THE SANKHYA SYSTEM

THE SANKHYA SYSTEM

'Darsanas'¹ is the name by which systems of philosophy were known in ancient India; 'Mata', 'Tantra', 'Siddhanta', etc, come later. The name is significant. It implied that what was central to these systems was based upon vision, a direct perception of the truths of existence caught in the depths of our being. There was abstract reasoning and theoretical speculation also, but these helped to grow a body to the soul which was the inner seeing.

But we must note the distinguishing character of the Indian attitude to the mode of apprehending truth. It is not confined, as in certain revealed religions, to a particular occasion in history, to a particular person or event. Whosoever by dint of his spiritual labour opens up his higher nature, attains to this immediate apprehension which is native to it. He is called apta, one who has attained. His testimony is aptavacana. And its validity is unhesitatingly affirmed by most Indian systems.

India began with the Veda. It was the record of a great spiritual exploration and discovery, of a quest for the immortal life. This quest was effected not by means of the intellect but by the energizing, focusing and kindling of the Soul's intimate faculties through a regulated external scheme of worship of Fire and other Godheads, who were envisaged as the Soul's spiritual kindred. But, after a great lapse of time, there occurred a severe break in the continuity of this tradition. Perhaps, too, some extraordinary events took place which helped to bring about this break and which very probably are symbolised in the myth of the stealing of the Veda by the Asura. So, in the subsequent period of the Brahmanas, so called because they are expositions of Brahman, that is the Vedic hymn, we find a strenuous attempt to recapture the lost meaning and significance of the hymns and reconstruct the damaged external forms of the Vedic worship. A great light such as the Veda could not have set without leaving some lingering glow in the overtaking darkness. The Brahmanas not infrequently succeed in recapturing the spirit of the Veda, but the Veda vadins came whose main preoccupation was the ritual. They elaborated

¹ Anvikshiki recognized as a special study, 6th Century B. C. By the 1st Century B. C. the term is replaced by Darsana (see Mahabharata Sand, 10-45—Bhagavata Purana 8-14). Radhakrishnan.

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various forms of sacrifice, all with their rigorous order and manifold detail, made the Vedic hymns their accompaniment and exalted this strict ritual code to the status of a self-existent Super-divine power and authority, which the forces of the universe were^ bound to obey. Man's thought and aspiration were made perpetual slaves to a heavy routine of external ceremonial.

This was an extraordinary situation for the human mind. There was vehement reaction on all sides, active, energetic. Innumerable movements of spiritual endeavour and speculative adventure, of doctrines and disciplines appeared on the scene. Now began a wonderful time of splendid and vital creation. Out of one of these movements emerged the Brahmavadins, who were the creators of the Upanishads. They kept themselves well in the main line of tradition. But, at various distances from it, what later on became the different philosophical systems of India were beginning to take form. The Sankhya system with which we are now concerned and the Yoga — its close ally from the beginning — must have been among these. The Jaina and the Buddhist religious and metaphysical systems which derive their names from their great promulgators who came on later and perhaps even the materialist system which subsequently earned the name of Lokayatika were others which began their career at this time. These latter systems, in their revulsion against the Vedavadins, go definitely outside the Vedic tradition. The Sankhya, too, seems to have roundly condemned the sacrificial ritual of the Vedavadins as an impure way and was perhaps not as accommodating as the Brahmavadins who gave it a qualified approval. And there was such lively interaction between the several schools and systems that it is difficult to say who was the borrower or who the lender.

Some scholars hold that the Sankhya is an amalgam of different ideas that occur here and there in the Upanishads and that it was put into shape after the Mahabharata period. I am unable to see the Sankhya in that light. All indications point to its great antiquity. It is undoubtedly true that we find in the Upanishads various conceptions which might have given rise to the Sankhya doctrines. For instance, the Katha Upanishad indicates the steps of the inner stairway by which we can climb back to our source and these resemble the steps of the evolution which the primal energy of the Sankhya takes in order to manifest the world. And there are various other resemblances

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not only of main doctrine but even of minor detail. Still it does not look right to derive the Sankhya from the Upanishads. The very manner in which the Svetasvatara Upanishad handles the main essentials of the Sankhya and Yoga themes and attempts to synthesize them in the Brahmavada of the Upanishads strongly implies their existence as somewhat distinct doctrines of the time though we can as yet form no exact picture of the whole system. From the Mahabharata accounts of the Sankhya, which are many and divergent, we can see some precise features — the twenty-four principles which are the result of Nature's evolution, the multiplicity of Purushas and the denial of a Creator or Isvara. The classical statement of the system we owe to Isvarakrishna's Karikas composed before the 4th Century A.D. on the basis of earlier authorities which are now lost. Sankara uses the Karikas as his authority for the Sankhya doctrine. The Sankhya Sutras are evidently later and neither these nor their expositors can be relied on for the purity of the original doctrine, for their aim is to assimilate it to the Vedanta.

