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Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s33: XX General Estimate

Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s33

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XX General Estimate

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The student of the history of philosophic thought finds a constant recurrence of the fundamental problems, however varied their statements and however widely separated in time and place their authors may be. The problems do not alter, nor even the answers, so much in themselves as in their application. When the scientific theory of evolution discovers an orderly process of development from the crudest germ of life to the fullest flower of man, it is not the hypothesis that is new, for that is as old as the Upaniṣads in India or Anaximander, Heraclitus and Empedocles in Greece; but what is new is the experimental study of details and verification of the theory by modern science. The Sāṃkhya theory, which offers some satisfaction to a need which the mind of man experiences, is a philosophical conception arrived at more under the moulding influence of metaphysical tendencies than under the scientific impulse of the observation of objective existence. But the philosophical view of the Sāṃkhya, with its dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti and a plurality of infinite puruṣas, each unlimited and yet not interfering with the unlimitedness of the others, though existing out of and independent of them, cannot be regarded as a satisfactory solution of the main problem of philosophy. The dualistic realism is the result of a false metaphysics. It will be well for us to understand at the outset that the puruṣa and the prakṛti are not facts of experience, but abstractions set up beyond experience to account for it.

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The fundamental truth intended by the Sāṃkhya theory of puruṣa is that consciousness is not a form of energy like motion, heat and electricity. The most advanced science has only established a relation in which certain nervous processes are co-ordinated with certain conscious occurrences. While we cannot derive consciousness from material existence, the former, in its empirical form, is always mediated by the latter. To overlook this essential relation is a mistake. The puruṣa is said to be something over and above the continuum of mental states. Such a puruṣa is never experienced and does not enter into the view of an empirical metaphysics. If we separate from puruṣa everything that is material, remove from it every attribute of empirical objects, we lose hold of everything by which we could positively characterise it. The puruṣa is defined negatively as eternal and indivisible, "without variableness or shadow of turning," as resting ever in its own pure self-identity. It is deprived even of ideal activity, and it becomes just the possibility of a pure consciousness. It is postulated as an element in our personality to illumine the mental processes, which are the outcome of the physical organisation. It does not figure among the *dramatis personæ* of the play it witnesses. The spirit which the art of prakṛti serves is never on the stage, though it is said to be an implication of all experience. What we observe is the jīva, which is not pure puruṣa, but puruṣa qualified by prakṛti. Every soul known to us is an embodied soul. We are breaking up the unity of the jīva when we regard it as a juxtaposition of a puruṣa complete in itself, and standing only in accidental relations to the things and beings without, which are simply organisations of the products of prakṛti. If we are loyal to the facts of experience, we shall have to admit that a pure self, emptied of all contents, is a fiction of the imagination.

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The Sāṁkhya arguments for the existence of the puruṣa turn out to be proofs for the existence of the empirical individuals and not transcendental subjects. This fact comes out more clearly in the Sāṁkhya theory of the plurality of puruṣas. The chief argument for the plurality of puruṣas is that, if there were only one puruṣa, when its buddhi returns from its delusion the cosmic process would cease. But nothing of the kind happens. The cosmic play continues for the infinite number of bound souls, even when a few are released. The argument that if the puruṣas were not many but only one, then all individual souls existing in bodies would have to die at the same time and be born at the same time, assumes that birth and death apply to the eternal puruṣa, which is not allowed by the Sāṁkhya system. We can only infer that the embodied souls are many and different, since they do not rise or die together. If one man sees a particular object, others do not see it at the same time, simply because each jīva has its own separate organism and interests.¹ There does not seem to be any need to pass from the manyness of empirical souls, which all philosophers admit, to the manyness of eternal selves which the Sāṁkhya upholds. The Sāṁkhya puruṣa is altogether distinct from prakṛti. We cannot ascribe to it any features such as personality or creative force. All definite characterisation of puruṣas is due to confusion.

