Tattva 12 — The Bound Self (Puruṣa)
The individual is born: the universal consciousness, wrapped in five cloaks, becomes a single separate 'I.'
Once the five cloaks have done their work, what emerges is the puruṣa — the individual self, the limited 'I' that experiences the world as a separate person. This is the same puruṣa, the witnessing subject, that Sāṃkhya places near the top of its scheme; but Kashmir Shaivism sees it as only a contracted, veiled form of the universal Śiva-consciousness, not an independent ultimate. With puruṣa, the long descent reaches the ordinary individual experiencer.
How it traveled
- Kaṭha UpaniṣadKuru-Pañcāla region · -500explains
- Śvetāśvatara UpaniṣadKuru-Pañcāla region · -400explains
Key passages(15)
That person alone (purusha) is all this, what has been and what will be; he is also the lord of immortality; he is whatever grows by food .
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I know that great person (purusha) of sunlike lustre beyond the darkness . A man who knows him truly, passes over death; there is no other path to go .
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But (there is) another, the Supreme Purusha, called the Highest Self, the immutable Lord, who pervading the three worlds, sustains them.
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Beyond the Undeveloped is the Person, the all-pervading and entirely imperceptible. Every creature that knows him is liberated, and obtains immortality.
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Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
Verily Dadhyak Atharvana proclaimed this honey to the two Asvins, and a Rishi, seeing this, said: 'He (the Lord) made bodies with two feet, he made bodies with four feet. Having first become a bird, h
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As these flowing rivers that go towards the ocean, when they have reached the ocean, sink into it, their name and form are broken, and people speak of the ocean only, exactly thus these sixteen parts
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The person (purusha), of the size of a thumb, stands in the middle of the Self (body ?), as lord of the past and the future, and henceforward fears no more. This is that.
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That person who is to be known, he in whom these parts rest, like spokes in the nave of a wheel, you know him, lest death should hurt you."
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O Pûshan, only seer, Yama (judge), Sûrya (sun), son of Pragâpati, spread thy rays and gather them! The light which is thy fairest form, I see it. I am what He is (viz. the person in the sun).
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'Man (purusha), my son, consists of sixteen parts. Abstain from food for fifteen days, but drink as much water as you like, for breath comes from water, and will not be cut off, if you drink water.'
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