The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 2/Practical Vedanta and other lectures/A study of the Sankhya philosophy
A STUDY OF THE SANKHYA PHILOSOPHY
Prakriti is called by the Sânkhya philosophers indiscrete, and defined as
the perfect balance of the materials in it; and it naturally follows that in
perfect balance there cannot be any motion. In the primal state before any
manifestation, when there was no motion but perfect balance, this Prakriti
was indestructible, because decomposition or death comes from instability or
change. Again, according to the Sankhya, atoms are not the primal state.
This universe does not come out of atoms: they may be the secondary or the
tertiary state. The primordial material may form into atoms and become
grosser and bigger things; and as far as modern investigations go, they
rather point towards the same conclusion. For instance, in the modern theory
of ether, if you say ether is atomic, it will not solve anything. To make it
clearer, say that air is composed of atoms, and we know that ether is
everywhere, interpenetrating, omnipresent, and that these air atoms are
floating, as it were, in ether. If ether again be composed of atoms, there
will still be spaces between every two atoms of ether. What fills up these?
If you suppose that there is another ether still finer which does this,
there will again be other spaces between the atoms of that finer ether which
require filling up, and so it will be regressus ad infinitum, what the
Sankhya philosophers call the "cause leading to nothing" So the atomic
theory cannot be final. According to Sankhya, nature is omnipresent, one
omnipresent mass of nature, in which are the causes of everything that
exists. What is meant by cause? Cause is the fine state of the manifested
state; the unmanifested state of that which becomes manifested. What do you
mean by destruction? It is reverting to the cause If you have a piece of
pottery and give it a blow, it is destroyed. What is meant by this is that
the effects go back to their own nature, they materials out of which the
pottery was created go back into their original state. Beyond this idea of
destruction, any idea such as annihilation is on the face of it absurd.
According to modern physical science, it can be demonstrated that all
destruction means that which Kapila said ages ago — simply reverting to the
cause. Going back to the finer form is all that is meant by destruction. You
know how it can be demonstrated in a laboratory that matter is
indestructible. At this present stage of our knowledge, if any man stands up
and says that matter or this soul becomes annihilated, he is only making
himself, ridiculous; it is only uneducated, silly people who would advance
such a proposition; and it is curious that modern knowledge coincides with
what those old philosophers taught. It must be so, and that is the proof of
truth. They proceeded in their inquiry, taking up mind as the basis; they
analysed the mental part of this universe and came to certain conclusions,
which we, analysing the physical part, must come to, for they both must lead
to the same centre.
You must remember that the first manifestation of this Prakriti in the
cosmos is what the Sankhya calls "Mahat". We may call it intelligence — the
great principle, its literal meaning. The first change in Prakriti is this
intelligence; I would not translate it by self-consciousness, because that
would be wrong. Consciousness is only a part of this intelligence. Mahat is
universal. It covers all the grounds of sub-consciousness, consciousness,
and super-consciousness; so any one state of consciousness, as applied to
this Mahat, would not be sufficient. In nature, for instance, you note
certain changes going on before your eyes which you see and understand, but
there are other changes, so much finer, that no human perception can catch
them. The are from the same cause, the same Mahat is making these changes.
