The question again arises that though purusha is pure intelligence, the gunas are non-intelligent subtle substances, how can the latter come into touch with the former?

Moreover, the purusha is pure inactive intelligence without any touch of impurity and what service or need can such a purusha have of the gunas? This difficulty is anticipated by Samkhya, which has already made room for its answer by assuming that one class of the gunas called sattva is such that it resembles the purity and the intelligence of the purusha to a very high degree, so much so that it can reflect the intelligence of the purusha, and thus render its non-intelligent transformations to appear as if they were intelligent. Thus all our thoughts and other emotional or volitional operations are really the non-intelligent transformations of the buddhi or citta having a large sattva preponderance; but by virtue of the reflection of the purusha in the buddhi, these appear as if they are intelligent.

The self (purusha) according to Samkhya-Yoga is not directly demonstrated by self-consciousness. Its existence is a matter of inference on teleological grounds and grounds of moral responsibility. The self cannot be directly noticed as being separate from the buddhi modifications. Through beginningless ignorance there is a confusion and the changing states of buddhi are regarded as conscious. These buddhi changes are further so associated with the reflection of the purusha in the buddhi that they are interpreted as the experiences of the purusha. This association of the buddhi with the reflection of the purusha in the buddhi has such a special fitness (yogyata) that it is interpreted as the experience of the purusha.

This explanation of Vacaspati of the situation is objected to by Vijnana Bhikshu. Vijnana Bhikshu says that the association of the buddhi with the image of the purusha cannot give us the notion of a real person who undergoes the experiences. It is to be supposed therefore that when the buddhi is intelligized by the reflection of the purusha, it is then superimposed upon the purusha, and we have the notion of an abiding person who experiences (1).

Whatever may be the explanation, it seems that the union of the buddhi with the purusha is somewhat mystical. As a result of this reflection of cit on buddhi and the superimposition of the buddhi the purusha cannot realize that the transformations of the buddhi are not its own. Buddhi resembles purusha in transparency, and the purusha fails to differentiate itself from the modifications of the buddhi, and as a result of this non-distinction the purusha becomes bound down to the buddhi, always failing to recognize the truth that the buddhi and its transformations are wholly alien to it. This non-distinction of purusha from buddhi which is itself a mode of buddhi is what is meant by avidya (non-knowledge) in Samkhya, and is the root of all experience and all misery (2).

Yoga holds a slightly different view and supposes that the purusha not only fails to distinguish the difference between itself and the buddhi but positively takes the transformations of buddhi as its own. It is no non-perception of the difference but positively false knowledge, that we take the purusha to be that which it is not (anyathakhyati). It takes the changing, impure, sorrowful, and objective prakriti or buddhi to be the changeless, pure, happiness-begetting subject. It wrongly thinks buddhi to be the self and regards it as pure, permanent and capable of giving us happiness. This is the avidya of Yoga. A buddhi associated with a purusha is dominated by such an avidya, and when birth after birth the same buddhi is associated with the same purusha, it cannot easily get rid of this avidya.

If in the meantime pralaya takes place, the buddhi is submerged in the prakriti, and the avidya also sleeps with it. When at the beginning of the next creation the individual buddhis associated with the purushas emerge, the old avidyas also become manifest by virtue of it and the buddhis associate themselves with the purushas to which they were attached before the pralaya. Thus proceeds the course of samsara. When the avidya of a person is rooted out by the rise of true knowledge, the buddhi fails to attach itself to the purusha and is forever dissociated from it, and this is the state of mukti.

1: Tattvavaisharadi and Yogavarttika, I. 4.
2: This indicates the nature of the analysis of illusion with Samkhya. It is the non-apprehension of the distinction of two things (e.g. the snake and the rope) that is the cause of illusion; it is therefore called the akhyati (non-apprehension) theory of illusion which must be distinguished from the anyathakhyati (misapprehension) theory of illusion of Yoga which consists in positively misapprehending one (e.g. the rope) for the other (e.g. snake). Yogavarttika, I. 8.

gunas, impurity, inference, intelligence, moral responsibility, purity, purusha, real person, reflection, sattva, self consciousness, transformations, virtue