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 Bases of Yoga [3]

You write in Bases of Yoga, “All the ordinary vital movements... are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti,” and “The desires come from outside ...” [p. 61]. If desires are only waves from outside (Prakriti), what then is the vital itself? Is not desire its main constituent?

There can be a vital without desire. When desire disappears from the being, the vital does not disappear with it.

Is not the vital itself part of the same Prakriti?

By Prakriti is meant universal Prakriti. Universal Prakriti entering into the vital being creates desires which appear by its habitual response as an individual nature; but if the habitual desires she throws in are rejected and exiled, the being remains but the old individual prakriti of vital desire is no longer there — a new nature is formed responding to the Truth above and not to the lower Nature.

What determines the first response to these waves? One may suppose that the habit of response is carried over from life to life. But what determined the response when we were animals in some distant past?

Universal Prakriti determined it and the soul or Purusha accepted it. In the acceptance lies the responsibility. The Purusha is that which sanctions or refuses. The vital being responds to the ordinary life waves in the animal; man responds to them but has the power of mental control. He has also, as the mental Purusha is awake in him, the power to choose whether he shall have desire or train his being to surmount it. Finally, there is the possibility of bringing down a higher nature which will not be subject to desire but act on another vital principle.

December 1936