A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1Dasgupta, Surendranath
Religion
A History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1
Dasgupta, Surendranath
Hindu philosophy; India -- Religion
effect. Thus, for example, in a body at rest mass is patent, energy
latent and potentiality of conscious manifestation sublatent. In a
moving body, the rajas is predominant (kinetic) and the mass is
partially overcome. All these transformations of the groupings of
the gu@nas in different proportions presuppose the state of prak@rti
as the starting point. It is at this stage that the tendencies to
conscious manifestation, as well as the powers of doing work, are
exactly counterbalanced by the resistance of inertia or mass,
and the process of cosmic evolution is at rest. When this equilibrium
is once destroyed, it is supposed that out of a natural
affinity of all the sattva reals for themselves, of rajas reals for other
reals of their type, of tamas reals for others of their type, there
arises an unequal aggregation of sattva, rajas, or tamas at different
moments. When one gu@na is preponderant in any particular
collocation, the others are co-operant. This evolutionary series
beginning from the first disturbance of the prak@rti to the final
transformation as the world-order, is subject to "a definite law
which it cannot overstep." In the words of Dr B.N.Seal [Footnote ref 1],
"the process of evolution consists in the development of the differentiated
(_vai@samya_) within the undifferentiated (_sâmyâvasthâ_) of the
determinate (_vies'a_) within the indeterminate (_avis'esa_) of the
coherent (_yutasiddha_) within the incoherent (_ayutasiddha_). The
order of succession is neither from parts to whole nor from whole to the
parts, but ever from a relatively less differentiated, less determinate,
less coherent whole to a relatively more differentiated,
more determinate, more coherent whole." The meaning of such
an evolution is this, that all the changes and modifications in
the shape of the evolving collocations of gu@na reals take place
within the body of the prak@rti. Prak@rti consisting of the infinite
reals is infinite, and that it has been disturbed does not
mean that the whole of it has been disturbed and upset, or
that the totality of the gu@nas in the prak@rti has been unhinged
from a state of equilibrium. It means rather that a very vast
number of gu@nas constituting the worlds of thought and matter
has been upset. These gu@nas once thrown out of balance begin to
group themselves together first in one form, then in another, then
in another, and so on. But such a change in the formation of
aggregates should not be thought to take place in such a way
that the later aggregates appear in supersession of the former ones,
so that when the former comes into being the latter ceases to exist.
_____________________________________________________________________
[Footnote 1: Dr B.N. Seal's _Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus_,
1915, p.7.]
247
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