... observing the action of the mind; it is something which is going on in him and yet before him as an object of his regarding knowledge. This self-awareness is the intuitive sense of the witness Purusha, sākṣī . Witness Purusha is a pure consciousness who watches Nature and sees it as an action reflected upon the consciousness and enlightened by that consciousness, but in itself other than it. To mental Purusha... proceeding. It is quite possible for him to accentuate it in a direction away from existence in Nature, a detachment, a withdrawal from mind, life and body. He may try to live more and more as the witness Purusha, regarding the action of Nature, without interest in it, without sanction to it, detached, rejecting the whole action, withdrawing into pure conscious existence. This is the Sankhya liberation... knots of its bondage and the loosing-points of liberation, discover the keys of its Page 635 imperfection and lay our finger on the key of perfection. When the regarding soul, the witness Purusha stands back from his action of nature and observes it, he sees that it proceeds of its own impulsion by the power of its mechanism, by force of continuity of movement, continuity of mentality, ...
... 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 instead of the witness. The illusory sense of being the doer of all actions, which is one of the innate characteristics of the egoic con... 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 consequence a division in the being; the sadhak 5 feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness... world. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental energy. Page 71 But the Divine can stand back from his energy and observe it at its work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the mind can do that—a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection is ...
... building and self- creation, the appearance of a composite perfection of the saint, the selfless worker and the man of spiritual knowledge." 41 Page 47 Psychic Being, Experience of Witness Purusha or static Consciousness, and Process of Psychic Transformation In order to arrive at the widest totality and profound completeness, one has to shift the centre of consciousness from the... effected. It is true that at a certain stage, particularly, when one can stand back from the activities of Prakriti, it becomes possible to realize one's inner being as a silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. In this state, one may not arrive at a discovery of the psychic being or psychic entity in their fullness, but one may be led to a spiritual realization and liberation. In that state, a certain ...
... Page 243 The Witness Purusha or Witness Consciousness By itself the Purusha is impersonal, but by mixing itself with the movements of Prakriti it makes for itself a surface ego or personality. When it appears in its own separate nature then it is seen to be detached and observing. The consciousness you speak of would be described in the Gita as the witness Purusha. The Purusha or basic... wrong movements by refusal of assent and by substituting for them the action of the true consciousness from within or above. You can certainly go on developing the consciousness of the Witness Purusha above, but if it is only a witness and the lower Prakriti is allowed to have its own way, there would be no reason why it [ an unquiet and disturbed condition ] should ever stop. Many take that ...
... 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 consequence a division in the being; the sadhak 78 feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness... 81 Among the various methods pertaining to the three categories of paths, two methods stand out most prominently in Eckhart's teaching: The first is the Sankhya process of becoming the Witness Purusha—a method very similar to Eckhart's teaching about being the witnessing Presence. The second method, which pertains to the Path of Works and which is prominent in Eckhart's teaching, is that of ...
... getting his chance began to send all the shots to my weak partner and I kept on standing like a witness-Purusha. He was bent more on winning than enjoying the game." Next year, however, my partner and I changed our roles. I was now the active Prakriti and she the witness- Page 64 Purusha and we gave the formidable pair a good thrashing. The news had already reached the Mother so that ...
... law,—he is, in fact, a sort of far-off constitutional monarch or spiritual King Log, at the best an indifferent inactive Spirit behind the activity of Nature, like some generalised or abstract witness Purusha of the Sankhyas; he is pure Spirit and cannot put on a body, infinite and cannot be finite as the human being is finite, the ever unborn creator and cannot be the creature born into the world,—these ...
... room for the formation of the spiritual consciousness there. Stone image of Shiva = the realisation of the silent Self or Brahman there (peace, silence, wideness of the Infinite, purity of the witness Purusha). Out of this silence emerges the Divine Shakti concentrated for the transformation of the material. Sunlight = Light of Truth. 12 October 1936 Whenever I have seen snakes in dream ...
... energy, Shakti, that creates worlds. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental energy. But the Divine can stand back from his energy and observe it at its work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the mind can do that—a man can stand back in his mind-consciousness and watch the mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection is ...
