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The vital...is a thing of desires,impulses, force-pushes, emotions, sensations, seekings after life fulfillment, possession and enjoyment; these are its functions and its nature;- it is that part of us which seeks after life and its movements for their own sake and it does not want to leave hold of them if they bring it suffering as well as or more than pleasure; it is capable luxuriating in tears and suffering as part of the drama of life. What then is there a common between the thinking Intelligence and the vital and why should the latter obey the mind not follow its own nature? The disobedience is perfectly normal instead of being, as Augustine suggests, unintelligible.Of course, man can establish a mental control over his vital and in so far as he does it he is a man- because the thinking mind is a nobler and more enlightened entity and consciousness than the vital and ought, therefore, to rule and, the mental wale is strong, can rule. But this rule is precarious, incomplete and held only by much self-discipline. For if the mind Is more enlightened, the vital is nearer to the earth, more intense, vehement, more directly able to touch the body. There is too a vital mind which lives by imagination, thoughts of desire, will to act and enjoy from its own impulse and this is able to seize on the reason itself and make it its auxiliary and its justifying counsel and supplier of pleas and excuses. There is also the sheer force of Desire in man which is the vital’s principal support and strong enough to sweep off the reason, as the Gita says, “like a boat on stormy waters”...
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p29</ref>
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Most people live in the vital. That means they live in their desires, sensations, emotional feelings, vital imaginations and see and experience and judge everything from that point of view. It is the vital that moves them, the mind being at its service, not its master. In Yoga also many people do sadhana from that plane and their experience is full of vital visions, formations, experiences of all kinds, but there is no mental clarity or order, neither do they rise above the mind. It is only the minority of men who live in the mind or in the psychic or try to live in the spiritual plane.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-nature-of-the-vital#p3</ref>
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In the ordinary life people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex, etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or insists to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard of morality or rule of conduct. Here, on the contrary, as in all spiritual life, the conquest and complete mastery of these things is demanded.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/morality-and-yoga#p6</ref>