Ritual

they cooperate to produce the world of effects, they do not
coalesce. All the gunas are present in any manifestation in a potent
latent or sublatent form: in the material system, for instance,
where tamas, or the matter-stuff, predominates mass is potent,
energy is latent and the intelligence-stuff is sublatent. The totality
of the gunas, whether actual or potential, always remains constant
since they can neither be created nor destroyed, which suggests the
principle of the conservation of the energy-stuff and the matterstuff
as well as their transformations.
Evolution is based on recognition of a natural law whose order
of succession is 'from a relatively less differentiated, less
determinate, less coherent to a relatively more differentiated, more
determinate, more coherent whole'. The implication here is that
though there are consecutive transformations and developments of
categories, there is no change in their substance; in other words,
differentiation of categories is within an integrated whole. This
stage continues until there is a tendency of the unstable equilibrium
to reverse the course of events and the order of succession to return
to the original stable equilibrium of Prakriti, with the equal
diffusion of all the gunas. This is analogous to a state when there is a
total dissipation of energy and mass stuff. Thus, then, the process of
evolution is an incessant manifestation of a twofold process
according to irreversible cosmic principles.
The Sarhkhya doctrine postulates that in the process of
evolution, matter and mind evolved concurrently from the
original flow of energy. The first evolute is the intelligible essence
of the cosmos which bifurcates into two coordinated series to make
the world of appearances. The two divisions are the 'object series',
which gives rise to material potencies and gross matter, and the
'subject series', from which emanate all the modes of the mind,
such as intelligence, volition, sense perception, ego-sense, and the
like, all of which can be generically termed 'mind-stuff'. In a
physicalistic attempt to link matter and mind, an eminent
astronomer, V. A. Firsoff postulates the existence of extremely
subtle particles of mind stuff, or 'mindons', of a quasi-ethereal
quality. He suggests that mind is 'a universal entity or interaction
of the same order as electricity or gravitation, and that there must
exist a modulus of transformation, analogous to Einstein's famous
equality E = mc 2 , whereby "mind stuff" could be equated with
other entities of the physical world'. 21
After a scries of subtle transformations, there is further
differentiation and integration which transform the universal
energy of the cosmos into various classes of infra-atomic potential
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