Vital Forces and Spiritual Forces and the Evolution of Consciousness

Vital Forces and Spiritual Forces and the Evolution of Consciousnessr
Posted on January 8, 2026
Most people do not recognise the active role and intention of conscious vital forces in their lives. First, the physical body tends to shield them from direct perception of these forces. While they may experience emotions, feelings, thoughts, cravings, reactions and responses, they do not necessarily attribute them to the action of conscious forces or entities that they cannot easily perceive. Those who have the experience of conscious awareness outside the physical body, however, report interaction with these vital forces and formations. Additionally, as an individual attains the standpoint of the witness, and observes closely how thoughts, feelings, perceptions come to him, it becomes clear that universal forces bring them to the being, which then accepts and internalizes them. In most cases, these forces are not acting with directed, conscious attention on the individual, but are simply manifesting the force that they carry generally; but in other cases, the intention can be felt and understood.

Opening up the lower chakras, more subject to the influence of vital forces, can therefore lead to an individual facing serious disturbances, disruptions and imbalances. To the extent he vibrates in sympathy with the vibrational pattern set up by these forces, and then re-broadcasts them, these forces gain an influence on others in the surrounding environment.

The experience of fear is a good example of this. An individual recounted a confrontation where law enforcement was attempting to shut down a protest demonstration some time ago in Washington D.C. The protesters were surrounded by police with shields, billy clubs, protective vests and guns. A sense of great fear for safety arose within the crowd when confronted with this situation. There was a clearly communicated energy. Then something happened to change that mood. Some people took up chanting OM and brought a calming energy which then circulated in the group and calmed the original reaction of fear. We see here how the vital forces work to raise up an energy and disseminate it, in this case, both a hostile energy that brought fear, and a supportive, calming energy that brought peace.

Turning our attention then to the sexual energy, the opening up of receptivity of the first chakra which occurs with the focus on the sexual force also opens up the being to the influence of vital forces that feed upon these energies, or that actively oppose the spiritual evolution that is taking place.

Spiritual forces are active just as vital or mental forces are active, and they come to those who have tuned their focus to their action and who are openly receptive to them. The action of these higher forces, however, is very much conditioned on the overall receptivity of the being. They are unwilling to be diverted to the fulfillment of vital desires. If that is how they are being utilized by the individual, they simply withdraw until they have a clear field within which to act.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “It is an error to imagine that, although the physical sexual action is to be abandoned, yet some inward reproduction of it is part of the transformation of the sex-centre. The action of the animal sex-energy in Nature is a device for a particular purpose in the economy of the material creation in the Ignorance. But the vital excitement that accompanies it makes the most favourable opportunity and vibration in the atmosphere for the inrush of those very vital forces and beings whose whole business is to prevent the descent of the supramental Light. The pleasure attached to it is a degradation and not a true form of the divine Ananda. The true divine Ananda in the physical has a different quality and movement and substance; self-existent in its essence, its manifestation is dependent only on an inner union with the Divine. You have spoken of Divine Love; but Divine Love, when it touches the physical, does not awaken the gross lower vital propensities; indulgence of them would only repel it and make it withdraw again to the heights from which it is already difficult enough to draw it down into the courseness of the material creation which it alone can transform. Seek the Divine Love through the only gate through which it will consent to enter, the gate of the psychic being, and cast away the lower vital error.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 4, Desire — Food — Sex, pp. 71-72