by Yogi Ananda Viraj (Eugene P, Kelly, Jr.)
This is the first in a series of essays intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to Yoga-Samkhya philosophy.
Yoga and Samkhya
The “philosophies” of Yoga and Samkhya are sisters. The origins of both are sketchy; no one knows just how far back into Indian civilization they go. However, as “schools” of thought and practice, they began to be systematized somewhere between 100 B.C.E. and 450 C.E. During this period the teachings of Yoga and Samkhya were crystallized into formal “philosophical” systems. Both of these schools or philosophical perspectives (darsana) share a common terminology. In order to understand yoga one must learn the language of Samkhya. It is through the language of Samkhya that the practices of Yoga find their articulation.
The two major texts of Yoga and Samkhya that we need be concerned with, here, are: The Samkhya Karika of Isvarakrsna and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. These two are the major texts upon which numerous commentaries have been made, even up to the present day. As with all Indian philosophy, excepting perhaps Jainism, the origins of Yoga and Samkyha stem from the vision of the Vedic seers (rsis) as handed down in the Vedas (2500-600 B.C.E.), the foundation texts of Indian philosophy and culture. Our outline will draw mainly from these two texts.
The Trinitarian Language of Yoga-Samkhya
Most contemporary commentators consider Yoga and Samkhya to be dualistic philosophies. They hold this dualism to include purusa or consciousness and prakrti, or, as some put it, “materiality.” We, however, wish to consider the product of their union (samyoga), the manifest (vyakta), as a third member constituting a triad. We will examine each member of the triad separately and then enter into a discussion of their mutual cooperation in the process of liberation (kaivalyam).
The Manifest (Vyakta)
Firstly, let our guiding principle for an understanding of Yoga Samkhya be made explicit. This philosophy, i.e., the language, is radically descriptive. What this means is that Yoga-Samkhya terminology is designed to describe human experience. It is not meant to be a description of how the world is, but of how our world is experienced. Our philosophy is not scientific in the sense of talking about a world independent of human experience. We are concerned with how that world appears to us.
The manifest is precisely what is manifest to consciousness (purusa). The manifest is the created world of our experience. The manifest. includes 23 aspects (tattvas). These are: understanding or intelligence (buddhi), self or I-formation (ahamkara), the conceptual faculty or mind-organ (manas), the five senses or organs of knowledge (jnana-indriyas or buddhi-indriyas), the five organs of action (karmaindriyas), the five subtle elements or sensations (tanmatras) and the five elements of earth, water, air, light, and space. Keep in mind that these elements are not being considered in themselves but as we experience them.
Basically, the manifest (vyakta) is our manner of being in the world. These 23 aspects of experience are common to all of us (barring defects), but provide different experiences for each of us depending on our past habits of action (karma). It is through our past actions that our experiences are structured in the present toward the future.
All aspects (tattvas) of experience are composed of three distinct perspectival movements of experience termed gunas. The three gunas constitute the threefold nature of all manifesting or the movement of creation. The three are: sattva or illumination, rajas or stimulation, and tamas or inertia. For the sake of clarity let us outline their structure of activity.
1.) The nature of the gunas:
sattva is pleasurable
rajas is painful
tamas is deluding2.) The functions of the gunas:
sattva is to illumine
rajas is to activate
tamas is to limit3.) The means of their threefold functioning:
domination, support, activation, and interaction
(Samkhya Karika XII)
All three gunas function together at all times in the manifest.1 They might be considered as the way in which the manifest is made manifest. When the goal of Yoga-Samkhya is realized, the gunas take on a different mode of operation. This will be discussed at the appropriate time. Suffice it to say for now that the movement of experience can be viewed as having three essentials: illumination or knowing, movement, and limitation or concretization. The apple is perceived or illuminated, it is in motion, or becoming, in some meaningful manner in our experience, and it is a defined or limited object. It can cause pleasure in its being eaten, can cause pain if it cannot be digested, and can bring about delusion or darkness (tamas) if we get sick from it. Needless to say, this analysis of the gunas is quite superficial. However, it does serve our immediate purpose, which is merely to familiarize the reader with yogic terminology. A more elaborate treatment of the gunas will be provided below.
In summary, let us say that the manifest creation with 23 aspects or tattvas is unfolded and enfolded by way of the three gunas in light of the karmic predispositions (sarrskara, vasana, asaya) resulting from past actions.
