Purusha and Prakriti an elaboration

Experiencing consciousness alone: Yoga has been described as a process of realizing that Purusha (Spirit) is independent but not outside of Prakriti (Nature) or its manifestations, as it activates Prakriti.

Purusha or Conscious-Soul is the sole Reality; it is a passive, inactive, changeless entity. Once Purusha is known all distinctions; represented by Prakriti, vanish. Then only Oneness remains.

One may ask if Purusha is the only consciousness, why would it create good and evil.

The answer according to yoga is that good and evil is only a concept of the ego and hence the idea of good and evil and heaven and hell is incorrect. What we experience as good and evil is just a way of how Prakriti is designed to create and dissolve and to create and dissolve again and again.

We need to be clear that Purusha is the witness; Prakriti executes, and is the active principle. The soul (individualized Purusha) may assume the function of the witness, it may look on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but it does not participate.

We can then see, that it is Prakriti, (Mother Nature, God in creation) that acts through the gunas or functions of nature in life, mind and body and that it is not the real us that accts. The whole idea of action is an external process.

Realizing that this status of an inner passivity and an outer action are independent of each other provides us with great spiritual freedom.

The Yogi, says the Gita, even in acting does not act, for it is not he, but universal Nature which is at work. When the yogi realizes this, he is no

Longer bound by his works, neither does he leave any karmic residues on his mind or soul.

While one is still involved in worldly activities, it is wise to take the uplifting position of the silent, tranquil, detached witness, rather than being attached to ones activities and their results and let the process, of what one sets into motion evolve.