India · proto-Sāṃkhya c. 4th c. BCE; classical texts c. 4th–5th c. CE – today
Sāṃkhya & Yoga
Reality has two irreducible principles—pure consciousness (puruṣa) and active matter (prakṛti)—and liberation is consciousness recognising that it was never matter.
How can pure consciousness be freed from the workings of nature?
The habit of enumerating the constituents of the world (‘sāṃkhya’ means ‘enumeration’) grew in the later Upanishads and the Mahābhārata. Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s verses gave the classical dualist system, and Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra paired a similar framework with a method of meditation.
Effects already exist latently in their cause (satkāryavāda), so the whole world—including intellect and ego—unfolds from one material source made of three qualities (guṇas). But matter is unconscious and something must witness it, so there are many pure, inactive conscious selves; suffering comes from confusing the witness with the mind, and Yoga’s stilling of the mind ends the confusion.
- Consciousness and matter are wholly distinct.
- Intellect and ego are refined forms of matter.
- Yoga is the stilling of the mind’s fluctuations.
Its cosmology of the three guṇas shaped the Bhagavad Gītā, Āyurveda and Tantra, and Patañjali’s Yoga, through modern reinterpretations, became a worldwide practice.
Thinkers
c. 4th–5th c. CEĪśvarakṛṣṇaAuthor of the classical summary of Sāṃkhyac. 4th–5th c. CE? (dating disputed)PatañjaliCompiler of the Yoga SūtraKey texts
Where it came from
Grew out ofVedic & Upanishadic thoughtSāṃkhya took up the Upanishadic search for the true self but split reality into many conscious selves and one material nature instead of a single Brahman.