Bhagavad Gita, chapter 13, verse 23

The first important new element we find is in the 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 consent, by reflection upholder of the work of Nature, sākṣī anumantā bhartā, but nothing more. But the Purusha of13.23 the Gita is also the Lord of Nature; he is Ishwara. If the operation of the intelligent will belongs to Nature, the origination and power of the will proceed from the conscious Soul; he is the Lord of Nature. If the act of intelligence of the Will is the act of Prakriti, the source and light of the intelligence are actively contributed by the Purusha; he is not only the Witness, but the Lord and Knower, master of knowledge and will, jñātā 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 the traditional analysis.

In the very part of its teaching in which the Gita's synthesis leans most towards the side of pure knowledge, we have seen that it constantly prepares for this fuller truth and more pregnant experience. Indeed, it is implied in the very form the Gita gives to the realisation of the self-existent Immutable. That immutable Self of all existences seems indeed to stand back from any active intervention in the workings of Nature; but it is not void of all relation whatever and remote from all connection. It is our witness and supporter; it gives a silent and13.23 impersonal sanction; it has even an impassive enjoyment. The many-sided action of Nature is still possible even when the soul is poised in that calm self-existence: for the witness soul is the immutable Purusha, and Purusha has always some relation with Prakriti. But now the reason of this double aspect of silence and of activity is revealed in its entire significance,—because the silent all-pervading Self is only one side of the truth of the divine Being. He who pervades the world as the one unchanging self that supports all its mutations, is equally the Godhead in man, the Lord in the heart of every creature, the conscient Cause and Master of all our subjective becoming and all our inward-taking and outward-going objectivised action. The Ishwara of the Yogins is one with the Brahman of the seeker of knowledge, one supreme and universal Spirit, one supreme and universal Godhead.

The Soul and Nature are only two aspects of the eternal13.20-24 Brahman, an apparent duality which founds the operations of his universal existence. The Soul is without origin and eternal, Nature too is without origin and eternal; but the modes of Nature and the lower forms she assumes to our conscious experience have an origin in the transactions of these two entities. They come from her, wear by her the outward chain of cause and effect, doing and the results of doing, force and its workings, all that is here transient and mutable. Constantly they change and the soul and Nature seem to change with them, but in themselves these two powers are eternal and always the same. Nature creates and acts, the Soul enjoys her creation and action; but in this inferior form of her action she turns this enjoyment into the obscure and petty figures of pain and pleasure. Forcibly the soul, the individual Purusha, is attracted by her qualitative workings and this attraction of her qualities draws him constantly to births of all kinds in which he enjoys the variations and vicissitudes, the good and evil of birth in Nature. But this is only the outward experience of the soul mutable in conception by identification with mutable Nature. Seated in this body is her and our Divinity, the supreme Self, Paramatman, the supreme Soul, the mighty Lord of Nature, who watches her action, sanctions her operations, upholds all she does, commands her manifold creation, enjoys with his universal delight this play of her figures of his own being. That is the self-knowledge to which we have to accustom our mentality before we can truly know ourselves as an eternal portion of the Eternal. Once that is fixed, no matter how the soul in us may comport itself outwardly in its transactions with Nature, whatever it may seem to do or however it may seem to assume this or that figure of personality and active force and embodied ego, it is in itself free, no longer bound to birth because one through impersonality of self with the inner unborn spirit of existence. That impersonality is our union with the supreme egoless I of all that is in cosmos.

The distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the soul can adopt towards Nature in its movement towards perfect freedom and rule. The Purusha is, says the Gita, witness, upholder, source of the sanction, knower, lord, enjoyer; Prakriti executes, it is the active principle and must have an operation corresponding to the attitude of the Purusha. The soul may assume, if it wishes, the poise of the pure witness, sākṣī; it may look on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but does not itself participate. We have seen the importance of this quietistic capacity; it is the basis of the movement of withdrawal by which we can say of everything,—body, life, mental action, thought, sensation, emotion,—"This is Prakriti working in the life, mind and body, it is not myself, it is not even mine," and thus come to the soul's separation from these things and to their quiescence. This may, therefore, be an attitude of renunciation or at least of non-participation, tamasic, with a resigned and inert endurance of the natural action so long as it lasts, rajasic, with a disgust, aversion and recoil from it, sattwic, with a luminous intelligence of the soul's separateness and the peace and joy of aloofness and repose; but also it may be attended by an equal and impersonal delight as of a spectator at a show, joyous but unattached and ready to rise up at any moment and as joyfully depart. The attitude of the Witness at its highest is the absolute of unattachment and freedom from affection by the phenomena of the cosmic existence.

