Samkhya Dualism in the Anthropocene

Hindu philosophy of religion provides distinct thinking tools for our human, non-human and natural worlds. The Samkhya school has unique and detailed theories of nature, materiality, and evolution and can contribute to pluriversal ways (Mbembe 2016) to think about culture as a product of nature, rather than a point of contrast. Using Samkhya’s ontology of nature as a meta-category, this paper provides a philosophical reflection on classical texts, lived religion, and scientific theories to consider the significance of Samkhya’s dualist ontology of nature and consciousness in the Anthropocene. 

The classical texts (such as the Sāṃkhyakārikā) can be argued to reinforce anthropocentrism, especially if we accept Burley’s (2007) compelling reading of the Sāṃkhyakārikā as accounting only for subjective material reality and not objective material reality. Such a stance is reflected in commentaries, such as Śaṅkara’s Gītabhāṣya 13.12, which provides a definition of Sāṃkhya that is inherently anthropomorphic. Sāṃkhya is: ‘[t]he reflecting, that the guṇas, – goodness, passion and darkness, – are objects of my perception; and that I, distinct from them, am spectator of their operations, eternal, heterogeneous from the guṇas, spirit’ (trs. Hall 1862; 6).

However, focusing first on embodiment, I will present a contrary interpretation to anthropocentricism via philosophy of lived religion. This approach engages a fieldwork reflection on the impossibility of embodied dualism in relation to nature as an inescapable environment of sensory experience. Drawing on a 2024 field visit to Hariharānanda Āraṇya’s Sāṃkhya ashram site (Kapil Math) in Jharkhand, I reflect on the artificial cave of the guru as an anthropocentric space of isolation from surrounding nature, engineered to produce residence in a pure consciousness. However, that consciousness is inevitably alloyed in material subjectivity since the guru as human subject is surrounded by powerful forces of nature, from which even the concrete walls cannot sustain separation. Furnished with windows and a viewing platform, the inner space of the cave is infused by environmental sensorial materiality, which seeps into the cave despite its boundaries. This vignette attempts an embodied understanding of an ontological dualism that is only abstractly or metaphorically explained in the historical texts. Despite the basic Sāṃkhya ontology, there is no space into which consciousness can retreat and such an embodied dualism is impossible. What is left is the overarching category of nature which is also the basis of culture at the Math. The landscaped site is filled with vibrant flower beds, aesthetic structures, shrines, signs, sculptures, all designed for the visual appreciation of the sole occupant, the guru who gazes from the viewing platform or the window.

To further understand the category of nature, the paper then turns to the Yuktidīpikā, a c. 7th-century commentary on the Sāṃkhyakārikā, which explains pradhāna (primordial or unmanifest nature) as ‘the resorting place of all the evolutes (at the time of dissolution) and puruṣa [pure consciousness] as the entity which rests in the body’ (Kumar and Bhargava 1990: x-xi). Why did such an early Sāṃkhya commentary reach for (mula)prakṛti, or (primordial) nature, as the overarching category that contains not only the body but also an embodied consciousness? I will examine how analysis in the Yuktidīpikā shifts from an earlier anthropocentrism to a more materially-focused ontology, perhaps also reflecting certain interpretations of Sāṃkhya found in the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. As Yogasūtra 2.22 argues, despite its characterisation as ever-changing, prakṛti is the enduring feature of our world and it is human consciousness that is ephemeral: kṛtārthaṃ prati naṣṭam apy anaṣṭaṃ tadanyasādhāraṇatvāt (YS 2.22) ‘Although destroyed in relation to him whose interest has been fulfilled, it is not destroyed on account of its commonness to others’ (trs. Baba 1949: 70). Hence materiality, or nature, does not cease to exist just because the liberation of a consciousness (puruṣa) is achieved – the material continues for the purpose of other puruṣas who are still associated with prakṛti and reinforces the fundamental basis of the world as nature and not consciousness.

Finally, the paper will relate Sāṃkhya notions of consciousness to selected models in contemporary scientific philosophy of mind, to argue that (a) neuroscientific lenses can provide helpful ways through which to discuss Sāṃkhya dualism and (b) such scientific models of conscious phenomenology can also, problematically, reinforce an anthropocentric worldview. Drawing on Mudrik et al 2025, the paper will explore theories of consciousness such as global neuronal workspace theory, which explains conscious and non-conscious processing; higher order theory, which proposes that the ‘substrate of consciousness does not have the anatomical/physiological properties of a maximum of cause-effect power’ (Mudrik et al 2025: 4-5); and predictive processing which discusses the material as a commitment to biological naturalism, computational functionalism or non-computational functionalism (Mudrik et al 2025). By engaging these scientific theories of consciousness, we are able to draw Sāṃkhya dualism into broader contemporary conversations about ontological dualism and embodiment.

Gathering together classical, lived and scientific ideas, the paper explores how in the Anthropocene, with its consequence of nature and climate nature degradation, engaging Sāṃkhya can contribute to building pluriversal ways of thinking so that we may proceed into our planetary future with fresh perspectives on the critical questions that currently pervade human life.