Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

There are certainly plenty of things in our existence which the Sankhya does not explain at all or does not explain satisfactorily, but if all we need is a rational explanation of the cosmic processes in their principles as a basis for the great object common to the ancient philosophies, the liberation of the soul from the obsession of cosmic Nature, then the Sankhya explanation of the world and the Sankhya way of liberation seem as good and as effective as any other. What we do not seize at first is why it should bring in an element of plu ralism into its dually by afiim^n g one Prakrit i, but many PurusHasl iT^ould seem that the existence of one Purusha^ and one Prakriti should be sufficient to account for the creation and procession of the universe. But the Sankhya was bound to evolve pluralism by its rigidly analytical observation of the principles of things. First, actually, we find that 2there ar e many conscious b ei ngs i n the wmid and each“ regards the same world in his own way and has his independent experience of its subjective and objective things, his separate dealings with the same perceptive and reactive processes. If there were only on e Purusha , thgre jwould iiot b this central independence and separativen^s, but all would see th^woriarTn an identic SsEion and with a common subjectivity and objectivity. Because Prakriti one^ all m mess t he same wOrtS^f because her principles are everywhere the same, the general principles which constitute internal and external experience are the same for all ; but the infinite differ ence of view and outlook and atjdmd^^acrion an3“’*'expenence^ and escape from experience — a difference not of the natural operations which are the same but of the witnessing consciousness, — are utterly inexplicable except on the supposition that tlfiere is a multiplicity of w itnesses, many^ Purushas . The separative ego-sense, we may say, is a sufficient explanation? But the ego-sense is a common principle of Nature and need not vary ; for by itself it simply induces the Purusha to identify himself with Prakriti, and if there is only one Purusha, all beings would be one, joined and alike in their egois- tic consciousness ; however different in detail might be the mere forms and combinations of their natural parts, there would be no difference of soul-outlook and soul-experience. The variations of Nature ought not to make all this central difference, this multiplicity of outlook and from beginning to end