Distinguishing Vital Vibrations from Soul Vibrations

We meet people who are passionate about their lives, engaged, dedicated and committed. In many cases they are caring individuals with a concern for how they can be of benefit to others and the world at large. Many of them have a type of charismatic energy that engages and charms.

We attribute these things to the soul. And there is likely at least some influence of the soul on the mind and the vital being in order to create much of this direction and energy. As long as we are primarily vital and mental beings, we need to consider the limitations, the diffusion of the soul’s force into the external being in its various parts, and our own inability to directly experience and know the vibration of the psychic being. As a result, we frequently describe the action of the vital nature as the action of the soul.

As we develop individually in our capacity to directly experience the soul’s vibrational pattern, and as the soul more powerfully is able to infuse itself into the external being, first as an influence, later as a directing and guiding force, we gain the ability to distinguish between the vital vibration and the soul vibration.

The Mother writes: “Now, obviously, most often what people — unless they are initiated — call ‘soul’ is the vital activity. If someone has a strong, active, obstinate vital which rules the body’s activities, which has a very living or intense contact with people and things and events, if he has a marked taste for art, for all expressions of beauty, we are generally tempted to say and believe, ‘Oh! he has a living soul’; but it is not his soul, it is his vital being which is alive and dominates the activities of the body. That is the first difference between someone who is beginning to be developed and those who are still in the inertia and tamas of the purely material life. This gives, first to the appearance and also to the activity, a kind of vibration, of intensity of vibration, which often creates the impression that this person has a living soul; but it is not that, it is his vital which is developed, which has a special capacity, is stronger than the physical inertia and gives an intensity of vibration and life and action that those whose vital being is not developed do not possess. This confusion between the vital activity and the soul is a very frequent one…. The vital vibration is much more easily perceptible to the human consciousness than the vibration of the soul.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pp. 190-191