We may observe feelings, perceptions, thoughts, emotions, ideas, imaginations, memories, etc. all arising in our minds, and, for most of us, this is all just ‘mental activity’. And for most people this is clearly enough! For those taking up the spiritual life and practice, however, it becomes difficult to understand what is going on, and what can and should be done about it, to bring about the right mental ‘texture’ of the consciousness to be receptive and able to handle the higher inspirations, intuitions, and powers as they enter into the mind. It is thus highly useful to be able to distinguish the different elements that bring about the mental activity we experience and thereby, to understand the source, the power, and the intention of the forces at work in our “mind-stuff”.
Of particular note is that the vital aspect of our lives has tremendous power to ‘convince’ the mind to support the fulfillment of its desires and wishes. What may seem to be a form of mental reasoning process may in fact be specious reasoning driven by the vital nature and its bias towards its own fulfillment.
The true mental power focuses on principles and concepts that are native to the mental world. There is something of a separation from the life-powers that can create a process of logic and reasoning that is not subject to the desire-soul, but independent of individual ego-fulfillment.
Sri Aurobindo writes: “The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines, arranges things and thoughts according to the life-pushes, desires, will to power or possession, will to action, emotions, vital ego reactions of the nature. It must be distinguished from the reasoning will which plans and arranges things according to the dictates of the thinking mind proper, the discriminating reason or according to the mental intuition or a direct insight and judgment. The vital mind uses thought for the service not of reason but of life-push and life-power and when it calls in reasoning it uses that for justifying the dictates of these powers, imposes their dictates on the reason instead of governing by a discriminating will the action of the life-forces.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pg. 47
Santosh has been studying Sri Aurobindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at http://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at https://anchor.fm/santosh-krinsky He is author of 17 books and is editor-in-chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Wholistic Education, a non-profit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life.
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