Out of Mahat comes universal egoism. These are all substance. There is no
difference between matter and mind, except in degree. The substance is the
same in finer or grosser form; one changes into the other, and this exactly
coincides with the conclusions of modern physiological research. By
believing in the teaching that the mind is not separate from the brain, you
will be saved from much fighting and struggling. Egoism again changes into
two varieties. In one variety it changes into the organs. Organs are of two
kinds, organs of sensation and organs of reaction. They are not the eyes or
the ears, but back of those are what you call brain-centres, and
nerve-centres, and so on. This egoism, this matter or substance, becomes
changed, and out of this material are manufactured these centres. Of the
same substance is manufactured the other variety, the Tanmatras, fine
particles of matter, which strike our organs of perception and bring about
sensations. You cannot perceive them but only know they are there. Out of
the Tanmatras is manufactured the gross matter — earth, water, and all the
things that we see and feel. I want to impress this on your mind. It is
very, hard to grasp it, because in Western countries the ideas are so queer
about mind and matter. It is hard to get those impressions out of our
brains. I myself had a tremendous difficulty, being educated in Western
philosophy in my boyhood. These are all cosmic things. Think of this
universal extension of matter, unbroken, one substance, undifferentiated,
which is the first state of everything, and which begins to change in the
same way as milk becomes curd. This first change is called Mahat. The
substance Mahat changes into the grosser matter called egoism. The third
change is manifested as universal sense-organs, and universal fine
particles, and these last again combine and become this gross universe which
with eyes, nose, and ears, we see, smell, and hear. This is the cosmic plan
according to the Sankhya, and what is in the cosmos must also be
microcosmic. Take an individual man. He has first a part of undifferentiated
nature in him, and that material nature in him becomes changed into this
Mahat, a small particle of this universal intelligence, and this particle of
universal intelligence in him becomes changed into egoism, and then into the
sense-organs and the fine particles of matter which combine and manufacture
his body. I want this to be clear, because it is the stepping-stone to
Sankhya, and it is absolutely necessary for you to understand it, because
this is the basis of the philosophy of the whole world. There is no
philosophy in the world that is not indebted to Kapila. Pythagoras came to
India and studied this philosophy, and that was the beginning of the
philosophy of the Greeks. Later, it formed the Alexandrian school, and still
later, the Gnostic. It became divided into two; one part went to Europe and
Alexandria, and the other remained in India; and out of this, the system of
Vyasa was developed. The Sankhya philosophy of Kapila was the first rational
system that the world ever saw. Every metaphysician in the world must pay
homage to him. I want to impress on your mind that we are bound to listen to
him as the great father of philosophy. This wonderful man, the most ancient
of philosophers, is mentioned even in the Shruti: "O Lord, Thou who produced
the sage Kapila in the Beginning." How wonderful his perceptions were, and
if there is ant proof required of the extraordinary power of the perception
of Yogis, such men are the proof. They had no microscopes or telescopes. Yet
how fine their perception was, how perfect and wonderful their analysis of
things!
I will here point out the difference between Schopenhauer and the Indian
philosophy. Schopenhauer says that desire, or will, is the cause of
everything. It is the will to exist that make us manifest, but we deny this.
The will is identical with the motor nerves. When I see an object there is
no will; when its sensations are carried to the brain, there comes the
reaction, which says "Do this", or "Do not do this", and this state of the
ego-substance is what is called will. There cannot be a single particle of
will which is not a reaction. So many things precede will. It is only a
manufactured something out of the ego, and the ego is a manufacture of
something still higher — the intelligence — and that again is a modification
of the indiscrete nature. That was the Buddhistic idea, that whatever we see
is the will. It is psychologically entirely wrong, because will can only be
identified with the motor nerves. If you take out the motor nerves, a man
has no will whatever. This fact, as is perhaps well known to you, has been
found out after a long series of experiments made with the lower animals.
We will take up this question. It is very important to understand this
question of Mahat in man, the great principle, the intelligence. This
intelligence itself is modified into what we call egoism, and this
intelligence is the cause of all the powers in the body. It covers the whole
ground, sub-consciousness, consciousness, and super-consciousness. What are
these three states? The sub-conscious state we find in animals, which we
call instinct. This is almost infallible, but very limited. Instinct rarely
fails. An animal almost instinctively knows a poisonous herb from an edible
one, but its instinct is very limited. As soon as something new comes, it is
blind. It works like a machine. Then comes a higher state of knowledge which
is fallible and makes mistakes often, but has a larger scope, although it is
slow, and this you call reason. It is much larger than instinct, but
instinct is surer than reason. There are more chances of mistakes in
reasoning than in instinct. There is a still higher state of the mind, the
super-conscious, which belongs only to Yogis, to men who have cultivated it.
This is infallible and much more unlimited in its scope than reason. This is
the highest state. So we must remember, this Mahat is the real cause of all
that is here, that which manifests itself in various ways, covers the whole
ground of sub-conscious, conscious, and super-conscious, the three states in
which knowledge exists.
Now comes a delicate question which is being always asked. If a perfect God
created the universe, why is there imperfection in it? What we call the
universe is what we see, and that is only this little plane of consciousness
and reason; beyond that we do not see at all. Now the very question is an
impossible one. If I take only a small portion out of a mass of something
and look at it, it seems to be inharmonious. Naturally. The universe is
inharmonious because we make it so. How? What is reason? What is knowledge?
Knowledge is finding the association about things. You go into the street
and see a man and say, I know this is a man; because you remember the
impressions on your mind, the marks on the Chitta. You have seen many men,
and each one has made an impression on your mind; and as you see this man,
you refer this to your store and see many similar pictures there; and when
you see them, you are satisfied, and you put this new one with the rest.
