The Separation of Purusha and Prakriti: The Soul and the Exte al Being

Most people identify themselves with their exte
al being, their body-life-mind complex. They assign a name to that being and they answer to that name. They are totally immersed in the needs, wants, and directions that that exte
al being is taking. When they awaken to a deeper spiritual urge, they talk about “finding the soul” as if the soul is an element of that exte
al being.

Those who have shifted their viewpoint to the witness consciousness of the Purusha, or even have just experienced the shift of standpoint to the soul, come to recognise that this is actually a reversed view of things. Actually, the exte
al being is something developed by and for the soul’s use. It is the soul that is primary and the causative factor that creates the exte
al life and its experiences. It is for the benefit of the soul that the being takes birth, has various experiences and then, leaves the body behind in the transition we call death. But the soul does not die. The soul takes on its future forms, has new experiences and continues to grow and develop the psychic being, which is the soul entity that guides the birth and development process.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead explores the transition of the soul from life, through death, and into future life with a remarkable clarity that speaks of actual experience and understanding.

The Mandukya Upanishad describes the relation of the witness consciousness and the active nature, and explains how we become immersed in the actions of the exte
al nature to such a degree that we lose our awareness of the soul. But when we step back, and see the witness, we separate ourselves from the exte
al nature and experience freedom.

The Taittiriya Upanishad has a chapter that explores the increasing understanding of the separation of the exte
al form from the actual causative element, the Self or soul. The seeker is asked to undertake tapasya, concentration of conscious-force to understand the Ete
al. As we do, he starts by understanding that Matter, the material being, is the cause by which all beings are born, by which they live and into which they dissolve when they depart. When he goes to his teacher, (his father), he is asked to go back and focus again, obviously as he had not reached the solution. He then understands that it is the life-force that acts as the cause. Energy creates Matter! He once again is sent back and he determines that Mind is the cause, which creates and directs energy to create Matter. Even this does not resolve the question. In the next iteration of his concentration, he understands that there is a larger causative consciousness, Vijnana, translated by Sri Aurobindo as the ‘supramental consciousness’ that is the creative force that causes Mind, Life and Body. He still has not achieved the full realisation. Then he realizes that Ananda is the ultimate causative factor. Ananda is co-existent with Sat, Pure Existence and Chit, pure Consciousness-Force, and is the divine Existence that manifests the entire creation through the action of the Vignana, and then down into mind, life and body.

Science has now confirmed the Vedic knowledge that Matter is a form of Energy and the cutting edge of science is now confirming that Energy is a form of Consciousness. The detailed complexity, comprising billions of details, of our human existence, not to speak of the complexity of the rest of the creation, makes it clear that consciousness is driving and creating these forms and interactions and patterns. Matter is thus not the original cause, but an effect of the force of consciousness in manifestation.

Once we gain this basic recognition, we can begin the process of taking conscious charge of the exte
al nature. This is the uplifting and transformative process that Sri Aurobindo describes when he indicates that the Purusha need not be just a passive witness, but can take on the active role of Master of the nature, aligned with the divine Consciousness of which each being, each element, each form, is a part.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “The first step in this path of knowledge, having once determined in our intellect that what seems is not the Truth, that the self is not the body or life or mind, since these are only its forms, must be to set right our mind in its practical relation with the life and the body so that it may arrive at its own right relation with the Self. This it is easiest to do by a device… it is to create a separation between the Prakriti and the Purusha. The Purusha, the soul that knows and commands has got himself involved in the workings of his executive conscious force, so that he mistakes this physical working of it which we call the body for himself; he forgets his own nature as the soul that knows and commands; he believes his mind and soul to be subject to the law and working of the body; he forgets that he is so much else besides that is greater than the physical form; he forgets that the mind is really greater tha
Matter and ought not to submit to its obscurations, reactions, habit of inertia, habit of incapacity; he forgets that he is more even than the mind, a Power which can raise the mental being above itself; that he is the Master, the Transcendent and it is not fit the Master should be enslaved to his own workings, the Transcendent imprisoned in a form which exists only as a trifle in its own being. All this forgetfulness has to be cured by the Purusha remembering his own true nature and first by his remembering that the body is only a working and only one working of Prakriti.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 161