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Alain Danielou – While the Gods Play – On Samkhya and Yoga

Samkhya concerns the macrocosm, nature, and the universe, and Yoga the microcosm, the internal world of the living being.  These two methods are strictly coordinated and interdependent. They are the instruments of higher knowledge by which man is distinguished from other living beings.

Yoga is the exploration of ourselves, this special body, this abode, in which our consciousness resides. Yoga seeks to analyse the structures of our interior universe, to study and develop the powers latent in it, and eventually to go beyond the barriers of the senses, the limitations of relative time and space that imprison us.

The Samkhya enables us to transpose the elements of Yoga to the universal plane and to establish correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between Universal Man (purusha) and individual man (jiva).