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Integral Yoga Method for Attaining Mastery Over the Force of Desire in the Lower Vital Nature · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  Humanity develops habits of response that tend to become
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  ingrained in almost all approaches to any particular
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  topic. This is found to be especially
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  true when it comes to the question of religious dedication
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  and spiritual aspiration. The default response to
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  religious or spiritual devotion has been historically to give up
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  abandoned the focus on life in the material world, whether it
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  is the renunciate or the monk, or life in the desert, The Cave,
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  the monastery, cloister, ashram or Abbey.
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  Humanity has created a fixed and habitual way of addressing the
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  issue to such a degree that this approach is rarely, if ever,
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  challenged. This habit is based on the
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  mindset that treats the physical being as the basis and the
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  development of mental, religious, and spiritual
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  impulses as a development that seeks to transcend the physical
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  body. This has led to many experiments
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  such as extreme fasting, vows of silence, ascetic bareness, vows
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  of poverty, and other ways of making a clean break from the
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  physical material life to one of spiritual focus.
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  People have experienced clear benefits from these approaches,
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  which has led to their becoming embedded in the spiritual and
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  religious development in the 1st place.
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  Fiora Bindo's approach represents a different, more
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  nuanced approach to these issues.
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  Inasmuch as he sets the objective not as the abandonment
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  of life but the upliftment and transformation of life, the need
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  for focus on the spiritual effort remains.
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  But all of these long standing methods have to be looked at
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  with a new understanding and from a perspective based on
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  transformation rather than escape from the life of the
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  world. A devotee living a Triorubindo
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  ashram some years ago recounted an experiment he made for a
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  period of time. He determined to adopt A vow of
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  silence to gain some control over the force of speech and the
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  energy that was dispersed in idle talk on a day-to-day basis.
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  He adopted carrying a notebook and pen with him to respond to
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  people. The discipline helped keep him
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  focused on the internal process. Yet he felt that he needed to
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  adapt the vow of silence to allow him to carry out the tasks
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  he was given as part of the Ashram community.
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  He thus adopted the process of speaking to the extent it was
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  directly related to the work he was assigned, and then only the
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  absolutely necessary speech, while refraining from all social
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  speech. He carried on this experiment
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  for a period of some months and learned a great deal about the
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  impulsion to speak and the habitual patterns of
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  interaction. He also gained an insight about
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  the use of the vow of silence itself and how it would need to
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  be modified for an individual who did not want to cut the use
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  of speech entirely. Similar review could lead to a
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  change from extreme fasting to a careful understanding of the
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  actual needs of the body and life energy and a tailoring of
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  the food intake to meet those needs.
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  Without indulgence in the desires of the palate, the
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  social habits of taking meals, the cravings of the lower
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  nature, or going to the extreme of fixating so much on this
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  process of understanding that it becomes a distraction of its
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  own. Instead of avoidance of money
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  and its power, the devotee could accept money from the standpoint
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  of the trustee who does not assert ownership over the money.
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  Money could flow to carry out activities that enhance the
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  well-being of people and the balance of the environment, as
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  well as bringing beauty, harmony and enrichment to life without
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  any sense of self aggrandizement or individual ego satisfaction.
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  All of these modified approaches imply a more conscious and
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  subtle approach to both accomplish the objective and
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  avoid creation of an excuse for indulgence.
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  The practitioner needs to be inwardly awake and totally
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  dedicated to the spiritual quest to align himself with the Divine
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  will rather than the promptings of the ego personality,
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  Sriorabindo writes. Quote If you want to do yoga,
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  you must take more and more in all matters small or great, the
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  yogic attitude in our path. That attitude is not one of
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  forceful suppression, but of detachment and equality with
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  regard to the objects of desire. Forceful suppression, fasting
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  comes under the head, stands on the same level as free
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  indulgence. In both cases the desire
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  remains. In the one it is fed by
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  indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by
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  suppression. It is only when one stands back,
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  separates oneself from the lower vital, refusing to regard its
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  desires and clamours as one's own, and cultivates an entire
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  equality and equanimity in the consciousness with respect to
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  them, that the lower vital itself becomes gradually
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  purified and itself also calm and equal.
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  Each wave of desire as it comes must be observed as quietly and
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  with as much unmoved detachment as you would observe something
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  going on outside you, and must be allowed to pass rejected from
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  the consciousness and the true movement, the true Consciousness
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  steadily put in its place. End Quote.
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  Reference. Srioro Bindo.
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  Bases of Yoga. Chapter 4.
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  Desire Food Sex page 65.