These three Purushas are described in the fifteenth chapter of the Gita. "There are two Purushas in the world, the akṣara and the kṣara,—the kṣara is all creatures, the akṣara is called kūṭastha, the one on the summit. There is another Purusha, the highest (uttama), called also the Paramatma or Supreme Spirit, who enters into the three worlds, (the worlds of suṣupti, svapna, jāgrat, otherwise the causal, mental and physical planes of existence), and sustains them as their imperishable lord." And in the thirteenth 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, (the play of conservation, creation and destruction; reception, reaction and resistance; illumination, misconception and obscuration; 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."

This obedience is forcibly imposed on the lower ignorant creation. But thinking man who experiences increasingly from generation to generation and from life to life the nature of things and develops reflective knowledge and the sense of his soul in Nature, delivers in her a power of initiating will. He is not bound to her set actualities; he can refuse assent, and the thing in Nature to which it is refused goes on indeed for a time and produces its results by impetus of Karma, but as it runs, it loses power and falls into impotence and desuetude. He can do more, he can command a new action and orientation of his nature. The assent was a manifestation of the power of the soul as giver of the sanction, anumantā, but this is a power of the soul as active lord of the nature, īśvara. Then Nature still insists more or less on her old habitual way by reason of her past impetus or the right of previous sanctions and may even, in proportion as she is unaccustomed to control, resist and call in hostile powers, our own creations, the children of our past willings; then is there a battle in the house of our being between the lord and his spouse or between old and new nature and a defeat of the soul or its victory. And this is certainly a freedom, but only a relative freedom, and even the greatest mental self-mastery a relative and precarious thing at the best. This liberty when we look down at it from a higher station, is not well distinguishable from a lightened bondage.

This is, internally, our necessary attitude towards God & the world. But to translate an internal attitude into the terms 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 existence even while secretly or openly He enjoys also His transcendent existence. The Soul or God is, says the Gita, Ishwara, bharta, jnata, anumanta; the Master for whose pleasure Prakriti acts, the Indweller who fills her with his being & supports her actions, the Knower who watches & takes into His cognisance her activities, the anumanta who gives or withholds or after giving withdraws His consent and as He gives, continues or withdraws it, things begin, endure or cease. But He is also & preeminently bhokta, her enjoyer. For all this is bhogartham—for the sake of enjoyment. But in practice we find that we are not Ish, but anish, not master, but slave; not jnata & anumanta, but ajna, not knowing & controlling, but ignorant, clouded, struggling for knowledge & mastery; not an immortal enjoyer in delight, but victim of sorrow, death & limitation. Limited, we struggle to enlarge ourselves & our scope; unpossessed of our desire, we demand & we strive; unattaining, reacted upon by hostile forces, we are full of sorrow & racked by pain. We see others possess & ourselves lack & we struggle to dispossess them and possess in their stead. The facts of life as we live it contradict at every turn the sublime dogma of the Vedantist. What are we to do? To struggle with God in others & God in the world or live only for God in others & not at all for God in ourselves?

It may be objected, that while 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 present Ishwara, the controlling Lord of the action, man, by standing back from the Prakriti as the Soul or Purusha, may be indeed, secondarily to God, the upholder of his individual system,—that formal vessel, adhara, of his soul-states,—may be in some sort sanction-giver to its activities, may be, secretly always & here eventually, the free enjoyer of all world-activities that come within its experience, but is not & because of his individuality cannot be or ever realise in himself the Ishwara, the present Lord and master of Nature. He has freedom, not lordship,—the passive freedom of God in the unmoving Brahman he may indeed acquire or share, but not His active lordship in the moving Brahman. To be mukta but never ish would seem to be his destiny. Yet the Gita asserts that the Jivatman also is the Ishwara and the Upanishad declares the identity of the human soul with the divine Lord who inhabits all these motion-built forms of Nature.

An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer
And Master of its multitude of forms,
It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,
The witness Lord of Nature's myriad acts
Consenting to the movements of her Force.

