Unity, Prakrti, Purusa, Matter

I was taught that Prakrti is matter, Purusa is soul. Iyengar talks of Prakrti as Nature, and Purusa as non-physical reality, because he likes to avoid the religious connotations of the word "soul". Everything around us, and even our "us" is Prakrti. The nature of Prakrti is change. We find comfort in thinking that our bodies and our personalities will continue forever, but it is not so. I have heard Prakrti compared to sand paintings. Great, beautiful realities are built up and then blown away. In contrast, Iyengar says Purusa is an abiding reality. He says, "It is logical but remains conceptual to our minds until we experience its realization within ourselves. We rightly associate this abiding reality with selfless love, which is founded in the concept of unity, not difference. The strength of a mother's love derives from her unity with the child. In unity there is no possession, as possession is a dual state, containing me and it. Soul is unchanging, eternal, and constant; it always remains as witness, rooted in divine origin and oneness. The whole practice of yoga is concerned with exploring the relationship between Prakrti and Purusa, between Nature and Soul...It is through the correct practice of asana and pranayama and the other petals of yoga that the pracitioner (sadhaka) experiences the communication and connection between them...To achieve this union, the sadhaka has to look both within as well as looking out to the frame of the soul, the body. He has to grasp an underlying law or else he will remain in Nature's thrall and Soul will remain merely a concept. Everything that exists in the macrocosm is to be found existing in the microcosm or individual."

A few things here. First, the italics were my emphasis on Iyengar's words. Here, he describes that intense feeling I had with the twins when they were newborns - that they were the same flesh as me. We were one being; they were not other. This is a far cry from the call that we should all abandon our intimate connections to avoid suffering that I have read in other texts.

Second, Edwin Bryant took this explanation of Prakrti versus Purusa further when he described matter. He said that matter is only here to give the different Purusas the experiences they need to have in each lifetime in order to grow. He said something to the effect of "this Prakrti might be a dinosaur and then a sea plant and then a redwood and then a Celestial and then a cockroach and then a rock." I thought of the kids' play dough when they are being really creative and playing pretend.

Fred just leaned over and asked me what Prakrti was. I said "matter", and he said, "well, you should write about dark Prakrti. What does Krishna have to say about the fact that most of the universe is made up of dark Prakrti?" His constant questioning and undying scientific agnosticism only makes me want to dig further to somehow prove him wrong, I must admit. And, ultimately, it does not matter what either of us believes because, as he would be the first to say, "It's gonna be what it's gonna be, and we can't change it." And despite his skepticism, I find it pretty easy to find a groove between the barebones cosmic physics that I know and the barebones Hindu philosophy I know. He would say that it's because I know only a fraction of what there is to know about the two things that allows that groove. But learning more doesn't seem to be making the connections go away; they seem to be getting stronger and grooving even more. It's a journey, and it feels good to be asking the questions, even if the answers are not forthcoming and do not, ultimately, matter.