We can understand this complex core principle of the Sāṁkhya system through our own physical experience within our yoga practice. For example, it is easy to admit that you do not have complete control over which sensations are being presented to you—there might be a sensation in your quadriceps, a pain in your shoulder, a pinching in your abdomen, or a sense of stretching in the skin in front of your heart. However, the true insight and freedom within any posture actually comes from being able to observe the sensations, whatever they are, as they arise. In the same way, insight into pure consciousness, into puruṣa, lies quite simply in your ability to intelligently stay with the content that is being presented to you (in this case the feelings, thoughts, and sensations as they arise in your āsana practice). If you (false puruṣa) can then step out of the way, your own buddhi, your own intelligence, like a focused lens, will keep seeing through, balancing, and opening the contextual background of whatever you are observing, so that the mind does not jump away. Through yoga, the buddhi is said to become purified, meaning that as we practice, the intelligence no longer gets derailed by the mind but sees through the labels and thoughts about the particular content that is being presented. If we look at the Sāṁkhya universe as being an unfolding flower, then the puruṣa sits right within the buddhi at the center of that flower, either caught in the drama of interfacing identity with the flower or basking in the clear light, the mirror of the buddhi’s integrated, balanced, intelligence. In fact, the second and the tenth chapters of the Bhagavad Gītā describe yoga as being buddhi yoga—the yoga of pure intelligence.
The next thing that evolves out of buddhi is called ahaṁkāra—the I-maker or the ego function. Though essential to establishing form and organisms in this world, it can become the stem of endless suffering and loneliness. Within the Sāṁkhya system ahaṁkāra is considered to be a sacred process that occurs within prakṛti. It has been called the cit-acit granthi, the knot that ties together that which is cit or pure consciousness (puruṣa) with that which is acit or unconsciousness (prakṛti). The knot forms as a mysterious sense of a subjective “I,” which continuously collects images, theories, and beliefs about itself as separate from others and from its environment. It arises from basic ignorance, the confusion of puruṣa with prakṛti. It causes us to quickly create subject-object relationships in the sense fields by endowing countless small sections of prakṛti with self, thereby pulling objects out of their backgrounds. The ahaṁkāra, the ego, then accepts or rejects the objects according to its perceived need to protect and maintain itself as a separate organism, blocking the inherent flow of information within the buddhi that would lead to truer perception and insight. This confusion of ego, this blocking of the intelligence of interdependence, is still ultimately the guṇas acting on the guṇas and is every bit as sacred as any of the other manifestations of prakṛti, any other perception or insight, and any of the other processes of the buddhi. In fact the ego is essential to life because it allows us to at least temporarily draw boundaries and identify particular things—this body, this thought, this object—as separate from everything else.
To understand the importance of ahaṁkāra, imagine it as a seed. Generally a seed has a hard outer surface, which keeps it separated from what is outside of its exterior shell. At a certain point, if it is a lucky seed, it falls into the ground, and with the presence of moisture, the outer casing begins to soften until it is sufficiently supple and becomes porous. At this point there is communication between the inside of the seed—which has information—and the external environment. It is that exchange of information that stimulates the growth of the seed so that transformation, life itself, can begin to occur. Likewise, we have an ego that is like a shell that allows our potential, the manifestation of our truest self, to develop. At certain junctures of interaction with others or with the environment—which are usually points of illumination, transformation, or insight—our ego becomes porous. If we stay present with the process of change that we are encountering, and if we stay tuned into the process of the guṇas acting on the guṇas, then we are carefully able to let go of those things we identify as ourselves and release the perceptions that falsely or partially identify others and other things as separate for us and from each other. In this way we are able to assimilate things that lie beyond our immediate system, whether they are outside our philosophical system or the physical system of our body. This assimilation process allows us to experience transformation or growth, and in witnessing our own process of change there is the possibility of discovering what we really are deep at the core. Yoga actually makes the ego function porous. Periodic letting go of ego positions and images keeps the function useful and healthy, allowing insights to occur. Having no ego function would mean the death of our physical organism, but learning to become fluid within our ego system leads to insight. The ego, the ahaṁkāra, is useful in that it always gives us stuff to let go of. It is sacred in that when its contracting function arises in us or in others, it should be observed as it is.
