Here is your notes on the Sankhya Philosophy

The Sahkhya may be called a philosophy of dualisidc realism. It traces the whole course of the world to the interplay of two ultimate principles, viz. spirit and primal matter (purusa and prakrti).

On the one hand, we have prakrti which is regarded as the ultimate cause of the world of objects including physical things, organic bodies and psychical products like the mind (manas), the intellect and the ego.

Prakrti is both the material and the efficient cause of the world. It is active and ever-changing, but blind and unintelligent.

How can such a blind principle evolve an orderly world and direct it towards any rational end? How again are we to explain the first disturbance or vibration in prakrti which is said to be originally in a state of equilibrium?

On the other hand, the Sahkhya admits another uldmate Principle, viz. purusa or the self. The category of purusa includes a plurality of selves who are eternal and immutable principles of pure consciousness.

These selves are intelligent but inactive and unchanging. It is in contact with such conscious and intelligent selves that the unconscious and unintelligent prakrti evolves the world of experience.

But how can the inactive and unchanging self at all come in contact with and influence prakrti or matter? The Sahkhya holds that the mere presence (sannidhi) of purusa or the self is sufficient to move prakrti to act, although it itself remains unmoved.

Similarly, it is the reflection of the conscious self on the unconscious intellect that explains the cognitive and other psychical functions performed by the latter.

But how the mere presence of the self can be the cause of changes in prakrti, but not in the self itself, is not clearly explained.

Nor, again, is it quite clears how an unintelligent material principle like the intellect can reflect pure consciousness (which is immaterial) and thereby become conscious and intelligent.

The physical analogies given in the Sahkhya are not sufficiently illuminating. Further, the existence of many selves is proved by the Sahkhya from the difference in the nature, activity, birth and death, and sensory and motor endowments of different living beings.

But all these differences pertain, not to the self as pure consciousness but to the bodies associated with it. So far as their intrinsic nature (i.e. pure consciousness) is concerned, there is nothing to distinguish between one self and another.

So there seems to be no good ground for the Sahkhya theory of many ultimate selves. It may be that the many selves, of which we speak, are the empirical individuals or egos dealt with in ordinary life and experience.

From the speculative-standpoint there seem to be certain gaps in the Sahkhya philosophy. Still we should not underrate its value as a system of self-culture for the attainment of liberation.

So far as the practical end of attaining freedom from suffering is concerned, this system is as good as any other and enables the religious aspirant to realise the highest good of his life.