রাজসিক অহঙ্কারকে জাগাইয়া সত্ত্ব-প্রসূত জ্ঞানের সাহায্যে তাহা নির্ম্মূল করা উন্নতির প্রথম সোপান। রাজসিক অহঙ্কারের হস্ত হইতে মুক্তির উপায় জ্ঞান ও শ্রদ্ধা ও ভক্তির বিকাশ। সত্ত্বপ্রধান ব্যক্তি বলেন না যে, আমি সুখী; তিনি বলেন, আমার প্রাণে সুখবিকাশ হইতেছে, তিনি বলেন না যে, আমি জ্ঞানী; তিনি বলেন, আমার মধ্যে জ্ঞানসঞ্চার হইতেছে। তিনি জানেন যে, সেই সুখ ও জ্ঞান তাঁহার নহে, জগন্মাতার। অথচ সর্ব্বপ্রকার অনুভবের সহিত যখন আনন্দসম্ভোগের জন্য লিপ্ততা থাকে তখন সেই জ্ঞানী বা ভক্তের ভাব অহঙ্কৃত। “আমার হইতেছে”, যখন বলা হয় তখন অহংবুদ্ধি পরিত্যাগ করা হইল না। গুণাতীত ব্যক্তিই সম্পূর্ণ অহঙ্কারজয়ী। তিনি জানেন, জীব সাক্ষী ও ভোক্তা, পুরুষোত্তম অনুমন্তা, প্রকৃতি কর্ত্তা, ইহার মধ্যে “আমি” নাই, সবই একমেবাদ্বিতীয়ং ব্রহ্মের বিদ্যাবিদ্যাময়ী শক্তির লীলা। অহংজ্ঞান জীব-অধিষ্ঠিত প্রকৃতির মধ্যে একটী মায়াপ্রসূত ভাবমাত্র। এই অহংজ্ঞানরহিত ভাবের শেষ অবস্থা সচ্চিদানন্দে লয়। কিন্তু যিনি গুণাতীত হইয়াও পুরুষোত্তমের ইচ্ছায় লীলা-মধ্যে অবস্থান করেন, তিনি পুরুষোত্তম ও জীবের স্বতন্ত্র অস্তিত্ব রক্ষা করিয়া আপনাকে প্রকৃতিবিশিষ্ট ভগবদংশ বুঝিয়া লীলার কার্য্য সম্পন্ন করেন। এই ভাবকে অহঙ্কার বলা যায় না। এই ভাব পরমেশ্বরেরও আছে, তাঁহার মধ্যে অজ্ঞান ও লিপ্ততা নাই, কিন্তু আনন্দময় অবস্থা স্বস্থ না হইয়া জগন্মুখী হয়। যাঁহার এই ভাব, তিনিই জীবন্মুক্ত। লয়-রূপ মুক্তি দেহপাতে লাভ করা যায়। জীবন্মুক্তদশা দেহেই অনুভূত হয়।

साधुर्ह्यहङ्कारं सात्त्विकं रक्षति न तदर्पयति भगवते । एतत्पुण्यमेतत्पापमेतत्करिष्यामि नैतत्करिष्यामीति पापपुण्यबोधः सिद्धिविघ्नकरः । अज्ञानजो हि नास्ति पापं नास्ति पुण्यमीश्वरेच्छा वर्तते त्वाश्रित्य स्वभावम् । न पापचित्तस्तान्त्रिकः सिद्धो भवति न पुण्यचित्तस्तच्चित्तस्तु सिद्धो भवति स एव तान्त्रिकः । कष्टा तु चित्तशोधनक्रियानन्दमयी चित्तशुद्धिर्धैर्यं कर्तव्यं श्रद्धा कर्तव्या न व्याकुलता न साधनफलाकाङ्क्षा कथं न भवतीति कष्टमद्य भवेदिति । सा प्रविष्टा ज्ञानं ददाति शक्तिं ददाति प्रेम ददाति ददात्यानन्दं । अपूर्णानि त्वेतानि चास्थिराणि चित्तशोधने शुद्ध्यन्तु पूर्णानि भवन्ति । न सा पूर्णता सिद्धिः सिद्धिप्रतिष्ठा तु सिद्धिप्रवर्तनञ्च कालीसंगमः सिद्धिः । साधर्म्यमेव तत् प्रतिष्ठा साधर्म्यं सिद्धेः । तत्साधर्म्यस्य चतुष्टयचतुष्कं लक्षणम् । तद्यथा शुद्धिचतुष्टयं शक्तिचतुष्टयं ज्ञानचतुष्टयं सौन्दर्यचतुष्टयञ्च । समता शान्तिः सुखं हास्यं शुद्धिचतुष्टयम् । फलत्यागः कर्मत्यागः कामनात्याग इति समता । न त्वप्रवृत्तिस्त्यागः सा हि तामसी भगवति तु सन्न्यासो बुद्धौ निर्लिप्तबुद्धिरेव समो न त्यक्तप्रवृतिः स जडो न समः । तद्यथा त्वं यत्प्रवृत्तिं दास्यसि तत्कर्म करिष्यति शक्तिर्यत्फलं दास्यसि तद्भोक्ष्यति यं कामं प्राणे दास्यसि तत्कामयिष्यति नाहं कर्ता नाहं कामविद्धो ज्ञाताहं भोक्ताहं पुरुषोत्तमोऽनुमन्ता तस्यानुमतं काली करोति तस्याः कर्म कामं फलमहं ज्ञास्यामि भोक्ष्यामि च समभावेन सुखमानन्द इति । स्थैर्यमनुद्वेगो धैर्यमिति शान्तिः । तदपि चित्ते । उग्रभावोऽपि रुद्रकर्मा शान्तिसंपन्नो भवेत् ।

