The inevitability of dualism

To go any further into these issues would take us deeper into the thickets of Indian philosophy than would be useful here, so we should probably step back and take stock of what we’ve surveyed.

In the first place, dualism is not so easy to avoid. There seems to remain the fundamental distinction between consciousness and its contents — that which sees and that which is seen, at all levels and in all dimensions. Now that which is seen is by definition unconscious. Hence the Samkhya’s emphasis on the blind nature of prakriti. Moreover, purusha, consciousness, has no characteristics other than pure cognition. Strictly understood, it is neither infinite nor finite, neither individual nor collective. It can assume any or all of these features or none. That is why the Samkhya sees it as particular and the Vedanta as collective.

Purusha is both devoid of characteristics and endlessly mutable. All possibilities are open to it — including being bound to its own experience and confusing itself with what it experiences. It can become, or seem to become, what it beholds. This, I believe, is the meaning of the Greek myth of Narcissus, who drowns while admiring his own reflection in the water. Consciousness “drowns” in this way. As paradoxical as this may sound, it loses consciousness by being identified with its own reflections, its own experience. This is the meaning of maya, or, to use another Sanskrit term, avidya — ignorance or, more accurately, obliviousness.