Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo

Mind and the Witness Consciousness

Perhaps a more significant difference in the perspectives of Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo regarding the role of mind in spiritual life pertains to the witness consciousness. As stated earlier in this chapter, in Eckhart's view, to be identified with the mind is to be in a stare of unconsciousness; it is a state in which one is not present. Therefore, when one is identified with the mind, one does not have a

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witness consciousness. However, as stared in the previous chapter, there is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a witness consciousness in the mind, also, for he distinguishes two parts of consciousness at each level— physical, vital, mental. One part of consciousness—called Prakriti or Nature—is the part that is active and involved, and is relatively unconscious. The other part—called Purusha, Person or Soul—is the part that stands back as a Witness. Thus there is a witness consciousness at each level—physical, vital, mental. As the Mother explains in answer to a question asked by a student regarding the meaning of "the mental witness" spoken of by Sri Aurobindo:

There are witnesses everywhere. It is a capacity of the being to detach itself, to stand back and look at what is happening, as when one looks at something happening in the street or when one looks at others playing and does not himself play, one remains seated, looking at the others moving but does not move. That's how it is.

In all the parts of the being there is one side which can do this: put itself at the back, remain quiet and look, without participating. This is what is called the witness. One has many witnesses inside oneself, and often one is a witness without even being aware of it. And if you develop this, it always gives you the possibility of being quiet and not being affected by things. One detaches oneself from them, looks at them as at a dramatic scene, without participating in it.⁴²

In Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought, the previously mentioned Sankhya distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is expressed in terms of the inner (or true) being and the outer or surface being. As Sri Aurobindo states:

There are always two different consciousnesses in the human being, one outward in which he ordinarily lives, the other inward and concealed of which he knows nothing.⁴³

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There are, we might say, two beings in us, one on the surface, our ordinary exterior mind, life, body consciousness, another behind the veil, an inner mind, an inner life, an inner physical consciousness constituting another or inner self.⁴⁴

It is the inner mind just mentioned—which is perhaps what some Zen Masters call "Zen mind" or the "deeper mind"—that is the witness in the mind. To requote Sri Aurobindo from the previous chapter (p. 72):

Even the mind can do that-—a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the mental energy⁴⁵ doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all int rospection is based upon the fact that one can so divide oneself into a consciousness that observes and an energy that acts. These are quite elementary things supposed to be known to everybody. Anybody can do that merely by a little practice; anybody who observes his own thoughts, feelings, actions, has begun doing it already. In yoga we make the division complete, that is all.

It is the inner mind—the mental Purusha—that can stand back as a witness and observe the outer being, which, as previously stated, is chiefly ruled by the viral nature (desires and emotions), and thereby arrive at detachment, freedom, and joy. As Sri Aurobindo states:

... the mental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to say "I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional passions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the sensational and emotional mind." The mind then draws back from its emotions and becomes

with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing mind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at their unreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and loses himself in the play.⁴⁶

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