Question: Is there any difference between emotion and the vital?

Sri Chinmoy: Emotion and the vital are two different things. You can say that the vital is the house and in that house emotion is the tenant. The most predominant emotion is the vital emotion. But emotion can also be in the body, in the mind and in the heart. Emotion in the body usually degrades our consciousness. Emotion in the impure heart blinds and binds us, while emotion in the pure heart illumines us and liberates us. In the mind there is some emotion, but the mind is by nature dry and it does not have the exuberant or uncontrolled, childlike or childish emotion of the vital. When we say, “He is an emotional fellow,” we are referring to his undisciplined and unillumined vital emotion. This emotion usually originates in the two centres below the navel centre.

Some of you disappoint me very badly with your emotional vital problems. Please try to purify your vital world. I will be most proud of each of you the moment I see the purification of your vital. I shall be bloated with divine pride because my spiritual children are really pure.

If there is no effort to transform the vital emotional life into the purest spiritual life, then all your spiritual activities will be a kind of self-deception, and in self-deception there is no God-realisation. Many so-called aspirants feel that they can deceive their spiritual Master. They pretend to be the purest virgins and the most complete celibates. But God has given the true spiritual Masters a third eye which is fully open. They are always aware of the aspirants’ imperfections and shortcomings.

If you can transform your vital emotions into divine joy, this divine emotion is not bad. When you use your emotions for enjoyment or self-indulgence, then you are ruining your inner life. But if you use it for inner determination, for self-liberation, then emotion is the strongest power in you. Please use it in this way, as your inner assistant.