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OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
buting all the activity involved in it and the puruşa the element of awareness (caitanya). The puruşa illumines or is reflected in the buddhi, which though physical is fine enough to receive the reflection; and, thus illumined, it serves as the conscious subject. The buddhi may therefore be viewed as the physical medium for the manifestation of spirit. We may call their unity in this sense the empirical self to distinguish it from the puruşa or the transcendental self. Owing to such association, each of the two elements in the empirical self appears completely transmuted-nonsentient buddhi becoming sentient, as it were, and passive puruşa, active. The illustration commonly given in this connection is the 'red-hot iron ball' where the formless glow of fire appears spherical and cold iron, hot. Every jñāna is a state of this blend. When we consider its two parts separately, the modification of the buddhi which such a state involves is called a yrtti and the reflection of the puruşa in it jñāna. Owing to the felt identity of the two elements, the vṛtti also is sometimes designated jñāna."
It will be noticed that in the evolutionary scheme are included the eleven indriyas or sense organs (including manas), aham-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 puruşa 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 puruşa 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 prakrti to adapt itself to the requirements of the YSB. ii. 20; iv. 22.
SK. st. 20.
