... as they are called in the terminology of the Sankhya philosophy, Purusha and Prakriti;—Purusha, that which lies concealed in the Vast of universal existence, Prakriti, active or operative energy thrown forward from the concealed spiritual source. The whole of Evolution spiritual, psychical, material, is the result of Purusha and Prakriti acting upon each other; the three evolutions are really one, coincident... presence of Purusha and Prakriti together, says Sankhya, that can alone account for cosmic evolution. Page 258 Vedanta agrees and emphasizes what Sankhya briefly assumes,—that Purusha & Prakriti are themselves merely aspects, obverse and reverse sides, of a single Supreme entity or Self of Things. Buddhism, still more trenchant, does away with the reality of Purusha and Prakriti altogether... Universal Evolution; Prakriti in action is its eternal motion, mutability, multiplicity. Sankhya does not go beyond this conclusion which it finds sufficient for its purposes; it considers Purusha and Prakriti to be both ultimate eternal entities in the Supreme Reality and their propinquity a satisfactory explanation of the Universe. Vedic philosophy, going deeper, was driven both by philosophical ...
... dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle Page 93 of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatar of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual ... Mundaka Upanishad, (III. 1.1,2,3) and also in Shwetashwatara Upanishad (IV.5, 6,7,10). Since this parable forms the basis of the Gita's insistence and development of the distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, it would be extremely useful to study the relevant verses in their original formulation. These verses are as follows, which are taken from the Mundaka Upanishad: 'Two birds, beautiful... immobile. The Purusha is, however, conceived in the Sankhya as a witness of Prakriti or Nature by virtue of reflection and the giver of the sanction, sāksī and anumantā. According to the Sankhya, Purusha and Prakriti co-exist, and they are the dual cause of the universe, a passive Consciousness and an active Energy. Indeed, there are certainly plenty of things in the world, which the Sankhya does not ...
... A Greater Psychology 9 Purusha and Prakriti: Soul and Nature Soul and Nature ...we have to begin with a dualism of the thing and its shadow, Purusha and Prakriti, commonly called spirit and matter. Properly speaking, the distinction is illusory, since there is nothing which is exclusively spirit or exclusively matter, nor can the Universe be strictly... eventually to obey. Early found to be true in our subjective experience, this ultimate principle of things is eventually discovered by the Yogin to determine even objective phenomena. The Purusha and Prakriti are therefore not only the Witness and the Activity witnessed, but the Lord and his executive energy. The Purusha is Ishwara, the Prakriti is His Shakti. Their play with each other is both... and habit and we must strive constantly with ourselves and surrounding circumstances to make the least advance or self-amelioration. There seems to be a dual being in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to be half in agreement, half at odds, Nature laying its mechanical control on the soul, the soul attempting to change and master nature. And the question is what is the fundamental ...
... Reason, which normally tends to follow the principle of parsimony, it omitted the integral richness of the nature of Purusha and Prakriti that one can Page 30 find in the above verses, and it retained only two principles to be ultimate and unborn, namely, Purusha and Prakriti. The intellectual exposition of the Sankhya begins with the statement of two ultimate principles of existence... state of sādharmyam. In the last six chapters (XIII - XVIII), the entire synthesis of yoga of the Gita is reviewed from a special standpoint, — the standpoint of the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti, and the precise relations between the supreme Page 23 Purusha (Purushottama),¹¹ the immutable Self (Akshara Purusha),¹² and the mobile Self (Kshara Purusha), as also the intimate... sanction, even though his giving of sanction is passive, and later on, when he withdraws the sanction, his withdrawing of sanction is also another passivity. It is the interrelationship between Purusha and Prakriti which is the cause of the universe, — the relationship between the passive Consciousness and the active Energy. According to Sankhya, when Prakriti begins to manifest, there is first the ...
... all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation." 1 Apparently, Purusha and Prakriti seem to be two different and distinct Principles. Not only that: in the ordinary status of conscious existence, the action and influence of Prakriti seem to be deleterious to the progress... all his observing and mandatory consciousness as the whole support and sense of her creative purpose." 2 But why is this so ? Because, in their essential nature and original aspect, Purusha and Prakriti arise from the being of divine Sachchidananda. As a matter of fact, "Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha: the Power of self-aware existence... Sat is the Being, the Purusha, Chit is the conscious executive force or Prakriti and Ananda is the halo and aroma of their indissoluble union. But this essential unity and union of Purusha and Prakriti are not overtly realised on the lower planes of existence, the lower planes of manifestation of the Spirit. The true intrinsic relation has been perverted there and a pragmatic division and ...
... complete liberation and mastery. We have always to keep in mind the two great doctrines which stand behind all the Gita's teachings with regard to the soul and Nature,—the Sankhya truth of the Purusha and Prakriti corrected and completed by the Vedantic truth of the threefold Purusha and the double Prakriti of which the lower form is the Maya of the three gunas and the higher is the divine nature and... all the fever of thy soul passed away from thee,"— nirāśīr nirmamo bhūtvā . Page 215 This view of our being starts from the Sankhya analysis of the dual principle in our nature, Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha is inactive, akartā ; Prakriti is active, kartrī : Purusha is the being full of the light of consciousness; Prakriti is the Nature, mechanical, reflecting all her works in the conscious... better, perilous is it to follow an alien law." What is precisely meant by this svadharma we have to wait to see until we get to the more elaborate disquisition in the closing chapters about Purusha and Prakriti and the gunas; but certainly it does not mean that we are to follow any impulse, even though evil, which what we call our nature dictates to us. For between these two verses the Gita throws ...
... the Lord and Knower, master of knowledge and will, jñāta īśvaraḥ . He is the supreme cause of the action of Prakriti, the supreme cause of its withdrawal from action. In the Sankhya analysis Purusha and Prakriti in their dualism are the cause of the cosmos; in this synthetic Sankhya Purusha by his Prakriti is the cause of the cosmos. We see at once how far we have travelled from the rigid purism of... while in others it remains under the delusion of bondage? These are difficulties which cannot be passed by without a solution. The Gita answers them in its later chapters by an analysis of Purusha and Prakriti which brings in new elements very proper to a Vedantic Yoga, but alien to the traditional Sankhya. It speaks of three Purushas or rather a triple status of the Purusha. The Upanishads in dealing... and no others? Yes, says the divine Teacher in effect, that is a perfectly valid account for the apparent operations of the cosmic Prakriti with its three gunas, and the relation attributed to Purusha and Prakriti there is also quite valid and of great use for the practical purposes of the involution and the withdrawal. But this is only the lower Prakriti of the three modes, the inconscient, the apparent; ...
... The Yoga of Self-Perfection The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XVI The Divine Shakti The relation between the Purusha and Prakriti which emerges as one advances in the Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully in this part of the Yoga. In the spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of being... mechanism and habit and we must strive constantly with ourselves and surrounding circumstances to make the least advance or self-amelioration. There seems to be a dual being in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to be half in agreement, half at odds, Nature laying its mechanical control on the soul, the soul attempting to change and master nature. And the question is what is the fundamental character... aware soon of a far higher power of the Spirit and its Shakti concealed or above, superconscient to mind or partially acting through the mind, of which all this is an inferior derivation. The Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind ...
... psychic being behind the outer being and the inner being and supporting them both is also a Purusha (Fig. 3). Purusha Prakriti figure 3. Purusha and Prakriti Explaining the nature of Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo writes: The Being is one throughout, but on each plane of Nature, it is represented by a form of itself which is proper to that plane, the... comes forward and begins first to influence and then govern the actions of the instrumental nature that man begins to overcome vital desire and grow towards a divine nature. 22 Purusha and Prakriti Developing the concepts of the Sankhya philosophy, Sri Aurobindo distinguishes between the soul or spirit side of the Being called Purusha (Person or Conscious Being), which is the ...
... 317 transpersonal, definitions of, 390-91 yoga, nature and methods of, 303-13 Purusha, 4, 15, 131, 133, 134, 384 See also Conscious being; Purusha and Prakriti Purusha and Prakriti, 96-107, 345- 47; see also Purusha; Prakriti Rajas, 108, 110-15 passim changed into tapas, 118 Ramakrishna, 229 Realisation, meaning of, 171 ... Physical (being, outer, surface), the, 67-71, 337 vital-physical, 64 Prajna, 23, 209, 215, 297 Prakriti, 86, 384 higher and lower, 106 See also Nature; Purusha and Prakriti Psychic, the psychic, see Psychic being use of word "psychic", 89fn Psychical phenomena, 243-49 cf. Clairvoyance; Telepathy Psychical (psychic) consciousness ...
... of an elder son. One day there was an animated discussion on ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’. The younger ones were just not getting the idea. I remembered how in my college days our philosophy professor had tried so desperately to make us understand the concept of ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’. The moment he mentioned ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’ we would immediately think of man and woman and start laughing... faithful love for the Mother always in mind. The Mother kept looking at Nolini-da for a while. Love was overflowing from Her eyes. Then the Mother herself explained the difficult concept of ‘purusha’ and ‘prakriti’ so simply and so beautifully that we could not believe it! And when we went on to read “The Divine Shakti” from Sri Aurobindo’s The Synthesis of Yoga I realised I had finally understood ...
... self-moved delight of existence." 4 The method of Tantra teaches us to draw the divine Shakti to us so she can transform us. The Integral Yoga brings the two poles of reality—Brahman and Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti—together. It does not countenance the mere formulaic mechanics of Tantra nor does it favour the Vedantic rejection of Shakti as a power of illusion that one must overcome. Here Purusha or... the spaces of a divine calm where all is one seamless Ananda. It comes in the line of the Sapthashati, the Devi Bhagavatam. Quite early in the epic, we are introduced to the duo of Purusha and Prakriti as the concept is used in Integral Yoga. Even as Aswapati begins his travels in the occult stair which is an image of his Yoga, he gains the "secret knowledge" which explains to him the truth... bases of the Yoga, through the images of the Shalwa Prince and the Madran Princess, a recurring image in the evolution of earth, the togetherness of the Conscious-Soul and the Nature-Soul, Purusha and Prakriti: O Satyavan, O luminous Savitri, Isent you forth of old beneath the stars, A dual power of God in an ignorant world, In a hedged creation shut from limitless self, ...
... involved itself in the movement in two poises that are necessary for working out its intention in Creation.... This is the dual status taken by the Divine in the Creation - Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti - in order to build it in the full figure of the Truth to be manifested." Here it would appear that "the spirit's descent" is interpreted as the descent of the Spirit during the process... experience. The "descent" here is the opposite of the individual being's ascent, spoken of earlier, to the "heights" of "heavenlier states". And the "twin duality for ever one" does not refer to Purusha and Prakriti in the usual sense but to The formless Power, the Self of eternal Light. A reference to the original creation, the primal descent into the Inconscient, would be an anomaly... Also, the mention of "the twin duality" choosing its home amid "the tumults of the sense" would be pointless because "the tumults of the sense" are surely part of Prakriti. We can't speak of Purusha and Prakriti descending into Prakriti itself! Again, the mention of "He" in the line just following our passage - He comes unseen into our darker parts - would be impossible to account ...
... By development of the inner will it [ the Purusha ] can become active. The Purusha in men is normally passive not active. It is the Prakriti that is active. Page 40 Purusha and Prakriti There is a Purusha or essential being for each plane of the consciousness—just as each has its prakriti (nature, especial force of action and movement), so each has its Purusha, a part of... and impure nature unable to assimilate it and serious perturbations might be the consequence. There is a constant movement (Prakriti) and a constant silence (Purusha). It is the Purusha and Prakriti sides of the nature—one leading to pure conscious existence, static, the other to pure conscious force, dynamic. The past darkness they have come out of is that of ignorance, the future darkness... physical action and not only in the silent soul somewhere inside. You seem to think that action and Prakriti are the same thing and where there is no action there can be no Prakriti! Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers of the being. It is not that Purusha Page 45 = quiescence and Prakriti = action, so that when all is quiescent, there is no Prakriti and when all is active there ...
... all was developed and not cease. The only reason for such a premature end of the sadhana would be that the sadhak is not capable of going farther. Page 19 ACTION OF PURUSHA AND PRAKRITI What do you mean by the individuality of the Prakriti? Prakriti means nature - each person individualises his own nature in the sense that he centres it round his ego and also... being remains detached while the outer is under the action of the gunas, then it is an understandable thing. All nature is Prakriti, not only the outer nature. The difference is between Purusha and Prakriti, not between inner and outer being. Purusha is the still, observing, supporting, creating consciousness. Prakriti is the dynamic side of the being. It is not the inner Purusha only... is left in it for us to distinguish between Prakriti and Purusha? You seem to think that action and Prakriti are the same thing and where there is no action there can be no Prakriti! Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers of the being. It is not that Purusha = quiescence and Prakriti = action, so that when all is quiescent there is no Prakriti and when all is active there is no Purusha. When ...
... is the Vast and Infinite Consciousness. 5. Mother-in-law – ordinary consciousness. 6. Sun and Moon – day and night, the cycle of ordinary consciousness. 7. Purusha and Prakriti in right relation means the victory of the Supreme Consciousness V The world flows fast like a river deep and sombre. On either side muddy banks,... ahead. Do not turn to the right, nor to the left – go forward keeping a watchful eye all around. > IX The solid stake of Dual Consciousness Purusha and Prakriti is broken, . Broken all the bondages that encircle: Kanhu revels drunk with the sweetest wine, He enters Self- born's lotus-grove and attains the calmness; ... containing five j ñā nendriyas and five karmendriyas plus the one above and the one Page 275 below (Purusha and Prakriti); the Vedas also speak of ten sisters. 3. Moon: the being of delight. XXVIII Tier upon tier the hills arise, there ...
... division between Purusha and Prakriti in one sense, is very sharp and so it helps one to get away from the bondage of Prakriti. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, it is categorical. They believe in the two, Purusha and Prakriti, as the final elements. Sankhya and Buddhism were both first understood and appreciated by Europe, – Sankhya because of its sharp distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, which they ...
... been usually characterised by a certain excess of stress and tension. The ancient Vedic balance between Spirit and Matter was soon lost in the subsequent ages, and a cleft was made between Purusha and Prakriti. The transcendence of the Brahman became the exclusive aim of all, or almost all, spiritual seeking, and the intention of the Transcendent in its own immanence in the world was more or less... and "Earth and the manifestation of Spirit in Matter, and the other, intense and exclusive, renouncing life in its intolerant thirst for the Light, and creating a permanent divorce between Purusha and Prakriti, Spirit and Matter, the One and the Many. The Vedic Yoga, grown obsolete and somewhat obscure, survives in some of its lingering vestiges only in some forms of Paurânic Bhakti Yoga and Tantra... integral consummation and have a direct and dynamic bearing upon his spiritual progress: the beginning and the end. The Gitâ .starts with Sânkhyayoga, that is to say, with a separation between Purusha and Prakriti through the instrumentality of the buddhi, the most enlightened part of the human mind; but it seems to be rather a poor and precarious beginning for the realisation of such a stupendously ...
... and concealed, in the cosmic are expressed and realise their infinite quality and capacity. The first of these principles in importance is the duality—which resolves itself into a unity—of Purusha and Prakriti of which we have had occasion to speak in the Yoga of Works, but which is of equal importance for the Yoga of Knowledge. This division was made most clearly by the old Indian philosophies; but... limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and Page 434 delight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully in the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature. Purusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being of Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware existence, whether ...
... chapters on the Mother's relation with Sri Aurobindo and her role in his outer life. There used to be considerable speculation in the early days about their mutual relationship. Was it one of Purusha and Prakriti, Master and disciple or Shiva and Shakti? I was therefore very curious from the start to observe and discern the relationship. I came to the conclusion that it was that of Shiva and Shakti.... like a father and mother, both loving but one indulgent, liberal, large, the other a firm though not inconsiderate disciplinarian. Both are aspects of the one Divine — Impersonal and Personal, Purusha and Prakriti and both have their ineffable charm. Though all were free to ask her questions, it was not always easy to ask them, as the answers instead of having a direct bearing on the questions were sometimes ...
... philosophy has to teach and something more which it cannot give. SATYENDRA: The Sankhya division between Purusha and Prakriti is in one sense sharp and helps one to get away from bondage to Prakriti. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is categorical. They believe in two realities, Purusha and Prakriti, as the final elements. Sankhya and Buddhism were first appreciated by Europe because of their sharp distinction ...
... Part IV: Correspondence with Early Disciples Champaklal's Treasures - Edition-II Correspondence with Punamchand To Punamchand I) Separation of Purusha and Prakriti to establish tranquillity of heart and mind. (a) Separated Purusha, calm, observing Prakriti. (b) Prakriti in the heart and mind attending calmness. II) Offering of all the actions... salvation or Bliss, but for our work this is the means and so as means for the work, I want it and not for anything else personal. In November last a fortnight after I saw you, I felt separation of Purusha and Prakriti once in the dream-state. Once I felt for nearly seven days that all my desires, as they were entering into me, were dissolving calmly as rivers in the ocean. Once I felt the world and all around ...
... and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. All the last terms to which we can reduce the universe, Force and Matter, Name and Form, Purusha and Prakriti, are still not entirely that which the universe really is, either in itself or its nature. As all that we are is the play and form, the mental, psychic, vital and physical expression of a supreme... soul-expression and nature-expression of a supreme Existence which is unconditioned by force and matter, unconditioned by idea and name and form, unconditioned by the fundamental distinction of Purusha and Prakriti. Our supreme Self and the supreme Existence which has become the universe are one Spirit, one self and one existence. The individual is in nature one expression of the universal Being, in spirit ...
... all is brought powerfully back to the original question of Arjuna round which the whole exposition revolves and completes its cycle. Afterwards the Gita proceeds by the differentiation of the Purusha and Prakriti to work out its ideas of the action of the gunas, of the ascension beyond the gunas and of the culmination of desireless works with knowledge where that coalesces with Bhakti,—knowledge, works... source of cosmic existence and its fundamental creative force and effective energy and of which the other lower and ignorant Nature is only a derivation and a dark shadow. In this highest dynamis Purusha and Prakriti are one. Prakriti there is only the will and the executive power of the Purusha, his activity of being,—not a separate entity, but himself in Power. This supreme Prakriti is not merely a ...
... occult mechanisms, which are indeed powerful when rightly used, but which can fall more easily from the clarity of their original intention. In the synthesis of the Vedanta and Tantra, both Purusha and Prakriti are admitted. As a result, the integrating method that is developed is to put our whole conscious being (soul and Prakriti) into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform... starts from the method of Vedanta to arrive at the aim of the Tantra. 5 The Tantra accepts that there are two poles of being whose essential unity is a secret of existence. These two poles are Purusha and Prakriti or Brahman and Shakti. Shakti is the power of Brahman or rather Brahman is Shakti. It is Shakti that has manifested and, at the human level, we experience it as Nature that is seen to be active ...
... subtle and elastic. He has perhaps intellectual vanity and sense of self-sufficiency which may be a great obstacle in his yoga.” He was asked to practise the preliminary step of separating Purusha and Prakriti – the witness self and the active nature. 27-12-1923 The same Sadhaka again had an interview with Sri Aurobindo before his departure. Sri Aurobindo : Have you something... Rajayogi Guru. For this yoga his mind must undergo a radical change. My giving him the yoga at present is out of the question. If he wants to prepare himself he can practise the separation of Purusha and Prakriti. + + + 1-1-1924 Two Tamil brothers of whom, the elder was a pleader, wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo this morning. They claimed to be guided here by the spirit of their eldest brother ...
... Purusha-Prakriti, the ineffable Two-in-One: ...all is their play: This whole wide world is only he and she. 16 Strange is the relationship between purusha and prakriti, like word and meaning: Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet: His breast he offers for her cosmic dance Of which our lives are the quivering theatre... Odysseus of the occult seas— dare to catch the vision of the blessed Isles, to discover "a new mind and body in the city of God". 21 No sleep, no rest, till the goal be reached! Purusha and Prakriti are entangled here together in a mystic embrace, and they are seemingly lost in this cosmic game of play and clash and new creation. 22 He is Being and Becoming both, Becoming in his ...
... is the masterpiece and magnum opus of the age on the epic level. The central idea of this great unfinished poem, the marriage of Siva and Parvati, typified in its original idea the union of Purusha and Prakriti, the supreme Soul and dynamic Nature by which the world is created; but this type of divine legend was used esoterically to typify also the Nature-Soul's search for and attainment of God, and ...
... of spiritual quiescence action of force may seem to disappear in the stillness of the observing or witness consciousness. These two conditions are the two extremes of an apparently separated Purusha and Prakriti, but each at its extreme point does not abolish but at the most only conceals its eternal mate in the depths of its own characteristic way of being. Therefore, since consciousness is always ...
... pleasure of the witnessing conscious Soul that Nature performs it and only by his support that she can maintain it. Therefore it is evident that the Gita's conception of the relations of the Purusha and Prakriti are not the Sankhya's, since the same movement leads to a quite different result, in one case to cessation of works, in the other to a great, a selfless and desireless, a divine action. In the ...
... has to synthetise the Yoga doctrine of liberation by works and the Sankhya doctrine of liberation by knowledge; it has to fuse karma with jñāna . It has at the same time to synthetise the Purusha and Prakriti idea common to Sankhya and Yoga with the Brahmavada of the current Vedanta in which the Purusha, Deva, Ishwara,—supreme Soul, God, Lord,—of the Upanishads all became merged in the one all-swallowing ...
... of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear !14.21! statement of the practical operations ...
... comes to fix on the immaterial and flee from itself in a disgust or a self-forgetting ecstasy, or else to deny its own immortality and take its orientation away from God and towards the animal. Purusha and Prakriti, the passively luminous Soul of the Sankhyas and their mechanically active Energy, have nothing in common, not even their opposite modes of inertia; their antinomies can only be resolved by ...
... y, but yet sufficiently conscious that still, after all, one is not perfect, you see, that things could be better than they are. That's enough! That part can aspire. What is the work of Purusha and Prakriti? Ah! Once again I have to give the impression that I don't know. ( Mother turns to Nolini. ) Nolini, explain this. ( Laughter ) As for me, I understand nothing at all of this, it does not ...
... Interest on Yoga and Practical Life (1921-1938) Autobiographical Notes To and about Punamchand M. Shah [1] To Punamchand I. Separation of Purusha and Prakriti to establish tranquility of heart and mind. (a) Separated Purusha, calm, observing Prakriti. (b) Prakriti in the heart and mind attending calmness. II. Offering of all the actions, ...
... unnecessary delay. Yoga is not taught as in a school. There are no set formal instructions or notebooks; therefore his request cannot be complied with. Suggest to him the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, introspection, rejection of ego and desire wherever he sees it. Also to open to the Divine Shakti. 22 June 1927 Page 593 I was discouraged to learn that you have not yet come ...
... × In the passage of The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 91 ) the Mother had just read, Sri Aurobindo expounds the traditional distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, the Master of Nature and Nature, and describes the different stages of immersion of the Master of Nature in Nature, or of the soul in the activities of the world; then he shows the traditional ...
... longer understood or effective. We may note also in passing that the Indian ideal of the relation between man and woman has always been governed by the symbolism of the relation between the Purusha and Prakriti (in the Veda Nri and Gna), the male and female divine Principles in the universe. Even, there is to some degree a practical correlation between the position of the female sex and this idea. ...
... THE THREEFOLD PURUSHA [Gita XV. 16, 17. See also XIII passim.] Atman represents itself to the consciousness of the creature in three states, dependent on the relations between Purusha and Prakriti, the Soul and Nature. These three states are Akshara, unmoving or immutable; Kshara, moving or mutable; and Para or Uttama, Supreme or Highest. Kshara Purusha is the Self reflecting the changes ...
... our solutions of our problem. We are perplexed by the appearance of an antinomy; we set soul Page 327 against Nature, the spirit against his creative energy. But Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, are two eternal lovers who possess their perpetual unity and enjoy their constant difference, and in the unity abound in the passion of the multitudinous play of their difference, and in every ...
... aspects a cosmic and even a divine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Ishwara and the Shakti and without it there could be no world-creation or manifestation of the world-principle of Purusha and Prakriti which are both necessary for the creation, necessary too in their association and interchange for the play of its psychological working and in their manifestation as soul and Nature fundamental ...
... the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.) 2) The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is according to the Sankhya System—the Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti—Prakriti is the force of Nature which one feels as doing all the actions ...
... of consciousness, but does not come home to the mind, the other in which it is vivid and the very nature of the soul's view of things. The Ishwara is not as often before Krishna or Kali, Purusha and Prakriti, in the individual, but the Lilamaya impartially in all, Krishna with Kali in the purusha, Kali with Krishna in the stri . The prema-kama is normalising itself in the same way,—in two ways ...
... movement. The Self and Life It is always possible to have realisations of a kind on the mentalspiritual plane even if the vital is still impure. There is a sort of separation of the mental Purusha and Prakriti which results in a knowledge that has no transforming effect on the life. But the theory of these Yogis is that one has to know the Self; life and what one does in life do not matter. Have you ...
... ce of the play of the Forces and its relation with the self, the action of the Guide, what is behind the appearance of things, occurrences etc. etc., the actual relations of the workings of Purusha and Prakriti etc. The Divine Truth is the truth of the divine Essence, Consciousness, Self-Knowledge, Light, Power, Bliss. It is something from which the cosmos derives with all its movements, but it is ...
... But once the presence of a symbolism is established, it is probable that the father and mother are also part of the symbolism and, as they very often do, represent what might be called the Purusha and Prakriti of that particular kingdom. If it is an actual encounter, it must be with some part of their vital selves which is in sympathy with or representative of this domain, not with the actual persons ...
... in terms of place, time or difference, but the Brahman knowable by Yoga, the luminous shadow of the One put forth by the Shakti of the One, which by dividing itself into the Male and Female, Purusha and Prakriti, has created this world of innumerable forms and names. Brahman is spoken of as the Lord; that is, we best think of Him as the Ruler & Sovran of the Universe. He is the still ocean of spiritual ...
... four divine principles, his three feet or three legs the three human principles, mentality, vital dynamism and material substance, his two heads the double consciousness of Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, his seven hands the seven natural activities corresponding to the seven principles. "Triply bound"—bound in the mind, bound in the life-energies, bound in the body—"the Bull roars aloud; great ...
... honey-wine of an eternal Ananda. Page 220 × Ishwara-Shakti is not quite the same as Purusha-Prakriti; for Purusha and Prakriti are separate powers, but Ishwara and Shakti contain each other. Ishwara is Purusha who contains Prakriti and rules by the power of the Shakti within him. Shakti is Prakriti ensouled by Purusha ...
... Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supra mental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis Page 293 of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium ...
... which brings with it all the train of the dualities, life and death, good and evil, joy and pain, completeness and want, the fruit of a divided being. This is the fruit which Adam and Eve, Purusha and Prakriti, the soul tempted by Nature, have eaten. The redemption comes by the recovery of the universal in the individual and of the spiritual term in the physical consciousness. Then alone the soul ...
... and its oneness with the Prakriti and will enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti. All the gnostic evolution opens up into the divine principle of Ananda, which is the foundation of the fullness of spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda or eternal Brahman ...
... at most receives or reflects that which is true, divine and eternal; the gnostic soul reaches a true identity, possesses the spirit and power of the truth-Nature. In the gnosis the dualism of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature, two separate powers complementary to each other, the great truth of the Sankhyas founded on the practical Page 501 truth of our present natural existence, disappears ...
... But the Spirit, Self or Being determines the world it lives in and the experiences of its consciousness, force and delight in that world by some poise—among many possible—of the relations of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature,—some basic poise in one or other of its own cosmic principles. Poised in the principle of Matter, it becomes the physical self of a physical universe in the reign of a physical ...
... The Synthesis of Yoga Chapter XVIII The Soul and Its Liberation We have now to pause and consider to what this acceptance of the relations of Purusha and Prakriti commits us; for it means that the Yoga which we are pursuing has for end none of the ordinary aims of humanity. It neither accepts our earthly existence as it is, nor can be satisfied with some ...
