Vedic tradition teaches that the self is to be identified as universal: the fundamental nature of all individual selves is the same as the fundamental pattern of nature, and as a consequence there's really only one universal self. With this identity, the individual self seems an illusion or a misunderstanding of what's actually a unified nature. The Samkhya tradition argues for the existence of a multiplicity of selves, which seems on the surface to contradict the Vedic declaration of the universal self. Nevertheless, Samkhya claims to be consistent with the earlier Vedic tradition and argues that the two views are not at all irreconcilable. A closer look at the nature of the identity asserted, and the nature of the multiplicity asserted, shows more clearly how a multiplicity of selves can be reconciled with an identity in a universal self. Consciousness being an undifferentiated universal property while there are still billions of distinct individual conscious beings may not be as contradictory as it first seems.

Samkhya gives several arguments for the existence of multiple selves. The authors appeal to the distinction of individual minds in the empirical world, where individuals have unique cognitive apparatus that drive unique action, distinct from the action of others: "The plurality of spirits certainly follows from the distributive nature of the incidence of birth and death and of the endowment of the instruments of cognition and action, from bodies engaging in action, not all at the same time, and also from differences in the proportion of the three constituents." (Indian Philosophy, vol II, p. 432) If there were only one self it would be most reasonable to expect all action to be uniform and all minds to be one. Observed diversity must be accounted for, and the obvious way to account for it is by saying there are multiple beings (selves) in the world. Another argument for multiplicity stems from the description of the subtle body (the mind-body, contained in prakriti [nature]) as being formed for purusha's (the self's) purpose. If we were to speak of only one purusha, it wouldn't make sense to say that it forms billions of subtle bodies for its purpose... it would seem to only need one. If instead we start from the observation that there are billions of subtle bodies, then we must say they are all formed for the purpose of particular purushas, meaning there must be billions of purushas rather than just one.

Purusha (person/self) is identified in Samkhya as the "witness" of prakriti (nature, including purusha's mind and body), and this description is another illustratration of the necessity of multiple selves. Purusha is uninvolved, but consists of awareness of thought and action. The existence of purusha is actually derived from the observation of the existence of thought and action, through the deduction that since thought is being experienced/observed there must be an experiencer/observer, so it would make no sense to deny that the witness of the individual mind's thoughts is a proper example of a purusha. Clearly there's a multiplicity of distinct thoughts and scenes being witnessed in the world. Necessarily this must imply a multiplicity of witnesses... it would be inconsistent to suppose there being only one witness, when people are aware of only their own thoughts and only the part of the world near them, and have no consciousness of other places which other people are conscious of. The distinctness of scenes witnessed requires distinct witnesses, which means distinct purushas.

Despite the arguments for multiplicity, a serious charge can be leveled against the idea of multiple purushas: indistinctness. Each purusha is inactive and unchanging, unaffected by anything since all change is part of prakriti. Radhakrishnan argues the impossibility of multiple purushas by saying "multiplicity without distinction is impossible," (p. 322), and his statement is true enough, but perhaps he looks in the wrong place for the distinction -- perhaps the distinction is relational. Samkhya identifies purusha as subject and prakriti as object... subject and object are in a relation, such that object can present the subject in a different context. To consider the full situation, it must be acknowledged that a part of the subject is the relation to the object -- the relation introduces a distinctness.

