Unlike in the Western religions, Purusha
(spirit, God) did not create Prakriti (nature); purusha is responsible for
prakriti becoming animated, alive.
Samkhya philosophy holds that there are
countless individual purushas, each one infinite, eternal, omniscient, unchanging,
and unchangeable. There is no single purusha that sits hierarchically above any
others. There is no creator God, no puppet master pulling any strings. Since
purusha is pure consciousness, it follows that prakriti is unconscious.
Prakriti is everything that is changing. Prakriti is not just the physical
aspects of the universe that we can sense; it is our very senses themselves -
our thoughts, memories, desires, and even our intelligence. Prakriti is
everything that is that isn't conscious. Consciousness resides only in purusha,
or more properly, as purusha.
Purusha, pure and distant, is beyond
subject and object. One cannot understand purusha, for that would make it an
object. Purusha cannot know or understand anything either, for that would make
purusha a subject. Purusha simply just is. But, because of the presence of
prakriti, purusha gets attracted to nature in the way a man is attracted when
he watches a beautiful woman dancing. He cannot help but try to get closer. And
then the disaster occurs: purusha becomes trapped inside prakriti and gets more
and more entangled in prakriti. Soon purusha forgets that it was ever separate
and ceases to struggle to regain its freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment