The Need to Gain Control Over the Action of the Vital Mind and Its Function

Everyone has had the experience, at some time or another, of imagining themselves doing something extraordinary, or at least fulfilling some dream about how their lives could develop or turn out. It may be a fantasy about winning a lottery, or gaining fame or recognition, or finding the right person to marry and raise a family with, or advancement in a career, or making some discovery, or achieving some feat of skill, or carrying out some act of heroism, etc. Some individuals are carried away by these dreams and either devote substantial focus to trying to make them real, or else, simply wander in their minds without any actual effort or attempt for a successful outcome. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, a short story by James Thurber (eventually turned into a feature film) captures this sense of inner adventure and heroism for an individual who was outwardly living a quite ordinary life.

Those who take up the spiritual life are not immune to the workings of this vital mind. We have met people who believe they are the reincarnation of Jesus, or the heir apparent to a great teacher, leader or religious founder, and who take this idea to an extreme that becomes a severe imbalance in their lives and undermines their spiritual seeking.

The capacity to see and imagine something new, something extraordinary, is a valuable faculty. For those who have the power of realisation, there is here a basis for doing great things indeed. At the same time, if the vital imagination takes over and one becomes enmeshed in the dreams, or daydreams, without implementing a power of actualization, it can be an enormous waste of time, energy and focus.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “There is a part of the nature which I have called the vital mind; the function of this mind is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, buddhi, — but to plan or dream or imagine what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if opportunity and circumstances become favourable or even it can work to make them favourable. In men of action this faculty is prominent and a leader of their nature; great men of action always have it in a very high measure. But even if one is not a man of action or practical realisation or if circumstances are not favourable or one can do only small and ordinary things, this vital mind is there. It acts in them on a small scale, or if it needs some sense of largeness, what it does very often is to plan in the void, knowing that it cannot realise its plans or else to imagine big things, stories, adventures, great doings in which oneself is the hero or the creator. What you describe as happening in you is the rush of this vital mind or imagination making its formations; its action is not peculiar to you but works pretty much in the same way in most people — but in each according to his turn of fancy, interest, favourite ideas or desires. You have to become master of its action and not allow it to seize your mind and carry it away when and where it wants. In sadhana when the experiences begin to come, it is exceedingly important not to allow this power to do what it likes with you; for it then creates false experiences according to its nature and persuades the sadhak that these experiences are true or it builds unreal formations and persuades him tht this is what he has to do. Some have been taken away by this misleading force used by powers of Falsehood who persuaded them through it that they had a great spiritual, political or social work to do in the world and led them away to disappointment and failure.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 2, Planes and Parts of the Being, pp. 46-47