The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.18

c7.18

In the ethics of the epic there prevails even greater variety of doctrine than in the more metaphysical views. The doctrine of transmigration and the theory that all action is strictly conditioned by action in a previous life is mitigated and interfered with* by the doctrine of human action and free-will, and is further complicated by the belief in the saving power of devotion to God, and his power to help. The fate of the souls on death is described more or less closely in accord with the doctrine of the Upaniṣads: there is the way of the gods, which leads to the world of Brahman and to freedom from transmigration; there is the way of the fathers, which is the fruit of good deeds and leads back to rebirth on earth; there is the third place, rebirth as a beast or a plant, and there is also the possibility of punishment in hell. Final release can be obtained either by knowledge in the form of reflection, the Sāṃkhya way which uses the means of perception, inference and scripture, or by the practice of Yoga, which results in an intuitive perception of the final truth. The truth takes two distinct forms: in the one case the end is the recognition of the identity of the individual self and the absolute, which results in the possessor of that knowledge becoming the absolute; for in the strict sense the individual self is, as in the Vedānta, the absolute self, and not a part of it, or at least the individual is merged in the absolute, if, as often may be the case, the feeling is that the individual is for the time at least real, and release is a merger rather than an identification. This state of identification, or merger, is the state of supreme bliss, though past all comprehension and understanding, which is styled Nirvāṇa. On the other hand, there appears often in the closest connection with this view the more properly Sāṃkhya view of the goal being isolation, and the saving knowledge not that of the unity of the individual and the absolute, but the realization of the distinction between self as spirit and nature. The result of this knowledge is the freedom of the spirit from all individuality and all consciousness, the spirit being freed for ever (xiv, 47, 8ff.). This is not merely the aim of the followers of Sāṃkhya, but of the followers of Yoga also, who, despite their acceptance of an Īśvara, devotion to whom by meditation upon him is a powerful assistance to final release, nevertheless in their desire for release aim at the isolation of the souls from nature, not at union with an absolute.