Taken from:
PERSEUS AND THE GORGON MEDUSA
https://www.greekmyths-interpretation.com/en/perseus-gorgon-medusa-interpretation-greek-mythology/
Mosaic, National Roman Museum, Rome
"The Gorgon would then be the expression of the centralising movement of the ego, which, ending the evolution in unity, introduces – when we lose touch with Reality (the material things, the body) – fear in the vital and doubt in the mind, the two “paralyzing” processes of action. Thus, the mere sight of the Gorgon might be petrifying."
(...)
"Basically, Gorgo (or Gorgons: Medusa, Euryale and Stheno) represent the life energy that supports mental activities (they are winged) – which is the definition of “psychic prana” given by Sri Aurobindo, to be distinguished from the “physical prana”, which supports the body’s activities – and who is subjected to deformation at the beginning of the mental polarisation (Ceto) when movement of individuation appeared necessary to get out of the animal group functioning."
(...)
"The attributes of the Gorgons are often taken from the description of Hesiod. The name of the only mortal Gorgon, Medusa, meaning “that which contains in the right measure, which takes care (of growth)”: in the animal and in the animal within man, the stimulus of evolution is suffering, and fear is protection.
The other two Gorgons, Euryale “evolution towards immense freedom” and Stheno “evolutionary power”, express the absolute needs for freedom and growth at the root of life."
(since embodying the principle of Prana, these two gorgons cannot be killed, since Prana itself is immortal. Only the way in which it manifests in the mind, as psychic prana, or thought forms, can be worked upon and transformed.)
"According to Apollodorus, the Gorgons have certain features that indicate their effectiveness in each of the corresponding levels:
– Head bristling with snakes (with scaly rings): a strong evolutionary force marked by the beginning of mentalisation.
– Long boar tusks: a fair ability to defend or attack, and the capacity to show aggression in the lower layers of the vital.
– Bronze hands: a powerful action from which we cannot defend ourselves.
– Golden wings that allow them to fly: an ability to act over the nascent mind.
Also, note that the Gorgons, for Hesiod, are related to the underwater reefs, i.e., the “nodes” within the vital."
(...)
"The invisibility helmet helps to see without being seen, i.e. it helps in avoiding “identification”. Direct confrontation is avoided and the death of the Gorgon occurs as a surprise, simple consequence of the preparation work carried out with the Graeae and the nymphs.
The invisibility helmet does not emit any vibration, i.e. it establishes stillness, if not mental silence, emotional peace and physical immobility. When perfect stillness is achieved, then nothing can touch the seeker.
The invisibility prevents him from being “caught” by the element considered. He must not focus his attention on it for if he does, it would only nurture it. Rather, he must “step back” to “disidentify” himself. (It is the image reflected by the mirror or the reflection of the Gorgon on his shield.) He must develop the “witness” consciousness."
(Here the witness is perhaps Buddhi or Intellect, personified as Athena, and the mind, Manas, as its temple. Left unidentified or less clear is the union between Poseidon and Medusa in the temple of Athena. The author of this above excerpted article equates Poseidon with the subconcious, which may mean the constant, uncontrolled arising of thoughts in the mind, when it is not tamed or when awareness is not directed at it, whereas according to Proclus, Poseidon is the proceeding, dyadic demiurge, which might reflect in a way the divisive and multiple nature of the psychic prana as thought-forms as they appear in the mind, being constantly generated into endless multiplicity from this mental prana. But why their union in the temple of Athena? If Athena is the witness and observer, then its temple is perhaps the observed. If there is no witness, observer, awareness upon the temple, Mind, then it may be subject to unconscious or subconscious determinations, instead of conscious ones. The mind is either filled or it is clean consciously, or else it is filled and polluted subconsciously. Without a Master, Athena, the Higher Intellect, the mind becomes a slave to passions and fears. They reproduce themselves endlessly, which is a demiurgic activity akin to that of Poseidon, which is the cause of multiplication in creation. When the witness is aware, then perhaps they, the thoughts and that thought-process becomes something not desirable for even the witness to contemplate, i.e., ugly and paralysing, "head bristling with snakes". How many of us never realized that some mindset in which we were engaged was corrosive, and had to just simply "look away" and not participate in it anymore? Perhaps that's also one of its meanings. However since mental prana/energy cannot be killed, it will only change form. Thus from her head sprang Pegasus, the formerly encased mental energy in thought-forms now becoming free and unrestrained like a wild horse soaring to the heavens, and Chrysaor, a strong, focused will which doesn't vacilate from its target.)