... uplifting them out of the established groove in which our life goes spinning, we have to perceive that the Spirit has based all its workings upon two twin aspects of its being, Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti. We have to treat them as different and diverse in power,—for in practice of consciousness this difference is valid,—although they are only two sides of the same reality, pole and pole of the ...
... suggest that the biological division or a species into two sexes is some kind of representation of a twofold basic reality of being. Within each of us, spiritual experience reveals a twofoldness - Purusha and Prakriti, being and becoming, self and nature. In spiritual knowledge the creative world-principle is seen to be biune - Ishwara-Shakti - a two-in-one put forth from the Oneness in which manyness lies ...
... vitality-stuff and matter-stuff, this true psyche here below makes a projection of itself into them, a projection which gets steeped in their tones. Now, all existence has a biune reality - Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. Wherever consciousness plays, this biune reality is present in one form or another, openly concordant or apparently divided. We have thus in the realm of ...
... and self-sufficient in its eternal existence, sometimes called the Silent Brahman; but there was also the duality in the Active Brahman, the self-manifesting Divine, of Ishwara and Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti. A Gnostic text from the second century CE has the Great Mother say in words which echo the Vedic scriptures: It is I who am the offspring of what gave birth to me [what gave birth to her ...
... though variously named and described. We find her in Isis, Cybele, Sophia, and the Virgin Mary. She is the One who became Two – the active Brahman from eternity divided into Ishwara and Shakti, Purusha and Prakriti. On the Origin of the World , a gnostic text from around 200 CE, defines her in terms which, if properly understood, agree with those of the Vedantic scriptures: It is I who am the offspring ...
... scheme the triple act of the One. 23 A fourth variety of this style is seen in Book I Canto 4 (The Secret Knowledge) where Sri Aurobindo describes the play of the Two in One, of Purusha and Prakriti, Being and Becoming. Here the difficulty is not one of language, but of the thought itself which is paradoxical and subtly metaphysical: There are Two who are One and play in many worlds; ...
... improper action and movement. Another action becomes possible, commences, grows, culminates, a working more truly right, more luminous, natural and normal to the deepest divine interplay of Purusha and Prakriti although supernatural and supernormal to our present imperfect nature. The body conditioning the physical mind insists no longer on its tamasic inertia that repeats always the same ignorant ...
... elements of knowledge relating to the objects and methods of yoga, particularly in connection with liberation of the soul and attainment of perfection, is connected with the distinction between Purusha and Prakriti. In the synthesis of yoga that we find in the Gita, this distinction is of pivotal importance, and although its roots are to be found in the Veda and the Upanishads, the clarity and complexity ...
... Page 44 "The first answer is : 'They belong to Universal Nature, Prakriti.' "But the higher answer is obtained when the Gita points out that Prakriti ever acts for the Soul, Purusha. And Prakriti itself offers the sacrifice of all its works to Purusha. "Hence, it follows that we should offer our actions not to Prakriti but to the Soul. "But what is the Soul? Is it the individual ...
... lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatara of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual ...
... the animal. The animal lives as if satisfied with what Nature has done for it; but it is man who first makes this upward gaze consciously his own business. In the Indian terms of the play of Purusha and Prakriti, it can be said that man is no longer, like the animal, an undeveloped conscious being or Purusha entirely driven by Prakriti, a slave of the executive Force, played with by the mechanical energies ...
... and its oneness with the Prakriti and will enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with God and the universe and beings in the universe in the highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha and Prakriti." 66 Gnostic Evolution into Divine Ananda and Brahmic Consciousness Finally, — this is the sixth element of perfection, — the individual by virtue of his Gnostic evolution into ...
... of the human mind and body? And his last questions demand a clear distinction between renunciation of works and this subtler renunciation he is asked to prefer; the actual difference between Purusha and Prakriti, the Field and the Knower of the Field, so important for the practice of desireless action under the drive of the divine Will; and finally a clear statement of the practical operations and results ...
... different in certain essentials from other methods which go by the same name. According to the old method we have to select the intellect, the emotion or the will or to difierenciate between Purusha and Prakriti, the conscious Soul and Nature. By that we arrive at an Infinite of Knowledge, an all-Loving and all-Beautiful Supreme or an Infinite Impersonal Will, Or the Silent Brahman beyond our mind ...
... enter a woman and live and fulfil itself or exhaust there; and the masculine part of a woman also can identify itself with its type and pattern in a man. The difference, however, between Purusha and Prakriti, philosophically, seems to be very definite and clear; but in actuality, when they take form and embodiment, it is not easy to define the principles or qualities that mark out the two. At the ...
... to the ordinary nature and tries to master the movements of nature from the mental consciousness helped, if possible, by prayer. He has hardly even a cursory acquaintance with the division of Purusha and Prakriti, so necessary to establish the basis of the spiritual life Disciple : The prayers in the Ashram are a fixed routine. Disciple You know, I once conducted a prayer in Nava Vidhan ...
... experiment" and "cosmos is soul's opportunity". He saw in the Vision that only by bringing down a higher Power than the Mind can man realise his divine destiny. He sees the dual aspect of Purusha and Prakriti—Self and Nature —working throughout the universe and he found that behind the duality, which to the outer view, wears the aspect of an opposition and even conflict, a purpose, is working out ...
... impulses and passions of the vital, and from the body, and remain unaffected by it. It is the Purusha as the Sakshi, the witness consciousness. Gita says that by practising this separation of Purusha and Prakriti man would be able to control his nature more effectively and it would serve as the initial step in the process of transformation of nature. Gita points out the distinction between Tyaga ...
... seized and informed it... most art expresses the play of Prakriti; Buddhistic art in its most characteristic creations expresses the absolute repose of the Purusha; Hindu art tends to combine the Purusha and Prakriti in one image.... This is the motive of the Natarajan, the Dancing Shiva... the self-absorbed concentration, the motionless peace and joy are within, outside is the whole mad bliss of the cosmic ...
... of Indian philosophy, most art expresses the play of Prakriti; Buddhistic art in its most characteristic creations expresses the absolute repose of the Purusha; Hindu art tends to combine the Purusha and Prakriti in one image. But in the earlier stone sculptures it is the sublime repose, tranquil power, majestic concentration of the Deity which the whole image principally represents even in poses expressive ...
... It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided. Gita. (XIII. 17.) Brahman, the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinite. Taittiriya Upanishad. (II. 1.) Know Purusha and Prakriti to be both eternal without beginning. Gita. (XIII. 20.) One must know Maya as Prakriti and the Master of Maya as the great Lord of all. Swetaswatara Upanishad. (IV. 10 ...
... fear, where duality continues to reign, but without entailing discord: a duality at the background of which unity can be anticipated. This is the same unity as found in the Indian archetype of Purusha and Prakriti, of Spirit, the immovable witness, and active Nature. In Purusha, the work of Prakriti is reflected without troubling his peace or obscuring his transparency. The soul contemplates the universe ...
... of the marriages in the world, if at all, result in such a union. When found, a spiritual companion doubles your life and power and increases your speed of progress tenfold. It is really the Purusha and Prakriti fulfilling themselves in their world and raising themselves to the Divine plane by their united power. A wrong choice in the type of one who seeks spiritual greatness is worse than in the psychic ...
... activities of the instrumental Nature (Prakriti) through Page 113 attachment and a false identification. Describing the "very powerful method" of the Sankhyas for the separation of Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo says: One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness—all action of mind, vital, physical becomes an outer play which is not myself or mine, but belongs to Nature and ...
... 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 ...
... Correspondence Champaklal's Treasures With Punamchand To Punamchand I) Separation of Purusha and Prakriti to establish tranquillity of heart and mind. (a) Separated Purusha, calm, observing Prakriti. (b) Prakriti in the heart and mind attending calmness. II) Offering of all the actions, all that is done in your life as a sacrifice to the ...
... Woman or Husband and Wife for the absolute Being, who is the creator, and his Knowledge or Power, who is the creatrix, are common to most high religions. In Hinduism, for instance, they are Purusha and Prakriti or Ishvara and Shakti . The principle of the universal manifestation is then their Son, the true and perfect Anthropos or Adamas, divine as his parents are, from whom all things originate ...
... of course, that there is a masculine and a feminine sex in the lower hemisphere. The origin of the two complementary sexes obviously has its origin in the functional differentiation between Purusha and Prakriti, the One and its Shakti, its Maya. 92 It is little known that the relation Purusha-Prakriti created a problem to the manifested two-poled Avatar, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ...
... and benign, you are the imperishable substance and cause of what is; you are the Being and the Non-Being; verily, you are beyond the reach of them all. In you is the origin of Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti; what defines the creative principle in its power of manifestation, that you are; you yourself are without a beginning, O Ancient of Days. You are the life-breath of this entire universe, in ...
... of Yoga the self or being is in essence one with the Divine or at the least it is a portion of the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha ...
... and pure awareness of the Brahman; it creates a dualism within its featureless unity which is not other in its purport than the dualism of the double Principle in the Sankhya view of things, Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature. These solutions then must be put aside as untenable, unless we modify our first view of the Reality and concede to it a power of manifold status of consciousness or a power ...
... divine presence and this greater working there can be no siddhi of the power of the nature. All the action of man in life is a nexus of the presence of the soul and the workings of Nature, Purusha and Prakriti. The presence and influence of the Purusha represents itself in nature as a certain power of our being which we may call for our immediate purpose soul-force; and it is always this soul-force ...
... spiritual workings. This greater vision of the Shakti will enable us to escape from the control of the gunas, to convert them into their divine equivalents and dwell in a consciousness in which the Purusha and Prakriti are one and not separated or hidden in or behind each other. There the Shakti will be in its every movement evident to us and naturally, spontaneously, irresistibly felt as nothing else but ...
... being can rise to its perfection. But first we must understand what we mean by planes of consciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which a universal existence has created or established ...
... lines of his self-development. He may evolve himself from plane to plane of his own being and embrace on each successively his oneness with the world and with Sachchidananda realised as the Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious-Soul and Nature-Soul of that plane, taking into himself the action of the lower grades of being as he ascends. He may, that is to say, work out by a sort of inclusive process of ...
... determines its perpetual cycles. And we must yet concentrate once again and see and realise and must know the Self as the one Existence who is both the Soul of all and the Nature of all, at once Purusha and Prakriti and so able both to express himself in all these forms of things and to be all these Page 340 formations. Otherwise we have excluded what the Self does not exclude and made a wilful ...
... multiple individuality but without the veil of ignorance, with self-knowledge, in its multiple oneness, in the truth of its divine Shakti. In the Vijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and Prakriti are found, because there they become unified and the Divine is no longer veiled in Maya. All is his action. The Jiva no longer says "I think, I act, I desire, I feel"; he does not even say like ...
... belong to them. We may seek this knowledge on two sides separately, the side of Purusha, the side of Prakriti; and we may combine the two for the perfect possession of the various relations of Purusha and Prakriti in the light of the Divine. There is, says the Upanishad, a fivefold soul in man and the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The physical soul, self or being,—Purusha, Atman,—is that of ...
... existence not limited by qualities, infinite Page 1459 and eternal and unchanging, which is at the same time the source and foundation of all the worlds and the whole universe. Sat—Purusha and Prakriti Brahman representing itself in the universe as the stable, by immutable Existence (Sat), is Purusha, God, Spirit; representing [itself] as the motional by its power of active Consciousness ...
... action can see inaction and can see action still continuing in cessation from works, is the man of true reason and discernment among men. This saying hinges upon the Sankhya distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, between the free inactive soul, eternally calm, pure and unmoved in the midst of works, and ever active Nature operative as much in inertia and cessation as in the overt turmoil of her visible ...
... the complete renunciation of works, to an immobile passivity and to the severance of the soul from Nature. But in reality such an absolute renunciation, passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and Prakriti are twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and so long as we remain in Nature, our workings in Nature must continue, even though they may take a different form or rather a different ...
... Gita the secret of the spiritual self hidden within us of which mind and external Nature are only manifestations or figures. It is the secret of the constant relations between soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, the secret of an indwelling Godhead who is the lord of all existence and veiled from us in its forms and movements. These are the truths taught in many ways by Vedanta and Sankhya and Yoga ...
... from the Kshara. At first sight it would almost seem better, more logical, more easy Page 437 of comprehension, if we admitted with the Sankhyas an original and eternal duality of Purusha and Prakriti, if not even an eternal plurality of souls. Our experience of the Akshara would then be simply the withdrawal of each Purusha into himself, his turning away from Nature and therefore from all ...
... fundamental truths remain common to all, even if stated in different terms, because they are the subjects of a common experience. Now the facts discovered by the Indian method, the duality of Purusha and Prakriti, the triple states of conscious being, the relation between the macrocosm & the microcosm, Page 184 the fivefold and sevenfold principles of consciousness, the existence of more ...
... experience of yoga the self or being is in essence one with the Divine or at least it is a portion of the Divine and has all the divine potentialities. But in manifestation it takes two aspects, the Purusha and Prakriti, conscious being and Nature. In Nature here the Divine is veiled, and the individual being is subjected to Nature which acts here as the lower Prakriti, a force of Ignorance, Avidya. The Purusha ...
... things in some rough practical fashion, some tolerable disorderly order,—this is the material of his existence." 16 Real self-knowledge begins when a separation takes place between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Self and its outer Nature. We then perceive "the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless ...
... world the single force of the creating energy is divided in all the manifestation, even the most contrary manifestation, you see. It is this single force which, in the creation, is divided into Purusha and Prakriti and, also, energy and resistance. That's what it means; at the origin the force is single and in the manifestation it is divided, and it is divided in all the contraries, which are at the same ...
... Year for 1965. 30 December 1964 Sweet Mother, What is the eternal truth behind this sympathy or attraction of man for woman and of woman for man? The relationship between Purusha and Prakriti. You have only to read what Sri Aurobindo has written on this subject. 5 January 1965 Sweet Mother, You have said in Your New Year message for this year: "Salute to the advent ...
... the poise of the consciousness as the apprehending Purusha: it does not negate or exclude identification, which is another arm of a biune process. The two are complementary to each other. Also Purusha and Prakriti are nor contradictories, not mutually exclusive; they are dual aspects or dispositions of the same consciousness or self-conscious reality. Consciousness involved and lost to itself and in itself ...
