EGO AND VITAL BEING
But here the second condition or factor of the evolution intervenes; for
this seeking for knowledge is not an impersonal mental process hampered only by
the general limitations of mind-intelligence:
- the ego is there, the physical ego, the life ego bent,
not on self-knowledge and the discovery of the truth of things and the
truth of life, but on vital self-affirmation;
- a mental ego is there also bent on its own
personal self-affirmation and largely directed and used by the vital urge
for its life-desire and life-purpose.
For as mind develops, there develops also a mental individuality with a
personal drive of mind-tendency, a mental temperament, a mind formation of its
own. This surface mental individuality is ego-centric; it looks at the world
and things and happenings from its own standpoint and sees them not as they are
but as they affect itself: in observing things it gives them the turn suitable
to its own tendency and temperament, selects or rejects, arranges truth
according to its own mental preference and convenience; observation, judgment,
reason are all determined or affected by this mind-personality and assimilated
to the needs of the individuality and the ego.
Even when the mind aims most at a pure impersonality of truth and
reason, a sheer impersonality is impossible to it; even the most trained,
severe and vigilant intellect fails to observe the twists and turns it gives to
truth in the reception of fact and idea and the construction of its mental knowledge.
Here we have an almost inexhaustible source of distortion of truth, a cause of
falsification, an unconscious or half-conscious will to error, an acceptance of
ideas or facts not by a clear perception of the true and the false, but by
preference, personal suitability, temperamental choice, prejudgment.
Here is a fruitful seed-plot for the growth of falsehood or a gate or
many gates through which it can enter by stealth or by an usurping but
acceptable violence. Truth too can enter in and take up its dwelling, not by
its own right, but at the mind’s pleasure.
In the terms of the
Sankhya psychology we can distinguish three types of mental individuality:
- that which is
governed by the principle of obscurity and inertia, first-born of the
Inconscience, tamasic;
- that which is
governed by a force of passion and activity, kinetic, rajasic;
- that which is
cast in the mould of the sattvic principle of light, harmony, balance.
- The tamasic intelligence has its seat in the
physical mind: it is inert to
ideas, —except to those which it receives inertly, blindly, passively from
a recognised source or authority,—obscure in their reception, unwilling to
enlarge itself, recalcitrant to new stimulus, conservative and immobile;
it clings to its received structure of knowledge and its one power is
repetitive practicality, but it is a power limited by the accustomed, the
obvious, the established and familiar and already secure; it thrusts away
all that is new and likely to disturb it.
- The rajasic intelligence has its main seat in the
vital mind and is of two kinds:
- one kind is
defensive with violence and passion, assertive of its mental individuality
and all that is in agreement with it, preferred by its volition, adapted to
its outlook, but aggressive against all that is contrary to its mental
ego-structure or unacceptable to its personal intellectuality;
- the other kind
is enthusiastic for new things, passionate, insistent, impetuous, often
mobile beyond measure, inconstant and ever restless, governed in its idea
not by truth and light but by the zest of intellectual battle and movement
and adventure.
- The sattvic intelligence is eager for knowledge, as open as it can be to it, careful to consider
and verify and balance, to adjust and adapt to its view whatever confirms
itself as truth, receiving all that it can assimilate, skilful to build
truth in a harmonious intellectual structure: but, because its light is
limited, as all mental light must be, it is unable to enlarge itself so as
to receive equally all truth and all knowledge; it has a mental ego, even an enlightened one, and is determined by
it in its observation, judgment, reasoning, mental choice and preference.
In most men there is
a predominance of one of these qualities but also a mixture; the same mind can be open and plastic and harmonic in one direction, kinetic
and vital, hasty and prejudiced and ill-balanced in another, in yet another
obscure and unreceptive. This limitation by personality, this defence of
personality and refusal to receive what is unassimilable, is necessary for the
individual being because in its evolution, at the stage reached, it has a
certain self-expression, a certain type of experience and use of experience which
must, for the mind and life at least, govern nature; that for the moment is its
law of being, its dharma.
This limitation of mind-consciousness by personality and of truth by
mental temperament and preference must be the rule of our nature so long as the
individual has not reached universality, is not yet preparing for
mind-transcendence. But it is evident that this condition is inevitably a
source of error and can at any moment be the cause of a falsification of
knowledge, an unconscious or half-wilful self-deception, a refusal to admit
true knowledge, a readiness to assert acceptable wrong knowledge as true
knowledge. This is in the field of cognition, but the same law applies to will
and action.
The surface
consciousness
Out of ignorance a wrong consciousness is created which gives a wrong
dynamic reaction to the contact of persons, things, happenings: the surface
consciousness develops the habit of ignoring, misunderstanding or rejecting the
suggestions to action or against action that come from the secret inmost
consciousness, the psychic entity; it answers instead to unenlightened mental
and vital suggestions, or acts in accordance with the demands and impulsions of the vital ego.
