In is said that modern religions except those that are mentioned in the very body of the Aphorisms are the outcome of the Vedantic system. They are not acknowledged to have the support of the Vedantic thought and we find even refutations of them in that book. Some chroniclers predate the advent of the Sankhya system before the thought of Vedanta came into existence. We need not subscribe to this opinion as we find the Shankhayans have got a tendency to condemn the Vedantists as well. Some critics have deemed it fit to reject the present Aphorisms of Sankhya as original, but their view gravitates towards a neo-Sankhy system made out of the old policy of that school. They are found to tell us that Iswara Krishna’s work Kaarikaa was commented on by Gaudapada who is said to have been the preceptor of Govinda, the Guru of Shri Shankaracharya. In the Upanishads themselves we find both the views of Sankhya and Vedanta side by side which has given rise to the religious views now in vogue. So these two systems are correlated whenever they are spoken of.
Many people believe that a person is the brain or some part of the brain. You may be one of them. If so, the following should boggle your mind:
Recent studies on the turnover of the molecular population within a given nerve cell have indicated that ... their macromolecular contingent is renewed about ten thousand times in a lifetime.*
In other words, the matter making up each brain cell is completely renewed every three days.
Your brain—that mass of matter which is contained in your skull today—is not the same brain that was in your skull last week.
Science of Identity Foundation - Siddhaswarupananda
*Paul Weiss, “The Living System: Determinism Stratified,” in Arthur Koestler and J.R. Smythies, eds., Beyond Reductionism (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p. 13.
The Personal Phase of Brahman has been differentiated from all objects of the phenomena, so they have come strictly under the calculations of Sankhya. But as we cannot do away with our present concept of phenomena, the system of Sankhya has got involuntarily mixed up with the ritualistic aspects of all religious evolution. The cosmological view of phenomena has resulted in the elimination of all the objects realisable through the senses from final representation of the source.
The realistic view has deemed it fit to consider the elements as the cause of action. Even the Efficient cause is but a peculiar composition of differently distributed elements; whereas the other theory would tell us that the seat of true knowledge is eclipsed by the foreign intrusion of ignorance in the shape of elements. The peculiar formation of the sense has led to the mutilation of the objects in the chamber of subjectivity according to the particular predominating quality.