... plane one can have the same experience, but of the actions as a play of forces. What is lacking at present to you is the other side of the experience, viz. that of the silent Atman or else of the witness Purusha calm, tranquil, free, pure and undisturbed by the play of the Prakriti. It tries to come and you are on the point of going into it, but the tendency of externalisation is still too strong. This ...
... transformed. .. . 128 Detach yourself from this vital-physical 129 —observe it as something not yourself; reject it, refuse your consent to its claims and impulses, but quietly as the witness Purusha whose refusal of sanction must ultimately prevail. ... Page 133 When you are not in this impersonality, still use your mental will and its power of assent or refusal—not with ...
... unquietude does not seem to touch him. The object is not swallowed up by the subject and vice versa. He has taken hold of a skylark to pour all his unsung melodies and yet remained the grand witness Purusha of the ancient Indian psychology, a dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in a certain manner of speaking, we may say that no great art is possible ...
... however, follow the traditional way. And what I have called the mantra of initiation — the often repeated command of Sri Aurobindo to detach myself from all happenings and practise to be only the Witness Purusha — this mantra was not given as such. The traditional method consists in the Guru's choosing an auspicious day and moment, and softly uttering the mantra in the sishya's ear. But Sri Aurobindo's ...
... , illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha, the sense of an Infinity or a Timelessness that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real. This experience is the highest sublimation of ...
... field of circumstances and the knower of the field, kshetra and kshetrajna. There is behind and above the field of circumstances the secret conscious-ness that can be experienced as a silent witness, purusha or as a transcendental immobility, Brahman or as the controlling and ruling giver of sanction and master, anumanta and ishwara. One of these experiences or all of them together can provide ...
... watching it reading or writing or talking, just as you watch the body acting or moving. I try to separate myself from the mental activity, but what happens is that, instead 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 ...
... gravity, all were in order. Still, Sri Aurobindo remained Sri Aurobindo to us; there was no loss of reverence. Some of us had hotly discussed topics even to the point of losing our temper before his Witness-Purusha consciousness. That would be very unusual before the Mother. To put a homely simile, they were like a father and mother, both loving but one indulgent, liberal, large, the other a firm though not ...
... happening in the mind and in other parts as well; it is in fact the observer of the whole adhara. The other parts are the vital and the physical. The vital too has its own central consciousness, its witness Purusha, which observes all the vital movements and also through its own angle the other parts. Likewise the physical has a Purusha and it too observes through its own conscious-ness. The mental Purusha ...
... some sadhak at Tiruvanamalai who was arguing with him that knowledge need not be accompanied by power. Sri Aurobindo : Yes, it is true. It depends on whether you lean on the side of witness Purusha or power or both. If Page 269 a man realizes the Sad aspect, the Pure Being, he may have no power, because Pure Being does not act. On the contrary, there may be those who may ...
... one realises only the static aspect of the psychic, and not the dynamic, or, eve before having a definite experience of the psychic, one may widen out into an experience of the Self, the silent, witness Purusha, detached from the working of nature and indifferent to it, udāsīnavadāsīnaḥ. There are different realisations possible, and unless we have a clear perception of their distinctive characteristics ...
... to get detached from one's actions themselves and feel oneself Page 46 to be merely watching what goes on by force of Prakriti or Nature. This deepens into one's becoming the witness Purusha, the individual Being who initiates nothing and only gives or withholds sanction to Nature's doings — and ultimately one realises the infinite impersonal Atman, the one World-Self standing aloof ...
... however, follow the traditional way. And what I have called the mantra of initiation — the often repeated command of Sri Aurobindo to detach myself from all happenings and practise to be only the Witness Purusha — this mantra was not given as such. The traditional method consists in the Guru's choosing an auspicious day and moment, and softly uttering the mantra in the sishya's ear. But Sri Aurobindo's ...
... however, follow the traditional way. And what I have called the mantra of initiation — the often repeated command of Sri Aurobindo to detach myself from all happenings and practise to be only the Witness Purusha — this mantra was not given as such. The traditional method consists in the Guru’s choosing an auspicious day and moment, and softly uttering the mantra in the shishya’s ear. But Sri Aurobindo’s ...
