Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s33.3

v2.c24.s33.3

The fundamental truth intended by the Sāṃkhya theory of puruṣa is that consciousness is not a form of energy like motion, heat and electricity. The most advanced science has only established a relation in which certain nervous processes are co-ordinated with certain conscious occurrences. While we cannot derive consciousness from material existence, the former, in its empirical form, is always mediated by the latter. To overlook this essential relation is a mistake. The puruṣa is said to be something over and above the continuum of mental states. Such a puruṣa is never experienced and does not enter into the view of an empirical metaphysics. If we separate from puruṣa everything that is material, remove from it every attribute of empirical objects, we lose hold of everything by which we could positively characterise it. The puruṣa is defined negatively as eternal and indivisible, "without variableness or shadow of turning," as resting ever in its own pure self-identity. It is deprived even of ideal activity, and it becomes just the possibility of a pure consciousness. It is postulated as an element in our personality to illumine the mental processes, which are the outcome of the physical organisation. It does not figure among the *dramatis personæ* of the play it witnesses. The spirit which the art of prakṛti serves is never on the stage, though it is said to be an implication of all experience. What we observe is the jīva, which is not pure puruṣa, but puruṣa qualified by prakṛti. Every soul known to us is an embodied soul. We are breaking up the unity of the jīva when we regard it as a juxtaposition of a puruṣa complete in itself, and standing only in accidental relations to the things and beings without, which are simply organisations of the products of prakṛti. If we are loyal to the facts of experience, we shall have to admit that a pure self, emptied of all contents, is a fiction of the imagination.