“This terrestrial evolutionary working of Nature from Matter to Mind and beyond it has a double process: there is an outward visible process of physical evolution with birth as its machinery, – for each evolved form of body housing its own evolved power of consciousness is maintained and kept in continuity by heredity; there is, at the same time, an invisible process of soul evolution with rebirth into ascending grades of form and consciousness as its machinery. The first by itself would mean only a cosmic evolution; for the individual would be a quickly perishing instrument, and the race, a more abiding collective formulation, would be the real step in the progressive manifestation of the cosmic ...

This talk is based upon Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, “Physical Consciousness, etc.”. This evening the reading ends with the following lines:

“The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever… All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.”

Is an emotion always a vital movement?

It depends on the emotion and it also depends on what you call an emotion. For example, there is a state where, if you find yourself in the presence of a very precise, very clear psychic movement, a distinctly psychic movement − this happens quite often − the emotion is so powerful that tears come to your eyes. You are not sad, you are not happy, neither one nor the other; it doesn’t correspond to any particular feeling, but it is an intensity of emotion which comes from something that is clearly, precisely psychic.