Samkhya

The Classical Samkhya and Classical Yoga schools are closely related and often associated with each other. In many ways Samkhya provides the metaphysical and epistemological theory and Yoga the practise of spiritual discipline. However, there are divergences in the schools; for instance, Samkhya is atheistic and Yoga is theistic.

Historical Background
Samkhya is often considered one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy for a number of reasons:

i. The Svetasvatara Upanisad refers to the sage Kapila, who is regarded as the traditional founder of the school.
ii. The Svetasvatara Upanisad, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita refer to samkhya.
iii. Prakrti (matter) and purusa (consciousness), core concept in Samkhya metaphysics, are found in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavadgita.

However, modern scholarship regards this evidence as insufficient to establish a link to the Samkhya school. Kapila may be a mythical figure, and the text attributed to him, Samkhyapravacana Sutra, is thought by modern scholars to have been composed in the 14th century. References to samkhya could simply mean 'knowledge' or 'wisdom' (literal meaning is 'discriminating' or 'enumerating'), rather than a reference to the school. Moreover, ideas about matter and consciousness in the epics do not systematically present the Samkhya philosophy.

The earliest available work of the school is Isvara Krsna's Samkhya Karika, which was probably composed in the 5th century CE. There are a number of commentaries on the Karika, such as Gaudapada's Bhasya (6th century), the Yuktidipika (7th century; author unkown), and the Vacaspati Misra's Samkhyatattvakaumudi (9th-10th century).

Philosophical Background

Samkhya's goal is to alleviate suffering (duhkha) caused by the three miseries:

1.misery due to intrinsic influences such as anger and desire,
2. misery caused by friends, enemies, relatives and animals,
3. misery caused by supernatural forces.

Reality
According to Samkhya, there are two ultimate realities: purusa (monads of consciousness), pure passive witnesses (saksin), and prakrti (the phenomenal world). Purusas are the sources of conscious experience and prakrti is the field of experience as manifested to each purusa. Everything that can be experienced is a manifestation of prakrti.
Prakrti is the first principle, the root cause, out of which the world of our experience evolves. It is composed of the gunas (strands or ropes): sattva, rajas and tamas. These are not qualities of prakrti, but its constituents. The gunas have different qualities:

Sattva (real, existent) is illuminative. At the epistemological level it results in reflection and at the psychological level produces pleasure, happiness and bliss.

Rajas (activity) restless activity at the epistemological level, pain at the psychological level.

Tamas (darkness, inactivity, obscurity). Resistance or inertia at the epistemological level producing ignorance and indifference, apathy, depression at the psychological level.

Prakrti as manifested to a purusa is manifold, limited in space and time, and caused.
Unmanifested prakrti is one, complex, independent, eternal, infinite, uncaused, dynamic, unconscious and imperceptible. Its imperceptibility is due to its subtle nature, but it exists and may be inferred from the objects around us.

Purusas are manifold, distinct but eternal, free, beyond space and time, and non-agents. They are separate 'bubbles of consciousness', pure witnesses to prakrti.
Samkhya argues that if there were only one purusa, the release of one, would mean the release of all.

Evolution
Samkhya views the entire world as the result of the evolution of prakrti. The process is cylical so that evolution (sarga) is followed by dissolution (pralaya), etc. Dissolution is caused by a state of equilibrium of the gunas, evolution is caused by a state of disequilibrium. Samkhya attempts to explain evolution of the world on both a cosmological and individual level. This is a neat idea, but causes some problems when attempting to explain the relationship between individuals and the cosmos.

A central model of Samkhya is the evolution and relation of the 25 Tattvas ('Reals' or 'Principles). They are:
1 is purusas.
2 is prakrti.
3-25 evolutes from prakrti.

The first evolute is called the 'great' (mahat) or the intellect-will (buddhi). Intellect is made from the pure sattva guna and is able to reflect the consciousness of purusa creating a mirror image, which has intelligence and consciousness. Buddhi then produces the ego-sense or individuation (ahamkara). Depending on the preponderance of a particular guna, the ego-sense produces the rest of the evolutes. In his recent study Classical Samkhya and Yoga (2007), Burley argues that the tattvas demonstrate synchronic relations of dependence outlining the conditions necessary for experience to occur.

