World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 85

was told 'action cleaves not to a man.' Taken together, the two provide an integral view of karma - Purusha in its unborn aspect is untouched by karma, while prakriti is conditioned by its effects. The transformation of prakriti rests in its ability to come under the control of purusha. Alternately, one may say that the evolution of purusha lies in its power to control the prakriti of ignorance. But such a power cannot be acquired in a brief lifetime. Hence purusha carries the impress of karma from life to life, though untouched by it. The prakriti (nature) assumed by a soul in a life becomes subject to the traces of karma carried in the purusha (soul). This aspect of purusha is termed by Sri Aurobindo the psychic being. Psychic being or soul personality is moulded into a qualitative essence and can control nature having the qualities it has already mastered. This is how it expresses itself in life.
The persistent refusal of the soul's choice, the quiet voice of the inner Socratic Daemon, in favor of the pull of desire, by the prakriti is referred to as the slaying of the soul, that which leads to an absorption in realms of unconsciousness in the afterlife. Sri Aurobindo points out that in the Indian conception, the subtle (sukshma) prakritic makeup of the individual, composed of the subtle physical (sukshma sharira), the vital (pranamaya) and mental (manomaya) sheaths (kosha) with the soul (chaitya purusha) at its centre, travels to the subtle physical, vital and mental worlds after death, persisting in these realms for longer or shorter periods, before being divested of the respective sheaths of prakriti and finally entering the soul's sleep of assimilation between lives. The preparation of the subtle make-up through receptivity to certain zones of subtle existence determines the duration of the soul's sojourn in those realms. A life of greed and desire subjects the soul to the automatisms of nature, dragging it into "the sunless worlds." A disciplined prakritic existence, on the other hand, which attempts to refine its choices through desirelessness, openness to more conscious realities and obedience to the voice of the soul, enables the psychic being and subtle body to persist for longer periods in realms of heightened consciousness (the heaven or solar worlds) during the afterlife, and express these forms of consciousness in lives to come. Unless one is attuned, aligned, aspiring for the Divine Will, the gravitation of universal prakriti drags the soul towards desire and unconsciousness. The greater the absorption in patterns of slavery to desire, expressing the will of falsehood, the more bound or subject the condition of the soul, rejected from life. It is this condition that is being termed the "slaying of the soul" and the lot of such a being after death is lost wanderings in sunless worlds.
This reference to a sunless world also invokes a different resonance which forms a key component to the message of this Upanishad in later verses. One may think of two kinds of darkness that are referred to there. The metaphor of darkness can be used from the viewpoint of consciousness to describe whatever lies beyond its range of awareness. The realm of experience belongs to self-representation of Being, the universe inhabited by the
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