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The self is without attributes or qualities, without parts, imperishable, motionless, absolutely inactive and impassive, unaffected by pleasure or pain or any other emotion. All change, all character belong to prakṛti. There does not seem to be any basis for the attribution of distinctness to puruṣas. If each puruṣa has the same features of consciousness, all-pervadingness, if there is not the slightest difference between one puruṣa and another, since they are free from all variety, then there is nothing to lead us to assume a plurality of puruṣas. Multiplicity without distinction is impossible. That is why even the Sāṃkhya commentators like Gauḍapāda are inclined to the theory of one puruṣa.¹ That there must be an enjoyer of things shows that there is an enjoying soul and not a passive puruṣa. The separate allotments of form, birth, death, abode and fortune lead only to the empirical multiplicity of jīvas. From the different conditions of the three modes we cannot infer a radical pluralism, since they are only the modifications of prakṛti. The Sāṃkhya view of prakṛti as moving for the sake of the enjoyment and release of puruṣas, it is said, requires that there should be many puruṣas. If there were only one puruṣa there would be only one buddhi. But let us remember that the pure puruṣa is immortal and indifferent and has no longing for anything. The play of prakṛti is not for the sake of the ever-free puruṣas, but only for the sake of the reflected egos.

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There is no dispute about the manyness of the latter. Superintendence and yearning for release hold good of selves which suffer from want of discrimination. The different arguments prove the plurality of actual souls in relation to prakṛti and not of the puruṣa we reach by way of abstraction. Plurality would involve limitations, and an absolute immortal, eternal and unconditioned puruṣa cannot be more than one. If the being of puruṣa were necessary for the play of prakṛti, one puruṣa will do.² Apparently, the Sāṃkhya is compelled to concede the reality of puruṣa on account of its explanatory value. Every conscious state belongs to a conscious individual. We have never a feeling but that of the self feeling in a certain way. But how can we distinguish the self of puruṣa from its experiences? While we cannot describe mental facts without assuming a mental subject, we cannot describe them adequately if we make the subject an empty focus of an immaterial substance or an unchanging principle of universality utterly unrelated to the particular facts which it is said to relate. To explain the coherence of our conscious experiences by the presence of puruṣa is to restate the characteristic nature of the fact and hypostatise it as a causal prius of its own existence. Puruṣa is not a sort of supernatural hold-all to take in all conscious experiences. Throughout the Sāṁkhya there is a confusion between the puruṣa and the jīva.

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If puruṣa is eternally unchanging, inactive and isolated, then it cannot be the cogniser or the enjoyer subject to error resting on superposition.¹ But these qualities cannot belong to prakṛti, since they are attributes of intelligent beings. Superposition (adhyāsa) means the attribution by an intelligent being of the qualities of one object to another. So the conception of jīva is developed. Jīvas exist as individuals, but we cannot conclude that puruṣas have a separate existence of their own in another world beyond space and time. Puruṣa is the perfect spirit, not to be confused with the particular human spirit. The puruṣa is certainly in me, this individual me, as my very core and substance; and the jīva, or the individual, with all his irrational caprices and selfish aims, is but a distortion of puruṣa. To say that every jīva is striving to realise its puruṣa means that every jīva is potentially puruṣa, every man is potentially divine.

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¹ S.S.S.S., xii. 68-69.

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¹ See Gauḍapāda on S.K., 11 and 44.

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² Regarding the plurality of all-pervading selves, whose nature is pure intelligence devoid of qualities and of unsurpassable excellence, Śaṃkara says: "The doctrine that all selves are of the nature of intelligence, and that there is no difference between them in the point of proximity (to prakṛti), etc. (and non-activity, or audāsīnya, of the selves), implies that if

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¹ S.K., 20-21.

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Prakṛti is also an abstraction from experience. It is the limiting concept on the object side, the name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of the object world. If the real is the experienced, then prakṛti is the unrealisable abstraction

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one self is connected with pleasure and pain, all selves will be so connected " (S.B., ii. 3. 50). " It is impossible to maintain that there exist many all-pervading selves, since there are no parallel instances " (S.B., ii. 3. 53). The selves, if equally omnipresent, would all occupy the same place.

