Sri Aurobindo and the Mother make a distinction between the ‘desire soul’ of the vital nature and the ‘true soul’ which expresses the inmost being that is a direct spark of the Divine. They differ in their focus, orientation, and basis of action. The desire soul incorporates the drives of the external being’s vital nature, the desires, emotions, impulsions that lead to the seeker after forms of power, wealth, sex, fame, and the fulfillment of the relationships which the individual has in his outer life, those of family, friends, and business associates etc. The desire soul is fixed on the fulfillment of the individual ego’s goals, objectives, and desires. It is essentially framed by the concepts behind ‘I, me, mine.” It is a focus that creates division between the fulfillment of the individual and the potentially conflicting needs or wants of the larger community and eventually that of the divine intention in the world.
The true soul, on the other hand, is a soul of oneness, identifying itself with the larger divine purpose in the manifestation. it does not put the individual fulfillment of desire as its objective or point of focus; rather, it is aware of the overall intention and works to carry out that intention and to take into account the other beings, forms, forces that are part of that larger manifestation. It is a soul of harmony, and a soul of insight into the significance of the world and its own role in the development of which the world is a part of the much larger universal creation. It does not act from personal desire, but from aspiration, from consecration, from surrender of its own individual fulfillment to the larger universal fulfillment.
Sri Aurobindo writes: “All or most of the works of life are at present or seem to be actuated or vitiated by the soul of desire; even those that are ethical or religious, even those that wear the guise of altruism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, self-denial, are shot through and through with the threads of its making. This soul of desire is a separate soul of ego and all its instincts are for a separative self-affirmation; it pushes always, openly or under more or less shining masks, for its own growth, for possession, for enjoyment, for conquest and empire. [from The Synthesis of Yoga]”
A disciple inquires: “Sweet Mother, what is the ‘soul of desire’? “
The Mother responds: “It is what makes you live, act, move. Soul, the word for soul in French, ‘ame‘ comes from a word which means ‘to animate’. It is what gives life to the body. If you didn’t have it you would be inert matter, something like stones or plants, not altogether inert, but vegetative.”
“Some people say that without desires, that is, without this soul of desire, there would never have been any progress…. In ordinary life it is something very useful but when one decides to do yoga, to find the Divine, it becomes a little cumbersome.”
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 27-28
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.