I have said at the outset that the ancient systems are based on an inner vision. Now the basis of the Sankhya is a profound realisation of our self as an individual spiritual Consciousness which is changeless and action less; it merely experiences the ceaseless activity and change of an unconscious mechanical Force, absolutely separate from itself, which is called Prakriti or Nature. This experience the Sankhya accepts as final, incontrovertible. The Upanishads, too, accept this experience but they accept also another higher status of the spiritual Consciousness, which is cosmic and a still higher one, the highest, which is the transcendent, the Absolute. Thus ensues the great difference between the Upanishads and the Sankhya. On this experience the Sankhya bases its central doctrine, the doctrine of Purusha and Prakriti and from this follows as a natural consequence the rest of the system, which may be comprised under two other doctrines, the doctrine of evolution and the doctrine of the three Gunas. But before we can proceed further we have to see the implication of the doctrine of Purusha and Prakriti.

The Sankhya finds that it cannot reduce Purusha, who is pure consciousness, to Prakriti, or attribute Prakriti, which is multiform activity of an inconscient energy, to Purusha. So it seeks to account for the universe on the basis of these two realities, both un originated and self-existent, eternal and all-pervasive. In its primal status

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Prakriti is non-manifest showing forth no sign to mark it by, avyakta, for the three interacting modes in which its energy works, called sattva, rajas and tamas, counter-balance one another and the result is its perfect equipoise. But with the union of Purusha and Prakriti, the equipoise is disturbed and the three modes are released into play and the world-evolutionary movement begins. Purusha is witness merely; he does nothing. His mere presence sets Prakriti on the move. And Prakriti goes forth into play for the sake of Purusha, so that he may see and enjoy all that there is in her to see and enjoy and in the end go back to the eternal calm of his Absolute Status. Again, inconscient Prakriti can harbour no purpose although all her play is for the sake of Purusha. Prakriti appears as if purposive, as if conscient, only because of the reflection in her of the glow of the conscient Purusha merely looking on. Purusha, too, the non-actor in whom no change or movement is ever possible, he too is deluded by the play into thinking that he is the actor, is subjected to joy and sorrow and dark bewilderment and gets involved in the tremendous drama of birth and death on the various stages of the world.

The play of Prakriti is a real play and no mere make-believe. Prakriti is one through all its manifold manifestations, it is common to all, it is objective. But conscious existence is private, personal. It implies a separate centre, an individuality. So the Sankhya accepts a multiplicity of Purushas on the basis of our experience and regards them all as eternal and pervasive.

From its non-manifest status Prakriti moves into manifestation not because of any outside command but due to the compulsion of its own inner forces. It is an unfolding, an evolution; what already is there within it in potentiality presses forward and expresses itself. There is no Creator, no God who creates out of Himself or out of nothing. Creation and destruction are impossible ideas. Things come into manifestation or go out of it — that is all.

Some of you may feel a little astonished that an ancient system such as the Sankhya and one also that has continued to be regarded as one of the orthodox systems should have denied the necessity of a Creator. It only shows in what atmosphere of freedom and tolerance thought was allowed to function in its search after truth. Again, the acceptance of Deity or a particular scripture was not a matter of crucial importance. But whether life was held to have some meaning and significance beyond its brief hour was of supreme consequence and on this point, though the Sankhya is non-theistic, its answer is an intense affirmation.

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Now the first product of the evolution of Prakriti is mahat or buddhi, that is, the great one or the intelligence-will. From Mahat is evolved the principle of ahamkara or ego or the principle of individuation. Ahamkara gives rise, on the one hand, to the sense-mind with its sense organs, five of perception and five of action, which in their totality function as vital energies also; on the other hand ahamkara also gives rise to the five Fine Elements called tanmatras, which are respectively the subtle objects of the five sense-perceptions: sound, touch, form, taste and smell. And in the final step of this evolutionary series, out of the Fine Elements are evolved their gross forms, the Five Great Elements or the mahabhutas, called Ether, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. These are not perceived by us in their purity. Variously combined, these Mahabhutas make all the objects of our world.

These are the several tattvas or Principles which are generated through the evolution of Nature. These number altogether twenty-four. Purusha forms the twenty-fifth principle. These twenty-five principles constitute, according to the Sankhya, our existence.

Now we may ask, what is it precisely that operates this evolution? Herein comes the doctrine of the three Gunas, called Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. Sattva represents the principle of light and harmony, Rajas the principle of activity and passion and Tamas the principle of darkness and inertia.

