Weekly definition - Prakriti - Matter and Spirit!.......

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Prakriti is made up of two natures ... they are

 

1) para ( higher )

 

2) apara ( lower )

 

Let us now take up the 'lower' prakriti first !

 

SRIMAD BHAGAVAT GITA , CHAPTER 7 VERSE 4 DESCROBES THE LOWER

PRAKRITI THUS

 

Bhumir apo `nalo vayuh kham mano buddir eva ca

Ahamkara iti' yam me bhinna prakritir astadha

Chapter 7 IV

 

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect, egoism-thus is my

eightfold Prakriti!

 

SWAMI CHINMAYANANDA EXPLAINS THIS VERSE THUS :

 

The five Great Elements, Mind, intellect and Ego constitute,

according to the Geeta, the eight-fold Prakriti that has come to be

super-imposed upon the Truth through Ignorance. The five Great

Cosmic Elements are represented in the Microcosm by the five sense

organs by which the individual comes to experience and live in the

world of sense-objects. Thus, the list making up the Prakriti is

nothing other than the subtle body and its vehicles of expression

constituted of the sense organs. The sense organs are called the

Mind. The impulses received in the mind are rationally classified

and systematized into the knowledge of their reception by the

intellect. At all these three levels of the sense perception, mental

reception, and intellectual assimilation there is a continuous sense

of I-ness, which is called the Ego. These constitute the equipment

through which, at the touch of Life, man functions as the

intelligent being that he is.

 

READ THE NEXT VERSE :

 

apare `yam itas tv anyam prakrtim viddhi me param

jivabhutam mahabaho yaye dam dharyate jagat

Chapter 7 V

 

swamiji explains this further

 

This is the inferior (Prakriti) but different from it, know thou, O

mighty- armed, My higher Prakriti, the very life-element, by which

this world is upheld.

 

After enumerating in the above stanza the Lower Nature of the Self,

Krishna says that it is not all and that the Self-possesses, besides

these equipments, a Higher Nature that is constituted of Pure

Consciousness or Awareness. It is the Spiritual Entity that makes it

possible for the body, mind and intellect, made up of the mere inert

minerals, to act as if they were in themselves so vitally sentient

and intelligent.

 

The Spiritual Factor is the Entity with whose contact the equipment

functions, but without which, the equipment becomes dull and

insentient. If Consciousness were not in us, we will not be able to

experience the world outside or within us. It is this Consciousness

that maintains, nourishes, and sustains all the possibilities in us.

Without this Spiritual Spark functioning in us, we would be no more

intelligent or divine than the stone world.

 

(snip snip snip... )

In philosophy, the term Jagat means not only the world of objects

perceived by us through our sense organs but it includes in its

concept, the world experienced through and interpreted by the mind

and intellect also. Thus the world-of-objects, the world-of-feelings

and the world-of-ideas that we experience together, in their

totality, constitute the Jagat. This is supported by the Conscious

Principle with Its grace showering upon them all. In this sense

also, Krishna's declarations are scientifically true, when He says

that the higher Prakriti, the Principle of Consciousness is that "by

which this entire world of experiences is sustained".

 

to be continued

 

Harihi Aum!