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of pure object. This character of prakṛti is admitted when it is denoted by the word "avyakta," or the unmanifested. It is mere emptiness, being the formless substrate of things. The most general features of the object world are summed up in the conception of prakṛti. Every part of physical and mental nature symbolises the tension¹ between a quality and its opposite, giving rise to activity. If change is a passage from the potential to the actual, it may be regarded as a struggle of the form to realise itself by overcoming the obstacles to its realisation. The three guṇas represent the three moments of all being; and prakṛti, said to be the equilibrium of the three guṇas, is but the framework of all existence. As Mahādeva says, it is not something which underlies the guṇas, but is the triad of the guṇas.² The guṇas are the forms (rūpa) of prakṛti and not its attributes (dharma). What is really a conceptual abstraction becomes, when viewed empirically, an undifferentiated manifold containing the potentialities of all things.

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¹ Viṣamatva. See Maitrāyaṇi Up., v. 2.

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² S.P.S., Vṛttisāra, i. 61. See also vi. 39. Cp. Guṇā eva prakṛtiśabdavācyā na tu tadatiriktā prakṛtir asti (Yogavārttika, ii. 18).

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The Sāṃkhya account of prakṛti and the guṇas inclines one to the view that prakṛti and its development are not real in the ultimate sense of the term. The three guṇas imply the necessary conditions of all existence. Every stage of the evolution of prakṛti involves an ideal or purpose (sattva), a striving to realise it (rajas), and a materiality (tamas) which are not abstractions but definite positive existents, at any rate in the opinion of Vijñānabhikṣu. Nothing can exist without these. They are, according to the Sāṃkhya, in a natural state of conflict. Prakṛti possesses contrary capacities. It has not only the tendency to activity, but also the contrary tendency to oppose activity. Tamas is the restraining force. As offering resistance to activity, it becomes the basis of activity also. The existent, or that which has the three guṇas, represents at best a situation and not reality. To look upon sattva, rajas and tamas as subsisting in a state of contradiction and, at the same time, as constituents of the object, is possible only if we admit that every object in which the guṇas participate is nothing but a conflict, an unreal existent trying to transcend itself. In the world of prakṛti there is no individual which is entire and harmonious, for it is always a question of one guṇa keeping in subjection the others. Even when sattva prevails tamas is there, though in bondage to sattva. Evolution is nothing more than the domination of the one or the other, or the suppression of the one or the other. But suppression is not supersession. No one guṇa can extirpate the others. We cannot conceive of a state where sattva, rajas and tamas exist in themselves, having overcome the others, or exist in harmony. In pralaya they seem to be in absolute harmony, but it is only seeming; for prakṛti in pralaya is said to be in a state of tension. It has the three guṇas; but since they are equally strong, no evolution takes place. We have evolution when one of these guṇas becomes more dominating. Evolution is unceasing so long as harmony does not prevail. The Sāṁkhya philosophy does not contemplate a state of perfection, where the three guṇas will be in harmony. The original state of prakṛti cannot be said to be a harmony; it is really a suspense, a condition in which prakṛti may be said to be neither active nor inactive. The incompatibles seem to stand in absolute opposition. It is not so much possibility but its limit, the impossibility, where possibilities are sharply divided into contraries. Prakṛti cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a unity or a harmony. It is not the concrete universal which binds together the different existences, or the bare unity of being which characterises them all. It is a state of tension of the guṇas. Puruṣa is necessary to introduce some order and meaning into the region of prakṛti. The influence of puruṣa makes the suspense disappear; one or the other guṇa becomes supreme, holding the others in restraint. There can never be a state of perfection. Harmony is an impossibility with the guṇas. Where there is not a state of perfection, change, evolution or involution is bound to appear. The world of prakṛti is not the real in itself. Its possession of the three guṇas brings out its self-contradictory character. Since perfection or reality is that in which the opposition of the three guṇas is overcome and transcended, and such is not the character of prakṛti; it is not the real. The very endlessness of the process of prakṛti marks it off as unreal and relative The Advaita Vedānta faces this conclusion and regards the world of prakṛti as māyā.

