The clay before the pot

From that one question Sāṃkhya builds a complete account: what the universe is made of, how consciousness gets caught in it, why that hurts, and the exact order in which to climb back out. The account comes in two parts, the argument and then the game it leads to, and this page keeps that shape.

A word on what this page is. I am a compiler, not a scholar of Sāṃkhya. These are my notes, set down in the order the argument made sense to me, from the teachers and books listed at the end. Where I have added a date or a name they did not give, I say so where it happens. The diagrams are mine.

Why this one gets called scientific

The same question, a different instrument

Start with telescopes. Hubble and James Webb sit outside the atmosphere; ISRO's AstroSat does the same. They read every band of the electromagnetic spectrum, radio to gamma, to work out where the universe came from. The point of starting there is that the question is old. Four or five thousand years ago, with none of these instruments, the rishis of India asked the same thing: where did existence come from, and why? What they had was close observation of nature and a lot of reasoning. What they produced were systems with enough depth that they are still studied in universities. T. S. Eliot, a Nobel laureate in literature, once remarked that next to the subtlety of the Indian philosophers, Europe's great philosophers looked like schoolboys.

Sāṃkhya is the one of these systems I am most drawn to, and the one most often called scientific, for one reason: it refuses to start from a creator god and insists that the universe be explained from something that was already there. The rest of this page follows that single demand to its conclusion.

Where Sāṃkhya sits

One of six ways of seeing

At the centre of Sanātana Dharma are the four Vedas, each with its layers of hymns, ritual commentary, forest texts and Upaniṣads. Studying them, the rishis developed six darśanas, six ways of seeing human life. Sāṃkhya is one.

The six do not agree. Some rank karma (action) highest, some bhakti (devotion), some jñāna (knowledge); these are the three roads to the divine in the tradition. Some schools accept many gods, some one, and some none. One view even holds that a god may well exist but has no wish to create anything.

Sāṃkhya is अनीश्वरवादी anīśvaravādī. It does not deny that Īśvara exists. It does not accept that Īśvara made the universe by pushing it into being from outside. Hold that thought. Everything below is built to answer the question a creator leaves open.

Where it comes from

A lineage that is mostly lost

The founder is Kapila Muni, whom I was taught to place around 700 BCE. He is held in such regard that tradition counts him as the fifth avatar of Viṣṇu, and in the Bhagavad Gītā, when Kṛṣṇa lists the forms in which he is to be recognised, he says: among the perfected ones, I am the sage Kapila (सिद्धानां कपिलो मुनिः, 10.26).

That respect runs across the theist and non-theist divide, which is unusual for a school that needs no creator.

On the āstika side, Sāṃkhya ideas sit inside the Purāṇas, the Mahābhārata and the Gītā itself. On the nāstika side, the clearest case is Buddhism. The Buddha spent the first 29 years of his life in Kapilavastu, a city named after Kapila, and it is no surprise that his thinking shows Sāṃkhya's influence.

What we can actually read today is thin. Kapila's own text, the Sāṃkhya Pravacana Sūtra, is lost. He taught Āsuri, who wrote nothing down. Āsuri taught Pañcaśikha, who wrote the Ṣaṣṭitantra, also lost. The teaching passed from guru to student until Īśvarakṛṣṇa compressed it into about seventy-two verses, the Sāṃkhya Kārikā. That is the text everyone since has read, and every later Sāṃkhya book is a commentary on it.

On the dates. I was taught to place Īśvarakṛṣṇa around 300 BCE. The histories I checked against date the Sāṃkhya Kārikā to roughly the fourth century CE, and that is the usual scholarly view. The gap does not change the argument below; it only changes how old the written record is.

Step 1

Nothing comes from nothing

सत्कार्यवाद satkāryavāda. Sat is being, what is. Kārya is effect, the thing produced. The doctrine says a real effect comes only from a real cause: sat comes from sat. You cannot say there was nothing, and then something appeared.

