The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.15

c5.15

It is most probable that in these traces of Sāṃkhya views we are not to see the result of a contamination of Sāṃkhya with a Vedānta philosophy: it is perfectly plain that in iv, 5 we are not dealing with the conscious expression of a view which ignores the absolute; on the contrary in iv, 10 we find the deliberate description of nature as an illusion, and the great lord as an illusion-maker, emphatic denials of the possibility of the separate and real existence of nature as held by the Sāṃkhya school. It is not natural that one who is opposed so essentially to the view that the Sāṃkhya principles are correct should appropriate phrases which seem to accept them, whereas all is natural if we assume that the Upaniṣad represents a definite development of the doctrine of the Absolute based on the older Upaniṣads, from which in due course the Sāṃkhya developed.* With such a view there is nothing inconsistent in iv, 5: the metaphor there used applies perfectly properly to the different condition of two individual souls, the one of which does not realise its true nature as the absolute enveloped in the three Guṇas, while the other recognizes its true nature and throws aside its connection with nature.