The exact nature of soul is however very difficult of comprehension, and yet it is exactly this which one must thoroughly grasp in order to understand the Sa@mkhya philosophy.  Unlike the Jaina soul possessing anantajnana, anantadars’ana, anantasukha, and anantaviryya, the Sa@mkhya soul is described as being devoid of any and every characteristic; but its nature is absolute pure consciousness (cit).  The Sa@mkhya view differs from the Vedanta, firstly in this that it does not consider the soul to be of the nature of pure intelligence and bliss (ananda) [Footnote ref 3].  Bliss with Sa@mkhya is but another name for pleasure and as such it belongs to prak@rti and does not constitute the nature of soul; secondly, according to Vedanta the individual souls (Jiva) are

_______________________________________________________

____________

[Footnote 1:  See S.N.  Das Gupta, Yoga Philosophy in relation to other Indian systems of thought, ch.  II.  The most important point in favour of this identification seems to be that both the Patanjalis as against the other Indian systems admitted the doctrine of spho@ta which was denied even by Sa@mkhya.  On the doctrine of Spho@ta see my Study of Patanjali, Appendix I.]

[Footnote 2:  Karika, 18.]

[Footnote 3:  See Citsukha’s Tattvapradipika, IV.]

239

but illusory manifestations of one soul or pure consciousness the Brahman, but according to Sa@mkhya they are all real and many.

The most interesting feature of Sa@mkhya as of Vedanta is the analysis of knowledge.  Sa@mkhya holds that our knowledge of things are mere ideational pictures or images.  External things are indeed material, but the sense data and images of the mind, the coming and going of which is called knowledge, are also in some sense matter-stuff, since they are limited in their nature like the external things.  The sense-data and images come and go, they are often the prototypes, or photographs of external things, and as such ought to be considered as in some sense material, but the matter of which these are composed is the subtlest.  These images of the mind could not have appeared as conscious, if there were no separate principles of consciousness in connection with which the whole conscious plane could be interpreted as the experience of a person [Footnote ref 1].  We know that the Upani@sads consider the soul or atman as pure and infinite consciousness, distinct from the forms of knowledge, the ideas, and the images.  In our ordinary ways of mental analysis we do not detect that beneath the forms of knowledge there is some other principle which has no change, no form, but which is like a light which illumines the mute, pictorial forms which the mind assumes.  The self is nothing but this light.  We all speak of our “self” but we have no mental picture of the self as we have of other things, yet in all