Observing, Controlling and Transforming the Forces That Create our Vital and Mental Actions

The physical body and the sense of separateness that it creates for us acts both as a limitation and as a protection from the action of the energies and forces that are constantly moving in the universal creation and setting up vibrational patterns to which we may respond. The physical body itself has developed an immune system to ward off various forces that try to invade and break down the body itself. While not perfect, this immune response, for the most part, helps keep the physical body healthy and functioning despite the presence of endless numbers of forces that take forms such as microbes, germs, bacteria and viruses and use these to enter into the body and then begin their vibrational pattern which can manifest, when they overwhelm the immune system, as an illness, a disease, or at the very least, a painful reaction.

It is not just the physical body that is subjected to the bombardment of these forces. The vital being and the mental being are also subject to being attacked and infected with forces working on those corresponding levels of energy. We frequently do not see the forces as they enter into us, but suddenly we experience hunger, or lust or anger or any number of vital responses that arose as a result of some exte
al force setting up a vibrational pattern in our vital being. Or we suddenly have ideas arose that guide us to act in particular ways, or to follow certain lines of focus for our minds, and we often have no idea where these thoughts came from, particularly if they are out of the ordinary line of our everyday thought patterns.

There is an experience of consciousness where one actually leaves behind the ego-consciousness, enters into a wider and more fluide status of awareness and one can then see the action of these forces, how they create vibrational patterns, how they find a correspondence within ourselves and others, and how they then develop the vibrational patterns we then recognize as physical, vital or mental reactions or responses.

When we manifest any of these forces, we are simply allowing their vibrations to take over some part of our being and transmit the vibration into the world through the nexus of our being. While these forces are constantly circulating, just as we now understand to occur with the physical being and the forces that can cause disease, we can develop our own ‘immune system’ at the vital and mental levels once we can see and understand the action of these forces, and thus, instead of setting up the corresponding vibration within ourselves which we transmit further, we deaden that vibratory pattern and don’t allow it further action through us. A still further step, as discussed by the Mother, is to actually be able to send back a counteracting vibratory force that acts to transform the force rather than simply deny it the ability to act through us.

The Mother observes: “If you could always remain in this state of consciousness, after some time — provided you maintained within you the flame of Agni, the flame of purification and progress — you would be able not only to prevent these movements from taking an active form in you and expressing themselves materially, but also to act on the very nature of the movement and transform it. But, of course, unless you have attained a very high degree of realisation, it will be practically impossible to maintain this state of consciousness for long. Almost immediately you fall back into the egoistic consciousness of the separate self. And then all the difficulties come back: the disgust, the revolt against certain things, the horror they arouse in you, etc.”

“It is probable — it is even certain — that until you are yourself completely transformed, these movements of disgust and revolt are needed so that you can do in yourself what has to be done to shut the door. For after all, the problem is not to allow them to manifest themselves.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 2, Looking at Oneself and Others, pp. 50-51