Transcendental to the Transcendental

Re: Derrida, Death and Forgiveness by Andrew J. McKenna by Vladimir on Thu 16 Nov 2006 07:00 AM PST Profile Permanent Link According to Sri Aurobindo, Purusha is the transcendental Conscious Soul, who was sacrificed, plunged into material Inconscient, in order to uplift the fallen Self; Purushottama is a Supreme, though being one with the Transcendental, Universal or Individual, he exceeds them all. He is Transcendental to the Transcendental, beyond Para and Apara Prakriti, beyond Saguna and Nirguna Brahman, (purushah . . . aksharaat paratah parah)

That is why when Sri Krishna reveals his most secret Knowledge (raajaguhyam) to Arjuna it sounds incomprehensible: Mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad avyaktamuurtinaa/ matsthaani sarvabhuutaani na caaham teshv avasthitah/ 9.4 Na ca matsthaani bhuutaani pashya me yogam aishvaram/ bhuutabhrin na ca bhuutastho mamaatmaa bhuutabhaavanah/ 9.5

“All this world is extended by Me, who has no manifested form. All the beings stay in Me, but I do not stay in them; (defining the Transcendental character of Purusha) even one can’t say that they stay in me, just see and wonder about My Supreme Yoga! My Self, Atman, is carrying and supporting them, as it were, but not even staying in them.” (indicating the paraat parah purushah).

“Thus there are three, the Kshara, the Akshara, the Uttama.” – says Sri Aurobindo in the Essays on the Gita. - “Kshara, the mobile, the mutable is Nature, svabhaava, it is the various becoming of the soul; the Purusha here is the multiplicity of the divine Being; it is the Purusha multiple not apart from, but in Prakriti. Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works. The Uttama is the Lord, the supreme Brahman, the supreme Self, who possesses both the immutable unity and the mobile multiplicity. It is by a large mobility and action of His nature, His energy, His will and power, that He manifests Himself in the world and by a greater stillness and immobility of His being that He is aloof from it; yet is He as Purushottama above both the aloofness from Nature and the attachment to Nature.” (Essays on the Gita, p. 79)

That’s how He can be our guide within our psychic being, as the Lord of the Sacrifice, adhiyajna, as Krishna calles himself in the Gita, for he is neither transcendental nor mutable only, but something greater them both. And that is Uttamam Rahasyam.

Re: Derrida, Death and Forgiveness by Andrew J. McKenna by Debashish on Thu 16 Nov 2006 09:34 AM PST Profile Permanent Link The Akshara Purusha is beyond the mutations of Time in the cosmos (jagat) but it is not this which has sacrificed itself since it knows no becoming. Purushottama is beyond Akshara and Kshara Purushas but has become both of these - each of them is a poise or specific projection of Purushottama. The power through which it assumes these poises is its Nature, Paraprakriti. Thus it is Purushottama as Kshara Purusha that has sacrifced itself and that Sri Aurobindo is referring to when he speaks of the "holocaust of the Purusha."

Similarly Paraprakriti remains united with Purushottama and beyond the cosmic being and becoming in Her Supreme poise, but also projects herself as the sleeping automatism of Apara Prakriti of Avidya and houses in this form the sleep of Purushottama as Kshara Purusha and bases Her cosmic changes in the stable though impotent poise of Akshara Purusha. This is the holocaust of Prakriti. This is true both at the cosmic and individual levels - i.e. the Paraprakriti puts on the masks of the soul and forms of the Ignorance or becomes the Avidya and the jivas and the Purushottama becomes the cosmic Purusha (in its Kshara and Akshara poises) and the individualization of chaitya purusha in the jiva.