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If we admit the Sāṃkhya view of prakṛti and its complete independence of puruṣa, then it will be impossible to account for the evolution of prakṛti. We do not know how latent potentialities become fruitful without any consciousness to direct them. As Sāṃkhya says, there can be no activity where an intelligent principle is not present. "The three guṇas of the Sāṃkhyas, when in a state of equipoise, form the pradhāna. Beyond the pradhāna there exists no external principle which could either impel the pradhāna to activity or restrain it from activity. The puruṣa is indifferent, neither moves to nor restrains from action. As therefore the pradhāna stands in no relation, it is impossible to see why it should sometimes modify itself into mahat and sometimes not."¹ "Nor can we say that pradhāna transforms itself into mahat, etc., even as grass does into milk, for grass requires other causes which are present only in a cow and not in a bull."² The argument that from limited effects an unlimited cause can be inferred does not necessarily prove the reality of prakṛti composed of the three guṇas. The guṇas limit one another and are therefore effects. If the guṇas are unlimited, no inequality can arise, and so no effects can originate.³ If the three guṇas in equipoise form pradhāna, and if they do not stand in the relation of mutual superiority or inferiority, they will not enter into a relation of mutual subserviency, since then they would forfeit their absolute independence. Since there is no extraneous principle to stir up the guṇas into an unstable state, activity is impossible.⁴ Unintelligent prakṛti cannot spontaneously produce effects which serve the purposes of puruṣas. Intelligence cannot be attributed to prakṛti, for that would be to contradict the central feature of the Sāṁkhya.¹ The scriptures do not tell us of a prakṛti undirected by intelligence as the cause of world evolution. The Sāṁkhya theory admits the presence of design in the evolution, for the final cause of the activity of prakṛti is to enable the puruṣas to gain their freedom. Both the efficient and the final causation attributed to prakṛti is inconceivable on the hypothesis of a non-intelligent prakṛti. It is sometimes suggested that the activity of prakṛti may be automatic or habitual. The horse drags the carriage by habit, while the driver does nothing but watch the movement of the horse. But habit presupposes past acts. The horses are trained by intelligent men. But the guidance of puruṣa is disallowed on the Sāṁkhya theory. The analogy of the unconscious rise of milk for the nourishment of the calf is ineffective, since a distinction is to be made between proximate and ultimate causes.² To state a fact is not to remove the mystery. We find certain laws to which things conform, but unless we posit the ultimate source of all these laws the explanation is incomplete. The simile of the blind and the lame man is misleading, since both of them are intelligent and active agents who can devise plans to realise their common purpose. Prakṛti and puruṣa have no common purpose. Unconscious prakṛti cannot suffer; inactive puruṣa cannot experience suffering. How can the two co-operate for the redemption of the world? The question cannot be answered so long as the Sāṁkhya declines to admit a higher unity.³

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¹ S.B., ii. 2. 4. See also S.B., Praśna Up., vi. 3.

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² S.B., ii. 2. 5.

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³ R.B., ii. 2. 1.

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⁴ S.B., i. 2. 8. Rāmānuja says: "If the Sāṃkhyas maintain that the origination of the world results from a certain relation between principal and subordinate entities (aṅgāṅgibhāva) which depends on the relative inferiority and superiority of the guṇas according to the difference of the abodes of the several guṇas (S.K., 16), then, as in the pralaya state, the three guṇas are in a state of equipoise, none of them being superior or inferior to the others, that relation of superiority and subordination cannot then exist, and therefore the world cannot originate. If it be maintained that, even in the pralaya state, there is a certain inequality, it would follow therefrom that creation is eternal" (R.B., ii. 2. 6).

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¹ S.B., ii. 2-9.

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² S.B., ii. 2. 3. Again: "The cow, which is an intelligent being, loves her calf, makes her milk flow by her wish to do so, and the milk is in addition drawn forth by the sucking of the calf."

