One of the common questions in spiritual inquiry is this: why are human beings not naturally oriented toward spirituality in the same way they are oriented toward material life? Why does the mind so easily move toward objects, relationships, security, pleasure, identity, achievement, comparison, and survival, while spiritual inquiry often has to be awakened through effort, suffering, maturity, grace, or discernment? 

A simple answer would be that the senses move outward and, therefore, the mind becomes occupied with the world. But from the standpoint of Sāṅkhya and Yoga, this can be understood more deeply. The outward orientation is not accidental. It is not merely a personal weakness. It arises because the mind, senses, body, objects, desires, and actions all belong to prakṛti. The entire field of experience is prakṛti moving through the three guṇas. 

Prakṛti is the primordial field of manifestation. Everything that can be observed, experienced, known, felt, thought, desired, remembered, and acted upon belongs to prakṛti. The body is prakṛti. The senses are prakṛti. The mind is prakṛti. The intellect is prakṛti. Even the sense of individuality, the “I” that claims experience, is part of prakṛti. Puruṣa, in contrast, is pure consciousness, the witnessing principle. Puruṣa does not act, change, desire, or become bound. Yet because of proximity to prakṛti, experience appears to arise. 

This is why material orientation comes first. The human being initially identifies with the instrument of experience rather than the witnessing consciousness. The senses contact sense objects. The mind organizes impressions. The intellect interprets and decides. The ego claims, “I see,” “I want,” “I suffer,” “I act,” “I possess,” “I have become.” In this way, life becomes organized around experience, identity, and action. 

This brings us to the important Sāṅkhya teaching of bhoga and apavarga. 

Prakṛti unfolds for two purposes: bhoga and apavarga. Bhoga means experience. Apavarga means release, freedom, or disentanglement. At first, prakṛti provides bhoga. Through body, senses, mind, relationships, pleasure, pain, duty, conflict, success, failure, longing, and disappointment, the individual undergoes experience. Life is tasted, endured, enjoyed, resisted, and interpreted through the instrument of prakṛti. 

But bhoga does not mean indulgence alone. It means the undergoing of experience. Every experience becomes part of the education of the embodied being. Pleasure teaches. Pain teaches. Desire teaches. Loss teaches. Achievement teaches. Repetition teaches. Even confusion teaches when it is eventually seen clearly. 

At first, however, experience tends to deepen identification. The person says, “This is my joy,” “This is my sorrow,” “This is my success,” “This is my failure,” “This is who I am.” Buddhi, the intellect, may be active, but before refinement, it often serves the movement of prakṛti. It plans, protects, justifies, compares, and pursues. It may become very intelligent in worldly terms, yet still remain bound to the mistaken identification between puruṣa and prakṛti. 

The turning point is viveka, discernment. 

Viveka is the refined capacity of buddhi to see clearly. It begins to recognize the difference between the seer and the seen, between consciousness and the instrument, between puruṣa and prakṛti. This recognition does not require rejection of life. Rather, it changes one’s relationship with life. 

Before discernment, the person is carried by the movement of prakṛti. 

After discernment, the person begins to witness prakṛti’s movement. 

Before discernment, action strengthens identity. 

After discernment, action can become participation. 

Before discernment, experience is taken personally. 

After discernment, experience becomes instruction. 

Before discernment, bhoga binds. 

After discernment, bhoga ripens into apavarga. 

This is a very important point. Bhoga and apavarga are not two separate worlds. The same prakṛti that first provides experience also becomes the means for release. The same life that binds through ignorance can 

liberate through discernment. The same mind that once chased objects can become quiet enough to reflect the truth. The same buddhi that once served desire can become clear enough to distinguish puruṣa from prakṛti. 

This is why spirituality is often not the first orientation of human life. The first orientation is toward experience because the embodied instrument is structured for experience. The senses move toward objects. The mind moves toward impressions. Rajas moves toward action. Tamas holds patterns in place. Sattva, when cultivated, begins to illumine the whole process. Until sattva becomes strong enough and buddhi becomes sufficiently refined, the person remains absorbed in the movement of life without clearly seeing it. 

Spirituality begins when this absorption is interrupted by inquiry. 

Sometimes this inquiry comes through suffering. Sometimes it comes through repeated disappointment. Sometimes it comes through maturity. Sometimes it comes through the exhaustion of desire. Sometimes it comes through a teacher, scripture, grace, or a quiet inner recognition that material experience, while necessary and meaningful, cannot finally satisfy the deepest longing of the human being. 

At that point, the question changes. The person no longer asks only, “How can I arrange the world so I can be happy?” The deeper question arises: “Who is the ‘I’ that seeks happiness through the world?” This question marks the beginning of the inward turn. 

The movement from materiality to spirituality, then, is not a movement from bad to good. It is a movement from unconscious participation to conscious discernment. Material life is not outside ṛta. It is part of ṛta. Saṃsāra itself functions lawfully. Bondage is lawful, and freedom is also lawful. If ignorance, identification, desire, and attachment sustain bondage, then refinement, discernment, non-attachment, and clear seeing open the way to freedom. 

This understanding removes blame from the human condition. People are not naturally material because they are spiritually deficient. They are first oriented toward materiality because the field of prakṛti operates through the guṇas, and the embodied being initially identifies with that field. Spiritual orientation begins when buddhi matures enough to recognize the movement of prakṛti and turn toward viveka. 

In simple terms, bhoga is life being experienced. Apavarga is life being understood so clearly that one is no longer bound by the experience. 

Prakṛti first gives experience. Through experience, discernment can arise. Through discernment, the difference between puruṣa and prakṛti becomes clear. When this clarity is steady, the purpose of prakṛti is fulfilled. What once appeared as bondage becomes the very path through which freedom is recognized.