puruṣa – animating principle
bahutva – multitude
tri – three
guṇa – quality of nature
viparyaya – opposing
There is one Knower, but many Spirits.
- Is there just one spirit or are there many?
- I (my intelligence, identity, body, senses, experiences) am a specific and unique medium (an expression of the three gunas).
- At birth spirit connects with the unique medium that I am. Since Spirit is eternal and unchanging, it is not modified at birth. Spirit projects through me and that projection is a unique “dweller within me”.
- As Spirit dwells within me it expresses uniquely through this unique medium that I am.
- At death Spirit surrenders the body. Spirit itself does not die, it is eternal.
- Like water takes on different flavors depending on the medium it inhabits (same rain, different plants), so does a single Knower become a multiplicity of Spirits.
- In this way a singular eternal Knower projects as multiple spirits.
- This is how individual uniqueness comes to be.
- If there was only one Spirit: when one body was born, all would be born. When one body died all would die. If one person was blind, all would be blind.
- If there was only one Spirit how is it that some are engaged in virtue and some in vice?
- Is it possible that one Spirit is connected with numerous bodies? What would happen to the other bodies when one person died or another was born?
- This question assumes that different bodies are like parts of one body. Like the hands and fingers or feet and toes of my body.
- What kind of relationship would there be between birth and death and Spirit?
- I do not die when you cut off one of my fingers and I am not born when a new hair grows on my body.
- If I accept Spirit as a dweller within a medium, then a spirit connected to numerous mediums makes no sense.
- There is one Knower (Jna – see vese 2) that dwells in many places. The dwellers (Purusa) present as plural Spirits.