The three forms of dasyam are now distinct and well-marked. The simple dasyam is that obedience to the divine impulsion which is self-chosen & depends on the individual's intelligence of God's will and his consent, his readiness to obey. The Purusha is still karta & anumanta, a servant of God, not His slave. The great step bridging the transition from the simple to the double dasyam is the renouncement of the kartritwa abhimana, by which we perceive that Prakriti is the only doer of all our actions voluntary or involuntary from the most deliberately concerted endeavour even to the simplest trifle and, in consciousness, are aware of the impulse of Prakriti in every movement physical or mental. At first the consciousness tends to make a false division claiming the movement itself to be our own although the determining impulse is felt as a driving or a pressure proceeding from infinite Nature above or around us. The wearing away of this division marks a farther attenuation of servanthood and deepening towards the divine servitude. But so long as the anumanta keeps his abhimana and reserves his right of individual lordship (Ishwara) over Prakriti, we have not passed the stage of simple dasyam. For between the various impulses of Prakriti, we have the sense of choosing, of an active & constant freedom, & although we choose what we understand to be God's will, it is still our choice that determines the action in the adhara & not His direct and imperative Will. In the double dasyam on the contrary there is no active & constant freedom, but only a general & ultimate freedom which is used little or only exceptionally. We are aware of ourselves as Ishwara & anumanta, the individual ruling & sanctioning authority, but, although we still have the power of refusing our sanction to any particular impulse of Prakriti if we choose, we do not choose; we make no choice, we do not determine what is God's will and act thereby or order Prakriti to act thereby, but leave everything to God to determine; the whole responsibility is His & a given impulse of Prakriti fulfils itself or not as He chooses without our interference. If the will is used, it is used by Prakriti. We are aware of it as being not our will, but the will in the adhar used by Prakriti. In the triple dasyam, even this potential freedom disappears. Whatever impulse of infinite Nature comes, we could not interfere with it if we wished, any more than the drifting leaf can deny itself to the storm or the engine to the force that works it. We are aware of our body as a whole & in its various parts being moved not by will in the body but by a will or force outside the body; our thoughts, feelings, will-power similarly. Each of these stands perfectly apart from the others & is worked separately by Nature. The will wills & has done; it does not try to determine action but leaves the action to happen or not as Nature pleases; the thought thinks & is done, it does not try to determine either the movement of the will or the movement of the action; the feelings equally live for themselves, atmatripta, not striving to compel action & emotion or thought & feeling to agree. What harmony is necessary is determined by the Para Shakti that drives us, which we feel always as a Force driving us. But this Force is itself only an instrument of a conscious Will driving it,—the Will or Anumati of the Purushottama, who is Parameshwara & universal Anumanta.

The aham karta is now replaced by the kartri brahma, so the aham jnata by the jnatri, the aham bhokta by the bhoktri, the aham bhartá by the bhartri, the aham sakshi by the sakshi brahma. What is left of the aham is a kendra of action, a kendra of knowledge, a kendra of vision, a kendra of enjoyment. In this kendra Kali receives the will of God, thinks it out in the idea, fulfils it in action, watches its fulfilment and sends up the bhoga to God, becoming herself the will, the action, the vision, the bhoga, the knowledge. The two have now to be harmonised, the Kalibhava & the Krishnabhava in the one Brahman. The dissolution of the sakshi aham into the sakshi Brahma has rendered this possible at last in its finality and completeness.

