into the whole being (including the lower vital and body) that the basis and organisation [ of the being ] can be founded and settled. Descent into the Physical Consciousness and Body This is a very great progress—to be able to receive the ...
... in their own region. These beings are ethereal, peaceful, pure, loving, shy, like beautiful children. One should not injure their sense of harmony, purity, refinement and beauty by allowing any lower vital crudities. Mother sends one of these beings to each of us according to his possibility. There is much truth in what you write—there are beings of that kind and your description is good. But it ...
... are disturbing you so that you may not get free from the disturbance. My help and the Mother's help are there—you have only to keep yourself open to it to recover. 27 March 1933 Today my lower vital rose up and disturbed me because the Mother did not smile at me. For years and years I have suffered so much from unquietness at the thought that Mother is displeased with me. These things ought ...
... only so far as it helps the inner sadhana, but how much can be given and what will help or hinder, the Mother only can judge, the sadhak cannot be the judge—he will be led away by the desires and lower vital ego, as so many have been in fact. Such means of help by physical contact as the Mother had established have been largely spoiled by the sadhaks' misuse of them, the wrong attitude of which I have ...
... To an Unknown Person Now you have seen practically all that needed to be seen with an entire sincerity and a true unsparing vision. The root was there in the lower vital; it was that one among your formations of personality on the vital level which brought in a persistent element of insincerity and vitiated precisely in the way you have described your nature and ...
... the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas (beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they exercise their function and authority and some of them were ...
... Light is the Mother's light. Wherever it descends or enters, it brings peace, purity, silence and the openness to the higher forces. If it comes below the navel, that means that it is working in the lower vital. 31 July 1934 Page 265 The Mother's white light is the light of the Divine Consciousness; you are living more and more under it and it is that that is liberating you. 25 August ...
... direction and marriage lies in quite another and opposite. All talk about a complementary soul is a camouflage with which the mind tries to cover the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. It is that vital nature in you which puts the question and would like an answer reconciling its desires and demands with the call of the true soul in you. But it must not expect a sanction ...
... November 1934 Today is really a great day for me. What greater day can there Page 336 be than the one when the Mother is accepted even by the obscure, ignorant, revolting parts of my lower vital nature? Yes, when that has been done, it is one of the biggest steps in the sadhana. 28 March 1935 The Mother puts energy into all who can receive it; it depends on them whether they use ...
... Three Experiences of the Inner Being … the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know—and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners,—is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal ...
... and general function which base all their special powers and functionings. The mūlādhāra governs the physical down to the subconscient; the abdominal centre - sv ā dhisth ā na - governs the lower vital; the navel centre - n āb hipadma or manipura - governs the larger vital; the heart centre - hrdpadma or an ā hata - governs the emotional being; the throat centre -vi ś uddha- governs the ...
... the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. lower vital : made up of the smaller movements of human Iife desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dis likings, vanity ...
... with—unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself, but that, you know, is so rare a case that one can't consider it. All men when they leave their body are flung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing particularly pleasant about it... The most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness in which one was while both were joined together, when the vital being ...
... has a little life in it. That would be interesting. ( Silence ) You will see, the more you strive to realise, you will discover in the nature—the lower nature, that is, the lower mind, the lower vital, the physical—how much pretension, sham and ambition there is.... One can use any... The desire to put on airs: all that must be eliminated, absolutely, radically, and replaced by a sincere flame ...
... 1955 My dear boy, All this talk of leaving you is mere nonsense. What you are or are not I know better than you do; and I know the treasures that are hidden behind what you call your lower vital. The only thing true you say is that love is unselfish and unconditioned. Such is the love of Sri Aurobindo and myself for you. That is why we shall never listen to all your nonsense and will ...
... world! All these vital beings have taken possession of the whole of Matter ( Mother touches her body )—life and action—and have made it their domain, this is evident. But they are beings of the lower vital, for they seemed artificial—they didn't express any higher form, but an entire range of artificial mechanisms, artificial will, artificial organization, all deriving from their own imagination and ...
... In other words, one domain after another, one difficulty after another, one kind of obstacle after another (obstacles that are either subconscious or in the most material consciousness or the lower vital), it all comes for an ACTION. An action which is very sustained and varied; even when some other thing (some other difficulty or problem) is in the foreground, predominant in the consciousness, ...
... and they were discussing. My body was on the bed (though I think I wasn't sitting, yet I wasn't standing!), and they were discussing together but without words. It looked like kinds of beings in a lower vital world, huge , tall beings—tall, strong, formidable. Then one of them, in his demonstration, pointed to my heart with his finger, and his finger touched—I let out a scream! A physical scream! ...
... the Mind *Research Monographs, on the following topics: *Anger—its cause and cure *Awakening the Consciousness—the power of will and effort in progress *Conquering the Major Lower Vital Movements *Consciousness—Search for the Psychic Being *Dealing with Conflict and Violence—the power of attitude *Detachment and Harmony in Human Relationships *Emotional Security ...
... grow out of human nature before you can have the Ananda. Many struggle towards the Ananda but cannot reach it because though the soul and even the thinking mind and the higher vital want it, the lower vital and physical want something else and are too animal and strong in them for control. [That is the case at least with some in the Ashram.] 111 Or the ego wants something that is not that or wants ...
... and as soon as I read it I could not resist drawing the conclusion that this is X's present picture, word for word. Do you agree? Yes, it is that. A certain part of him which belongs to the lower vital was always rushing and has dragged away the rest. ... Why has this lower nature become so vehement this time? But it has been rising again and again vehemently for a long time. Many times ...
... first—R with D. How shall I detach myself when a subtle strain of dissatisfaction runs within? Detach from the dissatisfaction. Shall I cry out—"Damn it all; don't worry even if the lower vital bursts up. Everything will be all right"? That is not nirbhar. I fear all my answers 30 are scrappy as well as illegible, but this has been also a fell day (one letter 36 pages vernacular ...
... justified the laghu-gurumetre altogether, sustaining a perfect naturalness and fluency through out such a long poem.” Srigal-Trishnā [The Thirst of a Fox]: “I suppose the meaning is that the lower vital desire leaving the spiritual control, destroying the soul-forces and those that make for the higher victory is received into the inner door of the sunconscient (instead of going up towards the S ...
... when the light, the vibration of awakening, from the mind comes down into the vital energies, from the brain to the heart region. The Vaishya spirit has taken up man still at a lower region, the lower vital: the' economic man that has his gaze fixed upon his stomach and entrails. Lastly, the final stage is reached when physical work, bodily labour, material service have attained supreme importance and ...
... many different places in many of their writings. The essence of their teachings is as follows: Apparent happiness and outer success and good fortune is no doubt very very pleasing to man's lower vital; but gross enjoyment and prosperity is not the ultimate objective of life. That a soul accepts rebirth is not to square accounts for its past good deeds or misdeeds. In actual fact, rebirth is the ...
... with no true and radical change in the law of the external nature. If, then, any sadhak refuses in practice to admit this change or if he refuses even to admit the necessity for any change of his lower vital being and his habitual external personality, I am entitled to conclude that, whatever his professions, he has not accepted either myself or my yoga." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1306) We should ...
... between two human beings and not as between a man and a woman. (vi)One should not seek to establish relationships in order tot satisfy the sentimental, sensational and physical wants of the lower vital nature. (vii)A relationship should not be formed with a craving for the gratification of unchastened emotional desires or physical passions. (viii)"For one who has known love for the ...
