Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / The Mental Purusha: the Witness Awareness of the Mind

Transcript

The Mental Purusha: the Witness Awareness of the Mind · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:00
  As the seeker attempts to achieve the separation of the
• 0:03
  witness consciousness from the external nature of the being
• 0:06
  which is comprised of the body, the vital being and the mind,
• 0:11
  the first phase is generally the separation of the mental
• 0:14
  awareness from the body. This brings forth the awareness
• 0:18
  of the mental Purusha. This stage is intermediate to
• 0:22
  the complete experience of the separation of the Purusha from
• 0:26
  the Prakriti, as the individual still tends to identify with the
• 0:31
  mental being, but shows that the awareness is becoming sensitized
• 0:36
  to the different aspects and parts of the being and can begin
• 0:41
  to distinguish them. A certain amount of distance
• 0:44
  arises between the mental awareness and the physical
• 0:48
  experience, Sri Orobindo notes quote.
• 0:54
  Thus disciplined, the mind will gradually learn to take up
• 0:57
  towards the body the true attitude of the Purusha.
• 1:01
  First of all, it will know the mental Purusha as the upholder
• 1:05
  of the body and not in any way the body itself, for it is quite
• 1:10
  other than the physical existence which it upholds by
• 1:13
  the mind through the agency of the vital force.
• 1:17
  This will come to be so much the normal attitude of the whole
• 1:20
  being to the physical frame that the latter will feel to us as if
• 1:25
  something external and detachable, like the dress we
• 1:29
  wear or an instrument we happen to be carrying in our hand.
• 1:34
  We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense
• 1:38
  non existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital
• 1:43
  force and our mentality. These experiences are signs that
• 1:49
  the mind is coming to a right poise regarding the body, that
• 1:53
  it is exchanging the false viewpoint of the mentally
• 1:57
  obsessed and captured by physical sensation for the
• 2:01
  viewpoint of the true truth of things.
• 2:05
  End Quote. Reference Sri Orobindo and the
• 2:09
  Mother Looking from within, Chapter 5.
• 2:13
  Attitudes on the Path, page 163.