The Sāṃkhya, one of the six orthodox Indian philosophical schools that inspired in part the practice of yoga. Thus, in the fifth century CE, Patañjali in his Yogasūtra, which are authoritative in the Indian yoga world. This gives the practice of yoga a metaphysical basis inspired by Samkhya theory.
Samkhya (in devanāgarī: सांख्य ) Sanskrit term, is known today as a school of orthodox Indian philosophy (āstika) or more specifically as one of the six darśana. It was codified in the Sāṃkhyakārikā composed in the fourth or fifth century of the current era by Īśvarakṛṣṇa. Samkhya is traditionally coupled with Patañjali’s yoga systematized in the Yogasūtra, which are the aspect considered practical. Kapila, about whom little is known, is given as the founder of the “Sāṃkhya system.”
The Samkhya proposes to analyze reality rationally. From this understanding comes liberation from the cycle of rebirths (Saṃsāra). Which is suffering (duḥkha). This analysis of reality (i.e., not only the material world, but also its becoming) establishes that from the encounter, the union between the unmanifested, unique, pradhāna or mūlaprakṛti, the original nature or primordial matter and one of the conscious monads. The puruṣa (literally: “man, male, person”)unfolds the phenomenal world. The prakṛti, in 23 other principles (tattva) beginning with the intellect. Buddhi, literally: “the awakening” also called mahat, the great, because it has a “cosmic” dimension. From which comes the principle of individuation or ego (ahaṃkāra, literally: maker of self). From which comes a double creation: thought (manas). The five faculties of awakening (buddhīndriya or jñānendriya), i.e., the five senses, and the five faculties of action (karmendriya), i.e., speech, hands, feet, anus, and genitals; on the other hand, the five subtle elements (tanmātra), which are not specific, i.e., perceptible as objects of the senses, except for the gods and yogis. The five subtle elements finally create the five gross elements (mahābhūta), which are specific, i.e., perceptible as sense objects.
Of these principles, the awakening (buddhi), the ‘self-maker’ (ahaṃkāra)-principle of individuation and pretension-and thought (manas) constitute the ‘internal organ’ antaḥkaraṇa, which might be called the psychic apparatus. The principles from the awakening to the subtle elements form the subtle entity that transmigrates from death to birth, a soul as it were, which would, however, be distinct from the conscious monad, the true subject, which can never be an object. This entity is called the ‘subtle body’ (sūkṣmaśarīra) or ‘phallus’ (liṅga), a word by which we designate in logic a characteristic sign from which we infer the bearer of the sign, the ‘signified’ (thus smoke is the sign of the presence of fire). Enlightenment is also called ‘the great’ (mahat) because some Sāṃkhya schools regard it as common to the puruṣa.
If not, it is at least prior to the individuation principle, ‘the self-maker’ (ahaṃkāra), and it is in this cosmic that it determines the ‘ideal creation’ (pratyayasarga), which positions it in creation (see below in “The Ethics of the Sāṃkhya”). It is both the strength and weakness of the Sāṃkhya that it presents creation on both a psychological and cosmological level. It is in fine to explain both how the world, both inner and outer occurs to consciousness, and how Karma (the law of retribution for acts in rebirths) organizes itself, allows experience (enjoyment, bhoga) as well as deliverance.
Another point peculiar to the Sāṃkhya, is that the prakṛti consists of three guṇa, three fibers or qualities called sattva, rajas and tamas, from which the world is woven. This one is not merely black (tamas) or white (sattva), it is also red, moving (rajas). It is not only pleasant (sattva) or unpleasant (rajas), it is also depressing (tamas), good (sattva), bad (tamas) or passionate (rajas)
Unlike the other five darśana, the classical Sāṃkhya is not based on a sūtra, but on a kārikā, the Sāṃkhyakārikā. Like the sūtras, the kārikās are very terse (every repetition, every unnecessary word is considered a mistake) and mnemonic texts, almost incomprehensible without the accompanying commentaries. The versified kārikās, however, are more literary and less cryptic. In the fifteenth century a Sāṃkhyasūtra would be written, aiming to “vedantize” the Sāṃkhya, a vedantization that had already begun in the tenth century with the commentary Sāṃkhyatattvakaumudī of Vācaspati Miśra.
The systematic and canonized classical sāṃkhya naturally did not appear suddenly. It was formed from scattered ideas, a way of thinking and a search for truth that first took it along theistic paths, described below, to develop a philosophy with sound epistemology and logic before it was assimilated again by various religions and philosophy, losing its autonomy in the process.
Since the Sāṃkhya aims at complete liberation from the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra), ethics is not its primary vocation. It does, however, provide the prerequisites for a life and mind filled with sattva. That is, luminous, without blemishes (tamas), or passion (rajas). Sāṃkhya ethics subordinates religious/social duties to intelligence and the search for liberation. This allows him to advance morality, emancipating himself from tradition and renouncing for example the violence of animal sacrifice . The moral becoming of the individual is described in the kārikās and considered as a creation of the intellect (buddhi, or “great” mahat), The ideal creation (pratyayasarga).
This ‘ideal creation’ orients him along eight poles: “If he is ‘virtuous’, that is, if he performs his duties (dharma, religious/social). He goes up (in the hierarchy of beings) or he goes down if he is not virtuous. If he is endowed with ‘sovereignty’, i.e. with powers (strength in the animal sphere, power in the human sphere and magical powers in the celestial sphere). He does not meet any obstacle, or the opposite if he does not have any. If it is ‘passionate’, it dies and is reborn again and again, unless it is detached, in which case it dissolves into prakṛti (which ‘yogis’ do but which does not constitute liberation according to the Sāṃkhya). Finally, he becomes enchained if he does not possess knowledge or he becomes liberated if he possesses knowledge. This knowledge is essentially, of course, the practical knowledge of Sāṃkhya philosophy. Which must result in the puruṣa understanding that he is not the person he thinks he is, that he is pure consciousness, and ceases to identify himself with his psychic apparatus).”