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³ Vijñānabhikṣu, who is theist, is able to account for the conjoint action of puruṣa and prakṛti. He writes: "Prakṛtisvātantryavādibhyāṁ, sāmkhyayogibhyāṁ puruṣārthaprayuktā pravṛttiḥ, svayam eva puruṣeṇa ādyajīvena saṁyujyate . . . ayaskāntena lohavat . . . asmābhis tu prakṛtipuruṣasaṁyoga Īśvareṇa kriyate" (Vijñānāmṛta, i. I. 2).

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Subject and object are aspects of a higher unity, distinctions within a whole. If we are at the empirical level, even then we shall have to say that all consciousness is consciousness of an object and all reality is the object of consciousness. It is only in distinguishing ourselves from and relating ourselves to an objective world that we know the self at all. We deepen our consciousness of self in widening our experience of the world. If we assume the essential unrelatedness of subject and object, it would be impossible to pass from the one to the other. The unity of the two terms is the presupposition of their difference. It is simply due to our avidyā, our ignorance or want of reflection on the nature and conditions of experience, that we fail to recognise the ultimate oneness of subject and object. It is quite true that the dualistic conception of mind and object is natural to our minds, but a little reflection tells us that if the two are independent we require a *tertium quid* to connect the two. The moment we realise the utter unsatisfactoriness of this *tertium quid* hypothesis, we are left with the view that the two are aspects of one ultimate consciousness, which is the basis of all knowledge as well as existence. Failure to recognise this ultimate unity is the fundamental mistake of the Sāmkhya theory.

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All evidence that we have shows that dualism is not absolute, that puruṣa and prakṛti are not accidentally related. We may set down here a few details of the Sāmkhya in support of this view. Prakṛti gives rise in the puruṣa to a knowledge of the true being at once of itself and of the world which it inhabits. Does this not bear witness to the unity which underlies the difference between the two? Prakṛti becomes manifested only when it is related to the subject.¹ If prakṛti is what it does,² then it is informed by puruṣa. In other words, the conception of prakṛti independent of puruṣa is an unthinkable, self-contradictory one. The Sāmkhya says that prakṛti is equally primordial with puruṣa, being underived and independent. If we are to be accurate, we have to say that the puruṣa and the prakṛti are antagonistic, though mutually dependent articulations within the real. They are the necessary presuppositions of the creative evolution. If the womb of the eternal ground of prakṛti is not impregnated by the puruṣa, there can be no experience. The dust of prakṛti must be enchanted by puruṣa if it is to evolve into its products. Again, the immanent teleology of prakṛti's evolution is traced to the influence of puruṣa. The development of prakṛti is regarded as the means for the realisation of the freedom of spirit. While the Sāṁkhya does not admit that prakṛti consciously designs and executes any plan, it still holds that the development of prakṛti is the execution of a plan designed to meet the ends of spirit. What prakṛti, the bare potentiality of objects, becomes, depends upon what form or end of puruṣa is impressed upon it. Prakṛti, which is potentially everything, becomes this or that thing by the acquisition of form determined by the puruṣas. Though puruṣa is not anywhere in the chain of prakṛti, it is equally related to all its links. Its influence not only starts the evolution of prakṛti, but continually maintains it. If an error of judgment had not thrust the puruṣa into the playhouse, and if our deluded minds had not watched the performance of prakṛti, there would be no action of prakṛti at all.

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¹ S.P.S., i. 79.

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² Prakarotīti prakṛtiḥ.