... the ego, the realisation of the Self, of the Cosmic Consciousness, of the Transcendental Consciousness, — these are among the most fundamental. Nirvana and Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita, Purusha and Prakriti, Brahman and Maya, Ishwara and Shakti and hundred other similar concepts have behind them the experiences and realisations which are of central significance to Yoga. And pertaining to each ...
... exceedingly dear to Me." 137 Against this vast background, we can now enter into the last six chapters. 3. A New Standpoint for the Yoga of the Gita: Relationship between Purusha and Prakriti, Pnrushottama and Para Prakriti, State of Trigundtita and Sddharmya Mukti The central problem of yoga is to discover how the soul gets entangled into Prakriti, — into Apara ...
... psychic being is a major experience of Karma yoga, since through that experience the entire process of Karma yoga begins to be guided by direct intuition that distinguishes not only between Purusha and Prakriti but also distinguishes between the good and the evil, in the sense that it distinguishes between that which is determined by the engine of lower Prakriti and that which is demanded by the higher ...
... the state of sādharmyam. In the last six chapters (XIII—XVIII), the entire synthesis of yoga of the Gita is reviewed from a special standpoint," the standpoint of the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti, and the precise relations between the supreme Page 24 Purusha (Purushottama), 5 the immutable Self (Akshara Purusha), 6 and the mobile Self (Akshara Purusha), as also the ...
... caitya purusha is a major experience of Karma yoga,, since through that experience the entire process of Karma yoga begins to be guided by direct intuition that distinguishes not only between Purusha and Prakriti but also distinguishes between the good and the evil, in the sense that it distinguishes between that which is determined by the engine of lower Prakriti and that which is demanded by the higher ...
... I've done, good deeds 79An Indian tree, very large and wide-spreading. 80 Amavasya means new moon and purnima means full moon. 81The two ultimate principles of existence are Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha is Soul or pure Consciousness, silent, immobile, witness, and inactive. Ptakriti is Nature, of body, life, and mind. It is mechanical, unconscious energy and power. Purusha does not ...
... there even in small things like this. Now it has come to such a state that I have understood that it is impossible to escape, to leave the work, till God wishes you to. Now the talk of Purusha and Prakriti reminds me of a great story. Some of you might know it. I'm talking of the story of Mirabai. 247 You know that she left her palace, her husband, her friends, the world, for the love of her ...
... experiences of the play of the Forces and its relation with the Self, the action of the Guide, what is behind the appearance of things, occurrences etc. etc., the actual relations of the workings of Purusha and Prakriti etc. The Divine Truth is the truth of the divine Essence, Consciousness, Self, Knowledge. Light, Power, Bliss. It is something from which the cosmos derives with all its movements, but it is ...
... perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakriti in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic spiritual ...
... other end away from Matter, it is the Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism, Spirit is Freedom, Liberty, Self-choice. That is the well-known duality – Purusha and Prakriti, that divide existence between themselves. Purusha is the conscient Being, and Prakriti the inconscient becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably distinct and separate inco ...
... explained to him its meaning: 'The two birds in flight are coming down together onto the earth. The two birds are twin aspects of the Divine: the static and the dynamic, you could call it Purusha and Prakriti. The two birds are golden in colour, that is they are descending carrying the supramental light. There is the Mother's symbol in red on the birds' breast, a symbol of-the Mother's Love. There ...
... the Supermind, Purusha-Prakriti are one, they are "a single truth, two aspected." The two aspects are the subjective and the objective aspects. They are one in the Supermind. In the Overmind, Purusha and Prakriti are present; they are not completely divided but each is separate and deals with the other. It is not unity on which they are proceeding. The basis of independence is given to Purusha as well ...
... happy alone?” And so the Supreme Purusha or Brahman divided himself. The Indivisible One Supreme Being by dividing himself became a Dual Being: Brahman and Brahmashakti, Ishwara and Ishwari, Purusha and Prakriti, the two standing on two poles of the earth’s axis, as it were. Having separated and moved far apart in time, the Mother, the Eternal Shakti entered the depths of Inconscience. She became the ...
... from other methods which go by the same name. According to the old method you have to select the intellect, the emotional being or the will as the starting point or to differentiate between Purusha and Prakriti, the conscious soul and nature. By that we arrive at an Infinite of knowledge, an all-loving and all-beautiful Supreme or an Infinite Impersonal Will, or the Silent Brahman beyond our mind – ...
... personal felicity, will really be "an escape instead of a victory"), the next stage will be to see the Unity as a creative duality of Two-in-One: Pure Existence and Power of ,Consciousness, Purusha and Prakriti, Krishna and Kali. The true Yogi turns himself into a pure engine of Power; to be used for His purposes by Krishna. What, then, happens to the individual self? In itself it is nothing; but ...
... VI) Kingdom of the Morning Star: The Heroic Age SELF OF MIND WORLD-SOUL (Canto XIII) (Canto XIV) Centre of Purusha Silence Prakriti HEAVENS OF THE IDEAL (Canto XII) The Rose & the Flame GREATER MIND (Canto XI) Higher mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive ...
... Becoming Parabrahman means going back through self-consciousness into Parabrahman, for you already are That, only you have projected yourself forward in self-consciousness into its terms or symbols, Purusha & Prakriti through which you uphold the universe. Therefore, to become Parabrahman void of terms or symbols you must cease out of the universe. By becoming Parabrahman void of Its self-symbols you do... deep sleep (sushupti) in the impersonal principles of Ananda, Chit or Sat. All these are forms of release & the ego gets from God by His Maya Page 103 or Prakriti the impulse towards any one of them to which the supreme Purusha chooses to direct him. Those whom He wishes to liberate, yet keep in the world, He makes jivanmuktas or sends them out again as His vibhutis, they consenting to wear... Non-Being are primary symbols; not Atman or unAtman or Maya; not Personality or Impersonality; not Quality or Non-Quality; not Consciousness or NonConsciousness; not Bliss or Non-Bliss; not Purusha or Prakriti; not god nor man nor animal; not release nor bondage; but something of which all these are primary or derivative, general or particular symbols. Still, when we say Parabrahman is not this or ...
... outside what we felt to be our self. This is because our true self, described previously as the Purusha, who is one with the Self of all things and beings, has identified itself through ignorance with Prakriti, its outer instrumental nature made up of body, life and mind. This identification of Purusha with Prakriti has led to the formation in us of an ego—physical, vital and mental—which gives us the sense... causing division, conflict, disharmony and disorganisation in our outer being. Harmonisation and unification of the outer being can be brought about only by discovering our inmost being – Chaitya Purusha or the psychic being—and organising the outer being around the psychic as its centre and governing principle. The aim of spiritual quest in the past has generally been to obtain liberation from ...
... s philosophy? NIRODBARAN: Yes, and Indian philosophy. Even here there is too much complication; there are so many Purushas and Prakritis. SRI AUROBINDO: There is only one Prakriti. NIRODBARAN: Para and Apara Prakriti. SRI AUROBINDO: What is difficult there? Para Prakriti is nature higher than your own. EVENING NIRODBARAN: Will you now have time to finish Savitri? SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme; ...
... that you should feel the double blessing. 17 November 1933 The Mother and myself stand for the same Power in two forms—so the perception in the dream was perfectly logical. IshwaraShakti, Purusha-Prakriti are only the two sides of the one Divine (Brahman). 1933 Page 126 It is a very common experience—that of the identity between myself and the Mother (the perception that we are one) ...
... neither Becoming nor non-Becoming (Sambhuti, Asambhuti); neither Quality nor non-Quality (Saguna, Nirguna); neither Consciousness nor non-consciousness, (Chaitanya, Jada); neither Soul nor Nature (Purusha, Prakriti); neither Bliss nor non-Bliss; neither man nor god nor animal; He is beyond all these things, He maintains & contains all these things; in Himself as world He is & becomes all these things. ... Essays Divine and Human Essays Divine and Human Circa 1913 Essays Divine and Human Parabrahman and Parapurusha God or Para Purusha is Parabrahman unmanifest & inexpressible turned towards a certain kind of manifestation or expression, of which the two eternal terms are Atman and Jagati, Self and Universe. Atman becomes in self-symbol all existences ...
... has spoken of this particular one Page 345 —I do not think so—but it is the same thing; it is just a way of seeing. He has spoken of the dualities Personal-Impersonal, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti. There is one more: the Divine and the Anti-Divine. Page 346 ...
... ly one may say then all contradictions are an apparent illusion, all contradictions naturally and inevitably mean an inmost unity and identity. Even so the Brahman and the world or the Purusha and the Prakriti are apparent negations to each other, the duality is in the ordinary ignorant consciousness, but the two are one in the supreme indivisible consciousness. Page 46 ...
... Paradoxically one may say then all contradictions are an apparent illusion, all contradictions naturally and inevitably mean an inmost unity and identity. Even so the Brahman and the world or the Purusha and the Prakriti are apparent negations to each other, the duality is in the ordinary ignorant consciousness, but the two are one in the supreme indivisible consciousness. Page 205 ...
... don't know if he spoke of this particular one; I don't think so, but it's the same thing. It's again a certain way of seeing. He has written of the Personal-Impersonal duality, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti ... but there is still one more: Divine and anti-divine. Page 162 ...
... necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also—so works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken up—like this of Purusha-Prakriti, but with a difference in the final object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her plaything, but the knower, lord and upholder of the nature; but... Page 210 purely superficial action—and you strongly dislike silence and emptiness. The third way which is one of the two ways towards Yoga by works is the separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the ...
... is in the inner mental that this separation first happens and it is the inner mental Purusha who remains silent, observing the Prakriti as separate from himself. But it may also be the inner vital Purusha or inner physical or else without location simply the whole Purusha-consciousness separate from the whole Prakriti. Sometimes it is felt above the head—but then it is usually spoken of as the Atman... before that this condition was of the inner being and its silence, the separation of Purusha from Prakriti. Yes, but it seems also to be the beginning of liberation from identification with the body consciousness. That easily comes with the Purusha-consciousness in the inner being. Is this inner being or the Purusha the same as the psychic being? No, not necessarily—the inner being is composed... silent, i.e. it seemed to me that it was something apart from me. Along with this the inner silence began. i.e. The real self (Atman or Purusha) is not the body—the body is something separate, a part of the being, but a part of Prakriti, not the true self or Purusha. I also tried to imagine your presence before me, but the appearance soon became obliterated into a nothingness, so to say. But is ...
... interior light, Alone between tremendous Presences, Under the watching eyes of nameless Gods,... To the source of all things human and divine. 132 Here he beholds Purusha-Prakriti, the deathless Two-in-One, A single being in two bodies clasped, A diarchy of two united souls, Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;... 133 And behind them stands ...
... herself appears at his side as the Ishwari Shakti. Or, one may say, it is the Supreme Consciousness-Power of the Supreme that manifests or puts forth itself as Ishwara Ishwari, Atma Atmashakti, Purusha Prakriti, Jiva Jagat. That is the truth in its completeness as far as the mind can formulate it. In the Supermind these questions do not even arise—for it is the mind that creates the problem by erecting ...
... 1 are stages not of evolution but of the involution of the Divine in Matter. The Devas and Asuras are not evolved in Matter; for the typal being only a Purusha with its Prakriti is necessary—this Purusha may put out a mental and vital Purusha to represent it and according as it is centred in one or another it belongs to the mental or vital world. That is all. There is no essential difference... is and can be no psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none in a God who does not need one for his existence. But what the God has is a Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the typal worlds wants to evolve he has to come down to earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because they do not want to... nearer to the experience of One in all and All in one. The Soul, the Divine, the Gods, the Asuras The word soul has various meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the formation of Prakriti which we call a being, though the proper word would be rather a becoming; it may mean on the other hand specifically the psychic being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may ...
... chapter, while drawing the distinction between the lower Purusha and the higher, Sri Krishna defines more minutely the relations of God and the individual soul to Nature. "Prakriti is the basic source of cause, effect and agency; the Purusha, of the sense of enjoyment of happiness and grief; for it is the soul in Nature (Purusha in Prakriti) that enjoys the threefold workings of things caused by Nature... sweet and bitter fruit, the two are the birds. One of the unborn enjoys her sweetness, the other has put it away from him. These are the two Purushas, the akṣara , or immutable spirit, and the kṣara , or apparently mutable, and the tree or woman is Prakriti, universal Energy which the Europeans call Nature. The kṣara puruṣa is the soul in Nature and enjoying Nature, the akṣara puruṣa is the soul... ; calm, work and inertia; all being different manifestations of three fundamental forces called the gunas or essential properties of Prakriti), and it is the attachment of the soul to the gunas that is the cause of births in bodies good and evil. The highest Purusha in this body is the one who watches, who sanctions, who enjoys, who upholds, who is the mighty Lord and the Supreme Soul." The personality ...
... rushing stream of Prakriti's works and fancies itself to be a part of that stream and swept in its currents and in its eddies. It has to go back in its self-existence to the silent Purusha even while participating in its self-becoming in the movement of Prakriti. It becomes, then, not only like the silent Purusha, the witness and upholder, but also the Lord and the free enjoyer of Prakriti and her works... expansion of the movement as well as in the concentration of the Idea. Page 48 Therefore the truth of the Soul is freedom and mastery, not subjection and bondage. Purusha commands Prakriti, Prakriti does not compel Purusha. Na karma lipyate nare . The Manishi takes his stand in the possibilities. He has behind him the freedom of the Infinite and brings it in as a background for the determination... when they intend to make prominent the latter idea they more often prefer to use the masculine Sa, He, or else they employ the Page 40 term Deva, God or the Divine, or Purusha, the conscious Soul, of whom Prakriti or Maya is the executive Puissance, the Shakti. The Isha Upanishad, having declared the Brahman as the sole reality manifesting itself in many aspects and forms, having presented ...
... into what is above the Page 48 cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one's inner being and sees the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one's works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one's works taken from one and done by the universal ...
