The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c5.8

c5.8

Further material for the origin of the series of evolution is also to be found in the Upaniṣads. In the *Kaṭha*, which has every claim to be regarded as an old work,[*] not indeed of the same antiquity as the great prose Upaniṣads like the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka*, *Chāndogya*, *Aitareya*, *Taittirīya*, or *Kauṣītaki*, but at the head of the second stage of poetical Upaniṣads, representing the period of the full development of the philosophy of these texts, there is found (iii, 10-13), after an exhortation to control the unruly steeds of the senses, a description of Yoga, or concentration. In this it is expressly stated that the objects are higher than the senses, mind than the objects, the intellect than mind, the great self than intellect, the unevolved than the great self, and the spirit than the unevolved. The spirit dwells unseen in all beings and is above all. In concentration, therefore, speech with mind is to be restrained in the knowledge-self, that is intellect, that again in the great self, and that in the calm self, that is the unevolved. In a later passage (vi, 7-11) a similar account is given: here the mind stands above the senses, Sattva above the mind, over that the great self, over that the unevolved, over that the spirit which is described by terms applicable in the classical Sāṃkhya, as all-pervading and without any distinctive mark. The highest condition of Yoga is reached when the senses with mind and intellect are brought to a standstill. In the next lines the spirit is described as only to be expressed by the declaration of existence. With this series may be compared the fact that according to the *Chāndogya* (vi, 8, 6) at death speech enters into mind, mind into breath, breath into brilliance and brilliance into the supreme godhead.