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While the dualism of puruṣa and prakṛti involves a division of the consciousness of man from the other elements of his nature, which makes knowledge, life and morality baffling mysteries, the latter are rendered intelligible by the Sāṁkhya, simply because it assumes the exact opposite of what it avows to itself, viz. the unity of human nature. We have already seen that if buddhi were unspiritual and unconscious, it could not even reflect consciousness. Things belonging to two different planes of existence cannot act as original and reflection. Puruṣa cannot be said to experience the states of buddhi, since its reflection in buddhi is unreal. The Sāṁkhya account of the relation of puruṣa to buddhi suggests the kinship between the two, and not their utter opposition. The most intimate point of contact between puruṣa and prakṛti is in buddhi, which discriminates and co-ordinates the operations of cosmic energy and, by the aid of ahaṁkāra, identifies the witnessing self with these activities of thought, sense and action. It is buddhi in its sattva aspect that has to strive for the discriminative knowledge. When buddhi realises that the identification is a mistake, and perceives that all is mere disturbance of the equilibrium of the guṇas, buddhi turns away from the false show which it has been supporting. Puruṣa ceases to associate itself with the cosmic dance, and prakṛti loses her power to reflect herself in the puruṣa; for the effects of ahaṃkāra are destroyed, buddhi becomes indifferent, and the guṇas fall into equilibrium. If buddhi is caught in the confusion, the puruṣa is said to be in trouble; if buddhi clears up the confusion, the puruṣa is said to be saved. Buddhi seems to function practically as puruṣa. It is, therefore, more akin to the subject than to the object.¹

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¹ Vidyāraṇya, in his *Vivaraṇaprameyasaṃgraha*, says: ‘Were things as the Sāṃkhyas represent them, ahaṃkāra (the self-sense) and all that depends on it, all action, all enjoyment, and so on, would present themselves to consciousness in a purely objective form, ‘This is a doer,’ ‘This is an enjoyer,’ and not as something superimposed on the self; so that the actual forms of consciousness, ‘I am a doer,’ ‘I am an enjoyer,’ would never arise’ (Indian Thought, p. 376).

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The ethical consequences of the view are equally significant. If prakṛti be completely mechanical, then freedom of the will is an illusion, since the will is a product of prakṛti. Ethical distinctions become meaningless, since vice and virtue are products like vitriol or sugar. But the Sāṃkhya will not admit that a human being cannot be blamed for killing any more than the stone for destroying. There is something in man which is absent in the stone or the plant. There is something more than mechanism in prakṛti, otherwise it cannot gain for us freedom. The Sāṃkhya asserts that the knowledge which saves is a gift of prakṛti.

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The imagined connection between puruṣa and prakṛti, traced to aviveka or non-discrimination, will not be possible if the two are not related to each other. It is difficult to conceive how the false conception of a connection between two entities, which refuse to have anything to do with each other, arises. The connection must be real enough to further the development of prakṛti; it must be real enough to enable the puruṣa to recognise its purity and isolation through the instrumentality of prakṛti. That by which the puruṣa is helped cannot be simply external to it. The Sāṃkhya is obliged to bring the two, puruṣa and prakṛti, nearer to each other than its insistence on dualism would make us believe. The mutual adaptation of puruṣa and prakṛti is simply marvellous. To give an example, by the stress of what we may call its unconscious desire, prakṛti develops little mechanical toys through which puruṣa could see the spectacle of the world. Conscious spirit and unconscious nature are two stages of one development. It is the jīva that strives for liberation; for the finite consciousness presupposes an infinite consciousness, finitised by the nature of prakṛti; and the finite spirit realises its true being by discovering the infinite consciousness within it.

