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 Lights on Yoga [7]

If the true vital is “capable of all power, all knowledge, all Ananda” [p. 13], it would seem to be the equal of the supramental vital itself or the vital of the Ishwara. How is it possible for an individual to have such a vital?

It is capable of receiving the movements of the higher consciousness, and afterwards it can be capable of receiving the still greater supramental power and Ananda. If it is not, then the descent of the higher consciousness would be impossible and supramentalisation would be impossible. It is not meant that it possesses these things itself in its own right and that as soon as one is aware of the true vital, one gets all these things as inherent in the true vital.

20 October 1935