... the unquietude does not seem to touch him. The object is not swallowed up by the subject and vice versa. He has taken hold of a skylark to pour all his unsung melodies and yet remained the grand witness Purusha of the ancient Indian psychology, a dispassionate judge who does not tamper with evidence in a complex case. Indeed, in a certain manner of speaking, we may say that no great art is possible without ...
... illimitable, immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal witness Purusha, 10 the sense of an Infinity or a Transcendence that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real. 11 Two prominent philosophical ...
... 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 consequence a division in the being; the sadhak feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness which ...
... itself from emotion and sensation and Works in the interests of its own acute or rarefied or far-ranging powers. At first it is — to take again a term from Indian philosophical psychology — the witness Purusha, the watching Self, just saying "Yes" or "No" to the Nature-flux, Prakriti, of the speech of sensation and emotion, but by its support or lack of support it gives the flux on the whole a deliberate ...
... the Mother, the other the external being mostly vital which draws you outward and downwards towards the play of the lower nature. There is also in you behind the mind the being who observes, the witness Purusha, who can stand detached from the play of the nature, observing it and able to choose. It has to put itself always on the side of the psychic being and assent to and support its movements and to ...
... immobile, free, the uplook to something above us indescribable and unseizable into which by abolition of our personality we can enter, the presence of an omnipresent eternal Page 292 witness Purusha, the sense of an Infinity or a Timelessness that looks down on us from an august negation of all our existence and is alone the one thing Real. This experience is the highest sublimation of sp ...
... physical being, the Purusha. So too, by standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together, it becomes possible to realise one's inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. This will lead to a spiritual realisation and liberation, but will not necessarily bring about a transformation; for the Purusha, satisfied to be free and himself, may leave the Nature, the Prakriti ...
... sanction and to let them run down till they come to a 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 ...
... 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 consequence a division in the being; the sadhak feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness ...
... alleviate and shorten the difficulty: 1) Detach yourself from this vital-physical—observe it as something not yourself; reject it, refuse your consent to its claims and impulses, but quietly as the witness Purusha whose refusal Page 113 of sanction must ultimately prevail. This ought not to be difficult for you, if you have already learned to live more and more in the impersonal Self. 2) When ...
... 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 consequence a division in the being; the Sadhak feels within him the growth of a calm silent separate consciousness which ...
... energy, Shakti that creates worlds. The mind is a modified consciousness that puts forth a mental energy. But the Divine can stand back from its Energy and observe it at its work, it can be the Witness Purusha watching the works of Prakriti. Even the mind can do that - a man can stand back in his mind consciousness and watch the mental energy doing things, thinking, planning, etc.; all introspection ...
... on the nature and keep it under its control? I see it remaining simply detached, doing nothing! That is its first condition when it manifests in the lower nature. It is then called the witness Purusha. If you want the rest to develop, you have to train your mind to be its instrument. The working consciousness is still so restless during work. The Purusha is separate but unable ...
... and the knower of the field, kshetra and Page 275 kshetrajna. There is behind and above the field of circumstances the secret consciousness that can be experienced as a silent witness, purusha or as a transcendental immobility, Brahman or as the controlling and ruling giver of sanction and master, anumanta and ishwara. One of these experiences or all of them together can provide ...
... the field of circumstances and the knower of the field, kshetra and kshetrajña. There is behind and above the field of circumstances the secret consciousness that can be experienced as a silent witness, purusha or as a transcendental immobility, Brahman or as the controlling and ruling giver of sanction and master, anumanta and Ishwara. One of these experiences or all of them together can provide a sure ...
... in the mind and in other parts as well; it is in fact the observer of the whole adhar. The other parts are the vital and the physical. The vital too has its own central consciousness, its witness Purusha, which observes all the vital movements and also through its own angle the other parts. Likewise the physical has a Purusha and it too observes through its own consciousness. The mental Purusha ...
... 189 the traditional way. And what I have called the mantra of initiation—the often repeated command of Sri Aurobindo to detach myself from all happenings and practise to be only the Witness Purusha—this mantra was not given as such. The traditional method consists in the Guru's choosing an auspicious day and moment, and softly uttering the mantra in the sishya's ear. But Sri Aurobindo's ...
