In ancient India there was the philosophy of Samkhya, created by the sage Kapila, a system which later became the base for Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. It was called realistic dualism, because existence was seen as composed of Purusha and Prakriti. Prakriti is Nature, or the objective material word. Purusha is Self, our true identity. The dualism of Samkhya is the dualism between the observer and the observed, subject and object, the sentient and the insentient. Identification with Prakriti causes Purusha to become Ahamkara, or ego, and fall into ignorance and bondage. And the objective of this philosophy was to get out of this bondage through higher understanding; so that with the aid of Buddhi (intellect) one could realize Purusha and radically separate its absolute quality from all that exists outside of it, from Prakriti. More or less, this was the message of this teaching. I wrote articles on Yoga Sutras in the past, but now I just wish to address certain points for reference in this contemplation..
Samkhya
According to this philosophy there is plurality of realized Purushas, as each one awakens in every person separately. Otherwise, if Purusha was only one, when a single person awakens, all people would awaken, which obviously is not the case. While Samkhya was an intellectual path of liberation, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali came up with various practical methods on how to liberate Purusha. Samkya was atheistic, it conceived of the reality of this world as without God. Kapila thought that if reality can be explained as it is, there is no need for a concept of god in his teaching.
We could concur with him, for the idea of god is needed only if we fail to understand this world and its existence, and our existence. When people cannot explain things, they shift the burden of proof on their imaginary god. There is a fundamental intellectual and emotional dishonesty in all religions. In Yoga an entity similar to God was mentioned, called Ishvara, suggesting that those who cannot follow the rigoristic path of meditation can take an alternative path of surrender to Ishvara, but then nothing more was said. The concept of god is very insignificant on that particular path, because its only goal was to liberate Purusha, and not to realize Ishvara. Ishvara was merely mentioned as the Special Purusha that is eternally free of bondage, and as the master of all yogis. It appears that Ishvara was more like an archetype of Purusha in the mind of the Ether rather than an actual god. Similar to the concept of an ‘Idea’ of Plato. Yes, that’s what he was – an Idea of Purusha.
Purusha
Purusha is another name for Me. But realization of the personal me is not entirely the same as realization of Purusha. In fact the realization of me was entirely bypassed here in the search of unqualified samadhi and liberation. If anything, the experience of personal me (or some kind of subjective awareness without content) would be interpreted in their philosophy as still not free from Prakriti, and limited to the sattva guna. The three gunas (tamas, rajas and sattva) are meant to represent the three different qualities, forces or energies of Prakriti, the manifested world. Sattva in relation to the awakening of me would reflect the pure, positive, open, and luminous quality of the personal me. However, Patanjali would look down at such realization, as merely relative, due to the flaw in his spiritual reasoning caused by extreme idealism, negative interpretation of creation, the denial of human individuality, and inability to truly embrace the purpose of our existence. There is this uncompromising quality to the teaching of Patanjali, which deserves the highest respect, but there is also an obsession with discarding the relative. In reality, without awakening of me, you are nothing, and what is the point of trying to arrive at perfect samadhi if you are nothing? I Am does not want to be recognized by nothing, or by no self; it wants to be recognized by you who is clearly conscious of your existence as Me. One might imagine that realization of Purusha could be similar to the one of the universal me, because only through complete surrender to I Am, our me becomes fully free. But it was not really the same. The attainment Yoga was pointing to, if we follow their logic, was an unnatural state of suspension, complete disconnection from the world, and trance in I Am, or just an unqualified trace without connection to I Am.
The question that I would like to ask and to answer is whether there are many mes such as in Sankhya or only one Me, like Self in some schools of Vedanta or Advaita, or no self at all as in Buddhism. This subject is not easy to grasp, because one has to first tap into the greatest sensitivity of the spiritual realm. I would like my students to really feel what I am writing. Do not just grasp the words with your mind. It is often that your belief systems you adhere to prevents you from accessing deeper truth. Addiction to an ignorant understanding which is perceived as knowing truth, is a veritable poison of the human mind. This is why humility is needed to Understand. No matter what you think you know, it is the not-knowing that must be your foundation, because you are a cup that has to become empty first before it can be filled. Even people who are open to explore the nature of reality, most often are cups only quarter or half empty, at the most .
