The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c7.7

c7.7

The result of the development which transfers all activity to nature and denies it to spirit is to make the latter the subject of knowledge only, that is, to make spirit a synonym for the abstraction of subject from object in conciousness, an idea which is, of course, expressed among other conceptions in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (ii, 4, 14; iii, 4, 2; iv, 3, 15). In the Anugītā (xi, 50, 8ff) the distinction of nature and of spirit as object and subject is expressed in the clearest manner, and the subject is declared to be free from any contrasts, without parts, eternal, and essentially unconnected with the three constituents which make up nature. In this passage and elsewhere the spirit is described as the Kṣetra-jña, the knower of the place, as opposed to the Kṣetra, the body, and the relation of the two is described in terms which show that all activity belongs to the empiric self, while the real spirit is a mere spectator (xii, 194). In this aspect spirit is set over against the twenty-four principles of nature as the twenty-fifth, the former being the objects of, the latter the subject of, knowledge (xii, 306, 39, 40). But the relation of these two principles is not detailed: it is a mystery which is therefore expressed in vague terms, such as the binding of spirit in nature, or again it is said in the Anugītā (xiv, 50, 14) that spirit uses nature as a lamp with which it enters the darkness: the two are connected like the fly and the fig leaf, the fish and water. But it is perfectly clear that final release comes through the recognition of the fundamental distinction of the spirit and nature; on this being attained all intermixture with nature ceases for spirit (xii, 307, 20).