Understanding the Stage of Development of the Vital Man

Human beings are not all at the same stage of evolutionary development. We can see this clearly when we observe the different interests, ways of responding and directions that people take as they grow and begin to participate in the life of the society and the world at large. We see some people are very rooted in their physical nature and are concerned primarily with food, drink, comfort and physical satisfactions. Others appear to be very reserved and thoughtful, as if living in a world of mental development, possibly a realm of science or mathematics. And yet others appear to be challenging everything in the world, furthering ambitions, taking on new enterprises and working to achieve something with their lives. Yet others appear to be gentle souls focused on devotion, goodwill, harmony and peace. Each of these can be seen as an archetypal formation representing one or more of the separate domains that make up the totality of our human lives. There is the physical being, the vital being, the mental being, and the psychic being. These are generally mixed up in each one of us, to some degree, although we may tend to have a predominant development that serves to characterize our stage of development and normal focus for our lives.

In this regard, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes the various stages and relates them to human personality as we observe and experience it. In particular he describes here the vital man, the individual who is focused on the development, expression and fulfillment of his vital being primarily.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “This rule of different selves in us is at the root of the stages of the development of human personality…. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life-habits, mind-habits, body-habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow formation. But even in the physical man there are other elements and he cannot live altogether as the human animal concerned with birth and death and procreation and the satisfaction of common impulses and desires and the maintenance of the life and the body: this is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed, however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; then is created the vital man, concerned with self-affirmation, self-aggrandisement, life-enlargement, satisfaction of ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle, inner and outer adventure: all else is incidental or subordinated to this movement and building and expression of the vital ego. But still in the vital man too there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or spiritual character, even if these happen to be less developed than his life-personality and life-power. The nature of the vital man is more active, stronger and more mobile, more turbulent and chaotic, often to the point of being quite unregulated, than that of the physical man who holds on to the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, mind and will can get the reasoning intelligence to give it a firm support and be its minister, then a certain kind of forceful formation can be made, more or less balanced but always powerful, successful and effective, which can impose itself on the nature and environment and arrive at a strong self-affirmation in life and action.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVII The Vital, pp. 135-137