________________
SANKHYA-YOGA
283
infinite knowledge, wisdom, etc., as their limit. He to whom these latter belong is God. But it may be asked how these super-excellences can belong to God if he also, being a puruşa, is bare spirit and stands aloof from prakṛti. To ward off such an objection the doctrine views God as endowed with a sort of personality implying actual contact with a physical adjunct which consists mainly of sattva and does not bind him. Besides affording the initial impetus for the evolution of prakṛti, he in his mercy helps his devotees in finding release from empirical existence. But God's help is not the only means of securing it, the successful practice of yoga, as we shall see, being another.
Before concluding this section, we may bring together the several postulates of the Sankhya-Yoga to which we had occasion to refer. They are:
(i) Whatever is, always is; and whatever is not, never is. (ii) Change implies something that changes.... (iii) The effect is essentially the same as its material cause. (iv) All variety can eventually be traced to three sources, which are not, however, independent but interdependent.
(v) Matter is characterized by perpetual motion.
(vi) Neither mind is derived from matter, nor matter from mind.
II
Here as elsewhere in Indian philosophy generally the term 'psychology' is to be understood in its etymological sense as the science of the soul. But what is the soul that can be the subject of experience in this system? We have the puruşa, no doubt, but it really remains external to everything and cannot therefore stand for the subject of experience. There is another element that serves as an important aid in the process of knowing, viz. mahat or buddhi; but that is equally unsuited to be the subject though for quite a different reason. It is non-sentient (jada) being derived from prakṛti, and experience cannot therefore be ascribed to it. Though neither by itself can serve as the subject, it is stated, they do so together, the buddhi contri
