Basic Overview of the Vital Consciousness

The life force brings mobility and increased responsiveness compared to the physical being. It operates primarily under the impulsion of attraction and repulsion. The predominant quality or Guna is Rajas, which brings energy, action, and progress, while at the same time, its deformations can bring all manner of vital disturbances, such as reactions of anger, greed, lust, vanity, fear, etc. Rajas tends to push beyond limits and if it does this to the physical body, eventually suffering can result, including breakdown of the body if the force was more than it could handle. When rajas is rebuffed, or disappointed, it tends to respond by falling into a tamasic state. The vital being has a strong hold over the entire human being and it is skilled in gaining the acquiescence and support of the mental being to justify and aid it in fulfillment of its desires.

Without a strong vital nature, nothing much can be accomplished in the outer world; yet, care must be exercised to eventually bring it under control of more disciplined and sattwic impulses and to direct it towards the development of the higher consciousness. Once that happens, the vital can become as strong an ally as it can be an obstacle in its usual state of focus on the satisfaction of the desires of the external nature.

Dr. Dalal notes: “The vital (being): Intermediate between the physical and the mental is the vital, made up of life-energies, sensations (pleasure, pain, etc.), instincts and impulses (anger, fear, lust, etc.), desires, feelings and emotions. The vital (from the Latin word vita, ‘life’), is aptly so called because it is the source of life-force and seeks after life for its own sake, clinging to life even if it brings more of suffering than of pleasure. The vital consciousness is characterised by likes and dislikes, the search for pleasure and enjoyment, and the avoidance of pain and discomfort, desire to possess and to accumulate. Common attitudes based on the vital consciousness express a hedonistic orientation in life, what Freud referred to as ‘the pleasure principle’. Besides the quest for pleasure these attitudes are characterised by a need for perpetual variety and change, ambitiousness, attachment and repulsion, aggression, fear and impulsiveness.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Introduction by Dr. Dalal, pg. vii