Prakrti (“nature”) Purusha
("person") is the other of the Samkhya school's two essential
concepts.
Purusha and prakrti—roughly, spirit and nature—are the
source of all things, according to Samkhya's atheistic philo sophical dualism.
Prakrti is more accurately described as force or power than
as a definite physical thing.
It contains three separate energies with three different
characteristics (guna): sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Sattva tends toward the good, rajas to activity or passion,
and tamas to darkness and decay.
These forces exist in perfect harmony in the primordial
prakrti, each perfectly balancing the others, but when prakrti's equilibrium is
disrupted, it sets in action an evolutionary process that forms both the
outside physical world and the internal psychological world.
All of these evolutions, whether material or mental, have a
different balance of the three gunas, which defines their healthy, active, or
unwholesome nature.
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.
