The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.22

c5.22

As the Upaniṣads do not recognize the existence of spirit as individual only, but always admit the existence of a supreme spirit, the essence of the knowledge which is to save men from constant rebirth is the knowledge of the real identity of the supreme and the individual self. The derivative character of the Sāmkhya comes into very clear prominence in its retention of the doctrine of knowledge as the means of saving grace. In the Sāmkhya, as there is no real connection between spirit and nature, it seems wholly impossible to understand how the false conception of such a connection can arise: the spirit is in reality purely subjective, nature is purely objective, and there is no interaction which can explain the existence of ignorance or indeed of knowledge. On the other hand, in the case of the Upaniṣads, whatever degree of reality be allowed to the individual souls of the world, it is essentially the case that there is a source of ignorance: the absolute, either by self-illusion or in fact, develops from itself a world of spirits and matter, and the knowledge which brings salvation is the knowledge that, despite the seeming multiplicity, there is no real difference between the absolute and the self, at any rate in ultimate essence. Ignorance is admitted in the Sāmkhya as a fact, but it is a fact which has no explanation whatever, and therefore its position in the system must be traced to a form of philosophy in which it had a more just claim to existence.