The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c12.19

c12.19

The *Sūtra* also includes many points which the *Kārikā* leaves out as unessential. It deals doubtfully with the old question of works as opposed to knowledge and is inconsistent, in one place allowing them value while in others the more consistent view of their total valuelessness comes out, a fact which accords with the lack of any ethical side to the Sāmkhya system. The necessity of a teacher is laid down, and the only true teacher is one who has attained the saving discrimination in the period before his final release in death: the winning of such a teacher is the result of good deeds in previous lives. A real furtherance, but not a means to secure release, is indifference, Vairāgya, which, again, is a motive for refraining from doing good deeds, with which it is incompatible: moreover, the same quality is definitely opposed to a man's association with other men, which is a hindrance to the desired end. Indifference is divided into the higher which arises only after the attainment of discrimination, and the lower which precedes it: if the latter is carried to its furthest limit, the result is birth as a god in the next world period, pending which the person is merged in nature. Mere hearing of the teaching of the truth is not enough: it must be accompanied by reflection and meditation, and in a marked degree, in contrast to the earlier Kārikā, the Sūtra adopts large masses of the Yoga technique as a means of producing the desired isolation of spirit and nature. Moreover, the Sūtra also accepts from the Yoga the doctrine of the high value of asceticism and the Yogin's power to see all things future and past, a power which is consistent with the Sāmkhya doctrine of the reality of the product in the cause.