None of these principles can even exist without the other two; still there is a ceaseless struggle, so to say, among them for power, for the upper hand. It is this struggle that operates the evolution of Prakriti. It is their combination in infinitely varying proportions in their phases of diverse degrees of power, that brings forth the foundational principles from Buddhi onwards and from them the infinite variety of things. We may picture the Sankhya evolution as a graded precipitation of subtle primal energy through mind and life into gross matter; for the series from Mahat to the Mahabhutas evidently comes to this, to use modern language. Or we may think of it as a gradually deepening obscuration. On the level of Buddhi Sattva is predominant; on the level of sense-mind and life it is Rajas that has the upper hand, for Tamas here has gained sufficient strength to counteract Sattva; and finally on the level of matter Tamas is in full domination.

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At the commencement of the world cycle arise the linga sariras, the subtle bodies. Each of them is an organization of the foundational principles, Buddhi, Ahamkara, sense-mind with sense organs and the Fine Elements or Tanmatras, and is built on a basis made up of the subtle forms of the five gross elements. This subtle body attaches itself to a Purusha and is thus launched forth on its career of transmigration. It enters a fructified seed-cell, develops a gross body from the elements, Ether, Air, etc., is born and after playing its part on the stage of life goes back through the gates of death. It goes up in the scale of existence by dharma or righteousness, falls through adharma or unrighteousness; but, by the true knowledge of Purusha and Prakriti, is released entirely and finally from existence and all its sorrows.

This, too briefly, is the Sankhya system in its essential features. It is often claimed that it is a system based on rational consideration in preference to revelation or tradition. But I am unable to convince myself that it arrived at the Purusha-Prakriti doctrine by making abstractions of the subject-object elements in our knowledge. We have to note here that, in the Sankhya dualism, Nature is not something hostile or indifferent to Purusha, as in certain modern theories, but, though inconscient, it is there to serve his purposes. This, in a way, mitigates the dualism but how far is the Sankhya account of our experience on this dualistic basis satisfactory?

That it has seized upon a great truth in viewing the processes of Nature as an unfolding or evolution is now quite obvious, especially as a result of the help which Science has rendered to human thought in the last century — though the order of evolution which Modern Science presents is the reverse of the Sankhya order. The Sankhya order we may take as the order of involution. It is remarkable, too, that the Sankhya makes out that the thinking intelligence and will, the sense-mind together with its instruments, along with life are all unconscious formations of the energy of Nature, thus curiously anticipating some recent speculations. Its view is that mind and intelligence, etc. are not conscious on their own account, but become so because of the reflection of Purusha, somewhat like the planets appearing to be luminous because they reflect the light that they get from the Sun. Perhaps we have to

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see in mind and intelligence forms of inconscient energy suitably evolved to receive the consciousness of the all-pervading Purusha. In contra-distinction to the modern materialistic theories the Sankhya accepts consciousness as an independent reality, but it resembles them closely by making will and intelligence, mind and life only subtler formations of the same inconscient energy of Nature which precipitates itself as matter. It is really remarkable how far the realm of mechanism and the iron rigour of mechanical law or inconscient determinism extends into what we ordinarily consider the free self-determination of consciousness. It is the intense realisation of this fact that commits the Sankhya to the violent paradox of will and intelligence and sense-instrumentation as functioning without consciousness. The sense-organs and their objects are correlated formations of one and the same inconscient energy. Because of this, the sense organs are able to act as carriers of the messages of the outside world to the intelligence. And because on the intelligence falls the reflection of the conscient Purusha, there arises the phenomenon of conscious existence.

This is how the Sankhya tries to answer the crucial problem of philosophy — the problem of Spirit and Nature. We may marvel at the insight it shows into the process of Nature. We may be impressed by its anxiety to preserve the freedom of Spirit superior to Nature's flux, but, after all, the solution it offers is not a satisfactory solution. Is consciousness an ineffectual glow merely playing on the complex machinery of Nature? If Nature is a blind force and Purusha a non-acting, non-suffering seeing or awareness only, who is it that suffers joy and sorrow, who is it that strives, who is it that fails and succeeds? Perhaps no mere philosophy can give a satisfactory solution. The picture that the Sankhya makes of our life, of a lame man on the shoulders of a blind man, both of them lost in a deep forest, is not an encouraging one though it is true to a certain aspect of our existence. But it gives one practical guidance of inestimable value to those who strive for an answer to the problem of life. It says: "Stand back for a while from the play of Nature within you, within your mind, and learn to watch the play as a mere spectator. When you are able to do this perfectly well the truth of Purusha and Prakriti will dawn upon you" — and this guidance has been found acceptable by all schools and systems irrespective of their particular theories of existence.

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