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XIV
Sāmkhya Philosophy in the Gitā 465 mental ground, do not, therefore, seem to be products of the guņas or the prakyti. They seem to constitute a group by themselves, which is referred to as being a lower nature of God, side by side with His higher nature as life and spirit. Kșetra is a complex of both the guņa elements of experience and the complex categories of body and mind. There seem, therefore, to be three different principles, the aparā prakrti (the lower nature), parā prakrti or puruşa, and praksti. Prakyti produces the guņas, which constitute experience-stuff; the aparā prakrti holds within itself the material world of the five elements and their modifications as our bodies, the senses and the mind-categories. It seems very probable, therefore, that a later development of Sāmkhya combined these two prakştis as one, and held that the guņas produced not only the stuff of our experience, but also all the mind-categories, the senses, etc., and the five gross elements and their modifications. The gunas, therefore, are not the products of prakrti, but they themselves constitute prakrti, when in a state of equilibrium. In the Gītā prakrti can only produce the guņas through the fertilizing energy of God; they do not constitute the prakrti, when in a state of equilibrium. It is hard to realize the connection between the aparā prakrti and the prakrti and the gunas. The connection, however, can be imagined to take place through the medium of God, who is the fertilizer and upholder of them both. There seems to be but one puruṣa, as the all-pervading fundamental life-principle which animates all bodies and enjoys and suffers by its association with its experiences, remaining at the same time unaffected and untouched by the effects of the guņas. This naturally presumes that there is also a higher and a lower purușa, of which the former is always unattached to and unaffected by the guņas, whereas the lower puruṣa, which is different in different bodies, is always associated with the prakrti and its guņas and is continually affected by their operations. Thus it is said that the puruşa, being in prakrti, enjoys the guņas of prakrti and this is the cause of its rebirth in good or bad bodies!. There is also in this body the higher puruşa (puruṣaḥ paraḥ), which is also called paramātman, being the passive perceiver, thinker, upholder, enjoyer and the great lorda. The word purusa is used in the Gitā in four distinct senses, firstly, in the
1 Gitā, XIII. 21.
upadrastanumantă ca bharta bhoktā maheśvarah
paramātmeti cāpy ukto dehe 'smin puruşah parah. DII
Ibid. XIII. :3.
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