The Practice of Attempted Elimination of Unwanted Vital Movements Through Purposeful Indulgence, Part 2

An individual dedicated some years to study and spiritual development. He gathered a small group of young people around him and took on the role of a teacher. He had obviously studied the texts and spent some time practicing them. He gained an aura of charisma for the young people who came under his tutelage. Eventually he came to Europe and started a small community with himself at the center. So far, so good. But something changed. At some point he began to exercise his desire for money, power, sex and began to exploit the young people to achieve his immediate objectives. The more he dove into these forces, the further he strayed from his original spiritual focus. He began to make contracts with various businesses for goods and services he wanted for the community, then decided to renege on the payment, making the excuse that he was doing spiritual work and those ordinary people running those businesses would just waste the money. He began to exploit the young women for sexual satisfaction, telling them he was ‘liberating them’ from their attachment to convention and thereby giving them a first step towards ultimate spiritual liberation. He then turned then to gain control of the young men through sexual promises and favors when they did what he asked and brought money. His sexual appetite was not satisfied and he kept going to further extremes until eventually he was exploiting young children. He also showed bouts of anger and beat and tortured these young children. It was at this point that he was eventually arrested, convicted and sent to jail.

All along he provided excuses for his behaviour. This is a very clear illustration of the kind of dangers Sri Aurobindo describes when the drives of the lower vital nature are raised up and indulged rather than avoided. The vital is generally able to convince the mind to support its desires and in his case, this clearly occurred as he made rationales for what he was doing and why, while he continued to not only consent to these forces, but actually sought them out and extended their action and their life. When he was let out of jail he was more or less a broken man with failed dreams, no longer focused on spiritual sadhana but on seeing how much of his assets he could hold onto and enjoy, and determined to squeeze out any vital satisfactions still available to him in his disgrace.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, ete
ising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them. Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in Yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 95-96