Integral_Vital_Education | Matriniketanashram

Integral Vital Education

“The Prana is not only a force for the action of physical and vital energy, but supports also the mental and spiritual action. Therefore the full and free working of the pranic shakti is required not only for the lower but still necessary use, but also for the free and full operation of mind and supermind and spirit in the instrumentality of our complex human nature. That is the main sense of the use of exercises of Pranayama for control of the vital force and its motions which is so important and indispensable a part of certain systems of Yoga. The same mastery must be got by the seeker of the integral Yoga; but he may arrive at it by other means and in any case he must not be dependent on any physical or breathing exercise for its possession and maintenance, for that will at once bring in a limitation and subjection to Prakriti. Her instrumentation has to be used flexibly by the Purusha, but not to be a fixed control on the Purusha. The necessity of the pranic force, however, remains and will be evident to our self-study and experience. It is in the Vedic image the steed and conveyance of the embodied mind and will, vahana. If it is full of strength and swiftness and a plenitude of all its powers, then the mind can go on the courses of its action with a plenary and unhampered movement. But if it is lame or soon tired or sluggish or weak, then an incapacity is laid on the effectuation of the will and activity of the mind. The same rule holds good of the supermind when it first comes into action. There are indeed states and activities in which the mind takes up the pranic shakti into itself and this dependence is not felt at all; but even then the force is there, though involved in the pure mental energy. The supermind, when it gets into full strength, can do pretty well what it likes with the pranic shakti, and we find that in the end this life power is transformed into the type of a supramentalised prana which is simply one motor power of that greater consciousness. But this belongs to a later stage of the siddhi of the Yoga...

Then again there is the psychic prana, pranic mind or desire soul; this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the first necessity is a fullness of the vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength and spring of energetic action on the fullness of the psychic prana. (the second necessity) But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the psychic life-being. This dynamis must not be a troubled, perfervid, stormy, fitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but a clear and glad and pure energy, a seated and firmly supported pure rapture. And as a third condition of its perfection it must be poised in a complete equality. The desire-soul must get rid of the clamour, insistence or inequality of its desires in order that its desires may be satisfied with justice and balance and in the right way and eventually must rid them of the character of desire altogether and change them into impulsions of the divine Ananda. To that end it must make no demands nor seek to impose itself on heart, mind or spirit, but accept with a strong passive and active equality whatever impulsion and command come into it from the spirit through the channel of a still mind and a pure heart. And it must accept too whatever result of the impulse, whatever enjoyment more or less, full or nil, is given to it by the Master of our being. At the same time, possession and enjoyment are its law, function, use, swadharma. It is not intended to be a slain or mortified thing, dull in its receptive power, dreary, suppressed, maimed, inert or null. (the fourth condition and necessity) It must have a full power of possession, a glad power of enjoyment, an exultant power of pure and divine passion and rapture. The enjoyment it will have will be in the essence a spiritual bliss, but one which takes up into itself and transforms the mental, emotional, dynamic, vital and physical joy; it must have therefore an integral capacity for these things and must not by incapacity or fatigue or inability to bear great intensities fail the spirit, mind, heart, will and body. (1) Fullness, (2) clear purity and gladness, (3) equality, (4) capacity for possession and enjoyment are the fourfold perfection of the psychic prana. (purnata, prasannata, samata, bhoga-samarthya)"

Sri Aurobindo

CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-733-735

The Integral Vital Education:

“Held by intuitive heart and secret sense.” Savitri-29

“A secret sense awoke that could perceive

A Presence and a Greatness everywhere.” Savitri-42

“Eternity’s contact broke the moulds of sense.

A greater Force than the earthly held his limbs,

Huge workings bared his undiscovered sheaths,” Savitri-81

“Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure.

There could have reached our Divinised sense and heart

Some natural felicity’s bright extreme,

Some thrill of Supernature’s absolutes:” Savitri-123

“A purer, fierier sense had there its home,

A burning urge no earthly limbs can hold;

One drew a large unburdened spacious breath

And the heart sped from beat to rapturous beat.” Savitri-123

“Our very senses blindly seek for bliss.” Savitri-170

“Thrilled by the clasp of the warm satisfied sense” Savitri-233

“His knowledge stripped bare of the garbs of sense” Savitri-294

“A wall of stillness shuts it (Soul) from the world,

A gulf of stillness swallows up the sense

And makes unreal all that mind has known,

All that the labouring senses still would weave

Prolonging an imaged unreality.” Savitri-310

“Sense failed in that tremendous lucency;” Savitri-319

“Life in his members lay down vast and mute;

Naked, unwalled, unterrified it bore

The immense regard of Immortality.” Savitri-320

“Where sense can build a world of pure delight:” Savitri-328

“Life’s rapture kept for ever its flame and cry.” Savitri-329

“The Power within her shaped her moulding sense

In deeper figures than our surface types.” Savitri-356

“This spirit stumbling in the fields of sense,

This creature bruised in the mortar of the days

Could find in her broad spaces of release.” Savitri-380

“He (Satyavan) takes with bright surprise spirit and sense.” Savitri-430

“A mighty life-self with its inner powers

Supports the dwarfish modicum we call life;” Savitri-485

“A secret air of pure felicity

Deep like a sapphire heaven our spirits breathe;

Our hearts and bodies feel its obscure call,

Our senses grope for it and touch and lose.

If this withdrew, the world would sink in the Void;

If this were not, nothing could move or live." Savitri-629

“There is a joy in all that meets the sense,

A joy in all experience of the soul,

A joy in evil and a joy in good,

A joy in virtue and a joy in sin:” Savitri-630

“The All-Wonderful makes a marvel of each event,

The All-Beautiful is a miracle in each shape;

The All-Blissful smites with rapture the heart’s throbs,

A pure celestial joy is the use of sense.” Savitri-663

“All here but passionate hint and mystic shade

Divined by the inner prophet who perceives

The spirit of delight in sensuous things,

Turned to more sweetness than can now be dreamed.” Savitri-675

“There was a greater tranquil sweetness there,

A subtler and profounder ether’s field

And mightier scheme than heavenliest sense can give.” Savitri-677

“The high perfected sense illumined lived” Savitri-678

Vital is the universal play of force to create, energise, maintain, support and modify and even to some extent dissolve and reconstruct substantial forms and its fundamental character is the interchange and mutual play of an overtly or secretly conscious energy. Vital Education is defined as energising of conscious vital being that liberates creative force of existence such as effective dynamism, enthusiasm, endurance,¹⁰ delight, love and beauty. Through this education the heart and the sense become subtle, intense and large to embrace all existence and it makes one capable to see, feel, hear and touch God, the Eternal and realizes the transcendent Self and oneness of Self. Integral Vital Education liberates man from slavery¹¹ to instincts. It attains self-fulfilment when Life consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever new forms and activities of universal existence. The Mother observed, ‘When one paints a picture or composes music or writes poetry, each one has his own way of expression. Every painter, every musician, every poet, every sculptor has or ought to have a unique, personal contact with the Divine, and through the work which is his speciality, the art he has mastered, he must express this contact in his own way, with his own words, his own colours. For himself, instead of copying the outer form of Nature, he takes these forms as the covering of something else, precisely of his relationship with the realities which are behind, deeper, and he tries to make them express that. Instead of merely imitating what he sees, he tries to make them speak of what is behind them, and it is this which makes all the difference between a living art and just a ﬂat copy of Nature.’¹

“A tangle of bright bodies, of moved souls

Tracing the close and intertwined delight,

The harmonious tread of lives for ever joined

In the passionate oneness of a mystic joy

As if sunbeams made living and divine,

The golden-bosomed Apsara goddesses,

In groves flooded from an argent disk of bliss

That floated through a luminous sapphire dream,

In a cloud of raiment lit with golden limbs

And gleaming footfalls treading faery swards,

Virgin motions of bacchant innocences

Who know their riot for a dance of God,

Whirled linked in moonlit revels of the heart.” Savitri-676-77

Guru Sangamam in 2012

In Integral Vital Education, Life is identified as dynamisation of the entire secret of the universe and in order to master it he has to go through a mass of colliding results, a whirl of potential energies out of which he has to disengage some supreme order and some yet unrealized harmony. The ideal of human life is neither simply an animal repeated on a higher degree of vitality nor a moderate living with mental satisfaction which would have arrested all his growth and advance, nor a scientific mind, which extends life to mechanical principle, unaware of new evolving principle and another state of Consciousness. Integral Vital Education identifies man as greatest of the discontented living being and he can uncover the concealed Godhead through four ascending stages of life.

