The Bhagavad Gita by Eknath Easwaran

╭ introduction
sha, pure spirit, is the knower of this field of phenomena, and
belongs to a wholly different order of reality. Only Purusha is
conscious – or, rather, Purusha is consciousness itself. What
we call “mind” is only an internal instrument that Purusha
uses, just as the body is its external instrument. For practical
purposes – at least as far as the Gita is concerned – Purusha
may be regarded as a synonym for Atman . Purusha is the Self,
beyond all change, the same in every creature.
Matter and Mind
Perhaps I should confess at this point that the
paragraphs that follow in this short section are somewhat
technical and not necessary for understanding the Gita. They
can be skipped by anyone who finds them dry. I include them
simply because Sankhya’s explanation of mind and matter,
when properly understood, makes sense of many subjects in
the Gita that might otherwise seem arbitrary: maya, the survival
of personality after death, the way karma works through
the mind. It accommodates modern physics perfectly and
offers promising explanations of mind-body relationships
in health and disease. However, Sankhya’s way of looking at
the mind is very different from our usual physical orientation,
and therefore impossible to absorb without reflection.
Sankhya’s hallmark is a list ( sankhya means counting or
listing) of twenty-four principles or tattvas (“suchnesses”)
which trace the steps by which unitary, primordial prakriti
╭ 38