... Divine Force is already acting on him, how can my aspiration help him further? It can. Every little helps. What is this "confounded quarrel with Matter" you mention? Does this refer to the lower vital and physical movements of the sadhaks? I am not speaking of the sadhaks, but the resistance of the Earth nature itself in its material parts. But these are things you people cannot understand ...
... ing all night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness.... Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers, through which she was doing the action, behind a veil and come down into the physical ...
... vitals are free here (not sexually) [ Sri Aurobindo drew a line to the word 'free". ] That seems to be the one thing true in all that he said. One is linked up with another, e.g. D's lower vital with N's. Rubbish! If D wants to meet the Mother in the vital, he has to go through N's vital, he says. Bejabbus! Ramchandra wants S's stove, sign (?) and coals, kerosene, spirit, ...
... the general excitement over nothing. As I look back at the dancer's visit here, it becomes clear that I unnecessarily opened myself to the general atmosphere and its turmoil. The lower vital enjoys such excitements and novelties which are harmful to the sadhana. Yes. Whatever the state of the general atmosphere, there was no reason to open yourself to it. If one keeps on ...
... Mother's feet will not be shifted even when I become fully supramentalised. Good — that keeps one to the Truth and keeps out the megalomania of the ego. Once the lower vital agrees to the hostile suggestions and accepts the demand, we are finished — from the high peak we Page 83 fall rolling down below. It is very true. Ego and ...
... appetite but for this purpose that you must take sufficient food. I think you said some time ago that the absence of my appetite was due to the inertia and the resistance of the lower vital. I wonder what sort of connection exists between the appetite and inertia. All ill-health is due to some inertia or weakness or to some resistance or wrong movement there, only it has ...
... trance! Trance could not be sufficient — the waking consciousness must be the same. What greater day can there be than the one when the Mother is accepted even by my lower vital? Yes, when that has been done, it is one of the biggest steps in the sadhana. I see a dawning possibility of my silence and work getting fused into each other. ...
... They work for themselves, not for the Divine, and they follow their own ignorant light and cling to it instead of opening to the Divine Knowledge. What are the conditions in the lower vital and physical for the higher consciousness to begin action? There must be the will to purify, the will of sadhana, some capacity for introspection and experience. ...
... a depth in the heart and a height on the head simultaneously. That is what should be. You wrote, "All that dissatisfaction is of course an ignorant objection of the lower vital which does not know how the higher consciousness works or even what is real fullness." Will you kindly enlighten me how the higher consciousness works and what is a real fullness, since I too am ...
... What is forgotten is there in the subconscient as an impression. When it comes up, one says, "I remember." Is our subconscient turned particularly towards Ignorance like the lower vital? It is like the rest of the nature, only less conscious — it admits whatever comes into it. It is only if the mind is silent that the subconscient can be empty. What has to ...
... importance. Along with the sex thoughts, there are the egoistic thoughts about the power to attract others through one's physical charms. It is the usual vanity of the lower vital — it is very common. Any man can have an attraction for any Page 200 woman, and vice versa, when the sex forces are active, but that attraction is not his, it is the pull ...
... when the light, the vibration of awakening, from the mind comes down into the vital energies, from the brain to the heart region. The Vaishya spirit has taken up man still at a lower region, the lower vital: the economic man that has his gaze fixed upon his stomach and entrails. Lastly, the final stage is reached when physical work, bodily labour, material service have attained supreme importance and ...
... advances, ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness—energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies ...
... Prières et Méditations. She speaks of the cherry-blossom which is the emblem of the Japanese artistic sense, the feeling for beauty, a purified sense-perception: not a rough and crude and violent (lower) vital, but a fine, a pleasant intimate feeling and orderly happiness, that Page 5 is what the cherry-blossom means. Mother described also a vision of hers, a beautiful picture it was, a ...
... words, if the higher mind, the intellect and intelligence is somewhat illumined with a new light from above and even if the higher vital comes under its influence in a general way, the lower Page 27 vital comes hardly in its grasp. And the lowest region, the region of physical or nervous movements for all practical purposes lies outside the influence of the Higher or Transcendent Co ...
... ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness - energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed and motivated energies ...
... thing to do is self-purification—purification of the body, purification of the vital, the reorientation and reorganisation of the entire lower base of consciousness, its physical and especially its lower vital parts. Those who want spirituality in practical life must go down to the bottom and accomplish this purification. And the future? The future of what? The future of the individual soul is in ...
... material science to concretise, to objectify a spiritual reality. While speaking about "the Godheads of Little Life", he speaks of Aswapathy having "plunged his gaze into the siege of mist" of the lower vital and then: "As when a search-light stabs the Night's blind breast And dwellings and trees and figures of men appear As if revealed to an eye in Nothingness, All lurking things ...
... of aspiring humanity symbolised in Aswapathy, the Lord of manifested Life, first descends from his human consciousness into nether regions of unconsciousness and materiality, the regions of the lower vital, its heaven and its hell, as a conscious witness. He then ascends to the regions of Heavens of the higher Vital and then crosses over to the Heavens of the Mind. After scaring into regions above ...
... domination of " theories "— intellectual ideas—and "isms" in modern art. III 3 Most productions of modernist art are expressions of the undisciplined subconscient, suggestions from the lower vital world, full of impulses and crude material and other dream-stuff, fancies and random freaks. 1 I quote Herbert Read to show how he agrees with me on this point. Says he, " Pioneers like ...
... labour of illumining and transforming the Subconscient and the Inconscient. The subconscient is the main support of all habitual movements, Page 364 especially the physical and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason ...
... nude. There is too much of a genius to be positively ugly. When they go further even in the application of their theories they become absurd. What they mean by "inner" is "subconscient", lower "vital". There is no objection to suppressing the unessentials in a work of art – all great artists do it. To retain the "essentials only" – Fauvism. Page 303 24th January ...
... work through the usual psychological opening which the normal man gives : they have to work through desires, impulses etc. But this kind of work in the occult is an effort on the part of the lower vital forces to break the barrier and gain possession of the physical plane. If they could succeed they would retard the whole course of evolution and the destiny of the race. Therefore, throwing the doors ...
... true in a certain sense, within certain limits: it gives one the knowledge of the world which is inconscient, it brings one in contact with the elemental powers of the subconscient and the lower vital nature. Secondly, practice of ethics or morality tends to purify the ordinary nature and may serve as the beginning of dissolution of the ego which is a great obstacle in man's inner progress ...
... other is true—though both may be said to be subjective. It is the false, or rather ignorant subjectivity that finds expression in most of the modern art creations. It expresses the subconscient, the lower-vital region of impulses, the chaotic inner planes of consciousness. It is incapable of meeting our highest aesthetic need. Two elements of the highest importance which modernist art has given to all future ...
... occasional sinking of the consciousness happens to everybody. The causes are various, some touch from outside, something not yet changed or not sufficiently changed in the vital, especially the lower vital, some inertia or obscurity rising up from the physical consciousness. When it comes, remain quiet, open yourself to the Mother and call back the true condition and aspire for a clear and undisturbed ...
... mean? They are not human, they are subhuman. Oh, yes! But we can see that everywhere. It is something that is not human at all — and is meant to disappear. Only pisachas [demons of the lower vital] can do such things. Just so. They were the specimens of what is not human. And those who were a little more human had not the courage to express what they felt. A complete lack of courage ...
