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The Nature of Vital Emotions · Sri Aurobindo Studies

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  The vast majority of the responses we categorize as
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  emotions come from the external, vital nature.
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  The vital being has a strong tendency to the expression of
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  rajas, which can bring forward strong, powerful actions,
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  violent and passionate emotions, and eventually, when it
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  retreats, a fall into tamas, which can lead to depression,
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  despair, weakness and uncertainty in the being.
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  The concept of romantic love and the extremes it can lead to have
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  been documented widely in the work of authors and playwrights.
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  William Shakespeare catalogued the vital emotions throughout
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  his body of writings, including the famous play Romeo and
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  Juliet, where two young people experienced an intense feeling
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  of emotional love but were separated by the mutual
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  hostility between their families.
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  They eventually overcame this separation to find fulfilment in
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  their passionate, romantic love for one another, but at a
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  certain point, Romeo was forced to flee the town and Juliet was
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  directed to marry someone she could not accept.
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  A priest stepped in, provided a drug that feigned death, and
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  instead of a wedding, her family conducted a funeral.
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  Meanwhile, Romeo returned without knowing what happened,
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  discovered the apparently dead body of Juliet, and killed
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  himself in the despair that seized him.
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  When Juliet revived from the artificial death, she saw the
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  dead body of Romeo and committed suicide to join him after death.
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  What clearer picture of the vital emotional being and its
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  reactions can we find? Shakespeare illuminates the
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  theme of vital passions and their effects throughout his
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  plays such as Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear and many more.
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  In one of his plays, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Shakespeare
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  attempts to distinguish passion, lust and vital expressions of
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  love from a deeper, pure expression, which appears to be
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  his sole attempt at an approach to what the mother identifies as
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  psychic love. He was limited by the language
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  and the conceptions of his time, trying to describe something
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  that was, to say the least, an unusual emotional framework.
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  Whether he succeeded or not, we can leave to each reader.
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  Pericles daughter Marina was kidnapped and sold into slavery
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  in a brothel. She maintained her virginal
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  status by the strength of her purity and aspirations and her
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  ability to reach deeper into the potential clients sent to her
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  than just satisfying their lustful feelings.
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  The play has long been undervalued simply because it
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  does not follow the popular and easily recognized patterns of
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  the vital nature and its emotional reactions, but tries
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  to reach a deeper source, the mother writes.
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  Quote Vital emotions are of an altogether different nature.
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  They are very clear, very precise, you can express them
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  very distinctly. They are violent, they usually
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  fill you with an intensity, A restlessness, sometimes a great
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  satisfaction, and then the opposite comes with the same
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  force. And so people, many people think
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  we have mentioned this several times already.
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  Some people imagine they experience love only when it is
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  like that, when love is in the vital, when it comes with all
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  the movements of the vital, all this intensity, this violence,
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  this precision, this glamour, this brightness.
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  And when that is absent, they say, oh, this is not love.
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  And yet that is exactly how love gets distorted already.
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  It is no longer love, it is beginning to be passion, and
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  this is an almost universal error among human beings.
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  Some people are full of a very pure, very high, very selfless
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  psychic love, and yet they know nothing about it and think they
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  are cold, dry and without love because this admixture of vital
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  vibration is absent for them. Love begins and ends with this
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  vibration, and it is something highly unstable which has
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  movements and reactions and violences of all kinds.
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  In depression, as in satisfaction, love is something
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  very ephemeral for these people. They have minutes of love in
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  their lives. It may last for a few hours, and
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  then it becomes dull and flat again, and they imagine that
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  love has deserted them. End Quote.
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  Reference Sri Rogindo and the Mother, The psychic being soul,
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  its nature, Mission and evolution.
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  Section 1. Meaning and Nature of the
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  Psychic Being, pages 39 to 40.