The way I learned it, modern science rests on the same ground. If the universe came from a Big Bang and we say it began from almost nothing, we still have to admit that "almost nothing" was a point, a something, of infinite density perhaps, but there. Zero gives zero. Something gives something.

Step 2

A cause already holds its effect

Cause is कारण kāraṇa. Effect is कार्य kārya. Before you write a book, the book exists in your mind as a thought, as potential; then it becomes pages. A father is the cause and the child is the effect, and the child in turn is the cause of the next child. The Greeks, Plato among them, worked the same pair.

What Sāṃkhya adds is the order of existence. The cause comes first, and it carries the full potential of the effect inside it, whether or not that potential has been expressed yet. A thought is invisible until the work is done. The cause was there the whole time. That is what the dotted pot in the figure above means.

Step 3

A maker is not enough. Where is the material?

Sāṃkhya splits cause in two. A clay pot exists because of a potter and because of clay. Take away either and there is no pot. The potter is the निमित्त कारण nimitta kāraṇa, the efficient cause, the agent who acts. The clay is the उपादान कारण upādāna kāraṇa, the material cause, what the thing is made of.

So, says Sāṃkhya, grant the potter. That is only the nimitta kāraṇa. What is the upādāna kāraṇa? Where did the clay come from? God or no God, the universe needs a material cause, and the rest of the philosophy is a search for it.

Step 4

Read the cause off the effect

Normally the cause comes first and the effect follows. But we can find ourselves in the reverse position, holding the effect without knowing the cause. The universe is exactly that case: we have it, and we do not know what produced it.

Sāṃkhya's answer is inference, अनुमान anumāna. Look at me and you can guess roughly what my parents are like; put me in a line-up of couples and you could pick them with some confidence. Hand someone a clay pot and a tray of materials and nobody will say it was made of wax. The pot looks like its clay. So the material cause of the universe must look like the universe.

Step 5

Three things the universe keeps showing

So the rishis studied the universe, and three things stood out everywhere. Much of it shines: luminous, radiant bodies. Much of it moves: everything rushing somewhere. Much of it lies in darkness. They saw the same three in people. Some faces glow with contentment. Some people are in constant motion and in constant pain. Some are inert, listless, stuck in their lives.

If the effect carries three qualities, the material cause must carry the same three, or the effect could never have come from it. Sāṃkhya names them: सत्त्व sattva, light and clarity; रजस् rajas, motion and agitation; तमस् tamas, inertia and darkness.

Step 6

Prakṛti, the clay of the universe

The material cause now has a name: प्रकृति Prakṛti. This is not the "nature" of trees and rivers. Pra means before; kṛti means the work, the effect. Prakṛti is what was there before the effect. The texts give it other names, and each one is a definition.

Four properties follow from the argument so far.

• Infinite asīma
  Big enough to produce a universe whose edge we still have not found.
• Unmanifest avyakta
  No form, no shape, nothing expressed. An idea before it is drawn.
• In equilibrium sāmyāvasthā
  Sattva, rajas and tamas held in perfect balance, which is exactly why nothing is expressed.
• Inert jaḍa
  No mind, no consciousness. It simply is.

The analogy I was given for how one material makes many things is a colour code. A code mixes red, green and blue in some ratio; change the ratio and you get red, then shades of red, then blue, then yellow. In the same way, different proportions of sattva, rajas and tamas produce the different things of the universe. Added from the books: the older texts picture the three guṇas as white, red and black, so the mixer below uses those.

Step 7

Puruṣa, and why Sāṃkhya is a dualism

Something has to disturb the balance, and it has to be something with consciousness, चेतना cetanā. Sāṃkhya calls it पुरुष Puruṣa. It is not a material. It is not made of the guṇas. It is the awareness that Prakṛti lacks.

So there are two root principles, and only two. Prakṛti: the inert, infinite, unmanifest material cause, three guṇas at rest. Puruṣa: consciousness. That is why Sāṃkhya is called द्वैतवाद dvaitavāda, a dualism.

