Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
His Life and Attempts to Write about It
On His
Published Prose Writings
A Passage from “Rebirth and Karma”
In “Rebirth and
{{0}}Karma”,[[The sixteen essays published since 1952 as The Problem of Rebirth
originally appeared in the monthly review Arya between 1915 and 1921. The first
twelve, which were published in 1915 and 1919, were sometimes referred to as
“Rebirth and Karma”. This informal title was used later as the subtitle of
Section I of The Problem of Rebirth. (In the United States, it also was used as
the title of the entire book.) The Problem of Rebirth is reproduced in Essays in
Philosophy and Yoga, volume 13 of The Complete Works of
Sri Aurobindo, pp. 255–434. — Ed.]] I find the following: “We have in
fact an immutable Self, a real Person, lord of this ever-changing personality
which, again, assumes ever-changing bodies, but the real Self knows itself
always as above the mutation, watches and enjoys it, but is not involved in it.
Through what does it enjoy the changes and feel them to be its own, even while
knowing itself to be unaffected by them?... This more essential form is or seems
to be in man the mental being or mental person which the Upanishads speak of as
the mental leader of the life and body, manomayaḥ
prāṇa-śarīra-netā{{0}}.”[[Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga,
p. 275.]] Would not the mental being be part of the human personality — the
mental, nervous and physical composite?
The mental being spoken of by the Upanishad is not part
of the mental nervous physical composite — it is the
manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ prāṇa-śarīra-netā, the mental being leader of the life
and body. It could not be so described if it were part of the composite. Nor can
the composite or part of it be the Purusha,— for the composite is composed of
Prakriti. It is described as manomaya by the
Upanishad because the psychic being is behind the veil and man being the mental
being in the life and body lives in his mind and not in his psychic, so to him
the manomaya puruṣa is the leader of the life and
body,— of the psychic behind supporting the whole he is not aware or dimly aware
in his best moments. The psychic is represented in man by the Prime Minister,
the manomaya, itself being a mild constitutional
king; it is the manomaya to whom Prakriti refers for
assent to her actions. But still the statement of the Upanishad gives only the
apparent truth of the matter, valid for man and 
the
human stage only — for in the animal it would be rather the
prāṇamaya puruṣa that is the netā, leader of
mind and body. It is one reason why I have not yet allowed the publication of
“Rebirth and Karma” because this had to be corrected and the deeper truth put in
its place. I had intended to do it later on, but had not time to finish the
remaining articles.
24 December 1935