is first produced produces in its turn (or is
the source of) Ahankara, "self-consciousness" and manas "mind." The
reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of
these two internal faculties, "Buddhi" per se, can have neither
self-consciousness nor mind; viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve
an essence of personal self-consciousness or "personal individuality" only
by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that
finite faculty; for Ahankara, that is the perception of "I," or the
sense of one's personal individuality, justly represented by the term
"Ego-ism," belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of
the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas. It is the latter which
draws "as the web issues from the spider" along the thread of Prakriti,
the "root principle," the four following subtle elementary principles or
particles--Tanmatras, out of which "third class," the Mahabhutas or the
gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved--
the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira. The three gunas of
"Prakriti"--the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity,
and ignorance or darkness)--spun into a triple-stranded cord or "rope,"
pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles.

It depends on the 5th--Manas or Ahankara, the "I"--to thin the guna,
"rope," into one thread--the sattwa; and thus by becoming one with the
"unevolved evolver," win immortality or eternal conscious existence.
Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence; so
long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the
divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles
"like an animal" (purusha pasu). The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th
and 6th principles), whether of the macro-or microcosm, though bound by
these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is
yet nirguna--i.e., entirely free from them. Out of the three producers
or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that
can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal. The
"divine monad" is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that
from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is
gunavat--endowed with qualities. With the latter, Purusha or Atman can
have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its
gunuvatic state); with the forme