The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.6

c5.6

The cosmogonical form of the doctrine of the self sets at once the absolute into conflict with the individual self, and it undoubtedly tends to minimise the importance of the absolute, since its operation appears to have been exhausted by the action of creation. At the same time, it is clear that the opposition of matter to the individual soul becomes quite a sharp one, for on the cosmogonic or theistic system the primitive matter is indeed produced from the absolute, but equally clearly it exists before the individual soul enters into the sphere of existence. While thus the relation of soul and nature becomes one of opposition under the aegis of an absolute which tends to become more faded, at the same time reflection is more bent on the actual character of the relation of soul and nature, and finds expression in such an utterance as that of the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (i, 4, 6), where it is expressly stated that food and eater make up the entire universe. This passage is interpreted in the late *Maitrāyaṇi Upaniṣad* as referring to the distinction between spirit, which is subject, and all the rest of nature, including the *Bhūtātman*, the psychic apparatus produced from nature, as the object: it is characteristic of the confused character of this late work that the very next chapters (vi, 11-13) deal with nature as being the product of the supreme Brahman. It would be wrong, therefore, to find in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* any conscious realization of a doctrine which would eliminate the Brahman, but it is clear enough that the path to the elimination of that element was open.