Samkhya is one of the most ancient of India's philosophical traditions and its influence has been widespread in Indian thought for centuries. The central aim of Samkhya is to counteract human suffering. To do this, Samkhya proposes a special type of metaphysical dualism, which asserts the absolute distinction between pure consciousness (purusa) on the one hand, and the phenomenal world (prakrti) on the other. The ancient philosophy of Samkhya can be applied to modern life in a number of valuable ways. Rather than becoming overly concerned with the metaphysics of the system, Samkhya can be seen as a psychological tool to overcome suffering. Through rigorous philosophical and psychological analysis, a person can learn to detach or disassociate from the psychophysical entity, and realize witness consciousness. Classical Samkhya postulates no God, supreme being, or creator of the universe. Thus Samkhya shows us that there is not a necessary dichotomy between atheism and spirituality. Moreover, its understanding of the human condition, the self, and the universe provide us with profound psychological insights that may be utilized for better living in this world. In this book, the author investigates the foundational text of classical Samkhya, the Samkhyakarika of Isvarakrsna, to uncover its important psychological insights concerning our human condition and the means to transcend it. Included in the book are special meditational exercises to internalize the teachings of Samkhya, and a complete English translation of the Sanskrit Samkhyakarika. Dr D.E. Osto is a scholar of Asian philosophies and meditation teacher with over thirty years of meditation experience.
The Sāṃkhya System brings new life to an ancient Hindu system of thought. Sāṃkhya spans the fields of philosophy, physics, metaphysics, psychology, and ethics. Although notably not theological, its key premises can be found in virtually all religious traditions that originate from India. Sāṃkhya espouses a reciprocity between Prakṛti, the realm of activity, and Puruṣa, the silent witness. It also delineates the phenomenal experiences that arise from Prakṛti, including the operations of the human body, the five great elements, and the eight mental states. Sāṃkhya proclaims that knowledge of world and self can lead to freedom. This book presents a new translation of Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṃkhya Kārikā, with grammatical analysis. It includes interpretive essays that explore the philosophical aspects of the Sāṃkhya system by Geoffrey Ashton, Ana Funes Maderey, Mikel Burley, Christopher Key Chapple, and Srivatsa Ramaswami, as well as its sociological and psychological applications as delineated by Marzenna Jakubczak, McKim Marriott, and Alfred Collins.
The tradition of Samkhya is one of the oldest and most influential in the intellectual history of India. The fundamental notions of Samkhya namely prakrti, purusa, buddhi, ahamkara, manas and the three gunas provided the conceptual framework in which much of Indian philosophizing occurred, and the classical formulations of Yoga and Vedanta together with many traditions of Buddhist philosophy and meditation developed vis-a-vis the intellectual perspective of the Samkhya. Similarly on a general cultural level the influence of Samkhya was profound and important over many centuries in such areas as law, medicine, ancient science and mathematics, logic, mythology, cosmology and ritual. This study traces the history of the Samkhya not only in the Indian intellectual tradition, but also in the traditions of historical criticism. The book also offers a new interpretation of the philosophical significance of the Samkhya, with special reference to the classical interpretation of the interaction of prakrti and purusa. In this edition author has also included a Chart of the Twenty-five Basic Principles of the Samkhya, a Glossary of Samkhya Terminology, an additional Appendix which surveys recent scholarly work in the area of Samkhya together with a discussion of Samkhya in the Purana-s and a revised Bibliography.
This book, "Understanding Samkhya Philosophy: Exploring the Ancient Wisdom of Kapila," seeks to unravel the intricate web of ideas that constitute Samkhya thought. It delves into the rich historical tapestry from which this philosophy emerged and provides a comprehensive exploration of its core principles. Through these pages, we invite you to embark on a journey of discovery, to engage with the profound teachings of Sage Kapila, and to contemplate the timeless questions that Samkhya philosophy addresses. As the reader, you are invited to explore the intricate dualism of Purusha and Prakriti, to contemplate the enumeration of tattvas that make up the universe, and to consider the path to liberation through discriminative knowledge. Whether you are a seasoned scholar of Indian philosophy or a newcomer to this ancient tradition, we hope this book will serve as a valuable resource and a source of inspiration. Our aim in writing this book is not only to elucidate the philosophical intricacies of Samkhya but also to convey the enduring relevance of its ideas in our contemporary world. As we navigate the complexities of our existence, the insights offered by Samkhya can shed light on fundamental questions about the nature of consciousness, the human experience, and the pursuit of inner freedom.