... discussion on modem art, Sri Aurobindo said: What modem art is trying to do - at least what it began with - is to convey the vital sensation of the object; very often it happens to be the lower vital sensations. But it is the first effort to get behind the physical form. 5 On a later occasion (14 January 1941), Sri Aurobindo made a critical reference to the work of Cezanne and Matisse: ...
... Again, the more they are difficult the greater is the joy in surmounting them. This is a very pathetic condition: swaying between the possible and the impossible. Now to get out of the grip of the lower vital is the problem I have to answer. SRI AUROBINDO: You have to go on rejecting the vital mixture every time it rises. If you are steadfast in rejecting, it will lose more and more of its force and ...
... occasional sinking of the consciousness happens to everybody. The causes are various, some touch from outside, something not yet changed or not sufficiently changed in the vital, especially the lower vital, some inertia or obscurity rising up from the physical parts of nature. When it comes, remain quiet, open yourself to the Mother and call back the true condition, and aspire for a clear and undisturbed ...
... through the other states; that's what it means. Sweet Mother, here it is said: "a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts are the thing to be established." Well, so what? Page 74 How can it be done? How should you do it? You must want it, then aspire; and then each time you do something which ...
... But you have never noticed that it is different? For example, your physical consciousness or your subtle physical consciousness, your vital consciousness or the consciousness of your higher or lower vital, your psychic consciousness, your mental consciousness, each one is completely different! So when you sleep you have one consciousness, and when you are awake you have another. In your waking state ...
... stage. At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established. Other things can come in their proper time. What is the real need now is not insistence on physical nearness, which is one of those other things, but the psychic ...
... themselves to wait and learn. Avoiding Gossip Is it not true that to look always at others' faults and criticise them is harmful and an obstacle to one's progress? Yes, all that is true. The lower vital takes a mean and petty pleasure in picking out the faults of others and thereby one hampers both one's own progress and that of the subject of the criticism. 6 July 1933 Is gossiping and making ...
... who is helping. 6 May 1935 I have observed that someone with a sensitive disposition becomes very prone to the easy admission of forces from the vital world or from persons who are full of lower vital desires, especially when the sensitive person has a highly sympathetic attitude which manifests in nursing others or trying to save others, in lavishing emotional pity, in philanthropy, etc. ...
... your psychic being and the Mother. That relation is always there; it is prevented from filling up the whole vital and physical consciousness by the old habitual movements that return upon the lower vital and physical and by the assent some part of the mind, when it is obscured, gives to these movements. Do not allow your mind to give this assent, and do not allow any demand to rise in your vital ...
... and smile are all right, one finds he has been given a smaller lotus than others. If nothing else is found, then one remembers that in 1932 Mother did not treat me well. It must be the wolf in the lower vital at work. Yes, it is the insatiable demand of the vital and when the vital is up reason gets no chance. It was the experience of this insatiable demand that made the Mother draw back and retire ...
... are not and cannot until the confounded quarrel with Matter is settled. 1 February 1935 Page 499 What is this "confounded quarrel with Matter" you mention? Does this refer to the lower vital and physical movements of the sadhaks? I am not speaking of the sadhaks, but the resistance of the Earth nature itself in its material parts. But these are things you people cannot understand ...
... stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. lower vital: made up of the smaller movements of human life-desire and life-reactions, it is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, ...
... (1929-1931) Victory over Falsehood The lords of Falsehood hold, at present, almost complete sway over poor humanity. Not only the lower life-energy, the lower vital being, but also the whole mind of man accepts them. Countless are the ways in which they are worshipped, for they are most subtle in their cunning and seek their ends in variously seductive disguises ...
... Signature Of Truth VICTORY OVER FALSEHOOD The lords of Falsehood hold, at present, almost complete sway over poor humanity. Not only the lower life-energy, the lower vital being, but also the whole mind of man accepts them. Countless are the ways in which they are worshipped, for they are most subtle in their cunning and seek their ends in variously seductive disguises ...
... Page-235 it. That would be interesting. (Silence) You will see, the more you strive to realise, you will discover in the nature the lower nature, that is, the lower mind, the lower Vital, the physical how much pretension, sham and ambition there is.... One can use any... The desire to put on airs: all that must be eliminated, absolutely, radically, and replaced by a sincere flame ...
... surface can impair or abolish it. It can bear all the movements of the universe and yet be the same. When the peace is fully established everywhere in the being, these things [ reactions in the lower vital ] will not be able to shake it. They may come first as ripples on the surface, then only as suggestions which one looks at or does not care to look at, but in either case they don't get inside, affect ...
... to open one day and withdraw the next. The opening is the same for all. It begins with an opening of the Page 108 mind and heart, then of the vital proper—when it reaches the lower vital and physical the opening is complete. But with the opening there must be the full self-giving to what comes down, which is the condition of the complete change. It is this last stage that is the ...
... can reconsider the matter. Page 46 Very often the earlier stage of the sadhana is successful, because there is an opening of the mind to first workings of the Force—afterwards the lower vital consciousness and the physical rise up and if these are not ready or inclined for the sadhana, it ceases. The sadhaka has first to purify and open them and call in the Force to work there and make ...
... are in connection with the higher worlds above the mental, with the mental and the psychic or even with some of the higher vital planes, then there is the peace and Ananda—but connection with the lower vital worlds can easily bring disturbance and unrest, so long as your vital itself is not changed and made full of peace and strength and quiet. You forget that for a long time she was often keeping ...
... following a very sound method in his practice and has attained some good results. The first step in Karmayoga of this kind is to diminish and finally get rid of the ego-centric position in works, the lower vital reactions and the principle of desire. He must certainly go on on this road until he reaches something like its end. I would not wish to deflect him from that in any way. What I had in view when ...
... come across and created this upsetting. It is not the descent and the experiences, for many have had them or similar things without being any the worse. It is something in you, probably in your lower vital and physical, that does not want the Higher Consciousness because it will have to change and it has no intention of changing. When this pressure acts, it gets at once a fear and shakes the physical ...
... artificial literary exercise. You have a genuine vein of poetic inspiration somewhere above your intellect which comes through sometimes when the said intellect can be induced to be quiet and the lower vital does not meddle. If I were you, I should try to find that always and make the access to it free and the transcriptions from it pure (for then your writing becomes marvellously good); that would be ...
... supramental Truth which is the object of our Yoga. But there is an obstinate dark and inert resistance both from material Nature and from the physical conscious ness of the sadhaks—of which the lower vital and the material consciousness, both of them still unregenerated, are the cause. It [ the material ] is the most physical grade of the physical—there is the mental physical, the vital physical ...
... perceptive mind); the vital—1st emotional vital with all the emotional movements in it; 2nd the central vital (the larger desires, passions, ambitions, forces of work, possession, conquest); 3rd the lower vital (all the small egoistic movements of desire, enjoyment, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, vanity etc. etc.); 4th the physical energies concerned with the material life and its functioning, needs, outer ...
... reason walking by the light of the senses. The Asuras of the past were after all often rather big beings; the trouble about the present ones is that they are not really Asuras, but beings of the lower vital world, violent, brutal and ignoble, but above all narrow-minded, ignorant and obscure. But this kind of cynical narrow intellectualism that is rampant now, does not last—it prepares its own end by ...
... Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego. On the lower vital plane the corresponding forces we call the Rakshasas which represent violent passions and influences. There are also other kinds of beings on the vital plane which are called the Pisachas and Pramathas ...
... matter of fact, to hold takes long with everybody. Once you have got it well established, your nature is likely to hold it firmly. As for the lack of discrimination, that is only in the physical and lower vital mind—within you there is something that can discriminate, the psychic. The only thing is to get it out and keep it in front. When you had the psychic state or rather a touch of it from time to time ...
... any vital reaction. Reading Novels and Newspapers Reading novels is always distracting if you are deep in sadhana. It is better to avoid it now. Page 65 If novels touch the lower vital or raise it, they ought not to be read by the sadhak. One can read them only if one can look at them from the literary point of view as a picture of human life and nature which one can observe, as ...
... speaks, as people say, from inspiration. The pure inspiration and conception is something quite different [ from ordinary thought ]—it comes from deep within or from high above. This is the lower vital mind at work making formations. When the calmness is there all sorts of things may rise on the surface—they have not to be accepted, but simply looked at. In time the calmness will be so developed ...
... ego not accustomed to correction or else a vital full of the kāmavāsanā . On a small scale it can be misused by the small Page 363 selfishnesses, vanities, ambitions, demands of the lower vital supporting themselves upon it. If you are on guard against these things then there is no danger of misuse. If the psychic puts forth psychic discernment along with the love, then there is no danger ...
... withdraws. These experiences impregnate the consciousness with the Overmind knowledge and they prepare it for transformation. The overmind experience does not necessarily deliver from the lower vital and physical movements—it changes them only to a certain extent and prepares them for a greater Truth. Overmind Experiences and the Supermind People talk very lightly of the overmind and the ...
... necessary for the sadhak is not to give any consent of his mind or higher vital and to keep them from being covered. If that can be done, then it becomes possible to push the lower forces out of the lower vital and body and not allow them to return. It is the Mother's Force which you feel—for all the higher forces are hers. Page 708 ...
... obscure and repeats always the old habitual movements even when the mind has abandoned them and the vital is quite willing to abandon them. But when the physical receives the old vibration, the lower vital is affected and responds—otherwise it would be merely a vibration and there would be no danger of its being accepted or affecting the conduct. There is nobody who is free from difficulties ...
... speaking brings the wrong reactions at night, it is better to abstain from such talk or speech. Here also control is the thing you have to develop. By bringing down strength and calm into the lower vital (region below the navel) [ fear can be eliminated ]. Also by will and imposing calm on the system when the fear arises. It can be done in either way or both together. Fear is of course a vital ...
... Mother. Get rid of these dissatisfactions, they prevent the permanent psychic opening. 29 September 1934 The heart is beginning to open to the Mother, but it is still easily touched by lower vital suggestions. That is probably why the vital is not always happy with the way the Mother deals with me at pranam. What the psychic always feels is "What the Mother does is for the best", and it ...
... the idea of the Mother's presence and her regard on you, the reference in what you think and do to her with the idea of her approval or disapproval, are signs that the psychic is acting in your lower vital and physical mind and increasing its rule over their movements. The forms that came before your eyes are sometimes glimpses of the things on other planes, sometimes symbols; e.g., the golden water ...
... life-being, and this corresponds on the occult plane to an invisible Nature which is of a like character and whose occult powers can be called into activity by a knowledge and methods to which the lower vital intuitions and instincts may open a door of access. This might be formulated in a first stage of religious belief and practice which would be occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its character ...
... human mind but by inspiration, as the mouthpiece of the Gods. "The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,—even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind ...
... habit of intuitive sight; by turning emotion out of its intimate chamber in the house of Poetry, he has had to bring in to relieve the dryness of much of his thought, too much exaggeration of the lower vital and sensational reactions un-transformed or else transformed only by exaggeration. Nevertheless he has perhaps restored to the poet the freedom to think as well as to adopt a certain straightf ...
... eyes Can shut in all-repose, For the Great Flower knows Its perfume of paradise. Not for Sethna the mole-like burrowing into the darkness's of one's own vital and lower-vital consciousness that is the hallmark of most of the anthologised poets of post-independence Indo-Anglia. Not for him the ironic skepticism of those poets whose daily servility to sex imagery has ...
... p. 259. 8. Ibid . Page 308 It [the psychoanalysis of Freud] takes up a certain part, the darkest, the most perilous, the unhealthiest part of the nature, the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science ...
... through which he can enter into contact with them, are called chakras in India. They are located in the ethereal substance of the spine. At its bottom is the centre of matter, with above it the lower vital or sex centre. Behind the navel is the centre of the middle vital (anger, fear), and behind the heart that of the higher vital, of the noble feelings. In the throat is the centre of mental expression ...
... and again is pulled downwards by the weight of the past it carries in him, by the darkness, the ignorance and the burden of the subconscious, by the weight of matter and the irrationality of the lower vital — all the invisible but very real forces affecting his thinking, usually a bobbing cork on the restless inner waves. Sri Aurobindo called this ‘the downward gravitation’. Moreover, the mental co ...
... At present the necessity is to prepare the physical consciousness; for that a complete equality and peace and a complete dedication free from personal demand or desire, in the physical and the lower vital parts is the thing to be established. Other things can come in their proper time. What is the real need now is the psychic opening in the physical consciousness and the constant presence and guidance ...
... is not called the psychic eye. 3) Throat-Centre—Externalizing mind. 4) Heart-lotus—Emotional Centre in front, Psychic behind it. 5) Navel—Higher Vital (Proper) Centre. 6) Below Navel—Lower Vital Centre. 7) Muladhar—Physical Centre. All the Centres are in the middle of the body, not on left or right; they are supposed to be attached to the spinal cord; but in fact all these things are ...
... what I meant is that I do not want the kitchen workers to take any extra trouble for such ungrateful people. I pray to you with a quiet force of aspiration for a complete victory over these lower vital and physical forces of desire etc. Yes, all these lower movements have to be conquered if ever anything divine is to be established upon earth. All trust, love and blessings to you, my dear ...
... who are not straightforward cannot profit by the Mother 's help, for they themselves turn it away. Unless they change, they cannot hope for the descent of the Supramental Light and Truth into the lower vital and physical nature; they remain stuck in their own self-created mud and cannot progress. ...
... yearly ritual worship in honor of Durga, the universal Mother. × The rakshas are demons of the lower vital plane. × The attack of black magic in December 1958 . ...
... physical life without an order and rhythm. When this order is changed it must be in obedience to an inner growth and not for the sake of external novelty. It is only a certain part of the surface lower vital nature which seeks always external change and novelty for its own sake. It is by a constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other ...
... overwhelm you. A fall into them strikes me as worse than the periodic fall into what you feverishly consider devilish temptation. These morbid reactions belong to the same level of the lower vital self as the moods of passion that trouble you every ten or fifteen days. I may go to the extent of saying that they are manifestations of the same force that sexually engulfs you - they are part ...
... equanimity in all circumstances, and at the same time give a maximum of force and power and will to the Perfection that must be realized? As soon as we deal with even the vital plane, even the lower vital, the problem doesn't arise, it's very easy; but here, in the cells of the body, in this life? In this life of every minute, which is so constricted, so shriveled, so microscopic.... What should you ...