The Unmanifest (Avyakta)
The unmanifest (avyakta, pradhana, mula-prakrti, alinga) is the twenty-fourth tattva or aspect of human experience. This tattva is not an aspect of “ordinary” manifest experience; it is the source of such experience, the source of the 23 tattvas of the manifest. The unmanifest is also composed of the three gunas. However, in the unmanifest, the gunas do not interact in any way. They are in a condition of equilibrium or balance. There is no domination, support, or activation by rajas affecting sattva or tamas. Without such interaction none of the tattvas of the manifest can unfold. If rajas acts to dominate the illuminative (prakasa) power of sattva, it activates that perception forcing “something-to-be-done” with the illumined. Instead of “seeing” the object as it is,2 without self interest, a self-laden perspective arises promoting attachment or aversion. In other words, the function of (I-maker) is brought to bear in the act of perception. If tamas were to come forth to dominate, the perception of the object would congeal into a stable movement of reification, turning the object into its name; we would perceive the object as an independent existent against which our selfhood is pitted. In this case, names are perceived as “standing for” a referent. The object takes on limitation, becoming concretized (guru) and enveloping (varanaka),3 thereby covering (vr) or concealing totality. Because names are seemingly independent of one another, the rajasic and tamasic perspectives view the world as populated by substances existing independently.
We now see that the workings of the gunas force forth selfhood and substantiation thereby bringing about the manifest. The sattvic perspective is the one to be cultivated in order to bring about a realization of the totality or avyakta. The unmanifest is a matrix wherein all things abide interdependently with no one particular standing out in a privileged or manifest position. The three gunas abide in isolation from each other in this condition. It is through the purification of the sattva from rajas and tamas that the manifest world is retrieved into its origin, the avyakta (See Y.S. III.55).
As stated above, it is the conceiving of names as referring to independently existing substances that populates the world with entities. The world then becomes a world of manifest particulars, things in themselves, that our senses operate on and knowledge is derived from. This world is viewed as independent of human participation. It is a strictly “natural” world. Yoga-Samkhya teaches that the world is neither a product of the mind, or a thought projection (idealism), or a realm of existence independent of human knowledge (realism). This perspective walks a middle road between idealism and realism. The world is certainly not a thought-construct but neither is it independent of human construing. The world is always, at least in ordinary perception, “seen through human eyes,” i.e., the world is interpreted. This interpretive process rests upon a base of karmic accumulation dating back as far as….
Yogis make the effort to return to the pristine origin of the world by suspending the karmic functioning of the mind (citta) thereby suspending the operation of manifestation. In this way the karmic or historical nature of the manifest is realized and the movement from origin to world is understood. Also, the yogi realizes the foundation of the manifest in the unmanifest. The world is no longer seen to be composed of things-in-themselves, but each particular is viewed as gaining its “presence” through its participation in the whole, the avyakta.
At the risk of obscuring or even complicating what has been said, we offer an analogy. Ordinary hearing perceives a musical score as a series of notes in a relation that brings about a melody. There is a linear movement from beginning to end along a line of time. A yogically enhanced perspective might include the silence (the unmanifest) that each note rests on for its manifestation. A deeply felt perspective might even “feel” both the silence and the notes (the manifest) arising from it without losing the melody. Silence, like the rest of the unmanifest ambience, is not simply a lack of sound. It is body-positive, i.e., a living, felt embodiment. The unmanifest is eternal, atemporal. Each note rests on the eternal silence. As the mind links each note together, through memory, into a melody, time as sequence is born. However, each note, as each moment (ksana), is an embodiment of the eternal. It is mind (buddhi-nirmana) which fabricates sequence (krama).
The Body as Manifest and Unmanifest
Yoga and Samkhya both hold that it is the body as prakrti wherein all experience, the world, occurs. All perceptions arise through this body. The most distant stars are perceived in and through the body. Even though the stars are seen to be at a great distance from us, it is still in the body that distance is organized and perceived. (Neurologically speaking, our nervous systems actively construe the distance and we see the stars as far away.) Whatever we perceive is mediated through the body and abides in the body. Any biologist will agree that it is the light from the stars upon the retina, transferred to the optic nerve, then organized by the brain that grants us our perception of the stars. All of our perceptions, all of our world, whether by seeing, hearing, etc., take place in the body.
