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The Mother
Conversations 1930-31
Vital Conversion and Rebirth
It is very important that the vital should agree
to change: it must learn to accept conversion.
The vital is not in itself anything to be decried: in fact, all energy,
dynamism and push comes from it - without it you may be calm and wise
and detached, but you will be absolutely immobile and uncreative. The
body would be inert, just like a stone, without the force infused into
it by the vital.
If the vital is left out, you would be able to realise nothing.
But like a spirited horse it is liable to be refractory and, therefore,
requires good control. You have to keep your reins tight and your whip
ready in order to keep the powerful beast in check. Of course, once the
vital has consented to be transformed there is no need either of the tight
reins or the ready whip: you proceed smoothly towards the goal, leaping
lightly over each obstacle in the way. Otherwise, the vital will either
stumble over the barriers or fight shy of jumping them.
It is no use thinking that all would have been well if there had been
no hurdles at all: they are a part of the game and if they are not faced
and jumped in this life on earth you will have to surmount a hundred times
greater ones on other planes and in other lives.
The best thing is to make up your mind once for all and train your vital
to run the race here while you are in the body and, if possible, win it.
You are sure to win provided your physical mind reforms itself and helps
the vital to change, instead of playing the role of a robber who holds
down his victim while his accomplice makes a haul of the victim's property.
The condition of your being after death depends very much on whether the
vital has been converted here or not.
If you are only a medley of unorganised impulses, then at death, when
the consciousness withdraws into the background, the different personalities
in you fall apart, rushing hither and thither to seek their own suitable
environments. One part may enter into another person who has an affinity
for it, another may even enter an animal, while that which has been alive
to the divine Presence may remain attached to the central psychic being.
But if you are fully organised and converted into a single individual,
bent on reaching the goal of evolution, then you will be conscious after
death and preserve a continuity.
The Mother
in CWM, volume 3, "Questions and Answers 1930-31",
pages 144-145
published by Sri
Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry
diffusion by SABDA
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