Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.63

c19.63

The most important distinction between the Sāṅkhya and the Yoga is the belief of the latter in God. Some scholars, old as well as new,² have tried to maintain that there was no intention on the part of Kapila to deny God and that all that he meant to assert was the impossibility of rationally establishing his existence. But this seems to be contrary to the spirit of classical Sāṅkhya as already observed; and it may here be added that the attempt to give a theistic colour to the doctrine appears quite late in its history. Vijñāna Bhikṣu is anxious to find a place for God in the Sāṅkhya scheme, but the support for it even in the late Sūtra is slender. We have already indicated how the notion of God or Īśvara as he is termed here came to be included in the Yoga; and it is therefore only loosely related to the doctrine. The very sūtras in which it is postulated in Patañjali’s work stand disconnected with the rest of the work.³ As conceived here, he is a puruṣa like others, though a perfect one. He is omniscient and omnipresent; but, unlike the Vedāntic Īśvara, he is external to matter (prakṛti) as well as to the individual selves (puruṣas). In other words, he is not the Absolute and in this he resembles the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika God (p. 242), the chief difference being in the part they play in shaping the world owing to the difference in the conception in the two doctrines of the material out of which it is shaped. The only argument adduced by Patañjali in support of his theistic position is the existence in our experience of a graded scale of knowledge, wisdom, etc., which, he supposes, points to infinite knowledge, wisdom, etc., as their limit. He to whom these latter belong is God. But it may be asked how these super-excellences can belong to God if he also, being a puruṣa, is bare spirit and stands aloof from prakṛti. To ward off such an objection the doctrine views God as endowed with a sort of personality implying actual contact with a physical adjunct which consists mainly of sattva and does not bind him. Besides affording the initial impetus for the evolution of prakṛti, he in his mercy helps his devotees in finding release from empirical existence. But God's help is not the only means of securing it, the successful practice of yoga, as we shall see, being another.