When a new impression comes and it has associations in your mind, you are
satisfied; and this state of association is called knowledge. Knowledge is,
therefore, pigeon-holing one experience with the already existing fund of
experience, and this is one of the great proofs of the fact that you cannot
have any knowledge until you have already a fund in existence. If you are
without experience, as some European philosophers think, and that your mind
is a tabula rasa to begin with, you cannot get any knowledge, because the
very fact of knowledge is the recognition of the new by means of
associations already existing in the mind. There must be a store at hand to
which to refer a new impression. Suppose a child is born into this world
without such a fund, it would be impossible for him ever to get any
knowledge. Therefore, the child must have been previously in a state in
which he had a fund, and so knowledge is eternally increasing. Slow me a way
of getting round this argument. It is a mathematical fact. Some Western
schools of philosophy also hold that there cannot be any knowledge without a
fund of past knowledge. They have framed the idea that the child is born
with knowledge. These Western philosophers say that the impressions with
which the child comes into the world are not due to the child's past, but to
the experiences of his forefathers: it is only hereditary transmission. Soon
they will find out that this idea is all wrong; some German philosophers are
now giving hard blows to these heredity ideas. Heredity is very good, but
incomplete, it only explains the physical side. How do you explain the
environments influencing us? Many causes produce one effect. Environment is
one of the modifying effects. We make our own environment: as our past is,
so we find the present environment. A drunken man naturally gravitates to
the lowest slums of the city.
You understand what is meant by knowledge. Knowledge is pigeon-holing a new
impression with old ones, recognising a new impression. What is meant by
recognition? Finding associations with similar impressions that one already
has. Nothing further is meant by knowledge. If that is the case, if
knowledge means finding the associations, then it must be that to know
anything we have to set the whole series of its similars. Is it not so?
Suppose you take a pebble; to find the association, you have to see the
whole series of pebbles similes to it. But with our perception of the
universe as a whole we cannot do that, because in the pigeon-hole of our
mind there is only one single record of the perception, we have no other
perception of the same nature or class, we cannot compare it with any other.
We cannot refer it to its associations. This bit of the universe, cut off by
our consciousness, is a startling new thing, because we have not been able
to find its associations. Therefore, we are struggling with it, and thinking
it horrible, wicked, and bad; we may sometimes think it is good, but we
always think it is imperfect. It is only when we find its associations that
the universe can be known. We shall recognise it when we go beyond the
universe and consciousness, and then the universe will stand explained.
Until we can do that, all the knocking of our heads against a wall will
never explain the universe, because knowledge is the finding of similars,
and this conscious plane only gives us one single perception of it. So with
our idea of God. All that we see of God is only a part just as we see only
one portion of the universe, and all the rest is beyond human cognition. "I,
the universal; so great am I that even this universe is but a part of Me."
That is why we see God as imperfect, and do not understand Him. The only way
to understand Him and the universe is to go beyond reason, beyond
consciousness. "When thou goest beyond the heard and the hearing, the
thought and the thinking, then alone wilt thou come to Truth." "Go thou
beyond the scriptures, because they teach only up to nature, up to the three
qualities." When we go beyond them, we find the harmony, and not before.
The microcosm and the macrocosm are built on exactly the same plan, and in
the microcosm we know only one part, the middle part. We know neither the
sub-conscious, nor the super-conscious. We know the conscious only. If a man
stands up and says, "I am a sinner", he makes an untrue statement because he
does not know himself. He is the most ignorant of men; of himself he knows
only one part, because his knowledge covers only a part of the ground he is
on. So with this universe, it is possible to know only a part of it with the
reason, not the whole of it; for the sub-conscious, the conscious and the
super-conscious, the individual Mahat and the universal Mahat, and all the
subsequent modifications, constitute the universe.
What makes nature (Prakriti) change? We see so far that everything, all
Prakriti, is Jada, insentient. It is all compound and insentient. Wherever
there is law, it is proof that the region of its play is insentient. Mind,
intelligence, will, and everything else is insentient. But they are all
reflecting the sentiency, the "Chit" of some being who is beyond all this,
whom the Sankhya philosophers call "Purusha". The Purusha is the unwitting
cause of all the changes in the universe. That is to say, this Purusha,
taking Him in the universal sense, is the God of the universe. It is said
that the will of the Lord created the universe. It is very good as a common
expression, but we see it cannot be true. How could it be will? Will is the
third or fourth manifestation in nature. Many things exist before it, and
what created them? Will is a compound, and everything that is a compound is
a product of nature. Will, therefore, could not create nature. So, to say
that the will of the Lord created the universe is meaningless. Our will only
covers a little portion of self-consciousness and moves our brain. It is not
will that is working your body or that is working the universe. This body is
being moved by a power of which will is only a manifestation in one part.
