The Vital Envelope Is the First Line of Defense Against Illness

Most people are not aware of the vital envelope, sometimes called the ‘aura’, that surrounds their physical body. Those who experience this vital envelope are sensitive on the vital plane. They are frequently ridiculed for speaking about the ‘aura’ which they can feel or even observe in others.

Western science decided to find a way to test the long-proclaimed existence of the aura. Tests were developed to capture the electro-magnetic field that surrounds the body. Eventually, a technique called Kirlian photography was devised that could actually photograph this electro-magnetic field.

An individual who had no experience or belief, one way or the other, about the existence of the aura came into contact with a researcher at Jipmer Hospital in Pondicherry, India some years ago. This researcher was studying cancer and the vibratory pattern it gave off, and how it could be cured by projecting onto the mice he was using for his experiments the vibratory pattern given off by healthy mice. One of the tools he used was Kirlian photography. After describing his work to the visitor, and showing a series of photographs of healthy mice, the cancerous mice, and their subsequent recovery, he offered to show the visitor how the Kirlian photography actually worked. He took photographs of two stones. One was an “ordinary” stone. The other was a stone that had been in an active temple for potentially hundreds of years. The ‘ordinary’ stone had virtually no aura surrounding it, while the ‘temple stone’ had a strong field of radiance exuding from it.

The researcher then went further and asked the visitor to extend his hand. He photographed the hand and showed the result of a noticeable, but rather diffused field surrounding it. Then he asked the visitor to chant some mantras. Afterwards he photographed the hand once again. This time the aura was bright and radiant and extended far beyond the former photographed field.

Even for those who have not had personal insight or experience about the existence of this vital envelope, there are several significant points here. First, the aura exists! Second, it can be augmented through focused practice such as long-standing prayer (the temple rock), or through use of mantras (the visitor’s experience).

Those who have practiced to gain a sensitive awareness can feel the protective role that this vital envelope plays and the ways it can be supported to reject the vibrations of illness that try to attack the physical body, as Sri Aurobindo recounts here.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “Attacks of illness are attacks of the lower nature or of adverse forces taking advantage of some weakness, opening or response in the nature, — like all other things that come and have got to be thrown away, they come from outside. If one can feel them so coming and get the strength and the habit to thorw them away before they can enter the body, then one can remain free from illness. Even when the attack seems to rise from within, that means only that it has not been detected before it entered the subconscient; once in the subconscient, the force that brought it rouses it from there sooner or later and it invades the system. When you feel it just after it has entered, it is because though it came direct and not through the subconscient, yet you could not detect it while it was still outside. Very often it arrives like that frontally or more often tangentially from the side direct, forcing its way through the subtle vital envelope which is our main armour of defense, but it can be stopped there in the envelope itself before it penetrates the physical body. Then one may feel some effect, e.g., feverishness or a tendency to cold, but there is not the full invasion of the malady. If it can be stopped earlier or if the vital envelope of itself resists and remains strong, vigorous and intact, then there is no illness; the attack produces no physical effect and leaves no trace.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, Physical Consciousness — Subconscient — Sleep and Dream — Illness, pp. 104-105