Normally our bodies are trained to focus exclusively on the manifest (vyakta). “I see the stars out there,” is a sentence that exemplifies our normal perceptions. This perception is attended by a specific embodiment. I feel myself to be standing “here” viewing stars “out there.” The average person takes this embodiment as normative and does not question or examine its “feel.” Yogis, on the other hand, are well aware that this perception of space and stars is occurring within the body, and thus they have learned to sensitize themselves to it, rendering the experience an intimacy which ordinary experience lacks. The stars, the space, etc. are felt as one’s own, inside as it were, at one with the body (prakrti). This does not exclude ordinary perception but includes it. This embodiment is the truly aesthetic dimension which is the foundation of the ordinary. The movement or becoming of the stars is “my own becoming.”
But what of the background or ambience that surrounds me while I view the stars? For example, the ground beneath my feet, the tree to my left, the street light to my right, etc., are all “there,” in some sense, but I am not conscious of them. Yet, if the street light went out, I more than likely would become immediately aware of it. Somehow my body was conscious in its surroundings without my having to be conscious of them. The body knows its ambient status quo. A disruption of the status quo, such as a sharp noise, occurs against a conscious background, the total body (the unmanifest). While I am conscious of the stars, all that is not explicit or manifest still resides in and as the body as the avyakta (unmanifest). Should I exercise the suspension of the manifest, balancing the gunas, stilling the mind, interrupting the flow of karma or history, my body would surrender to its wholistic condition as conscious totality. This would be a realization of the origin, the divine oneness.
The Knower (Jna)
We have been referring to the body as the “conscious body” or “conscious totality.” We have outlined a discussion of the 24 tattvas including a mention of intellect (buddhi) and manas (mind organ).4 At this point we can no longer proceed without discussing the “conscious” aspect of experience, the 25th tattva, purusa. Purusa is consciousness (cetana). Within the language of Yoga-Samkhya purusa has various synonyms: atman (self), citi-sakti (the power of consciousness), jna (knower), saksi (witness), drastr (seer), svamin (owner), and more. All of these terms are used in various contexts to convey something of the different ways in which the purusa or consciousness may be conceived.
One may assume from our prior discussions that because intellect and mind were included, a discussion of consciousness or awareness was unnecessary. However, for the yogi, consciousness is other than the movements of the intellect (buddhi) and mind organ (manas), and other than the movements of the I-sense (ahamkara). Consciousness is that which grants the movements of prakrti (the body) the life that transforms those non-conscious movements into human experience. It is quite ridiculous to talk of non-conscious experience. Consciousness is an aspect of all experience. It is inactive, uncaused, eternal, all-pervasive, and singular (not made of parts).5 Purusa is not to be conceived of as an entity or thing. It is only pure awareness. It cannot be known by the citta (mind) because it is the knower. We can never “get behind” it to know it. All movements of the gunas (guna-parnama), that is, all manifestation as well as the unmanifest are “seen” or “known” by the purusa.
The purusa does not know in the same sense as the citta or mind can be said to know something. The consciousness (cetana) that is purusa is not a consciousness of something. In the mind ‘s process of knowing, a modification of the mind (citta-vrtti) occurs which takes one or more of five forms: cognition (pramana), which includes perception (pratyaksa), inference (anumana), and valid testimony (agamah); error (viparyaya); conceptualization (vikalpa); sleep (nidra); and memory (smrtayah). All of these modifications ( vrtti) of the citta or mind (including intellect and I ness) in one way or another entail a movement to be conscious of something. Purusa, as pure consciousness, provides the awareness within that movement. We can compare, in a very limited way, consciousness to a mirror. Essentially, the mirror is always free from and indifferent toward its images. Yet, it is not a mirror without them. The process of imaging is done by the citta and, obviously, the mirror (purusa) reflects the images. So, too, in experience (the movement of the reflections in the mirror) we have a twofold operation producing a unified experience. According to Yoga-Samkhya, the problem we have lies in not isolating (kevala) or discriminating (viveka) the mirror from the image. If, as was alluded to above, we can halt the operation of image-making (citta-vrtti-nirodha) the mirror can reside in its own-form (sva-rupa) and this allows us to know the difference between consciousness and prakrti. The knowledge of this difference is freedom, the realization of the distinct (kevala) nature of the purusa.
