prak@rti can bring forth this order and harmony of the universe, how can it determine what course of evolution will be of the best service to the puru@sas, how can it remove its own barriers and lend itself to the evolutionary process from the state of prak@rti equilibrium? How too can this blind tendency so regulate the evolutionary order that all men must suffer pains according to their bad karmas, and happiness according to their good ones? There must be some intelligent Being who should help the course of evolution in such a way that this system of order and harmony may be attained. This Being is Îs'vara. Îs'vara is a puru@sa who had never been subject to ignorance, afflictions, or passions. His body is of pure sattva quality which can never be touched by ignorance. He is all knowledge and all powerful. He has a permanent wish that those barriers in the course of the evolution of the reals by which the evolution of the gu@nas may best serve the double interest of the puru@sa's experience (_bhoga_) and liberation (_apavarga_) should be removed. It is according to this permanent will of Îs'vara that the proper barriers are removed and the gu@nas follow naturally an intelligent course of evolution for the service of the best interests of the puru@sas. Îs'vara has not created the prak@rti; he only disturbs the equilibrium of the prak@rti in its quiescent state, and later on helps it to follow an intelligent order by which the fruits of karma are properly distributed and the order of the world is brought about. This acknowledgement of Îs'vara in Yoga and its denial by Sâ@mkhya marks the main theoretic difference between the two according to which the Yoga and Sâ@mkhya are distinguished as Ses'vara Sâ@mkhya (Sâ@mkhya with Îs'vara) and Nirîs'vara Sâ@mkhya (Atheistic Sâ@mkhya) [Footnote ref 1]. Buddhi and Puru@sa. The question again arises that though puru@sa is pure intelligence, the gu@nas are non-intelligent subtle substances, how can the latter come into touch with the former? Moreover, the puru@sa is pure inactive intelligence without any touch of impurity and what service or need can such a puru@sa have of the gu@nas? This difficulty is anticipated by Sâ@mkhya, which has already made room for its answer by assuming that one class of the gu@nas called sattva is such that it resembles the purity and the intelligence of the puru@sa to a very high degree, so much so ____________________________________________________________________ [Footnote 1: _Tattvavais'âradî,_ IV. 3; _Yogavârttika,_ I. 24; and _Pravavanabhâsya,_ V. 1-12.] 260