Purusa
Now if anybody makes the mistake of
thinking that he lives at the same time in the basement and on the fourth story,
that he is the purusa himself, he is crazy. He is what the
German very aptly calls verruckt, carried off his feet up to somewhere
else. He just sits up there and spins. We
are allowed to behold only the purusa, to behold his feet up there.
But we are not the purusa; that is a symbol that expresses the
impersonal process. The self is something exceedingly
impersonal, exceedingly objective. If you function in your
self you are not yourself – that is what you feel. You have
to do it as if you were a stranger: you will buy as if you did not buy; you will
sell as if you did not sell. Or, as
You see, values, convictions, general ideas are psychical facts that are nowhere to be met with in natural science. One cannot catch them with a butterfly net, nor can one find them under microscopes. They become visible only in anahata. Now according to tantric yoga, the purusa is first seen in anahata: the essence of man, the supreme man, the so-called primordial man then becomes visible. So purusa is identical with the psychical substance of thought and value, feeling. In the recognition of feelings and of ideas one sees the purusa. That is the first inkling of a being within your psychological or psychical existence that is not yourself – a being in which you are contained, which is greater and more important than you but which has an entirely psychical existence. TPoKY 46