The Separation of the Witness Consciousness from the External Nature

We tend to identify ourselves with the specific body-life-mind complex we inhabit and which becomes the nexus for the ego-consciousness. This identification, however, makes it virtually impossible to gain real insight or mastery over the mind, life and body. The process followed by the devotee in the Taittiriya Upanishad systematically had him discover that he was not the body, the life-energy nor the mind, as he systematically tried to understand who or what he was. The sage of Arunachala, Sri Ramana Maharshi, asked the question repeatedly “who am I”? He used this to peel away the layers of the outer surface nature to understand that he was not the body, not the life-energy and not the mind that form the normal associations for most people when they are asked who they are.

Sri Aurobindo describes the ancient technique which involves the separation of the witness consciousness, the Purusha, from the active external nature, Prakriti. The seeker systematically works to recognise the difference between his awareness, the consciousness, and the external nature, and eventually he is able to observe, as a more or less disinterested witness the actions of the mind, the actions of the life-force and the actions of the body. At a certain stage he realises that he is not any of these ‘sheaths’ and can be detached from them and eventually begin to control them from a new, higher standpoint.

The Mother notes: ”But first this consciousness must be mobile, and one must know how to distinguish it from the other parts of the being which in fact are its instruments, its modes of expression. The consciousness must make use of these things, and not you mistake these things for the consciousness. You put the consciousness in these things, so you become conscious of your body, conscious of your vital, conscious of your mind, conscious of all your activities through your will for identification; but for this, first your consciousness must not be completely entangled, mingled, joined, so to say, with all these things, it must not take them for itself, must not be mistaken.”

“When one thinks of himself (obviously out of millions of men perhaps there are not ten who do otherwise) he thinks ‘Myself… that’s my body, that’s what i call ‘myself’, what’s like this. And so, I am like that; and then my neighbor, he also is the body. When I speak of another person, I speak of his body.’ And so, as long as one is in this state, he is plaything of all possible movements and has no self-control.”

“The body is the last instrument and yet it’s this which one calls ‘myself’ most of the time, unless one has begun to reflect.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 164-165