Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.71

c19.71

It will be noticed that in the evolutionary scheme are included the eleven indriyas or sense organs (including manas), ahaṃ-kāra and buddhi; but there they represent successive stages in the evolution of the universe from prakṛti. These thirteen factors have also another aspect with which we are at present more particularly concerned. In this aspect they assist the individual in acquiring experience, and together constitute the psychic apparatus with which every puruṣa is endowed in the empirical state. The exact relation between these two aspects, viz. the cosmic and the individual, is a matter which shall immediately engage our attention. For the present it will suffice to recall the explanation already given of ‘psychic’ as applied to these factors. They are psychic in the sense that they lend themselves to be lighted up by the puruṣa unlike the other products of prakṛti, viz. the elements whether subtle or gross. It is this that distinguishes the two series, the subjective and the objective as we may call them. They are the result on the part of prakṛti to adapt itself to the requirements of the puruṣa.¹ In other words, the functions that we describe as mental are really mechanical processes of physical organs, which assume a psychical character only when illumined by spirit. The senses are here derived from the ahaṃ-kāra, and not from the elements (bhūtas) as in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (p. 248). Though traceable to one and the same source, each sense functions differently—the eye apprehending colour; the ear, sound; and so forth—owing to the difference in the collocation of the guṇas in them.