Step 8

Why they come near at all

Start with what a cause is. A seed is only the cause of a tree once a tree has grown from it. If no tree ever grows, the seed was never a cause of anything. A thought in your mind becomes a cause only when the work gets done. So a cause has to realise its potential, or it is not a cause.

Apply that to Prakṛti. It is the material cause of the universe, with infinite potential inside it. But if it never turns into a universe, its being a cause means nothing. So Prakṛti is restless, bechain in the word I learned it by: it has to take form to be what it is.

Now apply the same test to Puruṣa. Consciousness means to experience. Puruṣa is निर्गुण nirguṇa, without qualities, pure awareness and nothing else. But an awareness that has experienced nothing is nothing, a zero. For Puruṣa to be consciousness, it has to experience something. So Puruṣa is restless too.

Step 9

One Prakṛti, many Puruṣas

The two principles are not symmetric in number. Prakṛti is one, and infinite in extent. Puruṣa is many, infinite in count. The reasoning again runs from the effect back to the cause.

Prakṛti is one because everything that comes into being is made of it and dissolves back into it. Think of it as all the matter and energy there is: I am made of it, I die, I return to it. Whatever is forming, breaking and being absorbed all the time has to be one boundless stock.

Puruṣa is many because experience is many. The same event lands differently on different beings. The example that made it stick for me: feed a dog well, walk it, care for it, and the dog decides you are God. Give a cat exactly the same treatment and the cat decides it is God. My awareness, my neighbour's, the street dog's, the lion's in the forest: each sees one world from its own place. Since consciousness is nothing but experience, and experience comes in countless distinct streams, there must be countless distinct Puruṣas.

Step 10

The twenty-five tattvas, in the order they appear

Prakṛti was never made and never ends. But when a consciousness stands before it and begins to experience, Prakṛti starts to transform, विकृत vikṛta, and things appear out of it in a fixed order. I learned it as a trap being set, one layer at a time, around a consciousness that was pure a moment ago. Each layer is a तत्त्व tattva, a principle.

First comes बुद्धि buddhi, also called mahat, the great one: the intellect, the capacity to decide. No body yet, no world yet, only the power of judgement. With that, the game is already lost; consciousness has something to be caught by.

Second comes अहंकार ahaṃkāra, the I-maker. Until now the intellect took itself to be everything. With ahaṃkāra, consciousness becomes someone. To use myself as the example: it becomes me, and from that moment everything else is other: this dog, that fish, Shukla ji, Pandey ji. The individual exists, and the individual needs a form.

From ahaṃkāra come the instruments of that form, and then the objects the instruments need.

The five ज्ञानेन्द्रिय jñānendriyas are the organs of knowing. Until now consciousness understood Prakṛti only through the intellect; now, as if Prakṛti were saying it, see me with eyes, hear me with ears, smell me, taste me, touch me. The five कर्मेन्द्रिय karmendriyas are the organs of action, and they are there so that the individual can keep itself going while the game runs: hands to touch, feet to go and look further, speech, the organs of reproduction so that children carry on after you die, and excretion. Eat, and expel, and stay.

The eleventh instrument is मन manas, the mind, and it has to be kept apart from buddhi.

An eye is useless without something to see. So from the same ahaṃkāra come the five तन्मात्रा tanmātras, the subtle objects: form for the eye, sound for the ear, smell for the nose, taste for the tongue, touch for the skin. Prakṛti makes itself into what the senses need. And from these five objects come the five महाभूत mahābhūtas, the great elements: space, air, fire, water, earth. That is the last tattva. The world is complete.

What all this is for, in one line: the tattvas exist to catch consciousness. Caught, consciousness forgets what it is. It takes itself for Prakṛti. The man in the chair thinks his intellect is him, his body is him, when he is the awareness watching. Prakṛti, meanwhile, is delighted: it has become an effect, which is all it wanted.