Another function of the ahaṁkāra is to facilitate a shift of focus away from pure consciousness by turning the activity of the buddhi outward in a relentless attempt to create a false self, or a false puruṣa. This process is represented in the myth of Rāma, in which Rāma’s beloved consort Sītā was captured by the demon Rāvaṇa, who carried her away to Śrī Lanka. This event set off the yogic cycle of activity that is part of the ancient epic tale the Rāmāyaṇa. In the story the demon Rāvaṇa is the ego, the false puruṣa, who steals the buddhi, or Sītā, away from pure consciousness, Rāma, the true puruṣa. Rāma then enlists the son of the wind god, Hanūmān who represents prāṇa, and which cleans and integrates the buddhi. Hanūmān steals Sītā back and burns down the city, which represents the structures around the inflated ego, Rāvaṇa. Ultimately Rāma defeats Rāvaṇa in an incredible battle, and this defeat necessitates all of the other events that happen within the story and which are symbolic of the yoga process. The story should be read by all students of yoga
The next layer that evolves within Sāṁkhya after buddhi and the ahaṁkāra is called manas, or “mind.” Manas is considered simply to be the organizer of perception. Depending on circumstances, it gives attention to particular feelings, thoughts, and sensations that come into our awareness while it completely ignores other things that arise. We are constantly surrounded by a sea of information that reaches us through the senses, and at the same time, we are continually creating stories and hypotheses about these things on an internal—often subconscious—level based on our theories. The vital function that is served by manas is to select and filter the onslaught of information that our awareness is picking up. Manas is said to have two basic functions: saṅkalpa and vikalpa. Kal means “to imagine,” while san means “together” and vi means “divided.” Saṅkalpa, therefore, means to imagine or to construct things into a whole, to unify them. The process takes a collection of various things that appear to be separate and recognizes their commonality, unifying them and putting them all together into one category, one box. At this point the second function of manas steps in; turning the mind around and practicing vikalpa, it divides those very same things back up into separate units or subcategories. So the mind will put everything together into a nice, neat, whole, unified package, and then it will dump everything back out again. All this is to say that the mind has a capacity and a propensity to make both a divided construction and a unified construction; it accepts things and then turns right around and rejects those very things—all of this based on the ego function: “This is something I can use. This is something I can recognize. I will take this in. This is useless, and I will reject it.” It is at this level of manas where the internal world of ideas and feelings meets the outer world of actual sense perceptions. It is where the rubber meets the road. For example, if we are holding a piece of fruit, a practical decision must be made on whether to eat it or not. With data from the senses we move back and forth from the senses to the
buddhi through the organizing function of the manas, judging ripeness, odor, and texture against internally stored past experiences, hunger rating, food theories, beliefs, and so on, until we finally make the choice whether or not to eat the fruit.
Yoga is a very grounding art because through it we work with and accommodate the innate functions and shortcomings of buddhi, ahaṁkāra, and manas against the feedback of the outer world. The intelligence is purified through the practice, and the ego then becomes porous, allowing the manas, or the more mechanical and immediate function of the mind, to begin to work with clarity. Through the practice we are able to pay attention to the actual feedback we get from the outside world, and at the same time we can balance this input with the desires, constructs, and imagination of our inner world. Bringing these two worlds into balance helps us to come into the present moment, at which point we are considered to be grounded. But the deep effects of the yoga practice do not stop there. From ahaṁkāra and manas we start to unfold the real forms, sensations, and objects of our experience, which lie in what are called the five elements (space, air, fire, water, and earth). These five elements are interdependent transformations of the three guṇas—sattva, rajas, and tamas—and they occur not only in the outside world as objects but also in our internal world as current, remembered, and imagined sense perceptions, that is, touch, smell, taste, sounds, shapes, colors, textures, and so on. Even our most subtle feelings, our most sublime internal sensations, or whatever our most graphic vision might be, all of this has as its content some blending of the five elements. Every perception, each sensation we can experience, is actually composed of a unique pattern of these elements. The five elements unfold out of each other hierarchically from subtle to gross. The gross are always considered to be condensations of all of the subtle layers that have come before them. In fact, without the five elements, there is nothing for the manas, the buddhi, and the ahaṁkāra to do!
The first of the elements is called ākāśa or “sky.” Ākāśa is the quality of nonobstructive, radiant space, which is said to correspond to hearing. In a way you can experience space when you “simply listen” because you are hearing, but you are not naming, categorizing, drawing conclusions about, or identifying the sounds you perceive. You merely experience sound vibration within space. In fact, you are also experiencing yourself, because your thoughts are not creating any form of obstruction to anything that might appear in the space of your listening. Just like the sky does not obstruct clouds—they are free to arise, to transform, or to blow away altogether—so too when you simply listen you are not obstructing the sounds that arise. Through ākāśa, meditation on the other elements can begin to occur because we give space to those elements to be as they are. From ākāśa unfolds vāyu, or the element of air. Like the wind, vāyu describes motion through both inner and outer space and establishes the beginning of distinctive form in which location is defined, and then movement from that point to another occurs. Vāyu corresponds to the sense of touch and is intimately related to prāṇa, the substratum of the actual process of thought. Unfolding from vāyu is tejas, or fire, a hot, upward-expanding opening movement. Tejas is light and deals with the sense of sight. From fire comes the element apas, or water, which is representative of a downward contracting flow and is said to correspond to the sense of taste. It describes external movement of actual