The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.35

c11.35

Mind shares with intellect and individuation the peculiarity that there is no distinction between organ and function, as there is in the case of the other ten senses. In perception all four functions, the senses, mind, individuation, and intellect are active: in other cases only the latter three are employed, but their activity must rest upon the result of previous perception, a memory picture or an idea. The action in both cases may be simultaneous, or step by step, but in the former case the real sense is, it seems, that the process is too swift for the steps to be observed: thus an object is seen by the senses, the sense impression is developed into a percept by mind, related to the self by individuation, and made into a concept by intellect, or suggested decisions are formed by mind, brought into individuation, and the decision is given by intellect, whereupon mind sees to their execution. Thus in its widest sense the organ can be described as thirteen-fold: the three functions, intellect, individuation, and mind form the inner organ, the ten senses the outer organ, through which alone can the inner organ be set in activity, either directly in perception or through the influence of a former perception. The outer organ is thus bound to the present in time, the inner can deal with past and future. The organs are mutually helpful, but their ultimate aim is for the sake of spirit. The senses are the door, while the inner organ is compared to the doorkeeper. Between the organs of perception and of action there is a distinction in the nature of their objects; the former contemplate both the fine and the gross elements, including all the world under the latter head; speech has sound as its object, while the other four organs deal with all the five gross elements and the world derived from them.