Step 11

Why it hurts

This is where suffering comes from in Sāṃkhya. Consciousness, which is pure and cannot be harmed, is caught in Prakṛti's layers and mistakes itself for them. The mistake is an illusion of union, an आभास ābhāsa: nothing has actually happened to consciousness, but it feels everything that happens to the body, the senses, the mind and the self as its own. The way I learned it, that suffering sorts into three kinds.

All three land on the same mistaken identity. The body is Prakṛti's; the luck is Prakṛti's; the flood is Prakṛti's. Consciousness suffers because it has forgotten that none of it is consciousness.

Naming. My addition, from the textbooks: the classical Kārikā names the three sufferings ādhyātmika (from within oneself), ādhibhautika (from other beings) and ādhidaivika (from fate and the elements). The three labels above are the simpler cut I was taught, of the same idea.

Step 12

The way out is the way in, reversed

Sāṃkhya's answer to suffering follows directly from the tree above. Consciousness was caught layer by layer in a fixed order, so it has to free itself layer by layer in the reverse order, from the last thing made back to the first. What waits at the top is कैवल्य kaivalya, aloneness: consciousness standing in its pure form, apart from Prakṛti. It is Sāṃkhya's word for what the wider tradition calls mokṣa.

The first rung is the objects. Someone's appearance should not take over your mind; someone's words should not ruin your day. Rising above the tanmātras and the elements is a matter of discipline, and it means your senses no longer depend on what the world puts in front of them.

The second rung is the instruments themselves. Go deaf, lose a leg, lose the ability to have children: these are real losses, and I will not pretend otherwise, but they are losses to Prakṛti's equipment. You are the awareness, and the leg was never you. A person without legs can be content; with time, he forgets the leg was ever the point.

The third rung is the mind, which wanders from one wish to the next and sours when a wish fails. The task is to make it stay.

Then the game changes. The fourth rung is ahaṃkāra: forgetting that I am this particular person, that this should happen for me, that I should get that. The sense of being separate is what drives quarrels and grasping. Letting it go is a very large step; the tradition has people who did it, who became detached, virakta, but it is not in everyone's reach.

The last rung is buddhi, and it is worth stopping to admire the difficulty. The intellect is the power of judgement. It is the faculty that is learning Sāṃkhya right now, the one producing the thought of getting free. That too has to be let go.

Whoever manages it stops being an individual. Suffering ends, because there is no longer anyone mistaking Prakṛti's losses for their own. Prakṛti, for its part, tires; it feels the game is played out, and lets the consciousness go. Puruṣa stands apart in its pure form. That is kaivalya, and that is the whole of Sāṃkhya.

In one piece

The argument, start to finish

Each line below depends on the one before it. Remove any one and the chain stops. That is also why the school reads as scientific: it is a single inference carried to its end, and then run backwards as a method.

1. The universe exists. It is an effect.kārya
2. Nothing comes from nothing, so it has a cause that already held it as potential.satkāryavāda
3. An effect needs a material, not only a maker. A creator, if there is one, is only the maker.upādāna kāraṇa, not only nimitta kāraṇa
4. The material can be read off the effect, the way a pot shows its clay.anumāna
5. The universe shows three qualities everywhere: light, motion, inertia.observation
6. So the material is Prakṛti: three guṇas in equilibrium, unmanifest, infinite, inert.sattva · rajas · tamas, sāmyāvasthā, avyakta, jaḍa
7. Inert matter cannot choose proportions. Consciousness must: Puruṣa. Two principles, a dualism.cetanā, dvaitavāda
8. A cause must realise its potential; a consciousness must experience something. So the two come near.saṃyoga
9. Everything is made of one Prakṛti; every experience belongs to its own Puruṣa. One matter, many witnesses.Prakṛti one, Puruṣa many
10. Near a consciousness, Prakṛti unfolds in order: intellect, I-maker, mind and ten organs, five objects, five elements. Twenty-five principles.buddhi → ahaṃkāra → manas, indriyas, tanmātras → mahābhūtas
11. Caught in those layers, consciousness mistakes them for itself, and feels their losses as its own. That is suffering.ābhāsa, duḥkha
12. Let the layers go in reverse order, ending with the I and the intellect. Consciousness stands alone.kaivalya

Terms

Glossary

The school

सांख्य Sāṃkhya

The school itself. The name is usually read as "enumeration", for its habit of counting principles.

