Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. Planes and Parts of the Being

Fragment ID: 374

1. The soul and the psychic being are practically the same, except that even in things which have not developed a psychic being, there is still a spark of the Divine which can be called the soul. The psychic being is called in Sanskrit the Purusha in the heart or the Chaitya Purusha. (The psychic being is the soul developing in the evolution.)

2. The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is according to the Sankhya System – the Purusha is the silent witness consciousness which observes the actions of Prakriti – Prakriti is the force of Nature which one feels as doing all the actions, when one gets rid of the sense of the ego as doer. Then there is the realisation of these 2 entities. This is quite different from the psychic being. It is felt in the mind, vital, physical – most easily in the mind where the mental being (Purusha) is seated and controls the others (manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā).

3. Prajna, Taijasa, etc. are a different classification and have to do, not with the different parts of the being, but with three different states (waking, dream, sleep-gross, subtle, causal).

I think one ought not to try to relate these different things to each other – as that may lead to confusion. They belong to different categories – and to a different order of experiences.