Observations placeholder

Alain Danielou – While the Gods Play  

Concepts of the Samkhya

A coherent universe can only develop in accordance with a plan, a system, which comes before it. In the conception of the Samkhya, thought precedes matter, the subtle precedes the concrete, possibility precedes reality, and the laws which govern the universe precede their manifestations or applications.

The laws of gravitation precede the birth of the atoms and constellations whose formation results from these laws. This is true for all aspects of the world. The laws that govern the mechanisms of perception, life, thought, and communication, including the principle of Ianguage, precede the formation of the organs that make them possible in the living being. This applies to all the physical or sensory functions, individual and collective, as well as to the social laws that govern vegetable, animal, or human groups. The only true science is the search for understanding of these laws, which constitute the permanent aspect (akshara) of the world.

Life, perception, and thought are born of the same archetypes as matter, and are strictly coordinated and interdependent aspects of the development of the visible world. The slow development of the states of matter, then of life, in infinitely diversified forms, as well as that of perception, sensation, and the mechanisms of thought, depend on increasingly complex combinations of simple energetic forms, whose "signature" we find at all levels.

We speak of physical laws, heaviness, density, gravitation, and compounds of elements, all of which science tries to understand, but we sometimes forget that all aspects of life, the structure of individual or collective beings, human or animal, all also obey these laws.

There is no fundamental difference, with precise limits, between what we consider to be inert matter and living cells.

It is simply a matter of an additional dimension which we call life, but which is only apparent under certain conditions related to duration and to certain potentials of perception.

An element of intelligence and perception is present, in a form that may be more or less latent, in every atom, every cell every molecule, every astral system, every organism. It is this element of intelligence that guides the logic of their affinities, behaviour, and inclinations, and allows them to play a consistent role.