Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)

SANKHYA, YOGA AND VEDANTA

Let US see, however, what all this means ; for we may be sure that a synthetic and catholic system like the Gita’s will not treat such important parts of the Aryan culture in a spirit of mere negation and repudiation. The Gita has to synthetise the Yoga doctrine of libera tion_ by jvorks and the Sankhya doctrine of liberatipn^l^Jknowle3ge ,* it has' to fuse karma with [ndna^ , It has at the same time to syntlietise the Purusha and Prakriti idea common to Sankhya and Yoga lYith the BrahmavacU of the current Vedanta in which the Purusha, Deva, Ishwara,— supreme Soul, God, Lord, — of the Upanishads all became merged in the one all- swallowing concept of the immutable Brahman ; and it has to bring out again from its overshadowing by that concept but not with any denial of it the Yoga idea of the Lord or Ishwara. It has too its pwn luminous thou|[ht to add, the crown of its synthetic system, the doctrine, of the Purushottama and of the triple Purusha for which, though the idea is there, no precise and indisputable authority can be easily found in the Upanishads and which Rfiems indeed at first sight to be in contradiction with that text of the Sruti where only two Purushas are recognised. Moreover, in synthetising works and knowledge it has to take account not only of the opposition of Yoga and Sankhya, but of the opposition of works to knowledge in Vedanta itself, where the connotation of the two words arid therefore their point of conflict is not quite the same as the point of the Sankhya-Yoga opposition.

I 129 It is not surprising at all, one may observe in passing, that with the conflict of so many philosophical schools all founding themselves on the texts of the Veda and Upanishads, the Gita should describe the understanding as being perplexed and confused, led in different directions by the Sruti, grutwipratipannd. What battles are even now delivered by Indian pundits and meta- physicians over the meaning of the ancient texts and to what different conclusions they lead ! The understanding may well get disgusted and in- different, gantdsi nirvedam, refuse to hear any more texts new or old, grotavyasya, grutasya cha, and go into itself to discover tjfie truth in the light of a deeper and inner and direct experience.