The siege has, today, been lifted, but the full vijnana is not yet manifest. At present the siddhis of power are being allowed to manifest through the Bhuvar tapas or the Swar-tapas on the objectivity. Manifesting through the Bhuvar tapas the Will tends to produce powerfully immediate results & more intermittently, often by indirect means & after much tergiversation, final results; manifesting through the Swar tapas it fastens more often on general than on particular effectualities or seizes only on the general effect & some of the effectuating movements. When the pure Chittapas manifests in vijnanabuddhi & manasbuddhi, there is a more consistent simultaneous & sometimes identical knowledge & effectuality, but the manasabuddhi is constitutionally averse or unable to hold for a long time the continuous activity of the Chittapas. When this Power is thus active through vijnanabuddhi & manasabuddhi, the knowledge also tends to lapse back from the ideality to these organs. It is now especially at home in vijnanabuddhi, where it perceives all or most of the forces at work, the possibilities, many of the immediate actualities & sometimes the eventual actuality. The movement is now towards a levelling up of the siddhis of Power & siddhis of knowledge. Script & vani have been made manifest to the mind in such a way that the real script & real vani can be distinguished from their secondary reproductions & from false simulations. Egoistic activity has been once more expelled and driven back into the world-environment. The Jiva is now only a secondary ishwara, bhokta, bharta & jnata receiving all things as a centre of enjoyment & lordship for the Purushottama.

The consciousness you speak of would be described in the Gita as the witness Purusha. The Purusha or basic consciousness is the true being or at least, on whatever plane it manifests, represents the true being. But in the ordinary nature of man it is covered up by the ego and the ignorant play of the Prakriti and remains veiled behind as the unseen Witness supporting the play of the Ignorance. When it emerges, you feel it as a consciousness behind, calm, central, unidentified with the play which depends upon it. It may be covered over, but it is always there. The emergence of the Purusha is the beginning of liberation. But it can also become slowly the Master—slowly because the whole habit of the ego and the play of the lower forces (which also you describe correctly here) is against that. Still it can dictate what higher play is to replace the lower movement and then there is the process of that replacement, the higher coming, the lower struggling to remain and push away the higher movement. You say rightly that the offering to the Divine shortens the whole thing and is more effective, but usually it cannot be done completely at once owing to the past habit and the two methods continue together until the complete surrender is possible.

To reject doubts means control of one's thoughts—very certainly so. But the control of one's thoughts is as necessary as the control of one's vital desires and passions or the control of the movements of one's body—for the Yoga, and not for the Yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master,—the mental Purusha, manomaya puruṣa, śakṣī, anumantā, īśvara. It is no more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of unruly and uncontrollable thoughts than to be a rudderless ship in the storm of the desires and passions or a slave of either the inertia or the impulses of the body. I know it is more difficult because man being primarily a creature of mental Prakriti identifies himself with the movements of his mind and cannot at once dissociate himself and stand free from the swirl and eddies of the mind whirlpool. It is comparatively easy for him to put a control on his body, at least a certain part of its movements: it is less easy but still very possible after a struggle to put a mental control on his vital impulsions and desires; but to sit, like the Tantrik Yogi on the river, above the whirlpool of his thoughts is less facile. Nevertheless it can be done; all developed mental men, those who get beyond the average, have in one way or other or at least at certain times and for certain purposes to separate the two parts of the mind, the active part which is a factory of thoughts and the quiet masterful part which is at once a Witness and a Will, observing them, judging, rejecting, eliminating, accepting, ordering corrections and changes, the Master in the House of Mind, capable of self-empire, svārājya.

Sri Aurobindo: In order to distinguish the work intended by the Shakti and that dictated by the lower nature you have to be very careful. You must develop the power of looking within. When you look within you must first realise yourself as the Purusha, that is to say, the being quite separate from the movements of Prakriti, Nature, going on in the Prana (the vital parts), the Chitta, the Mind etc. Any movement that arises in Prakriti has to be rejected and anything that comes from Above has to be accepted. Not only must you separate yourself, but the Purusha must become the calm and passive witness. Thus there will be a portion in yourself which will be quiet, unaffected by anything in Prakriti. The calm of the Sakshi, witness, then extends to the nature and then nature remains quite unmoved by any disturbance. You can not merely remain unmoved but also, as Anumanta, give the sanction to certain movements of nature and withhold it from others.

You write about passivity and activity: you have to understand and know what they are. When one begins Yoga, naturally, all the forces on the mental, and especially on the vital plane, that are hostile to the Siddhi of this Yoga, are bound to rise and one must be active in rejecting them — what the Gita calls _apramatta_ — because the Purusha is not only _sākṣī_ but _anumantā_, one who gives consent. This activity of rejection must be always there. Even if you fall you must rise up again and again and fight.

Sri Aurobindo: Purusha is passive according to the Sankhya; Purusha as described by the Gita is _sāksī_ and _īśvara_ – it sees all the workings of nature as well as is the lord of all; Prakriti only works out the will of the Purusha, hence it is called Shakti.