Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 18130

1936-37

What is meant by your last four words?

Might become exceedingly strong and violent.

The vital is too selfish to have any gratitude. The more it gets the more it demands and it takes everything as its right and every denial of what it wants as an injustice and an offence.

The whole significance of your sentences was that you had made all the necessary resolutions, but you could not carry them out because the Force refused to support you. That is the usual trick of the vital mind when it wants to rid itself of the blame for difficulties or want of progress in the sadhana. “I am doing all 1 can, but the Force is not supporting me.”

I am not “pressing” any Force. The Force is there to help if the help is acceptable. The vital is depressed and dissatisfied because ego and desire have to be given up and it does not want to give up anything. And as for you, well, you will say “If the vital does not want, what can I do?”

Your vital responds to it [depression] and reproduces its suggestions of despondency etc. If your vital stopped doing that, you would feel it is a suggestion from outside and simply answer with you mind “Nonsense” and dismiss it. Even if you could live separate in your inner being, the response of your vital would be felt as something superficial, negligible, not effective.

Perhaps the vital cooperated before because it hoped to get something for the ego out of the sadhana and refuses to cooperate now as its demands are not honoured – also because there is now a pressure for the giving up of desire and selfishness and it is not prepared to do it. In the absence of the vital cooperation the mind cannot get up steam to do anything steadily in the sadhana line.

Purification of the vital is usually considered to be a condition for a successful sadhana. One may have some experiences without it, but at least a complete detachment from the vital movements is necessary for a substantial realisation.

The cause of depression does not lie in there being Pranam or no Pranam but in the nature itself- in a certain kind of rajasic and tamasic vital egoism which seizes on any excuse for indulging its propensities. The reason is that there is in the vital a desire or an interest and in the mind a habit of bringing itself all the satisfaction of the desire or chewing the cud of interest and the mechanical mind goes on doing these things even when it ought to be free from all such things and concentrated on the sadhana. That is why the roots of all desires have to be loosened so that one can do things without desire or attachment and be able also not to do them; so with interests they must be held loosely cm the surface of the mind so that they can be dismissed or taken up at will and not allowed to fasten on the mind and occupy it against its will.