7rcTIX1xP

The Third Lesson: The Sankhya System.1175
System fails to express the highest conceptions, and wherein it leads one on
a false by-path.
Kapila ignores, although he does not deny, the existence of that—The
Absolute—Brahman and Para-Brahm—and devotes his attention to an
examination of the “How” of creative activity and phenomenal life and
being—a most important work, surely, and yet not the most important.
Moreover, he teaches that the individual Purushas existed before the
creation of the universe, and before they became immersed in Prakriti—
that is, existed in separate existence. Whereas our teachings are that when
the Great Outpouring took place, the Absolute projected its Spirit into
the manifestation called matter, and when the Evolutionary wave began,
the tendency toward individual expression brought about the origin of
the individual souls, which before that time had their existence only in a
state of Oneness. And yet Kapila has given us a wonderfully clear idea
of the development of the Personal Consciousness or Sense of Egoism,
or Ahamkara, from the Universal Life Consciousness or Cosmic Buddhi,
which in turn evolved from the Cosmic Spirit Awareness, or Universal
Spiritual Consciousness, or Mahat, in which the Purushas became “aware”
of themselves in a state of Unity, or Oneness of the Many, which was their
first step after they had entered into Prakriti, and left the state of Pure Spirit
or Virgin Purusha. A comparison between the two teachings will show the
resemblance, and the relation they bear to each other. In our own teachings
we have had little or nothing to say regarding the “Three Gunas” which we
have described in explaining the Sankhya System, but we have said that
the conception was familiar to all Hindu thought, and we have treated of
them in a general way as forming a part of “The Laws of Nature”; in fact the
Inner Teachings hold that the Three Gunas are in the nature of a poetical
conception of, or an idealization of, the Natural Forces, instead of being
distinct principles in themselves as Kapila and others have taught. Strictly
speaking, even Kapila admits that the Gunas are merely “Qualities” or Forces