Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His Published Prose Writings

Passages from Yogic Sadhan [7]

“I come next to Prana, the nervous or vital element in man which is centralised below the Manas and Chitta in the subtle body and connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha” [p. 1388]. What is that subtle body? Also, I don’t understand the phrase “connected with the navel in the Sthula Deha”.

How is it you do not know these elementary things? Man has not a gross (sthūla) visible body only, but a subtle body (sūkṣma deha) in which he goes out of the sthūla deha at his death.

The navel is the vital center in the physical body — but the native seat of the vital is in the vital sheath of the subtle body, which sheath it pervades, but for action through the gross body its action is centred at the navel and below it.

16 September 1933