From the Editor’s Desk

The theme of this issue is ‘Vital Education’. In the integral psychology, the vital is distinctly different from the mental plane. It is often called the life force. More specifically, it entails all the emotions –the passions, desires, feelings, preferences, attractions, and the repulsions that arise in us. Enthusiasm is a great force arising from the vital and so too dejection and depression.

All too often, we probably find ourselves at the mercy of this vital. We may take the instance of a day. When we run through it, we probably can pick out ‘n’ number of times when we would have been carried away with a vital impulse. But that is what it is all about! It is Life!, something in us may say. But then the many moments of regret of having lost a grip over ourselves, our passions, preferences and desires would also be there, alongside. For some, this is life, this may be all that life is, this is living life as it is, a pendulum swinging from pole to pole. However, there is too, it appears, something within us that wants a life of mastery, a life of freedom over the anarchy of desires, passions, even depressions and repulsions. The answer, the way and means, comes to us through education, vital education. So what is this vital education?

The Mother says that with the collaboration of the vital, nothing is impossible. The challenge, she says, lie in securing this collaboration. This is because the vital seeks it’s own satisfaction. So there! It appears that the vital sets everything in motion to attain something it desires, for its own satisfaction. But then The Mother explains, that the vital has a special capacity. It is often captivated by something spectacular, something noble, extraordinary, “exceedingly but splendidly beautiful -  and it can be carried away by it..”. Mother says that the nature of the vital is such that it would want the same spectacular, the same splendid, for itself. And here comes the hallmark of the vital, in the Mother’s words: “It begins by an ambition, it ends with a consecration.”. The converse, however, is true of the vital too. When placed in an ugly environment, filled with violence and things less beautiful, it also gets influenced and emulates the ugliness, the violence.

The beauty of the vital, in comparison to the other planes is that it does not calculate. This quality accounts for its giving itself wholeheartedly without calculation to that which appeals to it. On one end, it offers itself to dire forces and on the other pole, it can equally offer itself to the Highest, without questions, with total consecration.

For this reason, Mother calls it a ‘very precious instrument’, an instrument needing to be perfected. This perfecting is what is envisioned in vital education. An important beginning here is sense education. The sense organs are given emphasis and each is sought out for its own special development in sensitivity, precision and consciousness. It is this consciousness, Mother says, that “transmutes everything” perceived by the senses. For more from The Mother on Vital Education, see pages 5 and 6 of this edition and the continuation in next months’ edition.

This is a special month. We look forward to The Mother’s 136th Birth Anniversary with quiet joy. There is a joyful anticipation in the air. Here in Singapore, quiet undercurrents are felt as members make preparations for Mahaprasad for the 21st. Silently too, in each of us, this special birthday will herald a new dawn.