Mastery of Vital Impulses Requires Change of Focus and Management of the Energy Flow

It is obvious. If a system is set up to carry out vital demands, desires and wants, and it is provided more energy, it will simply expand its ability to achieve those desires. That is the reason that undertaking practices that increase the vital force, without first ensuring that the focus and direction has been changed, actually increases lust, greed, pride, ambition and other forms of desire.

Many practices, including the use of various regimens of fasting, breathing techniques (Pranayama), specific hatha yoga postures, certain mantras or chanting, various sports conditioning routines and the implementation of bandhas (energetic ‘locks’ within the physical body) to concentrate and control the flow of energy can vastly increase the physical strength and the overall vitality. They have their benefits. The dramatic increase in the practice of hatha yoga in the West shows that people experience and notice benefits to their physical health and well-being. It is interesting to note that in the West, the practices of Hatha Yoga are primarily considered to be healthy exercise routines. There is nothing inherently ‘spiritual’ about these practices if they are not turned towards spiritual realisation in the first place.

As a result, in the context of gaining control and mastery over the vital impulses, whether the sexual impulse or any other vital action of the exte
al being, the result does not come through increasing the intensity or force operating at these levels; rather, a change in the focus and direction of the energy is needed so that the increased force is applied to the spiritual objective. Additionally, the practitioner should take care to build up the ability to hold and not ‘spill’ the energy that comes into the system. This is done through the cultivation of calm, peace and equality. Shifting the focus to the inner being and having it direct the use of the energy, rejecting the pressures of the exte
al nature, and holding the enhanced energy effectively represent the primary directions for mastery of the vital nature.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Pranayama and other physical practices like Asana do not necessarily root out sexual desire — sometimes by increasing enormously the vital force in the body they can even exaggerate in a rather startling way the force too of the sexual tendnecy, which, being at the base of the physical life, is always difficult to conquer. The one thing to do is to separate oneself from these movements, to find one’s inner-self and live in it; these movements will not then any longer appear as belong to oneself but as surface impositions of the outer Prakriti upon the inner self or Purusha. They can then be more easily discarded or brought to nothing.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 4, Desire — Food — Sex, pp. 79-80