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When the Sāṁkhya breaks up the process of reality into its two articulations of the mechanism of matter and the freedom of spirit, it is to be noted that these reals are conceptual and not historical. They tell us that in the world of experience we have two different tendencies inseparably related. Prakṛti and puruṣa are the two aspects of all experience. If puruṣa is of the nature of consciousness, prakṛti is non-conscious, being opposed in character to puruṣa. These two, consciousness and non-consciousness, are the two aspects of the one becoming. The real is neither mere puruṣa nor mere prakṛti. These are non-existent, since whatever exists has name and form. Matterless form and formless matter are the upper and the lower limits of the scale of beings, though neither of them exists. The first existent is mahat, from which the rest is said to evolve. This mahat is not pure matter, but formed matter. Mahat is the determinate manifestation of the indeterminate prakṛti. If both puruṣa and prakṛti do not co-operate, we cannot have mahat. It is the first product, or empirical existence, which arises when prakṛti is informed by puruṣa. The God whom the Sāṁkhya admits is not pure subject, but has in him the potentiality of object. If we trace back the products of the world to their highest category, we get an all-conscious soul containing the potentiality of all things, i.e. a subject-object. All things that constitute the universe are subject-object. Both in God and in the lowest matter we have the two tendencies of puruṣa and prakṛti. Those in which matter predominates come lower down, and those in which form is predominant come higher up. In proportion to the success of spirit does the resultant being stand high in the scale of creation. In the lowest stage of matter we have the pure externality of things to things, though even this realm of nature serves the ends of spirit. We have a gradual ascent in plants, animals and men. While the plant stands low in the scale of organic life, the animal with its sensitive part comes higher up; man is higher still with his rational-volitional nature. All things continually strive to rise higher and higher. The theory of development regards the individual, not as a permanent result, but as a transitory phase leading up to the revelation of the perfect puruṣa. These opposites are mutually dependent, through antagonistic movements of the one concrete becoming. If we separate the puruṣa from prakṛti, it becomes unreal; so also prakṛti separated from puruṣa. All things combine puruṣa and prakṛti and struggle to reveal the puruṣa more and more, and this struggle is the process of the world.

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When the Sāṃkhya thinkers hold that the highest product of experience is not ultimate, they mean that the world of experience, in which the two tendencies struggle for the domination of the one on the other, requires some other principle as its logical basis. Their suggestion that what is behind and beyond this world of strife is puruṣa on the one side and prakṛti on the other, possible subjects and possible objects eternally opposed to one another, does not do justice either to the facts of experience or to the principles of the Sāṃkhya. If the cosmic spirit (mahat) gives rise to the plurality of individual subjects (ahaṃkāra) and individual objects (tanmātrāṇi), it is unnecessary to postulate, behind mahat, a plurality of subjects and objects. If all the objects are reduced to one prakṛti, the subjects may also be reduced to one universal spirit, which in the empirical individuals of the world has to contend with the manifold impediments of matter. If the impassive consciousness of puruṣa and the incessant movement of prakṛti are regarded as independent of each other, the problem of philosophy is insoluble. But the Sāṃkhya philosophy becomes plausible, simply because it describes their different relations as if they were the different aspects of the single eternal energy of spirit. The wonderful way in which they help each other shows that the opposites fall within a whole. The transparent duality rests upon some unity above itself.

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If anything may be regarded as the presupposition of all experience, it is a universal spirit on which both the tendencies of puruṣa and prakṛti rest, for the two, puruṣa and prakṛti, do not stand confronting and contradicting each other. In the becoming of the world, the contradiction is resolved. It shows that the two things rest on a fundamental identity. The Sāṁkhya insistence on puruṣa, when it is not confused with the jīva, amounts to nothing more than the recognition of a pure and perfect presence, not divided by the divisions of things, not affected by the stress and struggle of the cosmic manifestation, within it all, while superior to it all. The absolute self is too great to be limited by the movement in time and space which it supports. But the world hangs on it. Prakṛti represents, in Hegel's phrase, "the portentous power of the negative," which brings the world into being. If we start with an original unbridgeable chasm, the unity of the world cannot be rendered intelligible.