water in the outside world as well as the sensation of downward, waterlike internal movement. From apas, the final and most gross element of all is earth, or pṛthivī, which is complete cohesion. Pṛthivī results from having packed everything together into a solid mass that totally obstructs movement. This final element, pṛthivī, is said to deal with smell, and to a certain extent it is the complete opposite of ākāśa, the sky element. Pṛthivī represents the quality of tamas guṇa, in which things are completely fixed or solid. Though it might seem undesirable to find yourself in the tamas guṇa, because it is associated with dullness, tamas also has the characteristic of being the foundational and historical aspect of things. For example, a geologist studying the earth and its rock formations and mountains is dealing with something that has a very deep history to it from which life continually pours forth. When you contemplate the realm of geology you may study what seem like static aspects of the universe—rock formations—but when you look closely you realize that you are seeing a stop frame along a continuum of change through an incredibly long period of time. Through geology you can start to really comprehend what time means, which is one of the glorious things about paying attention to anything that is historical; it makes our imaginative world seem almost trivial. The same is true when you contemplate space. If you go out on a clear night and look up at the stars with a telescope at distant galaxies, you get the nauseating feeling and the idea that there is really no end to that space—it is immensely vast. But if the sky were blank, if there were no stars and galaxies out there, you would simply have a vague notion that what you were looking at is vast and expansive. As soon as any form of one or a combination of the other elements appears as a defined field, the space itself shifts because it is the form that actually provides context and a way of appreciating the unlimited, accommodating dimensions of the space. Likewise the five elements complement and give perspective to each other. We experience these elements as different modes of structure, processes, and movements in the outside world, and in the inside world we experience them as different qualities of internal sensation. So when one of the elements is dominant within our mind, then that means we are appreciating internally particular patterns of movement and relationship that are associated with that element.
The distinct qualities of the five elements can be used for focusing the mind in meditation on any one of them. Remembering that the elements are hierarchical and that they unfold from each other (from ākāśa to earth), we see that one element helps in the experiencing of another one inside or around the body. Ākāśa gives space through listening to all of the elements. Centered around the throat, it allows you to feel the body as being open, infinite space or sky in all directions. This spacious attention allows you to feel the touch of air or vāyu around the heart area shifting, rolling, and flowing freely as it redefines the sense of the open sky of the ākāśa. The sense of vāyu makes it easy to define from the roots of the navel up around the edges of the diaphragm the strong spreading and rising movement associated with fire, tejas. By contrast, underneath the fire, below the navel and into the inner thighs, is the distinct opposite: the cool, downward flow of water, apas. Water is the best way to find the earth in the pelvic floor, sitting bones, backs of legs. Let water flow freely down, and it will eventually get the earth to respond, stopping, channeling, and containing the water.
The five elements are experienced both internally and externally through the five senses, or indriyas. The five senses are like fields in which sense objects or sensations arise and fall like flowers in a meadow. The sense fields themselves are experienced by yogins in meditation as the five tanmātras of each element or sense. Tanmātra means “moment of that-ness” and refers ultimately to the open quality of sensation when it is experienced without any overlay of concept. This open quality allows a spreading of the awareness out from any particular sensation point into the background field of potential sensation points.
We have now unfolded the basic Sāṁkhya world from the inside out and have just given hints about how meditation and yoga practice will allow us to trace our direct sense experiences back in through the various layers of mind and buddhi to eventually watch prakṛti fulfill her ultimate purpose of revealing puruṣa. A quick summary of Sāṁkhya might go like this: the mysterious pure consciousness, puruṣa, somehow interfaces with the buddhi, which generates an ego-making function. This manifests the dividing-constructing and symbol-making mind, which takes in and organizes data from the senses and sends actions and reactions back out into the world through organs of action like the hands. The world is composed of the five gross elements and other puruṣa-pra
kṛti cognitive systems called other sentient beings. All of this is an interweaving of the energetic strands of the three guṇas, strands that stretch as a unified whole, a tapestry or network of time itself.
When learning about Sāṁkhya philosophy, it is important to, time and again, remind yourself that the system was the first major attempt to explain the human condition from a yogic perspective. By examining the way the mind works, impermanence, and the nature of reality and perception itself, Sāṁkhya laid a remarkable groundwork for future thinkers to build on. Even though it had its limitations, and in spite of the fact that the system was often highly criticized by others, it presented ideas that have been instrumental in the development of both the yogic and Buddhist perspective. But because Sāṁkhya attempted to demonstrate the nature of mind and existence, there was (and still is) room for confusion on the part of those attempting to follow the subtle philosophical threads the system laid before us. This is due to the fact that we must use our own minds to understand the ideas about our own minds that Sāṁkhya presents. At first, conceptualizing puruṣa as something called pure consciousness and prakṛti as “all things that manifest” seems relatively simple and straightforward. However, because it is our mind, our “self,” our own intimate connection to pure consciousness (but one filled with ego) that has the insight of understanding, and because that same mind is naturally and constantly producing more ideas—we are forever generating prakṛti—it is very easy for the concepts of Sāṁkhya to slip through our fingers as its ideas dissolve and fold back in on themselves. It can be confounding! But still it is worth returning to for a foundation in understanding.
The Mirror of Yoga Page 11