Śivasaṃhitā 1.10

A third philosophical position enters the survey: the plurality of eternal souls. The matimatāṃ śreṣṭhaiḥ — the wisest among the learned — maintain that individual souls are real, multiple, and omnipresent. This is not a monist reduction nor a materialist denial, but a robust metaphysical pluralism in which each soul stands as an irreducible, eternal reality.

The compound guptālokanatatparaiḥ is precise: gupta (hidden, occult) + ālokana (investigation, scrutiny) + tatparaiḥ (wholly devoted to). It designates those who dedicate themselves to probing realities inaccessible to ordinary perception — a characterization that implicitly honors these thinkers even as the text prepares to surpass their conclusions.

The school most clearly evoked is classical Sāṃkhya, with its infinite individual puruṣas, or Jain philosophy with its eternal jīvas. By listing this view alongside materialism and other positions, the Śivasaṃhitā constructs a philosophical panorama before asserting its own Advaita resolution, lending the final teaching greater argumentative weight.