The Separation of Consciousness From the Physical Body

Large numbers of individuals have reported the experience of being conscious outside of their physical body. This frequently happens within the context of a near death experience. The individual reports his awareness up above looking down on the body, or outside observing what is taking place. In some cases, the individual, when he returns to the body and regains awareness there, can report about people and activities and describe the location and the circumstances even though he was technically dead and lacking consciousness within the body.

Yogis also report the experience of separation of the awareness from the physical body under a variety of circumstances, in some cases consciously induced through the practices they were undertaking. Mystics have also reported what is called an “out of body experience” whereby they leave the body behind in an inert state and travel out and visit other places or realms, attached through a silver thread. When they are ready to return to the body, they draw the thread back and their awareness once again enters the body.

All of these experiences make it clear that the consciousness and the physical body are not tied to one another, nor are they necessary to one another. When an individual gains this realisation, he finds that he can shift the standpoint from the body consciousness to either a vital consciousness, a mental consciousness, a psychic consciousness or a spiritual consciousness and observe and act from whichever standpoint he happens to take up. 

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, the seeker goes through a successive realisation of this type starting from identification with the body, then the vital force, then the mind, then the higher Reason, the “knowledge-consciousness” and finally the awareness of pure bliss, which is one aspect of the triune experience of Sat-Chit-Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Force-Bliss.

As long as we associate ourselves with the body, we remain bound and limited and do not have the power to control or direct the life in any meaningful way. As we go up the scale of consciousness, however, we gain leverage to manage the details of the body, the life and the mind. 

One practice for accomplishing this is the cultivation of the separation of the Purusha, the witness-consciousness, from the Prakriti, the executive power of action in the manifestation. As the seeker accomplishes this shift in standpoint, he gains control over the life in the body and can directly exercise the higher spiritual will in all aspects of his life.

The Mother writes: ”And if the contact has been conscious and complete enough, it liberates you from the bondage of the outer form; you no longer feel that you live only because you have a body. That is usually the ordinary sensation of the being, to be so tied to this outer form that when one things of ‘myself’ one thinks of the body. That is the usual thing. The personal reality is the body’s reality. It is only when one has made an effort for inner development and tried to find something that is a little more stable in one’s being, that one can begin to feel that this ‘something’ which is permanently conscious throughout all ages and all change, this something must be ‘myself’. But that already requires a study that is rather deep. Otherwise if you think ‘I am going to do this’, ‘I need that’, it is always your body, a small kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, of more or less confused sentimental reactions, and still more confused thoughts which form a mixture and are animated by an impulse, an attraction, a desire, some sort of a will; and all that momentarily becomes ‘myself’ — but not directly, for one does not conceive this ‘myself’ as independent of the head, the trunk, the arms and legs and all that moves — it is very closely linked.”

“It is only after having thought much, seen much, studied much, observed much that you begin to realise that the one is more or less independent of the other and that the will behind can make it either act or not act, and you begin not to be completely identified with the movement, the action, the realisation — that something is floating. But you have to observe much to see that.”

“And then you must observe much more still to see that this, the second thing that is there, this kind of active conscious will, is set in motion by ‘something else’ which watches, judges, decides and tries to found its decisions on knowledge — that happens even much later. And so, when you begin to see this ‘something else’, you begin to see that it has the power to set in motion the second thing, which is an active will; and not only that, but that it has a very direct and very important action on the reactions, the feelings, the sensations, and that finally it can have control over all the movements of the being — this part which watches, observes, judges and decides.”

“That is the beginning of control. … When one becomes conscious of that, one has seized the thread, and when one speaks of control, one can know, ‘Ah! Yes, this is what has the power of control. … This is how one learns to look at oneself.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 183-184