In all of our experience one can detect a constant. Most of us attribute that feeling of constancy to the image which is in perpetual motion. One aspect of that image to which we give constancy is the I sense. We therefore impute stability or continuity to the sense of self (asmita) and consider ourselves to be substances or entities. This false attribution (viparyaya) of constancy conceals that which is truly constant and eternal, the purusa. Additionally, we impute movement to the purusa (the mirror) because of this confusing of mirror and moving image. So, we take the I to be a conscious agent of actions and purusa is obscured. The images (including selfhood) in the mirror function in a manner similar to a flame. As the flame bums it is arising or manifesting at the same time as it is dissolving. The uniformity of this movement gives us the sense that it is a singular or self-identical flame. The name “flame” helps to solidify this perception. However, as we know, there is nothing constant about that flame. In its appearing, it is disappearing. In its being born and dying simultaneously, experience (the flame) is rising and falling before the gaze of consciousness. It is through the fundamental error of ignorance (avidya) that the names of our world seem to grant substantiality and constancy to the things in it. (In point of yogic fact, all things are always becoming what they are, becoming what they are.) All this takes place before consciousness which gives life to the movement. One might say that all experience, the world, abides within consciousness.
This “display” for the sake of consciousness takes place as long as ignorance lasts, i.e., as long as the independence of the purusa (mirror) goes unrealized. As noted above, there are two levels of this imaging movement. The first is the manifest (vyakta). The images (remember, by images we also include all sensory images) are incarnate facts, not just “ideas in the mind.” This order of experience takes the form of “I see the stars,” etc. There is a subject/object dualism. All perceptions or experience of the manifest prakrti take the form of subject/object, with the exception of a heightened state of concentration called samadhi. In this type of samadhi, (there being others of a different order) the object alone “shines forth” as if the mind (citta) is emptied of its own nature. Still, there is a privileged particular “standing out,” as it were, from its background (avyakta).
It is not too difficult to understand that consciousness must be present in such ordinary perceptions; after all, I am conscious “…of the stars.” It demands a bit more understanding to see how consciousness is present within what I am not conscious of. For example, starting the car demands far more knowledge than I am conscious of. I may indeed be conscious of the ignition key, the door, the key hole, the turning of the key and the sound of the car starting. Yet, the knowledge of what a car is, what it does, where I came from, where I am going, the sky above, the earth below, the car windows, etc., are all implicated in my starting the car. There is a knowledge gained from past experience in the action in the present carrying that knowledge toward the future for a purpose that I may not be explicitly conscious of the moment I start the car. There is, to summarize, a matrix of knowledge and meaningful sensations embodied in the present that allow for the possibility of any action, whether it be starting the car or flicking a light switch.
This matrix, the unmanifest (avyakta), is inclusive of the past, present, and future in the absolute present, in the moment (ksana). However, I am not conscious of the matrix. I am conscious of putting the key in the ignition. But I could not or would not put the key in unless this knowledge was operative. My entire sensorium and historical knowledge (that knowledge being necessary even to know where or what my car is) is operating at a more primordial level than is my knowledge of something. This knowledge is fully incarnate and fully conscious. The purusa knows all things in the present. History is alive and conscious in the now. “Many are my past lives and yours, Arjuna; I know them all, you do not…,” (Bhagavad Gita IV.5). The contents of this matrix are not known as we would know of something. The knowledge of the unmanifest is totalistic or wholistic, a knowledge without parts, a knowledge of interdependence. Purusa, the knower, is the consciousness granting power that knows all; consciousness is omniscient. We do not often realize how consciously potent the past is in the present. We cannot act or live without it. Just how far back this past knowledge extends is not important. Our past lives “are many.” What does matter is that we realize that the past is very much alive as living history interpreting and thereby mapping our present life in a radically concrete manner.
The matrix of the avyakta is the origin and end of all. The particulars, sense objects, situations, etc. of our manifest experience are rising and falling out of and into the unmanifest. The knower (jna) is called, in the Bhagavad Gita, the knower of the field (or manifest). In ordinary experience the knower is that consciousness within experience. Then there is the knower which is “… the knower of the field in all fields” (B.G. XIII.2). To realize that consciousness in the totality, to realize the unmanifest as one’s own conscious body is to know “…that which is to be known, by knowing which one gains immortality (amrtam),” (B.G. XIII.12). This is a realization of the omnipresence (vyapin), (S.K. X,XI) of the purusa.
