Three positions taken by Consciousness

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. DB

by Debashish on Mon 16 Nov 2006 11:12 AM PST Related to the above, here is a passage from The Life Divine (Chapter "Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara, Maya, Prakriti, Shakti", SABCL, pgs. 362-3) which speaks of the three Purushas (static, dynamic and both-in-one) as three positions taken by Consciousness of its own Being: "The Being can have three different states of its consciousness with regard to its own eternity..."