Here the second of the primary conditions of the evolution, the law of a
separate life-being affirming itself in a world which is not-self to it, comes
into prominence and assumes an immense importance. It is here that the surface
vital personality or life-self asserts its dominance, and this dominance of the
ignorant vital being is a principal active source of discord and disharmony, a cause
of inner and outer perturbations of the life, a mainspring of wrong-doing and
evil.
The natural vital
element in us, in so far as it is unchecked or untrained or retains its
primitive character, is not concerned
with truth or right consciousness or right action; it is concerned with
self-affirmation, with life-growth, with possession, with satisfaction of
impulse, with all satisfactions of desire. This main need and demand of the
life-self seems all important to it; it would readily carry it out without any
regard to truth or right or good or any other consideration: but because mind
is there and has these conceptions, because the soul is there and has these
soul-perceptions, it tries to dominate
mind and get from it by dictation a sanction and order of execution for its own
will of self-affirmation, a verdict of truth and right and good for its own
vital assertions, impulses, desires; it is concerned with self-justification in
order that it may have room for full self-affirmation.
But if it can get the assent of mind, it is quite ready to ignore all
these standards and set up only one standard, the satisfaction, growth,
strength, greatness of the vital ego. The life-individual needs place,
expansion, possession of its world, dominance and control of things and beings;
it needs life-room, a space in the sun, self-assertion, survival. It needs
these things for itself and for those with whom it associates itself, for its
own ego and for the collective ego; it needs them for its ideas, creeds, ideals,
interests, imaginations: for it has to assert these forms of I-ness and my-ness
and impose them on the world around it or, if it is not strong enough to do
that, it has at least to defend and maintain them against others to the best of
its power and contrivance. It may try to do it by methods it thinks or chooses to
think or represent as right; it may try to do it by the naked use of violence,
ruse, falsehood, destructive aggression, crushing of other life-formations: the
principle is the same whatever the means or the moral attitude.
It is not only in the
realm of interests, but in the realm of ideas and the realm of religion that the vital being of man has introduced this
spirit and attitude of self-affirmation and struggle and the use of violence,
oppression and suppression, intolerance, aggression; it has imposed the principle of life-egoism on the domain of
intellectual truth and the domain of the spirit. Into its self-affirmation the
self-asserting life brings in hatred and dislike towards all that stands in the
way of its expansion or hurts its ego; it develops as a means or as a passion or
reaction of the life-nature cruelty, treachery and all kinds of evil: its satisfaction of desire and impulse
takes no account of right and wrong, but only of the fulfillment of desire and
impulse. For this satisfaction it is ready to face the risk of destruction
and the actuality of suffering; for what it is pushed by Nature to aim at is
not self-preservation alone, but life-affirmation and life-satisfaction,
formulation of life-force and life-being.
extract from: The Life Divine of Sri Aurobindo—chapter
The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
NOTE:
the vital being* : According Aurobindo the vital is the life-force
acting in
its own nature, impulses, emotions, desires, ambitions, etc., having as
their highest centre what we may call the outer heart of emotion, while
there is an inner heart where are the higher or psychic feelings and
sensibilities, the intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul.
The vital being has four parts:
1. The mental vital which gives a mental expression by thought,
speech or otherwise to the emotions, desires, passions, sensations and
other movements of the vital.
2. The emotional vital which is the seat of various feelings such as, love, joy, sorrow hatred and the rest.
3. The central vital which is the seat of the stronger vital
longings, and reactions e.g. ambition, pride, fear, love of fame,
attractions repulsions, desires, passions of various kinds and the
field of many vital energies.
4. The lower vital which is occupied with desires and emotions such
as make the greater party of the daily life e.g. food desire, sexual
desire, small likings and dislikings, vanity, quarells, anger at blame,
little wishes of all kind and a numberless host of other things.
Their respective seats are:
1. Mental vital the region from the throat to the heart.
2. Emotional vital its seat is the outer heart and the inner heart behind it it is related with the soul.
3. The central vital has as its seat the region from the heart to navel.
4. The lower vital below the navel.
We must not confuse the mind with the vital although the vital has a
mind element transfused in it. Mind and vital are mixed up on the
surface of the consciousness, but they are quite separate forces in
themselves.
The mental vital is a sort of mediator between vital emotion, desire,
impulsion, etc and the mind. It expresses the desires, emotions,
feelings, passions, ambitions, possessive and active tendencies of the
vital and throws them into mental .- the pure imaginations or dreams of
greatness, happiness, etc. in which men indulge are one peculiar form of
the mental vital. It is through the mental vital that the vital
passions, emotions, impulses, desires, rise up and get into the buddhi (intellect)
and either cloud it or distort it.
You can find
more about the vital-ego in the books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: THE
INTEGRAL YOGA & LIVING WITHIN