Why the Observer Needs a Central Place in Science The dominantly materialist outlook of modern science leaves a lot unexplained. This includes the nature of sensation, concepts, beliefs and judgments, and an understanding of morality. Science was developed by evicting all aspects of the subject from its theories, and this has now become a hindrance in the scientific study of the observer. Does the eviction of subjective qualities only impact the understanding of the subject, or does it also affect the understanding of matter within science? The dominant belief today is that the current view of matter is nearly final and mind and consciousness will be soon explained based on it. Sankhya and Science argues to the contrary. The nature of material objects if they are created and perceived by conscious beings is different than if they are independent of consciousness. If objects are created and perceived by conscious beings, they should be described as symbols of meanings rather than as meaningless things. Questions Tackled in This Book First, the author discusses a wide variety of problems in modern science, including mathematics, computing, physics, chemistry, biology and neuroscience and how they cannot be solved in the materialistic view.Then, the author offers the alternative view of matter based on Sankhya philosophy--meanings in consciousness are reflected in matter to create symbols of meaning. Now, to know all aspects of matter we need to understand all aspects of the observer, otherwise the theory of matter is incomplete. Mind and Matter Integrated into a Semantic Science The book connects a semantic view of matter to the problems of indeterminism and uncertainty in quantum physics, the problem of meaning in computing theory, the nature of information in chemistry and biology, and the problem of sensation and cognition in psychology and neuroscience. Unlike in modern science, where meaning and information are emergent properties of physical objects, in Sankhya, objects are created when the mind transfers meanings into space-time. The reader will see how mind and matter can be integrated without stepping outside the rational-empirical approach to science. Moreover, this integration can engender new kinds of empirical theories, better able to explain phenomena currently lying outside the reach of science. This deeper understanding of mind and matter also builds up the conceptual framework for understanding other complex topics such as Vedic Cosmology, meditation, mantras, prana, reincarnation and karma. The book illustrates how the choices of consciousness are first converted into meanings in the mind, which are then converted into energy, which is then converted into material objects through incremental steps. By the end of the book, the author builds a new approach to doing science. This paradigm will be able to explain more phenomena than current theories, and will solve the problems of indeterminism, uncertainty and incompleteness which plague current sciences. How Is This book Different? Most people drawing parallels between science and Eastern philosophy end up claiming that the Eastern mystics knew thousands of years back what modern science discovered only recently. This conclusion may be satisfying as a bridge between religion and science, but it is ultimately futile--if the mystical viewpoint is similar to the materialist view then why we still need mysticism? Instead of parallels, this book offers a contrarian view of matter and science. It hopes to show that current science and mysticism are not convergent (although a new science and mysticism could be). The convergence requires not faith but an evolution of science itself. This approach is interesting because it tells us that the convergence will be rational rather than a matter of faith.
While the Bhagavad Gītā is an acknowledged treasure of world spiritual literature, few people know a parallel text, theĪśvara Gītā. This lesser-known work is also dedicated to a god, but in this case it is Śiva, rather than Kṛṣṇa, who is depicted as the omniscient creator of the world. Andrew J. Nicholson's Lord Śiva's Song makes this text available in English in an accessible new translation. A work of both poetry and philosophy, the Īśvara Gītā builds on the insights of Patañjali's Yoga Sūtra and foreshadows later developments in tantric yoga. It deals with the pluralistic religious environment of early medieval India through an exploration of the relationship between the gods Śiva and Viṣṇu. The work condemns sectarianism and violence and provides a strategy for accommodating conflicting religious claims in its own day and in our own.
