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Addressing Depression and Vital Struggle in the Yogic Practice By Building Calm and Equality in Mind, Life and Body · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The play of the gunas in the external nature explains the
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  various reactions, moods and psychological states we
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  experience. This is true not just in the
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  ordinary life of the individual and society, but also for those
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  who take up the practice of yoga.
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  The patterns of reaction based in the action of the gunas are
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  well known. When rajas is predominant, there
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  is an uprising of ambition, desire and pressure to achieve a
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  specific result. When rajas becomes frustrated,
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  we're simply tires of the effort.
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  The individual generally falls back into Thomas with the
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  consequent fatigue, weakness, darkness, and the psychological
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  responses of depression. We're at least a deep malaise
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  and the confusion that results from stymied ambition.
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  When SAPWA arises, it leads to a period of light and harmony,
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  during which time both ambition and the reaction to failed
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  ambition are held at Bay. The issue with SAPWA is that,
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  like the other Gunas, it is not a permanent station of the
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  consciousness. Rather, it goes through its own
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  periods of predominance and recession as either rajas or
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  tamas rises again to continue this cycle.
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  Sapwa can also become somewhat arrogant in its knowledge and
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  thus may limit its ability to grow and develop flexibly.
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  The solution then seems to be the ability to separate oneself
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  from the nature, mind, life and body, to shift to the
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  consciousness of the witness of the nature, and to interact from
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  that standpoint. Based on a direct connection to
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  the Divine consciousness. Many people confuse the
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  development of a calm status of the being with mental calm.
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  Srioro Bindo takes this further by clarifying that there is not
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  just a need for mental calm but also for a vital nature and
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  physical body that can support the action of the Divine Force
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  through their own experience of peace, wideness and stability.
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  Srioro Bindo observes quote the depression and vital struggle
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  must have been due to some defective over eagerness and
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  straining for a result in your former effort, so that when a
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  fall in the consciousness came, it was a distressed,
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  disappointed and confused vital that came to the surface giving
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  full entry to the suggestions of doubt, despair and inertia from
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  the adverse side of the nature. You have to move towards a firm
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  basis of calm and equality in the vital and physical no less
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  than in the mental consciousness.
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  Let there be the full downflow of power and ananda but into a
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  firm attar capable of containing it.
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  It is complete equality that gives that capacity and
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  firmness. End Quote reference Trioral
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  window Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1 Calm, Peace and Equality, page
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  19.