The Self in Sahkhya-Yoga

sometimes known as the Sahkhya of Patanjali with the Sahkhya of Kapila. Patanjali is an historical person, although the dates of his life cannot be fixed; Kapila is thought to have lived about the sixth century B.C., although many doubt that he is more than a legend. The word sankhya means knowledge acquired by reflec­tion. Kapila's Sankhya is sometimes called Sesvara Sankhya, that is, Sankhya with Isvara or god; whereas Patanjall's Sankhya is called Nirlsvara Sankhya, that is Sankhya without Isvara. The Kapila version and the Patanjali version may be variations of an earlier Sankhya system, the oldest system of Indian philosophy. The philosophy of Kapila sets forth a metaphysical system in its cosmic outlines with the self as the subjective aspect of the uni­verse. The philosophy of Patanjali directs attention to the human self within the universe and delineates for man the path of his liberation. Thus, Patahjali's system is Sankhya metaphysics ap­plied to the practical problem of salvation. The chief metaphysical difference between the two systems is that Kapila's philosophy, to be designated hereafter as Sankhya, dispenses with the concept of deity, while Patanjali's philosophy, hereafter called Yoga, es­tablishes the existence of a deity.

Within the Upanishads, as was noted in the preceding chapter, are a large number of texts which describe ultimate reality in monistic terms, but there are other texts which describe reality as made up of the elements of earth, fire, and water. While the Atman and the fullness of external reality are often identified, the Atman is also described as that which pervades a reality. This duality of identification might lead one to conclude that there are two entities: that which pervades and that which is pervaded — an ultimate psychic principle and an ultimate cosmic principle. This suggests the metaphysical dualism which is one of the character­istics of Sahkhya-Yoga. Hence, it appears that Sankhya-Yoga ideas can be traced back to related and inferred ideas in the Upanishads, although only the rashest scholar would conjecture Sankhya-Yoga is a direct development from the Upanishads. Keith says, "it is impossible to find in the Upanishads any real basis for the Sankhya system. The Upanishads are essentially devoted to the discovery of an absolute, and, diverse as are the forms which

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The Self in Sahkhya-Yoga

the absolute may take, they do not abandon the search, nor do they allow that no such absolute exists".¹⁵ Keith adds that the Sankhya is a system built on the Upanishads, but that unlike the Vedanta of Sahkara, "it goes radically and essentially beyond the teachings of the Upanishads".¹⁶ The conflict situations described in the Upanishads — such as that of eater and food, of the two birds in the same tree, or of the copulating couple who separate after union — may be interpreted as the seeds of the dualism of the Sankhya-Yoga. Sahkhya-Yoga may be regarded as the phi­losophy which abandons the idea of the Absolute yet which keeps the ideas of spirit and matter, or perhaps as the philosophy in which the Absolute is broken into spirit and matter.

The difference between subject and object is fundamental in Sahkhya-Yoga. The distinction between perceiver and the per­ceived, between knower and the known, and between actor and the acted upon are distinctions found in all man's experiences. This elemental fact of human experiences caused the Sahkhya-Yoga philosophers to conclude that all reality springs from two separate and distinct realities which they called prakrti (the object) and purusa (the subject). These are principles which lie beyond the given. Their reality is inferred only from experiences of things which could not have caused themselves. While these terms are commonly translated as matter (or nature) and spirit, these trans­lations, or any translations, are misleading, for the concepts repre­sented by these terms have never arisen in Western philosophy in precisely these forms. To compare prakrti and purusa with Aris­totle's matter and form, or with Descartes' matter and mind, would be misleading; to point out the genuine similarities between prakrti and Plato's Receptacle, and between purusa and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, might help at first, but the problems involved in trying to eliminate those aspects of the Receptable and the Un­moved Mover which are not applicable would soon wipe out the value of the comparison. It is a good rule of thumb in the study of any philosophy to understand it first in its own terminology and

¹⁵ A. Berriedale Keith, Samkhya System (Calcutta, YMCA Publishing House, 1949), p. 7.