दर्शन darśana

A way of seeing; one of the six classical systems of philosophy.

अनीश्वरवाद anīśvaravāda

The position that no Īśvara is needed to explain the universe. Neither denial nor worship.

आस्तिक · नास्तिक āstika · nāstika

As used on this page, those who accept God's authority and those who do not.

सांख्यकारिका Sāṃkhya Kārikā

Īśvarakṛṣṇa's verse summary, the one surviving classical source.

Cause and effect

सत्कार्यवाद satkāryavāda

The effect pre-exists in its cause. Something comes only from something.

कारण · कार्य kāraṇa · kārya

Cause and effect.

निमित्त कारण nimitta kāraṇa

The efficient cause: the agent, the potter.

उपादान कारण upādāna kāraṇa

The material cause: the stuff, the clay.

अनुमान anumāna

Inference. Here, reasoning from a known effect back to its unknown cause.

The two principles

प्रकृति Prakṛti

The material cause of the universe. Literally what is before the effect. One, infinite in extent.

प्रधान Pradhāna

Another name for Prakṛti: the primary, the first.

गुण guṇa

Quality, strand. The three constituents of Prakṛti.

सत्त्व sattva

Light, clarity, calm. Pictured as white.

रजस् rajas

Motion, drive, agitation. Pictured as red.

तमस् tamas

Inertia, heaviness, darkness. Pictured as black.

अव्यक्त avyakta

Unmanifest, unexpressed, without form.

साम्यावस्था sāmyāvasthā

The state of equilibrium of the three guṇas, in which nothing is produced.

जड jaḍa

Inert, without consciousness.

पुरुष Puruṣa

The conscious principle. Not a material, not made of guṇas. Many, infinite in number.

चेतना cetanā

Consciousness, awareness; on this page, the capacity to experience.

निर्गुण nirguṇa

Without qualities. Puruṣa has no guṇas at all.

द्वैतवाद dvaitavāda

Dualism: two irreducible principles, Prakṛti and Puruṣa.

संयोग saṃyoga

Conjunction, coming near. The meeting of Puruṣa and Prakṛti that starts the world.

The twenty-five principles

तत्त्व tattva

A principle, a "that-ness". Sāṃkhya counts twenty-five.

बुद्धि · महत् buddhi · mahat

Intellect, the great one. The first thing to emerge from Prakṛti: the power to decide.

अहंकार ahaṃkāra

The I-maker. The principle of individuality; everything else becomes other.

मन manas

Mind. Fickle; both a sense organ and an action organ, ubhayendriya.

इन्द्रिय indriya

An organ or faculty. Eleven in all, counting the mind.

ज्ञानेन्द्रिय jñānendriya

Organ of knowing: eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin.

कर्मेन्द्रिय karmendriya

Organ of action: hands, feet, speech, reproduction, excretion.

तन्मात्रा tanmātra

Subtle object, "that only": form, sound, smell, taste, touch, each made for one sense.

महाभूत mahābhūta

Great element: space, air, fire, water, earth. The last tattvas to emerge.

विषय viṣaya

An object of the senses; what the eye sees, what the ear hears.

Suffering and release

आभास ābhāsa

Semblance, illusion. Consciousness seeming to be what it is not.

दुःख duḥkha

Suffering. Three kinds, as I learned them: of the body, of fate, of nature.

विरक्त virakta

Detached; one who has let go of the I.

सिद्ध siddha

A perfected one; those the tradition says managed the highest rungs.

कैवल्य kaivalya

Aloneness. Consciousness standing apart from Prakṛti in its pure form; Sāṃkhya's word for mokṣa.