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Vital Education

Of all education, vital education is perhaps the most important, the most indispensable.
Yet it is rarely taken up and pursued with discernment and method. There are several
reasons for this: first, the human mind is in a state of great confusion about this particular
subject; secondly, the undertaking is very difficult and to be successful in it one must have
endless endurance and persistence and a will that no failure can weaken.

Indeed, the vital in man’s nature is a despotic and exacting tyrant. Moreover, since it is the
vital which holds power, energy, enthusiasm, effective dynamism, many have a feeling of
timorous respect for it and always try to please it. But it is a master that nothing can satisfy
and its demands are without limit. Two ideas which are very wide-spread, especially in
the West, contribute towards making its domination more sovereign. One is that the chief
aim of life is to be happy; the other that one is born with a certain character and that
it is impossible to change it. The first idea is a childish deformation of a very profound
truth: that all existence is based upon delight of being and without delight of being there
would be no life. But this delight of being, which is a quality of the Divine and therefore
unconditioned, must not be confused with the pursuit of pleasure in life, which depends
largely upon circumstances. The conviction that one has the right to be happy leads, as a
matter of course, to the will to “live one’s own life” at any cost. This attitude, by its obscure
and aggressive egoism, leads to every kind of conflict and misery, disappointment and
discouragement, and very often ends in catastrophe.

In the world as it is now the goal of life is not to secure personal happiness, but to awaken
the individual progressively to the Truth-consciousness.

The second idea arises from the fact that a fundamental change of character demands
an almost complete mastery over the subconscient and a very rigorous disciplining of

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