Part 7 - The Sāṃkhya and the Yoga Doctrine of Soul or Puruṣa

The Sāṃkhya philosophy as we have it now admits two principles, souls and prakṛti, the root principle of matter. Souls are many, like the Jaina souls, but they are without parts and qualities. They do not contract or expand according as they occupy a smaller or a larger body, but are always all-pervasive, and are not contained in the bodies in which they are manifested. But the relation between body or rather the mind associated with it and soul is such that whatever mental phenomena happen in the mind are interpreted as the experience of its soul. The souls are many, and had it not been so (the Sāṃkhya argues) with the birth of one all would have been born and with the death of one all would have died^[1].

The exact nature of soul is however very difficult of comprehension, and yet it is exactly this which one must thoroughly grasp in order to understand the Sāṃkhya philosophy. Unlike the Jaina soul possessing anantajñāna , anantadarśana , ananta-sukha , and anantavīryya, the Sāṃkhya soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is absolute pure consciousness (cit). The Sāṃkhya view differs from the Vedānta, firstly in this that it does not consider the soul to be of the nature of pure intelligence and bliss (ānanda)^[2]. Bliss with Sāṃkhya is but another name for pleasure and as such it belongs to prakṛti and does not constitute the nature of soul; secondly, according to Vedānta the individual souls (jīva) are but illusory manifestations of one soul or pure consciousness the Brahman, but according to Sāṃkhya they are all real and many.

The most interesting feature of Sāṃkhya as of Vedānta is the analysis of knowledge. Sāṃkhya holds that our knowledge of things are mere ideational pictures or images. External things are indeed material, but the sense data and images of the mind, the coming and going of which is called knowledge, are also in some sense matter-stuff, since they are limited in their nature like the external things. The sense-data and images come and go, they are often the prototypes, or photographs of external things, and as such ought to be considered as in some sense material, but the matter of which these are composed is the subtlest. These images of the mind could not have appeared as conscious, if there were no separate principles of consciousness in connection with which the whole conscious plane could be interpreted as the experience of a person^[3].

We know that the Upaniṣads consider the soul or ātman as pure and infinite consciousness, distinct from the forms of knowledge, the ideas, and the images. In our ordinary ways of mental analysis we do not detect that beneath the forms of knowledge there is some other principle which has no change, no form, but which is like a light which illumines the mute, pictorial forms which the mind assumes. The self is nothing but this light. VVe all speak of our “self” but we have no mental picture of the self as we have of other things, yet in all our knowledge we seem to know our self.

The Jains had said that the soul was veiled by karma matter, and every act of knowledge meant only the partial removal of the veil. Sāṃkhya says that the self cannot be found as an image of knowledge, but that is because it is a distinct, transcendent principle, whose real nature as such is behind or beyond the subtle matter of knowledge. Our cognitions, so far as they are mere forms or images, are merely compositions or complexes of subtle mind-substance, and thus are like a sheet of painted canvas immersed in darkness; as the canvas gets prints from outside and moves, the pictures appear one by one before the light and are illuminated. So it is with our knowledge.

The special characteristic of self is that it is like a light, without which all knowledge would be blind. Form and motion are the characteristics of matter, and so far as knowledge is mere limited form and movement it is the same as matter; but there is some other principle which enlivens these knowledge-forms, by virtue of which they become conscious. This principle of consciousness (cit) cannot indeed be separately perceived per se, but the presence of this principle in all our forms of knowledge is distinctly indicated by inference. This principle of consciousness has no motion, no form, no quality, no impurity^[4].

The movement of the knowledge-stuff takes place in relation to it, so that it is illuminated as consciousness by it, and produces the appearance of itself as undergoing all changes of knowledge and experiences of pleasure and pain. Each item of knowledge so far as it is an image or a picture of some sort is but a subtle knowledge-stuff which has been illumined by the principle of consciousness, but so far as each item of knowledge carries with it the awakening or the enlivening of consciousness, it is the manifestation of the principle of consciousness. Know-ledge-revelation is not the unveiling or revelation of a particular part of the self, as the Jains supposed, but it is a revelation of the self only so far as knowledge is pure awakening, pure enlivening, pure consciousness. So far as the content of knowledge or the image is concerned, it is not the revelation of self but is the blind knowledge-stuff.

The Buddhists had analysed knowledge into its diverse constituent parts, and had held that the coming together of these brought about the conscious states. This coming together was to them the point of the illusory notion of self, since this unity or coming together was not a permanent thing but a momentary collocation. With Sāṃkhya however the self, the pure cit, is neither illusory nor an abstraction; it is concrete but transcendent. Coming into touch with it gives unity to all the movements of the knowledge-composites of subtle stuff, which would otherwise have remained aimless and unintelligent. It is by coming into connection with this principle of intelligence that they are interpreted as the systematic and coherent experience of a person, and may thus be said to be intelligized. Intelligizing means the expression and interpretation of the events or the happenings of knowledge in connection with a person, so as to make them a system of experience. This principle of intelligence is called puruṣa. There is a separate puruṣa in Sāṃkhya for each individual, and it is of the nature of pure intelligence. The Vedānta ātman however is different from the Sāṃkhya puruṣa in this that it is one and is of the nature of pure intelligence, pure being, and pure bliss. It alone is the reality and by illusory māyā it appears as many.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Kārikā, 18.

[2]:

Sec Citsukha’s Tattvapradīpikā, iv.

[3]:

Tattakaumudī, 5 ; Yogavārttika, IV. 22; Vijñānamṛtabkāṣya, p. 74; Yogcruārttika and Tattvavaiśāradī, I. 4, 11. 6, 18, 20; Vyāsabhāṣya, 1. 6, 7.

[4]:

It is important to note that Sāṃkhya has two terms to denote the two aspects involved in knowledge, viz. the relating element of awareness as such (cit), and the content (buddhi) which is the form of the mind-stuff representing the sense-data and the image. Cognition takes place by the reflection of the former in the latter.