The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c10.7

c10.7

On the other hand, the further effort to find Sāmkhya influences in neo-Platonism must be held to be completely mistaken. Plotinus (209-269 A.D.) held that his object was to free men from misery through his philosophy, that spirit and matter are essentially different, that spirit is really unaffected by misery, which is truly the lot of matter; he compares the soul to light and even to a mirror in which objects are reflected; he admits that in sleep, as the soul remains awake, man can enjoy happiness; he insists on the realization of God in a condition of ecstasy brought about by profound mental concentration. Porphyry (232-304 A.D.) teaches the leadership of spirit over matter, the omnipresence of the soul when freed from matter, and the doctrine that the world has no beginning. He also forbids the slaying of animals and rejects sacrifice. Abammon, a later contemporary, mentions the wonderful powers obtained by the exercise of contemplative ecstasy. But there is nothing here that can possibly be considered as necessarily derived from India. The opposition of matter and spirit, the removal of spirit from the world of reality, and the view that the only power to approach to it is through ecstasy are the outcome of the Greek endeavour to grasp the problem brought into prominence by Plato of the contrast of spirit and matter, and the views of Plotinus are the logical, and indeed inevitable, outcome of that development.* The protest against sacrifice is as old as Greek philosophy, the winning of supernatural powers by ecstasy is a popular conception which appears in Pythagoras and beyond all others in the Bacchic religion. On the other hand, the real extent of knowledge of Indian philosophy available to Plotinus and Porphyry alike seems to have been most severely limited.