“Her thoughts, her mind remembered Narad’s date.” Savitri-469

“Out of the ignorant eager toil of the years
Abandoning man’s loud drama he had come
Led by the wisdom of an adverse Fate
To meet the ancient Mother in her groves.” Savitri-393

The first status of Vital Education identifies life in terms of extreme divisions, a rigid form of Matter, a force-driven Subconscient will, a limited consciousness, which is responsible for our basic existence and accomplished type of material living. It seeks its extension through scientific mind and mechanical consciousness concealed in Matter. In the physical world, its most difficult achievement is to create and maintain a separative survival of individuality and a stable form.

“Earth she would lift to neighbourhood with heaven,” Savitri-196

“Make earth almost the mate and peer of heaven,” Savitri-706

“Earth shall be made a home of Heaven’s light,” Savitri-451

“She made earth her home, for whom heaven was too small.” Savitri-275

As life delivers itself out of this form, the second gradations of Vital Education interferes to concentrate on three terms of evolution; the first is the life’s positive urge to realize the physical immortality is confronted with immediate threat of death, decay and mutual devouring; secondly life’s positive urge to possess fully the delight of existence is confronted with the negative habit of hunger and conscious desire for life’s satisfaction and security; thirdly, the life’s positive urge towards possession of the Self and conquest of surrounding is confronted with limited capacity that struggles for survival, possession and perfection. This second status of Vital Education increases our vitality by dissolving our vital ego, vital selfishness of the individual and aggressive living.

‘Heaven’s joys might have been earth’s if earth were pure.’ Savitri-123

“Heaven’s tranquil shield guarded the missioned child.” Savitri-16

“She guards the austere approach to the Alone.” Savitri-295

The first two statuses of Vital Education contain in themselves the seed of the new principle of its third status, which must increase in proportion as Mind evolves out of the Matter and it is identified as principle of cooperation and mutual help. The third status of Vital Education gives birth to practice of association and flowering of human love which begins with the desire of the wife, the child, the friend and helper and associated group. This preliminary human love may be identified as extended selfishness and if this extension is permitted to evolve uninterruptedly, then man will realize that his natural individual formation is only a minor term of the vast Self and he exists by the grace of the universal Self. If the first status of Vital Education stands on the principles of division, then the third status of Vital Education grows under the strong principle of unity, a fusion by aggregation and every divided form must be its subordinate. Its safe growth is ensured by development of science of mental and spiritual existence which will explore in the line of ancient occult knowledge regarding the subtle vital being, our life energy, our desire energy, powers, passions, strivings and dissolution of vital frame after death and its relation with other vital bodies. It will further unfold the secret of life through constant interchange, intermixture and fusion of being with being. The persistent aggregate life finds its safety and harmony by the development of mental being and soul-consciousness. The governing principle of life is association with love and the new law that becomes active is the law of association, the law of love, of common help, kindliness, affection, comradeship, mutual self-giving and unity. With the development of mind these laws are increasingly imposed on the material existence and its scope increases by the commerce that more it gives, the more it receives and grows; and the more it fuses itself into others, the more it fuses others into itself and increases the scope and capacity of the being. The third status of law of love does not abolish the second status of law of desire but transforms and fulfills it. In the preliminary state of love, it obeys the law of hunger and enjoys the receiving and extracting from others rather than the giving and surrendering to others. The true law of love establishes an equal commerce in which the joy of giving is equal to the joy of receiving and tends in the end to give more. The law of love is an impulse to realize and fulfill oneself in others and by others, to be enriched by enriching others and to possess and be possessed by others.

