"Two birds sat in a tree; one ate the fruit; another looked on." -
Shvetashvatara, 4.7
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On 6/18/2014 1:48 PM, emptyb...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote:
/SoundofStillness/,
Strictly speaking Purusha, for Patanjali, is not an observer but
rather is a witness (sakshin) to the activities of consciousness
(chitta).
The concept "observer" is a relational term defining the function of
self-reflexivity by the chitta. Self-reflectivity means the active
functioning of the ahamkara (the foundational idea 'I, I') that seeds
cognitive activity and along with our various forms of self-identity.
If you ask TM teachers, you get recollections about MMY's descriptions
of wakefulness "inside" during meditation and its carry-over into
ordinary waking, dreaming, sleeping (resulting from gradual purification).
Perhaps you have never examined the way Patanjali used the word
"Purusha" in the Yoga Sutras. This concept has a significant history
in the history of Vedic texts. The various ideas described by the term
"Purusha" and its correlates are detailed in Georg Feuerstein's book,
*The Philosophy of Classical Yoga*, /Chapter II The Self/, starting on
page 15. (You can view this chapter on Google Scholar).
Particularly interesting is his diagram of the various metaphors that
Patañjali used for the term “purusha” in the Yoga Sutras:
Metaphor of *Otherness*: /para/
Metaphor of *Seeing*: /drashtri, drg-shakti, drishi, drishi-mâtra/
Metaphor of *Owning*: /svâmin, prabhu, grahîtri/
Metaphor of *Cognizing*: /chiti, chiti-shakti/
He continues:
/“Nowhere in the Yoga-Sutra is there a full-fledged definition of the
concept of purusha, and the most probable reason for this is that by
the time of the composition of Patañjali’s *vade mecum* (guidebook)
its precise meaning was perfectly evident. The opposite must have been
true of the concept of *išvara* which Patañjali carefully demarcates
from its popular usage in the sense of ‘creator’. From the few
references in the Yoga-Sutra it is clear beyond doubt that the concept
of *puruša* is remarkably akin to certain conceptions delineated in
the epic (mahabharata) and other pre-classical Sanskrit works. It
expresses the notion of man’s ‘transcendental identity’, here rendered
with ‘Self’ or ‘transintelligible subject’, as distinct from the
world-ground (prakrti) both in its noumenal form as *pradhâna* and in
its manifest forms as the objective universe (*drshya*). The Self is
an aspatial and atemporal reality which stands in no conceivable
relation to the composite world of phenomena nor to their
transcendental source. It is sheer awareness as opposed to
consciousness-of and in this respect is the exact antithesis of the
world-ground which is by definition insentient. This Self is
considered the authentic being of man.”/ (pg. 19)
Consider giving it a look so you can compare.