This book is the sequel to Robert Forman's well-received collection, The Problem of Pure Consciousness (Oxford, 1990). The essays in the earlier volume argued that some mystical experiences do not seem to be formed or shaped by the language system--a thesis that stands in sharp contradistinction to deconstruction in general and to the "constructivist" school of mysticism in particular, which holds that all mysticism is the product of a cultural and linguistic process. In The Innate Capacity, Forman and his colleagues put forward a hypothesis about the formative causes of these "pure consciousness" experiences. All of the contributors agree that mysticism is the result of an innate human capacity, rather than a learned, socially conditioned and constructive process. The innate capacity is understood in several different ways. Many perceive it as an expression of human consciousness per se, awareness itself. Some hold that consciousness should be understood as a built-in link to some hidden, transcendent aspect of the world, and that a mystical experience is the experience of that inherent connectedness. Another thesis that appears frequently is that mystics realize this innate capacity through a process of releasing the hold of the ego and the conceptual system. The contributors here look at mystical experience as it is manifested in a variety of religious and cultural settings, including Hindu Yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, and medieval Christianity. Taken together, the essays constitute an important contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of human consciousness and mystical experience and its relation to the social and cultural contexts in which it appears.
The Sāṃkhyayoga institution of Kāpil Maṭh is a religious organisation with a small tradition of followers which emerged in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in Bengal in India around the renunciant and yogin Hariharānanda Āraṇya. This tradition developed during the same period in which modern yoga was born and forms a chapter in the expansion of yoga traditions in modern Hinduism. The book analyses the yoga teaching of Hariharānanda Āraṇya (1869-1947) and the Kāpil Maṭh tradition, its origin, history and contemporary manifestations, and this tradition’s connection to the expansion of yoga and the Yogasūtra in modern Hinduism. The Sāṃkhyayoga of the Kāpil Maṭh tradition is based on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, on a number of texts in Sanskrit and Bengali written by their gurus, and on the lifestyle of the renunciant yogin living isolated in a cave. The book investigates Hariharānanda Āraṇya’s connection to pre-modern yoga traditions and the impact of modern production and transmission of knowledge on his interpretations of yoga. The book connects the Kāpil Maṭh tradition to the nineteenth century transformations of Bengali religious culture of the educated upper class that led to the production of a new type of yogin. The book analyses Sāṃkhyayoga as a living tradition, its current teachings and practices, and looks at what Sāṃkhyayogins do and what Sāṃkhyayoga is as a yoga practice. A valuable contribution to recent and ongoing debates, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Religious Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Indology, Indian philosophy, Hindu Studies and Yoga Studies.
This book analyzes the contemporary global revival of Nondual Śaivism, a thousand-year-old medieval Hindu religious philosophy. Providing a historical overview of the seminal people and groups responsible for the revival, the book compares the tradition’s medieval Indian origins to modern forms, which are situated within distinctively contemporary religious, economic and technological contexts. The author bridges the current gap in the literature between "insider" (emic) and "outsider” (etic) perspectives by examining modern Nondual Śaivism from multiple standpoints as both a critical scholar of religion and an empathetic participant-observer. The book explores modern Nondual Śaivism in relation to recent scholarly debates concerning the legitimacy of New Age consumptive spirituality, the global spiritual marketplace and the contemporary culture of narcissism. It also analyzes the dark side of the revived tradition, and investigates contemporary teachers accused of sexual abuse and illegal financial activities in relation to unique features of Nondual Śaivism’s theosophy and modern scholarship on new religious movements (NRMs) and cults. This book shows that, although Kashmir Śaivism has been adopted by certain teachers and groups to market their own brand of "High Tantra," some contemporary practitioners have remained true to the system’s fundamental tenets and teach authentic (albeit modern) forms of Nondual Śaivism. This book will be of interest to academics in the fields of religion and Asian philosophies, especially South Asian, tantric, neo-tantric and yoga philosophies, alternative and New Age spiritualities, religion and consumerism, and NRMs and cults. Winner of the inaugural 2021 New Zealand Asia Society Book Award, second prize.