The perfect solution of the problem of life cannot be realized by the law of love, the law of mind and heart alone and there must emerge a fourth status of vital Education in which the eternal unity of many is realized through the unity and freedom of the Spirit. The Vital Being, Pranamaya Purusha, must be trained to receive pure delight that comes to it from right functioning of life in obedience to the working of the Divine Will. The fine flower of the fourth status of Vital Education emerging from the fourth status of life is the pure and full emergence of original Divine Will, the illumined fulfillment of intermediate desire, deep satisfaction of conscious interchange of Divine Love and Divine unity of all souls which is the foundation of Supramentalised Vital Education and is envisaged as canalization of seas of Omnipotence for the final good and salvation of all humanity.

“As in a mystic and dynamic dance

A priestess of immaculate ecstasies

Inspired and ruled from Truth’s revealing vault

Moves in some prophet cavern of the gods,

A heart of silence in the hands of joy

Inhabited with rich creative beats

A body like a parable of dawn

That seemed a niche for veiled divinity

Or golden temple-door to things beyond.” Savitri-15

“Abolished were the scripts of destiny.” Savitri-82

“The soul is the watchful builder of its fate” Savitri-184

“But many-visaged is the cosmic Soul;

A touch can alter the fixed front of Fate.” Savitri-256“

A flame that cancels death in mortal things.” Savitri-291

“Fate’s driving ceased and Nature’s sleepless spur:” Savitri-320

“Let a great word be spoken from the heights

And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.” Savitri-345

“One shall descend and break the iron Law,

Change Nature’s doom by the lone spirit’s power.” Savitri-346

“Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.” Savitri-346

“A greater destiny waits you (Savitri) in your front:” Savitri-370

“Her force and will exceed her form and fate." Savitri-371

(Higher beings) “Have made our fate the child of our own acts,” Savitri-378

“Let Fate do with me what she will or can;

I (Savitri) am stronger than death and greater than my fate;

My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me

Helpless against my immortality.” Savitri-432

“And make the soul the artist of its fate.” Savitri-465

“My soul can meet them (stone eyes of Law and Fate) with its living fire.” Savitri-589

"And woke in it (Savitri’s heart) the Force that alters Fate.” Savitri-665

“The soul in man is greater than his fate:” Savitri-691

“You (Savitri) are my (Lord’s) Force at work to uplift earth’s fate,” Savitri-702

“A chant hymeneal to the unseen Divine,

A flaming rhapsody of white desire

Lured an immortal music into the heart

And woke the slumbering ear of ecstasy.” Savitri-123

“Alive with her yearning woke the inert cell,
In the heart she kindled a fire of passion and need,
Amid the deep calm of inanimate things
Arose her great voice of toil and prayer and strife.” Savitri-133

Behind the surface life of desire, lust, violence³ and sense enjoyment, there is in us an inner and subtle vital Sheath, which is not dissolved by death ‘and has the greatest difficulty in changing its way of being.’⁵ If this vital Godhead behind the vital sheath is brought out into prominence, then it lifts life with the Supreme’s touch and will be a true instrument of Divine Nature. The innermost domain of subtle vital Sheath that is close to the true Psychic being is called the true vital Being,⁴ Pranamaya Purusha, which has direct access to the Divine in the Spiritual domain. True vital is the means through which the sacrificial flame will rise in order to bring down Divine forces to the subtle vital and gross vital substance. True vital Being is the purest part of the vital where the Divine is stationed and around it there is extension of subtle vital and around subtle vital there is extension of gross vital. Both gross vital and subtle vital are subject to impurity and the purity of subtle vital grows as it is exposed to the influence of true Vital Being. The Mother confirms, “I am going to study what Sri Aurobindo says when I come to it in 'the Yoga of Self-Perfection.' He says there comes a time when the senses change – it’s not that you employ the senses proper to another plane (we have always known we had senses on all the different planes); it’s quite different from that: the senses THEMSELVES change. He foretells this change – he says it will occur. And I believe it begins in the way I am experiencing it now.”¹²