25 Principles (tattvas) of Samkhya

purusa (1), Pure Consciousness

prakrti (2), Unmanifested
(made of sattva, rajas and tamas)
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buddhi (3), Intellect or Will
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ahamkara (4), The Ego
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Subjective Modes
Mind (5)

Sense-capacities (6-10)
Hearing, Feeling, Seeing, Tasting, Smelling

Action-capacities (11-15)
Speaking, Grasping, Walking, Excreting, Procreating

Objective Modes

Subtle elements (16-20)
Sound, Touch, Form, Taste, Smell

Gross elements (21-25)
Space, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth

Evolution of prakrti is for an end, or goal, and that end is the liberation of purusa. Just as non-intelligent milk flows out of a cow to feed a calf, prakrti evolves so that consciousness can know its true nature. Prakrti is often conceived as a female dancer, who dances for the male purusa. Also common is the example of the lame man (purusa) and the blind man (prakrti) working together.

Liberation
There is bondage as long as a buddhi does not discriminate between purusa and prakrti (all psycho-physical processes, such as buddhi, ahamkara and manas and the other tattvas). In other words, buddhi must realize the absolute distinction between pure consciousness (purusa) and the phenomenal world (prakrti). As soon as a buddhi realizes that it,along with all other psychological and material processes are separate from the pure witness, then its cycle of rebirth stops.

For Samkhya, souls (linga) are individual subtle material bodies associated with purusas that are reborn. Once the buddhi discriminates its purusa from prakrti, the body continues for a while due to past karma (like a potter's wheel that keeps spinning).

Samkhya is unclear about whether there is one cosmological evolution of matter, or whether there are as many evolutions as there are consciousnesses (the dancer, when seen, stops dancing). If there is only one cosmological evolution, it must affect all purusas equally. This is a problem created by the ambition to provide an explanation at the cosmic and individual level with the same story. According to Larson (1979), the Samkhyakarika is not really concerned about cosmology, but with the situation of suffering for the individual, and how liberation from suffering is achieved by the individual.

Discriminatory knowledge which makes liberation possible is obtained through right knowledge, reflection and discipline. Knowledge is one of the eight primary predispositions (bhava) of the will (buddhi):

1. virtue (dharma)
2. non-virtue (adharma)
3. knowledge (jnana)
4. ignorance (ajnana)
5. dispassion (viraga)
6. passion (raga)
7. power (aisvarya)
8. impotence (anaisvarya)

Samkhya may rely on the Yoga for its practical discipline. Classical Yoga adopted the metaphysics of Samkhya, with the exception that for Classical Yoga, there is God, or the Lord (Isvara), a type of super-purusa, that was never confused by material world.

Theory of Knowledge
Samkhya accepts three pramanas: perception (drsta), inference (anumana) and verbal testimony (aptavacana or sruti).
Perception is thought to take place through images or ideas (akara) of objects. During perception the intellect or will (buddhi), upon stimulation by an object through the sense organs, undergoes modification (buddhivrtti). Thus the intellect assumes the form of the object it stimulates. Therefore, objects are not directly perceived, but only representations of them. Samkhya assumes the reality of the external object (representational realism).

Samkhya largely accepts the Nyaya account of inference. However, it uses a variety of inference known as samanyatodrsta (analogical reasoning) in its account of reality. Unfortunately, the details of analogical reasoning are not explained, and its use in Samkhya philosophy often raises questions about its effectiveness. For example, it uses the analogy of the lame man-blind man to explain the relationship between consciousness (purusa) and matter (prakrti). This might work if matter had intelligence, but it doesn't. Although Samkhya accepted verbal testimony as a valid means of knowledge, it does not really make use of the Vedas.

Causation
Samkhya view of causation is satkaryavada--the pre-existence of the effect in the cause. Their version of it was called real-transformation (parinama-vada). Thus the pot pre-exists in the mud as potential at time1 which is actualised as a pot at time2. Just as curds are made from milk and cloth is made from threads, all things arise from primordial matter (thus their underlying substance is the same).