... for its peace and silence and gravitate towards it, emphasizing the illusoriness of the world of appearances and turning away from it; but if it is a full opening of the soul, not only of the witnessing Purusha, but also of the Prakriti in it—for, it comprises both— not only of its status, but also of its purposive dynamism, then the natural aspiration will be for the realization and revelation of the ...
... but of the witnessing consciousness,—are utterly inexplicable except on the supposition that there is a multiplicity of witnesses, many Purushas. The separative ego-sense, we may say, is a sufficient explanation? But the ego-sense is a common principle of Nature and need not vary; for by itself it simply induces the Purusha to identify himself with Prakriti, and if there is only one Purusha, all beings... conception of Purusha itself. Prakriti conducts her activities for the pleasure of Purusha; but how is that pleasure determined? In the strict Sankhya analysis it can only be by a passive consent of the silent Witness. Passively the Witness consents to the action of the intelligent will and the ego-sense, passively he consents to the recoil of that will from the ego-sense. He is Witness, source of the... mechanical and inconscient takes on the appearance of consciousness. It is because of the reflection of Prakriti in Purusha; the light of consciousness of the Soul is attributed to the workings of the mechanical energy and it is thus that the Purusha, observing Nature as the witness and forgetting himself, is deluded with the idea generated in her that it is he who thinks, feels, wills, acts, while ...
... consciousness, not other than itself, part of its being, but a part (or parts) put away from itself,—that is to say, from the centre of vision in which Being concentrates itself as the Knower, Witness or Purusha. We have seen that from this apprehending consciousness arises the movement of Mind, the movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own universal being as if other than he; ...
... 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 witness, the Purusha. Prakriti works by the inequality of her three modes, gunas, in perpetual collision... 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 the true soul-nature. This is the key... the appearance of a lower self, an ego-self. And so too what we think of ordinarily as the soul is really the natural personality, not the true Person, the Purusha, but the desire-soul in us which is a reflection of the consciousness of the Purusha in the workings of Prakriti: it is, in fact, itself only an action of the three modes and therefore a part of Nature. Thus there are, we may say, two souls ...
... Rayi, the universal movement emanating from the quiescent Male. Purusha is therefore imaged as the Enjoyer, Prakriti as the 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... artificial canals from the reservoir were not, indeed, wanting. Some by resolving that army of witnesses into a single Witness, arrived at the dual conception of God and Nature, Purusha & Prakriti, Spirit and Matter, Ego and Non-ego. Others, more radical, perceived Prakriti as the creation, shadow or aspect of Purusha, so that God alone remained, the spiritual or ideal factor eliminating by inclusion the... threshold of the porch He is Parabrahman envisaging Maya, and the next step carries Him into Maya, where Duality begins, Purusha differentiates from Prakriti, Spirit from Matter, Force from Energy, Ego from Non-Ego; and as the descent into phenomena deepens, single Purusha differentiates itself into multitudinous receptacles, single Prakriti into innumerable forms. This is the law of Maya. But ...
... parts against certain others. But Purusha is not totally inactive. This inactivity, reduced to the single role of passive witness, is that of Sankhya. * Purusha is Sakshi.** But even then he can either give or refuse his consent, he is the giver of sanction : anumanta. And Prakriti does not work only for herself, she works for Purusha also — she executes. But Purusha is more than that. It is not he who... is also the Knower and Lord (Ishwara). And what he decides, Prakriti executes. In most people Purusha is hidden behind all mental action. There is certainly a consent to the Play of Prakriti. But Purusha is not free then: Prakriti casts her action on Purusha. Purusha must first recover his attitude of witness. Then he experiences that he has a certain power over the activities of Prakriti. *System... consciousness. **Witness. Is this consent of the Purusha conscious? Or is it something much more profound? It is not in the mental ego, that is why it seems unconscious. But when Purusha is free it becomes conscious. This part which I call myself, which looks at the calmed mind, not sharing in its activities, is this Manomaya Purusha ?* *The mental Purusha or mental self ...
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