The Samkhya school of Indian philosophy's central concept.
The Samkhya school employs an evolutionary theory to explain how humans see an inner world of subjective experience and an objective outside world, both of which it claims are not accurate elements of the actual, or fundamental, reality.
Purusha and prakrti, according to Samkhya metaphysics, are the essence of the cosmos.
Purusha is pure consciousness, which is aware yet unchanging and passive.
Prakrti is primordial substance, which is a balance of three unconscious forces (gunas): sattva (goodness), rajas (passion), and tamas (disgust) (decay).
According to the Samkhya, the conflation and confusion of purusha and prakrti is the fundamental reason of the soul's bonding to the reincarnation cycle (samsara), where purusha seems to be active and prakrti appears to be cognizant.
While this mistake has no impact on purusha, it does cause prakrti to go through an evolutionary process in which it gets more differentiated, leading to even more uncertainty about the nature of the cosmos.
When the primordial balance between the three gunas is disrupted, the first stage of development is termed mahat (“great one”); mahat is also known as buddhi, which is understood as the cognitive ability required for cognition.
The development of ahamkar ("I-making"), in which one discovers the initial emotions of egoconsciousness, is aided by the mental processes eased by buddhi.
With the rise of subjective feeling comes the division into subjective and objective worlds: on the one hand, ahamkar evolves the five subtle elements (tanmatras), which are the precursors of the gross elements, and on the other, it evolves the eleven faculties: five jnanendriyas or sense organs, five karmendriyas or action organs, and the mind as the eleventh.
At emancipation, the evolutionary process is reversed, with the many devolving becoming the one one by one.
Liberation occurs when a proper understanding replaces a faulty one, as it does in most Indian philosophical systems.
Samkhya, edited by Gerald Larson and Ram Shankar Bhattacharya, was published in 1987, and A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, edited by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, was published in 1957.
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