Integral Yoga proposes six-fold disciplines through which life will be transformed into the image of the Divine. First, life as it is a movement of desire; for Divine living the desire must be abolished and in its place there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of true vital being;⁷ secondly, life is driven partly by the influence of physical mind, vital mind, emotional mind, sensory mind, intellectual mind, and these faculties are still under the domination of ignorant forces; for Divine living these lower mind faculties must cease to be anything but an instrument of the inmost Psychic being; thirdly, there is a veil that separates the lower mind faculties from higher mind faculties, which are higher Mind, illumined Mind, intuitive Mind and Over Mind; for Divine living the lid that separates these two domains must be broken and vital sheath must come under the direct influence of higher Mind; the six lotuses or energy centres open from top in descending order and vital sheath opens by the pressure of higher mental sheath or Spiritual sheath; fourthly, life for its satisfaction turns towards separative ego; ego must disappear and must be replaced by true Spiritual person and the formation of universal sheath begins; fifthly, the law of Love is a Divine Presence and Influence to realise and fulfil oneself in others and by others, to possess and be possessed by others because without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly; sixthly,¹³ the life must open itself towards Supramental pranic force and will for its complete transformation and perfect enjoyment and with the exposure towards Divine Love one ‘does in a brief period the work of many lives or ages.’² Lastly, we may take the help of external physical means of Hatha Yogic Asana and Pranayama and Raja Yogic japa, for the full and free working of the universal Pranic Shakti.⁸

Savitri, Book-2, Canto-3, gives a vivid account of the action of Para-prakriti or higher Nature or ‘the gracious great-winged Angel’⁹ on life or vital plane. This is also Prakriti Yajna, Vedic sacrifice, more powerful and more comprehensive than the Purusha Yajna or Vedantic sacrifice.

From this Canto we learn the lesson how Para-Prakriti or a hierarchy of dynamic Consciousness, can act stumblingly and steadily on the life and experiences, both rise and fall, or glory and fall of life. We also get the hint of nude god-children who are perfect instruments to Divinise life and the knowledge on vital transformation that makes life young and energetic.

This Canto asks to develop the highest dynamic Consciousness which can meet the inert Inconscient’s law. We can refer to the Mother’s following important observation related with Her vital Being:
“But you see, you see all the way I have come...And I was born with a consciously prepared body—Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do this work.
A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless—a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior—no desires, no attachments...Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to human consciousness, are “monstrous;” my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real “monster,” because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, “Would you like to do this?” I answered, “I don’t care.” If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm—and so: “You are a monster, you have no feelings.”

And with that preparation... It is eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without let up, night and day... We shouldn’t be in a hurry.”⁶

OM TAT SAT

References:

1: TMCW-8/Questions and Answers-1956/p-158,

2: CWSA/Vol-23/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-183,

3: “Violence is necessary as long as men are ruled by their ego and its desires. But violence must be used only as a means of defense when you are attacked. The ideal towards which humanity is moving and which we want to realize is a state of luminous understanding in which each person’s needs as well as the harmony of the whole are taken into account…The future will have no need of violence because it will be governed by the Divine Consciousness, in which all things are harmonized and complement each other…For the moment, we are still in a stage where weapons are necessary. But it should be understood that this is a transitory stage, not a permanent one, and we must strive for the other one…Peace ... peace and harmony will be a natural outcome of the change of consciousness…You see, in India there reigns the Gandhian concept of nonviolence which has replaced physical violence with moral violence, but it’s far worse! But if you dare speak against Gandhi, everyone will immediately ... oh! You don’t need to mention his name, you can explain to the children that replacing physical violence with moral violence is no better. Lying down in front of a train to stop it running is a moral violence that can ultimately cause more disorder than physical violence…There would be a lot to say. It depends on each case. I myself very much encouraged the practice of fencing because it gives you skill, control over your movements and discipline in violence – I very much encouraged fencing at one time. I learned how to shoot; I used to shoot with a rifle, because it gives you steadiness and skill and a very good eye; and it forces you to remain calm in the midst of danger. All these things are.... I don’t see why one should be hopelessly nonviolent, it only makes a spineless character…Turn it into an art! An art for cultivating calm, skill and self control. There’s no need to cry out indignantly as Gandhi would. It’s useless, useless, absolutely useless – I am not at all in favor of it! One should master the means of self-defense, and one should cultivate them in order to do so…Above all, make them understand that moral violence is just as bad as physical violence. It can even be worse, that is, at least physical violence forces you to become strong and control yourself, whereas moral violence is... You may be like this [apparently quiet] and harbor the worst moral violence in yourself.” The Mother’s Agenda-18.02.1973,