... more than the psychic being. The psychic being is behind the heart; while the Jiva is high above, connected with the Central Being. It is that which on every level of consciousness becomes the Purusha, the Prakriti and the personalities of Nature. The psychic being, one may say, is the soul-personality. The psychic being most purely reflects the Divine in the lower triplicity of mind, life and body. There... psychic being the same as what is called Atman? Sri Aurobindo: The Atman generally means what you imply in English by the word Spirit. It is self-existent, conscious, the ānandamaya Being, the Purusha. The Atman is the same in all; it is that which is behind all the manifestation of Nature. Disciple: Has it any features? Sri Aurobindo: It has no features. The only thing that can be said... idea of 'soul'. The Western occultists recognise, at least they used to recognise, three things: Spirit, soul, body. The Spirit corresponds to the Atman, and the soul to the psychic being. It is the Purusha hṛdguhāyām — the soul in the cave of the heart. Disciple: Is the aṇguṣṭha mātraḥ puruṣaḥ , spoken of in the Upanishad the same as the psychic being? Sri Aurobindo: It may be. I think the ...
... things, Purusha poised in himself and Purusha active in Prakriti; it is akṣara and kṣara . In both of these aspects the Divine Being, Purushottama, manifests himself in the universe; the immutable above all qualities is His poise of peace, self-possession, equality, samaṁ brahma ; from that proceeds His manifestation in the qualities of Prakriti and their universal workings; from the Purusha in Prakriti... insecurity of Prakriti, but in the peace of the immutable Brahman, even while his actions continue in the movement of Prakriti. Thus is sacrifice his way of attaining to the Highest. That this is the sense of the passage is made clear in what follows, by the affirmation of lokasaṅgraha as the object of works, of Prakriti as the sole doer of works and the divine Purusha as their equal... lower self that desires and enjoys and gives up his personal sense of being the worker to the true executrix of all works, Prakriti, and his personal sense of being the enjoyer to the Divine Purusha, the higher and universal Self who is the real enjoyer of the works of Prakriti. In that Self and not in any personal enjoyment he finds now his sole satisfaction, complete content, pure delight; he has ...
... may open out many meanings and may lead us to the essential significance. The practical and the efficient base of Karma is all the relation of the soul to the energies of Nature, the use by Purusha of Prakriti. It is the soul's demand on, consent to or use of the energies of Nature and the return and reflex of her energies on the soul that must determine the steps of our progress in Page 383 ...
... an exclusive Purusha side of the supreme. All this is reflected in your language which is a confused repetition of the language of the more ignorant schools of Vedanta. The Supreme is not exclusively the Purusha. One has to go through both aspects in union to reach him. The Mother herself is not merely Prakriti; she is the supreme and universal Shakti and contains in herself Purusha as well as Prakriti... limits or you are deforming it in your language. It is the one and dual Supreme who is Spirit of the spirit—the supreme Spirit, supreme Brahman, supreme Ishwara, supreme Shakti, supreme Purusha with supreme Prakriti. The Supreme is the one Being; it would be absurd to describe him as an essence within the universal Mental. The clumsy abstract language of the dry intellect soon gets out of place when... Supreme; but she carries too the Supreme within her. Here in the creation she manifests the dual Supreme whom she carries within her as the Ishwara and the Mahashakti and also as the dual power of Purusha-Prakriti. The Mahashakti comes out of the Ishwara and does the work of the creation, supported by the Ishwara. 2 Man, the ignorant embodied mental being, begins to get free from his ignorance when ...
... sees plenty of proof of Shakti, of Prakriti, of Nature; it sees none of the Purusha or any room for His existence. If He exists at all, it must be as an Impersonal Being immanent in but different from Force and Energy and Himself inactive; but even of this there is no proof. Religion holds that God is not only impersonal but personal, not only Purusha but Prakriti, not only Being but Shakti; He is all... recognises Him in all movements as natural Law. We hold that He manifests Himself in particulars not as Law, which is only a generalisation of the methods by which He acts, but as Shakti working for the Purusha. He puts Himself as force, energy, motive-power into every particular. It is perfectly true that every particular contains Him, but there are differences in the force of His manifestation. This is ...
... In the spiritual thought of India during the time of the Rishis and even before, the Sankhya and Vedanta elements were always combined. The Sankhya account of the constitution of the being (Purusha, Prakriti, the elements, Indriyas, Buddhi etc.) was universally accepted and Kapila was mentioned with veneration everywhere. In the Gita he is mentioned among the great Vibhutis; Krishna says, "I am Kapila ...
... The Purusha consciousness is becoming separate from the Prakriti. If Prakriti does not obey, has not the Purusha to become severe and harsh to her? No. The Purusha always remains calm and always goes on putting its will till it succeeds. Page 100 Even when the Purusha does not lose its separate-ness and wants the Prakriti to be calm, the Prakriti does not... by the action of the Purusha — his consent or refusal. You have said, "Everything which belongs to Prakrit! can be rejected by the Purusha." But when the Purusha itself has become one with Prakriti', what is one to do? There is no need of rejection when the Purusha is one with the Prakriti — but that happens only on a higher plane. Here the Purusha is not one, it is only... The Purusha and the Prakriti The year 1933 Can a beginner get a distinct answer from the Purusha? The Purusha does not talk. It is a movement of consciousness— a movement of consent or refusal. Has not each of our beings — mental, vital and physical—its own Purusha, which observes all the movements without ...
... Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To... living synthesis of Spirit and Matter. It is in the context of this great need that we need to turn to the great synthetic spirit that we find in the Gita and also to the "message of union with Para Prakriti, which is one of the master-concepts of the Gita. Yoga is both a science and a technology, and yoga is, therefore, capable of answering the disabling hesitations of scepticism as also the ...
... and soul are preoccupied with material existence, this externality of our being is not a binding limitation. We can raise our internal consciousness from plane to plane of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti, and even become, instead of the mental being dominated by the physical soul and nature, the gnostic being or the bliss-self and assume the gnostic or the bliss nature. And by this raising of ...
... of the witness Purusha, the mental consciousness gets separated from the mental activity! It is, I suppose, because you have not yet got the mental Purusha separate from the mental Prakriti - so when you pull the Purusha back, the Prakriti comes with him. What can be done to prevent this from happening? The only way is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel... all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside on the street, then that is the separation of mental Purusha from mental Prakriti. Still I cannot separate the mental Purusha from mental Prakriti! You will have to learn the trick. You must learn to become the observer of thoughts and no longer the thinker. This morning... it and a resolution to abide by its truth. So far as I remember now all that took place within a few seconds. Very good. Page 75 SEPARATING MENTAL PURUSHA FROM MENTAL PRAKRITI When my consciousness keeps itself separate from reading or talking, it cannot understand what is being said or read. That only means that you cannot separate ...
... Soul, the Purusha, Witness or sākṣī, the active and superstrucrural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the sākṣī. 3 The Purusha is the true being, but in the ordinary consciousness it is identified with Prakriti. Therefore, in the ordinary consciousness, one loses the sense of being the witness, Purusha, and thinks of oneself as the active Prakriti—the doer... that is all. 10 The division, just spoken of, between the Witness Purusha and the active Prakriti takes place progressively with the growth of consciousness. Initially, in the state of total ignorance and bondage, Purusha, the Soul, is royally identified with Prakriti, the outer Nature. In this state ... the Purusha is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him,... the normal state of our ignorance." 11 This state in which the Purusha is driven by the modes of Prakriti, giving them an unconscious and therefore automatic sanction, is the state of bondage. The first step towards liberation of the Purusha from the bondage of Prakriti is the emergence of a consciousness in which the Purusha is no longer only a silent Witness behind, as it is ordinarily, ...
... feeling, or acting ever intrudes. There is simply a consciousness and Shanti—no contact with the entire nature. That is the pure static Atman consciousness or separate Purusha consciousness. Purusha separated from Prakriti is like that, Atman separated from Maya (I don't mean Illusion) or Shakti is like that. This is the static side of being, the other the dynamic must manifest in that. ...
... the normal counter-point of Death. Purusha is not the only conscious element in or above creation. Prakriti is not merely the unconscious being. The unconscious Page 16 Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha. This Higher Prakriti is the inner reality of each created... other impure. The ancients thought that the whole creation is impure; the only pure substance is the Divine. The Sankhya posited clearly the demarcation between Purusha, the Conscious Being secreted above and behind and the entire Prakriti which is absolute unconsciousness. But as we have said, a new revelation has been slowly coming up which speaks of a different conclusion and a different destiny... universe. And it is always insisting and working for the elimination of its counter-part, the inferior Prakriti; and evolution, human or cosmic is nothing but the gradual corroding of the inferior Prakriti by the pressure of the Light-Energy of the Higher Prakriti. One day when this lower Prakriti is dissolved in this way in each cell, the fullness of the radiant manifestation, an embodiment of the ...
... body, we will not exclude anything. Full Oneness... All this is Brahman, the Page 270 fourth, the causal, the subtle, the gross, deep sleep, dream, waking, Brahma and Maya, Purusha, Prakriti, you, I, He is all, Vasudeva is all this, this is the root mantra of this Knowledge. * The Gita says equality is yoga, 'equality is said to be yoga'. Further, those whose mind ...
... reality free from the normal counterpoint of Death. Purusha is not the only conscious element in or above creation. Prakriti is not merely the unconscious being. The unconscious Prakriti is only the apparent aspect of the Higher Prakriti, the Para Prakriti, which is supremely conscious, for it is one with the Supreme Purusha. This Higher Prakriti is the inner reality of each created cell of the universe... other impure. The ancients thought that the whole creation is impure; the only pure substance is the Divine. The Sankhya posited clearly the demarcation between Purusha, the Conscious Being secreted above and behind and the entire Prakriti which is absolute unconsciousness. But as we have said, a new revelation has been slowly coming up which speaks of a different conclusion 'and a different destiny... it is always insisting and working for the elimination of its counterpart, the inferior Prakriti; and evolution, human or cosmic is nothing but the gradual corroding of the inferior Prakriti by the pressure of the Light-Energy Page 186 of the Higher Prakriti. One day when this lower Prakriti is dissolved in this way in each cell, the fullness of the radiant manifestation, an embodiment ...
... for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes the state of bondage; according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified with the... the other two, or even if admitted, they appear to be sublated. The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws... all connection with Nature or Prakriti is cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind, continue by the momentum of the past. At the same time, even in the outer Prakriti, roof of desire and egoism are ...
... terms for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes the state of bondage; Page 288 according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified... the other two, or even if admitted, they appear to be sublated. The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws... all connection with Nature or Prakriti is cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind, continue by the momentum of the past. At the same time, even in the outer Prakriti, the root of desire and egoism ...
... or else the uplifting into what is above the cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of one's inner being and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing one's works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all one's works taken from one and done by the ...
... and silent will. That will is the will of the Purusha behind the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from the action of the nature. To be calm, steady, fixed in the spirit, dhīra, sthira , this quietude of the mind, this separation of the inner Purusha from the outer Prakriti is very helpful, almost indispensable. So long... discovery of the true individuality and building up of it in the nature, two things are necessary, first, to be conscious of one's psychic being behind the heart and, next, this separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti. For the true individual is behind veiled by the activities of the outer nature. Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from ...
... Yoga , SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 266) In another letter he writes: Purusha in Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable. The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in evolution. ( Ibid ., p. 291) The integral... many centres of the Universal Being and Consciousness... (p. 280) Purusha in Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. The psychic being evolves, so it is not the immutable. The psychic being is especially the soul of the individual evolving in the manifestation the individual Prakriti and taking part in evolution. (p. 291) The psychic being is described... Adwaitin into a difficult situation when he comes to the three Purushas described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. Take a brief example of the verse hinting at the nature of Jiva, the individual soul: “It is an eternal portion of Me that becomes the Jiva in the world of living creatures and cultivates the subjective powers of Prakriti, mind and the five senses.” ( The Gita ...
... Darshana varies between the perception of the lower Purusha in the individual, Anandamaya Brahmamaya, occupying Prakriti, & of the Lilamaya embracing & occupying all individuals. The latter is the normal perception, but slides back into the inferior view. The darshana of Krishnakali is replaced by the darshana of Purusha-Prakriti. The Ishwaribhava has again given place to the Devibhava... Mahakali is occasional only, the normal bhava being the contained and dominated Mahakali. This again is due to the gulf that still remains between the Purusha & the Shakti. The Purusha is the dominant Krishna, bala, Balarama-Aniruddha; but the Prakriti does not always feel the fullness of the tertiary dasya & the actual presence of the bhava of madhura-dasya. Hence the Ishwara is recognised, but the... limited mental consciousness. The Darshana of KrishnaKali is no longer normal. It is now, however, manifesting again holding in itself both the double Personality & the bhava of Purusha enjoying Prakriti. Stable scene & movements in scene in the jagrad antardrishta. Page 810 Serious & unforeseen blow to the Kriti, received without any reaction except incertitude & loss of ...
... indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data Sri Aurobindo The Life Divine - I: Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti … there the ordinary mind and its ideas and perceptions—for there are only two categories of influences recognisable, the ideas and feelings and actions of oneself and others... others and the play of environment and physical forces. But once one begins to get the inner view of things, it is different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical which play upon our nature—and these are conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working ...
... all his works, who presides over the law of Prakriti and Karma. From him the soul came forth into the play of Nature's mutations; to him the soul returns through immutable self-existence to the highest status of the Divine, paraṁ dhāma . Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks... first essential self-becoming, this Swabhava, and effects, creates, works out under its influence the cosmic becoming of existences in Prakriti. By adhibhūta is to be understood all the result of mutable becoming, kṣaro bhāvaḥ . By adhidaiva is intended the Purusha, the soul in Nature, the subjective being who observes and enjoys as the object of his consciousness all that is this mutable becoming... come. For it is by thinking always of him with a consciousness united with him in an undeviating Yoga of constant practice that one comes to the divine and supreme Purusha." We arrive here at the first description of this supreme Purusha,—the Godhead who is even more and greater than the Immutable and to whom the Gita gives subsequently the name of Purushottama. He too in his timeless eternity is ...
... to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain determination by the instruments, to a domination of Purusha by Prakriti. But in man the psychic part of the personality is able to develop with a much greater rapidity than in the inferior creation, and a time can arrive when the soul-entity is close to the point ...
