aha@mkara (_abhimana-dravya_) is the specific expression
of the general consciousness which takes experience as mine.
The function of the ego is therefore called _abhimana_ (self-assertion).
From this again come the five cognitive senses of vision,
touch, smell, taste, and hearing, the five cognitive senses of speech,
handling, foot-movement, the ejective sense and the generative
sense; the _pra@nas_ (bio-motor force) which help both conation and
cognition are but aspects of buddhi-movement as life. The individual
aha@mkaras and senses are related to the individual buddhis
by the developing sattva determinations from which they had come
into being. Each buddhi with its own group of aka@mkara (ego)
and sense-evolutes thus forms a microcosm separate from similar
other buddhis with their associated groups. So far therefore as
knowledge is subject to sense-influence and the ego, it is different
for each individual, but so far as a general mind (_kara@na buddhi_)
apart from sense knowledge is concerned, there is a community of
all buddhis in the buddhitattva. Even there however each buddhi
is separated from other buddhis by its own peculiarly associated
ignorance (_avidya_). The buddhi and its sattva evolutes of aha@mkara
and the senses are so related that though they are different
from buddhi in their functions, they are all comprehended in the
buddhi, and mark only its gradual differentiations and modes. We
must again remember in this connection the doctrine of refilling,
for as buddhi exhausts its part in giving rise to aha@mkara, the deficiency
of buddhi is made good by prak@rti; again as aha@mkara
partially exhausts itself in generating sense-faculties, the deficiency

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is made good by a refilling from the buddhi. Thus the
change and wastage of each of the stadia are always made good
and kept constant by a constant refilling from each higher state
and finally from prak@rti.

The Tanmatras and the Parama@nus [Footnote ref 1].

The other tendency, namely that of tamas, has to be helped
by the liberated rajas of aha@mkara, in order to make itself preponderant,
and this state in which the tamas succeeds in overcoming
the sattva side which was so preponderant in the buddhi,
is called _bhutadi._ From this bhutadi with the help of rajas are
generated the _tanmatras,_ the immediately preceding causes of the
gross elements. The bhutadi thus represents only the intermediate
stage through which the differentiations an