Likewise in the universe there is will, but that is only one part of the
universe. The whole of the universe is not guided by will; that is why we
cannot explain it by the will theory. Suppose I take it for granted that it
is will moving the body, then, when I find I cannot work it at will, I begin
to fret and fume. It is my fault, because I had no right to take the will
theory for granted. In the same way, if I take the universe and think it is
will that moves it and find things which do not coincide, it is my fault. So
the Purusha is not will; neither can it be intelligence, because
intelligence itself is a compound. There cannot be any intelligence without
some sort of matter corresponding to the brain. Wherever there is
intelligence, there must be something akin to that matter which we call
brain which becomes lumped together into a particular form and serves the
purpose of the brain. Wherever there is intelligence, there must be that
matter in some form or other. But intelligence itself is a compound. What
then is this Purusha? It is neither intelligence nor will, but it is the
cause of all these. It is its presence that sets them all going and
combining. It does not mix with nature; it is not intelligence, or Mahat;
but the Self, the pure, is Purusha. "I am the witness, and through my
witnessing, nature is producing; all that is sentient and all that is
insentient."
What is this sentiency in nature? We find intelligence is this sentiency
which is called Chit. The basis of sentiency is in the Purusha, it is the
nature of Purusha. It is that which cannot be explained but which is the
cause of all that we call knowledge. Purusha is not consciousness, because
consciousness is a compound; buts whatever is light and good in
consciousness belongs to Purusha. Purusha is not conscious, but whatever is
light in intelligence belongs to Purusha. Sentiency is in the Purusha, but
the Purusha is not intelligent, not knowing. The Chit in the Purusha plus
Prakriti is what we see around us. Whatever is pleasure and happiness and
light in the universe belongs to Purusha; but it is a compound, because it
is Purusha plus Prakriti. "Wherever there is any happiness, wherever there
is any bliss, there is a spark of that immortality which is God." "Purusha
is the; great attraction of the universe; though untouched by and
unconnected with the universe, yet it attracts the whole; universe." You see
a man going after gold, because behind it is a spark of the Purusha though
mixed up with a good deal of dirt. When a man loves his children or a woman
her husband, what is the attracting power? A spark of Purusha behind them.
It is there, only mixed up with "dirt". Nothing else can attract. "In this
world of insentiency the Purusha alone is sentient." This is the Purusha of
the Sankhya. As such, it necessarily follows that the Purusha must be
omnipresent. That which is not omnipresent must be limited. All limitations
are caused; that which is caused must have a beginning and end. If the
Purusha is limited, it will die, will not be free, will not be final, but
must have some cause. Therefore it is omnipresent. According to Kapila,
there are many Purushas; not one, but an infinite number of them. You and I
have each of us one, and so has everyone else; an infinite number of
circles, each one infinite, running through this universe. The Purusha is
neither mind nor matter, the reflex from it is all that we know. We are sure
if it is omnipresent it has neither death nor birth. Nature is casting her
shadow upon it, the shadow of birth and death, but it is by its nature pure.
So far we have found the philosophy of the Sankhya wonderful.
Next we shall take up the proofs against it. So far the analysis is perfect,
the psychology incontrovertible. We find by the division of the senses into
organs and instruments that they are not simple, but compound; by dividing
egoism into sense and matter, we find that this is also material and that
Mahat is also a state of matter, and finally we find the Purusha. So far
there is no objection. But if we ask the Sankhya the question, "Who created
nature?" — the Sankhya says that the Purusha and the Prakriti are uncreate
and omnipresent, and that of this Purusha there is an infinite number. We
shall have to controvert these propositions, and find a better solution, and
by so doing we shall come to Advaitism. Our first objection is, how can
there be these two infinites? Then our argument will be that the Sankhya is
not a perfect generalization, and that we have not found in it a perfect
solution. And then we shall see how the Vedantists grope out of all these
difficulties and reach a perfect solution, and yet all the glory really
belongs to the Sankhya. It is very easy to give a finishing touch to a
building when it is constructed.