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 [12]

“...if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain [when the body is dissolved]; so also can the vital, provided they are organised by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic” [p. 18]. Does this mean that the vital of strong persons like Napoleon is carried forward in the future lives? But how can it be said that their vital was centred around the psychic being? It is only about the Bhaktas and the Jnanis that we can say that their vital was centred around the psychic.

If one has had a strong spiritual development, that makes it easier to retain the developed mental or vital after death. But it is not absolutely necessary that the person should have been a Bhakta or a Jnani. One like Shelley or like Plato for instance could be said to have a developed mental being centred round the psychic — of the vital the same can hardly be said. Napoleon had a strong vital but not one organised round the psychic being.

12 October 1935