From: https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2016/10/29/the-proper-function-of-the-psychic-prana/
"Sri Aurobindo’s examination of the instruments of human nature is not done with a view toward suppressing them, but toward determining the right and proper function of each instrument and its relation to the entirety of human action. While some yogic practices work toward elimination of the outer relations to the world and a one-pointed focus and fixation on the silent Absolute, the integral Yoga seeks to take up and fulfill the divine purpose in the world. The psychic Prana, which is a major cause of the admixture of desire into the working of the higher reasoning intelligence, has its own right and proper action.
Sri Aurobindo observes: “The proper action of the psychic Prana is pure possession and enjoyment, bhoga. To enjoy thought, will, action, dynamic impulse, result of action, emotion, sense, sensation, to enjoy too by their means objects, persons, life, the world, is the activity for which this Prana gives us a psycho-physical basis. A really perfect enjoyment of existence can only come when what we enjoy is not the world in itself or for itself, but God in the world, when it is not things, but the Ananda of the spirit in things that forms the real, essential object of our enjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the ocean of Ananda. But this Ananda can only come at all when we get at and reflect in our members the hidden spiritual being, and its fullness can only be had when we climb to the supramental ranges.”
For those who are still living in the purely human levels of the physical, vital and mental existence, there is of course an appropriate action for the psychic Prana as well: “Meanwhile there is a just and permissible, a quite legitimate human enjoyment of these things, which is, to speak in the language of Indian psychology, predominantly sattwic in its nature. It is an enlightened enjoyment principally by the perceptive, aesthetic and emotive mind, secondarily only by the sensational nervous and physical being, but all subject to the clear government of the Buddhi, to a right reason, a right will, a right reception of the life impacts, a right order, a right feeling of the truth, law, ideal sense, beauty, use of things. The mind gets the pure taste of enjoyment of them, rasa, and rejects whatever is perturbed, troubled and perverse. Into this acceptance of the clear and limpid rasa, the psychic Prana has to bring in the full sense of life and the occupying enjoyment by the whole being, bhoga, without which the acceptance and possession by the mind…, would not be concrete enough, would be too tenuous to satisfy altogether the embodied soul. This contribution is its proper function.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Part Four: The Yoga of Self-Perfection, Chapter 6, Purification–the Lower Mentality, pp. 628-629"
From: https://incarnateword.in/compilations/perfection/perfection-of-the-psychic-prana
"Then again there is the psychic prana, pranic mind or desire soul; this too calls for its own perfection. Here too the first necessity is a fullness of the vital capacity in the mind, its power to do its full work, to take possession of all the impulsions and energies given to our inner psychic life for fulfilment in this existence, to hold them and to be a means for carrying them out with strength, freedom, perfection. Many of the things we need for our perfection, courage, will-power effective in life, all the elements of what we now call force of character and force of personality, depend very largely for their completest strength and spring of energetic action on the fullness of the psychic prana. But along with this fullness there must be an established gladness, clearness and purity in the psychic life-being. This dynamis must not be a troubled, perfervid, stormy, fitfully or crudely passionate strength; energy there must be, rapture of its action it must have, but a clear and glad and pure energy, a seated and firmly supported pure rapture. And as a third condition of its perfection it must be poised in a complete equality. The desire-soul must get rid of the clamour, insistence or inequality of its desires in order that its desires may be satisfied with justice and balance and in the right way and eventually must rid them of the character of desire altogether and change them into impulsions of the divine Ananda. To that end it must make no demands nor seek to impose itself on heart, mind or spirit, but accept with a strong passive and active equality whatever impulsion and command come into it from the spirit through the channel of a still mind and a pure heart. And it must accept too whatever result of the impulse, whatever enjoyment more or less, full or nil, is given to it by the Master of our being. At the same time, possession and enjoyment are its law, function, use, swadharma. It is not intended to be a slain or mortified thing, dull in its receptive power, dreary, suppressed, maimed, inert or null. It must have a full power of possession, a glad power of enjoyment, an exultant power of pure and divine passion and rapture. The enjoyment it will have will be in the essence a spiritual bliss, but one which takes up into itself and transforms the mental, emotional, dynamic, vital and physical joy; it must have therefore an integral capacity for these things and must not by incapacity or fatigue or inability to bear great intensities fail the spirit, mind, heart, will and body. Fullness, clear purity and gladness, equality, capacity for possession and enjoyment are the fourfold perfection of the psychic prana.
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga - II: The Power of the Instruments"
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