The origin of creation is the primordial I am who is the source and the original singularity of existence. For simplicity sake, I will be using the term ‘I Am’ instead of the primordial I am as there is only one I Am. You may be wondering what about the two other centers of I Am that I spoke of in the past, like the absolute I am, or the universal I am? These are the relative and secondary centers of I Am, allowing it to have a stronger foothold in the manifested reality, and they are also entry points for us for the inner expansion of the soul, which is necessary before the primordial I am itself can be realized. But from a higher perspective, there is only one I Am.
Through the event of creation the world comes into existence as the subconscious mind of I Am. I Am contains the unconscious potential of the present, past and future worlds, their evolution and awakening. Being on the spiritual path, we are simply helping I Am to fulfil that potential. The millisecond after the zero-point of Creation, when I Am exploded into the universe, I Am was neither conscious of the world nor itself; it was not even subconscious of itself but merely sub-conscious in the world. It was only through the evolution of I Am as Creation and in Creation that I Am started to gradually become the consciousness of the universe. As the world evolves, so does I Am. It evolves through all of us, and its core-purpose is to recognize itself through you, through us, and to enter through us the world, so that in the end Creation as a whole is actualized as Me.
The sense of me
In the process of evolution and the arising of sentient life, the sense of me came into existence. It was very rudimentary at first, but gradually became more pronounced. The sense of me that you experience is yours for certain, but it is only yours because it belongs to I Am. It is I Am experiencing itself as your personal me. When the personal me begins to exist, it is initially only unconsciously connected to I Am, but when it finally awakens so does I Am awakens in that me. Each awakened me is intimately linked to I Am because it has activated the conscious presence of I Am in itself. There are countless mes in existence, but they are all made from the same knowledge of I Am. So as far as the personal me is concerned, there are countless mes, but they are all one Me in I Am.
The higher realization of me happens when our personal me merges with I Am. This is the realization of the universal me. In this realization, the personal me as a center is replaced by the universal me, or rather realizes itself as the universal me, but it continues to exist as the individual incarnation in human consciousness. The universal me is One, but it is realized through the personal me, which is many. The universal me is simply I Am that is awakened. Each person that awakens it, becomes a doorway for the universal me to enter our world. However, in order to have a higher impact on this reality and the collective consciousness, more people need to realize it. This is because our world as manifested from I Am, got separated from it, which is why this is the very world where the knowledge of I Am has been lost, and replaced with the mind. This world is completely insane, and all people in it are insane and their ignorance knows no bounds, is infinite. But this infinite ignorance is actually your ignorance because you are this world. To say, ‘I am not of this world’ is denial and delusion combined. You might now and then have a thought that you exist in the wrong world (like some of the more conscious AI people in the Westworld tv show), but this world is wrong only because it is you who is wrong. There are people engaged in spiritual pursuit, but they seek for an imaginary enlightenment or god, or just to diminish their suffering, but have you ever known a single person that is looking for Me? I have not. To get out of this absolute insanity and misery, there is only one way – to remember I Am and to remember Me. We simply must awaken in this dream; it is an absolute imperative that we Remember. There is no other way out, but only through remembering Me.
The universal me is the light of I Am that wants to unify this world with its consciousness so that it can become its complete body of Me. We are one and we are many, we are many and we are one. Even a personal me, when awakened, can feel that sense of sameness with everyone else, which is with the Me in others. We are one Me even though we are many. But to truly come to a place of complete unification in the reality that is based on separation, of all these people living in different bodies and different minds, we need to go deeper. To dissolve the boundaries between us and others, we need to realize I Am, make it conscious, awaken it from sleep through total surrender to Me. Only then can our I Am say: I am One, I am Many,I am All.