Prakriti

Twenty-three of Samkhya's twenty-five tattvas are evolutes, things produced by something else in an ordered sequence, and every one of those twenty-three traces back to a single starting point: prakriti, the unmanifest root. Nothing produces prakriti in turn. Like purusha, it is uncaused, but unlike purusha it is not inert; it is entirely capable of action; what it lacks is consciousness, which is purusha's sole possession.

Prakriti is composed of three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, held in perfect balance in its unmanifest state, a condition the tradition calls avyakta. Nothing distinguishes one part of unmanifest prakriti from another because there is no differentiation yet to distinguish; the gunas are simply poised. Evolution, the production of the twenty-three tattvas that follow, begins when that poise is disturbed, and Samkhya is notably reticent about supplying a mechanism for the disturbance itself, since a first cause of the disturbance would need its own cause and the system prefers an eternally recurring process to a single dateable beginning.

Once disturbed, the unfolding proceeds in a fixed order: mahat or buddhi first, then ahamkara, then from ahamkara the eleven organs and the five tanmatras, then from the tanmatras the five gross elements. Each stage is prakriti itself in a more differentiated form, never something ontologically new, which is why Samkhya calls its worldview a form of satkaryavada, the effect pre-existing in its cause. The world, on this account, is not created from nothing; it is prakriti becoming visible.

Sattva, rajas and tamas are not properties prakriti has; they are what prakriti is made of, in every one of its twenty-three evolutes as much as in its unmanifest root. Sattva is associated with lightness, clarity and intelligibility, rajas with activity, motion and turbulence, tamas with heaviness, inertia and obstruction. In unmanifest prakriti the three are in a state of perfect tension, each checking the others so that nothing differentiated can appear, which is why the unmanifest state is also called equilibrium rather than absence.

Every tattva that follows carries a different proportion of the three. Buddhi, the first evolute, is described as predominantly sattvic, which is why it is capable of discernment; ahamkara divides along all three lines at once, its sattvic aspect producing mind and the ten sensory and active organs, its tamasic aspect producing the five subtle elements, with rajas supplying the energy for both processes to occur. Nothing in the system is purely one guna; the three are always present together, only ever in different ratios, which is part of why Samkhya insists prakriti alone, without any additional principle, is sufficient to account for a physical and mental world of enormous variety.

What actually disturbs the original equilibrium is the question the system answers least directly. Some accounts appeal to the mere proximity of purusha, echoing the magnet simile used elsewhere for their relationship; the classical texts are more interested in describing the sequence that follows than in dating or explaining its trigger, treating the process as beginningless and cyclical rather than as a single creation event requiring a cause.