Samayasara OR Nature of Self

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 93

Xcil
SAMAYASARA
world of physical things represents only one side of the process. There is another process of development from the same sourc.from ahankara or the principle of individuality. We have the principle of building up the organic. This process of building up the oiganic body consists in the evolution of the five buddhi-indriyas or organs of sense perception and five karmendriyas or the organs of activity and manoindriyathe organ of thought. The five oigans of sense perception are the five familiar sense organs–Eye, car, nose, tongue and the skin. These sense organs according to the Sankhya system are evolved out of the principle of individuality, ahankara So also are the five Karmendriyas which are the vocal organs for speech, the hands, the feet, the organs of excrction and the gencrative organs. These five Buddhindriyas and the five Karmendriyas together with the manas are the eleven Indriyas derived from Ahankara. Thus the primeval cosmic principle Prakriti evolving upto ahankara branches off into two lines of development one leading upto the cosmos and the other to the building up of the body which serves as the temporal tabernacle for the purusha. Thus the Sankhya tatvas which are derived from Prakriti are 24 in number These together with Purusha constitute the 25 Sankhya tatvas.
The Nature Of Prakritz-Prakriti is otherwise called Avyakta or the unmanifest or Pradhana of the primary basis of existence. When we look to the process of evolution of the different Tatvas enumerated above we find this Prakriti as the fountain source of not only the elements that go to build up the physical universe but also of those that lead to the origin of organised living bodies. This primaeval subtle matter Prakriti may be some kind of Ether which early Sankhyas may be said to have imagined. This is the connecting link between the gross matter on the one hand and life activity on the other, the fountain source of both the inorganic and the organic. Even according to modern Science Ether is the primeval source of matter. According to what is known as the electron theory of matter, the physical atom is a complex system of electrons. Thus the physical basis of matter is traced to Ether which is the basis of forces like elec