4: “It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, – and even of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, – is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole. The subliminal self stands behind and supports the whole superficial man; it has in it a larger and more efficient mind behind the surface mind, a larger and more powerful vital behind the surface vital, a subtler and freer physical consciousness behind the surface bodily existence. And above them it opens to higher superconscient as well as below them to lower subconscient ranges. If one wishes to purify and transform the nature, it is the power of these higher ranges to which one must open and raise to them and change by them both the subliminal and the surface being. Even this should be done with care, not prematurely or rashly, following a higher guidance, keeping always the right attitude; for otherwise the force that is drawn down may be too strong for an obscure and weak frame of nature. But to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of one's way to invite trouble. First, one should make the higher mind and vital strong and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change.” Sri Aurobindo/The Mother’s Agenda-21.01.1962/CWSA-31/Letters on Yoga-IV/p-613

5: “But I have noticed, especially for those who have had a Western education, that they shouldn't change their external occupations abruptly. Most people tend to want to change their environment, to want to change their occupation, to want to change their surroundings, to want to change their habit, thinking that will help them to change inwardly – it's not true. You are much more vigilant and alert to resist the old movement, the old relationships, the vibrations you no longer want when you remain in a context that, in fact, is habitual enough to be automatic. You shouldn't be "interested" in a new external organization, because you always tend to enter it with your old way of being… It's very interesting even, I made a very deep study of people who think that if they travel things are going to be different.... When you change your external surroundings, on the contrary, you always tend to keep your internal organization in order to keep your individuality; whereas if you are held by force in the same context, the same occupations, the same routine of life, then the ways of being you no longer want become more and more evident and you can fight them much more precisely… Basically, in the being, it's the vital that has difficulty; it is the most impulsive part and has the greatest difficulty in changing its way of being. And it's always the vital that feels "free," encouraged and more alive during travels, because it has an opportunity to manifest freely in a new environment in which everything has to be learned: reactions, adaptations, etc. On the contrary, in the routine of a life that has nothing particularly exciting, it strongly feels (I mean, if it has goodwill and an aspiration for progress), it strongly feels its inadequacies and desires, its reactions, repulsions, attractions, etc. When one doesn't have that intense will to progress, it feels imprisoned, disgusted, crushed – the whole habitual refrain of revolt.” The Mother’s Agenda-2.12.1964,

6: The Mother’s Agenda-March 28 1964,

7: “There is behind all the vital nature in man his true vital being concealed and immobile which is quite different from the surface vital nature. The surface vital is narrow, ignorant, limited, full of obscure desires, passions, cravings, revolts, pleasures and pains, transient joys and griefs, exultations and depressions. The true vital being on the contrary is wide, vast, calm, strong, without limitations, ﬁrm and immovable, capable of all power, all knowledge, all Ananda. It is moreover without ego, for it knows itself to be a projection and instrument of the Divine; it is the divine Warrior, pure and perfect; in it is an instrumental Force for all divine realisations. It is the true vital being that has become awake and come in front within you. In the same way there is too a true mental being, a true physical being. When these are manifest, then you are aware of a double existence in you; that behind is always calm and strong, that on the surface alone is troubled and obscure. But if the true being behind remains stable and you live in it, then the trouble and obscurity remain only on the surface; in this condition the exterior parts can be dealt with more potently and they also made free and perfect.” CWSA-28/Letters on Yoga/p-185-186,

8: “We can become aware of the existence and presence of the universal Shakti in the various forms of her power. At present we are conscious only of the power as formulated in our physical mind, nervous being and the corporeal case sustaining our various activities. But if we can once get beyond this first formation by some liberation of the hidden, recondite, subliminal parts of our existence by Yoga, we become aware of a greater life force, a pranic Shakti, which supports and fills the body and supplies all physical and vital activities, --for the physical energy is only a modified form of this force, --and supplies and sustains too from below all our mental action.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga/p-755