... impulse. Regarding the one-sided, exaggerated views and over-generalisations of psychoanalysis, Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter: "It [psychoanalysis of Freud] takes up a certain part, ... the lower vital subconscious layer, isolates some of its most morbid phenomena and attributes to it and them an action out of all proportion to its true role in the nature. Modern psychology is an infant science ...
... patterns of our forms are found, and then into planes of pure life-force. Here in the lower regions, "an unhappy comer of eternity," the little cravings of earth's beings and a motley mass of lower vital creatures abound; in its higher regions live the higher emotions, desires and aspirations, where unattained ideas are beings and kings. Then lower into the dangerous nether regions of nescience ...
... concentrating all night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness... Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the Sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers, through which she was doing the action, behind a veil and come down into the physical ...
... meaning of Nirvana in, 226 Vidya, see Knowledge Vital (being), the, 17, 337 and the emotional being, 63 four parts of, 63-64 functions of, 64 higher vital, 63 lower vital, 63, 63-64 and mind distinguished, 339-40 outer (surface), 62-67 physical vital, 66 Vital mind, see under Physical (being), the Vivekananda, 38 Waking-State ...
... her love My dear boy, All this talk of leaving you is mere nonsense. What you are or are not I know better than you do; and I know the treasures that are hidden behind what you call your lower vital. The only thing true you say is that love is unselfish and unconditioned. Such is the love of Sri Aurobindo and myself for you That is why we shall never listen to all your nonsense and will ...
... They were godly in nature at one time but subsequently revolted against the Divine and became Asuras. The Asuras are generally found on the mental plane. Rakshasas and Pishachas function in the lower vital. A few hostiles are active in the physical consciousness: the Theosophists call them 'obscure elementals''. But what is noteworthy is that the hostile beings and forces have absolutely no access ...
... devil with your platonic love! Last night I dreamt that you were most affectionately patting me for a long time; but before that, somebody asked me to promise that I would never indulge in any lower vital movements. And I promised. What's this? Quite natural. If your vital makes that promise, the pat is normal.' But why this promise at all when I had no intention of that sort of vital movement ...
... from all concern about a disease and living just in the faith that the Mother could take care of everything, was more effectual than even Page 49 could be repelled from the lower vital and physical consciousness. You wrote yesterday about a complete separation of my consciousness from the feelings of the body and its acceptance of illness. But, when the whole head ...
... Darshan is approaching? It is often so. One has to learn not to submit to the resistance. Yesterday during the Darshan, 1 felt as if you had put a strong Force on my lower vital. I became conscious of it immediately. Is this correct? It is correct. After the Darshan people experience love, Ananda, exaltation -which last for a while. But is it ...
... lower forces. He has allowed himself to relax his will and as a result the forces he had kept in check here have rushed up with a double force and brought up everything in that line to which his lower vital had been at any time open. He must stop it at once! If it is idleness that makes him like that let him keep himself busy. But most of all he must once more fix his will, realise that he must stop ...
... possibilities. The struggles between the Greeks and the Trojans, between Achilles and his king Agamemnon, revolve around issues of power and honor (two of the usual passions that dominate man's lower vital). From one point of view Achilles is a god-like hero who allows himself to be overpowered by enormous vital passions: pride, anger, grief and finally a blood- Page 53 thirsty revenge ...
... confine its activities to the three lower centres. Does our Yoga accept this? What are the three lower centres? According to our system the three lower centres are the vital, the lower vital and the physical — but the planes are quite different. The three lower planes Page 8 are mind, life and matter and it is true that the human mind confines itself to these three ...
... If so, why is it more active now than before? I suppose because it thinks it has a better chance. Page 63 The inertia has come up and is trying to stain the lower vital and the sex centre. Is it not rather unusual that those parts should allow themselves to be influenced? When one is tamasic the sex plays very easily — that is not at all unusual. ...
... poems." April 11, 1935 Z's error of refraction though very slight may account for the headache. Is he, by any chance, given to any malpractice? I heard that he was passing through some lower vital trouble. If he does that it will be the worse for him. Unluckily even the knowledge of that "worse" doesn't stop people from malpractices. I think (?) it is that largely. Is it possible for ...
... Savitri VI 'THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER LIFE' From the "grey anarchy" of the lower vital' world, Aswapati now approaches the 'higher vital' world, a region ineffectual and purposeless still, where life see-saws between vain denial and dubious hope. It is a world of deceptive illuminations and spasmodic actions ...
... dweller of the forest,—a jungle man —akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an up rush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new ...
... ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness—energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in Page 257 and mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one by one and gives place to directed ...
... Prayers and Meditations. She speaks of the cherry-blossom, which is the emblem of the Japanese artistic sense, the feeling for beauty, a purified sense-perception: not a rough and crude and violent (lower) vital, but a fine, a pleasant intimate feeling and an orderly happiness; that is what the cherry-blossom means. Mother described also a vision of hers, a beautiful picture it was, a Japanese mother and ...
... dweller of the forest, — a jungle man,—akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order ...
... resistance. Disciple : This is quite a new thing this time. Disciple : It is not at all new. It is only expressed this time. Sri Aurobindo : Now that we have all come to the lower vital and the physical planes where the struggle is most acute I am speaking from there and not from any higher standpoint. ( Short pause : then to a Disciple : ) No, K – you can't evade your ...
... divinely willed? SRI AUROBINDO: That is what the Bible says. It says that Christ came to take the sins of humanity upon himself and deliver humanity from suffering. Even then some parts of his lower vital didn't want it because of the suffering, the desertion of his disciples and the humiliation. But he felt the suffering on the cross. Otherwise there is no use in suffering. If the suffering is not ...
... of the forest, – a jungle man, – akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order ...
... keeps the submind strongly intoxicated till I fall asleep. It is probably the physical that could not keep up with the concentration, so started the submind business. My lower vital seems to have hindered the free opening of the psychic being. That is why I don't feel any soul-movement like love, bhakti or joy in my heart and inner vital. I think this is the worst ...
... ascends from a purely bodily life and consciousness, to the next rung of the ladder, the first appearance and expression of life-force, the vital consciousness – energies and forms of the small lower vital. He moves on, moves upward, there is a growing light in Page 237 And mixed with the obscurity; ignorance begins to shed its hard and dark coatings one and gives place to directed ...
... In other words, if the higher mind, the intellect and intelligence is somewhat illumined with a new light from above and even if the higher vital comes under its influence in a general way, the lower vital comes hardly in its grasp. And the lowest region, the region of physical or nervous movements for all practical purposes lies outside the influence of the Higher or Transcendent Consciousness; that ...
... first and if the being is unified and sincere, "to live in Thee" soon follows. But of course, for the first to be perfect the second must be present. 24.6.1967 From yesterday the lower vital has been raising its evil head and I am trying to reject its movements. I pray to You to enable me to act radically and without pity. The direct fight is sometimes difficult. But to let the ...
... come from without; but they could, if not decisively thrown out, colonise a place within and operate securely from there. Even the lower mind - or the physical mind which is in alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements - can be infected by the hostile forces and degraded to their level of perversity and evil. What is our armour against such forces and their cancerous insinuations ...
... night and day without sleep and with very irregular food, there was no ill-health and no fatigue in her and things were proceeding with a lightning swiftness .... Afterwards, because the lower vital and the physical of the Sadhaks could not follow, the Mother had to push the Divine Personalities and Powers, through which she was doing the action, behind the veil and come down into the ...
