For, indeed, it is the experiences of one purusha which appear in all the seeming different purushas. And in the other suppositions there is neither emancipation nor enjoyment by purusha at all. For there, it is only the illusory self that enjoys or releases himself. By his release no purusha is really released at all. So the fundamental conception of prakṛti as moving for the sake of the enjoyment and release of purusha has to be abandoned. So we see that from the position in which Sāṃkhya and Yoga stood, this plurality of the purushas was the most consistent thing that they could think of. Any compromise with the Vedānta doctrine here would have greatly changed the philosophical aspect and value of the Sāṃkhya philosophy. As the purushas are nothing but pure intelligences they can as well be all-pervading though many. But there is another objection that, since number is a conception of the phenomenal mind, how then can it be applied to the purushas which are said to be many?[18] But that difficulty remains unaltered even if we regard the purusha as one. When we go into the domain of metaphysics and try to represent Reality with the symbols of our phenomenal conceptions we have really to commit almost a violence towards it. But we must perforce do this in all our attempts to express in our own terms that pure, inexpressible, free illumination which exists in and for itself beyond the range of any mediation by the concepts or images of our mind. So we see that Sāṃkhya was not inconsistent in holding the doctrine of the plurality of the purushas. Patañjali does not say anything about it, since he is more anxious to discuss other things connected with the presupposition of the plurality of purusha. Thus he speaks of it only in one place as quoted above and says that though for a released person this world disappears altogether, still it remains unchanged in respect to all the other purushas. CHAPTER III THE REALITY OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD We may now come to the attempt of Yoga to prove the reality of an external world as against the idealistic Buddhists. In sūtra 12 of the chapter on kaivalya we find: “The past and the future exist in reality, since all qualities of things manifest themselves in these three different ways. The future is the manifestation which is to be. The past is the appearance which has been experienced. The present is that which is in active operation. It is this threefold substance which is the object of knowledge. If it did not exist in reality, there would not exist a knowledge thereof. How could there be knowledge in the absence of anything knowable? For this reason the past and present in reality exist.”[19]