Page 41 - NAMAH-Jan-2024

Namah Individualisation in Integral Yoga Psychology

Vital Ego though she moulds on one general plan, she
insists always on an infinite variation. [...]
Subjectively, within our human mould, Human nature is one in its constituents and
the vital movements are experienced as its grand lines, but no two human beings
sensations seeking pleasure, instinctive are precisely alike in their temperament,
reactions, impulses, drives like hunger characteristics and psychological substance
and sex, desires, and greater impulsions to (6).”
conquer and expand our territories, or to feel
intimacy and deep connections with fellow Every social grouping has its particular vital
beings and emotional bonding that builds temperament, characteristic and psychological
families and clans. It operates through the substance and when you are born into a social
duality of pleasure and pain, attractions and context, unconsciously and habitually you
repulsions, and likes and dislikes. There inherit these formations. The vital ego is
is a pattern of behaviour, specific ways of formed within this framework, providing
responding to sensations, impulses, drives, a distinct sense of separation of one group
desires and emotions. A predictable pattern from another and one individual from
of such behaviour is considered as the unique another within a group. Territoriality is
character or temperament of an individual or a hallmark of this particular domain; the
a community. The behaviour of this part of our vital ego has a vaster extension than the
being is quite close to that of animals, largely boundary of the individual body and its
unconscious and habitual, following the herd. physical ego.
Vital energy is universal and it animates
all life on earth, bringing self-drive and Mental Ego
purposeful locomotion with adaptive intelligent
behaviour, governed by instinctive intelligence
specific to a type or subtype but always with
endless variation.

“The natural variation of human communities
from each other proceeds on the same plan as
the variation of individuals; each develops its
own character, variant principle, natural law.
This variation and fundamental following of its
own separate law is necessary to its life, but it
is equally necessary to the healthy total life of
mankind (5).” When you take birth in a specific social
context, you are not only inheriting the
Nature operates on the foundation of unity heredity of the parental lineage and the vital
and oneness but generates endless variety at temperaments of the social group, but you
every stage of her evolution. are also inheriting the mental formations of
the society. All cultures and subcultures have
“Her secret is clear enough from the fact that their worldviews and narratives concerning

41