The Trinity
It should be more than obvious by now that as human beings we comprise the manifest (vyakta), the unmanifest (avyakta) and knower (jna, or purusa). There is a different language to describe each member of the triad. We have the common language of ordinary manifest life wherein we find the language of subject/object dualism. We have a language of the origin which seeks to describe and elicit the realization of the matrix of the unmanifest. Finally, we have a language appropriate to consciousness. A human being is the cooperative working of all three members of the trinity. (There is an obvious parallel here with Christianity: the Father (purusa), the Spirit (prakrti), and the Son or the incarnation, the manifest as the human embodiment of the Father and Holy Spirit.)
“Whatever being is born, moveable or standing still, know it to be born from the union (samyoga) of field and the knower of the field…” (B.G. XIII.26). All experience is the result of this samyoga or union of purusa and prakrti. It is important to note that we find ourselves already a product of this union. We are after the fact, so to speak. The I-sense (ahamkara) is a product of identification (eka-atmata) of the seer with its instrument, the intellect (Y.S. II.6). This is an error, like original sin, that we find ourselves already having “committed.” At my core I feel sameness, constancy, eternality. The mistake we make is to appropriate that feeling and declare ourselves to be. This declaration not only says “I am” but reifies this evanescent I-sense into a substance that is seen to remain unchanged and conscious from birth to death. We have usurped the role of the eternal purusa and live our lives based on the fundamental error of independent and substantial selfhood. Technically, this error is termed avidya, defined as the perceiving of the eternal, the pure, the joyful and the self (atman) in what is temporal, impure, unsatisfactory (duhkha) and non self (Y.S. 11.5).
So as humans, even if we are ignorant humans, we incarnate the unmanifest and the knower. We are the three in one. Any discussion of human life, from a yogic point of view, must include a discussion of all three members of the triad. There are those moments when the functioning of the manifest ceases. This usually occurs as a result of spiritual practice (sadhana). It is at this stage that the manifest is “returned to its origin” (pratiprasava) in the avyakta. This is a correlate of the restriction of the modification of the mind (citta-vrtti-nirodhah). As the movements of the citta cease, so do the movements of the manifest. All experience, the world, occurs within human confines, the citta. The experiential fact that the world appears to be “outside” of “us” does not negate the yogic fact that the “outside” is inside of human embodiment, human grasping. At those moments of restriction (nirodhah) the projection of inside and outside, subject and object ceases and the unmanifest is distinguished or seen to be distinct (visinasti) from the knower (jna). This is not to say that the two are separated, only that the two are distinct. It is only through the purified intellect (buddhi) that the vision of the totalistic movement of the unmanifest is realized.
At every moment (ksana) the whole world undergoes a change. The vision of the movement of the whole, which is the movement of the gunas without their interacting, is the conscious movement of becoming. The whole world, in its becoming, constitutes time. Time is the momentary movement of the whole. Time is becoming. Our bodies are time as world becoming, consciously. All things are time. This is the level we may characterize as a divine union. This is the original act of copulation from which all manifestation emerges. This act, the union of prakrti and purusa, is the blissful foundation of our human situation. But this origin can only be realized in a moment of total renunciation of all things manifest. This is the highest samadhi. Our birthright is to enter into and become this living and ecstatic union wherein consciousness is “seen” to pervade the whole in its blissful becoming.
We find ourselves in a “fallen” condition, a manifest condition, alienated bodily from our It is our spiritual responsibility to consciously become a child of this union knowing both of our divine parents. However, this responsibility takes understanding and practice. We must understand our “fallen” or ignorant condition and take up the necessary practices which will cure it.
Footnotes:
1. Keep in mind #3 above. At any given time or place, in the manifest, one guna dominates the other two which are supporting, activating, and interacting. 
2.See Yoga Sutra III.3
3. See Samkhya Karika XIII
4. Although the term citta does not appear in the Samkhya Karikas, it does appear in the Yoga Sutras. Citta comprises buddhi (intellect), ahmakara (I-formation), and manas (mind).
5. Samkhya Karika X