The Vital Being: Its Nature, Its Role and Its Mode of Action

0:01 When the vital nature is involved, which individual has the power to control its impulsions and demands and keep it focused on the higher aims of life? The vital nature is a powerful and essential component of life on earth. It animates material nature and functions through the force of desire. There is an apocryphal tale of a man who has a magic lamp and can summon a genie. When the genie appears before the man, he asks what it is the man wants and lays out the ground rules. The individual can ask anything he likes and the genie will promptly carry it out.

0:45 However, the genie must be kept active. If the man fails to keep the genie always active, the genie will devour the individual. What a great description of the vital nature. For most people there is an intention to achieve objects of desire, but these objects of desire are transitory and lead to temporary satiation and then a renewal of the desire, perhaps in a more intensive form. There is no peace possible as long as the vital nature is left free to seek after the objects of desire.

1:27 Yet mental attempts to control the vital are in most cases quite ineffective, partial, temporary, and may lead, if it has been done through outright suppression, to a rebound with even greater energy, like a spring that has been compressed and thereby stores up additional force. The vital is so powerful that it can influence the mind into believing that it is in control, when in fact the vital is biasing the mental function to such a degree that the mind will justify anything the vital desires.

2:09 The vital is ruled primarily by the guna of rajas. In most instances, this guna, or quality of nature is one of action, desire and outreach. When it goes to its extreme, it can lead to aggression and injury as it exceeds the limits of the physical body within which it is active. Rajas inevitably loses its force and generally the result is a fall into the darkness and inaction of Thomas. Rare is the individual who can manage the operation of Rajas and Thomas through the application of satwa. The guna of harmony, balance, light, and understanding, Sri Aurobindo notes Quote Vital is a thing of desires, impulses, force, pushes, emotions, sensations, seekings, afterlife, fulfillment, possession, and enjoyment.

3:12 These are its functions and its nature. It is that part of us which seeks afterlife and its movements for their own sake, and it does not want to leave hold of them if they bring its suffering as well as, or more than pleasure. It is even capable of luxuriating in tears and suffering as part of the drama of life. What then is there in common between the thinking, intelligence, and the vital? And why should the latter obey the mind and not follow its own nature? The disobedience is perfectly normal. Instead of being, as Augustine suggests, unintelligible, of course man can establish a mental control over his vital, and in so far as he does he is a man, because the thinking mind is a nobler and more enlightened entity and consciousness than the vital and ought therefore to rule, and if the mental will is strong, can rule.

4:17 But this rule is precarious, incomplete, and held only by much self-discipline. For if the mind is more enlightened, the vital is nearer to earth, more intense, vehement, more directly able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination, thoughts of desire, will to act and enjoy from its own impulse, and this is able to seize on the reason itself and make it it's auxiliary, and it's justifying council and supplier of pleas and excuses. There is also the sheer force of desire in man, which is the vitals principal, support and strong enough to sweep off the reason, as the Gita says, like a boat on stormy waters. End Quote.

5:15 Reference Triorobindo and the Mother Our Many Selves, Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Plains and Parts of the Being, pages 26 to 27.