Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Understanding the Stage of Development of the Vital Man

Transcript

Understanding the Stage of Development of the Vital Man · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:01
  Human beings are not all at the same stage of evolutionary
• 0:05
  development. We can see this clearly when we
• 0:08
  observe the different interests, ways of responding and
• 0:12
  directions that people take as they grow and begin to
• 0:15
  participate in the life of the society and the world at large.
• 0:20
  We see some people are very rooted in their physical nature
• 0:24
  and are concerned primarily with food, drink, comfort, and
• 0:29
  physical satisfactions. Others appear to be very
• 0:33
  reserved and thoughtful, as if living in a world of mental
• 0:37
  development, possibly a realm of science or mathematics.
• 0:42
  And yet others appear to be challenging everything in the
• 0:45
  world, furthering ambitions, taking on new enterprises, and
• 0:51
  working to achieve something with their lives.
• 0:54
  Yet others appear to be gentle souls, focused on devotion,
• 0:59
  goodwill, harmony, and peace. Each of these can be seen as an
• 1:04
  archetypal formation, representing one or more of the
• 1:08
  separate domains that make up the totality of our human lives.
• 1:13
  There is the physical being, the vital being, the mental being,
• 1:18
  and the psychic being. These are generally mixed up in
• 1:22
  each one of us to some degree, although we may tend to have a
• 1:26
  predominant development that serves to characterize our stage
• 1:30
  of development and normal focus for our lives.
• 1:35
  In this regard, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes the various stages
• 1:39
  and relates them to human personality as we observe and
• 1:42
  experience it. In particular, he describes here
• 1:47
  the vital man, the individual who is focused on the
• 1:51
  development, expression and fulfilment of his vital being.
• 1:56
  Primarily Sri Oro Bindu observes quote.
• 2:01
  This rule of different selves in US is at the root of the stages
• 2:05
  of the development of human personality.
• 2:09
  In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of
• 2:14
  body who dominates the mind will in action.
• 2:18
  There is then created the physical man, mainly occupied
• 2:21
  with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life
• 2:27
  habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or
• 2:32
  not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting
• 2:36
  all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow
• 2:40
  formation. But even in the physical man
• 2:44
  there are other elements, and he cannot live all together as the
• 2:48
  human animal concerned with birth and death and procreation
• 2:53
  and the satisfaction of common impulses and desires and the
• 2:58
  maintenance of the life and the body.
• 3:01
  This is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed,
• 3:05
  however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they
• 3:10
  are developed, to a higher human evolution.
• 3:15
  If the inner subtle physical purusha insists, he can arrive
• 3:19
  at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical
• 3:23
  life and hope or attempt to realize it in his own or in the
• 3:28
  collective or group existence in others.
• 3:32
  It is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules
• 3:37
  the mind, the will. The action then is created the
• 3:42
  vital man concerned with self affirmation, self
• 3:46
  aggrandizement, life enlargement, satisfaction of
• 3:50
  ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his
• 3:55
  ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle,
• 4:01
  inner and outer adventure. All else is incidental or
• 4:05
  subordinated to this movement and building an expression of
• 4:08
  the vital ego. But still, in the vital man too,
• 4:13
  there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or
• 4:17
  spiritual character, even if these happen to be less
• 4:21
  developed than his life personality and life power.
• 4:25
  The nature of the vital man is more active, stronger and more
• 4:29
  mobile, more turbulent and chaotic, often to the point of
• 4:34
  being quite unregulated, than that of the physical man who
• 4:39
  holds on to the soil and has a certain material poise and
• 4:43
  balance. But it is more kinetic and
• 4:46
  creative. For the element of the vital
• 4:49
  being is not earth, but air. It has more movement, less
• 4:54
  status. A vigorous vital mind and will
• 4:57
  can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more
• 5:02
  by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a
• 5:05
  harmonization of the being. If, however, a strong vital
• 5:10
  personality, mind and will can get the reasoning intelligence
• 5:15
  to give it a firm support and be its minister, then a certain
• 5:20
  kind of forceful formation can be made more or less balanced
• 5:24
  but always powerful, successful and effective, which can impose
• 5:30
  itself on the nature and environment and arrive at a
• 5:34
  strong self affirmation in life and action.
• 5:38
  End Quote. Reference Srioro Bindu and the
• 5:42
  Mother Powers within Chapter 17, The Vital Pages, 1:35 to 1:37.