prakriti

prakriti, in the Samkhya system (darshan) of Indian philosophy, material nature in its germinal state, eternal and beyond perception. When prakriti (female) comes into contact with the spirit, purusha (male), it starts on a process of evolution that leads through several stages to the creation of the existing material world. Prakriti is made up of three gunas (“qualities” of matter), which are the constituent cosmic factors that characterize all nature. In the Samkhya view, only prakriti is active, while the spirit is confined within it and only observes and experiences. Release (moksha) consists in the spirit’s extrication from prakriti by its own recognition of its total difference from it and noninvolvement in it. In early Indian philosophical texts the term svabhava (“own being”) was used in a sense similar to prakriti to mean material nature.