... spiritual living centre of action for the One and feels no separation from all that is the One. (8) The Jivatman has its representative power in the individual nature here; this power is the Purusha upholding the Prakriti—centrally in the psychic, more instrumentally in the mind, vital and physical being and nature. It is therefore possible to regard these or any of them as if they were the Jiva here. All... depends on the experience. Very usually, it is the experience of the Purusha, often felt first as the Witness silent, upholding all the nature; but the Purusha can also be experienced as the Knower and the Ishwara. Sometimes it is as or through the mental Purusha in one centre or another, sometimes as or through the vital Purusha that one can become aware of one's self or spirit. It is also possible... head, so any ascent above is not indispensable. But, apart from that, one can very well, as you say, realise the Atman if one stands back from the mind and heart, detaches oneself from the parts of Prakriti, ceases to identify oneself with mind, life and body, falls Page 69 into an inner silence. One need not even explore the kingdoms of the inner mind or inner vital, still less is it compulsory ...
... that compels us to suppose two Purushas or two poses of the one Purusha, one secret in the Self that observes all from its self-existence—or perhaps observes nothing, another self-projected into Nature that lends itself to her action and identifies itself with her creations. But even this dualism of Self and Prakriti or Maya corrected by the dualism of the two Purushas is not the whole philosophic creed... at peace; our works continue so long as Nature's impulsion prolongs itself in our instruments, but there is a spiritual freedom and quiescence. This duality of Self and Nature, quiescent Purusha, active Prakriti, is not, however, the whole of our being; these are not really the two last words in the matter. If it were so, either all works would be quite indifferent to the soul and this or that action... soul of our being, but he is also Prakriti; for Prakriti is the power of the All-Soul, the power of the Eternal and Infinite self-moved to action and creation. The supreme Ineffable, the universal Person, he becomes by his Prakriti all these creatures. The supreme Atman and Brahman, he manifests by his Maya of self-knowledge and his Maya of ignorance the double truth of the cosmic riddle. The supreme ...
... silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action. It finds the same absolute oneness in the Purusha and the Prakriti; in the divine Presence and the works of the divine Power and Knowledge; in the eternal manifestness of the one Purusha and the constant manifestation of the many Purushas; in the inalienable unity of Sachchidananda keeping constantly real to itself its own manifold oneness... possessing itself in infinite joy and activity. We have to find Him knowing all, sanctioning all, governing all, containing, upholding and informing all as the Purusha and at the same time executing all knowledge, will and formation as Prakriti. We have to see Him as one Existence, Being gathered in itself and Being displayed in all existences; as one Consciousness concentrated in the unity of its existence... release into the absolute and ineffable Parabrahman who is beyond all cosmic being. The seeker of this ultimate release may take other realisations on his way, may realise the Lord of the universe, the Purusha who manifests Himself in all creatures, may arrive at the cosmic consciousness, may know and feel his unity with all beings; but these are only stages or circumstances of his journey, results of the ...
... Knowledge, but connected with or depending upon the nuclear reality, something like the physical body coexisting with and depending on the soul or self. One can also remember in this connection the Purusha-Prakriti relation in Sankhya. Such a standpoint, I suppose, is the precursor or philosophical background of what is well-known as the Manichean principle. Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is ...
... separate oneself from mental activities such as reading ] is to separate the Prakriti and Purusha. When you feel Page 64 something within watching all the mental activities but separate from them, just as you can watch things going on outside in the street, then that is the separation of Purusha from mental Prakriti. That [ inability to understand what is read ] only means that you ...
... power descending from the superconscient. The consequence of the transformation of the Inconscient would mean the appearance in the evolution of a Gnostic being and a Gnostic nature, Gnostic Purusha and Gnostic Prakriti. Humanity today is, in respect to the higher possible evolution, much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian Theory. That ape, leading his instinctive arboreal life in primitive ...
... Knowledge, but connected with or depending upon the nuclear reality, something like the physical body coexisting with and depending on the soul or self. One can also remember in this connection the Purusha-Prakriti relation in Sankhya. Such a standpoint, I suppose, is the precursor or philosophical background of what is well known as the Manichean principle. Sri Aurobindo's view is different. It is something ...
... terms for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes state of bondage; according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified with the mind and other... essential process of integral yoga. There is, first, the movement of quieting the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness, and in this movement, there is an exclusive concentration increasingly on the concealed inner being, on the Self or on the true inmost psychic being, Purusha, so that the same may be Page 49 disclosed. But while this is being done, the movement... one of them appears as an experience that excludes the other two. The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when mind withdraws from ...
... existence. Prakriti herself now seems to be mechanical only in the carefully regulated appearance of her workings, but in fact a conscious Force with a soul within her, a self-aware significance in her turns, a revelation of a secret Will and Knowledge in her steps and figures. This Duality, in aspect separate, is inseparable. Wherever there is Prakriti, there is Purusha; wherever there is Purusha, there... and does not participate; the other active in some outer or surface self pursues its habitual movements. He has entered into an intense separative perception of the great duality, Soul-Nature, Purusha-Prakriti. But as the consciousness deepens, he becomes aware that this is only a first frontal appearance. For he finds that it is by the silent support, permission or sanction of this witness soul... perfectly Two-in-one, the Master Soul with the Conscious Force within it, and its potentiality disowns all barriers and breaks through every limit. Thus this once separate, now biune Duality of Purusha-Prakriti is revealed to him in all its truth as the second great instrumental and effective aspect of the Soul of all souls, the Master of existence, the Lord of the Sacrifice. On yet another line of ...
... and their ultimate transformation. The difficulty with the Purusha-Prakriti theory was that it was only too apt to encourage people to plead that their own . prakriti being what it was, they were unable to change it; they could only suffer it! Or, by a supreme effort, they could try to get out of it into the inviolable realm of the Purusha. Recalling those days, she said in 1956: It's very ... 15 this Nature, I am the Purusha. Ah! let her go her own way; after all, I can't change her." This is extremely convenient. And that is why people adopt it; for they imagine they are in the Purusha, but at the least scratch they fall right back into Prakriti .... 6 Mirra once heard someone who had truly returned to the poise of the silent Purusha and hence exuded "a very remarkable... and meditated on its central message, or when she presently delved into what the commentators had to say, she was of course fascinated, but she was a little disconcerted as well. The Sankhyan Purusha-Prakriti theory seemed to offer both an explanation of phenomenal life and a clue to Liberation, but this didn't quite satisfy her. The reason was this: it was not a mere escape from the endless toil ...
... do is to realise that this thought-flow is not yourself, it is not you who are thinking, but thought that is going on in the mind. It is Prakriti with its thought-energy that is raising all this whirl of thought in you, imposing it on the Purusha. You as the Purusha must stand back as the witness observing the action, but refusing to identify yourself with it. The next thing is to exercise a control... standstill—this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga . Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction—the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this... on, "I am not the body, I am not the life, I am not the mind" till he gets to the self, separate from mind, life and body. That also is one way of doing it. There is also the separation of Purusha from Prakriti till one becomes the witness only and feels separate from all the activities as the Witness Consciousness. There are other methods also. The method of gathering of the mind is not an ...
... is in the inner mental that this separation first happens and it is the inner mental Purusha who remains silent observing the Prakriti as separate from himself. But it may also be the inner vital Purusha or inner physical or else without location simply the whole Purusha consciousness separate from the whole Prakriti. Sometimes it is felt above the head—but then it is usually spoken of as the Atman and... working. This condition you had of the inner being and its silence, separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings, is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is the fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the Yogic consciousness has been founded in you. This time it has increased in intensity, but it must also... distinguish the psychic being at first. What has to be done is to grow conscious of an inner being which is separate from the external personality and nature—a consciousness or Purusha calm and detached from the outer action of the Prakriti. The reason why she remembers nothing when she comes out of her meditation is that the experience is taking place in the inner being and the outer consciousness is ...
... Self as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature. To... Krishna declares himself to be? It is the Purushottama beyond the Self that acts not, beyond the Prakriti that acts, foundation of the one, master of the other, the Lord of whom all is the manifestation, who even in our present subjection to Maya sits in the heart of His creatures governing the works of Prakriti, He by whom the armies on the field of Kurukshetra have already been slain while yet they live... the giving up of works to the supreme Purusha. Others again speak of the Gita as if the doctrine of devotion were its whole teaching and put in the background its monistic elements and the high place it gives to quietistic immergence in the one self of all. And undoubtedly its emphasis on devotion, its insistence on the aspect of the Divine as Lord and Purusha and its doctrine of the Purushottama ...
... Isha, Maheshwar, Vishnu, Rudra, Indra, the Lord of the Illusion, the Ruler, the Mighty One of which all the Upanishads speak? Who is this triple Prajna-Hiranyagarbha-Virat? Who is this twofold Purusha-Prakriti, God & Nature, without which the existence of the phenomenal world and consciousness in matter would not be intelligible or conceivable? To whom does the Bhakti of the Bhakta, to whom do the works ...
... terms of Purusha, Prakriti, Gunas and Ishwara. Sri Aurobindo introduces another cardinal concept pertaining to the psychology of mastery - that of the psychic being. The psychic being is Chaitya Purusha, the Purusha in the heart, which constitutes the inmost being, as distinguished from the inner being which consists of Annamaya Purusha (the Purusha in the physical), Pranamaya Purusha (the Purusha in the... part of Prakriti and subject to the forces of Prakriti. Thus * Austerity. Page 133 the will of the ego is not truly a free will, but a will determined by Prakriti, formed in us by the sum of its own past action or Karma. Therefore, the first step towards mastery is freedom of the Purusha from bondage to Prakriti by overcoming the ignorance of identification with Prakriti, and thereby... condition as a state of bondage. Purusha, the Soul, is bound by Prakriti or Nature. As Sri Aurobindo puts it: "The soul is the witness, upholder, experiencer, but it is master only in theory, in fact it is not-master, an ś a, so long as it consents to the Ignorance. For that is a general consent which implies that the Prakriti gambols about with the Purusha and does pretty well what she ...
... necessary to bring out more definitely the precise relations between the supreme Purusha, the immutable self, the Jiva and Prakriti in her action and her gunas. Arjuna is therefore made to put a question which shall evoke a clearer elucidation of these still ill-lighted matters. He asks to learn of the Purusha and the Prakriti; he inquires of the Page 409 field of being and the knower of the... The Soul which finds itself here embodied in Nature has a triple reality to its own self-experience. First it is a spiritual being apparently subjected by ignorance to the outward workings of Prakriti and represented in her mobility as an acting, thinking, mutable personality, a creature of Nature, an ego. Next when it gets behind all this action and motion, it finds its own higher Page 410... things and all beings. This Nature itself is of two kinds, one derived and inferior, another original and supreme. There is a lower nature of the cosmic mechanism by association with which the soul in Prakriti lives in a certain ignorance born of Maya, traiguṇyamayī māyā , conceives of itself as an ego of embodied mind and life, works under the power of the modes of Nature, thinks itself bound, suffering ...
... also the method—a very powerful method—of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness—all action of mind, vital, physical becomes an outer play which is not myself or mine, but belongs to Nature and has been enforced on an outer me. I am the witness Purusha who am silent, detached, not bound by any of these things. There grows up in ...
... side as the Ishwari Shakti. Or, one may say, it is the Supreme Consciousness-Power of the Page 448 Supreme that manifests or puts forth itself as Ishwara Ishwari, Atma Atmashakti, Purusha Prakriti, Jiva Jagat. That is the truth in its completeness as far as the mind can formulate it. In the Supermind these questions do not even arise—for it is the mind that creates the problem by erecting... spiritual endeavour which means to be one-sided, radical and exclusive. It supports the effort of the Mind to get away from itself and from Life by a short cut into superconscience. Or rather it is the Purusha in Mind that wants to get away from the limitations of Mind and Life into the superconscient Infinite. Theoretically, the most radical way for that is for the mind to deny all its perceptions and all ...
... state it is not the inner Purusha only that remains detached—the inner Purusha is always detached, only one is not conscious of it in the ordinary state. It is the Prakriti also that is not disturbed by the action of the gunas or attached to it—the mind, the vital, the physical (whatever Prakriti) begin to get the same quietude, unperturbed peace and detachment as the Purusha, but it is a quietude, not... itself. If it were not so, my statement in the Arya that there can be a desireless or liberated action on which I found the possibility of a free (mukta) action would be false. The whole being, Purusha- Prakriti, becomes detached even in the action of the gunas. "The outer being is also detached—the whole being is without desire or attachment and still action is possible, action without desire ...
... to manifest fully, held back from coming to the front where it can stand out as the master of its nature, obliged to submit to a certain determination by the instruments, to a domination of Purusha by Prakriti. But in man the psychic part of the personality is able to develop with a much greater rapidity than in the inferior creation, and a time can arrive when the soul entity is close to the point... such a descent from above cooperated in the appearance of humanity in earth-nature. The secret psychical entity already there in the animal might have itself called down the mental being, the mind Purusha, into the realm of living Matter in order to take up the vital-mental energy already at work and lift it into a higher mentality. But this would still be a process of evolution, the higher plane only ...
... from all contingencies. I: 4 The Secret Knowledge: But perhaps there is a purpose in the Spirit submitting itself to Nature's law, Being to the law of Becoming, Purusha obeying Prakriti. It is through her mechanics that this stubborn inconscient stuff can slowly gain awareness. Though not herself divine presently, she is planned divinely. This truth has to be found and... simultaneously impersonal also. He stands on the summit and is a silent witness, sākshi , of things carried out by Nature, Prakriti. He watches indifferently the good and the bad of life; he is unconcerned about victory or defeat. Yet without his consent the movements of Prakriti would not take place. He is anumantā , giving approval for her actions. Aswapati lived in this still self, and its quiet ...
... universe. The Supreme is manifest in her for ever as the everlasting Sachchidananda, manifested through her in the worlds as the one and dual consciousness of Ishwara-Shakti and the dual principle of Purusha-Prakriti, embodied by her in the Worlds and the Planes and the Gods and their Energies and figured because of her as all that is in the known worlds and in unknown others. All is her play with the Supreme;... creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother. Four great Aspects of the Mother, four of her leading Powers and Personalities have stood in front in her guidance of this universe and... worlds that she has made; her presence fills and supports them with the divine spirit and the divine all-sustaining force and delight without which they could not exist. That which we call Nature or Prakriti is only her most outward executive aspect; she marshals and arranges the harmony of her forces and processes, impels the operations of Nature and moves among them secret or manifest in all that can ...
