Chapter 47The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness · The Vital Nature

The emotional being is itself a part of the vital.

* The heart is the centre of the emotional being and the emo-tions are vital movements. When the heart is purified, the vital emotions change into psychic feelings or else psychicised vital movements.

* The heart is part of the vital — it has to be controlled in the same way as the rest, by rejection of the wrong movements, by acceptance of the true psychic surrender which prevents all demand and clamour, by calling in the higher light and knowledge. It is not usually however the heart that bothers about mental questions and the answer to them.

* Pure and true thoughts and emotions and impulsions can rise from the human mind, heart and vital, because all is not evil there. The heart may be unpurified, but that does not mean that everything in it is impure.

* I make the distinction [between emotions and lower vital move-ments] by noting where these things rise from. Anger, fear, jealousy touch the heart no doubt just as they touch the mind but they rise from the navel region and entrails (i.e. the lower or at highest the middle vital). Stevenson has a striking passage in Kidnapped where the hero notes that his fear is felt primarily not in the heart but the stomach. Love, hope have their primary seat in the heart, so with pity etc.

Above the heart is the vital mind — sense and the rising of