... followed by a bunch of short writings culled from the Mother's answers to some disciples. The main exhortation in the talks is a call to the sadhaks to be open always, not to the physical, the lower vital, the emotional or the higher vital, or the double-edged mental, but to the psychic or the soul: "To dwell in the psychic is to be lifted above all greed." 2 To be thus poised in the psychic is to ...
... wrestle with desire in its own field, where it is almost invincible by any human effort, and constantly fed and fortified by its own universal energy. What we have to do is to step back from the lower vital which is a part of the un-universal Nature, abounding with all sorts of desires, cravings, lusts, hungers, etc., and take our stand on our true being. Once we learn how to stand there, we are free ...
... undertook the tremendous labour of illumining and transforming the Subconscient and the Inconscient. "The subconscient is the main support of all habitual movements, especially the physical and lower vital movements. When something is thrown out of the vital or physical, it very usually goes down into the subconscient and remains there as if in seed and comes up again when it can. That is the reason ...
... in the normal working of Nature. What actually happens sometimes is that, if a man is very vicious or extremely avid of the gross pleasures of the lower prana, a part of his pranic being or the lower vital may project itself into the animal birth for the desired enjoyment. It may enter the body of a pig or a dog or any other animal. But his soul or central being can never take an animal body. Such ...
... spark that is within all. But, if the artist gets entangled in this false subjectivity he descends-as some of the modern artists have-in his consciousness into the subconscient, the realms of the lower vital from where, in the language of Sri Aurobindo-; Impure, sadistic, with grimacing mouths, Grey foul inventions, gruesome and macabre, Come televisioned from the gulfs of Night. ...
... within her and knowing that it was her Page 248 Soul She wanted to find it. She withdrew within herself and had to pass first through a plane where unrestrained life-force, the lower vital force, was having a free play of sensations. She remained a witness all through taking care not to identify herself with any movement and saved herself by repeating the divine Name. Then She came ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Savitri - An Approach And A Study CANTO VI THE KINGDOMS AND GODHEADS OF THE GREATER LIFE From the region of the lower vital plane where Aswapathy found the denial of the highest possibilities of man he came up to the kingdoms of the higher vital where he found at least "a dubious hope". There was in this plane of consciousness ...
... up this beautiful and really genuine feeling? I wish I could keep up this sweet feeling and not trouble you with all these silly things any more. SRI AUROBINDO: It is the small habits of the lower vital being which gather all their strength to resist correction and try to occupy the consciousness. When they come you must learn to detach your inner consciousness from them entirely so that even when ...
... MYSELF: Rejection has to be done: I know it but to yield oneself again and again to what has to be rejected is a condition I cannot bear, nor the suffering caused by it. SRI AUROBINDO: The lower vital is not a part that listens to reason. There is no why to its action; it acts in a particular way because it has long been accustomed to act in that way, and it goes on even if the doing brings a ...
... and there could be no effective liberation in life and action till these were liberated. The thinking mind and higher vital can accept without too much difficulty, but the difficulty is with the lower vital and physical and especially with the most external parts of them, for these are entirely creatures of habit, recurring movement, an obstinate repetition of the same movement always. This habit is ...
... given the idea to Motilal Roy - it was evidently intended to be a sort of controlled experiment. But Motilal "took it up with all his vital being and in an egoistic way", with the result that the lower vital forces took possession of the work and gave it a direction that was far from satisfactory. The Chandernagore group made "Commune, Culture and Commerce" the watchwords of the Pravartak Sangha, and ...
... abdomen centre's element is Water-water-centre in the body. This centre commands "the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements," in other words, the lower vital world. 3.MANIPURA (or NĀBHIPADMA): the navel lotus, violet and with ten petals. Its element is Fire. It governs what Sri Aurobindo terms as the larger vital , in other words, "the larger life ...
... throat (Connection between the mind and psychic) 5. On the heart (psychic) 6. On the navel (Vital) 7. At the base of the vertebrae (the base of the psychic) 8. Between the legs (lower vital) 9. On the knees (subconscient) 10. Between the knees and the ankle 11. On the feet 12.Below the feet (inconscient) ...
... times when there can be a guarantee of safety or ease. It is a time of great ordeals, an hour for calm, patience and the highest courage. Reliance on the Divine Will should be there, but not the lower vital's bargain for a guaranteed or comfortably guarded existence. ...
... the experiences of any sadhana as a part of this one. Was the experience of the Mother's Force inter-fered with by the lower vital's depression because that Force entered this part of the being? It may have been —but very often the lower Nature pushes these things across an experience in opposition to the working of the force. Is it the Mother who stops... working time, one's self can experience peace and watch quietly, but mechanical thoughts of an obscure type can still keep running. Is it the vital being that is non-cooperative in the sadhana? That is for you to observe. There are usually parts of the vital and physical which do not take great interest in the sadhana — until the whole being is converted. There is at times a ...
... And at other times it is impossible. Why? It depends on the state of consciousness one is in. When one is in the psychic and above, the work of transformation is relatively easy. In the lower regions, vital and material, which are subject to desires and the iron law of habits, the task seems impossible. But in the end, nothing can resist the power of aspiration. It is consciousness that brings ...
... necessary. 17 November 1933 Today the Mother gave me a "Vital purity" flower, but my vital does not like this flower because it lowers the vital in the opinion of people. "Other people get flowers with good significances, I get only this kind of flower"—unable to repel this suggestion, my vital got roused and I suffered. "Vital purity" is also a flower of good significance expressing a very... self-giving. May 1932 The Mother was so kind as to give me a message in the form of six flowers. Their significances are: Devotion, Faith, Mental Sincerity, Resolution, Divine Help and Peace in the Vital. But I did not understand the exact meaning of the message. Will you kindly explain it? The Divine Help was put inside the flower of faith—when that is done, the two flowers form a single idea =... = faith in Divine Help. The meaning was simply that these are the conditions for the realisation in the Yoga—devotion, faith in Divine help, resolution, mental sincerity, peace in the vital—if these are there, the realisation will come. 10 February 1933 What is the significance of the Mother's giving us flowers at Pranam? Page 556 It is meant to help the realisation of the thing ...
... our various activities or preoccupations at the mental or the below-mental—the vital and the material planes. If the resistance from the lower powers—matter, life (or the vital), mind is formidable, as it often is, the influence of the higher powers, the result of a chance or temporary descent of one of them to the lower planes, will be negligible or evanescent. But where the aspiration has been strong... "a shadowy image and disturbed reflection". 23 As we penetrate behind the surface or appearance and touch the reality within, this world of Anandamaya, new values replace the values of our lower mental, vital or material consciousness, and our aesthesis too, "shares in this intensification of capacity.. .As it enters the Overhead planes the ordinary aesthesis turns into a pure delight and becomes... enjoyment) is the result: By aesthesis is meant a reaction of the consciousness, mental and vital and even bodily, which receives a certain element in things, something that can be called their taste, Rasa, which, passing through the mind or sense or both, awakes a vital enjoyment of the taste, Bhoga, and this can again awaken us, awaken even the soul in us to something ...
... possible in times like those to give a guarantee of safety or ease, and people should be prepared to face any eventuality whatsoever. The real need was "reliance on the Divine will ... but not the lower vital's bargain for a guaranteed and comfortably guarded existence". On 29 July, again, Sri Aurobindo wrote to a sadhak with a renewed and strident emphasis: I affirm again to you most strongly ...
