is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi—­ “intellect”—­whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or microcosmic principle.  This 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 former—­or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated cosmic essence—­it has, since it is one with it and identical.