Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 4

Letter ID: 973

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

August 8, 1943

I didn’t really want to trouble you now – knowing how very busy you are, but a question of Bharati I find myself somewhat incompetent to answer and I can’t think of any letter of yours hereanent. [ “Can you tell me where I can find an explanation between ‘vital and nervous emotion’ and ‘purified emotion’?”] I send you her letter as you will find she is growing in her seeking. Also she calls upon me to renew contact with her father who used to love me much years ago. It maybe that she, and through her, her father who dotes on her, may turn, that is why I invite your attention – not for any selfish purpose.

By “vital emotion” is meant emotion generated and supported for the nonce by the vital – is it? But vital does include nervous too, does it not? I talked to her of the necessity through Yoga of purifying the emotions as she is emotional though not of the nervous type. But I told her vital emotions were not helpful if one wanted to touch spiritual depths though spiritual experience needed vital power to find full poetic expression. I hope I didn’t err here. But I am not quite clear about the nervous as I have not lived on the nerves except in rare moments of sudden outbursts of anger. So I ask you to explain. But first read her letter, please.

The nervous part of the being is a portion of the vital – it is the vital-physical, the life-force closely enmeshed in the reactions, desires, needs, sensations of the body. The vital proper is the life-force acting in its own nature, impulses, emotions, feelings, 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 emotions and intuitive yearnings and impulses of the soul. The vital part of us is, of course, necessary to our completeness, but it is a true instrument only when its feelings and tendencies have been purified by the psychic touch and taken up and governed by the spiritual light and power.