MENTAL HEALTH AND YOGA
"There is a psychological health just as there is
a physical health."
The Mother
"It is only by a change - not a mere readjustment -
of man's present nature that it can be developed, and such a change is not
possible except by yoga."
SRI AUROBINDO
PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTURBANCES
A MODEL BASED ON SRI AUROBINDO'S YOGA
"...nor a single person is normal, because
to be
normal is to be divine."1
THE MOTHER
Since, as Sri Aurobindo has stated, "Yoga is nothing
but practical psychology",2 resolving the psychological
problems inherent in human nature is the crux of the practice of yoga. As such,
yoga necessarily deals with psychological disturbances - the subject-matter of
clinical psychology and psychiatry. The purpose of this essay is to explain the
nature of psychological disturbances from the viewpoint of Sri Aurobindo's
psychological thought implicit in his Integral Yoga. In doing so, we will draw
mostly from specific references in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
bearing on the subject.
An understanding of the nature of psychological
disturbances from the standpoint of Integral Yoga may be approached from the
description of the state of psychological health contained in the following
message given by the Mother for newcomers to Sri Aurobindo International
University Centre (now called Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education):
"Some of them come with a mental aspiration, either
to serve or to learn; others come in the hope of doing yoga, of finding the
Divine and uniting with Him; finally there are those who want to devote
themselves entirely to the divine work upon earth. All of them
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come impelled by their psychic being, which wants to lead
them towards self-realisation. They come with their psychic in front and ruling
their consciousness; they have a psychic contact with people and things.
Everything seems beautiful and good to them, their health improves, their
consciousness grows more luminous; they feel happy, peaceful and safe; they
think that they have reached their utmost possibility of consciousness. This
peace and fullness and joy given by the psychic contact they naturally find everywhere,
in everything and everybody. It gives an openness towards the true
consciousness pervading here and working out everything. So long as the
openness is there, the peace, the fullness and the joy remain with their
immediate results of progress, health and fitness in the physical, quietness
and goodwill in the vital, clear understanding and broadness in the mental and
a general feeling of security and satisfaction."3
Two points may be noted in the above-quoted description
of the state of psychological well-being. First, well-being is described in
terms of states of the body, the vital and the mind: "...health and
fitness in the physical, quietness and goodwill in the vital, clear
understanding and broadness in the mental and a general feeling of security and
satisfaction." Secondly, such a state of psychological health is ascribed
to the fact that the psychic is in front and rules the consciousness, as a
result of which there is a psychic contact with people and things.
Before stating the implications of what has just been
said, it is necessary to explain some of the less familiar terms used above.
Whereas terms such as "mind", "vital",
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"physical" and "psychic" are not new,
they have special meanings in the language of Integral Yoga.
In ordinary usage, "mind" has a rather vague
and too broad a connotation: anything that does not clearly pertain to the body
is often conceived to be related to the mind. Thus all processes of thinking,
feeling and willing (cognition, affection and volition, as they are termed in
psychology) are ascribed to the mind. But in the language of Integral Yoga,
"mind" refers to that part of the human being which has to do solely
with cognitive functions and processes. Feeling or affection is regarded as
pertaining to the vital, whereas will or volition can be either mental or
vital. Sri Aurobindo clarifies the distinction between the mind and the vital
as follows:
"The 'Mind' in the ordinary use of the word covers
indiscriminately the whole consciousness, for man is a mental being and
mentalises everything; but in the language of this yoga the words
"mind" and "mental" are used to connote specially the part
of the nature which has to do with cognition and intelligence, with ideas, with
mental or thought perceptions, the reactions of thought to things, with the
truly mental movements and formations, mental vision and will, etc., that are
part of his intelligence. The vital has to be carefully distinguished from
mind, even though it has a mind element transfused into it; the vital is the
Life-nature made up of desires, sensations, feelings, passions, energies of
action, will of desire, reactions of the desire-soul in man and of all that
play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc.,
that belong to this field of the nature. Mind and vital
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are mixed up on the surface of the consciousness, but
they are quite separate forces in themselves and as soon as one gets behind the
ordinary surface consciousness one sees them as separate, discovers their
distinction and can with the aid of this knowledge analyse their surface
mixtures."4
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