In one manner of speaking there is a universal self, consistent with Samkhya: the fundamental pattern of self is the same as the fundamental pattern of nature, and this is a fact indifferent to the particular human being which identifies the common nature of all the beings. In defending itself as consistent with the Vedas, Samkhya says "it is the perfect self existing at the time of dissolution that alone is the object denoted by the words 'That' and the like" [this passage speaking of 'That art thou', the identification of the self with Brahman in the Upanishads] (p. 450). This explains that the absolute perfect self at dissolution is universal because it has no object (no prakriti), but the selves that exist before dissolution that include a relation to prakriti are multiple and non-universal due to the different relations to prakriti (that is, the different observations of thought/world). The subject (self) when considered without including a relation to the object (mind/world) is universal, but while the object (the world of human experience) is still part of the picture (as it must be for any world-bound mind involved in the action of reading, due to the nature of from where purusha is being considered), there are multiple distinct selves. When the object (citta, the mind) derives the existence of the subject (purusha), part of that purusha's nature is necessarily (from its derivation) that it's the particular purusha of that citta and no other. This sort of fundamental connection between subject and object is exactly what Samkhya implies when discussing how prakriti is for the purpose of purusha and purusha is in a way intertwined/entangled in prakriti. The assertion that the fundamental nature of the self is the same as that of all other selves is an assertion that the form is the same, not the totality, since the statement itself makes reference to a totality that has multiple selves -- for one thing (the many selves) to be identified with another (the universal form of self) the identity cannot be asserting that the totality of each is exactly the same (as if it were, there would be nothing to compare and identify). Samkhya explains this in its own defense: "There is no contradiction [by the Samkhya theory of the multiplicity of selves] of the Vedic declarations of non-duality of the self, because the reference in these declarations is to the genus of the self." (p. 449)

To illustrate how an identity (fundamental nature of the self as universal) can exist while still allowing for distinction (the multiplicity of selves), it's useful to consider an analogy in modern theoretical physics. It's well known that a small set of types of atoms which are indistinguishable from other instances of the same type of atom are said to be the underlying nature of all the incredible diversity of nature. Moving to an even smaller level, it's important to note that the quantum world functions without the notion of space -- there are no quantum distances, only relations represented as distances, for intuitions of spatial reality prove to not be applicable below a certain level. Suppose now that some form of string theory is valid (stings being far below the quantum level), and everything in nature is to be identified with a single substratum called a string which "vibrates" (metaphorically) in ways such that all particles and all of nature are modes of the string -- that is, appearances it can take on. Consider that no string is distinct from any other in its fundamental nature (only in mode), and so in a fundamental way the entire universe can be thought of as a single string existing in many modes (giving off many appearances) creating the appearances of particles that build what we perceive in the form of our space-time universe. Yet, despite the fundamental identity of the nature of all strings and how from a certain perspective they're all one string in many modes, it remains valid to talk of distinct strings for an important reason: depending on how you approach the string (what particle you're looking at), it's a different mode/appearance. The fundamental form is the same, still a string, but the totality of the situation must include the modes/appearances and this is where a multiplicity of particles becomes the only reasonable description of the situation. In the same way, each individual self can have at its core a fundamental nature which is like a string, and is the same form as that which is found by examining every other individual self. Yet, the particular self from which the examination begins still does determine the mode/appearance this common fundamental nature appears in -- so it can be said that something about the fundamental nature (namely it's appearance) is unique to a particular self, and it becomes possible to talk of multiple selves. A string identified by examination of a particular particle is distinct from one identified by examination of another particular particle, even though if we were to approach the situation from the perspective of the sting itself it would simply be the universal string in different modes. In the same way someone can identify their purusha as different from another person's purusha, even through a purusha itself wouldn't see the distinction even if it were a thinking creature.

That which distinguishes purushas is the objects they're aware of. Samkhya mentions that once disentanglement from the objects of awareness is attained ("time of dissolution", as noted earlier) the distinction collapses and the purusha becomes universal, whereas whenever there remain objects of awareness the purushas are made distinct by the nature of their individual relations to separate minds. A purusha which is aware of one mind is distinguished by that mind from a purusha which is aware of another mind -- in essence the mind by its existence carves off a piece of the universal and individualizes it. The existence of a mind necessitates the existence of an individual purusha as the witness of that mind, and only when the mind ceases to exist can the individual purusha be dissolved back into the universal. An inherent part of the nature of the individual purusha is that it's aware of the particular mind, and so the dissolution/disentangelment might also be considered as elimination of the individual purusha... but the universal is by its nature everywhere and so to dissolve the individuality of a purusha (that is, to take away the object which gives the subject distinctness by relation) is to make the universal purusha clear.

While it may seem contradictory on the surface, a universal self and a multiplicity of selves can coexist. The fundamental nature of a person's consciousness (their purusha) can be the same as the fundamental nature of anyone else's, but the relation of this to the individual minds can still make it possible and legitimate to speak of distinct individual consciousness. Consciousness can have a universal nature without denying the multiplicity of individualized conscious selves.