Emotional Being

Our emotions are the waves of reaction and response which rise up from the basic consciousness. Their action too is largely regulated by habit and an emotive memory.¹

The term higher vital is confined to that larger movement of the conscious life-force which is concerned with creation, with power and force and conquest, with giving and self-giving and gathering from the world for farther action and expenditure of power, throwing itself out in the wider movements of life, responsive to the greater objects of Nature.²

Higher vital usually refers to the vital mind and emotive being.³

This higher vital with all its parts is situated in the chest and has the cardiac centre as its main stronghold governing all this part down to the navel.⁴

Emotions are normally vital in character and not part of the psychic nature. Emotional being belongs to the most subtle part of the vital. The psychic is a steady flame that burns in you, soaring towards the Divine and carrying with it a sense of strength which breaks down all oppositions.⁵⁶⁷

In the ascetic Yoga all human feelings are regarded as illusory and have to disappear—so as to leave only the one supreme aspiration. In this Yoga the emotional being has not to be got rid of, but to undergo a transformation; the shortest way of transformation is to turn all the being to the Divine.⁸

When you are in connection with the higher worlds above the mental, with the mental and the psychic or even with some of the higher vital planes, then there is the peace and Ananda—but connection with the lower vital worlds can easily bring disturbance and unrest, so long as your vital itself is not changed and made full of peace and strength and quiet.⁹

Peace brings an inner stability. It should be called into the higher vital by aspiration and a quiet will and also rejecting movements that are not turned to the Divine.¹⁰

Concentration and aspiration in the heart which opens the inner emotional being. It must be done persistently without any trace of doubt. Aspiration should be for peace, calm, equanimity in the emotional being.¹¹¹²

Equality means self-mastery over the vital movements, anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest, not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit..¹³

One must develop a power to reject and refuse suggestions by hostile forces. Identification with them will be harmful, they must be regarded as something alien that must be rejected.¹⁴¹⁵