The Different Processes for Change of the Vital Nature and the Psychic Being

The vital nature, under the influence of the Guna of Rajas, tends to create drama. Struggle, disruption, aggressive responses are all a part of this vital play. One of the manifestations of this drama is to raise the temperature about any resistance, obstacle, delay etc. that the individual experiences. Another is to seek out a culprit and label it as a ‘hostile force’ thereby accentuating the challenge being faced and increasing the dramatic effect.

The nature of the psychic being is different. It tends to be a quiet voice that recommends, guides and maintains a constant patient presence that has its influence grow over time as the seeker begins to hear the voice of the soul.

Images from material nature illustrate the difference. The volcano erupts with heat, light and earthquake activity while it changes a landscape quickly. A river also can change a landscape, but it make take thousands of years to carve out a canyon in hard rock.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The method of the Divine Manifestation is through calm and harmony, not through a catastrophic upheaval. The latter is the sign of a struggle, generally of conflicting vital forces, but at any rate a struggle on the inferior plane.”

“You think too much of the adverse forces. That kind of preoccupation causes much unnecessary struggle. Fix your mind on the positive side. Open to the Mother’s power, concentrate on her protection, call for light, calm and peace and purity and growth into the divine consciousness and knowledge.”

“The idea of tests also is not a healthy idea and ought not to be pushed too far. Tests are applied not by the Divine but by the forces of the lower planes — mental, vital, physical — and allowed by the Divine because that is part of the soul’s training and helps it to know itself, its powers and the limitations it has to outgrow. The Mother is not testing you at every moment, but rather helping you at every moment to rise beyond the necessity of tests and difficulties which belong to the inferior consciousness. To be always conscious of that help will be your best safeguard against all attacks whether of adverse powers or of your own lower nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 3, In Difficulty, pp. 54-55