9: Savitri-130,

10: “Let endurance be your watchword: teach the life-force in you — your vital being — not to complain but to put up with all the conditions necessary for great achievement. The body is a very enduring servant, it bears the stress of circumstance tamely like a beast of burden. It is the vital being that is always grumbling and uneasy. The slavery and torture to which it subjects the physical is almost incalculable. How it twists and deforms the poor body to its own fads and fancies, irrationally demanding that every- thing should be shaped according to its whimsicality! But the very essence of endurance is that the vital should learn to give up its capricious likes and dislikes and preserve an equanimity in the midst of the most trying conditions. When you are treated roughly by somebody or you lack something which would relieve your discomfort, you must keep up cheerfully instead of letting yourself be disturbed. Let nothing rufﬂe you the least bit, and whenever the vital tends to air its petty grievances with pompous exaggeration just stop to consider how very happy you are, compared to so many in this world. Reﬂect for a moment on what the soldiers who fought in the last war had to go through. If you had to bear such hardships you would realise the utter silliness of your dissatisfactions. And yet I do not wish you to court difﬁculties — what I want is simply that you should learn to endure the little insigniﬁcant troubles of your life.” TMCW-3/Questions and Answers-1929-1931/p-136,

11: “No law can liberate women unless they liberate themselves.

What makes them slaves is:

Attraction towards the male and his strength,
Desire for home life and its security,
Attachment to motherhood.

If they get free from these three slaveries, they will truly be the equal of men.

Men also have three slaveries:

Spirit of possession, attachment to power and domination,
Desire for sexual relation with women,
Attachment to the small comforts of married life.

If they get rid of these three slaveries, they can truly become the equal of women.” The Mother/TMCW-14/Words of the Mother-II/p-289,

12: The Mother’s Agenda/ June 27, 1961,

13: "Because, for example, when Sri Aurobindo and I were working to bring down the supramental forces, a descent from the mental plane to the vital plane, he was always telling me that everything I did (when we ‘meditated’ together, when we worked) – all my movements, all my gestures, all my postures, all my reactions – was absolutely tantric, as if I had pursued a tantric discipline. But it was spontaneous, it did not correspond to any knowledge, any idea, any will, nothing, and I thought it was like that simply because, as He knew, naturally I followed." The Mother's Agenda/20.09.1960,

“It is very clear. So it is not I who can make Her (The Mother of Ananda, or the Creative Power’s aspect of Joy) stay. And I certainly cannot ask Her to stay for egotistical reasons. Moreover, all these Aspects, all these Personalities manifest constantly – but they never manifest for personal reason. Not one of them has ever thought of helping my body – besides, I don’t ask them to because that is not their purpose. But it is more than obvious that if the people around me were receptive, She could permanently manifest since they could receive Her – and this would help my body enormously because all these vibrations would run through it. But She never gets even a chance to manifest – not a single one. She only meets people ... who don’t even feel Her when She’s there! They don’t even notice Her, they’re not even aware of her presence. So how can She manifest in these conditions? I’m not going to ask Her, ‘Please come and change my body.’ We don’t have that kind of relationship! Furthermore, the body itself wouldn’t agree. It never thinks of itself, it never pays attention to itself, and besides, it is only through the work that it can be transformed...Yes, certainly ... had there been any receptivity when She came down and had She been able to manifest with the power with which She came ... But I can tell you one thing: even before Her coming, when, with Sri Aurobindo, I had begun going down (for the Yoga or calling down the Supramental Force) from the mental plane to the vital plane, when we brought our yoga down from the mental plane into the vital plane, in less than a month (I was forty years old at the time – I didn’t seem very old, I looked less than forty, but I was forty anyway), after no more than a month of this yoga, I looked exactly like an 18 year old! And someone who knew me and had stayed with me in Japan came here, and when he saw me, he could scarcely believe his eyes! He said, ‘But my god, is it you?’ I said, ‘Of course!' Only when we went down from the vital plane into the physical plane, all this went away – because on the physical plane, the work is much harder and we had so much to do, so many things to change... But if a force like Hers could manifest and be received here, it would have INESTIMABLE results! ... Well, I am only telling you all this because I thought someone might ask me about it, but otherwise ... I don’t have that kind of relationship with Her. You see, if you consider this body, this poor body, it is very innocent: it in no way tries to draw attention to itself nor to attract forces nor to do anything at all except its work – as best it can. And that’s how it stands: its importance is proportionate to its usefulness ... and to the significance the world attributes to it – since its action is for the world.”