... to show that there is or can be a higher-power or higher-plane or higher-source spiritual destiny which can, if its hour has come, override the lower power, lower-plane or lower-source vital and material fate of which the stars are indicators. I say vital because character can also be indicated from the horoscope much more completely and satisfactorily than the events of the life. The Indian explanation... sensational or nervous existence and astral fluid to the magnetic power or current of nervous, vital force in a man. It is this same vital force which pours upon us from all parts of the solar system and of this physical universe. But man is mightier than his sensations or vitality, or the sensational & vital forces of the universe. Our fate & our temperament have been built by our own wills and our own... supraphysical method, evolves much greater motives and significances. The moral energy is in itself a distinct power, has its own plane of karma, moves me even, and that characteristically, to override my vital and physical nature. Forms of one universal Force at bottom—or at top—these may be, but in practice they are different energies and have to be so dealt with—until we can find what that universal Force ...
... reactions, joy and grief, pleasure and pain. Prana—is the hampered dynamic energies which, feeding upon physical substances, are dependent on and limited by their sustenance; also [it] is the lower or vital energy. Annam—is the divisible being which founds itself on the constant changeableness of physical substance. Page 1461 Pravritti—Nature's tendency or impulse to action... al knowledge—is the Causal Idea which, by supporting and secretly guiding the confused activities of Mind, Life and Body ensures and compels the right arrangement of the Universe. Buddhi—is the lower divided intelligence as opposed to Vijnana. Manas-chitta—is the life of sensations and emotions which are at the mercy of the outward touches of life and matter and their positive or negative reactions... writing and sincerely practise. Page 1466 × Viveka is not conscience but true judgment between higher and lower, true and false, right and wrong. [ The last six words were added by Sri Aurobindo in his own hand. ] × ...
... take place in a few days. It is a constant progressive movement. The change of the lower consciousness (vital and physical) is a big work and takes a long time and much action of the higher forces to accomplish. Nobody has ever done it in a short time. That is nonsense—no one can get free from the lower nature in such a short time [ eight or nine months ]. It takes years for even the greatest... its hesitations, there is the vital with its desires, unwillingnesses and its struggles; there is the physical with its obscurity, slowness and inertia. Even to clear the field sufficiently for a beginning of experience is usually a very long labour. But afterwards if the peace begins or any other right condition, it comes and stays for a time—then what is left of the lower nature surges up on some excuse... layer of the being one after the other, but each step takes time. All comes in its time. One has to go on quietly and steadily increasing the higher consciousness till it takes possession of the vital and physical parts. I want you to be open and in contact with the Peace and Presence and Force. All else will come if that is there and then one need not Page 726 be troubled by the ...
... the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what... weak; in some people the mind is the strongest part and governs, in others the vital is the strongest part and leads or drives. But by sadhana the psychic being can be more and more brought forward till it is dominant and governs the rest. If it were already governing, then the struggles and difficulties of the mind and vital would not at all be severe; for each man in the light of the psychic would see... this. The psychic ordinarily is deep within. Very few people are aware of their souls—when they speak of their soul, they usually mean the vital + mental being or else the (false) soul of desire. The psychic remains behind and acts only through the mind, vital and physical wherever it can. For this reason the psychic being except where it is very much developed has only a small and partial, concealed ...
... is or Page 516 can be a higher-power or higher-plane or higher-source spiritual destiny which can, if its hour has come, override the lower power, lower-plane or lower-source vital and material fate of which the stars are indicators. I say vital because character can also be indicated from the horoscope much more completely and satisfactorily than the events of the life. The Indian explanation... Purusha and both in the strong-willed Socrates and in the weak willed slave of vital impulse, the action and its results would be determined by the assent or refusal of the Purusha. In the latter the Purusha gives its assent to and undergoes the play of the forces of Nature, the habit of the vital impulse, through a vital submission while the mind looks on helpless. In Socrates the Purusha has begun... the past nature strive to prevent the rapidity of the progress and to postpone the fulfilment. Those who fell, fell not because of the attacks of the vital forces, but because they put themselves on the side of the hostile Force and preferred a vital ambition or desire (ambition, vanity, lust, etc.) to the spiritual siddhi. Each has his own destiny which he brings with him into the world. ...
... is comprised of extracts from letters written in reply to the queries of disciples. "The forces that stand in the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealt with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the... men's thoughts. There are good ones, there are bad ones; and behind that there are all the formations of the vital world, a world essentially hostile to the Divine. Only the vital in man, under the psychic influence, can change and become a collaborator in the divine work. Otherwise, the vital world is essentially formed of beings hostile to the divine work, and those who open themselves to these... touch of the sun, for instance, indeed if anything has happened to you, well, if you know how to do this and bring down the force here, like this, here ( showing the centre of the chest ), or even lower down ( showing the stomach ), well, it will disappear. It will disappear. You will be able to do this in five minutes. You can try, the next time you have a headache... I hope you won't have a headache ...
... descends from above, the psychic is the change that comes from within by the psychic dominating the mind, vital and physical. 120 * Page 101 Psychicisation means the change of the lower nature bringing right vision into the mind, right impulse and feeling into the vital, right movement and habit into the physical — all turned towards the Divine, all based on love, adoration... main elements: (1) the opening of the occult inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, so that one becomes aware of all that lies behind the surface mind, life and body — (2) the opening of the psychic being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine — (3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth — this last may be called the ps... can rise above by a sort of going above of the mental, vital, physical being and a return, but one does not yet live above in the summit Page 99 consciousness where overmind has its seat with the other planes that are above the human Mind. The supramental transformation can only come when the lid between the lower and higher hemispheres or halves of existence is removed ...
... has governed the life, culture, social ideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his true spiritual self and the use of life—subject to a necessary evolution first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature—as a frame and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even... For in each people there is a soul idea or life idea at work, less mortal than its body, and if this idea is itself sufficiently powerful, large and force-giving and the people sufficiently strong, vital and plastic in mind and temperament to combine stability with a constant enlargement or new application of the power of the soul idea or life idea in its being, it may pass through many such cycles... development,—the motive and constructive power coming mostly from the subconscient principle of the life within it,—expressing, but without deliberate intention, the communal psychology, temperament, vital and physical need, and persisting or altering partly under the pressure of an internal impulse, partly under that of the environment acting on the communal mind and temper. In this stage the people ...
... of self-knowledge that there are two different natures and as it were two selves in us. There is the lower self of the obscure mental, vital and physical nature subject to ignorance and inertia in the very stuff of its consciousness and especially in its basis of material substance, kinetic and vital indeed by the power of life but without inherent self-possession and self-knowledge in its action, attaining... existence. That is what is called becoming Brahman, brahma-bhūya . It is to put off the lower mental, vital, physical existence and to put on the pure spiritual being. This can best be done by the intelligence and will, buddhi , our present topmost principle. It has to turn away from the things of the lower existence and first and foremost from its effective knot of desire, from our attachment to... to the outward-going desires of the lower nature by a firm and a steady will, dhṛtyā , which in its concentration faces entirely towards the impersonality of the pure spirit. The senses must abandon their objects, the mind must cast away the liking and disliking which these objects excite in it,—for the impersonal self has no desires and repulsions; these are vital reactions of our personality to the ...