... side, there has been enforced a more general perception of the unity of all movements of the Prakriti and of the unity of the mover of the Prakriti & their unity also with the same Purusha & Prakriti in this adhara. The Jiva also is made to recognise its unity with the Prakriti, but not yet with the Purusha, except in occasional glimpses. The rounding of the fingers still progresses; the only definite ...
... the end? Disciple (l) : Yes, I read it, but it does not say why it is to be there. Sri Aurobindo : I think he says at one place that it typifies the male and the female – the Purusha and the Prakriti – aspect without which there is no creation. But at one place he speaks of the Mithuna verging on the obscene. But I did not see anything of that sort in the illustrations. Disciple... detailed and delicate in expression. Page 214 (After waiting for some time Sri Aurobindo resumed). Sri Aurobindo : Did you refer to the dictionary to find out whether "Chaitya Purusha" can mean "the Psychic being", "the Soul"? Disciple (1) : I did, but the word is not given there in that sense; it only carries the sense of Chaitya of the Buddhas and the Jainas. Sri... Amsha – of the Divine which guides a man. It is called Chaitya Guru. Sri Aurobindo : I wanted to know if the word has a fixed connotation. If it has not, then one can use the word "Chaitya Purusha" for the "Psychic being". It has the advantage of carrying both the functions of the Psychic being : it is the direct portion of the Divine in the human and it is also the being that is behind the ...
... wholesome distrust, if not detestation, of attempts to divide humanity as male and female, introducing notions of strong and weak. We have seen how she didn't like the male-female implications of the Purusha-Prakriti concept, and how she was against providing different courses of physical education for boys and girls. Reality is one, the human race is one, for the indwelling Divine makes no difference between ...
... the method - a very powerful method -of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness - all action of mind, vital, physical becomes an outer play which is not myself or mine, but belongs to Nature and has been enforced on an outer me. I am the witness Purusha; I am silent, detached, not bound by any of these things. There grows up in ...
... of Purusha or of Prakriti, still it is a valid and indispensable practical knowledge in the lower hemisphere of existence. The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with this active Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer and knower, but reflects the modes and workings of Prakriti. It enters... only by subjection and reflection of that which fills her. Purusha knows and is still and inactive; he contains the action of Prakriti within his consciousness and knowledge and enjoys it. He gives the sanction to Prakriti's works and she works out what is sanctioned by him for his pleasure. Purusha himself does not execute; he maintains Prakriti in her action and allows her to express in energy and process... enjoyed, she bears in herself the burden of all enjoyments. Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force,—for she works out a movement imposed upon her; but within her is One that knows,—some Entity sits there that is aware of all her motion and process. Prakriti works containing the knowledge, the mastery, the delight of the Purusha, the Being associated with her or seated within her; but she can p ...
... enjoyed; Purusha as the Witness, Prakriti as the phenomena he witnesses; Purusha as the getter or father of things, Prakriti as their bearer or mother. And there are many other images the Upanishad employs, Purusha, for instance, symbolising Himself in the Sun, the father of life, and Prakriti in the Earth, the bearer of life. It is necessary thus clearly to define Purusha from the first in order... brain from the changes of Prakriti in the multitudinous stir of evolution, then is consciousness one out of the many terms of Prakriti itself, so that Prakriti alone remains as the one reality, the material or real factor eliminating by inclusion the spiritual or ideal. But if we deny, as many did, that Prakriti is an ultimate reality apart from the perceptions of Purushas and yet apply the theory of... existence; Prakriti the Female, Nature, is that side which is and evolves the material of phenomenal existence; both of them are therefore unborn & eternal. The Male is Purusha, he who lurks in the Wide; the Female is Prakriti, the working of the Male, and sometimes called Rayi, the universal movement emanating from the quiescent Male. Purusha is therefore imaged as the Enjoyer, Prakriti as the enjoyed; ...
... aim of the Integral Karma Yoga. As Sri Aurobindo explains: "If ours were not an integral Yoga, if we sought only the liberation of the self within us, or the motionless existence of Purusha separated from Prakriti, ...dynamic imperfection might not matter. ...But in an integral realization this can only be a step on the way, not our last resting-place. For we aim at the divine realization not only... Power. Page 48 This stumbling response can be remedied, according to Sri Aurobindo, when we open to the Divine Shakti in the truth of a force, as the supramental Para Prakriti, which transcends the lower Prakriti of the mind, life and body. As in other paths which are integrated in the integral yoga, even so, in the path of karma yoga, the path of divine works, the aim is not merely liberation... Divine Shakti as the one Cosmic Force that moves us and all creatures on the planes of Mind, Life and Matter. For at the level of Mind, Life and Matter, the cosmic force acts as the lower Nature, Apara Prakriti, and, although the Divine Knowledge, Light, Power are concealed there and at work in the ignorance and can break partly its veil and manifest something of the true character or descend from above ...
... necessary, and the will and power of action and creation also—so works too are necessary. In this Yoga the methods of other Yogas are taken up—like this of Purusha-Prakriti but with a difference in the final object. Purusha separates from Prakriti, not in order to abandon her, but in order to know himself and her and to be no longer her Page 285 Page 286 plaything ...
... out these liberated rivers of being, these showers of richness & sweetness, because he manifests himself in man with the inborn knowledge of the divine Purusha and the secret hold from which he pours out this sevenfold stream of the workings of Prakriti with all its riches; he knows at once where to go for the enrichment of our life & nature, to the Spirit's secret hold whence all things are produced;... wives to his mastery, common friends to his purity. Them in man do thou protect. The garbha, that which was contained in the secret hold of the father & which now comes forth as the child of Purusha & Prakriti, Agni bears & brings to man, all this higher fruit of their union upon the levels of purified mind. Agni, alone possessing the whole of our nature as Force divine manifested in many forms, drinks... tainted & muddied perceptions. The truth of them shines through the thin mental veil they wear. Here, in this lower kingdom, the seven in their eternal youth & vigour, children of one universal mother Prakriti, are as seven women with a common child; all of them, that is to say, enjoy the possession of this divine force, Agni, which they formerly kept concealed in their workings, but now hold manifested ...
... that is manifested. Asthe Lord, the relationship with the manifestation is not the same as the Purusha has with the manifestation. The relation-ship between Purusha and the power of manifestation (Prakriti) is that of eternal companionship, such that Purusha consents to Prakriti and Prakriti consents to Purusha, depending upon the nature of the play that they .want to play with each other. The relationship... Great Self; the Purusha is greater than theUnmanifest. None is higher than the Purusha. He isthe culmination. He is the highest goal of the journey.'(See verses 10 & 11, Chapter III, 1st Cycle, Katha Upanishad.) The Supreme Reality is defined here as Purusha; it will be seen that the word Brahman is not used in the above verse. This is because the word Brahman and the word Purusha are often used... the word Purusha is used as the one who is highest, it should be under-stood that the Purusha that is the highest is the Purushottama. It is the knowledge of the highest Purushottama that one Page 88 should aim at. It is that Purusha, in its highest poise that is the real immortal one, and it is because that Purushottama has all the three poises of Brahman, Ishwara and Purusha, the realization ...
... move. It moves or appears to move,—as action of Prakriti & the corresponding knowledge in Purusha,—in the conception of Time, Space & Causality; it does not move in reality, because these are mere symbols, conceptual translations of the actual truth, & movement itself is only such a symbol. The Habitation is the creation of a formative movement of Prakriti, who is indeed always recurrent in her doings... in our ears the chant of the immutable & eternal. She is one term, Prakriti, jagati, the ever moving, with every object, small or great, a mere knot of motion, jagat; that which she obeys & worships & of which she speaks to us always & yet seems always by the whirl of her motions in mind & matter to conceal, is the Lord, the Purusha. He is that One, Eternal & Immutable; it is He that is the centre of... action, it is our experience that a rule of life is needed. The purpose for which a householder builds himself a mansion & dwells in it, can only be one; it is to live & enjoy. So it is with the Purusha & Prakriti; their relation is the enjoyment of the one by the other. God has made this world in His own being that He may in mind & other principles live phenomenally in phenomena & enjoy this phenomenal ...
... to whom Prakriti refers for assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishad gives only the apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and the human stage only—for in the animal it would be rather the Page 113 prāṇamaya puruṣa that is the netā , leader of mind and body. Purusha Prakriti is the Kshara Purusha—standing back from it is the Akshara Purusha. Ego-sense... certain sense the various Purushas or beings in us, psychic, mental, vital, physical, are projections of the Atma, but that gets its full truth only when we get into our inner being and know the inner truth of ourselves. On the surface in the Ignorance, it is the mental, vital, physical Prakriti that acts and the Purusha is disfigured, as it were, in the action of Prakriti. It is not our true mental... being but it is not itself the psychic. Again it depends on what is meant by Ahambhava. But the psychic is not a "bhava"; it is a being, a Purusha. Ahambhava is a formation of Prakriti, it is not a being or a Purusha. Ahambhava can disappear and yet the Purusha will be there. By liberated psychic being, I mean that it is no longer obliged to express itself under the conditions of the obscure and ...
... Isha the Karmayogin may worship Him in various sub-aspects. Isha is a double being as Purusha-Prakriti; Purusha, the great male ocean of spiritual force which sets Prakriti to produce and watches her workings, and Prakriti, the mighty female energy which produces and works unweariedly for the pleasure of Purusha. He is the triple Being, Prajna, Hiranyagarbha, Virat; Prajna, Lord of Sleep-Life, the... which I am imprisoned or my desires by which my body is made miserable, but my true self, the Purusha or real Man within me, who is the witness and enjoyer of all this sweet, bitter, tender, grand, beautiful, terrible, pleasant, horrible and wholly wonderful and enjoyable drama of the world which Prakriti enacts for his delectation. Once I experience this truth, I can take as much pleasure in the riches... expression for world or universe. But why is the universe called Page 179 "she that moves"? Because it is the result of the working of Prakriti, the visible form of Prakriti, the great female material energy of the Lord, and the essence of Prakriti is motion; for by motion she creates this material world. Indeed all object matter is only a form, that is to say a visible, audible or in some ...
... to the strength and purity of its source. If ours were not an integral Yoga, if we sought only the liberation of the self within us or the motionless existence Page 251 of Purusha separated from Prakriti, this dynamic imperfection might not matter. Calm, untroubled, not depressed, not elated, refusing to accept the perfection or imperfection, fault or merit, sin or virtue as ours, perceiving... response to the Supreme Power, a veil over the face of the Divine, a constant mixture of the Ignorance. It is only when we open to the Divine Shakti in the truth of her Force which transcends this lower Prakriti that we can be perfect instruments of her power and knowledge. Not only liberation but perfection must be the aim of the Karmayoga. The Divine works through our nature and according to our nature;... perceiving that it is the modes of Nature working in the field of her modes that make this mixture, we could withdraw into the silence of the spirit and, pure, untouched, witness only the workings of Prakriti. But in an integral realisation this can only be a step on the way, not our last resting-place. For we aim at the divine realisation not only in the immobility of the Spirit, but also in the movement ...
... soul develops, in another and an inner reality of existence. In this inner reality the truth of existence is no longer Nature but Soul and Spirit, Purusha rather than Prakriti. Nature herself is only a power of Spirit, Prakriti the force of the Purusha. A Spirit, a Self, a Being one in all is the master of this world which is only his partial manifestation. That Spirit is the upholder of Nature and... he lives in one or the other, he will be a mind dwelling in human ignorance or a soul founded in divine knowledge. In its outer appearance the truth of existence is solely what we call Nature or Prakriti, a Force that operates as the whole law and mechanism of being, creates the world which is the object of our mind and senses and creates too the mind and senses as a means of relation between the... that your nature determines your action; your nature rules the immediate motion of your Swabhava and decides the expressive turn and development of your spirit in the paths of the executive force of Prakriti. Bring in no longer any self-will to confuse the steps of your mind in following the Godward way. Accept the action proper to your nature. Make of all you do from the greatest and most unusual effort ...
... existence and the Prakriti restlessly creating, acting, forming & effecting things for the delight of the Purusha, compose the double system of the Sankhyas. But as we continue analysing their relations and accumulate more and more experience of our subjective life, we find that this seeing of the Purusha is in effect a command. Whatever Prakriti perceives it to be the pleasure of the Purusha to see, she... The passive & fundamental consciousness is the Soul, the Purusha, Witness or Sakshi; the active & superstructural consciousness is Nature, Prakriti, processive or creative energy of the Sakshi. But the two seem at first to stand apart & distinct, as if they had no share in each other. The Purusha, still & silent witness of whatever Prakriti chooses to create, not interfering with her works, but ... experience, this ultimate principle of things is eventually discovered by the Yogin to determine even objective phenomena. The Purusha & Prakriti are therefore not only the Witness & the Activity witnessed, but the Lord & his executive energy. The Purusha is Ishwara, the Prakriti is His shakti. Their play with each other is both the motive & the executive force of all existence in the universe. ...
... principle comes in, the twin godhead or the two gods to which Yajnavalkya refers. The same principle is found in the conception of Ardhanarishwara, Male and Female, Purusha-Prakriti. The Upanishad says 1 yet again that the One original Purusha was not pleased at being alone, so for a companion he created out of himself the original Female. The dual principle signifies creation, the manifesting activity... the humanity of man. But there is another aspect hidden behind this apparent nature, there is another world where man dwells in his submerged, larger and higher consciousness. To that his soul—the Purusha in his heart only has access. It is the world where man's nature is transmuted into another triune reality—Sat, Chit and Ananda. The one, however, is not completely divorced from the other. The... with a perspective sub specie aeternitatis. The sexual function, for example, is easily equated to the double movement of ascent and descent that is secreted in nature, or to the combined action of Purusha and Prakrit! in the cosmic Play, or again to the hidden fount of Delight that holds and moves the universe. In this view there is nothing merely secular and profane, but all is woven into the cosmic ...