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The moment it becomes conscious of an object the absolute spirit becomes the supreme subject acting on the object which is called mahat.¹ Vijñānabhikṣu quotes from the Mahābhārata² a verse which declares that prakṛti, which changes, is called avidyā and puruṣa, which is free from all change, is vidyā.³ The Sāṁkhya is anxious to make out that prakṛti is not something subjective or unreal, since an unreal entity cannot give rise to real bondage.⁴ However that be, prakṛti is the negative of puruṣa, the not-self of the self. The witnessing by the self of the not-self⁵ is the affirmation by the self of the not-self or prakṛti. This affirmation gives to it all the existence which it has. The rise of the object is correlated with the rise of the subject. This self-conscious spirit, correlated with the rise of mahat, is not this or that jīva, since it continues to force prakṛti into activity, however many jīvas might obtain release. Through the control of the supreme Lord, prakṛti is progressively pluralised, even as a single throb of Bergson’s élan vital is broken into its manifold reverberations in nature. Vijñānabhikṣu refers to a supreme person produced at the beginning of creation with the principle of mahat as his upādhi, or external investment.¹ This supreme personality combines within himself the peace and bliss, the calm and silence of puruṣa, on the one hand, and the jarring multiplicity, the strife and suffering of prakṛti, on the other.

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The supreme contains within itself all lives and bodies,² and each separate individual being is nothing more than a wave of this boundless surge, a fragment of the world-soul. Īśvara-mahat is the unity at the start, in which the two different tendencies are fused into one. So the Vedānta, as well as the Purāṇas, looks upon prakṛti as dependent on the supreme reality.³ Only such a view can make the Sāṃkhya philosophy more consistent. The Sāṃkhya does not rise to the truth of monistic idealism, but is content to remain at the level of mere understanding, which insists upon the distinction between being and non-being, and regards the opposition between the two as real and their identity as unreal. It was not able to realise all that is involved in the questions it raised—questions the difficulty and importance of which have been brought to light by ages of conflict and controversy—still less to reach a satisfactory solution of them. Yet withal it is a great effort of the human mind to reach a comprehensive view of the universe in which no element of reality is suppressed or mutilated. The different aspects of things must be clearly defined and distinguished ere their true relations can be seen, and the Sāṃkhya analysis of experience prepared the ground for a more adequate philosophy.

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¹ Matsya Purāṇa says that Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Maheśvara are produced from the principle of mahat according as it is dominated by the guṇas of rajas, sattva and tamas respectively. Savikārāt pradhānāt tu mahat tattvam prajāyate Mahān ity yataḥ khyātir lokānāṁ jāyate sadā. Guṇebhyaḥ kṣobhyamāṇebhyas trayo devā vijajñire Ekamūrtis trayo bhāgā brahma-viṣṇumaheśvarāḥ. See Indian Philosophical Review, vol. ii, fn. to p. 200; also Bhāgavata, iii.

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² 12. 11419.

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³ S.P.B., i. 69.

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⁴ Cp. Na hi svāpnarajjvā bandhanaṁ dṛṣṭam (S.P.B., i. 20).

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⁵ Prakṛtim paśyati puruṣaḥ (S.K., 65).

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¹ S.P.B., v. 12.

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² The mahat of the Sāṃkhya is identified in the fourth chapter of the Vāyu Purāṇa with Īśvara or Brahmā. Cp. Viṣṇu Purāṇa: “Avijñeyam brahmāgre samavartata.” It is the divine mind in the creative mood, the source of the universe (jagadyoni).

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³ In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (i. 2) it is described as Kāryakāraṇaśaktiyukta. It is the effect of the supreme Lord and the cause of the rest of the universe. Cūlikā Up. speaks of prakṛti as “Vikārajananīm māyām aṣṭarūpām ajām dhruvām.” See also S.P.B., i. 26.

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S. C. BANERJEE : Sāṁkhya Philosophy. GARBE : Sāṁkhyapravacanabhāṣya. GARBE : Sāṁkhyasūtravṛtti. KEITH : Sāṁkhya System. NANDALAL SINHA : The Sāṁkhya Philosophy. S.D.S., xiv and xv. SEAL : Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus.

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THE YOGA SYSTEM OF PATAÑJALI

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Introduction—Antecedents of the Yoga system—Date and literature—The Sāṃkhya and the Yoga—Psychology—The means of knowledge—The art of Yoga—Ethical preparation—The discipline of the body—Regulation of breath—Sense-control—Contemplation—Concentration—Freedom—Karma—Supernormal powers—Theism of the Yoga—Conclusion.

Cites (10)