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

immutable, one, not evolutive ; dri the other side there is Prakriti or Nature-fo rce in e rt w ithout the conscious Soul, active but qnly by juxtaposition to that consciousness, By contoct^with it, as we would say, not so much one at first as indeterminate, tr^le in^ its qualities, capable of evolution and involution. The contact of soul and _nam^ generates the pl ay oLsubject ivity and obje ctivity which is our Mperienre of being ; what is to us the subjective first evolves, because the scml-coi^iousL ni^s is the ^rst cause, inconscient Nature-force only the second and "^dependent cause ; but still it is Nature and not Soul which supplies the instruments of our subjectivity. First in order„cpm e Budd hi, discriminative or determinative power evolving out of Nature-force, and its subordinate power of^sfilf:. ^scriminating ego. Then as a secondary evolution 5iere arises o ut of thes^the power which seizes the discriminations of objects, sense-mind or Manas,— we must record the Indian names “b^an^~ the corresponding English words are not real equi- valents. As a tertiary evolution out of sense-min d we have the sp ecialising j xrganjjL semsps, te n in numbe r, five of perception, five of action ; nex t the powers of each sense of perception, sound, form, scent, etc., which give their value to objects for the mind and make things what they are to our subjectivity, — and, as the substantial basis of these.

the primary conditions of the objects of sense, the five elements of ancient philosophy or rather elementary conditions of Nature, pan cha bh uta , which constitute objects by their various combination. ^ Reflected in the pure consciousness of Purusha these degrees and powers of Nature-force become the material of our impure subjectivity, impure because its action is dependent on the perceptions of the objective world and on their subjective reactions. Buddhi, which is simply jthe dete nnina- tive power*^ thaT “determines all inertly out of indeterminate inconscient Force, takes for us the form of - inteUigence and will.^ Manas, the inconscient force which seizes Nature's discrfmina- tions by objective action and reaction and grasps at them by attraction, becomes sense-perception and desire, the two crude terms or degra^tions of intelligence and will, — ^becomes the sense-niind sensational, emotive, volitional in the lower sense of wish, hope, longing passion, vital impulsion, all the deformations (vikdra) of will. The senses become the instruments of sense-mind, the perceptive five of our sense-knowledge, the active five of our impulsions and vital habits, mediators between the subjective and objective ; the rest are the objects of our consciousness, vishayas^ of tl^ senses.

This order of evolution seems contrary to that which we perceive as the order of the material evolution ; but if we remember that even Buddhi is in itself an. inert action of inconsckm Nature THE YOGA OF THE INTELLIGENT WILL and that \there is certainly in this sense an inconscient VilL anjT inte lligence, a dkcriminjuiy§ a^_d^erminative force even in the atom, if we observe the^^crudeTnconscient stuff of sensation, emotion, memory, impulsion in the plant and in the subconscient forms of existence, if we look at these powers of Nature-force assuming the forms of our subjectivity in the evolving consciousness of animal and man, we shall see that the Sankhya system squares well enough with all that modern enquiry has elicited by its observation of material Nature. In the evolution of the soul back from Prakriti towards Purusha, the reverse order has to be taken to the original Nature-evolution, and that is how the Upanishads and the Gita following and almost quoting the Upanishads state the ascending order of our subjective powers. “Supreme,’' they say, “beyond their objects are the senses, supreme over the senses the mind, supreme over the mind the intelligent will: tlm which J s supreme over the intelligent will, is the conscious self, the