To us, Samkhya’s soteriological conception seems audacious. Starting from the original datum of every Indian philosophy, suffering, Samkhya and Yoga, though promising to deliver man from suffering, are forced, at the end of their journey, to deny suffering as such, human suffering. Considered from the point of view of salvation, this road leads nowhere, since it starts from the axiom that Spirit is absolutely free—that is, not sullied by suffering—and arrives at the same axiom—that is, that the Self is only illusorily drawn into the drama of existence. The only term that matters in this equation—suffering—is left out of the account. Samkhya does not do away with human suffering; it denies it as reality by denying that it can have any real relationship with the Self. Suffering remains, because it is a cosmic fact, but it loses significance. Suffering is done away with by ignoring it as suffering. Certainly, this suppression of suffering is not empirical (narcotics, suicide), for, from the Indian point of view, every empirical solution is illusory, since it is itself a karmic force. But Samkhya’s solution drives man outside of humanity, for it can be realized only through the destruction of the human personality. The Yoga practices proposed by Patanjali have the same goal.

From Mircea Eliade’s Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009 (first published in 1954), pp. 34-35.