... punishment or any of the sanctions powerful on the little vital ego, but by an insistence from the higher mind on the lower, an insistence on right for its own sake, on imperative moral values, on an absolute law and truth of ethical being and ethical conduct that must be obeyed whatever the recalcitrances of the lower mind, whatever the pains of the vital problem, whatever the external result, the inferior... movement of mind labours to bring the soul of man out of the tangle of the vital and mental forces and opens to him a field in which the mind raises itself, raises at least the head of its thought and will, above the vital demands and standards and there at that top of its activities, whatever its other concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the true demands of a mental... infinite of the spirit. The third movement of the mental energy carries it therefore into its own native field and kingdom above the pressing subjection to the lowering and limiting claim of a vital and physical Karma. It is true that his lower being remains subject to the law of life and of the body, and it is true also that he must strive either to find in life or to bring into the world around him ...
... of the lower strata, and even they are besieged by the latter in their ordinary life and their best thought suffers continually from these lower intrusions. Only developed Yogins have a viśuddha-buddhi , a thought-organ cleared of the Page 435 interference of the lower strata by cittaśuddhi or purification of the citta , the mind-stuff, from the prāṇa full of animal, vital and emotional... ministering under compulsion to a few who rise higher and satisfy larger wants. These are the wants of the vital instincts, called in our philosophy the prāṇa koṣa , which go beyond and dominate the mere animal wants, simple, coarse and undiscriminating, shared by us with the lower creation. It is these vital wants, the hunger for wealth, luxury, beautiful women, rich foods and drinks, which disturbed the... Nature fixes everything before she works it out in the visible world. Nihatāḥ pūrvameva . The mass of humanity has not risen beyond the bodily needs, the vital desires, the emotions and the current of thought-sensations created by these lower strata. This current of thought-sensations is called in Hindu philosophy the manas or mind, it is the highest to which all but a few of the animals can rise ...
... vision; a centre in the throat which is that of the expressive or externalising mind: these are the mental centres. Below comes the vital—the heart (emotional), the navel (the dynamic life-centre), another below the navel in the abdomen which is the lower or sensational vital centre. Finally, at the bottom of the spine is the Muladhara or physical centre. Behind the heart is the psychic centre. If one... the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental-vital-physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher Consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual or divine) Consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what... everywhere in the system and there are several centres of it, e.g., the centre for inner concentration is not in the Page 309 brain but in the heart,—the originating centre of vital desire is still lower down. The two main places where one can centre the consciousness for Yoga are in the head and in the heart—the mind-centre and the soul-centre. One has to open through concentration ...
... and means for that discovery and for man's ascent from the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This was always subject to a necessary and inevitable gradual evolution, first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature. This dominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the stress and material exigencies and the externalities of political and social construction. ... that Nature has followed in building up her human aggregates. We see that in almost all cases in the formation of a united aggregate, there is provided first, a natural body, second, a common life and vital interest for the constituents of the body, and third, a conscious mind or sense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which that common ego-sense can realize itself and act. 1. We... be a considerable force of the second natural condition, that is to say, a necessity of economic unity or habit of common sustenance 2. and a necessity of political unity or habit of common vital organization for survival, functioning and growth. And in order that this second condition may fulfill itself in complete force, there must be nothing to depress or destroy 3. the third, a ...
... the way of sadhana are the forces of the lower mental, vital and physical nature. Behind them are adverse powers of the mental, vital and subtle physical worlds. These can be dealth with only after the mind and heart have become one-pointed and concentrated in the single aspiration to the Divine" Bases of Yoga. Drive away, my friend, from your mind and vital even the slightest reaction to what you have... which were not needed then, but without which modern man cannot fully satisfy his soul. Evolution is a progression in which to repeat the past is to stop dead on the way, or even to fall back to a lower level. 17.02.65 * * * In your last letter you have referred to the "essential nature" of man. This essential nature or Svabhava is the nature of the psychic being which evolves... towards action, and that you would be writing to me more frequently than recently. But I am afraid you have sunk again into same kind of stillness and inaction. Withdrawal from the blind drive of the lower nature is indispensable for the liberation of the Purusha. It is, indeed, the very first decisive step in our Yoga ; but an exaggeration of this tendency to passivity may lead towards the traditional ...
... the physical from the psychic and vital worlds. But his mind was unprepared and unable to understand his experiences and judged them by the light of fancy and imagination, and erroneous mental and vital suggestions. His vital being full of rajasic and egoistic energy rushed up violently to enjoy these new fields and use the force that was working for its own lower ends. This gave an opportunity for... order to work in the lower centres and prepare them for the light. The right condition will come when instead of the vital forces trying to push upwards, the Prana becomes calm and surrendered and waiting with full assent for the light and when instead of the chasm in between there is a constant aspiration of the heart towards the truth above. The light must descend into these lower centres so as to transform... about him exercised by one who had knowledge and confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced by the cries, grimaces etc., would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me add that these are not forces of our lower universal but an intervention from a foreign and hostile vital world. In the present circumstances the proper line for Krishnashashi is to postpone ...
... physical from the psychic and vital worlds. But his mind was unprepared and unable to understand his experiences and judged them by the light of fancy and imagination and erroneous mental and vital suggestions. His vital being full of rajasic Page 335 and egoistic energy rushed up violently to enjoy these new fields and use the force that was working for its own lower ends. This gave an opportunity... order to work in the lower centres and prepare them for the light. The right condition will come when instead of the vital forces trying to push upward the Prana becomes calm and surrendered and waiting with full assent for the light and when instead of the chasm in between there is a constant aspiration of the heart towards the truth above. The light must descend into these lower centres so as to transform... about him exercised by one who had knowledge and confidence in his own psychic and vital force, the untoward influence evidenced by the cries, grimaces, etc. would not have come in to spoil this stage. Let me add that these are not forces of our lower universal but an intervention from a foreign and hostile vital world. In the present circumstances the proper line for Krishnashashi is to postpone ...
... × Sri Aurobindo and the Mother often said that the lower, dark vital forces had made a massive inrush upon the Earth during the First World War. “The First World War was the result of tremendous descent of the vital forces – the hostile forces of the vital world – into the material world.” (The Mother: Questions and Answers 1953, p. 184). ... Death is a laying down of the physical body by the soul. The soul remains “sheathed” in its vital and mental bodies to the extent that these have been developed. But what happens if the vital and mental sheaths are supramentalised? Supramentalisation means divinisation which means immortality. Sri Aurobindo’s vital and mental sheaths had been supramentalised for many years when he entered voluntarily into... powers is the work of the “ripe souls” that have incarnated in order to accomplish this very job. Any spiritual effort is as much as possible thwarted by the hostile forces. These beings exist on all lower levels of existence, as well on what is for us “inside” as on what we experience as “outside”. In fact, the ignorant human being is to them what the mouse is to the cat, for everything that to us is ...
... the lower mechanically, even when it does not want to do so; both vital and physical suffering may be the consequence. There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence in the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and... the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what... speak of organising Page 14 the mind and the vital around the psychic centre, I do not mean that they become psychic; they remain the mind and the vital, but they are organised around the psychic as an army is organised around its leader — it does not become the leader, it obeys him, doesn't it? Well, it is the same thing here; the vital and the mind are organised around the psychic, they receive ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.