... put on the double nature of Sachchidananda; he is no longer, like the animal, an undeveloped conscious being entirely driven by Prakriti, a slave of the executive Force, played with by the mechanical energies of Nature, but has begun to be a developing conscious soul or Purusha interfering with what was her sole affair, wishing to have a say in it and eventually to be the master. He cannot do it yet,... the spirit within him wishes to rise to yet higher heights, to widen its bounds; something within, something occult, knows that it is not the intention of the deeper conscious Soul-Nature, the Purusha-Prakriti, to be satisfied with his present lowness and limitations. To climb to higher altitudes, to get a greater scope, to transform his lower nature, this is al ways a natural impulse of man as soon... vital, nervous, more open, though still obscurely, to the psychic, capable of a first soul-formation, though only of an obscurer life-soul,—not the psychic being, but a frontal formation of the vital Purusha. This life-soul concretely senses Page 746 and contacts the things of the life-world, and tries to realise them here; it attaches immense importance to the satisfaction and fulfilment of ...
... संशयं यथानुभवकथनेन. This refers to the persistent doubts of the sceptical intellect re the Karmasiddhi & points to increasing authority of the divine Vani, अस्याः being Kali the Prakriti & the speaker the Deva or Purusha, Krishna, Master of the Yoga. It appears, however, that the doubts as to dehasiddhi, rapidity, exact fulfilment of knowledge & power are also included. Images 1) A mirror (back... the Brahmadarshana during the last few years have had for their object the removal of these & other defects and the development & harmonious unification of its various aspects, Saguna & Nirguna, Purusha-Prakriti, Ishwara-Shakti, Prajna-Hiranya-Virat, Sarva with Ananta, Sarva-Ananta with Jnana, Sarva-Ananta-Jnana with Ananda etc. The unification seems now to be approaching completion. The interpretation... consciousness has been driven down into the manas & prana, apparently in order that their more obscure movements may learn to become satyam, brihat & ritam no less in the Annamaya & Pranamaya Purusha & Prakriti than in the Manomaya. It is promised that as a result of the apparent relapse a greater, firmer & vaster siddhi will emerge. Page 443 × ...
... spirituality should come to mean mere asceticism, that will merely impoverish life and weaken its base. In the different systems of Yoga, the consenting parties are three: God or Purusha, Nature or Prakriti, and the individual human soul. Man being a thinker and a doer, he has the freedom to aspire nobly and engage in appropriate action, thereby giving himself the push towards perfection or... have hitherto examined are Vedantic in their principle; their force is in knowledge, their method is knowledge.... In all the lord of the Yoga is the Purusha, the Conscious Soul that knows, observes, attracts, governs. But in Tantra it is rather Prakriti, the Nature-Soul, the Energy, the Will-in-Power executive in the universe. It was by learning and applying the intimate secrets of this Will-in-Power... origin in Nature or Prakriti. We cannot long ignore them, we cannot for ever run away from them, and we must not allow them to master or enslave us. The proper way would be to face them, understand them, purify them and tame and turn their terrific potentialities into purposive use: Yoga is nothing but practical psychology... [Nature] is the self-fulfilment of the Purusha through his Energy ...
... as the equal, the inactive, the immutable principle and of all works as simply the operation of universal Force, of the Nature-Soul, Prakriti, „ the unequal, active, mutable power. Lastly, the supreme Self has to be seen as the supreme Purusha governing this Prakriti, of whom the soul in Nature is a partial manifestation, by whom all works are directed, in a perfect transcendence, through Nature.... "impersonality of spiritual being". This in turn must facilitate a Divine orientation for all actions, all thoughts, all loves. In one sense, not the ego, but Prakriti or Nature is the doer of all works; but Prakriti is only a power of the being or Purusha who is the master and controller of all her multitudinous works and million-faceted energisms. The supreme rule of life is thus categorical and clear: ... sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I. Sri Aurobindo's comment is itself a tearing of the veil of the beautiful verse to get at the meaning coiled within: By the revelation of the vision of Surya ...
... in marriage 476 Divine omnipresence 8, 546, 568, 614, 636, 747, 772, 787 (cf 689) Paris Charity Bazar 12-3 sin and punishment 13 and Nature's upheavals 13 and Kali's working 724 Purusha-Prakriti 15-6, 592, 603 (cf155) Page 910 travelling in the occult 18-9, 25, 402 Mme Théon 23-4 occult warnings 25-6, 30 gambling 26-7 need of sound adhara 30, 246 sincerity and gratitude... extension 424 as Mona Lisa 420 supports Cripps' Mission 425-6, 571 calls on her time 460-1, 489 self-portrait and portrait of Sri Aurobindo 465, 700, 734 paints 'Emerging Godhead' or Golden Purusha 694 decline in Sri Aurobindo's health 490-1 supramental Force passing from Sri Aurobindo into her 492, 807 hymn of gratitude to him 503-5, 518 Playground classes 505ff range and soul-quality... his body charged with supramental light 494 significance of his passing 503-4, 799, 807 continuing his work 537, 799, 807 'belongs to the future' 606, 799 'is the Future...'754 the 'Golden Purusha' 617, 694 significance of his birth 635-6, 712, 831-2, 829 what he expects of us 636 his prose style 653-4, 656-7 what he came to tell us 669, 802 her understanding him anew 768 laying down ...
... the working out of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, an important change had taken place. At the beginning he practised and recommended the technique of distancing the inner being from the outer, the Purusha from the Prakriti, according to the Sankhya system of yoga. Gradually, however, and especially after the final arrival of the Mother, he recommended more and more the complete turning of the whole soul and ...
... than the psychic being. The psychic being is behind the heart; while the Jiva is high above, connected with the Central Being. It is that which on every level of consciousness becomes the Purusha, the Prakriti and the personalities of Nature. The psychic being, one may say, is the Soul-personality. The psychic being most purely reflects the Divine in the lower triplicity of mind, life and body... 3. The Divine Personality and its Transcendence. 4. Existence of two Natures – parā and aparā . Disciple : It speaks of the Para Prakriti and says that advanced souls attain to the Para Prakriti. Sri Aurobindo : The Para Prakriti there is used in general terms. Disciple : Yes. I don't find the transformation in the Gita. The exposition of the levels of consciousness beyond... the lower nature. How can you get the Divine Nature unless you conquer the nature of the animal-man in you ? The first step has been given to you : you must learn to separate yourself as the Purusha, and look unmoved at all the play of nature in you. You must externalise the play and see all its actions as outside yourself. You ought not to allow any mental justification for the play of the ...
... obedience to his own supreme being, a response to the Source of all his existence. The individual nature would be nothing separate, it would be a current of the Supernature. All antinomy of the Purusha and the Prakriti, that curious division and unbalance of the Soul and Nature which afflicts the Ignorance, would be entirely removed; for the nature would be the outflowing of the self-force of the Person... limited creature of Nature but a Self or Soul, a Purusha. The gnostic Individual would be such an inner Person unveiled, occupying both the depths—no longer self-hidden—and the surface in a unified self-awareness; he would not be a surface personality partly expressive of a larger secret being, he would be not the wave but the ocean: he would be the Purusha, the inner conscious Existence self-revealed... universal Self and Spirit; all his action would originate from and obey the supreme Self and Spirit's divine governance of Nature. All life would have to him the sense of the Conscious Being, the Purusha within, finding its self-expression in Nature; his life and all its thoughts, feelings, acts would be filled for him with that significance and built upon that foundation of its reality. He would feel ...
... Vedanta is only the mask of a divine cosmic Will, devátmashaktih swagunair nigúdhá; Prakriti of Vedanta is no separate Page 512 power, no self-existent mechanical entity, but the executive force of the divine Purusha at once self-revealed and self-concealed in the mechanism of its own workings. Purusha, conscious Soul, is the divine Poet and Maker; Nature, conscious Force, is His poetic... the divine Purusha standing back from the workings of His Prakriti, not only can be the free upholder, enjoyer & giver of an original & continued sanction to the world-workings, bharta bhokta anumanta, but also, by His eternal immanence as Master of the Will everywhere, is the Page 522 present Ishwara, the controlling Lord of the action, man, by standing back from the Prakriti as the Soul... constitutes in us these relations of the duality? It is not the soul itself but the activities of the mind, life, body, our thoughts, emotions, sensations; it is not the Purusha but our parts of Nature or parts of Prakriti. The soul or Purusha enjoys these relations because it identifies itself with the activities of Nature working in a special name & form & regards all her other workings from that centre ...
... the Knowledge by illumination proceeds. Lipi & Rupa are included. Lipi. 1) Build desolated Europe into a city of God. 2) Eyes in the splanchna. (the pranic sense). 27 April 1915 Prakriti Purusha well established in the Ananda Brahman. Kamananda obstructed yesterday but not entirely discontinued in the body. Strong pressure for the Ananda from the Sukshma. Continuous under adverse ... common, but not detailed. Page 831 29 April 1915 The Krishna Kali as the all containing one (An. Br [Anantam or Anandam Brahma]) & everything as its expression in the terms of Purusha Prakriti. The Ishwara begins to take final possession. Truth continues to grow in the trikaldrishti telepathy, effectivity in the power. Rupa advances, but is still seriously obstructed. 30 April... vibration is left combating the Ananda of failure, but this is itself becoming Anandamaya of the duality and is kept only to found a particular vibration of the pure Ananda. 2) Daivi Prakriti The daivi prakriti and the fundamental sraddha are founded firmly and the Mahakali energy has occupied the Mahasaraswati frame, covered the Maheshwari pratistha, assumed the Mahaluxmi colouring and made its ...
... physical life. Disciple : When the Purusha separates itself from Prakriti, how is it possible for it to aspire for something higher ? Sri Aurobindo : It is not the Purusha but the Prakriti which has to be made to aspire and made fit. The Purusha is silent, passive, looking at Prakriti. Disciple : What is the characteristic way of Purusha looking at the world from the Supermind ... : What is the characteristic of the Purusha on each plane of being – the physical, the vital and the mental – looking at the world ? Sri Aurobindo : The Purusha looks at the world as Prakriti i.e. Nature, represents it to be. On the mental plane Prakriti represents thoughts, ideas – in short, all mental movements. On the vital plane Prakriti represents itself as desires – in short... ? Sri Aurobindo : The Supramental Purusha looks at the world as the Truth looks at it. Disciple : how does the Truth look at the world ? Sri Aurobindo : (with a gesture of hand pointing up) : You get up there and you will see. Page 241 Disciple : In the Taittiriya Upanishad the following pa occurs : "Vijnana extends the sacrifice – what is its ...
... The Kshara Purusha is that which follows the movement of the universe and seems to move and change, because it identifies itself while the Akshara is not identified and stands apart. The Upanishad makes the same distinction of the two Souls and Prakriti. I used to take kṣetra and kṣara puruṣa to mean the lower nature. Nature is Prakriti—Purusha cannot be Prakriti. Neither can Purusha be kṣetra... were animals in some distant past? Universal Prakriti determined it and the soul or Purusha accepted it. In the acceptance lies the responsibility. The Purusha is that which sanctions or refuses. The vital being responds to the ordinary life waves in the animal; man responds to them but has the power of mental control. He has also, as the mental Purusha is awake in him, the power to choose whether... puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā , the mental being leader of the life and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can the composite or part of it be the Purusha,—for the composite is composed of Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the Upanishad because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his ...
... inconscient creation. And in it lies his passive wisdom waiting upon the establisher of the truth to manifest himself in the earthly play. He comes here and puts himself in the hands of Nature, Purusha shaped by Prakriti. Satyavan of his own accord cannot climb to divinity without the arrival of Savitri whose birth needs the occult-yogic support, the tapasya, the Divya Yoga of her father Aswapati. To this ...
... accepted as a step in the necessary process guided & imposed by the supreme Wisdom, Love & Power. This is the namas of the Prakriti to the Purusha. Till now it was only the submission of the Jiva to the Ishwara, & could not be perfectly effective because the exterior Prakriti was still rebellious. The next step must be the entire submission of the intelligence to the ideality. विप्रा नमस्यंति धियेषिताः... This is becoming Page 560 clear to the discrimination, Daksha, & through Daksha to the intellect. But its fullness is dependent on that full sevenfold activity of Agni in the Purusha & Prakriti indicated on the 12ᵗʰ. That is begun, not completed. The obstacle is that the gods cannot reveal themselves (9ᵗʰ & 10ṭḥ) because of the Nidah who take advantage of the lower forms of the... Asmarana. After meals. Three realisations to be fixed in a few minutes & recorded— 1) A strong & anandamaya perception of all action & thought in beings as action of Prakriti obeying & expressing the Purusha, Ishwara. Page 579 2) Strong compulsion of dasatya in my own action. 3) Third intensity of Anandamaya Ishwara first in the Avidya part of all, then in the whole. ...
... pushed out and done as a purely superficial action—and you strongly dislike silence and emptiness. The third way which is one of the two ways towards Yoga by works is the separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the... think realisation by itself necessarily transforms anything; it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti. One may have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were. I have seen any number of instances of that... and others and the play of environment and physical forces. But once one begins to get [he inner view of things, it is different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of Prakriti psychological as well as physical, which play upon our nature—and these arc conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working ...
... Page 115 powerful method—of the Sankhyas, the separation of the Purusha and the Prakriti. One enforces on the mind the position of the Witness—all action of mind, vital, physical becomes an outer play which is not myself or mine, but belongs to Nature and has been enforced on an outer me. I am the witness Purusha; I am silent, detached, not bound by any of these things. There grows up in... illusion, a device of Nature, part of its machinery of determination, only a seeming freedom or at most a restricted, relative and subject independence. It is only when one goes behind away from Prakriti to Purusha and upward away from Mind to spiritual Self that the side of freedom comes to be first evident and then, by unison with the Will which is above Nature, complete. But to show and elaborate that... spiritual endeavour which means to be one-sided, radical and exclusive. It supports the effort of the Mind to get away from itself and from Life by a short cut into superconscience. Or rather it is the Purusha in Mind that wants to get away from the limitations of Mind and Life in the superconscient Infinite. Theoretically, the way for that is for the mind to deny all its perceptions and all the preoccupations ...
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