Virtually everybody, at some point in their lives, has the experience of entering a room or a gathering of some sort and feeling the movement of some vital force rising up within them. It could be a room filled with the energy of greed, or sexual tension or anger. They feel like they are being taken over by that feeling and if they are aware of the vibrations moving in the room, they will note that they are in a place that is actively generating those vibrations, to which they are susceptible through the vital receptors within them, the various chakras that vibrate with these forces and, if not consciously controlled or managed, let them play within them at that point. The vibration that arises within an individual may not exactly correspond to the force active in the external environment, as each individual may have different habits or patterns of response to vibrations that move the various chakras, so it may be that an energy filled with greed may result in a strong desire for food, for instance.
Most people are not specifically aware of this occult working and thus, take the rising vibration as their own and either allow it to play, or struggle to restrain it, feeling that they are simply weak or failures if they wish to control the movements of desire within them, when in actuality they are simply responding to vibrations active in their environment.
The contagious nature of desire need not always be those of greed, food, sex, or other forces of the lower vital. It can also play out in the contagious nature of emotions, of feelings of consecration and devotion, and thus, can be used to aid the seeker at times in finding a suitable environment for encouraging these refined forces to express themselves.
As long as one lives in the world, this interchange at the vital level will take place. The question then turns on the recognition of how these vibrations enter the being, what effect they have, and how they can be either managed or transmuted by conscious awareness of the seeker as they occur.
A disciple asks: “Sweet Mother, is desire contagious?”
The Mother replies: “Ah , yes, very contagious, my child. It is even much more contagious than illness. If someone next to you has a desire, immediately it enters you; and in fact it is mainly in this way that it is caught. It passes from one to another… Terribly contagious, in such a powerful way that one is not even aware that it is a contagion. Suddenly one feels something springing up in oneself; someone has gently put it inside. Of course, one could say, ‘Why aren’t people with desires quarantined.’ Then we should have to quarantine everybody. (Mother laughs)
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 34-35
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.