The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c11.50

c11.50

In the case of any individual self, the connection of spirit and nature rests indeed on the lack of discrimination in a previous existence, which leaves its impression on the mind, and in the next existence leaves the spirit bound, but this does not meet the objection to an infinite regress which in other cases the Sāṃkhya system sharply refuses to allow. The spirit not being really connected with nature, there is no ground on which there can be produced the lack of discrimination of spirit from nature which causes bondage. In the Vedānta of Śaṃkara the finite and the infinite spirit are indeed in reality one, and the distinction between them is due to an illusion, but an illusion is something which can be removed by knowledge: a non-existing connection cannot create a lack of distinction which produces a connection. Or if that view of the Upaniṣads be accepted, in which the existence of individual souls and of the outer world is in some way believed to be real, then freedom may be won by the recognition of the true connection between the individual souls and the absolute through meditation upon, and devotion to, the absolute, or through grace, as in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad (ii, 23) and elsewhere.* Equally here is a connection realized between spirit and nature, the absence of which shuts off the Sāṃkhya from any possibility of logical explanation of its main principles.