Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
CWSA 35
Fragment ID: 8425
(this fragment is largest or earliest found passage)
Sri Aurobindo — Unknown addressee
October 19, 1935
Passages from Lights on Yoga [6]
“The true vital being... is wide, vast, calm, strong, without limitations, firm and immovable, capable of all power, all knowledge, all Ananda” [p. 13]. Does this imply that the true vital belongs to the cosmic or supracosmic consciousness? If not, how can it have such qualities?
The true being mental, vital or subtle physical has always the greater qualities of its plane – it is the Purusha and like the psychic, though in another way, the projection of the Divine, therefore in connection with the Higher Consciousness and reflects something of it, though it is not altogether that – it is also in tune with the cosmic Truth.
In the change of the vital nature, is the external surface vital to be entirely effaced and replaced by the true vital or is it to be kept and changed into the nature of the true vital? In either case, what is the need of an external vital at all if the true vital is already there?
The true vital is in the inner consciousness, the external is that 
which is instrumental for the present play of Prakriti in the surface personality. When the change comes, the true vital rejects what is out of tune with its own truth from the external and makes it a true instrument for its expression, 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.
19 October 1935
Current publication:
[Largest or earliest found passage: ]
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.
Other publications: