The Philosophy Of The Upanisads

INDIAN PHILOSOPHY

BY

S. RADHAKRISHNAN

George V Profe*or of Phflo*ophy b the Uomratjr of Calcatta
i
Demy 8v. Two 0ob. 21*. each

SOME PRESS OPINIONS

" We are fortunate in that Professor Radhakrishnan is evidently
deeply read in the Philosophy of the West, and shows considerable
acquaintance with general Western literature ; a happy blend of
Eastern conceptions with Western terminology makes the book
intelligible even to the inexpert, and, it need hardly be added,
instructive.'* The Times

" In this very interesting, Incid, and admirably written book . . .
the author has given us an interpretation of the Philosophy of
India written by an Indian scholar of wide culture." Daily News.

44 It is among the most considerable of the essays in interpre-
tation that have come from Indian scholars in recent years.
English readers are continually on the look-out for a compendium
of Indian thought wntten by a modern with a gift for lucid
statement . . . Here is the book for them." New Statesman.

41 The first volume takes us to the decay of Buddism in India
after dealing with the Vedas, the Upanisads, and the Hindu con-
temporaries of the early Buddists. The work is admirably done*"
BBRTRAND RUSSELL in the Nation.

"This book marks an epoch in speculative thought. It is
probably the first important interpretation of the Eastern mind
from within." Glasgow Herald.

44 A most systematic account of the subject. In every section
and subsection of the book we find a very readable exposition-
succinct and yet complete of the subject matter concerned. The
accounts are uniformly vivid, dispassionate, and well balanced."
MAHAMAHOPJtoHYlYA DR. SANGANATH JHA in the Hindustan
Review.

44 Brilliant performance. As an attempt to give a true philo-
sophical interpretation of Indian thought, it is of very great
value." Dr. B. M. BARNA in the Hindu.

14 A standard work on the subject." Indian Social Reformer.

" Not a formal history and a dry intellectual discussion of ideas,
but a work of feeling as well as of thought, an exposition of living
interest. The English is excellent." The Quest.

" As a work of philosophical interpretation and criticism, it is an
epoch-making publication . . . indispensable to every student of
Indian philosophy." The Mysore University Magazine.

44 It sets forth the philosophic background of Indian religions and
social life with a fulness of knowledge and concreteness of detail
that is perhaps unique. Many things which in the ordinary text-
books are obscure and even unintelligible here become rational.
The book is one of deep and exact scholarship."- Ho/6om Review.

44 Professor Radhakrishnan's beautifully written story of the
changing thought of the Vedic teachers, the Jainat, and the
Buddhists will more than repay the study of any specialist, but,
beyond this, it is of absorbing interest to those of us who do
not wish to make ourselves out to be either philosophers or
Orientalists. A delightful volume." Time* of India.

THE PHILOSOPHY
OF THE UPANISADS

BY

S. RADHAKRISHNAN

WITH A FOREWORD BY

RABINDRANATH TAGORE

AND AN INTRODUCTION BY

EDMOND HOLMES

AUTHOR OF " THE CREED OF BUDDHA," ETC.

LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. i

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

{All rights reserved)

Atfl> ITOKCMO

DEDICATION
TO

THE REV. W. SKINNER, M.A., D.D., ETC.

PREFATORY NOTE

I AM much obliged to Dr. Rabindranath Tagore and Mr.
Edmond Holmes for their kindness in writing the Foreword
and the Introduction to this reprint of the section on the
Upanisads from my Indian Philosophy.

The different, though not opposed, estimates brought
together in this book will, I trust, help the reader to appre-
ciate the meaning and value of the teaching of these ancient
scriptures of India.

S.R.

CALCUTTA,
March 1924.

FOREWORD

NOT being a scholar or a student of philosophy, I do not
feel justified in writing a critical appreciation of a book
dealing with the philosophy of the Upani$ads. What I
venture to do is to express my satisfaction at the fact that
my friend, Professor Radhakrishnan, has undertaken to
explain the spirit of the Upaniads to English readers.

It is not enough that one should know the meaning of
the words and the grammar of the Sanskrit texts in order
to realise the deeper significance of the utterances that have
come to us across centuries of vast changes, both of the inner
as well as the external conditions of life. Once the language
in which these were written was living, and therefore the
words contained in them had their full context in the life
of the people of that period, who spoke them. Divested of
that vital atmosphere, a large part of the language of these
great texts offers to us merely its philological structure and
not lif e's subtle gesture which can express through suggestion
all that is ineffable.

. Suggestion can neither have fixed rules of grammar nor
the rigid definition of the lexicon so easily available to the
scholar. Suggestion has its unanalysable code which finds
its depth of explanation in the living hearts of the people ,
who use it. Code words philologicaUy treated appear
childish, and one must know that all those experiences which
are not realised through the path of reason, but immediately
through an inner vision, must use some kind of code word
for their expression. All poetry is full of such words, and
therefore poems of one language can never be properly
translated into other languages, nay, not even re-spoken in
the same language.

., For an illustration let me refer to that stanza of Keats*

u

x PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

"Ode to a Nightingale/' which ends with the following
lines :-^

The same that oft-times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

All these words have their synonyms in our Bengali
language. But if through their help I try to understand
these lines or express the idea contained in them, the result
would be contemptible. Should I suffer from a sense of race
superiority in our own people, and have a low opinion of
English literature, I could do nothing better to support my
case than literally to translate or to paraphrase in our own
tongue all the best poems written in English.

Unfortunately, the Upaniads have met with such treat-
ment in some parts of the West, and the result is typified
disastrously in a book like Cough's Philosophy of the
Upani$ads. My experience of philosophical writings being
extremely meagre, I may be wrong when I say that this is
the only philosophical discussion about the Upaniads in
English, but, at any rate, the lack of sympathy and respect
displayed in it for these some of the most sacred words
that have ever issued from the human mind, is amazing.

Though many of the symbolical expressions used in the
Upaniads can hardly be understood to-day, or are sure to
be wrongly interpreted, yet the messages contained in these,
like some eternal source of light, still illumine and vitalise
the religious mind of India. They -are not associated with
any particular religion, but they have the breadth of a
universal soil that can supply with living sap all religions
which have any spiritual ideal hidden at their core, or
apparent in their fruit and foliage. Religions, which have
their different standpoints, each claim them for their own
support.

This has been possible because the Upaniads are based
not -upon theological reasoning, but on experience of spiritual
life. And life is not dogmatic ; in it opposing forces are recon-
ciled id$as of non-dualism and dualism, the infinite and the
finite, do not exclude each other. Moreover, the Upani?ads
do not represent the spiritual experience of any one great

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS xi

individual, but of a great age of enlightenment which has a
complex and collective manifestation, like that of the starry
world. Different creeds may find their sustenance from
them, but can never set sectarian boundaries round them ;
generations of men in our country, no mere students of
philosophy, but seekers of life's fulfilment/ may make living
use of the texts, but can never exhaust them of their fresh-
ness of meaning.

For such men the Upaniad-ideas are not wholly abstract,
like those belonging to the region of pure logic. They are
concrete, like all truths realised through life. The idea of
Brahma when judged from the view-point of intellect is an
abstraction, but it is concretely real for those who have the
direct vision to see it. Therefore the consciousness of the
reality of Brahma has boldly been described to be as real
as the consciousness of an amlaka fruit held in one's palm,
And the Upanisad says :

Yato vaco nivartante aprSpya manasa saha
Anandam brahmago vidvan na bibheti kadacana.

From Him come back baffled both words and mind. But he who
realises the joy of Brahma is free from fear.

Cannot the same thing be said about light itself to men
who may by some mischance live all through their life in an
underground world cut off from the sun's rays ? They must
know that words can never describe to them what light is,
and mind, through its reasoning faculty, can never even
understand how one must have a direct vision to realise it
intimately and be glad and free from fear.

We often hear the complaint that the Brahma of the
Upaniads is described to us mostly as a bundle of negations.
Are we not driven to take the same course ourselves when
a blind man asks for a description of light ? Have we not
to say in such a case that light has neither sound, nor taste,
nor form, nor weight, nor resistance, nor can it be known
through any process of analysis ? Of course it can be seen ;
but what is the use of saying this to one who has no eyes ?
He may take that statement on trust without understanding
in the least what it means, or may altogether disbelieve it,
even suspecting in us some abnormality.

xii PHILOSOPHY OF TfiDE UPANISADS

Does the truth of the fact that a blind man has missed
^he perfect development of what should be normal about
his eyesight depend for its proof upon the fact that a larger
number of men are not blind? The very first creature
which suddenly groped into the possession of its eyesight
had the right to assert that light was a reality. In the
human world there may be very few who have their spiritual
eyes open, but, in spite of the numerical preponderance of
those who cannot see, their want of vision must not be cited
as an evidence of the negation of light.

In the Upaniads we find the note of certainty about
the spiritual meaning of existence. In the very paradoxical
nature of the assertion that we can never know Brahma, but
can realise Him, there lies the strength of conviction that
comes from personal experience. They aver that through
our joy we know the reality that is infinite, for the test by
which reality is apprehended is joy. Therefore in the
Upaniads Satyam and Anandam are one. Does not this
idea harmonise with our everyday experience ?

The self of mine that limits my truth within myself
confines me to a narrow idea of my own personality. When
through some great experience I transcend this boundary
I find joy. The negative fact of the vanishing of the fences
of self has nothing in itself that is delightful. But my joy
proves that the disappearance of self brings me into touch
with a great positive truth whose nature is infinitude. My
love makes me understand that I gain a great truth when I
realise myself in others, and therefore I am glad. This has
been thus expressed in the I&opaniad :

Yas tu sarv&Qi bhutani atmany ev&nupatyati
Sarvabhute$u ctm&nam tato na vijugupsate.

He who sees all creatures in himself, and himself in all creatures,
no longer remains concealed.

His Truth is revealed in him when it comprehends Truth
in others. And we know that in such a case we are ready
for the utmost self-sacrifice through abundance of love.

It has been said by some that the element of personality
has altogether keen ignored in the Brahma o|pJie Upani?ads,

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS aiii

and thus our own personality, according to them, finds no
response in the Infinite Truth. But then, what is the
meaning of the exclamation : " Vedihametam puruam
mahntam. / have known him who is the Supreme Person..
Did not the sage who pronounced it at the same time pro*
claim that we are all Amrtasya Putrah, the sons of the
Immortal ?

Elsewhere it has been declared : Tarn vedyam purufam
veda yatha ma vo mrtyuh parivyathah. Know him, the Person
who only is to be known, so that death may not grieve thee.
The meaning is obvious. We are afraid of death, because
we are afraid of the absolute cessation of our personality*
Therefore, if we realise the Person as the ultimate reality
which we know in everything that we know, we find our
own personality in the bosom of the eternal.

There are numerous verses in the Upaniads which
speak of immortality. I quote one of these :

Esa devo vivakarm mahtm
Sad5 jan&nm hjxlaye sannivitab
Hfda man!& manasibhiklpto
Ya etad vidur amptas te bhavanti.

This is the God who is the world-worker, the supreme soul, who
always dwells in the heart of all men, those who know him
through their mind, and the heart that is full of the certainty
of knowledge, become immortal.

To realise with the heart and mind the divine being who
dwells within us is to be assured of everlasting life. It is
mahatma, the great reality of the inner being, which is vi&va-
karma, the world-worker, whose manifestation is in the outer
work occupying all time and space.

* Our own personality also consists of an inner truth which
expresses itself in outer movements. When we realise, not
merely through our intellect, but through our heart strong
with the strength of its wisdom, that Mahatma, the Infinite
Person, dwells in the Person which is in me, we cross over
the region of death. Death only concerns our limited self ;
when the Person in us is realised in the Supreme Person,
then the limits of our self lose for us their finality.

The question necessarily arises, what is the significance

xiv PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

of this sell of ours ? Is it nothing but an absolute bondage
for us ?

If in our language the sentences were merely for express-
ing grammatical rules, then the using of such a language
would be a slavery to fruitless pedantry. But, because
language has for its ultimate object the expression of ideas,
our *mind gains its freedom through it, and the bondage of
gratomar itself is a help towards this freedom.

/ If this world were ruled only by some law of forces, then
it would certainly have hurt our mind at every step and
there would be nothing that could give us joy for its own
sake. But the Upaniad says that from Anandam, from
an inner spirit of Bliss, have come out all things, and by it
they are maintained. Therefore, in spite of contradictions,
we have our joy in life, we have experiences that carry their
final value for us.

It has been said that the Infinite Reality finds its revela-
tion in dnanda-rupam amrtom, in the deathless form of joy.
The supreme end of our personality also is to express itself
in its creations. But works done through the compulsion
of necessity, or some passion that blinds us and drags us
on with its impetus, are fetters for our soul ; they do not
express the wealth of the infinite in us, but merely our want
or our weakness.

Our soul has its dnandam, its consciousness of the infinite,
which is blissful. This seeks its expression in limits which,
when they assume the harmony of forms and the balance
of movements, constantly indicate the limitless. Such ex-
pression is freedom, freedom from the barrier of obscurity.
Such a medium of limits we have in our self which is our
medium of expression. It is for us to develop this into
dnanda-rupam amrtam, an embodiment of deathless joy, and
only then the infinite in us can no longer remain obscured*

This self of ours can also be moulded to give expression
to the personality of a business man, or a fighting man, or
a working man, but in these it does not reveal our supreme
reality, and therefore we remain shut up in a prison of our
own construction. Self finds its dnanda-riipam, which is
its freedom in revelation, when it reveals a truth that
transcends self, like a lamp revealing light which goes far

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS xv

beyond its material limits, proclaiming its kinship with the
sun. When our self is illuminated with the light of lcxve,j
then the negative aspect of its separateness with others!
loses its finality, and then our relationship with others is
no longer that of competition and conflict, but of sympathy
and co-operation.

I feel strongly that this, for us, is the teaching of the
Upani$ads, and that this teaching is very much needed in
the present age for those who boast of the freedom enjoj&d
by their nations, using that freedom for building up a dark
world of spiritual blindness, where the passions of greed and
hatred are allowed to roam unchecked, having for their
allies deceitful diplomacy and a wide-spread propaganda of
falsehood, where the soul remains caged and the self battenfc
upon the decaying flesh of its victims.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE.

INTRODUCTION

PROFESSOR RADHAKRISHNAN'S work on Indian Philosophy*
the first volume of which has recently appeared, meets a
want which has long been felt. The Western mind finds a
difficulty in placing itself at what I may call the dominant
standpoint of Indian thought, a difficulty which is the out-
come of centuries of divergent tradition, and which therefore
opposes a formidable obstacle to whatever attempt may be
made by Western scholarship and criticism to interpret the
speculative philosophy of India. If we of the West are to
enter with some measure of sympathy and understanding
into the ideas which dominate, and have long dominated,
the Indian mind, India herself must expound them to us.
Our interpreter must be an Indian critic who combines the
acuteness and originality of the thinker with the learning
and caution of the scholar, and who has also made such a
study of Western thought and Western letters as will enable
him to meet his readers on common ground. If, in addition
to these qualifications, he can speak to us in a Western
language, he will be the ideal exponent of that mysterious
philosophy which is known to most of us more by hearsay
than by actual acquaintance, and which, so far as we have
any knowledge of it, alternately fascinates and repels us.

All these requirements are answered by Professor Radha-
krishnan. A clear and deep thinker, an acute critic and an
erudite scholar, he is admirably qualified for the task which
he has set himself of expounding to a " lay " audience the
main movements of Indian thought. His knowledge of
Western thought and letters makes it easy for him to get
into touch with a Western audience ; and for the latter
purpose he has the further qualification, which he shares
with other cultured Hindus, of being a master of the English
language and an accomplished writer of English prose.

2 *

2 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS

But the first volume of Indian Philosophy contains
nearly 700 closely printed pages, and costs a guinea ; and it
is not every one, even of those who are interested in Indian
thought, who can afford to devote so much time to serious
study, while the price, though relatively most reasonable,
is beyond the means of many readers. That being so, it
is good to know that Professor Radhakrishnan and his
publisher have decided to bring out the section on The
Philosophy of the Upani?ads as a separate volume and at a
modest price.

For what is quintessential in Indian philosophy is its
spiritual idealism; and the quintessence of its spiritual
idealism is in the Upanisads. The thinkers of India in all
ages have turned to the Upanisads as to the fountain head
of India's speculative thought. " They are the founda-
tions," says Professor Radhakrishnan, " on which most of
the later philosophies and religions of India rest. . . . Later
systems of philosophy display an almost pathetic anxiety to
accommodate their doctrines to the views of the Upanisads,
even if they cannot father them all on them. Every re-
vival of idealism in India has traced its ancestry to the
teaching of the Upaniads." " There is no important form
of Hindu thought," says an English exponent of Indian
philosophy, " heterodox Buddhism included, which is not
rooted in the Upaniads." x It is to the Upaniads, then,
that the Western student must turn for illumination, who
wishes to form a true idea of the general trend of Indian
thought, but has neither time nor inclination to make a
Close study of its various systems. And if he is to find the
clue to the teaching of the Upanisads he cannot do better
than study it under the guidance of Professor Radhakrishnan.

It is true that treatises on that philosophy have been
written by Western scholars. But the Western mind, as
has been already suggested, is as a rule debarred by the
prejudices in which it has been cradled from entering with
sympathetic insight into ideas which belong to another
world and another age. Not only does it tend to survey
those ideas, and the problems in which they centre, from
standpoints which are distinctively Western, but it some-
' Bloomfield : The Religion of ike Veda.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 8

times goes so far as to assume that the Western is the only
standpoint wl^h i^ Can

we wonder, "then, that when if criticises the speculative
thought of Ancient India, its adverse judgment is apt to
resolve itself into fundamental misunderstanding, and even
its sympathy is sometimes misplaced ?

In Gough's Philosophy of the Upaniads we have a con-
temptuously hostile criticism of the ideas which dominate
that philosophy, based on obstinate misunderstanding of
the Indian point of view, misunderstanding so complete
that our author makes nonsense of what he criticises before
he has begun to study it. In Deussen's work on the same
subject a work of close thought and profound learning
which deservedly commands respect we have a singular
combination of enthusiastic appreciation with complete
misunderstanding on at least one vital point. Speaking
of the central conception of the Upanisads, that of the
ideal identity of God and the soul, Gough says, " this
empty intellectual conception, void of spirituality, is the
highest form that the Indian mind is capable of." Com-
ment on this jugement saugrcnu is needless. Speaking of
the same conception, Deussen says, " it will be found to
possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upaniads,
their time and country; nay, we claim for it an inestimable
value for the whole race of mankind . . . one thing we
may assert with confidence whatever new and unwonted
paths the philosophy of the future may strike out, this
principle will remain permanently unshaken, and from it
no deviation can take place." This is high praise. But
when our author goes on to argue that the universe is
pure illusion, and claims that this is the fundamental view
of the Upanisads, he shows, as Professor Radhakrishnan
has fully demonstrated, that he has not grasped the true
inwardness of the conception which he honours so highly.

With these examples of the aberration of Western criti-
cism before us, we shall perhaps think it desirable to turn
for instruction and guidance to the exposition of the Upani-
ads which Professor Radhakrishnan, an Indian thinker,
scholar and critic, has given us. If we do so, we shall not
be disappointed. As the inheritor of a great philosophical

4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

tradition, into which he was born rather than indoctrinated,
Professor Radhakrishnan has an advantage over the Western
student of Indian philosophy, which no weight of learning
and no degree of metaphysical acumen can counterbalance,
and of which he has made full use. His study of the
Upaniads if a Western reader may presume to say so
is worthy of its theme.

The Upanisads are the highest and purest expression of
the speculative thought of India. They embody the medita-
tions on great matters of a succession of seers who lived
between 1000 and 300 B.C. In them, says Professor J. S.
Mackenzie, " we have the earliest attempt at a construc-
tive theory of the cosmos, and certainly one of the most
interesting and remarkable/ 1

What do the Upaniads teach us ? Its authors did not
all think alike ; but, taking their meditations as a whole,
we may say that they are dominated by one paramount
conception, that of the ideal oneness of the soul of man with

* - **"' *' " *iiiiiii>ni.iw-'*.>i .jHmtt^n,*. * **" v *** *<* i,i. Hi mnii ii,Hauij*<>"^iViiii i ..

fy&iMtoLQJJ^^lWY*!^ The Sanscrit word for the soul of
man is Atman, for the soul of the universe Brahman. " God's
dwelling place," says Professor Radhakrishnan in his ex-
position of the philosophy of the Upaniads, " is the heart
of man. The inner immortal self and the great cosmic
power are one and the same. Brahman is die Atman, and
the Atman is the Brahman. The one supreme power
through which all things have been brought into being is
one with the inmost self in each man's heart." What is
real in each of us is his self or soul. What is real in the
universe is its self or soul, in virtue of which its All is One,
and the name for which in our language is God. And the
individual soul is one, potentially and ideally, with the
divine or universal soul. In the words of one of the Upani-
ads : "He who is the Brahman in man and who is that in
the sun, these are one."

* The significance of this conception is more than meta-
physical. There is a practical side to it which its exponents
are apt to ignore. The unity of the all-pervading life, in
and through its own essential spirituality the unity of the
trinity of God and Nature and Man is, from man's point
of view, an ideal to be realised rather than an accomplished

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 5

fact. If this is so, if oneness with the real, the universal,
the divine self, is the ideal end of man's being, it stands to
reason that self-realisation, the finding of the real self, is the
highest task which man can set himself. In the Upanisads
themselves the ethical implications of their central concep-
tion were not fully worked out. To do so, to elaborate the
general idea of self-realisation into a comprehensive scheme
of life, was the work of the great teacher whom we call
Buddha.

This statement may seem to savour of paradox. In the
West the idea is still prevalent that Buddha broke away
completely from the spiritual idealism of the Upaniads,
that he denied God, denied the soul, and held out to his
followers the prospect of annihilation as the final reward
of a righteous life. This singular misconception, which is
not entirely confined to the West, is due to Buddha's
agnostic silence having been mistaken for comprehensive
denial. It is time that this mistake was corrected. It is
only by affiliating the ethics of Buddhism to the metaphysics
of the Upanisads that we can pass behind the silence of
Buddha and get into touch with the philosophical ideas
which ruled his mind, ideas which were not the less real or
effective because he deliberately held them in reserve. This
has long been my own conviction ; and I am now confirmed
in it by finding that it is shared by Professor Radhakrishna,
who sets forth the relation of Buddhism to the philosophy
of the Upanisads in the following words : " The only meta-
physics that can justify Buddha's ethical discipline is the
metaphysics underlying the Upanisads. . . . Buddhism
helped to democratise the philosophy of the Upaniads,
which was till then confined to a select few/ The process
demanded that the deep philosophical truths which cannot
be made clear fo the masses of men should for practical
purposes be ignored. It was Buddha's mission to accept
the idealism of the Upanisads at its best' and make it avail-
able for the daily needs of mankind. Historical Buddhism
means the spread of the Upaniad doctrines among the
people. It thus helped to create a heritage which is living
to the present day/'

Given that oneness with his own real self, which is also

6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANlSADS

the soul of Nature and the spirit of God, is the ideal end of
man's being, the question arises : How is that end to be
achieved ? In India, the land of psychological experiments,
many ways to it were tried and are still being tried. There
was the way of Gnani, or intense mental concentration.
There was the way of Bhakti, or passionate love and de-
votion. There was the way of Yogi, or severe and
systematic self-discipline. These ways and the like of these
might be available for exceptionally gifted persons. They
were not available, as Buddha saw clearly, for the rank and
file of mankind. It was for the rank and file of mankind,
it was for the plain average man, that Buddha devised his
scheme of conduct. He saw that in one's everyday life,
among one's fellow men, there were ample opportunities for
the higher desires to assert themselves as higher, and for the
lower desires to be placed under due control. There were
ample opportunities, in other words, for the path of self-
mastery and self-transcendence, the path of emancipation
from the false self and of affirmation of the true self, to be
followed from day to day, from year to year, and even for
Buddha, like the seers of the Upanisads, took the reality of
re-birth for granted from life to life. He who walked in
that path had set his face towards the goal of his own per-
fection, and, in doing so, had, unknown to himself, accepted
the philosophy of the Upaniads as the ruling principle of
his life.

If this interpretation of the life-work of Buddha is
correct, if it was his mission to make the dominant idea of
the Upaniads available for the daily needs of ordinary
jnen, it is impossible to assign limits to the influence which
that philosophy has had and is capable of having in human
affairs in general and in the moral life of man in particular.
The metaphysics of the Upanisads, when translated into
the ethics of self-realisation, provided and still provides
for a spiritual need which has been felt in divers ages and
which was never more urgent than it is to-day. For it is
to-day, when supernatural religion is losing its hold on us,
that the secret desire of the heart for the support and
guidance which the religion of nature can alone afford, is
making itself felt as it has never been felt before. And if

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 7

the religion of nature is permanently to satisfy our deeper
needs, it must take the form of devotion to the natural end
of man's being, the end which the seers of the Upaniads
discerned and set before us, the end of oneness with that
divine or universal self which is at once the soul of all things
and the true being of each individual man. In other words,
it is as the gospel of spiritual evolution that the religion of
nature must make its appeal to our semi-pagan world. It
was the gospel of spiritual evolution which Buddha, true
to the spirit of the Upaniads, preached 2,500 years ago ; x
and it is for a re-presentation of the same gospel, in the
spirit of the same philosophy, that the world is waiting <now.

* It was the gospel of spiritual evolution which Christ preached in
a later age, to a different audience and through the medium of other
forms of thought. Such at least is my earnest conviction. Of the
two pivotal sayings, " I and my Father are one," and " Be ye perfect
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect/' the former falls
into line with the spiritual idealism of the Upamsads, the latter into
line with the ethical idealism of Buddha. The notation, as might be I
expected, is different ; but the idea and the ideal are the same. *

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

B.C. . . Bhagavadglta.

E.R.E. . Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.

J.A.O.S. . Journal of the American Oriental Society.

J.R.A.S. . Journal of the Royal Asiatip Society.

P. ... PancastikayasamayasSra.

R.B. . . Ramanuja's Bhasya on the Vedanta Sfltras.

SB. . . Samkara's Bhasya on the Vedanta Sutras.

S.B.E. . . Sacred Books of the East.

Up. . . . Upanisads.

V.S. . . Vedanta Sutras.

REFERENCES

MAX MILLER : The Upanisads (S.B.E. Vols. I. and XV.).

DEUSSBN : The Philosophy of the Upanisads.

GOUGH : The Philosophy of the Upanisads.

BARUA : Pre- Buddhistic Philosophy.

MAHADEVA SASTRI : The TaittLrtya Upanisad.

RANADE : The Psychology of the Upanisads (Indian Philosophical

Review), 1918-1919
HUMS : The Thirteen Principal Upanisads.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
UPANISADS

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE
UPANISADS

Introduction The fluid and indefinite character of the teaching of
the Upanisads Western students of the Upanisads Date Early
Upamsads The great thinkers of the age -The hymns of the $g-
Veda and the doctrine of the Upanisads compared Emphasis on
the monistic side of the hymns The shifting of the centre from the
object to the subject The pessimism of the Upanisads The pessi-
mistic implications of the conception of saxhs&ra Protest against
the externalism of the Vedic religion Subordination of the Vedic
knowledge The central problems of the Upanisads Ultimate
reality The nature of Atman distinguished from body, dream con-
sciousness and empirical self- The different modes of consciousness,
waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and ecstasy The influence of
the Upamsad analysis of self on subsequent thought The approach
to reality from the object side Matter, life, consciousness, in-
telligence and Snanda Samkara and R&m&nuja on the status of
ananda Brahman and Atman Tat tvam asi The positive char-
acter of Brahman Intellect and intuition Brahman and the world
Creation The doctrine of m&y Deussen's view examined
Degrees of reality Are the Upanisads pantheistic ? The finite
self The ethics of the Upanisads The nature of the idealThe
metaphysical warrant for an ethical theory Moral life Its general
features Asceticism Intellectualism Jf&na, Karma and Up&sana
Morality and religion Beyond good and evil The religion of the
Upanigads Different forms The highest state of freedom The
ambiguous accounts of it in the Upanisads Evil Suffering-
Karma Its value The problem of freedom Future life and immor-
tality Psychology of the Upanisads Non-Vedantic tendencies in
the Upanisads Simkhya Yoga Nyaya General estimate of the
thought of the Upanisads Transition to the epic period.

I

THE UPANISADS

THE Upanisads * form the concluding portions of the
Veda, and are therefore called the Veda-anta, or the end

* The word Upanisad comes from upa, near, sad, to sit. It means
"sitting near" the teacher to receive instruction. It gradually came to

is

14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI^ADS

of the Veda, a denomination which suggests that they
contain the essence of the Vedic teaching. They are the
foundations on which most of the later philosophies and
religions of India rest. "There is no important form of
Hindu thought, heterodox Buddhism included, which is
not rooted in the Upaniads." x Later systems of philo-
sophy display an almost pathetic anxiety to accommodate
their doctrines to the views of the Upaniads, even if
they cannot father them all on them. Every revival of
idealism in India has traced its ancestry to the teaching
of the Upaniads. Their poetry and lofty idealism have
not as yet lost their power to move the minds and sway
the hearts of men. They contain the earliest records of
Indian speculation. The hymns and the liturgical books
of the Veda are concerned more with the religion and prac-
tice than with the thought of the Aryans. We find in the
Upani?ads an advance on the Samhita mythology, Brahmana
hair-splitting, and even Aranyaka theology, though all these
stages are to be met with. The authors of the Upaniads
transform the past they handle, and the changes they effect
in the Vedic religion indicate the boldness of the heart that
beats only for freedom. The aim of the Upaniads is
not so much to reach philosophical truth as to bring peace
and freedom to the anxious human spirit. Tentative solu-
tions of metaphysical questions are put forth in the form
of dialogues and disputations, though the Upaniads are
essentially the outpourings or poetic deliverances of philo-
sophically tempered minds in the face of the facts of life.
They express the restlessness and striving of the human
mind to grasp the true nature of reality. Not being sys-
tematic philosophy, or the production of a single author,
or even of the same age, they contain much that is incon-

toean what we receive from the teacher, a sort of secret doctrine or rakatytm.
Sometimes it is made to mean what enables us to destroy error, and approach
truth. $aihkara, in his introduction to the Taittirfya Upanisad, says:
" Knowledge of Brahman is called Upanisad because in the case of those
who devote themselves to it, the bonds of conception, birth, decay, etc.,
become unloostd, or because it destroy* them altogether, or because it leads
the pupil very near to Brahman, or because therein the highest God is
seated/' See Pandit, March, 1872, p. 254.

Bloomfield : Tk* Rtligion of U* Veda. p. 51.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 15

sistent and unscientific; but if that were all, we cannot
justify the study of the Upaniads. They set forth funda-
mental conceptions which are sound and satisfactory, and
these constitute the means by which their own innocent
errors, which through exclusive emphasis have been exag-
gerated into fallacious philosophies, can be corrected* Not-
withstanding the variety of authorship add the period of
time covered by the composition of these half-poetical and
half-philosophical treatises, there is a unity of purpose,
a vivid sense of spiritual reality in them all, which become
clear and distinct as we descend the stream of time.
They reveal to us the wealth of the reflective religious mind
of the times. In the domain of intuitive philosophy their
achievement is a 'considerable one. Nothing that went
before them for compass and power, for suggestiveness
and satisfaction, can stand comparison with them. Their
philosophy and religion have satisfied some of the greatest
thinkers and intensely spiritual souls. We do not agree
with Cough's estimate that " there is little that is spiritual
in all this/' or that " this empty intellectual conception,
void of spirituality, is the highest form that the Indian
mind is capable of." Professor J. S. Mackenzie, with truer
insight, says that " the earliest attempt at a constructive
theory of the cosmos, and certainly one of the most inter-
esting and remarkable, is that which is set forth in the
Upaniads." x

II

THE TEACHING OF THE UPANISADS

It is not easy to decide what the Upaniads teach.
Modern students of the Upaniads read them in the light
of this or that preconceived theory. Men are so little
accustomed to trust their own judgment that they take
refuge in authority and tradition. Though these are safe
enough guides for conduct and life, truth requires insight
and judgment as well. A large mass of opinion inclines
to-day to the view of Saxhkara, who in his commentaries

* B.R.E., vol. viii., p. 597; iee also Hume, Tk$ TKrU**
Up**ifads, p. g.

16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

on the Upaniads, the Bhagavadgita and the Ved&nta
Sfltras, has elaborated a highly subtle system of non-dualistic
metaphysics. Another is equally vehement that Samkara
has not said the last word on the subject, and that a philo-
sophy of love and devotion is the logical outcome oi the
teaching of the Upani$ads. Different commentators, start-
ing with particular beliefs, force their views into the Upani-
ads and strain their language so as to make it consistent
with their own special doctrines. When - disputes arise,
all schools turn to the Upaniads. Thanks to the obscurity
as well as the richness, the mystic haze as well as the sug-
gestive quality of the Upaniads, the interpreters have been
able to use them in the interests of their own religion and
philosophy. The upaniads had no set theory of philosophy
or dogmatic scheme of theology to propound. They hint
at the truth in life, but not as yet in science or philosophy.
So numerous are their suggestions of truth, so various are
their guesses at God, that almost anybody may seek in
them what he wants and find what he seeks, and every
school of dogmatics may congratulate itself on finding its
own doctrine in the sayings of the Upaniads. In the
history of thought it has often happened that a philosophy
has been victimised by a traditional interpretation that
became established at an early date, and has thereafter
prevented critics and commentators from placing it in its
proper perspective. The system of the Upaniads has
not escaped this fate. The Western interpreters have followed
this or that commentator. Gough follows Samkara's inter-
pretation. In his Preface to the Philosophy of the Upani?ad$
he writes : " The greatest expositor of the philosophy of
the Upani$ads is axhkara or Samkaracarya. The teaching
of Samkara himself is the natural and the legitimate inter-
pretation of the philosophy of the Upanigads." Max
Miiller adopts the same standpoint. " We must remember
that the orthodox view of the Vedinta is not what we
should call evolution, but illusion. Evolution of the Brahman
or parinima is heterodox, illusion or vivarta is orthodox
Vedinta. ... To put it metaphorically, the world according
to the orthodox Ved&ntin does not proceed from Brahman

*P. viii

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 17

as a tree from a germ, but as a mirage from the rays of
the sun." f Deussen accepts the same view. We shall try
to ascertain the meaning which the authors of the Upaniads
intended, and not what later commentators attributed to
them* The latter give us an approximately close idea of
how the Upaniads were interpreted in later times, but
not necessarily a true insight into the philosophic synthesis
which the ancient seekers had. But the problem is, do
the thoughts of the Upaniads hang together ? Could
all of them be traced to certain commonly acknowledged
principles about the general make-up of the world ? We
are not so bold as to answer this question in the affirmative.
These writings contain too many hidden ideas, too many t
possible meanings, too rich a mine of fancies and conjectures,
that we can easily understand how different systems can
draw their inspiration from the same source. The Upaniads
do not contain any philosophic synthesis as such, of the
type of the system of Aristotle or of Kant or of Samkara.
They have the consistency of intuition rather than of logic,
and there are certain fundamental ideas which, so to say,
form the first sketch of a philosophic system. Out of these
ideas a coherent and consistent doctrine might be developed*
It is, however, difficult to be confident that one's working
up of elements which knew neither method nor arrangement
is the correct one, on account of the obscurity of many
passages. Yet with the higher ideals of philosophic expo-
sition in view, we shall consider the Upaniad ideas of
the universe and of man's place in it.

Ill

NUMBER AND DATE OF THE UPANISADS
The Upaniads are generally accounted to be 108 in
number, of which about ten are the chief, on which Samkara
has commented. These are the oldest and the most authori-
tative. We cannot assign any exact date to them. The
earliest of them are certainly pre-Buddhistic, a few of them are
after Buddha. It is likely that they were composed between
the completion of the Vedic hymns and the rise of Buddhism
(that is the sixth century 8.9.) The accepted dates

1 S.B.E., vol. xv., p. xxvii.

9

18 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

for the early Upaniads are 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C. Some
of the later Upaniads on which Saifakara has commented
are post-Buddhistic, and belong to about 400 or 300 B.C.
The oldest Upaniads are those in prose. These are non-
sectarian. The Aitareya, the Kau!taki, the Taittiriya,
the Cha,ndogya, the Brhadaranyaka, and parts of the Kena

t are the early ones, while verses 1-13 of the Kena, an$Tv.
8-21 of the Brhadaranyaka form the transition to the
metrical Upaniads, and may be put down as later additions.
The Kathopani^ad is later still. We find in it elements
of the Samkhya and the Yoga systems. 2 It also quotes
freely from the other Upanisads and the Bhagavadgit.*

\The Manqlukya is the latest of the pre-sectarian Upanisads.
The Atharva-Veda Upaniads are also of later growth.
Maitrayam upaniad has elements in it of both the S&mkhya
and the Yoga systems. The vetavatara was composed
at the period when the several philosophical theories were
fermenting. It shows in many passages an acquaintance
with the technical terms of the orthodox systems and mentions
many of their prominent doctrines. It seems to be interested
in presenting a theistic syncretism of the VedSnta, the
Sariikhya and the Yoga. The Brahma Sfltras do not refer
to it. There is more of pure speculation present ifi the
early prose Upaniads, while in the later ones there is
more of religious worship and devotion.3 In presenting

' See ii. 18-19 ; " 6. 10 and n.

See i. 2. 5 ; and Mmtfaka, ii. 8 ; i 2-7, and GIt&, ii. 29 ; ii. 18-19, *d
ii. 19-20 and ii. 23, and Muitfaka, iii, 2-3, GltS, i. 53. Some scholars are
inclined to the view that the Katha upani$ad is older than the Mungaka and
the GltS.

3 Denssen arranges the Upanisads in the following order :

1. Ancient prose Upani$ads : Brhadaranyaka, Chindogya, Tait-

tiriya, Aitareya, Kao$Itaki, Kena (partly in prose).

2. Verse Upani$ads ; 1^1, Katha, Muitfaka and Svetaivatam.

3. Later prose : Pra^na and Maitrayanl. t

All these, excepting the Maitr&yanl, are called the classical Upani$ad.

About the Maitrlyanl, Professor MacdoneU writes : " Its many quota-
tions from the other Upanisads, the occurrence of several later words, the
developed S&mkhya doctrine presupposed by it, distinct references to the
anti-Vedic heretical schools, all combine to render the late character of this
work undoubted. It is, in fact, a summing up of the old upanisadic doc*
trines with an admixture of ideas derived from the S&rhkhya system and
from Buddhism" (Sanskrit Liter*****, p. 230).

Nrnfahottaratipanlya is one of the twelve Upanisads explained by
Vidyiranya in his "Sarvopani^adarthfinubhfltiprakWa."

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 19

the philosophy of the Upaniads, we shall take our stand
mainly on the pre-Buddhistic ones, and strengthen our
views as derived from them by those of the post-Buddhistic
ones. The main Upaniads for our purposes are the<
ChSLndogya and the B^hadaranyaka, the Taittiriya and i
the Aitareya, the K^uitald and the Kena ; the l and J
the Mi^i(Jukya come next

IV

THE THINKERS OF THE UPANISADS

Unfortunately, we know very little of the lives of the
great thinkers whose reflections are embodied in the Upani-
ads. So careless were they of personal fame and so
anxious for the spread of truth, that they fathered their
views on the honoured deities and heroes of the Vedic
period. Prajapati and Indra, NSrada and Sanatkumara
figure as dialecticians. When the history of the great
thinkers of the Upaniad period with their distinctive
contributions comes to be written, the following names,
if we leave aside the mythical ones, will stand out : MahidSsa
Aitareya, Raikva, Sarujilya, Satyakama Jabila, Jaivali,
Uddalaka, Svetaketu, Bharadvaja, Gargyayana, Pratar-
dana, Balaki, AjStaSatru, Varuna, Yajnavalkya, Gargi and
Maitreyi. 1

THE HYMNS OF THE RG-VEDA AND THE UPANISADS

In view of the distinctive character of their contents,
the Upaniads are regarded as a class of literature inde-
pendent of the Vedic hymns and the Brahmanas. The
simple faith in gods of the hymns was, as we saw, displaced
by the mechanical sacerdotalism of the Brahmanas. The
Upani$ads feel that the faith that ends in a church is not'
enough. They attempt to moralise the religion of the

* The interested reader will find a lucid account of these thinkers and
their views in the excellent work of my friend and colleague, D
Pr*-B*ddhtshc Indian Philosophy.

80 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

Vedas without disturbing its form. The advance of the
Upaniads on the Vedas consists in an increased emphasis
on the monistic suggestions of the Vedic hymns, a shifting
of the centre from the outer to the inner world, a protest
[against* the externalisxn of the Vedic practices and an in*

ierence to the sacredness of the Veda.

Amid all the confused ferment of Vedic devotions a
principle of unity and comprehension was asserting
itself. In some hymns the conception of a single central
power was actually formulated. The Upaniads carry out
this tendency. They recognise only one spirit almighty,
infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent, the creator,
preserver and destroyer of the world. He is the light,
lord and life of the universe, one without a second, and
the sole object of worship and adoration. The half-gods
of the Veda die and the true God arrives. " How many
gods are there really, O Yajfiavalkya ? " " One/' he said. 1
" Now answer us a further question : Agni, Vayu, Aditya,
K5la (time), which is breath (Prana), Anna (food), Brahm,
Rudra, Vinu. Thus do some meditate on him, some on
another. Say which of these is the best for us ? " And
he said to them : " These are but the chief manifestations
of the highest, the immortal, the incorporeal Brahman. . . .
Brahman, indeed, is all this, and a man may meditate on,
worship or discard also those which are its manifestations."
The visible infinite (objective) and the invisible infinite
(subjective) are taken up into the spiritual whole.

The polytheistic conceptions were too deeply rooted in
the Indian consciousness to be easily overthrown. The
many gods were subordinated to the One. Without Brah-
man, Agni cannot burn a blade of grass, Viyu cannot blow
a whisp of straw. " For fear of him, fire burns, for fear
of him the sun shines, and for fear of him the winds, the
clouds and death perform their office." 3 Sometimes the
many gods are made parts of one whole. The five house-
holders led by Uddalaka approach king A&vapati, who

Bfh. Up., ix. X.

Maitrftyaof Upanfcad, iv. 5-*; "* *> Murfaka, i. i. i ; Taittirlya,
i. 5 ; Brh., i. 4. 6 ; see alto i. 4. 7 ; i. 4. 10.
i Tait. Up.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 21

asked each of them, Whom do you meditate on as the
Self ? The first answered heaven ; the second, the sun ;
the third, air; the fourth, ether; the fifth, water; and
the king replies that each of them worshipped only a part
of the truth. Heaven is the head, the sun the eye, the
air the breath, the ether the trunk, the water the bladder,
and the earth the feet of the central reality, which is pictured
as the world-soul. Compromise between the philosophic
faith of the few and the fancied superstition of the crowds
is the only possible reconciliation ; we cannot abolish the
old forms, for that would be to ignore the fundamental
nature of humanity, as well as the patent differences, in
the moral and intellectual states of believers who were not
capable of acquiring at once the highest wisdom. Another
factor also determined the attitude of the Upanisads. Their
aim was not science or philosophy, but right living. They
wished to liberate the spirit from the trammels of the flesh,
that it might enjoy communion with God. Intellectual
discipline was subsidiary to holiness of life. Besides, there
was the feeling of reverence for the past. The Vedic seers
were the ancients of blessed memory, whose doctrines it
was impious to attack. In this way the Upaniads sought
to square a growing idealistic philosophy with the dogmas
of a settled theology.

The sources of man's spiritual insight are two-fold :
objective and subjective the wonders of the world without
and the stress of the human soul. In the Vedas the vast
order and movement of nature engages attention. Their gods
represent cosmic forces. In the Upaniads we return to
explore the depths of the inner world. " The self -existent
pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn outwards ;
therefore man looks outward, not inward into himself ;
some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing
for immortality, saw the self behind." * From the outward
physical fact, attention shifts to the inner immortal self
situated at the back of the mind, as it were. We need
not look to the sky for the bright light ; the glorious fire
is within the soul. The soul of man is the keyhole
to the landscape of the whole universe, the Aka within

* Katha Up,, iv, i.

22 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS

the heart, the limpid lake which mirrors the truth. The
altered outlook brought about a consequential change.
Not the so-called gods, but the true living God, the Atman
has to be worshipped. God's dwelling-place is the heart
of man. " Brahmsqiafc koSo'si," * Thou art the sheath of
Brahman. " Whosoever worships another deity, in such a
manner as he is another, another * I am/ does not know/' *
The inner immortal self and the great cosmic power are
one and the same. Brahman is the Atman and the Atman
is the Brahman. The one supreme power through which
all things have been brought into being is one with the
inmost self in each man's heart. 3 The Upaniads do not
uphold the theory of grace in the same spirit as the Vedas
do. We do not have appeals to the Vedic gods, who were
the sources of material prosperity for increase of happiness,
but only prayers for deliverance from sorrow.

The emphasis on sorrow is sometimes interpreted as
indicating an extravagant pessimism on the part of the
Indian ris. It is not so. The religion of the Vedas
certainly was more joyous, but it was a lower form of religion,
where thought never penetrated beneath the husk of things.
It was a religion expressing the delight of man at being
in a world full of pleasures. The gods were feared and also
trusted. Life on earth was simple and sweet innocence.
The spiritual longing of the soul rebukes light-hearted
joyousness and provokes reflection on the purpose of man's
existence. Discontent with the actual is the necessary
precondition of every moral change and spiritual rebirth.
The pessimism of the Upaniads is the condition of all
philosophy. Discontent prevails to enable man to effect

Tait. Up. Brh. Up., i. 4, 10.

3 See Chindogya, iii 14. Of Augustine : " I asked the earth for God,
and it answered me, ' I am not He ' ; I asked the sea and the depths and
the creeping things, and they answered, ' We are not the God, seek thon
above us.' I asked the breezy gales, and the airy universe, and all its
denizens replied, ' Anaximenes is mistaken, I am not God ' ; I asked the
heaven, sun, moon, stars, ' Neither are we,' say they, ' the God whom thou
seekest ' ; and I asked unto all things which stand about the gateways of
any flesh (the senses), ' Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He ; tell
me something of Him/ and they cried with a loud voice, ' Ha made us/ "
The search goes on until the inward self is questioned, when the answer is :
" Thy God is unto thee, even the life of thy life " (Confusions, x. chap. 6),

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 28

an escape from it. If there is no way of escape, if no deliver-
ance is sought after, then dissatisfaction is mischievous.
The pessimism of the Upaniads has not developed to
such an extent as to suppress all endeavour and generate
inertia. There was enough faith in life to support all
genuine search for truth. In the words of Earth : " The
Upaniads are much more instinct with the spirit of specu-
lative daring than the sense of suffering and weariness." r
" Within the limits of the Upaniads there are indeed
few explicit references to the misery of the life caught in
the ceaseless cycle of death and birth. And its authors
are saved from pessimism by the joy they feel at the message
of redemption they proclaim." * The formulation of the
theory of samsara or rebirth is no proof that the Upaniads
are pessimistic. Life on earth is the means of self-perfectiont|
We have to undergo the discipline of samsara in our efforts
towards the higher joy and the complete possession of
spiritual truth. That which gives zest to life is the supreme
motive of the joy of self-conquest. Samsara is only al
succession of spiritual opportunities. Life is a stage in
spiritual perfection, a step in the passage to the infinite.
It is the time for preparing the soul for eternity. Life is
no empty dream and the world no delirium of spirit. In
the later versions of rebirth in Indian thought we miss
this ennobling ideal, and birth becomes the result of an
error of the soul and samsara a dragging chain.

At the stage of life represented by the Brahmajias, the
simple religion of the Vedic hymns was one of sacrifices.
Men's relations with the gods were mechanical, a question
of give and take, profit and loss. The revival of spirituality
was the need of the age immersed in formalism. In the
Upaniads we find a return to the fresh springs of
spiritual life. They declare that the soul will not obtain
salvation by the performance of sacrifices. It can be ob-
tained only by the truly religious life, based on an insight into
the heart of the universe. Perfection is inward and spiritual,
not outward and mechanical. We cannot make a man
dean by washing his shirt. A consciousness of the identity

1 Religions of India, p. 84.

* Cave: Redemption. Hindu and Christian, p. 64.

24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

of one's own soul with the great All-soul is the essence of
a truly spiritual life. The uselessness of ritual, the futility
of sacrifices as means to salvation are brought out. God
is to be honoured by spiritual worship and not external
Ceremony. We cannot save ourselves by praising God.
We cannot impress Him by sacrifices. The authors
of the Upaniads had a sufficient sense of the historic
to know that their protest would become ineffective
if it should demand a revolution in things. They
; therefore ask only for a change in the spirit. They
* reinterpret sacrifices and allegorise them. In some passages l
v we are asked to meditate on the horse-sacrifice.* This
meditative effort helps us to realise the meaning of the
sacrifice, and it is said to be quite as valuable as making
a sacrifice. By giving detailed descriptions of the kind of
plank, the nature of the wood, etc., they show that they
are not indifferent to the sacrificial religion. While adhering
i to the forms they try to refine them. They say that all
! sacrifices axe for the sake of realising the self of man. Life
% itself is a sacrifice. " The true sacrifice is man ; his first
Uwenty-four years are his morning libation ... in hunger,
in thirst, in abstinence from pleasure standeth his conse-
cration. ... In his eating and drinking and in his pleasures
he keeps a holy festival, and in his laughter and feasting
and marrying he sings hymns of praise. Self-discipline,
generosity, straightforwardness, ahirhsa,3 and truth in
speech, these are his payments, and the bath of purification
when the sacrifice is over is death." 4 We are told how
the divine nature every day sacrifices itself ; by its sacrifice
do we live. Sacrifice is made to mean not feasting but
Denunciation. Make every action, every feeling and every
thought an offering to God. Let your life be one sacrament
or yajfia. Sometimes we are told that the sacrifices are

* Brh, Up., i. i, z. * Agvamedha. I Innocence*

Chin. Up., iii Ci. Isaiah Iviii. 6-7 : " Is not this the fast that I have
chosen ? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens,
and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not
to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that ate cast
out to thy house ? When thon seest the naked, that thou cover him, and
that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ? " See Plato: Euthyph***,
14. ; Ltwt, 906, D. Jowett'i Edition.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 2$

xy as preparations for the higher path. Nobody can

tread the higher road without fulfilling the requirements of
the lower. Sacrifices are necessary for the unenlightened,
though they alone will not do. They give us admission
to the world of the fathers, which after a temporary sojourn
in the moon leads back to a new earthly existence. Cere-
monialism is contrasted with spiritual worship. 1 There
are occasions when the sacrificial and priestly religion
strikes them as superficial, and then they give vent to all
their irony. They describe a procession of dogs to march
like a procession of the priests, each holding the tail of the
other in front and saying, " Om ! Let us eat. Om, let us
drink . . . etc." * Thus the rigid ritual of the Brahmanas,
which gave little comfort to the weak heart of man, was
held in check in the Upaniads.

The attitude of the Upaniads is not favourable to
the sacredness of the Vedas. Like the rationalistic thinkers
of a later day, they adopt a double attitude towards Vedic
authority. They consider the Veda to be of supernatural
origin, as when they say, " Just as when a fire is laid
with damp wood, clouds of smoke spread all around, so in
truth from this great being, has been breathed forth the
IJg-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, the hymns of the
Atharvas and the Arigirasas, the narratives, the histories,
the sciences, the mystical problems, the poems, the proverbs,
and the expositions all these have been breathed forth
from Him." 3 It is also recognised that the Vedic know-
ledge is much inferior to the true divine insight/ and will
not liberate us. NSrada said : "I know the Rg-Veda, Sir,
the Yajur, the S5ma-Veda, with all these I know only the
Mantras and the sacred books, I do not know the Self." 5
The Muncjaka Upaniad says: "Two kinds of knowledge
must be known, the higher and the lower. The lower
knowledge is that which the Rg, Sama, Atharva Veda,
Ceremonial, Grammar give . . . but the higher knowledge is
that by which the indestructible Brahman is apprehended." *

* See also Chin. -Up., i. I, xo. * Ibid., i. 12, 4. 5.

1 Brh. Up., ii. 4. xo.

4 See Chftndogya, v. 3. 10. Brh., 3. 5. x ; iv. 4. 21 ; vi. a. i. Kau^Itaki, i. ;
Tait, ii. 4; Katha, i*. 23.

$ Chin. Up., vtt. 2. * Muptfaka, L s. 4. 5.

2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS

VI

THE PROBLEMS DISCUSSED IN THE UPANISADS

The central theme of the Upaniads is the problem
of philosophy. It is the search for what is true. Dis-
satisfaction with things and second causes suggests the
questions, which we read at the beginning of the vet&&-
vatara: "Whence are we born, where do we live, and
whither do we go ? O, ye who know Brahman, tell us
at whose command we abide here whether in pain or in
pleasure. Should time or nature, or necessity or chance,
or the elements be considered to be the cause, or he who
is called Purua, the man that is the Supreme spirit ? "
In the Kena Upaniad the pupil asks, " At whose wish
does the mind sent forth proceed on its errand ? At whose
command does the first breath go forth, at whose wish do
we utter this speech ? What god . directs the eye or the
ear ? " * The thinkers did not take experience to be an
inexplicable datum, as common sense does. They wondered
whether the report of the senses could be taken as final.
Are the mental faculties by which we acquire experience
self-existent, or are they themselves effects of something
mightier still, which lies behind them ? How can we
consider physical objects, effects and products as they
are, to be quite as real as their causes ? There must
be something ultimate at the back of it all, a self-
existent, in which alone the mind can rest. Knowledge,
mind, the senses and their objects are all finite and con-
ditioned. In the field of morals we find that we cannot
get true happiness from the finite. The pleasures of the
world are transient, being cut off by old age and death.
Only thfe infinite gives durable happiness. In religion we
cry for eternal life. All these force upon us the conviction
of a timeless being, a spiritual reality, the object of philo-
sophical quest, the fulfilment of our desires, and the goal
of religion. The seers of the Upaniads try to lead us to
this central reality which is infinite existence (sat), absolute
truth (cit), and pure delight (Snanda). The prayer of

i. i.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 27

every human heart is " Lead me from the unreal to the
real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death
to immortality." x

We shall deal with the philosophy of the Upaniads
under the two heads of metaphysics and ethics. We shall
present their views of ultimate reality, the nature of the
world, and the problem of creation under metaphysics,
and their analysis of the individual, his destiny, his ideal,
the relation of karma to freedom, the highest conception
of mukti or release, and the doctrine of rebirth under ethics.

VII

THE NATURE OF REALITY

In solving the question of the nature of ultimate reality,
the Upaniad thinkers seek to supplement the objective
vision of the Vedic seers by a subjective one. The highest
conception reached in the Vedic hymns was that of the one
reality (Ekam Sat), which realises itself in all the variety
of existence. This conclusion is strengthened in the
Upaniads, where the problem is sometimes approached by
way of a philosophical analysis of the nature of the self
which they call the Atman. The etymology of this word
is obscure. In the Kg-veSa x. 16. 3 it means breath or
the vital essence. Gradually it acquired TSi^Eoeaniiag' of
soul or^seir^TTKe theory of the true self or Atman is not
set out with any clearness or fullness of detail, nor are
isolated statements connected into a coherent system. In
a dialogue between the teacher Prajapati and the pupil
Indra, narrated in the Chandogya Upaniad,* we find a
progressive development in the definition of self through
the four stages of (i) the bodily self, (2) the empirical self,
(3) the transcendental self, and (4) the absolute self. The
question discussed is not so much psychological as meta-
physical. What is the nature of the self of man, his central
being? Prajapati opens the discussion by giving certain

* Asato m sad gamaya, tamaso mft jyotir gamaya, mrtyor mft amrtaifa-
gamaya. Bfh. Up., i. 3. 27.

* viii. 3-12.

88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

general characteristics which the true sell should possess.
"The self which is free from sin, free from old age, from
death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires
nothing but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing
but what it ought to imagine, that it is which we must try
to understand." z It is the subject which persists through-
out the changes, the common factor in the states of waking,
dream, sleep, death, rebirth and final deliverance.* It is
the simple truth that nothing can destroy. Death does
not touch it nor vice dissolve it. Permanence, continuity,
unity, eternal activity are its characteristics. It is a world
self-complete. There is nothing outside of it to set against
it. Modern criticism will object to the whole procedure as
a case of petitio principti. By the characteristics of self-
containedness and self-completeness being assumed, the
solution is taken for granted. But as we shall see, this
line of procedure has its own meaning. Prajapati makes
it clear that the self of man consists in the truly subjective,
which can never become an object. It is the person that
sees, not the object seen.s It is not the bundle of qualities
called the " me," but the I which remains beyond and behind
inspecting all these qualities. It is the subject in the truest
sense, and it can never become the object. Much of the con-
tent of the self as ordinarily used can become an object. The
argument assumes that whatever becomes an object belongs
to the not-self. We must strip away everything of our
actual self alien to or different from the self. The first
answer given is that the body which is born, grows up and
decays and dies, is the true self. The self, according to
Prajipati, is indeed he who is seen when you look into
another's eye or a pail of water or a mirror. It is suggested
that we observe a picture even to the very hairs and nails.
To indicate that it is not the self, Prajapati asks Indra
to adorn himself, put on the best clothes and look again
into the water and the mirror, and he sees his likeness
frell adorned with best clothes and clean. A doubt occurs
to Indra. " As this self in the shadow or the water is well
adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed
when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body

viii. 7. i. See Brh. Up*, iv. 4, 3. J vitt. 7. 3.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANKA0S 29

is well cleaned, that self will also be blind if the body
is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is
crippled, and perish, in fact, as soon as the body perishes.
I see no good in this/' z India approaches his teacher
Praj&pati, and after another long interval is told that
" he who moves about happy in dreams is the self." The
true self is not the body which is exposed to all suffering
and imperfections, which is a material phenomenon. The
body is only an instrument used by consciousness, while
consciousness is not the product of the body. And now
Indra is told that the dreaming subject is the self, but he
feels another difficulty. " Though it is true that that self
is not rendered faulty by faults of body, nor struck when
it is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they
struck him in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes
even conscious as it were of pain and sheds tears, therefore
I see no good in this." a Prajapati took the dream states
instead of other mental experiences, because dreams being
more independent of body are crucial in their nature. The
self is supposed to roam untrammelled in dreams. In
them the mind is said to float free of the accidents of body.
This view equates the self with the ever-growing and changing
mental experiences. This is the empirical self, and Indra
rightly recognises that this empirical self is subject to the
accidents of experience. It cannot be the subject, for every
moment it is changing. Though it is independent of body,
dream states do not seem to be self-existent, which the
true self or Atman must be. The ego dependent on the
limitations of time and birth cannot be said to be eternal.
The self tethered to a local and temporal environment is
a creature of time. It is the wanderer in the world of
samsira. It constructs for itself an imperfect world out
of imperfect data. It is not indestructible, nor has it
boundless freedom. We seem to require a subject as the
ground and sustainer of all experience, a vaster reality of
which the dream states as well as waking experience are
only imperfect revelations. A mere flux of states cannot
be sustained by itself. The empirical self is not eternal
in ltd own right. Indra again approaches Praj&pati, explains

* vitt. 9* I* viU. so, a. 3.

80 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

to him his position, and after a long time is taught. " When
a man being asleep, reposing and at perfect rest, sees no
dreams, that is the self/ 9 * Praj&pati understands Indra's
difficulty. The self could not be reduced to a series of
states, for that would be to explain away the reality of a
permanent ego, and make Atman subject to the vicissitudes
of our chance experiences. Indra has to be taught that
the objects of experience require a permanent subject by
which they could be experienced. Prajapati intended to
bring out how, while a grin required a cat, everywhere
except in Alice's wonderland, a cat need not always have
a grin. The object depends upon the subject, but not the
subject on the object in the same sense. Without the self
there can be no knowledge, no art, no morality. Objects
out of relation to a self are non-existent. From the subject
are all objects and the subject itself is not a thing among
other things. To enable Indra to realise that the self is
the subject of all experiences, Prajapati employs the method
of abstraction which has its own disadvantages. Our life
is ordinarily busy with things. The world is too much
with us. Our self is lost in feelings, desires and imaginations,
and does not know what it really is. Leading the life of
mere objectivity, absorbed in the things of nature, ever
busy with the active pursuits of the world, we do not want
to waste a moment's thought on the first principle of all
things the self of man. Knowledge is taken for granted.
To reflect on it, to understand its implications, means mental
strain. In the history of European thought the question
of the possibility of knowledge is a late one, but when it
was put, it was realised that knowledge was impossible
without what Kant called the transcendental unity of
apperception, what Plotinus referred to as the " accom-
paniment " by the soul of its own mental activities. The
most elementary presentation requires the reality of self.
In the most apparently passive perceptions we realise the
activity of the self. All changes, all experiences, assume
a central self. The changes themselves are recog-
nised as changes within a whole, which we are trying to
actualise. Praj&pati wishes to bring out the necessity

' viii. ii. I.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANKADS 81

of this self by urging that the self continuously exists,
even when the waking or the dreaming experience is sus-
pended. In sleep, deep and dreamless, we have no felt
objects of experience, but we cannot on that account say
there is no self. Prajapati assumes that India will admit
the reality of a self in sleep, for the continuity of conscious*
ness, despite the temporal gaps, cannot otherwise be accounted
for. Devadatta, after good sleep, continues to be Devadatta,
since his experiences unite themselves to the system which
existed at the time when he went to sleep. They link
themselves to his thoughts and do not fly to any other's.
This continuity of experience requires us to admit a perma-
nent self underlying all contents of consciousness. That
which exists in sleep without any objects to contemplate
is the self. The mirror is not shattered simply because
nothing is seen in it. Prajapati tries to bring out the
absolute supremacy of the subject over the object, the
truth jof Yajfiavalkya's statement that even when all objects
are extinguished, the subject persists in its own light.
" When the sun has set, when the moon has set, and when the
fire is put out, the self alone is his light." l But Indra was
too much of a psychologist for Prajapati. He felt
that this self, freed from all bodily experience, from
the shapeless mass of dreams, etc., this objectless self,
is a barren fiction. If the self is not what it knows, feels
and reacts upon, if it is divorced from it and thus emptied
of its content, what remdins ? " Nothing," said Indra.
" To be free from everything is to be nothing." Gautama,
the Buddha, takes up the analogy of a tree and asks what
is that tree which is supposed to remain, after we tear away
its leaves, hew down its branches, strip off its bark, etc. ?
Peel off layer after layer of an onion, and what remains?
Nothing. Bradley points out : " The ego that pretends to
be anything either before or beyond its concrete psychical
filling is a gross fiction and a mere monster, and for no
purpose admissible. " 3 On this view in dreamless sleep
there is no self at all. Locke declares that every drowsy

1 Byb. Up., iv. 3.

* Bradley: Ethical Studits, p. 53.

s Appearance and Rtality, p. 89.

88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

nod explodes the sell theory. " In sleep and trances the
mind exists not there is no time, no succession of ideas.
To say the mind exists without thinking is a contradiction,
nonsense, nothing.' 1 x Indra seems to have been an em*
piricist ages before Locke and Berkeley. " If the soul in
a perfectly dreamless sleep thinks, feels, and wills nothing,
is the soul then at all, and if it is, how is it ? " asks Lotze.
" How often has the answer been given, that if this could
happen, the soul would have no being. Why have we not
the courage to say that as often as this happens the soul
is not ? " * Indra has the courage to declare it.3 " It is
indeed destroyed/' This has an important lesson which is
again and again forgotten in Indian thought. To deny
the life without is to destroy the god within. Those who
think that we reach the highest point attainable, in pure
subjectivity must turn to the dialogue of Indra and Praj&pati.
The condition freed from the limits imposed by the organism,
from time and space, from the existence of objects, is simple
annihilation, according to Indra. This contentless ego, this
abstract cogito of Descartes, this formal unity of Kant,
this objectless subject supposed to stand behind, unrelated
to all empirical consciousness, is an impossibility. Philo-
sophical reflection as well as psychological analysis leads
to this result. But Prajapati was trying to emphasise the
identity of the self which is unaffected by the changes of
experience. He was anxious to point out that while the
self was not exclusive of conscious states, it was not the
conscious states. Dr. McTaggart puts the whole point thus :
" What does the self include ? Everything of which it is
conscious. What does it exclude ? Equally-Everything of
which it is conscious. What can it say is not inside it ?
Nothing. What can it say is not outside it ? A single
abstraction. And any attempt to remove the paradox
destroys the self. For the two sides are inevitably con-
nected. If we try to make it a distinct individual by
separating it from all other things, it loses all content, of
which it can be conscious, and so loses the very individuality

* Berkeley's Works, vol. i. p. 34.

M*t*pb>**", Bag- Translation, vol &, p. 317,

3 Vinftiam cva upaiti.

PHILOSOPEfY OF THE UPANISADS 8*

which we started by trying to preserve. If, on the other
hand, we try to save its content, by emphasising the inclusion
at the expense of the exclusion, then the consciousness
vanishes ; and since the self has no contents, but the objects
of which it is conscious, the contents vanish also." I Indr$
shows the risks in conceiving the self as a transcendental
one. The self must be shown to be the true life of the
whole, and not a mere abstraction. Hence the next step,
when India explains to Prajapati his difficulty in the words,
"in truth that dreamless sleeping subject does not know
himself that he is, nor does he know anything that exists.
He is gone to utter annihilation, I see no good in this." 2
Prajapati points out how it is an identity, running in and
through differences. The whole world is the one process
of the self-realisation of the absolute thought. " Magha-
van ! 3 This body is mortal and all is subject to death*
It is the abode of the self, which is immortal and without
body. He is the person of the eye, the eye itself is the
instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this,
he is the self, the nose is the instrument of smelling, etc." 4
The self is shown to be not an abstract formal principle,
but an active universal consciousness, existing, to adopt
Hegel's phraseology, both in itself and for itself. It is
simple self-sameness as well as varied distinctions. It is
both subject and object. The objects we know in experi-
ence are based on it. The true infinite self is not the self
which is simply not finite. It is none of the limited things,
but yet the basis of all of them. It is the universal self,
which is immanent as well as transcendent. The whole
universe lives and breathes in it. " The moon and the
sun are its eyes, the four quarters of the sky its ears, the
wind its breath. "5 It is the blazing light that burns in

1 He$d\an Cosmology, sec. 27. * viii. xx. x.

s Another name for Indra.

viii. 12. Cf. Plato, who distinguishes in the Tim**$, two souls, one
immortal and the other mortal. The mortal soul consists of passions and
affections. It is the empirical ego which identifies itself with the perishing
world of change and death. The immortal soul is the intelligent principle
common to man and the world, the divine spark enclosed in human person-
ality (Timmus and Ph*do). We have also the same distinction in Aristotle's
inUlhctus a& ens as opposed to perishing mind and memory.

s Muntfaka, i. x ; Chan., iii. 13. 7.

4

84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

the deeps of personality, the universal k&a from which
all creatures proceed, 1 the vital principle of creation,* the
subject in which the entire world moves trembling.s There
is nothing outside it. It contains all consciousness of objects
implicitly. There is nothing in the universe which is not
involved in the infinite self in us. This self which embraces
all is the sole reality containing within itself all the facts
of nature and all the histories of experience. Our small
selves are included in it and transcended by it. This is
the subject which is more than the flux of presentations,
which are only imperfect revelations of it. All our states
of consciousness revolve round this central light. Abolish
it, they vanish. Without a subject there will be no flux,
no order of sensations in space or sequences in time. It
renders possible memory and introspection, knowledge and
morality. The Upaniads contend that this subject is the
universal ground which is in all individuals. It is hidden
in all things and pervades all creation. " There is no second
outside it, no other distinct term." 4 " As breathing he is
named breath, as speaking speech, as seeing eye, as hearing
ear, as understanding mind, all these are but names for
his operations." 5 It is only the self thus understood that
can be looked upon as the permanent subject persisting
in waking and dreaming, death and sleep, bondage and
liberation. It is present throughout, surveying all the
worlds. It is the universal subject and yet the universal
object. It sees and yet sees not. As the Upaniad has it,
" When then he sees not, yet is he seeing, although he sees
not ; since for the seer there is no interruption of seeing
because he is imperishable ; but there is no second beside
him, no other distinct from him, for him to see." 6 The
self is the whole. "I indeed am this whole universe. "7
This universal self by its very nature cannot be per-
ceived. As Samkara puts it, " The witness self illumines
consciousness, but never itself is in consciousness." It is
not a datum of experience, not an object, though all objects

1 Chin., i. 91. * Chin., i. zz. 5.

3 Kaftha, vi. i. 4 Brh., iv. 3. 23 ; Chin., viii. i. 3.

s Brh., i. 4. 7 ; Kanfltaki. iii. * Brh., iv. 3. 23.

9 Aham eva idam sarvo'smi.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 85

are for it. It is not a thought, but all thoughts are for it.
It is not a thing seen, but is the principle of all seeing. As
Kant would say, the condition of the empirically known
is not the known itself. " What I must presuppose in order
to know an object/' says Kant, " I cannot know as an
object." The subject of all experience cannot itself be an
experience. If it is experience, the question arises, by
whom is it known ? Knowledge always works dually.
This self, therefore, is indefinable. Like all ultimate prin-
ciples, it has only to be accepted. It is the explanation
of all else, though it itself remains unexplained. The old
difficulty of Comte that the subject cannot turn round
and catch itself is not altogether imaginary. " The soul
which is not this or that, nor aught else, is intangible, for
it cannot be laid hold of." z The Upanisads refuse to identify
the self with the body, or the series of mental states or the
presentation continuum or the stream of consciousness.
The self cannot be a relation which requires a ground of
relations, nor a connexion of contents, which is unintelligible
without an agent who connects. We are obliged to accept the
reality of a universal consciousness which ever accompanies
the contents of consciousness and persists even when there
are no contents. This fundamental identity, which is the
presupposition of both self and not-self, is called the Atiqan.
None can doubt its reality.*

The MSncJukya Upaniad gives us an analysis of con-
sciousness leading to the same conclusion. We shall start
with a free rendering of what it says on this point. 3 The
soul has three conditions which are all included in a fourth.
They are waking, dreaming, sleeping, and what is called
turiya. The first condition is that of wakefulness, where the
self is conscious of the common world of external objects. It
enjoys the gross things. Here the dependence on the body
is predominant. The second condition is that of dreaming,
where the self enjoys subtle things/ fashions for itself a
new world of forms with the materials of its waking ex-
perience. The spirit is said to roam freely unfettered by

., iii. 7. 3; iv. 4. 22.
* Na hi ka&dt sandigdhe aha** 1 vfi nhaih veti. Bh&matl.
s i. 2. 7. 4 See Bj-h., iv. 3. 9. 14.

86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE U?AM$ADS

the bonds of the body. The third is the condition of sound
sleep, where we have neither dreams nor desires. It is
called suupti. The soul is said to become temporarily
one with Brahman and enjoy bliss. In deep sleep we are
lifted above all desires and freed from the vexations of
spirit. The oppositions are, so to say, lost in this pure-
objectless-knowing subject condition. 1 Samkara observes
that the phenomena of duality caused by the action of the
mind are present in the other two conditions, but absent
here. In several passages we are told that we taste the
nature of absolute bliss in dreamless sleep, where a man
is cut off from the distracting world. The soul is divine
in origin, though clogged with the flesh. In sleep it is said
to be released from the shackles of the body and to gain
back its own nature. We read in an Aristotelian fragment,
" whenever the soul is alone and by itself in sleep, it recovers
by its proper nature." * The natural divinity of the soul
reasserts itself when freed from the tyranny of the flesh.
" He giveth his beloved truth in sleep." The analogy of
eternal dreamless sleep is used to bring out how all outer
activities are then suppressed. But there was the likelihood
of its being confused with sheer unconsciousness. So the
Man<Jukya Upaniad points out that the highest is not
this dreamless sleep, but another, a fourth state of the soul,
a pure intuitional consciousness, where there is no knowledge
of objects internal or external. In deep sleep the spirit
dwells in a region far above the changeful life of sense in
absolute union with Brahman. The turiya condition brings
out the positive aspect of the negative emphasised in the
condition of deep sleep. " The fourth is not that which is
' conscious of the subjective, nor that which is conscious of
the objective, nor that which is conscious of both, nor
that which is simple consciousness, nor that which is an
all-sentient mass, nor that which is all darkness. It is
unseen, transcendent, inapprehensible, uninferrable, un-
thinkable, indescribable, the sole essence of the conscious-
ness of self, the completion of the world, the ever peace-
ful, all blissful, the one unit, this indeed is the At man." 3

* See Brh., ii. x ; KautltaH, iv.; Chftn., vi. 8. i ; Bratau, iv* 4; iv. 3. 7,

* Fragment a.* I i. 7.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 87

It is symbolised by the* Aumkara, with its parts of A-U-M,
the waking, the dreaming and the sleeping states. It is
not an exclusive self, but the common ground of all, their
basis of identity. 1 In deep sleep we may be said to reach
an eternal unity in which all distinctions vanish and the
entire universe is obliterated. But since this cannot be
considered the highest state, a higher positive is suggested.
To the empirical individual, if the not-self goes, his indi-
viduality also vanishes. So there is a suspicion that the
abolition of the objects would reduce the self into a thin
abstraction, but in the highest universal self the reality of
all objects is included. Objects of the world are known
and loved by us only in so far as they enter our self, which
comprehends in itself all objects of the universe and has
nothing outside. It is the unchanged and persistent identity
which continues in the midst of all change. The moods
pass and vary but the self remains the same. It has no
beginning, no end, though the objects of which it is conscious
have a beginning and an end. " Never has the cessation
of consciousness been experienced, or witnessed directly ;
or if it has been, then the witness, the experiencer, himself
still remains behind as the continued embodiment of that
same consciousness." * It is the foundation of all existence,
the one witness to and the only possible support of all we
know, though the nature of the dependence of the objects
of knowledge on the subject so insistently repeated is not
very clear. The three conditions of the self, waking, dream-
ing, sleeping, together with that which comprehends them
all, are called respectively the VaiSvanara, the Taijasa, the
Prijfia and the Turiya states.3

From this analysis of the three states of dreaming,
waking and sleeping, it follows that all of them are unreal,
though not non-existent. " What is naught at the beginning
and naught at the end must surely be naught in the middle."
Judged by it, waking experience is not real. If it is said

< Xrisu dh&masu yat tulyam s&m&nyam Gaugapftda's Kirikas, i. 23.

* See Devi Bhftgavata, iii. 32. 15-16.

s The Buddhist discrimination of the four planes of k&ma, rfipa, ar&pa
and lokottara, answers to this division.

Gaugapftda's Kftdkftt, i. 0.

8* PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

that the dream states are unreal since they do not cohere
with the rest of our experience, may it not be urged that
the waking experience does not cohere with dreams ?
Dreams may be coherent within themselves, even as waking
experience is within its own bounds. The worlds seem to
be real only in relation to the particular moods of the self.
It is not right to apply the standard of waking experience
to the dream world and condemn it. Dreaming and waking
experiences are both unreal though in different degrees.
The condition of dreamless sleep is one in which we have
no distinct cognitions of anything internal or external. It
is a distinctionless mass under the pall of darkness, com-
parable to Hegel's night, in which all cows are black. We
have here the negative condition of the highest state, freedom
from sorrow. But Atman is not this absence of unhappiness.
It is positive bliss. It is neither waking nor dreaming nor
sleep, but the fourth witnessing to as well as transcending
the three. The negative descriptions given indicate that
we as finite cannot know the positive nature of it. The
fourth is realised, not so much by negating the three as by
transcending them all. It is impossible for us finite beings
to define the character of the ideal reality, though the
Upanisads are quite emphatic that it is not a blank. Yet
to refute false ideas of the highest and to point the truth
that it is no abstraction, they indulge in inadequate con-
cepts. Strictly speaking we cannot say anything of it.
Yet for purposes of discussion, we are obliged to use intel-
lectual concepts with their limited validity.

The problem of the self is one of the most important
discussed in the Upanisads. It occurs again as the
Adhyatma Vidya in the Bhagavadglta and the VedSnta
Sutras. The analysis of the nature of self is the legacy of
the Upani$ads bequeathed to the subsequent systems of
thought. It has given rise to many misconceptions. Con-
tradictory doctrines of the nature of self are held by Buddha
and axhkara, Kapila and Patafijali, who all trace their views
to the Upanisads. It was not the intention of the Upani-
ads to make of the deeper self an abstract nothingness. It
is the fullest reality, the completest consciousness, and not a
mere negative calm, untroubled by any unrest and unpolluted

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 69

by any blot or blemish. The logic of thought has in it
a negative movement, where it rises by the repudiation of
the finite, but this is only a stage in the onward march.
By the negative process the self has to recognise that its
essence is not in its finitude or self-sufficiency. By the
positive method it finds its true self in the life and being of
all. All things exist within this true self. Some Buddhists
make of the self mere emptiness, and on this assumption
rightly dismiss it as an abstraction of the metaphysician.
We cannot find this self in any corner of the field of con-
sciousness. Not finding it there, we rush to the conclusion
that it is nothing. The Samkhya takes it to be a simple
and pure, though passive, spirit, which in spite of its apparent
simplicity has some character and uniqueness, and so we
get the doctrine of the boundless plurality of souls. Some
Vedantins adopt the view that the true self or Brahman
is pure, calm, peaceful and untroubled, and hold that there
is only one self. By throwing the emphasis on the passive
side they run the risk of reducing it to mere emptiness.
There are Buddhistic sects which reduce the self to mere
intelligence, which can somehow think without any contents.

VIII

BRAHMAN

We may now proceed to define the ultimate reality from
the objective side, when it is called Brahman 1 . In the

* The question how Brahman came to denote the supreme reality of the
Upanisads has been answered in different ways by different scholars.
Haug holds that Brahman means prayer, being derived from the root
Brh, to swell or to grow. It is that which swells or grows. Sacred
prayers cause the growth, and then it came to mean the force of nature, and
later the supreme reality. According to Roth, Brahman is first the force
of will directed to the gods, then it came to mean a sacred formula, and then
the Absolute. Oldenberg thinks that in the Vedic times, when the world
was peopled with many gods and mysterious forces capable of producing
happiness and misery, the most powerful man was the medicine man, who
wielded the magic spell and produced whatever effect was desired. Then
Brahman meant a magic spell. During the time of the Brihmanas it
referred to the sacred hymns used in the sacrifices. Perhaps some of these
hymns were used as spells for producing magical effects. The word was
slowly transferred to the central energy which produces the world* Deussen

40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

$

g-Veda we have seen that the monistic idea was arrived
at. The Upani$ads undertake the task of a more logical
definition of the Eternal Spirit ever acting and ever resting.
In another place we have traced the progress from the
lower imperfect conceptions to the more adequate ones
as formulated in the Taittiriya Upaniad. x In chapter iii
the son approaches the father with the request to teach
him the nature of reality from which aU things flow
and to which all return. The son is given the general
features of Brahman, and is asked to discover the content
which satisfies these requirements. " That from which these
beings are born, that in which when born they live, and that
into which they enter at their death, that is Brahman." a
Things of the world are ever changing their forms, and
they cannot be considered to be real in an ultimate
sense. Is there anything unalterably fixed underlying the
universe of changing things, namarupa, name and form, as
the Upanisads call them ? The son considers matter to
be the ultimate reality. It is the most prominent aspect
of the outer world. This view is held by the lokSyatas, or
the materialists. The son soon discovers that matter cannot
account for the life phenomena. Vegetable growth requires
a different explanation. He hits upon prSLna or life as
the ultimate principle. 3 Matter does not hold the secret
of life, though life cannot exist without matter. There is
something in life which enables it to absorb and transmute
the inorganic elements. This something is the vital principle
which in man helps to change the vegetable product into
blood, bone and muscle. It is the principle which pervades
the universe and binds human beings with the rest of
creation. 4 The son is sure that life belongs to a different
order from matter though prana is the essence of the body. 5

holds that Brahman is prayer, which elevates the soul, when we perceive the
truth, and the truth came to be denoted by the word. Max Mailer traces
it to " word/' as is evident from the name Brhaspati or Vftcaspati, lord
of speech. That which utters is Brahman (S.S., pp. 52, 70), We need not
trouble ourselves about the etymology of the word. To us, it is tilear. Brahman
means reality, which grows, breathes or swells.

t Sea Reign of Religion, chap. xiii. iii. I.

i Prtna means breath. See R.V., i. 66. x ; iii. 53. n ; x, 59. 6,
4 Se* Pradna, ii. s Bra., i. 3. 90. See Chin., vi. a. 4.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE! UPANISADS 41

t

Again he is dissatisfied with the solution of pr&qta as the
ultimate reality, for conscious phenomena which we come
across in the animal world are not explicable by the prin-
ciple of life. Manas, or perceptual consciousness, is a pro-
duct distinct from life and matter. It seems to be the
crown of the vital process. So the son believes that manas
is Brahman. Even this will not suffice, for there are intel-
lectual facts which mere perceptual consciousness does
not take into account. Vijfiina or intelligence is Brahman. 1
Some schools of Buddhism adopt this view. The son realises
that even intellectual self-consciousness is incomplete,
being subject to discord and imperfecti6n. It is the aim
of the Upaniads to point out that elements of duality
and externality persist at the intellectual level, however
much we may try to overcome them. In knowledge and
morality we have the subject-object relation. There must
be something higher than mere intellect, where existence is
no longer formulated in terms of knowledge. The unity of
existence requires that we must transcend the intellectual
level. Thought, as ordinarily understood, deals with objects
viewed as beyond or other than the process of thinking. It
reaches outwards to a somewhat other than and contrasted
with itself. Reality is different from thought, and can
be reached in the turiya state of highest immediacy, which
transcends thought and its distinctions, where the individual
coincides with the central reality. Ananda or delight is
the highest fruition, where the knower, the known and
the knowledge become one. Here the philosophical quest
terminates, the suggestion being that there is nothing
higher than ananda. This ananda is active enjoyment
or unimpeded exercise of capacity. It is not sinking
into nothingness, but the perfection of being.* " The
discerning see by their superior knowledge the Atman
which shines all bliss and immortality." 3 Strictly speaking.
we cannot give any account of the highest reality of ananda,
Even the question whether it is abstract or concrete is
illogical. Intellectual necessities require us to give some
description. It is truer to consider it concrete than abstract.

See Ait, ill. 3 I Tait., & 5-

See Murtaka Up. ' Muirfak*. ii. g.

42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS

Each higher principle is more concrete and inclusive than
the lower one, and therefore nanda, which is Brahman,
is the most inclusive of all. From it all things flow. By
it all things are sustained, and into it all things are dis-
solved. The different parts, the mineral world, the plant
life, the animal kingdom, and the human society, are not
related to the highest in any abstract or mechanical way.
They are one in and through that which is universal about
them. All parts in the universe share in the light of this
universal spirit and possess specific features on account
of the special functions which they have to perform. The
parts are not self-subsistent factors, but are dependent
aspects of the one. " Sir, on what does the infinite rest ?
On its own greatness or not even on greatness." Every-
thing else hangs on it and it hangs on nothing. The organic
and living nature of the relation of the parts to the whole
is brought out in many passages. " As all spokes are con-
tained in the axle, and in the felly of a wheel, thus also,
all beings and all gods, all worlds and all organs, also are
contained in that self." l " There is that ancient tree
whose roots grow upward and whose branches go downward.
That is the bright, Brahman, the immortal, all worlds are
contained in it and no one goes beyond it." a

We have defined reality as 5nanda, and thus contra-
dicted the statement frequently made that the ultimate
is indefinable. Constructive attempts at obtaining a com-
prehensive reality generally end in a concrete whole. If,
however, we try to reconcile the defined reality with the
undefined one, which also the Upanisads support, then
we shall have to say that Snanda in the present context
is not the ultimate reality, but only the highest conceivable
by the thought of man. It is not the absolute or the eternal
being which ever exists in its own essentiality. To the
logical mind, the whole is real, and within it falls the diversity
of the world. The concrete Snanda is the pramSnika
sattS, or the real revealed to thought, and answers to
the highest Brahman accepted by RSmSnuja. The pure
Brahman free from all the predicates is the nirupSdhika

Bjtu, ii. 5. *5-

* Katha* ii. 6. i. See also Tait., i. 10; B.C., xv. i.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 48

satta, or the Nirguna Brahman accepted by Samkara. The
former is an organised whole ; the latter is an indefinable
real. Yet even according to Samkara it is the latter that
shows itself as the former. The one of intuition appears
as the whole of knowledge. 1

This difference of view has resulted in a good deal of
discussion about the interpretation of Snanda in the
Upaniads. Samkara squarely says that anandamaya, by
its suffix maya, indicates that it is only a phenomenal effect.
Unless it were different from Atman, there can be no talk
of reasoning about it. If it were pure Brahman, it will
be inappropriate to give it form and attribute to it head,
limbs, as the Taittiriya Upanisjad does. If ananda were
Brahman there would be no separate mention of Brahman
as the supporting tail of ananda. 3 So Samkara concludes,
" Anandamaya Atman is an effect, and not the uncon-
ditioned Atman." RamSnuja, on the other hand, argues that
this ananda is Brahman. The suffix of maya indicates
only fullness or pracurya. Though with regard to matter,
life, etc., it is clearly stated that there is some other inside,
anyo 'ntara Atma, no such inner reality is asserted for ananda.
Ascribing limbs, etc., is nothing more than kalpana or im-
agination. Puccham Brahma need not be taken as implying
any difference between Snanda and Brahman. The two
may be related as whole and part,3 which is sometimes the
significance of the accusative usage. Immediately after the
reference to anandamaya, it is said in the Upaniad
" sokamayata," " he desired," and this masculine gender
can only refer to anandamaya, and not to puccham Brahma,

* The Upani$ads are definite about the fact that the supreme is in*
definable, though they give intellectual accounts of it which are not abso-
lutely true. If any logical description be true at all, it is R&m&nuja's way
of putting it. Saifakara, in the true spirit of the Upani?ads, contends that
there is a higher than the logical highest, which is R&m&nuja's. In discussing
the philosophy of axhkara, we shall see how he establishes the inadequacy
of the highest categories to the reality intended by them. He contends
that we cannot say whether the absolute is finite or infinite, or both or neither.
It is the same with ail relations like whole and part, substance and quality,
cause and effect. A rational demonstration of the limits of thought such
as the one we have in &aihkara is rendered possible only by the intervening
of the great Buddhist tradition between the Upanigads and Saihkara.

Brahma puccham prati?thft. , s Samud&yasamud&yfbh&va.

44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

which is neuter. Other forms of bliss, like priya, moda,
are included within the whole of inanda, and the disciple
reaches his final resting-place when he gets to ftnanda.
We have many cases in the same Upaniad where the
word ftnanda is used as a synonym for final reality.

It is obvious that the whole controversy is due to the
doubt whether finanda is to be looked upon as the logical
highest or the ultimate being. The Upaniads did not
draw any hard and fast line of distinction between the
simple one of intuition supported by Samkara and the
concrete whole of Rmnuja. If we separate the two,
it will become impossible for us to admit any distinction
or value in the world of concrete existence. The Upaniads
imply that the I&vara is practically one with Brahman.
Very strict usage and meticulous philosophic accuracy
require us to say that there is the slightest conceivable
diminution from the absolute when we come to the self-
conscious, I am I. 1 This quasinought is quite enough for
Samkara to precipitate pure being, the basal thought and fact
of all, into the world of space, time and cause. The Upaniads
by implication admit that the moment we think the pure
being, we make nothing the principle of distinction and
difference, equally basal. The self-conscious God, who later
develops into the organised whole of existence, is the maxi-
mum of being and the minimum of non-being. He is least
penetrated with objectivity and touched by externality.
The One is revealed in the existences of the world, and that is
why we are able to ascertain the degrees of reality possessed
by the objects of the world by measuring the distance
separating them from the One. Each lower degree con*
sists in a diminution of the higher, though throughout
the scale of existences from the highest to the lowest we
have the revelation of Brahman as well as the common
characters of space, time and cause. The lower things are
far away from the simple being than the higher ones, so
.much so that the Snandamaya of the Upani$ads, the
concrete Brahman of RSmnuja, the I&vara of aihkara,
is the nearest to it. Nothing nearer can be thought. The
supreme Brahman or ananda at the level of vijfi&na or

., i. 4, fo.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 45

self-consciousness becomes the personal I&vara with a
voluntary limitation. God or self is the ground of unity,
and matter or not-self becomes the principle of plurality. 1

IX

BRAHMAN AND ATMAN

The two, the objective and the subjective, the Brahman
and the Atman, the cosmic and the psychical principles, are
looked upon as identical. Brahman is Atman. 2 " He who
is this Brahman in man, and who is that in the sun, those
are one." 3 The transcendent conception of God held in
the Rg-Veda is here transformed into an immanent one.
The infinite is not beyond the finite but in the finite. The
subjective character of the Upaniad teaching is responsible
for this change. The identity between the subject and
the object was realised in India before Plato was born.
Deussen speaks of it thus : " If we strip this thought of
the various forms, figurative to the highest degree and not
seldom extravagant, under which it appears in the Vedanta
texts, and fix our attention upon it solely in its philosophical
simplicity as the identity of God and the soul, the Brahman
and the Atman, it will be found to possess a significance
reaching far beyond the Upaniads, their time and country ;
nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for the whole
race of mankind. We are unable to look into the future,
we do not know what revelations and discoveries are in
store for the restlessly inquiring human spirit ; but one
thing we may assert with confidence whatever new and
unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may strike
out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken, and
from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a
general solution is reached of the great riddle, which presents
itself to the philosopher in the nature of things, all the more
clearly the further our knowledge extends, the key can
only be found where alone the secret of nature lies open

See Tait., i. 5 ; S.B. and K.B. on V.S., i. i. 6. 'YTait., i. 5.

I ii. 8. See also iii, xo ; Cbftn., UL 13. 7 i & M- * 4 ; B r h.^v. 5. 9 ;
ii. i. xo.

46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

to its from within, that is to say, in our Innermost self. It
was here that for the first time the original thinkers of the
Upaniads, to their immortal honour, found it when they
recognised our Atman, our inmost individual being, as the
Brahman, the inmost being of universal nature and of all
her phenomena." x This identity of subject and object is
not a vague hypothesis, but the necessary implication of
all relevant thinking, feeling and willing. The human self
cannot think, conquer and love nature, were it unthinkable,
unconquerable and unlovable. Nature is the object of
a subject, quite rational and thoroughly intelligible, capable
of control and worthy of love. It exists for man. The
stars serve as lamps for his feet, and the darkness to lull
him into slumber. Nature summons us to the spiritual
reality of life and answers the needs of the soul. It is
formed, vitalised and directed by the spirit. From the
beginning of reflection this oneness of subject and object,
the existence of one central reality, pervading and embracing
all, has been the doctrine of the devout. Religious mysticism
and deep piety witness to the truth of the great saying,
" That art thou," " Tat tvamasi." We may not understand
it, but that does not give us a sufficient right to deny it.
The different conceptions of Brahman correspond to the
different ideas of the Atman, and vice versa. The stages
of waking, dreaming, sleeping, and the conception of ecstasy
of the self, are clearly discriminated in the later Vedanta
writings and answer to the different conceptions of Brahman.
The highest Brahman which is Snanda is just Atman,
as realised in the fourth or the turiya state. There the
object and the subject are one. The seer, the seeing eye
and the object seen merge together in one whole. When
we identify the Atman with the self-conscious individual,
Brahman is viewed as the self-conscious I&vara with a
force opposed to him. As the self-conscious individual
will be a mere abstraction apart from some content or
object from which he derives his being, even so the I&vara
requires an dement opposing him. The conception of
I&vara is the highest object of the religious consciousness.
When the Atman is identified with the mental and vital

i Philosophy of th* Upaniftd*, pp. 39-40.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 47

self of man (manas and pr&na), Brahman is reduced to
the Hiragyagarbha or the cosmic soul, which comes between
the ISvara and the soul of man. This Hiranyagarbha is
looked upon as related to the universe in the same way as
the individual soul is related to its body. We see here
the influence of the Rg-Veda. The world is supposed to
have a consciousness and a will. Mind always goes with
body, vaster orders of mind accompanying vaster orders
of body. The world in which we live has its own mind,
and this mind is Hiranyagarbha. This conception of world
soul appears in the Upanisads under various names and
forms. It is called Karya Brahma, or the effect God, the
Brahma of Natura Naturata, as distinguished from the
Krana Brahma or the Causal God of ISvara, or the natura
naturans. This effect God is the totality of created exist-
ences of which all finite objects are parts. The conscious
totality of all effects is Brahma or Hiranyagarbha. It is
not radically different from the Brahman. Brahman is
the simple, individual, absolutely self-identical, One,
without a second. Once He is looked at as the creator or
Igvara, again as the Created or Hiranyagarbha. Even
this Brahma comes from the Brahman l " He is the source
of Brahma " ; the entire objective universe is sustained
by this knowing subject. While the individual subjects
pass away; he lives contemplating the world. When we
identify the Atman with our body, Brahman becomes the
Cosmos or the Virat. Virat is the all, the hypostasisation
of the conception of the world as a whole. It is the totality
of things, the sum of all existence. " This is he, the internal
Atman of all created things whose head is Agni, whose eyes
are the sun and the moon, whose ears are the four directions,
whose speech is the Vedas which have emanated from Him,
whose breath is Vayu, whose heart is all the universe, and
from whose feet the earth proceeded."* The body of the
Virit is made of the material objects in their aggregate.
He is the manifested God whose senses are the directions,
whose body is the five elements, and whose consciousness
glows with the feeling " I am all." Prior to the evolution
of the Virit nmst have occurred the evolution of the Sfitrat-

iii. 13. 3. * Mmtfaka, ii. i. 4.

48 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

man, the cosmic intelligence or Hiragyagarbha, having for
his vehicle the totality of subtle bodies. Vir&t comes into
being after Hira^yagarbha. In the form of Vir&t Hira&ya-
garbha becomes visible. Till the effect is evolved, this
SfLtritman is only pure consciousness. 1 He abides as a
mere potentiality of intelligence and motion (Vijfiina and
Kriyi) in the first cause. The Vir&t is the universal self
manifested in the gross physical matter of the world, Brahma
is the same manifested in the subtle matter of the universe.
The Stitr&tman is Hiranyagarbha. The supreme self beyond
cause and effect is the Brahman, but when it becomes self-
conscious with a non-ego opposed to it we have the Igvanu*
The following table suggests the scheme :

Subject (Atman). Object (Brahman).

1. The bodily self (VaiSvtaara). i. Cosmos (Vir&t).

2. The vital self (Taijasa). 2. The soul of the world (Hira-

nyagarbha).

3. The intellectual self (Prajna). 3 Self-consciousness (14vara).

4. The intuitive self (Turiya). 4 Ananda (Brahman).

If a logical account is permitted, then we may say that
the Brahman of the Upaniads is no metaphysical ab-
straction, no indeterminate identity, no void of silence.
It is the fullest and the most real being. It is a living
dynamic spirit, the source and container of the infinitely
varied forms of reality. The distinctions, instead of being
dissolved away as illusory, are transfigured in the highest
reality. The syllable " AUM," generally employed to repre-
sent the nature of Brahman, brings out its concrete character.3
It is the symbol of the supreme spirit, the " emblem of the
most high/' 4 " Aum " is the symbol of concreteness as
well as completeness. It stands for the three principal
qualities of the supreme spirit personified as Brahma,
Virju and Siva. " A " is Brahma the creator, " U " is
ViQU the preserver, and " M " is Siva the destroyer. 5

In the Btifupti condition we have the subject self with the object
world supprewed, though not abolished.

i Awn is only the sign of the Eternal spirit, the thing ftyprt*^ even at
aa idol tignifict Vi*nn " pratimeva Vwofe " (SainkaraComm., Tait., i. 6).

4 Man*., ti. 83; *ee alto Tait., i. 7 ; Katna, i, a. 15-16.

s See Chin,, i. 3. 6-7. B r h, Up., ii. 3. i, and viii. 3. 4-5. *

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 40

The lift Upaniad asks us to warship Brahman both in
its manifested and unmanifested conditions. 1 It is not an
abstract monism that the Upaniads offer us. There is
difference but also identity. Brahman is infinite not in
the sense that it excludes the finite, but in the sense that
it is the ground of all finites. It is eternal not in the sense
that it is something back beyond all time, as though there
were two states temporal and eternal, one of which superseded
the other, but that it is the timeless reality of all things in
time. The absolute is neither the infinite nor the finite,
the self or its realisation, the one life or its varied expressions,
but is the real including and transcending the self and its
realisation, life and its expression. It is the spiritual spring
which breaks, blossoms and differentiates itself into number*
less finite centres. The word Brahman means growth, and
is suggestive of life, motion and progress, and not death,
stillness or stagnation. The ultimate reality is described
as sat, cit and ananda existence, consciousness, and
bliss. " Knowledge, power and action are of its nature."
It is self-caused. 2 Taittiriya says Brahman is existence,
consciousness and infinity. It is a positive reality, " Full
is that, full is this." 3 It is obvious that the ultimate
reality is not thought, or force, or being exclusively, but
the living unity of essence and existence, of the ideal and
real, of knowledge, love and beauty. But as we have
already said, it can only be described negatively by us,
though it is not a negative indeterminate principle.

INTELLECT AND INTUITION

The ideal of intellect is to discover the unity which
comprehends both the subject and the object. That there
is such a unity is the working principle of logic and life. To
find out its contents is the aim of philosophic endeavour.
But the enterprise is doomed to disappointment on account
of tite inherent incapacity of intellect to, grasp the whole.

1 Ubhayam saha, both together. * Sv*ymra-bhfi lift, vii.

i Brb., v. i. i. i.

60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

Intellect, with its symbols and shibboleths, creeds and con-
ventions, is not by itself adequate t0 the grasp of the real,
" from which all speech with the mind turns away unable
to reach it." * " The eye does not go thither, nor speech
nor mind. We do not know. We do not understand how
any one can teach it." * The ultimate reality cannot be
made into an objective representation which the intellect
can grasp. " How should he know him by whom he
knows all this ? How, O Beloved, should he know himself
the knower." 3 Objective knowledge of the subject is im-
possible. It is " unseen but seeing, unheard but hear-
ing, unperceived but perceiving, unknown but knowing." 4
Atmao: is not non-existent, simply because it cannot be
objectively represented. Though man's intellectual capacities
are not adequate for its comprehension, still they will have
no existence but for its "That which one cannot think
with the mind, but that by which they say the mind is
made to think, know that alone to be the Brahman." 6
Intellect works with the categories of space, time, cause
and force, which involve us in deadlocks and antinomies.
Either we must postulate a first cause, in which case
causality ceases to be a universal maxim, or we have an
endless regress. The puzzle cannot be solved by intellect,
pure and simple. It must confess itself to be bankrupt
when ultimate questions arise. " The gods are in Indra ;
Indra is in the Father God, the Father God is in Brahma,
but in what is Brahma? " and Yajnavalkya answers: "Ask
not too much." 7 Our intellectual categories can give
descriptions of the empirical universe under the forms of
space, time and cause, but the real is beyond these. While
containing space, it is not spatial ; while including time,
it transcends time ; while it has a causally bound system
of nature within it, it is not subject to the law of cause.
The self-existent Brahman is independent of time, space

' Taittirfya, ii. 4.

* Kena, ii. 3 ; MmxJaka, ii. i ; see Katha, i. 3. co.

3 Bfh., ii. 4. 13 ; see also iii. 4. 2.

4 Bj-h., iii. 7. 23 ; see iii. 8. xi.

5 See Brh., iii. 8. n ; ii. 4, 14 ; iv. 5. 15.

* Kena. ? Brh., iii. 6. x.

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 51

and cause. The space independence is brought out crudely
in the Upani^ads. Brahman is said to be omnipresent,
all-pervading, infinitely great and infinitely small. " That
which is above the heaven, O Grgi, and that which is
beneath the earth, that which men call the past, present
and future, all that is woven within and throughout in
space. But wherein then is space woven within and with-
out ? In truth, in this imperishable one, is space woven
within and throughout, O Gargi." x Brahman is described
as being free from the limitations of time. It is viewed
as an eternity without beginning and end, or as an instan-
taneous duration occupying no definite time interval. He
is independent of past and future,* and lord of all,3 at
whose feet time rolls along. 4 In emphasising the independ-
ence of causal relations Brahman is represented to be an
absolutely static being, free from all the laws of becom-
ing of which the universal rule is causality. This way of
establishing Brahman's independence of causal relations
countenances the conception of Brahman as absolute self-
existence and unchanging endurance, and leads to mis-
conceptions. Causality is the rule of all changes in the
world. But Brahman is free from subjection to causality.
There is no change in Brahman though all change is based
on it. There is no second outside it, no other distinct
from it. We have to sink all plurality in Brahman.
All proximity in space, succession in time, interdependence
of relations rest on it. The comprehension of this profound
philosophic synthesis cannot be obtained so long as we
remain at the level of intellect. The Upaniads assert
sometimes that thought gives us imperfect, partial pictures
of reality, and at other times that it is organically incapable
of reaching reality. It deals with relations and cannot
grasp the relationless absolute. But there is nothing on
earth existing in space or time which is not an appearance
of the absolute. No knowledge is entirely false, though
none is entirely true. The nearest approach to truth is
the conception of an organised whole, though it is not
completely true on account of the relational character which,

* Brh., iii. 8. 7 ; see also iv. 2. 4 ; Chan,, iii. 14. 3, and viii. 34. 7.

* K&tha* & 14* s Brh., iv. 4. 15. iv* 4. 16. 17.

52 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

however near to cancellation it may have come, is never
absolutely abolished. It is the highest form of the absolute
the mind of man can hit upon. Intellect, in the sense of
mere understanding, working with the limited categories of
time, space and cause, is inadequate. Reason also fails,
though it takes us beyond understanding. It does not help
us to attain reality, which is not merely an idea but a spirit.
An idea of reason is an imperfect fragment of reality which
is more than idea. The real is neither true nor false. Our
judgments about the real may be true or false, since they
imply the dualism between idea and reality. We have to
pass beyond thought, beyond the clash of oppositions,
beyond the antinomies that confront us when we work
with the limited categories of abstract thinking, if we are
to reach the real where man's existence and divine being
coincide. It is when thought becomes perfected in
intuition that we catch the vision of the real. The
mystics the world over have emphasised this fact. Pascal
dwells on the incomprehensibility of God, and Bossuet
bids us not to be dismayed by the divergencies, but regard
them all trustfully as the golden chains that meet beyond
mortal sight at the throne of God.

According to the Upaniads there is a higher power
which enables us to grasp this central spiritual reality.
Spiritual things require to be spiritually discerned. The
Yoga philosophy is a practical discipline pointing out the
road to this realisation. Man has the faculty of divine
insight or mystic intuition, by which he transcends the
distinctions of intellect and solves the riddles of reason.
The chosen spirits scale the highest peak of thought and
intuit the reality. By this intuitive realisation " the un-
heard becomes heard, the unperceived becomes perceived,
and the unknown becomes known." * The problems raised
by intellect solve themselves the moment we transcend
reasoning and start to live the religious life.* The Upani-
$ads ask us therefore to lay aside our pride of intellect
and self-consciousness, and approach facts with the fresh
outlook of a child. " Let a Brahmin renounce learning

' Chlndogya, vi. 13 ; see also Bfh. ii. 4. 5.
* Mnrtaka, iii. z. 8.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 58

and become as a child/ 1 x No man shall enter into the
kingdom of God except he first become as a little child.
The highest truths are to be felt by the simple and pure-
minded, and not proved to the sophisticated intellect.
" Let hiin not seek after many words, for that is mere weari-
ness of tongue." * " Not by learning is the Atman attained,
not by genius and much knowledge of books/' 3 It is attained
by the mystics in their moments of illumination. It is
direct knowledge or immediate insight. In the mystic
experience the soul finds itself in the presence of the highest.
It is lost in awareness, contemplation and enjoyment of
the ultimate Reality. It does not know what it is when
it reaches it. There is nothing higher than it. Other
things are all in it. It then fears no evil, no untruth, but
is completely blessed. This spiritual vision relieves us
from all passion and suffering. The soul in its exaltation
feels itself to be at one with what it sees. Plotinus says :
" In the vision of God, that which sees is not reason, but
something greater than and prior to reason, something
presupposed by reason, as is the object of vision. He who
then sees himself, when he sees, will see himself as a simple
being, will be united to himself as such, will feel himself
become such. We ought not even to say that he will see,
but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible
any longer to distinguish seer and seen, and not boldly to
affirm that the two are one. He belongs to God and is
one with Him, like two concentric circles ; they are one
when they coincide and two only when they are separated/'
All the aspirations of the human mind, its intellectual
demands, its emotional desires, and its volitional ideals
are there realised. It is the supreme end of man's effort,
the termination of personal life. "This is the supreme
end of that, this is the supreme treasure of that, this is
the supreme dwelling of that, this is the supreme joy of

1 Brh., iii. 5. i. This translation is adopted by Deussen and Gongh,
though Max Mailer translates thus: "Let a Bithmin after he has done
with learning wish to stand by real strength." This rests on the inferior
reading of balytna in lien of Wy***\ "tasmid brihmagab
nirvidya bftlyena ti**hiset."

Brh., iv. 4. ax. 9 Katha, u. 13.

4 Inge : Plotinus, vol. ii., p. 140.

54 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

that/ 1 * It is on a level with perceptual experience, but,
unlike the latter, it is not objective and verifiable by others.
It cannot, like inferential knowledge, be communicated to
others. It is impossible to give a formal exposition of it.
The mystic insight is inarticulate. As to a man born blind
we cannot explain the beauty of a rainbow or the glory
of a sunset, even so to the non-mystic the vision of the
mystic cannot be described. " God put it into my head,
and I cannot put it into yours/' is the last word of the
mystic experience. Simply because it is incommunicable,
it does not become less valid than other forms of know-
ledge. We can describe this experience only by metaphors.
For the light blinds us and makes us dumb. We cannot
render a full report of the ineffable. Bahva, when asked
by king Vakali to explain the nature of Brahman, kept
silent, and when the king repeated his request, the sage
broke out into the answer : " I tell it to you, but you do not
understand it, Santo 'yam atma : * this Atman is peaceful,
quiet/' To any suggested definitions of intellect we can
only answer, it is not this, it is not this. 3 The negative
definitions point out how the positive attributes known to
us are inadequate to the highest. " There is no measure
of him whose glory verily is great." 3 Contradictory pre-
dicates are attached to Brahman to indicate that we are
obliged to use negative conceptions so long as we employ
the dialectics of intellect, though positive features are
revealed when Brahman is intuited. "It is subtler than
the subtle, greater than the great/' 4 " It moves, it does
not move ; it is far and it is near ; it is within all this and
without all this/' 5 These seemingly inconsistent accounts
are not the sign of any confusion of thought.

The absolute is implied in all experience, for every object
of the world is based on the absolute, though none of them
expresses it completely. So those who imagine they do not

* Ye$isya parang, gatifc, ye$3sya parang, saxnpat, yefo'sya paramo
lokafe, ye$o'sya paramft &nandafe. (Bjrh., iv. 3. 32).

See Brh., Ui. 9. 26 ; iv. 2. 4. ; iv. 4. 22. ; iv. 5. 15 ; ii. 3. 6 ; Katha,
ill. 15 ; Pra6na, iv. zo ; Ch&ndogya, vii. 24. i ; Muirfaka, i. t 7 ; ii. i. 2 ;
iii. i. 7-8.

3 Yajur-Veda. 4 veta6vatara, iii. 20 ; Kena, i. 3. 5 lt, v.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 55

know the absolute, do know it, though imperfectly ; and those
who think they know the absolute really do not know it
completely. It is a state of half-knowledge and half-
ignorance. The Kena Upaniad says : " It is unknown to
those who know and known to those who do not know. x
The Upaniads do not maintain that intellect is a useless
guide. The account of reality given by it is not false. It
fails only when it attempts to grasp the reality in its fullness.
Everywhere else it succeeds. What the intellect investigates
is not the unreal, though it is not the absolutely real. The
antinomies of cause and effect, substance and attribute,
good and evil, truth and error, subject and object, are due
to the tendency of man to separate terms which are related.
Fichte's puzzle of self and not-self, Kant's antinomies,
Hume's opposition of facts and laws, Bradley's contradic-
tions, can all be got over, if we recognise that the opposing
factors are mutually complementary elements based on one
identity. Intellect need not be negated, but has only to
be supplemented. A philosophy based on intuition is not
necessarily opposed to reason and understanding. Intuition
can throw light on the dark places which intellect is not
able to penetrate. The results of mystic intuition require
to be subjected to logical analysis. And it is only by this
process of mutual correction and supplementation that
each can live a sober life. The results of intellect will be
dull and empty, unfinished and fragmentary, without the
help of intuition, while intuitional insights will be blind and
dumb, dark and strange, without intellectual confirmation.
The ideal of intellect is realised in the intuitive experience,
for in the supreme are all contraries reconciled. Only by
the comradeship of scientific knowledge and intuitive ex-
perience can we grow into true insight. Mere reasoning
will not help us to it.* If we content ourselves with the
verdict of intellect, then we shall have to look upon the
plurality and independence of individuals as the final word
of philosophy. Competition and struggle will be the end
of the universe. Abstract intellect will lead us to false
philosophy and bad morals. Brahman is concealed by
such knowledge. 3 The unreflecting attitude is perhaps

' ii. 3. Katha, ii. 9. s Medhayft pihitab. Tait. Up.

W PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ABS

better than this kind of intellectuaUsm, " All who worship
what is not knowledge enter into blind darkness; tbo
who delight in knowledge enter, as it were, into greater
darkness." 1 An intellectual knowledge of diversity with*
out the intuitive realisation is worse than the blind ignorance
of faith, bad as it is. The contradictions of life and logic
have to be reconciled in the spirit of Emerson's Brahml.

They reckon ill who leave me out ;

When me they fly I am the wings ;
I am the doubter and the doubt.

The one eternal spirit expresses, embraces, unifies and
enjoys the varied wealth of the world with all its passions
and paradoxes, loyalties and devotions, truths and contra-
dictions. Weak souls, unaware of this all-embracing reality,
grow weary of the fight, intellectual, aesthetic and moral.
But they have to draw courage from the fact that the joy
of harmony has to be derived from the struggle of discordant
elements. The seeming contradictions belong to the life
of spirit. The one spirit shows its being in all the opposi-
tions of life and thought, the puzzles of Hume, the problems
of Kant, the conflicts of empiricism and the dogmas of
speculation.

By insisting on intuition more than on thought, on
&nanda more than on vijfi&na, the Upaniads seem to
support the non-dualism referred to in the Introduction.
So long as we skim on the surface of reality with the notions
of thought, we do not get at the deeper spirit. In Snanda
man is most and deepest in reality. In the unexplored
depths of individual experience, the inner Snandamaya,
lies the stuff of reality. Intellectual systems disdain to
descend into the rich mine of life. Whatever is reduced
to vijfiina has become unreal, though it tends to become
universal and objective. What is not conceptualised or
categorised is the truly subjective. The organised whole
of vijfi&na gives a logical impress to identity. The intuition
shows up the fact of identity. In trying to know the identity
we superficialise it by breaking it into differences and try
to get them back to the identity by constructing a system.

* Bfh., iv. 4-10 ; tee la, be.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE OPANIADS T

the fact once broken into the relations can never
through mere logic have its oneness restored. As we have
mart than once observed, the first touch of logic is responsible
for the transformation of the One into a system.

XI

CREATION

It is clear from our account of the nature of Brahman
that the Upaniads are dissatisfied with the materialist
and vitalist theories of evolution. Matter cannot develop
life or consciousness unless it had the potentialities of them
in its nature. No amount of shocks from the external
environment can extort life out of mere matter. Ananda
cannot be the end of evolution unless it was also the beginning
of it. The end is present throughout, though in a suppressed
form. The individual things of the world possess the
feature^ of their ultimate source and end. " Whatever
there is belonging to the son belongs to the father ; whatever
there is belonging to the father belongs to the son." x Every-
thing in the world, not merely the human individual, is
in essence the ultimate reality itself. Development means
the manifestation of the potentialities of things by the
removal of the obstructing energies. From the scientific
point of view, we notice the different degrees of development
in the things of the world. The philosopher is interested
in the common ground of unity. The multiplicity of the
world is based on the one spirit. " Who indeed could live,
who breathe, should not this Snanda be in akaa ? " The
sun rises punctually, the stars run in their courses, and all
things stand in their order and faint not in their watches
because of the eternal spirit which slumbers not nor sleeps.
" All shine after Him who shines. By His radiance is all
this illumined/' 3 Ananda is the beginning and the end
of the world, the cause as well as the effect, the root as
well as the shoot of the universe.4 The efficient and the

1 Aitareya Ara^yaka, ii. x. 8. x.

* Tait., ii. i Muirfaka, ii. a. 10.

Mdla and tflla, Aitareya Ara^yaka, ii. x* 8. x.

58 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

final causes are one. The matter with which the process
of evolution starts is not an independent entity. It has
hidden in it the highest Snanda. The course of development
is a transition from the potential to the actual. Matter
has more potential in it than life. In the graduated scale
of the types of existence, the later is the more evolved or
the formed, and the earlier is the more potential or the
unformed. To use the words of Aristotle, the earlier is
the matter and the later is the form. Matter is the passive
principle which requires to be energised or informed. We
have in the logical accounts a god overlooking matter,
stirring it up into motion. This god is prajfi&na, or the
eternally active self-conscious reason. 1 He is responsible for
the whole realm of change. The Upaniads fight shy of
the conception of an omnipotent mechanic fashioning pre-
existing matter into the universe. If God excludes matter,
even though the latter is reduced to a mere potentiality,
we cannot escape dualism, since Go4 would remain opposed
to matter. Such a dualism is the characteristic feature
of the system of Aristotle with its distinction of the first
mover and the first matter. For the Upaniads, both
form and matter, the ever active consciousness and the
passive non-consciousness, are aspects of a single reality.
Matter itself is a god. 3 Its first forms of fire, water, and
earth are looked upon as divine, since they are all informed
by the one spirit. The Samkhya dualism is repugnant to
the Upaniads. The transcendent reality is the ground
or explanation of the struggle between spirit and matter. 3
The whole world is conceived as possessing an identity of
purpose as well as a common substratum of change. The
Upaniads bring out in several fanciful and mythological
accounts of creation the great truth of the oneness of the
world. Brahman is the sole and the whole explanation
of the world, its material and efficient cause. The entities
of the world are knots in the rope of development, which
begins with matter and ends in 9nanda.

99 That created itself by itself/' 4 " He creates the world

* Aitareya Ara^yaka, i. 3. 3, 6.

* Chin.* vi. 8. 4-6. 3 PraSna, i. 3.
Tait. Up. See also Bfh., ii. i. 20 ; Murfaka, i. i. 7 ; ii. i. i.

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANBABS 59

and then enters it." I A personal god, Praj&pati, tired of
solitude, draws forth from himself everything that exists,
or produces the world after having divided himself into
two, one half male and the other half female. 9 Sometimes
the personal or created being is represented as himself pro-
ceeding from a material substratum. On other occasions
the primary substance of things is represented as manifesting
itself in the created existence.3 The Atman pervades things
as the salt which has dissolved in water pervades the water ;
from the Atman things spring as the sparks fly out from the
fire, as threads from the spider, or sound from the flute. 4
The theory of emanation where the bringing of a product
into existence does not affect the source of the product is
also suggested. The light coming from the sun leaves
the sun unchanged. This seems to be the justification
for the later theory that the individual is a mere abhasa or
appearance of Brahman. The metaphors of the spinning of the
web by the spider, the bearing of the child by the mother, the
production of notes from musical instruments, attempt to
bring out the intimate relationship between the cause and the
effect. It is the tad at my a or oneness between Brahman and
the world that is conveyed in all this wealth of symbol and
image. The external world is not something separate,
existing side by side with the Atman. The ultimate ground
of being, Brahman, and the empirical state of being, the
world are not different. The world of plurality can be
reduced without residuum into the everlasting one, Brahman.
The Upaniads are decisive about the principle that Brah-
man is the sole source of life in all that lives, the single thread
binding the whole plurality into a single unity* When the
problem of the co-existence of the plurality and unity is
taken up, the Upaniads speak in the language of similes
and symbols, but do not give any definite answer. We

Brh.. iv. 7.

Brh., 1. 2. 14. We have something similar to this in the Chinese doctrine
of Yang and Yin. The primeval chaos is said to have been broken up by
the antagonism of these two principles of expansion and contraction. The
Yang is the male force in all creatures and the Yin is the female. Compare
also the view of Empedodes.

I Chan., iii. 39.

4 Chan., vii. 21, a ; vi. 2. i ; Brh., iv. 5 ; Mungaka, ii.

60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI? ADS

cannot in the absence of knowledge of Brahman dogmatise
about the relation of the empirical world to Brahman. The
two cannot be unrelated, for all that is, is one, and yet we
do not know how precisely they are one. The former
aspect is brought out in the argument that Brahman is
the material as well as the efficient cause of the world;
the latter when it is said that we do not know anything
of it at all. It is m&y&, or mysterious, or anirvacanlya
(inexplicable), as Samkara puts it. We cannot ask how
the relationless Brahman is related to the world. The
presumption is that the world of relations does not in any
way affect the nature of Brahman. The destruction of
the world of experience does not in the least take away
from the being of Brahman. Brahman can exist and does
exist apart from the world of relations. The world is not
an essential factor in the existence of Brahman. A reciprocal
dependence of the world on Brahman and vice versa would
be to reduce Brahman to the level of the world and subject
it to the categories of time and purpose. The incapacity
to define the relation of the absolute to the world is not
to be construed as a repudiation of the world as a screen
imagined by the finite man, which hides the absolute. For
it is declared that the world of space, time and cause has
its reality in Brahman. The absolute is so far present in
this world of relations as to enable us to measure the distance
of the things of the world from the absolute and evaluate
their grades of reality. Brahman is in the world, though
not as the world. The Upaniads do not face the question
directly. The only way to reconcile the several accounts
is by taking our stand on the absolute self-sufficiency of
Brahman. The perfection of Brahman implies that all
the worlds, states and aspects, and all the manifestations,
past, present and future, are realised in it in such wise
that they are nothing without it, though it is independent
of all other existence. If without conforming to the strict
philosophical position, that we do not know the precise
relation between the Brahman and the world, we proceed
to characterise it, it is truer to say that the world is the
self-limitation of the supreme than that it is a creation of
it. For the creation of the world by God would imply

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 1

that God was alone once upon a time, and at a certain
point in His history He created the world. It is not right
to look upon God as cause antecedent in time to the world
as effect. It is better to make the world the expression
of God* As a matter of fact, in many passages the Upan^
ads declare that the world is only a development of
the absolute spirit. Nature is a system of spontaneity
or self-evolving autonomy, since it is the energising of the
absolute. In this development, the first stage is represented
by the rise of the two factors of a self-conscious God and
the passive potentiality of matter. The ultimate fact is
the self-sufficiency of Brahman, and we cannot say how the
world is related to it. If we insist on some explanation,
the most satisfactory one is to make the absolute a unity
with a difference or a concrete dynamic spirit. We then
reach the self and the not-self, which interact and develop
the whole universe. 1 Self-expression becomes the essence
of the absolute. Activity is the law of life. Force is

1 An attempt is made by Babu Bhagavan Das, in his translation of a
work called Pranavavada, attributed t* Gargyayana, to interpret a great
saying of the Upanisads, aham etat na, "I not this," into a highly philoso-
phical doctrine. Aham or self is the self-conscious Isvara. Etat is nature
or not-self. The relation between the two is signified by na, a negation.
" The self is not the not-self " In the syllable A UM, " A " represents the
self. " U " the not-self, and " M " the negation of the two, but all these
three are rolled into the " AUM," the Pranava. The world is interpreted
to be a negative reflection of the Aham. It is affirmed by the self for its
own realisation. Etat is the unreal shadow, while Aham is the reality.
The interpretation is ingenious; but we have to remember that what is
denied is not the Etat (not-self) as the reflexion of Aham (self) but only
the Etat (not-self) as cut off from Aham (self). The many as separate
and apart from the One is denied. Brahman the reality causes, if such a
term is legitimate, all difference. In Indian thought this symbol AUM
stands for many things. Every kind of trinity is represented by AUM.
Being, non-being and becoming ; birth, life and death ; Prakrti, Jlvatman
and Paramatman ; Sattva, Rajas and Tamas ; past, present and future ;
Brahmft, Visnu and Siva. The conception of Brahma. Visnu and Siva
emphasises the different aspects of the one Supreme, which contains the
three conditions. God by a free act of His will creates, or more philosophically
posits, an eternal universe. This positing God is Brahma. He views it,
contemplates it, sustains it, enjoys it as being distinct from himself. This
God is Visnu. He receives it back into his own unity as an indissoluble
element of his being, then he is Siva. Those who imagine that the three
states are exclusive, postulate three personal agencies embodying the three
different functions.

62 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS

inherent in existence. M2LyS, in the sense of energy, is
potentially eternal in being.

There is hardly any suggestion in the Upaniads that the
entire universe of change is a baseless fabric of fancy, a mere
phenomenal show or a world of shadows. The artistic and
poet souls of the Upaniads lived always in the world of
nature and never cared to fly out of it. The Upaniads
do not teach that life is a nightmare and the world a barren
nothing. Rather is it pulsing and throbbing with the
rhythm of the world harmony. The world is God's revela-
tion of Himself. His joy assumes all these forms.* But
there is a popular view which identifies the Upaniad
doctrine with an abstract monism, which reduces the rich
life of this world into an empty dream. If we start with
the facts of everyday experience and try to account for
them, we are reduced to the two factors of a self-conscious
I&vara and indeterminate matter. Intellectually we are
convinced of the oneness of these two. Our difficulty is
the reconciliation between the two : subject and object
on the one hand, and the Brahman explicitly asserted by
the Upaniads on the other. The real is one, yet we have
the two. It is from this duality that the difference of the
world arises. We are confronted with a blank wall. If
philosophy is bold and sincere, it must say that the relation
cannot be explained. The one somehow becomes two.
This seems to be the most logical view in the circum-
stances : " The immanence of the absolute in finite centres
and of finite centres in the absolute, I have always set
down as inexplicable ... to comprehend it is beyond us
and even beyond all intelligence." * The inexplicabilty
of the relation between the two is assumed by the Upani^ads,
and the later Vedanta gives to it the name of my.

The difficulty of giving a satisfactory explanation is
traced to the imperfection of the human mind, which employs
inadequate categories of space, time and cause, which are

* Anandarflpam amftam yad vibhati.

Bradley : Mind, No. 74, p. 154. Cf. Green : " The old question, why
God made the world, has never been answered, nor will be. We know not
why the world should be ; we only know that there it is." ProUgomena to
Etkti*. Sec. too.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 68

self-contradictory. The aspects of the world known to
them are fragmentary and are not genuinely real. They
are appearances somehow in and of, but not for reality.
Everything we come across in our finite experience breaks
down somewhere or other and becomes contradictory.
While all finite experiences are limited and incomplete,
they are so in different degrees, and it is not right to put
them all on a general level or give to them all equal reality
or, more accurately, equal unreality. The doctrine of may5
gives abstract expression to this general feature of all .ex-
perience of the finite that it falls short of the absolute.

While intellectual modesty born of the consciousness
of human imperfection compelled the thinkers of the
Upaniads to rest in negative statements of the supreme
reality, the false imitators of the Upaniad ideal, with an
extreme of arrogant audacity, declare that Brahman is
an absolutely homogeneous impersonal intelligence a most
dogmatic declaration alien to the true spirit of the
Upaniads. Such a positive characterisation of the nature
of Brahman is illogical for even Samkara says that the
real is non-dual, advaita, and nothing positive.

There are passages, according to Thibaut, " whose
decided tendency it is to represent Brahman as transcending
all qualities, as one undifferentiated mass of impersonal
intelligence."' " And as the fact of the appearance of the
manifold world cannot be denied, the only way open to
thoroughly consistent speculation was to deny at any rate
its reality, and to call it a mere illusion due to an unreal
principle, with which Brahman is indeed associated, but
which is unable to break the unity of Brahman's nature
just on account of its own unreality." * Maya, according
to Thibaut, reconciles the appearance of diversity with the
reality of the One, but unfortunately the conception of
an abstract intelligence is a meaningless notion, which is
disallowed by the anti-dogmatist attitude of the Upaniad
theory. The Upani$ads do not support an abstract con-
ception of the ultimate reality. Their philosophy is not
so much a monism as an advaitism (not twoness). The
distinction of subject and object is not absolute, though

^Introduction to V.S., p. cxxliii Ibid., oocv.

64 PmLQSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

it is real in the world. We cannot split the world into
two halves of subject and object, for Brahman underlies
both. While it denies duality, it does not affirm that all
things could be dissolved into one except in a figurative
sense. 1

Other friendly interpreters of the Upaniads also con-
tend that the Upanisads support the doctrine of m&yft
in the sense of the illusoriness of the world. Let us inquire
into the value of their contention. Deussen, who has
done much to popularise VedJtntic lore in Europe, points
out that four different theories of creation occur in the
Upaniads. They are (i) that matter exists from eternity
independently of God, which He fashions, but does not
create ; (2) that God creates the universe out of nothing,

* We find that the passages which employ the illustration of clay
(copper, etc ) to explain the oneness of Brahman and the world, use
the words M vacaraxnbhanam vikaro namadheyam mrttikety eva satyam."
Its meaning seems to be that all are modifications of the one sub-
stance, marked by different names. &amkara interprets this to mean that
" the modification (vikara) originates and exists merely in speech ; in
reality there is no such thing as effect. It is merely a name, and there-
fore unreal." It is vyavah&nkam or empirical, but it does not follow that
it is mithya or falsehood. It has also to be noted that the statement is
made by Uddalaka, who held a theory of matter which admitted only
changes of form. The material, according to him, is one continuous whole,
in which qualitatively distinct particles of matter are mixed together The
passage says that the development is noticed by the giving of a different
name. Name and form are used in the Upani$ads to indicate individuality.
See Brh., i, 4. 7. Development of the one into the many is the rise of
name and form out of the primary principle. There is no suggestion that
the modifications denoted by name and form are unreal. They have,
of course, no reality apart from Brahman. Namarftpa is not what the
English words name and form indicate. They correspond to the form and
matter of Aristotle. The two together constitute the individuals of the
world. In Buddhism rQpa stands for the gross body and nama for the
subtle mind. In the Upanisads the development of name and form means
the individualisation of the One. The individualisation is the principle of
creation, the central feature of the cosmic process Things and persons are
ultimately only modes of the existence of God. They are not real on their
own account. Only Brahman is so real. Their separateness is superficial.
Salvation in the Upanisads is the cessation of the sense of separateness of
n&marupa. The Mungaka Upanisad says: "He who has attained the
highest wisdom unites with the universal spirit, delivered from namarupa as
the flowing streams enter into rest in the sea, leaving namarftpa behind."
Again, the cause is more real than the effect. God is the cause of mil
persons and tilings. As gold is the essence of gold ornaments, Brataum it
the realty of the world, its ftattasamauya or common substratum,-

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 65

and the latter is independent of God, although it is His
creation; (3) that God creates the universe by trans*
forming Himself into it ; (4) that God alone is real, and
there is no creation at all. The last, according to him, is
the fundamental view of the Upani$ads. The world in
space and time is an appearance, an illusion, a shadow of
God. To know God we must reject the world of appear-
ance. What inclines Deussen to this view is his own belief
that the essence of every true religion is the repudiation
of the reality of the world. Having come to that conclusion
on independent grounds, he is anxious to find support for
his doctrine in the philosophic systems of ancient India,
the Upani$ads and Sarhkara, ancient Greece, Parmenides
and Plato, and modern Germany, Kant and Schopenhauer.
In his eagerness to find support for his position he is not
very careful about the facts. He admits that the prevailing
doctrine of the Upaniads is the pantheistic one, while
the ^fundamental " doctrine is the illusion hypothesis.
That the pantheistic view is the " prevailing " one, Deussen
is obliged to concede by the mere pressure of facts. That
the illusion view is the " fundamental " one is his own
reading of the facts. Between the two, the fact of pantheism
and the reading of illusionism, a compromise has to be effected.
Deussen achieves it by holding that it is a concession to
clamour and the empirical demands of the unregenerate
man. " For the fundamental thought, that is held fast
at least as a principle at all stages, even at the lowest, which
maintains the independent existence of matter, is the con-
viction of the sole reality of the Atman ; only that side by
side with and in spite of this conviction, more or less far
reaching concessions were made to the empirical conscious-
ness of the reality of the universe, that could never be
entirely cast off." x The first argument urged in support of
the "illusion" hypothesis is that the Upaniads assert
the sole reality of Brahman. It follows that the world is
unreal. We agree that Atman is the sole reality. If we
know it, all else is known. That there is no plurality, no
change outside it, is admissible. But that there is no change
at all and no plurality at all, either in or out, such an un-

Tk* Philosophy of Jfe Upa*if*4* t pp. i*i-a,

6

66 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

qualified proposition is hard to understand* "Nature,"
says Deussen, " which presents the appearance of plurality
and change is a mere illusion." l In the same strain
Mr. Eraser argues : " This doctrine of the illusion of all
appearances of reality follows naturally and logically from
the repeated teachings in the Upaniads regarding the
non-duality of the self or Atman or Brahman as the sole
reality of the universe." * In these arguments the infinite
is taken in a false sense. It is equated with the not-finite ;
the eternal is made the not-temporal. When the eternal
becomes a timeless abstraction, the life of the world in
time becomes unreal. The opposition between the world
in space and time and the world absolute and eternal is
ultimate. But the Upani$ads nowhere say that the infinite
excludes the finite. Wherever they assert that Brahman
is the sole reality they are careful enough to add that the
woUd is rooted in Brahman, and as such has a share of
reality. " The finite is in the infinite. This Atman is the
entire universe. "3 It is pra$a. It is speech. It is mind.
It is everything in the universe. God is present in the
vile dust and the small mote. 4 The affirmation of the
real involves the affirmation of all that is based on it. From
the doctrine of the sole reality of Brahman follows the
relative reality of what is included in or based on it.

Deussen urges that " the passages which declare that
with the knowledge of the Atman all is known, ' deny '
the universe of plurality." We do not admit this conten-
tion. If the Atman is the universal self embracing within
it all thinking things and the objects of all thought, if
there is nothing outside it, then it follows that if it is
known all else is known. The true knowledge which
leads us to liberation helps us to realise the one indwell-
ing spirit. There is no suggestion that the Atman
and the world exclude each other ; in that case what
Indra said to Prajipati would be true, and Atman
which excludes everything definite and distinct, would be

, P. 237. * Indian Thought, p. 68. 3 Chftndogyft, ii. 4. 26.

Mn*4alc*, ii. 2. n ; Katha, ii. 5. 2 ; Tait , iii. i ; Chan., iii. 14. s.
Ii. 14. *-4 ; vi. 9. i ; Brh., U. 4. 6 ; iv. 5. 7 ; ii. 5. a ; v. 3, i ; i. 4. 16;
tt 5. 15 ; iii. 7, 15 ; iv. 4. 33.

PHTLOSOWSY OF THE UPANISADS $7

the barest abstraction. If we ignore differences, we reduce
the absolute to a non-entity. We do not improve the case
of the absolute by repudiating the relative. The eternal
need not give away the temporal as null and void. Loyalty
to the highest experience of man, religious and moral,
philosophic and aesthetic, requires us to recognise the reality
of the temporal as rooted in the eternal, of the finite as
subsisting in the infinite, of man as born from God. To
deny the contingent and the individual is to falsify the neces-
sary and the universal. The many passages which declare
the world to be rooted in Brahman are explained away
by Deussen as a concession to empirical consciousness.
The Upaniads would not have seriously put forth doctrines
about the relativity of the world if it was their view that
the world was a mere illusion. An unworkable interpre-
tation is adopted by Deussen, and arbitrary arguments are
employed to support what is fundamentally unsoftnd.
Deussen himself, in attempting to give the credit for the
"illusion" hypothesis to the great German philosopher
Kant, admits that the hypothesis was not really, or perhaps
explicitly, held by the Upaniad thinkers. For he writes :
" There is still always a broad distinction between the one
Brahman and the multiplicity of his appearances, nor were
ancient thinkers, or indeed any thinkers before Kant,
able to rise to the conception that the entire unfolding
in space and time was a merely subjective phenomenon/' 1
Deussen correctly suggests that the Upaniads could not
have held the view of the subjectivity of the world. The
different theories of creation are enunciated just to point
out that there is essential dependence between Brahman

* P. 103. Deussen seems to interpret Kant in the light of the Up*ni9*ds
and the Upani?ads in the light of Kant, with the result that he has prac-
tically misconstrued both. Kant is anxious that his idealism should not be
confused with Berkeleyan subjectivism quite as much as Samkara is anxious
that his idealism should not be identified with Buddhistic subjectivism.
Perhaps with Schopenhauer Deussen thinks that Kant's refutation of
idealism is a stupid after-thought and a great blunder. It is doubtful
whether students of Kant would agree with Deussen 's view. " The well-
known argument of Kant also, which bases immortality on the realisation
of the moral law implanted in us, a result only attainable by an infinite
process of approximation, tells not for immortality in the usual sense, twt
for transmigration " (p, 314).

68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

and the world. There are passages, we admit, which declare
that the variegated universe is due to the development of
name and form from out of the one absolute. These indi-
cate only that the fundamental essence of all things is the
one reality, and if we are lost in the name and form world,
we run the risk of missing the deep-lying essence which
gives rise to all the variety. This name and form-world
hides, so to say, the immortal essence. 1 We have to pierce
behind the veil which surrounds all mortal things. The
objects in space and time conceal the essence of things.
The passing semblance of life is in no wise its immortal
truth. The real being is above these things. He manifests
himself through the world. The manifestation is at the
same time a concealment. The more complete is the mani-
festation, the more is the reality concealed. God hides
Himself and manifests Himself by drawing a veil over His
face. The hidden meaning of things is opposed to the
testimony of the senses. The world, while it manifests His
glory, conceals His pure absolute nature. The truth, the
unique substance, the absolute void of phenomena and rid
of limitations, is covered by the multiplicity and plurality
of the created universe. The objects of the world, including
the finite selves, imagine that they are separate and self-
existent, and seem to be engaged in the work of self-main-
tenance. They forget that they all spring from an identical
source, from which they derive sustenance. This belief
is due to m5ya or delusion. " Each little leaf on a tree
may very naturally have sufficient consciousness to believe
that it is an entirely separate being, maintaining itself in
the sunlight and the air, withering away and dying when
the winter comes on and there is an end of it. It probably
does not realise that all the tinft it is being supported by

* Brh. t i. 6. 3. Amrtaih satyena channam. The ambiguity of the
word " sat " is responsible for much of the confusion of the Upanisad view
of reality. Sat in one sense means all that, exists. The world of change
and growth is " sat " in this sense. Sat also stands for the reality that
persists in the midst of all change, the immortal or the amrtam. The
Taittirfya calls the former sat and the latter tyat. Since tyat is opposed to
the existent sat, it is sometimes called asat or anrtam (Tait., ii. 6). Usually,
the permanent reality or Brahman is called sat and the world of change
asat (Chili., vi. 2. i ; iii. 19. i).

PHILOSOPHY OF THE DPANISADS 69

the sap which flows from the trunk of the tree, and that
in its turn it is feeding the tree too that its self is the self
of the whole tree. If the leaf could really understand itself,
it would see that its self was deeply, intimately connected,
practically one with the life of the whole tree/' z Below
the separate wave crests of consciousness there is the un
fathomed common depth of life, from which all spirits draw
the springs of their being. If we look upon the objects as
separate and self-existent, we erect a screen which shuts
us fiom the truth. The falsely imagined self -subsistence
of finite objects clouds the glow of heaven. When we
penetrate beneath the second causes to the essence of all
things, the veils fall apart and we see that the principle
underlying them is the same as that which dwells in us.
It is this need to go behind second causes to realise the
truth of the oneness of things that is brought out in the
dialogue between the father and the son in the Ch&ndogya
Upaniad (vi. 10 ff.).

" Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree." " Here
is one, Sir." " Break it." " It is broken, Sir." " What do you
see there ? " " These seeds, almost infinitesimal." " Break one of
them," " It is broken, Sir." " What do you see there ? " " Not
anything, Sir."

The father said : " My son, that subtle essence which you do not
perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists.
Believe it, my son, That which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists
has its self. It is the True. It is the self, and thou, O Svetaketu,
art it."

The father points out to the son some typical objects of
nature in succession and exhorts him to realise the philo-
sophical truth of the unity of life and the continuity of man's
life with that of the univferse. We cannot easily conceive
this one reality which is concealed by the many objects. We
are too worldly, too experienced, too serious about our-
selves for that realisation. We live on the surface, ding to
forms, worship appearance.

Deussen ignores the central truth of the Upaniad
philosophy when he holds that according to it " the whole
universe, all children, possessions and wisdom/' must " vanish

* Edward Carpenter ? Pagan and Ckrit&m Cwds, p. 501.

70 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS

into the nothingness, which they really are/' * On this
hypothesis it is necessary to explain away all those passages
which declare Brahman, the sustainer of the universe, to
be one with the psychical principle of the individual self,
on the principle of accommodation. " The same spirit of
accommodation lies at the basis of the form assumed by
the doctrine of Brahman as a psychical principle/ 1 * " The
Upaniads find a peculiar pleasure in identifying the Atman
as the infinitely small within us with the Atman as the
infinitely great outside us/ 1 3 When we are in trouble,
we have no more to bring in God, but only make concession
to weak human nature.

" Metaphysical knowledge impugns the existence of any
reality outside of the Atman, that is the consciousness. The
empirical view, on the contrary, teaches that a manifold
universe exists externally. From a combination of these
antagonistic propositions originated the doctrine that the
universe is real, and yet the Atman remains the sole reality,
for the Atman is the universe." 4 It is not easy to under-
stand how the two propositions are antagonistic and the
conclusion an irreconcilable compromise. When it is said
that there is no reality outside Atman, it is meant that the
Atman is the universal spirit or consciousness, including all
else. When it is said that " a manifold universe exists
external to us," the " us " refers to the empirical individuals
who are limited by mind and body, possessing local habi-
tations and temporal settings. Surely to such beings the
world is real, being set over against them. The Atman we
are in search of is not the object of knowledge but the
basis of all knowledge. It is the presupposition of material
and spiritual worlds alike. The thinking beings or jfvas,
the psychological selves, are part of the world of nature.
In that world they externally act on other beings and are
acted on by them. But logically Atman is the condition
of there being a world of related objects at all. All existence
is existence for self. The world is beyond us as psycho-
logical selves. It is there within the universal self. The
conclusion states, the universe is real to us, for we are not
yet perfect selves. Atman is the sole reality, and it includes

p. 168. P. 171. : P. *&. 4 P. 405.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 71

the universe also* Any other position would be illogical.
As empirical selves we are opposed by the world, limited
by the objects. As our life, which is first opposed to matter,
gradually absorbs and remoulds into itself the mechanical
side of things, even so the subject has to transfigure the
object. Then what was at the start external and objective
becomes only a condition of the subject's activity. This
process goes on steadily till the subject completely dominates
the object and becomes all in all. Then there would be
no obstacle outside the subject, but till then the goal is
not reached. The annulling of the opposition is the sign
of spirit's growth. The conclusion that the world is a mere
appearance would follow if the individual subject, this
particular link in the chain of evolution, bound by space
and time, be looked upon as the absolute reality. If we,
as we are, were Brahman, if we were the sole reality, then
the world opposed to us would be a mere magic show.
But the self asserted to be the sole reality is the perfect
self, which we have yet to become. To that perfect self,
which includes all that is within and without us, there is
nothing opposed. It is a confusion between the finite self
of man, with all its discord and contradiction, and the
ultimate self of Brahman, that suggests to Deussen an
imaginary antagonism which he tries to overcome by an
artificial device. *

There are some passages which say that we ought not
to see plurality (nana) in Brahman. 1 These passages try
to indicate the oneness of the world. The emphasis is on
the one infinite and not the many finites. In our waking
life we imagine the opposition between the subject and
the object to be real. Sober reflection tells us that the
opposition is not ultimate. Duality of subject and object
is not the ultimate truth. When it is said that duality is
not all, that duality is not final, it does not mean that
there is no duality at all, that there is no distinction or
variety. It is this false view of one school of Buddhism
that Sarhkara protests against. So long as we imagine
the world to be due to something else than the absolute
we are lost. It is the existence of a factor separate from

* See Bfh., iv. 4. 19.

72 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS

Atman that the Upaniads protest against. Arguing from
the similes of salt and water, fire and sparks, spider 'and
threads, flute and sound, employed by the Upaxd$ads
to represent the relation of Brahman to the world, Olden-
berg says : " We can detect behind these similitudes by
which men strove to bring the living power of the Atman
in the universe near to their understanding, a conviction,
though at the same time but a half-conscious conviction,
of the existence of an element in things separate from
the Atman. The Atman, says the Indian, pervades the
universe, as the salt the water in which it has dissolved,
but we may easily go on to add, as a complement to this,
that although no drop of the salt water is without salt,
the water continues, notwithstanding, to be something
separately constituted from the salt. And thus we may
infer the Atman is to the Indian certainly the sole actuality,
light diffusing, the only significant reality in things, but
there is a remainder left in things which he is not/' It is
against such a view that the repudiations of dualism are
intended. The Upaniads make it clear that they do not
mean to make the world of creation stand separate from
the Atman. They seem to be clamourously insisting on
the adequacy of the Atman to all experience. Unlike
abstract idealism, the Upaniad doctrine is distinguished
by its resolute devotedness to fact. Its highest principle
or God is the eternal spirit, 1 which transcends and includes
the objective world * and the subjective man.s In the
highest state there is only one Brahman. " We see nothing
else, hear nothing else, know nothing else/' 4 In the supreme
illumination of the souls we feel the oneness of subject
and object, the relativity of the world, the non-ultimate
nature of the oppositions. " There is neither day nor night
remaining any more, no existence, no non-existenceonly
God alone." St. Paul says : " When that which is perfect
is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.' 9
Similarly Ruysbroeck: "The fourth mode is a state of
emptiness made one with God in bare love and in divine

* Adhidaivam. Adhibhdtam.

/ i Adhyitmam. See Tait., i. 7. 4 Chin,, vii. 33.

% AtmaboddhipraldWa. gvetttvatarft, tv. 18.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 7ft

light. . . . So that a man forgetteth himself and knoweth
neither himself nor God, nor any creature, nor aught else
but love alone/' It is this integral oneness of intuitive
experience that is indicated by all those passages which
ask us to see no distinction in the highest.

We admit that according to the Upaniads, plurality,
succession in time, co-existence in space, relations of cause
and effect, oppositions of subject and object, are not the
highest reality. But this is not saying that they are unreal.
The Upaniads support the doctrine of maya only in the
sense that there is an underlying reality containing all
elements from the personal God to the telegraph post.
Samkara says : " That Atman is in the hearts of all living
creatures, from Brahma to a post." The different grades
of individuality are all broken lights of the one absolute.
Maya represents at the conceptual level the self-distinction
residing in the very heart of reality, propelling it to develop
itself. The particular things are and are not. They have
an intermediate existence. Measured by the perfection of
the absolute, the unlimited fullness of the one reality, the
world of plurality, with all its pain and disruption, is less
real. Compared with the ideal of the supreme one, it is
wanting in reality. Even if we look upon the persons and
things of the world as shadows of a substance, still, so long
^s the substance is real, the shadows also have reality.
Though the things of the world are imperfect representations
of the real, they are not illusory semblances of it. The
oppositions and conflicts which are in the foreground are
relative modes of the absolute unity, which is in the back-
ground. Duality and manyness are not the reality. 1

The unreflecting consciousness hastily assumes that the
finite world is absolutely real. This is not so. The forms
and energies of the world are not final and ultimate. They
themselves need explanation. They are not self-originated
or self-maintained. There is something behind and beyond
them. We must sink the universe in God, the finite in
the infinite, the real of uncritical perception in the Brahman
of intuition. There is no suggestion in the Upaniad3

< That is why the word " iva " is used in some of the Upani$ads. See
., ii. 4. J4 ; iv. 3. 7 ; iv. 4. 19.

74 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

that the objects which lie around us on every side in infinite
space, to which by virtue of our bodily frames we all belong,
are only apparitions.

There has been much criticism of the theory of the
Upani$ads under the false impression that it supports
the illusory nature of the world. It is contended that
progress is unreal because progress is change, and change
is unreal since time in which change occurs is unreal. But
the whole charge is due to a misconception. It is true that
the absolute is not in time, while time is in the absolute.
Within the absolute we have real growth, creative evolution.
The temporal process is an actual process, for reality mani-
fests itself in and through and by means of the temporal
changes. If we seek the real in some eternal and timeless
void, we do not find it. All that the Upaniads urge is
that the process of time finds its basis and significance in
an absolute which is essentially timeless. For real progress
this conception of the absolute is necessary. Without this
all-comprehending absolute we cannot be certain that the
flux of the universe is an evolution, that change is progress,
and that the end of the world is the triumph of the
good. The absolute guarantees that the process of the
world is not chaotic but ordered ; that the development
is not haphazard or the result of charge variations. Reality
is not a series of disconnected states. Were it so, were
there not an absolute, we should be landed in an endless
process, which would have no plan or purpose underlying it.
The unity of the absolute functions throughout the process
of the evolution of the world. We are not impotently
struggling to realise something which is not yet and can
never be. In a sense the real is expressed at every moment
of its history. Being and becoming, that which is and that
which is to be, are identical. With such a view, the teaching
of the Upaniads is in essential harmony. They do not
support the doctrine of the world illusion, Hopkins says :
" Is there anything in the early Upaniads to show that
the authors believed in the objective world being an illu-
sion ? Nothing at all." i

* J.4.O.S., xxiL, p. 385. Sir R. G. Bhandafkar holds that " the opinion
expressed by tome eminent scholars that the burden o! the Upanisad

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANBADS 75

XII

DEGREES OF REALITY

So far as the absolute is concerned, there are no degrees
at all. The conception of degrees has meaning only for
the finite intelligence which distinguishes things. It has
no ultimate value. When the manyness of the world is
taken over into the one, the conception of degrees is trans-
cended. In the metaphysical reality of the Upanigads
we have no scale of reals. Yet it has significance in the
world of experience. All progress in the world involves it.
Any demand for advance and alteration in existence pre-
supposes it. The approximation to the character of the
real in the relative world of things is the test of the more
or less of reality. We know enough of the ultimate to make
use of it in this world. This view of the Upaniads is
defended by SSamkara. In reply to the dilemma, Is Brahman
known or is it not known ?, if known, we need not inquire
into its nature ; if not known, it will not be worth our while
to inquire, Samkara says that reality as self is indubitably
known. It posits itself in such sayings as " I question,"
or " I doubt." That something is real is a self-evident truth,
and it is its nature that we have to understand. This reality
which we realise serves as the criterion to distinguish degrees
in existence. The theory of the world illusion is inconsistent
with the conception of degrees of reality. The Upani$ads
give us a hierarchy of different grades of reality down from
the all-embracing absolute, which is the primary source
as well as the final consummation of the world process.
The different kinds of being are higher and lower manifesta-
tions of the one absolute spirit. For nothing on earth
stands alone, however relatively complete and self-subsisting
it may appear. Every finite object holds within itself
distinctions which point beyond. While the absolute is
in all finite things and permeates them, the things differ

teaching is the illusive character of the world and the reality of one soul
only is manifestly wrong, and I may even say^ is indicative of an uncritical
judgment " (Vaiw<tvism> p. a, /.*.).

76 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

in the degree of their permeability, in the fullness of the
reflections they give forth.

Not all parts like, but all alike informed
With radiant light. . . .

There is a richer revelation of reality in organised life than
in brute matter, more in human society than in organised
life. The rank of the categories as higher and lower is
determined by the adequacy of their expression of reality.
Life is a higher category than matter. Self-conscious
thought is more concrete than mere consciousness. " He
who knows the gradual development of the self in hiiq
obtains himself more development. There are herbs and
trees and all that is animal, and he knows the self gradu-
ally developing in them. For in herbs and trees sap only
is seen, but citta or consciousness in animated being.
Among animated beings, again, the self develops gradually,
for in some sap is seen (as well as consciousness), but in
others consciousness is not seen, and in man, again, the self
develops gradually, for he is most endowed with knowledge.
He says what he has known, he sees what he has known.
He knows what is to happen to-morrow, he knows the
visible and the invisible worlds. By means of the mortal
he desires the immortal thus is he endowed. With regard
to other animals, hunger and thirst are a kind of under-
standing. But they do not say what they have known,
nor do they see what they have known. They do not
know what is to happen to-morrow, nor the visible and the
invisible worlds. They go so far and no farther/' l
We see that though the same reality is seen " in the star,
in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod/'
still it is seen more fully in living beings than in dead
matter, in developing man than in the satisfied beast, in
the spiritual life than in the intellectual. 9 In this process

1 Aitareya Aragyaka, ii. 3. 1-5.

The Aitareya Upanisad alludes to the fourfold clarification of jfvas
into those born of uterus, jar&ynja, like men and the higher animals; those
born of egg, a$4aja, like crows and ducks; those born of moisture, svedaja,
like worms and insects ; and those born of earth, udbhijja, like plants (iii. 3).
The classification proceeds on the mode of Appearance of the different beings
cm earth. See also Manu, i. 43-46. Aristotle speaks of vegetable, animal
and human souls, Leibaig classifies living beings into plants, animals and man.

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANIADS 77

of self-realisation or self-fulfilment the lowest is the earth*
The Upaniad thinkers have advanced on the Vedic con-
ception of a single element-water. Sometimes three ele-
ments of fire, water and earth are admitted. 1 The five
elements of ether, air, fire, water and earth, are distinguished.
" From that self (Brahman) sprang forth ether (ka) ;
from ether air, from air fire, from fire water, from water
earth. From earth herbs, from herbs food, from food seed,
from seed man. Man thus consists of the essence of food." *
In discussing the physical basis of life the author gives an
account of the evolution of matter. The higher possesses
the properties of the lower. Ether comes first, with the
single property of sound. It is that through which we
hear. From ether we proceed to air, which has the property
of ether, and in addition that of tangibility. It is that
through which we hear and see. From air comes fire. It
is that by which we hear, feel and see. From fire we get
to water. We can taste it also. From water comes earth,
that by which we hear, feel, see, taste and smell. Though
the science presupposed might appear to be fanciful at
the present day, still there was a principle involved in the
account. It is in the Upaniads that we have for the
first time the doctrine of the five elements. The distinction
of the elemental essence or the tanmatra and the gross
embodiment or substance is suggested. 3 The Chandogya
Upaniad sometimes suggests that the things of the world
are qualitatively distinct from one another, and may be
divided into infinite parts. Uddalaka propounds the theory
that matter is infinitely divisible and qualitatively distinct.
There is no such thing as the transformation of things into
one another. When we get butter from churning curds,
curds do not get transformed into butter, but the particles
of butter are already in the curds, and the process of churning
enables them to rise up wards. 4 The position of

i By the combination of these three, all other
Chftndogya Up., vi. 2^3-4, Possibly this view is the
doctrine of tanm&tras or subtle essences, giving rise
See also Prasna Up., iv. 8.

Tail, li. i.

i See Pra*na iv. 8 ; Aitareya, ii. 3 ; Katha,

Chin., vi. 6. i.

78 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

that different kinds of matter interpenetrate each other,
is similar to this : " If then an empirical fact, such as the
assimilation of nutriment, appears to show us the conver-
sion (say) of corn into flesh and bone, we must interpret
this as meaning that the corn contains in itself, in such
minute quantities as to be imperceptible, just that into
which it is transformed. It veritably consists of particles
of flesh and blood, and marrow and bone." x The atomic
theory of Kanada is also suggested in the view that the
particles only combine and separate. Matter is represented
as a chaotic mass, like the juices of various trees blended
together in honey.* It is not impossible to see in this the
germs of the Simkhya theory. The development of matter
is accounted for by either the entry of the jivitman into
matter or the animation of matter by spirit in varying
degrees. Sometimes the principle of motion is located
within matter itself. Prana or life, though it arises out of
matter, is not fully explicable by . matter. Similarly, con-
sciousness, though it arises from life, is not intelligible on
the hypothesis of prana or vitalism. When we get to man
we have sell-conscious thought. Man is higher than stones
and stars, beasts and birds, since he can enter into the
fellowship of reason and will, affection and conscience,
yet he is not the highest, since he feels the pain of contra-
diction.

Before we pass from this section let us consider whether
the Upaniad doctrine is rightly regarded as pantheistic.
Pantheism is the view which identifies God with the sum
of things and denies transcendence. If the nature of the
absolute is exhausted completely by the course of the
world, if the two become one, then we have pantheism.
In the Upaniads we come across passages which declare
that the nature of reality is not exhausted by the world
process. The existence of the world does not take away
from the perfection of the absolute. In a beautiful image
it is said : "That is full and this is full. From that full
rises this full. Taking away this full from that, what re-
mains is yet full/ 1 Even God in transforming Himself into

**Adamson: The Development of Greek Philotophy, p. 50.
Chin,, vi. 9. j-3.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE TJPANISADS 7

the world has forfeited nothing of His nature. As early
as the Rg-Veda it is said that all beings are only a fourth
of the Purua, while the three other fourths remain im-
mortal in the shining regions. 1 According to the Bfhad
Sranyaka (v. 14), one foot of Brahman consists of the
three worlds, the second of the triple knowledge of the
Veda, the third of the three vital breaths, while the fourth,
exalted above the dust of earth, shines as the sun.* The
Upani$ads declare that the universe is in God. But they
never hold that the universe is God. God is greater than
the universe, which is His work. He is as much and more
beyond this, as the human personality is beyond the body,
which is the instrument of its life here. They refuse to
imprison God in the world. From this it does not follow
that God is the external Creator existing separate from the
world. God expresses Himself in the world, and the world
is the expression of His life. God in the infinite fullness of
His being transcends His actual manifestations in the
universe of finite, physical and psychical entities which
He has called into existence. God is transcendent as well
as immanent. The Upaniads are not pantheistic in the
bad sense of the term. Things are not thrown together
into a heap called God, without unity, purpose or distinc-
tion of values. The philosophy of the Upaniads revolts
against the deistic conception of God. It does not say
that God is outside the world, and now and again makes
His presence felt by supernatural revelation or miraculous
interference. It is pantheism, if it is pantheism to say
that God is the fundamental reality of our lives, and we
cannot live without Him. Everything on earth is finite
and infinite, perfect and imperfect. Everything seeks a
good beyond itself, tries to rid itself of its finiteness and
become perfect. The finite seeks self-transcendence. This
clearly establishes that the Infinite Spirit is working in the
finite. The real is the basis of the unreal. If the doctrine
of the indwelling of the divine is enough justification for
condemning a system as pantheism, the philosophy of the
Upaniads is a pantheism. But pantheism in this sense
is an essential feature of all true religion.

1 x. 90. 3 See also Cfaftndogya Up., iii. xa. 6. iv. 3. 32,

80 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS

XIV

THE INDIVIDUAL SELF

The Upaniads make out that of finite objects the
individual self has the highest reality. It comes nearest
to the nature of the absolute, though it is not the absolute
itself. There are passages where the finite self is looked
upon as a reflection of the universe. The whole world is
the process of the finite striving to become infinite, and this
tension is found in the individual self. According to the
Taittiriya the several elements of the cosmos are found in
the nature of the individual. In the Chindogya Upani$ad
(vi. ix. 3 and 4) fire, water and earth are said to constitute
the jivatman or the individual soul, together with the prin-
ciple of the infinite. 1

Man is the meeting-point of the various stages of reality.
Prana corresponds to V5yu, the breath of the body to the
wind of the world, manas to aka&a, the mind of man to the
ether of the universe, the gross body to the physical elements.
The human soul has affinities with every grade of existence
from top to bottom. There is in it the divine element
which we call the beatific consciousness, the ananda state,
by which at rare moments it enters into immediate relations
with the absolute. The finite self or the embodied soul
is the Atman coupled with the senses and mind. 1

The different elements are in unstable harmony. " Two

1 Since God collected and resumed in man
The firmaments, the strata and the lights,
Fish, fowl, and beast and insect
Of various life caught back upon His arm all their trains,
Reorganised and constituted man,
The microcosm, the adding up of works.

BROWNING.

See also Aitareya, iii. 3 ; &vetttvatara, ii. 12. 6 ; Prafaa, vi. xz. The
individual subject is the world in miniature, and the world is the individual
writ large. Plato in his Timaus institutes an analogy between the macro-
cosm and the microcosm, the universe and man. The soul of the world is
said to be compounded by God Himself out of the changeless and the change-
ful and inserted in the midst of the universe (34. B). The universe, according
to him, is a magnified man. See Tait., i. 3, and Anandaghi's com-
mentary on it.

Chlfi., via. 12. 3.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 81

birds, akin and friends, cling to the self-same tree. One
of them eats the sweet berry, but the other gazes upon
him without eating. In the same tree the world tree
man dwells along with God. With troubles overwhelmed,
he faints and grieves at his own helplessness. But when
he sees the other, the Lord in whom he delights ah, what
glory is his, his troubles pass away/' x The natural and
the divine have not as yet attained a stable harmony.
The being of the individual is a continual becoming, a
striving after that which it is not. The infinite in man
summons the individual to bring about a unity out of the
multiplicity with which he is confronted. This tension
between the finite and the infinite which is present through-
out the world-process comes to a head in the human con-
sciousness. In every aspect of his life, intellectual, emo-
tional and moral, this struggle is felt. He can gain admission
into the kingdom of God, where the eternal verities of
absolute love and absolute freedom dwell only by sinking
his individuality and transforming the whole of the finite-
ness into infiniteness, humanity into divinity. But as finite
and human, he cannot reach the fruition or attain the final
achievement. The being in which the struggle is witnessed
points beyond itself, and so man has to be surpassed. The
finite self is not a self-subsisting reality. Be he so, then
God becomes only another independent individual, limited
by the finite self. The reality of the self is the infinite ; the
unreality which is to be got rid of is the finite. The
finite individual loses whatever reality he possesses if the
indwelling spirit is removed. It is the presence of the
infinite that confers dignity on the self of man. The indi-
vidual self derives its being and draws its sustenance from
the universal life. Sub specie aternitaiis, the self is perfect. 3
There is a psychological side on which the selves repel each
other and exclude one another. From this apparent fact
of cxclusiveness we should not infer real isolation of selves.
The exclusiveness is the appearance of distinction. It
ought to be referred to the identity, otherwise it becomes
a mere abstraction of our -minds. The hypothesis of ex-

* Mrtaka, lii. I. a. See R.V., i. 164. s*.
See Saihkara ; Introduction to V.S.

82 PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS

elusive selves leaves no room for the ideals of truth, goodness
and love. These presuppose that man is not perfect as
he is, that there is something higher than the actual self
which he has to attain to secure peace of mind. "And
the independent reality of the individual, when we examine
it, is in truth mere illusion. Apart from the community,
what are separate men ? It is the common mind within
him which gives reality to the human being, and taken
by himself, whatever else he is, he is not human. ... If
this is true of the social consciousness in its various forms,
it is true certainly no less of that common mind which * is
more than social. The finite minds that in and for religion
form one spiritual whole have indeed in the end no visible
embodiment, and yet, except as members in an invisible
community, they are nothing real. For religion, in short,
if the one indwelling spirit is removed, there are no spirits
left." *

Though the individual soul - fighting with the lower
nature is the highest in the world, it is not the highest
realisable. The striving discordant soul of man should
attain to the freedom of spirit, the delight of harmony
and the joy of the absolute. Only when the God in him
realises itself, only when the ideal reaches its fruition is
the destiny of man fulfilled. The struggles, the contra-
dictions and the paradoxes of life are the signs of imperfect
evolution, while the harmony, the delight and the peace,
mark the perfection of the process of evolution. The in-
dividual is the battlefield in which the fight occurs. The
battle must be over and the pain of contradiction trans-
cended for the ideal to be realised. The tendency to God
which begins in completed man will become then a perfect
fruition. Man is higher than all other aspects of the uni-
verse, and his destiny is realised when he becomes one
with the infinite. Nature has life concealed in it, and
when life develops, nature's destiny is fulfilled. Life has
consciousness concealed in it, and when it liberates con-
sciousness, its end is reached. The destiny of consciousness
is fulfilled when intellect becomes manifest. But the truth
of the intellect is reached when it is absorbed in the higher

* Bradley : Truth and Rtality, p. 435.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 88

intuition, which is neither thought nor will nor feeling,
but yet the goal of thought, the end of will and the per-
fection of feeling. When the finite self attains the supreme,
the godhead from which it descended, the end of spiritual
life is reached. " When to a man who understands, the
self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble, can
there be to him, who has once beheld that unity ? "

XV

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANISADS

In estimating the value of the ethics of the Upaniads
we have to consider the logical implications of the ideal
set forth, and develop the suggestions made in the texts.
From our previous discussion, it is obvious that the Upani-
ads have for their ideal the becoming one with God.
The world is not for itself. It issues from God, and must
therefore seek its rest in God. Throughout the process of
the world we witness this infinitisation of the finite. Like
the rest of the world, man, feeling the pressure of the infinite
in him, reaches out his hands to clasp the highest. "All
birds go towards the tree intended for their abode, so all
this goes to the supreme self." l " May I enter Thee, such
as Thou art, O, Lord ; may Thou, O Lord, enter me. . . .
May I become well cleansed, Lord." * " Thou art my
resting-place." 3 The realisation of the oneness with God
is the ideal cf man. The difference between human con-
sciousness and all else is that while all seek the infinite,
man alone has an idea of the end. After ages of develop-
ment man has become conscious of the great scheme of
the universe. He alone feels the summons of the infinite,
and consciously grows towards the heavenly stature awaiting
him. The absolute is the deliberate goal of the finite self.

That it is the highest perfection, the most desirable ideal,
is brought out in many ways. It is a state " far above
hunger and thirst, above sorrow and confusion, above old
age and death." "As the sun, the eye of the universe,

' PraSna, iv. 7. Tait, i. 4.

s Tait., i. 4; see Bfh. ( iv. 3. 32.

84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

remains far off and unaffected by all sickness that meets
the eye, so also the One, the Atman, who dwells in all
creatures, dwells afar and untouched by the sorrows of
the world/ 9 To live in the world of plurality, staking all
on the small self, subject to disease and suffering, is indeed
a misfortune. The undoing of the causes which lead to
finite existence is the proper aim of man. A return from
the plurality into the One is the ideal goal, the most ultimate
value. It gives satisfaction to the whole being of man.
It is, according to the Taittiriya Upaniad, " Pranaramam
mana-anandam, &&ntisamfddham amrtaxn," " the delight
of life and mind, the fullness of peace and eternity." Lower
goals which we crave after may satisfy the vital organism
or the mental desires, but this includes them and transcends
them. We have different kinds of pleasures answering to
the different levels of our existence, the vital pleasure,
the sensuous, the mental and the intellectual, but the
highest is inanda.

Whatever ethics we have in the Upani$ads is subsidiary
to this goal. Duty is a means to the end of the highest
perfection. Nothing can be satisfying short of this highest
condition. Morality is valuable only as leading to it. It
is the expression of the spiritual impulse to perfection
implanted in the heart of man, the instinct of the individual
soul. It is obedience to the Eternal Reality which constrains
our conscious self. This is the meaning of the expression
that duty is " the stern daughter of the voice of God/'
The perfect ideal of our life is found only in the Eternal
Reality. The law of morality is an invitation to become
perfect, " even as your heavenly Father is perfect/'

Before we take up the discussion of the ethical life, we may
consider the objections urged generally against the possi-
bility of ethics in the philosophical system of the Upaniads.
If all is one, it is asked, how can we have moral relations ?
If the absolute is perfection, where is there any need for
the effort to realise what is already accomplished ? But
monism does not mean an obliteration of the distinction of
good and evil. The sense of otherness and multiplicity
essential to ethical life is allowed for by the Upani$ads.
They point out that there is no meaning in asking us to

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 85

love our neighbour or achieve the unity of the world in
love, if exclusiveness and difference are fundamental in the
lives of men. If men were really external to each other,
as the Leibnizean monads, without the corrective of the
pre-established harmony, then the ethical ideal is impossible
of realisation. If we are called upon to love our neighbour,
it is because all are one in reality. My neighbour and
myself are one in our inmost self, if the superficial and
ephemeral distinctions are transcended. The true self,
absolutely and eternally valid, is beyond the fluctuating
particulars of time and space and all that finds its place
in them. It is no mere empty phrase to be told to transcend
our exclusiveness. Moka literally means release, release
from the bondage to the sensuous and the individual, the
narrow and the finite. It is the result of self-enlargement
and freedom. To live in perfect goodness is to realise one's
life in all. This ideal for which the moral nature of man
cries can be attained only if the finite self transcends its
narrow individuality and identifies itself with the whole.
The path of deliverance is the path of soul growth. The
reality in which we are to abide by transcending our in-
dividuality is the highest, and that is the reality asserted
by the Upaniads.

It is urged that there is no room for any ethical en-
deavour on the hypothesis that man is divine in nature.
Simply because it is said that God is in man, it does not.
follow that with it there is an end of all endeavour. God is
not in man in such an obvious fashion that he can possess
Him absentmindedly and without effort or struggle. God is
present as a potentia or a possibility. It is man's duty
to lay hold of Him by force and action. If he does not
do it, he fails in his duty as man. The God in man is a
task as well as a fact, a problem as well as a possession.
Man in his ignorance identifies himself with the external
wrappings, the physical and mental envelopments. Desire
for the absolute conflicts with his finitude or his limitation.
49 Though the individual is lit with the divine spark, he is
not wholly divine. His divinity is not an actuality, but
a part of God aspiring to be the whole. As he is, he is dust
and deity, God and brute crossed. It is the task of th*

88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

moral life to eliminate the non-divine element, not by des-
troying it, but by suffusing it with the divine spirit"
Man is a contradiction between the finite heritage of nature
and the infinite ideals of spirit, and by a gradual submission
of the chaotic principles of nature to the divine spirit he
has to work up to his destiny. It is his aim to break the
shell of his own little being and blend in love and perfect
union with the divine principle. The problem of morality
has a significance for man whose life is a struggle or a war-
fare between the finite and the infinite, the demoniac and
the divine elements. Man is born for the struggle, and
does not find his self until he feels the opposition.

From the references in the Upani^ads to the different
ways of attaining the highest, Rathitara's truth, Pauruiti's
austerity and Maudgalya's learning,* it is clear that the
thinkers^ of the period reflected a good deal on the problems
of ethics. Without attempting to elaborate the views
of tlie different thinkers, we may describe certain general
propositions accepted by them all.

The ideal of ethics is self-realisation. Moral conduct is
self-realised conduct, if by the self we mean not the empirical
self, with all its weakness and vulgarity, selfishness and
smallness, but the deeper nature of man, free from all fetters
of selfish individuality. The lusts and passions of the
animal self, the desires and ambitions of egoism, restrict
the vital energies to the plane of the lower self and contract
the life of the soul, and they are to be held in check. For the
growth of the soul, or the realisation of the highest, the
obstacles and influences must be subdued. The moral
life is one of understanding and reason, and not of mere
sense and instinct. " Know the self or Atman as the Lord
who sits in the chariot called the body, buddhi or intelli-
gence is the charioteer, mind is the reins, the senses are
the horses, and the objects are the roads. The self, the
senses and the mind combined, the intelligent call the
enjoyer. But he who has no understanding, but is weak
in mind, his senses run riot like the vicious horses of a
charioteer. He who has understanding, and is strong.

International Journal of Ethic$> 19x4, p. 169.
Tait., i. 9.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 87

minded, his senses are well controlled, like the good horses
of a charioteer. He who is without understanding, who
is thoughtless and impure, never reaches the immortal,
immaterial state, but enters into the round of birth. But
he who has understanding, and he who is thoughtful and
pure, reaches the state from which there is no return/ 1 K
The drive of desire has to be checked. When desire seizes
the helm the soul suffers shipwreck, since it is not the law
of man's being. If we do not recognise the ideal prescribed
by reason, and do not accept a higher moral law, our life
will be one of animal existence, without end or aim, where
we are randomly busy, loving and hating, caressing and
killing without purpose or reason. The presence of reason
reminds us of something higher than mere nature, and re-
quires us to transform our natural existence into a human
one, with meaning and purpose. If, in spite of indications
to the contrary, we make pleasure the end of our pursuits,
our life is one of moral evil, unworthy of man. " Man is
not in the least elevated above mere animalism by the
possession of reason, if his reason is only employed in the
same fashion as that in which animals use their instincts." *
Only the wicked make gods of the things of the world and
worship them. " Now Virocana, satisfied in his thought,
went to the asuras and preached to them the doctrine that
the bodily self alone is to be worshipped, that it alone is
to be served, and he who worships body and serves it gains
both worlds this and the next. Therefore they call even
now a man who does not give alms here, who has not faith,
and offers no sacrifices, an asura, for this is the doctrine
of the asuras." 3 Our life, when thus guided, will be at
the mercy of vain hopes and fears. " The rational life
will be marked by unity and consistency. The different
parts of human life will be in order and make manifest
the one supreme ideal. If, instead of reason, our senses
guide us, our life will be a mirror of passing passions and
temporary inclinations. He who leads such a life will have
to be written down, like Dogberry, an ass. His life, which

1 Katha Upani?ad.

* Kftnt : Critique of Pure Reason.

i Ch&ndogya, via. 8. 4-5.

88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISAIXS

will be a series of disconnected and scattered episodes,
will have no purpose to take, no work to carry out, no end
to realise. In a rational life, every course of action, before
it is adopted, is brought before the bar of reason, and its
capacity to serve the highest end is tested, and if found
suitable adopted by the individual/ 9 1

A life of reason is a life of unselfish devotion to the
world. Reason tells us that the individual has no interests
of his own apart from the whole, of which he is a part.
He will be delivered from the bondage to fortune and
caprice only if he gives up his ideas of separate sensuous
existence. He is a good man who in his life subordinates
personal to social ends, and he is a bad man who does the
opposite. The soul in committing a selfish deed imposes
fetters on itself, which can be broken only by the reassertion
of the life universal. This way of sympathy is open to
all and leads to the expansion of the soul. If we want
to escape from sin, we must escape from selfishness. We
must put down the vain conceits and foolish lies about
the supremacy of the small self. Each of us conceives
himself to be an exclusive unit, an ego sharply marked off
from whatever lies outside his physical body and mental
history. From this egoism springs all that is morally bad.
We should realise in our life and conduct that all things
are in God and of God. The man who knows this truth
will long to lose his life, will hate all selfish goods and sell
all that he has, would wish even to be despised and rejected
of the world, if so he can come into accord with the universal
life of God. In one sense the Upani$ad morality is in-
dividualistic, for its aim is self -realisation ; but " individual-
istic" ceases here to have any exclusive meaning. To
realise oneself is to identify oneself with a good that is not
his alone. Moral life is a God-centred life, a life of passionate
love and enthusiasm for humanity, of seeking the infinite
through the finite, and not a mere selfish adventure for
small ends.*

Finite objects cannot give us the satisfaction for which
our soid hungers. As in the field of intellect we miss the
ultimate reality in the objects of the empirical world, even

Intimation*! Journal of Etkici, 1914, pp. 171-2. lift Upftnip*, i.

i

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 89

do the absolute good we seek for in morality is not to be
found in finite satisfactions. "The infinite is bliss, there
is no bliss in things finite/ 1 * Yajfiavalkya, leaving for
the forest, proposed to divide his property between his
two wives, Maitreyi and K5ty2Lyani. Maitreyi did not
know what to do ; sitting among her household possessions,
rather sadly she was looking outwards towards the forest.
That day she administered a rebuke to the petty man who
pursues worthless aims in such breathless haste. Finite
things produce the opposite of what we aim at through
them. The spirit in us craves for true satisfaction, and
nothing less than the infinite can give us that. We seek
finite objects, we get them, but there is no satisfaction
in them. We may conquer the whole world, and yet we
sigh that there are no more worlds to conquer. " What-
ever he reaches he wishes to go beyond. If he reaches the
sky, he wishes to go beyond." Most of us are on " the
road that leads to wealth in which many men perish." 3
By becoming slaves to things, by swathing ourselves in
external possessions, we miss the true self. " No man
can be made happy by wealth." " The hereafter never
rises before the eyes of the careless youth, befooled by the
delusion of wealth. ' This is the world/ he thinks ; ' there
is no other/ Thus he falls again and again into the
power of death/' " Wise men, knowing the nature of what
is immortal, do not look for anything stable here among
things unstable." 5 Man is in anguish when he is separated
from God, and nothing else than union with God can satisfy
his heart's hunger. 6 The unbounded aspirations of the
soul for the ideally beautiful, the specklessly pure, are not
answered by the objects limited in space, time and the
shackles of sense. Many men there are who wish to realise
the ideal of an absolutely worthy existence in love of another
being. So long as that being is another human self, localised
in space and time, the ideal is never attained. It is self-
deception to seek the fullness of love and beauty in another

* Chin., vii. i. 24. Aitareya Anupyaka, ii. 3. 3. i.

i Katha, ii. 2-3. 4 Katha, i. a. 6. * Katha, ii. 4- a.

* " Miserable comforters are ye all, O that I knew where I might find
Him" (Job).

90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

human being, man or wom&n. The perfect realisation
can only be in the Eternal. Detachment from the world
and its possessions is necessary for this. From the beginning
there were people who sought deliverance from sorrow in
retirement from the world. Many there were who left
wife and child, goods and chattels, and went out as mendi-
cants, seeking the salvation of the souls in poverty and
purity of life. These groups of ascetics, who burst the
bonds that bound them to a home life, prepared the way
for the monasticism of the Buddhists. A life of holy re-
nunciation has been recognised to be the chief path to
deliverance.

It follows that the Upani^ads insist on the inwardness
of morality and attach great importance to the motive in
conduct. Inner purity is more important than outer con-
formity. Not only do the Upaniads say " do not steal,"
" do not murder," but they also declare " do not covet,"
or "do not hate or yield to anger, malice and greed." The
mind will have to be purified, for it is no use cutting the
branches if one leaves the roots intact. Conduct is judged
by its subjective worth or the degree of sacrifice involved.
The Upani^ads require us to look upon the whole world
as born of God as the self of man is. If insistence on this
doctrine is interpreted as reducing all love finally to a well-
directed egoism, the Upanisads admit that morality and
love are forms of the highest self-realisation, but only object
to the word " egoism " with all its associations. Yajfia-
valkya maintains that self-love lies at the foundation of
all other kinds of love. Love of wealth and property, clan
and country are special forms of self-love. The love of
the finite has only instrumental value, while love of the
| eternal has intrinsic worth. " The son is dear for the sake
I of the eternal in him." Finite objects help us to realise
\ the self. Only the love of the Eternal is supreme love,
which is its own reward, for God is love. 1 To love God
is bliss ; not to love Him is misery. To love God is to
possess knowledge and immortality ; not to love Him is
to be lost in doubt and delusion, sorrow and death.* In
all true religion it is the same dominating motive that

* KimftyaUna. Bfh., ill. 9. u Brh,, iv. 4. 5.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS 91

we have. " He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own
soul. All they that hate me love death." x The sinners
are the slayers of their souls, according to the Upani$ads
"atmahano jan5b."

The Upaniads ask us to renounce selfish endeavours,
but not all interests. Detachment from self and attachment
to God are what the Upaniads demand. The ideal sage
has desires, though they are not selfish desires. " He who
has no desires, who is beyond desires, whose desires are
satisfied, whose desire is the soul, being even Brahman
obtains Brahman." 2 Kama, which we are asked to re-
nounce, is not desire as such, but only the animal desire,
lust, the impulsive craving of the brute man. Freedom
from kma is enjoined, but this is not blank passivity. We
are asked to free ourselves from the tyranny of lust and
greed, from the fascination of outward things, from the
fulfilment of instinctive cravings. 3 Desire as such is not
forbidden. It all depends upon the object. If a man's
desire is the flesh, he becomes an adulterer ; if things of
beauty, an artist ; if God, a saint. The desires for salvation
and knowledge are highly commended. A distinction is
drawn between true desires and false ones,4 and we are
asked to share in the true ones. The filial piety and affection
of a Naciketas, the intense love and devotion of a Savitri
are not faults. The Lord of all creation has kama in the
sense of desire. " He desired (akamayata), let me become
many." If the Lord has desires, why should not we ? Wei
do not find in the Upaniads any sweeping condemnation]
of affections. We are asked to root out pride, resentment,
lust, etc., and not the tender feelings of love, compassion
and sympathy. It is true that here and there the Upaniads
speak of tapas as a means of spiritual realisation. But
tapas only means the development of soul force, the freeing
of the soul from slavery to body, severe thinking or energising
of mind, " whose tapas consists of thought itself." 5 Life is
a great festival to which we are invited, that we might show

' Prov., viii. 36. See Itt. Up. Brh.. iv. 4. 6.

I The true taint is described as ttnta, irftnta, dinta, uparata, samthita.
These all imply the conquest of passion.

Chftndogya, vii. i. 3. s Mujtfaka, i. i. 9-

98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

tapas or self-renunciation, d&na or liberality, firjavam or
right dealing, ahimsSL or non-injury to life, and satyava-
canam or truthfulness. 2 It is the spirit of disinterested*
ness that is conveyed by tapas or tySga. " Not by karma,
not by offspring, not by wealth, but by renunciation can
immortality be gained." "' The Chandogya Upaniad says
" Sraddha tapafc." 3 ^aitl^ asceticisgx^ To realise freedom
from the bondage of outward things one need not go to
the solitude of the forest and increase his privations and
penances that so the last remnants of earthly dependence
might be thrown away. " By renunciation thou shouldst
enjoy/' says the la Upaniad. We can enjoy the world
if we are not burdened by the bane of worldly possessions ;
we are princes in the world if we do not harbour any thought
of covetousness. Our enjoyment of the world is in direct
proportion to our poverty. A call to renunciation in the
sense of killing out the sense of separateness and developing
disinterested love is the essence of all true religion. 4

There was a change in Indian 'thought after the Vedic
period.5 Due to the asceticism of the Atharva-Veda, the
mystic tendency increased. During the period of the hymns
of the Rg-Veda there was a sort of selfish abandonment
to pleasure. The spiritual instinct of the human soul
asserted itself, and in the period of the Upaniads the
protest against the tyranny of the senses was heard in
clear tones. No more is the spirit to follow helpless and
miserable the flesh that rages and riots. But this spirit
of renunciation did not degenerate in the Upaniads into
the insane asceticism of a later day, which revelled in the
burning of bodies and such other practices. In the manner
of Buddha, Bharadvaja protests against both worldly life
and asceticism. 6 We may even say that this measureless
and fanatical asceticism is not indicative of a true renuncia-
tion, but is only another form of selfishness. Attempts to

Chin., iii. 16 ; Tait., i. 9-

N&iftyagtya, iv. ax. s v. 10.

4 " Them fool, that which them lowest is not quickened except it die 4
(t Cor. xv. 36).

i See Rhys Davids: Buddhism. Hibtort Licturn. pp. 21-33.
See Mmtfaka Up.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS 98

gain solitary salvation embodying the view that one's soul
is more precious than all the world's souls put together
are not the expression of any genuine modesty of spirit.
The Upani$ads require us to work but disinterestedly.
The righteous man is not he who leaves the world and
retires to a cloister, but he who lives in the world and loves
the objects of the world, not for their own sake, but for
the sake of the infinite they contain, the universal they
conceal. To him God has unconditional value, and all
objects possess derived values as vehicles of the whole
or as the ways to God. Every common duty fulfilled, every
individual sacrifice made, helps the realisation of the self.
We may be fathers, for that is a way of transcending our
narrow individuality and identifying ourselves with the
larger purposes. Human love is a shadow of the divine
love. We may love our wives for the sake of the joy that
burns at the heart of things. " In truth, not for the hus-
band's sake is the husband dear, but for the sake of the
Atman is the husband dear," says the Upaniad. The
same is asserted with constant repetition of wife, sons,
kingdoms, the Brahmin and the warrior castes, world
regions, gods, living creations and the universe. They are
all here, not on their own account, but for the sake of the
Eternal. 1 The objects of the world are represented not as
lures to sin, but as pathways to the divine bliss. When
once we have the right vision, we may have wealth, etc.*
" Tato me riyam Svaha." " After that bring me wealth."
And Samkara points out that wealth is an evil to the unre-
generate, but not to the man of wisdom. Things of the
world seemingly undivine are a perpetual challenge to the
spiritual soul. He has to combat their independence and
turn them into expressions of the divine. He does all
work in this spirit of detachment. " To be detached is
to be loosened from every tie which binds a soul to the
earth, to be dependent on nothing sublunary, to lean on
nothing temporal. It is to care nothiqg what other men
choose to say or think of us or do ; to go about our work
as soldiers go to battle, without a care for the consequences,
to account credit, honour, name, easy circumstances, com*

., ii. 4. 5* * Tait. i. 4.

94 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

, fort, human affection, just nothing at all when any religious
| obligation requires sacrifice of them." * The Upaniads
demand a sort of physical preparation for the spiritual
fight. Cleansing* fasting, continence, solitude, etc., as
purificatory of the body, are enjoined. " May my body
become fit, may my tongue become extremely sweet, may
I hear much in my ears." * This is not to despise the body
as a dog and an encumbrance to the human soul. Nor
has this purifying of the body, freeing of the senses, develop-
ment of the mind, anything in common with self-torture.3
Again, in the Chandogya Upamad* we are told that the world
of Brahman belongs to those who find it by brahmacarya.
Brahmacarya is the discipline a student has to undergo
when studying under a guru. It is not an ascetic with-
drawal from the world, for the same Upaniad in viii. 5
makes brahmacarya equivalent to the performing of sacrifices.
It looks as if these were meant as a warning against the
false interpretation of brahmacarya as aloofness from the
world. The body is the servant of the soul and not its
prison. There is no indication in the Upaniads that we
must give up life, mind, consciousness, intelligence, etc. On
the other hand, the doctrine of divine immanence leads to
an opposite conclusion.

" The Indian sages, as the Upaniads speak of them,"
according to Gough, " seek for participation in divine life,
not by pure feeling, high thought, and strenuous endeavour,
not by unceasing effort to learn the true and do the right,
but by the crushing out of every feeling and every thought,
by vacuity, apathy, inertion and ecstasy." 5 The aim of
the Upaniads, according to Eucken, is " not so much a
penetration and overcoming of the world as a separation
and liberation from it ; not an enhancement of life in order
to maintain it even in face of the hardest resistance, but
an abatement, a softening of all hardness, a dissolution,
a fading away, a profound contemplation." 6 The view

Newman : University Sketches, p. 127. Tait., i. 4.

3 Gough makes a mistake by translating tapas into self-torture. In
Tait. i. 4 the injunctions are to the effect that the body must be rendered
fit lor the habitation of God.

4 viii. 4. 3\ 5 Philosophy of the Upanifads, pp. 266-267.
* Main Currents, p. 13.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS M

here stated that the Upaniads demand a release from
the conditions which constitute human life is a complete
misconception. The Upaniads do not ask us to renounce
life, do not taboo desires as such. The essence of ethical
life is not the sublation of the will. The false asceticism
which regards life as a dream and the world as an illusion,
which has obsessed some thinkers in India as well as in
Europe, is foreign to the prevailing tone of the Upaniads.
A healthy joy in the life of the world pervades the atmo-
sphere. To retire from the world is to despair of humanity
and confess the discomfiture of God. M Only performing
works one should desire to live a hundred years." l There
is no call to forsake the world, but only to give up the dream
of its separate reality. We are asked to pierce behind the
veil, realise the presence of God in the world of nature and
society. We are to renounce the world in its immediacy,
break with its outward appearance, but redeem it for God
and make it express the divinity within us and within it.!
The Upaniad conception of the world is a direct challenge
to the spiritual activity of man. A philosophy of resignation,
an ascetic code of ethics, and a temper of languid world-
weariness are an insult to the Creator of the universe, a sin
against ourselves and the world which has a claim on us.
The Upaniads believe in God, and so believe in the world
as well.

The Upaniads do not content themselves with merely
emphasising the spirit of true religion. They also give us
a code of duties, without which the moral ideal will be an
uncertain guide. All forms of conduct where passion is
controlled and reason reigns supreme, where there is self-
transcendence in the sense of freedom from the narrowness
of selfish individuality, where we work because we are all
co-operators in the divine scheme, are virtuous, and their
opposites vicious. Restraint, liberality and mercy are
virtues.* The principle that the left hand
what the right hand does is expressed in
words : " Give with faith, give not

plenty, give with bashfulness, give with ffepf give with
sympathy/' 3 In Chindogya (iii. 17)

> X*& Up*ni$md, ii. B r h., v. a.

90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISAJ3S

right dealing, non-injury to life and truthfulness are laid
down as right forms of conduct. 1 To shrink from torturing
the brute creation, to be sorry for a hunted hare, may be,
according to our modern notions, silly sentimentalism fit
only for squeamish women. But in the Upani$ads love
of brute creation is considered to be a great virtue. Kind*
ness and compassion for all that has life on earth is a general
feature of Indian ethics. It is a crime to kill a deer for
sport or 'worry a rat for amusement. To attain conquest
over passions, a discipline is sometimes enjoined. The
Indian thinkers believe in the dependence of mind on body,
and so prescribe purity of food as necessary for the purity
of mind. 1 Control over the passions must be spontaneous,
and when that is not possible forcible restraint is sometimes
adopted. A distinction is made between tapas, or forcible
constraint of passions, and nyasa, or spiritual renunciation.
Tapas is for the vanaprastha who is in the lower stage,
while nyasa is for the sannyasin. The yogic practices of
concentration, contemplation, etc., are to be met with.
"The wise should sink speech in the mind and the mind
into buddhi." 3 Meditation and concentration as means
of cleansing the mind are also enjoined. The individual
is asked to turn all his thoughts inward and think only
of God, not with an eye to obtaining favours, but to becoming
one with Him. But even this exaltation of contemplative
life is not necessarily an escape from reality. It is only
the means by which we can see the ultimate truth of things.
" With sharp and subtle mind is He beheld." The four
5ramas of the brahmacarin or student, gfhastha or house-
holder, vanaprastha or anchorite, and sannyasi or wandering
mendicant, are mentioned as representing the different steps
by which man gradually purifies himself from all earthly
taint and becomes fit for his spiritual home.

Retirement from the world is enjoined for every Aryan
when once his duties to society are fulfilled. It comes at
the end of a man's career. The ascetic wanderer, whose life
is love and conduct righteousness, turns his eyes towards
heaven and keeps himself free from the temptations of the

8*0 alto i. 9. 12. AhittfaddhAU

t KftthA, i. 3. 10. 4 Ibid., iii. la.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 9*

world. The simple but devout minds of India were haunted
by dreams of imperishable beauty and echoes of unceasing
musk. They live so intimately with the ideal that they
are persuaded of its reality. To us it may be a dream,
yet it is a dream in which they live, and it is therefore more
real than the reality they ignore* A severe training of
body and soul is prescribed for the ascetic, who alone can
live such an ideal life. His life must be governed by the
strictest purity and poverty. He is required to wear the
yellow garments, shave his head and beg for his food in
the streets. These are the means to help the soul to humility.
The soul can mount to everlasting bliss by means of care-
fully regulated prayers and fastings. What makes an
ascetic great is his holiness and humility. It is not the
capacity to do clever con jureW Tricks or dream hysteric
dreams, but it is to remain pure from lust and resentment,
passion and desire. This living martyrdom is ever so much
more difficult than killing oneself. Death is easy. It is
life that is taxing. A true ascetic is not one who gives
up home and society to escape the social bonds ; he is not
one who becomes a sannyasin because he suffers shipwreck
in life. It is these latter that draw disgrace on the whole
institution. The true sannyasin is he who, with self-control
and spiritual vision, suffers for mankind. The labour of
life is laid upon us to purify us from egoism, and social
institutions are devices to help the growth of the soul. So
after the gjrhastha&ama, or the stage of the householder,
comes that of the recluse. The Upaniads declare that
the knowers of Atman relinquish all selfish interests and
become mendicants. " Knowing Him, the Atman, Brahmins
relinquish the desire for posterity, the desire for possessions,
the desire for worldly prosperity, and go forth as mendicants."*
In Ancient India, though the sannyasin is poor and penni-

According to Oldenberg, this is the earliest trace of Indian monas-
titism. " From these Brahmins, who knowing the Atman renounce all that
is earthly, and become beggars, the historical development progresses in
a regular line tip to Buddha, who leaves kith and Ion, and goods and chattels*
to seek deliverance, wandering homeless in the yellow garb of monk. The
appearance of the doctrine of the Eternal One and the origin of monastic
life in India are simultaneous ; they are the two issues of the same important
occurrence " (Oldenberg : Btufctt*, p. 32).

8

98 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

less, lives on daily charity, and has no power or authority
of any kind, he is still held in such high esteem that the
emperors of the world bow to him. Such is the reverence
for holy life.

The aramadharma, one of the central features of the
Hindu religion, attempts to fill the whole of life with the
power of spirit. It insists that a life of rigorous chastity is
the proper preparation for married life. To the thinkers of
the Upaniads, marriage is a religious sacrament, a form
of divine service/ The home is sacred, and no religious
ceremony is complete without the wife taking part in it.
After the individual realises to the full the warmth and
glow of human love and family affection, through marriage
and parenthood, he is called upon to free himself slowly
from attachment to home and family in order that he might
realise his dignity as a citizen of the universe. If Buddhism
failed to secure a permanent hold on the mind of India,
it was because it exalted the ideal of celibacy over that
of marriage and allowed all to enter the highest order of
sannyasins, regardless of their previous preparation for it.
The sannyasins are a spiritual brotherhood without possessions,
without caste and nationality, enjoined to preach in the
spirit of joy the gospel of love and service. They are the
ambassadors of God on earth, witnessing to the beauty
of holiness, the power of humility, the joy of poverty and
the freedom of service.

The rules of caste prescribe the duties to society. Man
has to fulfil his duties whatever his lot may be. The
functions depend on the capacities. Brahminhood does not
depend on birth, but on character. The following story
reveals this truth :

Satyak&ma, the son of Jabl, addressed his mother and said*
" I wish to become a brahmac&rin, mother. Of what family am I ? "

She said to him : " I do not know, my child, of what family thou
art. In my youth, when I had to move about much as a servant,
I conceived thee. So I do not know of what family thou art. I
am Jab&l& by name. Thou art Satyakftma. Say that thou art
Satyakftma Jftbftla."

He going to Gautama, the son of Haridrumat, said to him : " I
wish to become a brahmacirin with thee. Sire. May I come to you ? "

* See Tait. Up., i.

PHDLOSOPHY OF THE UPANIgADS 99

He said to him : "Of what family art thou, my friend ? "
He replied : " I do not know, Sire, of what family I am. I asked
my mother, and she answered : ' In my youth, when I had to move
about much as a servant, I conceived thee. I do not know of what
family thou art. I am Jabala by name, thou art Satyakima.' I am
therefore Satyakftma Jftbala, Sire."

He said to him : " No one but a true Brahmin would thus speak
out. Go and fetch fuel, I shall initiate thee. Thou hast not swerved
from the truth."

The whole philosophy of the Upani?ads tends towards
the softening of the divisions and the undermining of class
hatreds and antipathies. God is the inner soul of all alike.
So all must be capable of responding to the truth and
therefore possess a right to be taught the truth. Sanat-
kumara, the representative of the Katriyas, instructs the
Brahmin Narada about the ultimate mystery of things.
Higher philosophy and religion were by no means confined
to the Brahmin class. We read of kings instructing the
famous teachers of the time about the deep problems of
spirit. Janaka and AjataSatru are Katriya kings who
held religious congresses where philosophical disputations
were conducted. It was a period of keen intellectual life.
Even ordinary people were interested in the problems of
philosophy. Wise men are found wandering up and down
the country eager to debate. The Brahmin editors of the
Upaniads had so sincere a regard for truth that they
were ready to admit that Katriyas took an important
part in these investigations.* Women, though they were
much sheltered so far as the struggle for life was concerned,
had equal rights with men in the spiritual struggle for
salvation. Maitreyi, Gargi discuss the deep problems of
spirit and enter into philosophic tournaments.3

It is true that the Upaniads lay stress on knowledge
as the means to salvation. " Tarati okam Stmavit," the
knower of Atman, crosses all sorrow. " Brahmavid Brah-
maiva bhavati," the knower of Brahman, becomes indeed
Brahman. Because the Upaniads lay stress on jnana,
and look upon all morality as a preliminary to it, there are

i Chandogya, iv. 4. i. 4.

See Kau?Itaki Up., i. 4. a ; Bfh., iti. 7 ; Chan. v. 3. "7.

i Brh., ii. 4.

100 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

critics who contend that the Upaniads in their enthusiasm
for jfi&na relegate the will to a subordinate place. Deussen,
after urging that morality has no meaning for the enlight-
ened, says that it is not necessary even for the unenlightened.
"Moral conduct cannot contribute directly but only in-
directly to the attainment of the knowledge that brings
emancipation. For this knowledge is not a becoming
something which had no previous existence and might be
brought about by appropriate means, but it is the per*
ception of that which previously existed from all eternity."
But the Upaniads do not advocate knowledge in the
narrow sense of the term as the sole means to salvation.
" That self cannot be gained by the knowledge of the Veda
or by understanding or by much learning." Right living
is also insisted on. Knowledge should be accompanied by
virtue. If the candidate for theology does not possess
moral and spiritual attainments, he is not admitted, what-
ever be his zeal and inquisitiveness.3 Jfi&na, we must
make it dear, is not mere intellectual ability. It is the
soul-sense. The mind of the applicant must not be too
restless or too much taken up with the world to fix itself
on the Highest. His heart must be purified and warmed
by devotion to God. We hear in the Upaniads of people
who are required to go through a long course of moral and
spiritual discipline before they are taken up as students
by those ris, the specialists in the science of God. In
the PraSna Upaniad, Pippalada sends away six inquirers"
after God for another year of discipline. In the Chandogya
Upaniad, Satyakama Jabila is sent to the wilds of the
forests to tend the teacher's cattle, that thereby he might
cultivate habits of solitary reflection and come into contact
with nature. The jfiana which the Upaniads emphasise
is the faith which becomes the living law of the soul's energy.
As the tree bears fruit, knowledge must realise itself in work.
When we have jnana we are said to possess truth, make it
our own and be transformed by it. This is not possible
for " one who has not ceased from wicked conduct, who

Philosophy of th* Upanifadt, p. 362.
Mmtfaka, iii. 2. 3. See alto iii. I. 8.
I See Katha, i. 2. 24-25.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 101

is not calm, who is not collected and in whose heart there
is not peace." Rim&nuja therefore interprets knowledge to
be dhyina, meditation, or upasana, worship. There does
not seem to be any justification for the interpretation that
excludes moral life from knowledge. It is true that the
Upaniads urge that mere works will not do, unless these
express the feeling of unity with the self. " Nay, even if
one who does not know that self should perform here some
great holy work, it will perish for him in the end. If the
man worships the self only as his true spirit, his work does
not perish. For whatever he desires, that he obtains from
this self/ 9 x This passage insists that works must be per-
formed with knowledge. Without faith in the transcendent
mere works languish.* The real end of man cannot be
reached by mere mechanical goodness. In all works, in
offering sacrifices, in observing ritual, there is self-trans-
cendence, but not necessarily identification with the infinite.
All works must be done with the definite motive of promoting
the interest of the real self. Without God our life has no
aim, no existence and no support. The Upaniads con-
demn the rites and sacrifices performed with the sole idea
of bringing about large returns of outward good either in
this world or in the next. We should not do our duty
with the motive of purchasing shares in the other world
or opening a bank account with God. In protesting against
such a mechanical conception of duty in the Brahmanas,
the Upaniads lay stress on a necessary truth. But they
lend no support to the view that works and knowledge
are exclusive of each other, and that knowledge alone leads
to salvation. The Upaniads insist on a life of spirit
which combines both jnina and karma.

Just as the ideal of the intellect cannot be realised so
long as we remain at the intellectual level, but can be found
when we transcend that level, and rise to intuition, even
so the ideal of morality cannot be reached so long as we
remain at the moral level, but can be reached when we rise
to religion. At the moral level the two sides of our nature,
the finite and the infinite, are in conflict. The finite breathes
egoism or ahaihk&ra, and gives the individual a sense of
L 4. 15. ' See Bfh., iii. 8. 10.

102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

his separateness from the universal. The infinite in him
rushes forth to realise itself in the world. The self -fulfilment
Of spirit is opposed by the tendency to the disintegration
of spirit. We attempt to hold the lower nature in check
through the practice of morality, but until the lower is
completely spiritualised the ideal is not attained. It is
when we destroy the exclusiveness of our individuality
and therewith the sense of separateness that we enter the
joy of religion and realise the full freedom of the spirit.

The possibility of this religious realisation is the pre-
supposition of all morality. Without it we cannot be sure
that the aspirations of morality will be realised. In the
face of disasters and dreads, death and disease, the con*
viction that in spite of the apparent discord and contra-
diction all things work together for good, cheers us. Morality
requires the postulate of religion. God gives us the security
that all is well with the world and man is bound to
win. " When a man finds his peace and resting-place in
that invisible, intangible, inexpressible, unfathomable,
then has he attained to peace. If, however, a man admits
therein an interval, a separation, then his unrest continues ;
it is, moreover, the unrest of one who imagines himself
wise." 1 With this religious guarantee the pressure of cir-
cumstance or the persecution of man fails to disquiet us.
No rivalry provokes us to anger or bitterness. Religion
is the inspiration of morality. Without religion morality
becomes an eternal striving, a perpetual progress, an endless
aspiration towards something we do not have. In religion
all this is turned into realisation, enjoyment and fruition.
Then is the weakness of finite endowment overcome, and the
finite self becomes endowed with a meaning and a mission.
When once this consciousness is reached the continuance
or the cessation of bodily existence becomes a matter of
indifference.* Man is consumed with the fire of the love
of God and the service of humanity. He does not care

* Brh., iv. 2. 4.

" I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like
a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and lo, he was not : yea, I sought
him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the
upright : for the end of that man is peace " (Psa. xxxvii. 35-37).

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANBADS 108

whether the path he has to traverse is smooth or rough.
When a man realises the truth, evil turns away from him
and is itself destroyed, just as a ball of earth tutting against
a solid stone. 1

As the intuitional level goes beyond the categories of
intellect, even so does the religious level pass beyond the
distinctions of good and evil. He who reaches the highest
is above all laws. 2 " Him does not afflict the thought,
why have I not done what is good, why have I committed
sin ? " 3 He fears nothing and does not trouble himself
about his deeds and misdeeds in the past. " He the im-
mortal is beyond both, beyond good and evil ; what is
done and what is left undone cause him no pain, his domain
is affected by no action." This admits the possibility of
blotting out the effects of a sinful life by a sincere change
of heart. On this principle is based the Christian doctrine
that no amount of sin is a bar to salvation, provided an
act of sure repentance has been performed. When once
the soul attains the real, " in whom to dwell is happiness
imperishable," the human body is suffused with the splen-
dour of divinity in which all that is mean and vile shrivels
and dies. The question of morality has no significance.
For it is no more the individual that does anything. His
will is God's will and his life God's life. He has joined the
whole, and thus become the whole. All action flows from
the spring in God. There is no more the distinction between
God and the individual. Dr. Bosanquet, in his excellent
little book on What Religion Is, brings out this fundamental
oneness of the highest condition. " In the purity of love
and will with the supreme good, you are not only ' saved/
but you are ' free ' and ' strong.' . . . You will not be
helped by trying to divide up the unity and tell how much
comes from ' you ' and how much from ' God/ You have
got to deepen yourself in it, or let it deepen itself in you,
whatever phrase expresses the fact best to your mind." 4

* Chftndogya, i. 2. 7. Kau$Italri, ii. 8 ; Brh., iv. 4. 22,

i Tait., ii. 9.

4 Pp. 20-21. " As a drop of water is diffused in a jar of wine, taking
its taste and colour, and as molten iron becomes like to fire and casts off
its form, and as the air transfused with sunlight is transformed into that

104 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

Unfortunately, this central truth of religious life is not
sufficiently understood by even some good students of
Indian thought. The latest critic of the Upani?ads, Dr.
Hume, observes : " There is a wide difference between the
Upaniadic theory and the theory of the Greek sages,
that the man who has knowledge should thereby become
virtuous in character, or that the result of teaching should
be a virtuous life. Here the possession of some metaphysical
knowledge actually cancels all past sins and even permits
the knower unblushingly to continue in ' what seems to
be much evil" with perfect impunity, although such acts
are heinous crimes and are disastrous in their effect for
K others who lack that kind of knowledge/' * We have
already said that the knowledge of the Upaniads is not
metaphysical acumen or dialectical subtlety, but the reali-
sation of the highest as the supreme power at the heart
of the universe. This spiritual perception is possible only
with a thorough transformation of human nature in its
theoretical and practical aspects. What Dr. Hume calls
" the possession of some metaphysical knowledge " is pos-
sible only for the pure in heart. They have perfect freedom.
" In that highest state a thief is not a thief, a murderer
not a murderer. He is not followed by good, nor followed
by evil, for he then overcomes all the sorrows of the heart." *
The free can do what they choose with perfect impunity,
but this freedom is not "the madness of license." J The
mystic becomes a law unto himself and the lord of
himself and of the world in which he lives. Laws and
regulations are necessary for those men who do not naturally
conform to the dictates of conscience. But for those who
have risen above their selfish egos, morality becomes the
very condition of their being, and law is fulfilled in love.
There is no possibility of evil-doing in them. Pressure

Mine light, so that it seems not illumined but itself the light, thus in the
saints every human affection must in ineffable mode be liquefied oi itself
and transfused into the Will of God. How could God be all, if in man any-
thing of man remained ? A certain substance will remain, but in another
form, another glory, another power " (St. Bernard, quoted in Mind, 1913,

P- 3*9).

* Introduction to Tk$ Thirtttn Principal Upanifads, p. 60.

* Bfh., iv* 3 Rabindranath Tagore: S*dha*a t p. 18,

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 105

from without is converted into an inward acceptance. Till
the spiritual life is won, the law of morality appears to
be an external command which man has to obey with effort
and pain. But when the light is obtained it becomes the
internal life of the spirit, working itself out unconsciously
and spontaneously. The saint's action is an absolute sur-
render to the spontaneity of spirit, and is not an unwilling
obedience to externally imposed laws. We have the free
outpouring of an unselfish spirit which does not calculate
the rewards of action or the penalties of omission. The
conventional standards, the external duties and the ethical
rules become meaningless to him. The soul delights in
that supreme blessedness, perceives the unity of all, and
loves the world as we love our separate selves. " A per-
fectly good will would therefore be equally subject to objective
laws (viz. laws of good), but could not be conceived as
obliged thereby to act lawfully, because of itself from its
subjective constitution it can only be determined by the
conception of good. Therefore no imperatives hold for the
Divine will or in general for a holy will ; ought is here out
of place, because volition is already of itself necessarily
in unison with the law." x The moral laws are its expression,
and therefore do not bind it. Such a supreme soul is the
creator of values and svarat* a law to himself. In the
scheme of the world we have three classes of beings :
(i) Those who strive after self-assertion and gratification of
appetites, the bad men who, if ever they practise virtue,
do so for selfish reasons, such as hope of heaven or fear of
hell ; (2) men who know the law and try to conform to
it with great effort and trouble, since their selves are subject
to discord ; and (3) the saviours of the world, who have
overcome the conflict of life and attained peace. They know
the purpose of life and live up to it unconsciously and auto-
matically. The Upaniad asks us in cases of doubt and
difficulty to conduct ourselves in the manner in which the
knowers of Brahman devoted to duty would do. 3 These
great men go on doing their daily work, diffusing virtue
as the star diffuses light and the flower perfume, without

Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, p. 31 (Abbot's edition).
* Svayam eva rftjafc, ) Tait. 4, tx.

106 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UtAKI^ADS

even being aware of it. Every man can realise such a
condition. The possibility of becoming one with God can
be established only by the actuality of it. The fact of
realisation is the only proof of the possibility of the identi-
fication of man with the all-powerful spirit. According
to Christian thinkers, one such complete manifestation of
God in man is in the personality of Jesus. The Upani$ads
declare that all men have in them the possibility of rising
to their full divine stature, and can realise it if they strive
for it.

Since morality has a meaning only in the imperfect
world where man is struggling to realise his highest nature,
it is sometimes said that in the metaphysical system of
the Upaniads morality does not find a worthy place.
Deussen observes that when " the knowledge of the Atman
has been gained, every action and therefore every moral
action also has been deprived of meaning." l All through
we have been indicating the basis otsuch complaints. Moral
activity is not an end in itself. It is to be taken over into
the perfect life. Only this has transcendental worth. The
liberated in the fine phrase of the Talmud share with the
Almighty in the work of creation. Here we have morality
as obedience to a law displaced by the true idea of free
service of an end, spontaneous devotion to the whole. In
this state the individual being is absorbed in the Supreme.
This alone has transcendental worth, but the moral struggle
as preparing the way for it is not useless.

XVI

THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS

Religion is essentially a matter of life and experience.
The Upaniads prescribe three stages in the growth of the
religious consciousness, viz. srava^a, which literally means
listening, manana or reflection, and nididhyasana or con-
templative meditation. 2 The first stage points to the place

1 Philosophy of the Upanifads, p. 362.

Bj-h. Up., ii. 4. 5 ; iv. 5. 6. Udayana in his Kutum&fijali, L 3, refers to
them under the names of ftgama or scripture, anumftna or inference, and dhyftna
or meditation.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 107

of tradition in religious life. For the initiation of faith
in the living God, some kind of traditional revelation is
necessary. " Blessed are they that have not seen and
yet have believed." The bulk of men rest with tradition
and symbol. Religion, according to the Upaniads, is not,
however, to be confused with traditionalism. By strenuous
intellectual effort, we should try to understand the essential
meaning of or the truth contained in the tradition. The
need for rational thought is brought out in the second stage.
The mere assumption of the first stage becomes now a logical
conclusion. The understanding of truth, however, is not
the attainment of reality. To the highest religious con-
sciousness, the real is not something inferred, but given.
This experience of reality, this consciousness of the infinite,
requires the development of a mode of apprehension distinct
from that of mere reason. Nididhyasana, or contemplative
meditation, helps us to transform the logical idea into a
spiritual perception, or darSana, which is another name
for the effective realisation of truth already admitted. It
is to stand alone, and like Whitman, after a logical study
of astronomy, " to gaze in perfect silence at the stars."
It is to hold before the mind's eye the object we seek to
know. Meditation is not advised as a means to trance and i
catalepsy, which are most emphatically denounced, but only
as a help for the mind to rest on the object. By suppressing
all fluctuations of thought and the distractions of desire,
we allow the mind to settle on the object, penetrate it and
become one with it. The worship of God, the practice of good-
ness and the pursuit of truth are aids to the building up
of the life of truth in the soul. While the speculative mind
contemplates the being of God, the emotional nature in its
passionate devotion for God loses itself in Him. The object
is no more outside us as in ordinary experience. There is
an intense realisation, which pulses through the whole
being, a becoming one with God as it were. The worshipper
grows akin to that which he worships. The object becomes
not only the content of but the consciousness itself of the
contemplator. The transformation of mind is in a sense
the transformation of existence itself. The Upanigads
speak to us of the intuition of minor deities as well as the

106 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

ecstatic intuition of Brahman. So long as the otjects
intuited have limitations or traces of individuality, the ulti-
mate goal is not reached. We must intuit Brahman to
become Brahman.

It is dear that the religion of the Upaniads insists on
a transformation of the whole nature of man. It is not
a mere formal cult or an ethical discipline or a dogmatic
creed. It is untrue to say that the Upaniads do not care
for the non-intellectual sides of human nature. They pro*
vide room for an emotional as well as a speculative religion.
The Upaniads are aware of the contradictions which
ordinary religious consciousness is apt to exhibit. If
God is perfect goodness, then morality is already
realised, for everything that is must be the expression
of a perfect will. If God is the Creator of the world,
then He must bring something into existence which
limits His nature. Either the world created is distinct
from God the Creator, in which case He is limited by His
creation, or the two are identical, a possibility which is
repugnant to all religion and morality. In religion we
have the will of man set over against the will of God. If
the two are one, then there is no morality, for there is no
independent reality of the human will. If the two are
different, then God becomes limited and finite, and a finite
God cannot inspire confidence in us. Again, if we attribute
to God a free will, then He can overrule karma, and caprice
will become the central fact ; if on the other hand He is
subject to laws and treats us according to our karma, then
His freedom is restricted. These contradictions may lead
us to think that the highest conception of God we can
possibly have is not the highest reality. Religion may
lag behind and have to be content with a finite God, how-
ever contradictory such a conception may be. This may
be justified on the ground that it is not its main business
to discover the highest truth, and that philosophically we
may have to admit that all conceptions of God, however
lofty they may be, are only relative.* While thfe may
be the implication of the Upani$ad theory, it becomes an
explicit doctrine only when the intuitive vision of the

1 See Kena, i. 5. 8.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 100

Upani^ads is converted into a scientific system of thought.
The Upaniads, indeed, recognise higher and lower forms
of religion.

We have to remember that the highest religion of the
Upani?ads, which insists on meditation and morality and
worship of God in spirit and in truth, is not encumbered
by such traditional dogmas and miracles as still hang upon
the skirts of other religions. Its central principle that
there is one supreme reality that manifests itself in the
universe is not asserted as a dogma. It is the ultimate
truth at which it is possible for human understanding to
arrive. The progress of science and philosophy does not
conflict with it but only confirms it. The Upaniad re-
ligion is the feeling of reverence and love for the great spirit.
Such meditation is spiritualised bhakti. It recognises also
that the distinction between subject and object melts away
in the heart of religious fervour. The oneness and whole-
ness of the world is the supreme fact of the Upaniad religion.
This may not satisfy the ordinary religious consciousness.
Man as finite self is incapable of grasping the absolute
reality. He makes an object of it set over against himself.
The Absolute becomes a personal God. Though it is not
the final truth, ordinary religious consciousness requires it.
God is the friend and helper, the father and creator, the
governor of the universe. He is said to be the supreme
person (Puruottama), but He does not rule the world from
without. In that case there would be no organic connection
between Him and the world. He is the inner guide or the
antaryami. Though a person, he is said to be above all,
in all, and through all. All things arfe of Him, in Him
and unto Him. But as Jacobi would put it, an understood
God is no God at all. To imagine God is what we think
is nothing less than blasphemy. Though the God of religion
is a limited expression of the absolute, it is not a mere
imaginative presentation. In the development of the abso-
lute into the universe conceived by the finite mind, the
first existent being is the God or the universal soul pos-
sessing self-consciousness. He is the absolute personified.
The Upaniads do not care to identify Him with the ideal
tendency of things opposing and struggling through the

110 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPAKISADS

non-ideal ; in that case He would be reduced to the level
of the finite. According to the Upaniads, the Absolute
and God are one; we call it the supreme Brahman to
emphasise its transcendence of the finite, its unknowability,
its all-comprehensiveness ; we call it I&vara to emphasise
the personal aspect so necessary for religious devotion.
The relation between the two, the absolute Brahman and
the personal Ifivara, is said to be like that of the true Lord
to the idol. 1 Yet the two are one. The absolute is both per-
sonal and impersonal. 2 Meditation on the supreme becomes
the passionate devotion to the Lord of the universe. The
individual looks upon God as something transcendent, and
feels acutely the need of grace. Devaprasada, or grace of
God, is the condition of the deliverance of man from bondage.
" This Atman cannot be attained through study or intelli-
gence or much learning whom he wishes to attain by him
it can be attained. To him the Atman reveals its true
nature." 3 Sometimes the religious passion grows so fervent
that the devotee exclaims : " It is He who inspires to do good
works the man whom He will lead on high, and it is He
who inspires to do evil works the man whom He will
lead downwards." 4 The oneness of God and man is
realised only after a good deal of discipline and exercise.
When the ideal of religion is reached, the personal conception
is transcended. The higher we go in religious experience,
the more we perceive the identity between the object of
worship and the worshipper, till at last the two become one.
Then there is no worship in the traditional sense of the
term. The absolute is felt as a boundless spirit pervading
the whole universe and flooding the soul of man. Our
limits fall away and the defects incident to man's imperfec-
tion dissolve. The end of religion is the transcendence
of religion. Ideal religion overcomes the duality with
which it starts. Religious worship starts with fear, passes
through reverence, love and communion with the eternal,
and culminates in the ecstatic life, where God and the soul

* Saihkara's Commentary on Tait., i. 6. " &&lagram
Mflrtftmflrtam. Sarfikara's Commentary on Tait.,

ama iva
i. 6.

s Muncjaka, iii. 2. 3 ; Katha, ii. 23*
4 Kausltaki, iii. 8.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS ill

melt into each other. Religious worship has to be accepted
until the perfect condition is reached.

Imperfect forms of worship are admitted as preparatory
to the perfect. The Upaniads are led into inconsistent
notions when they try to do too much justice to the con-
flicting creeds which prevailed among the peoples of the
time. Some believed in magic ; some tried to subdue the
powers of nature by concentration and other ascetic prac-
tices ; some were lost in a futile formalism ; some wor-
shipped the Vedic gods ; some tried to effect an escape
from this world of change by means of spiritual insight.
The Upaniad thinkers, conscious of the weakness of
hum^n understanding which has to limit the God present
in all things, at all times, and in all places to some special
place, time and thing, recognise that if lower forms of
worship are dismissed, there is the risk of banishing God
altogether out of life. Some worship is better than none,
and so it is said that we become whatever form we worship.
" Let him worship the Brahman as support, and he becomes
supported. Let him worship Brahman as greatness, and
he becomes great. Let him worship Brahman as mind,
he becomes endowed with mind. And let him worship
Brahman as Brahman, and he will become possessed of
Brahman/ 9 x God reveals Himself in different ways to
different men. This is not to be confused with the doctrine
of incarnations, which is unknown to the Upanisads. The
Upaniads consider the highest form of religion to be
spiritual meditation on the absolute ; next in rank is the
passionate devotion to the one immanent Lord ; lowest of
all is the worship of the Vedic devas and other deities.

It is frequently urged that the Upaniads do not admit
of any religious worship. Dr. Urquhart writes : " However
clearly the attitude of true worship may seem to be indicated,
there is a constant refrain sometimes even in the same verse
to the effect that the self who is to be worshipped is the
self of the worshipper, and that consequently there is no
such distinction between the two (God and man), as is
demanded by the fully theistic relation." * The Upanisads

Tait, iii. zo ; see also Chin., i. 3. 12 ; Bj-h., i. 2. 13.
* The Upanifads and Life, p. 60.

112 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

are emphatic about the oneness of God and man* The
relative difference we recognise between the two is taken
over in a higher unity. " If a man worships another
divinity with the idea that he and the God are different,
he does not know/' x The unity of spirit is the first prin-
ciple of the Upani$ad doctrine. Divine immanence is its
central fact. If that is inconsistent with religious worship,
it means only that theism has no place for true religion,
since a true theism must accept divine immanence. All
true religion declares that finite things are not self-sustained,
are not self-evolved, but that God is over all, through all,
in all, the ground of existence, the source of life and the
goal of desire. " If I ascend up into heaven, thou art
there : if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter-
most parts of the sea ; even there shall Thy hand lead me."*
" Am I a God, at hand, saith the Lord and not a God afar
off ? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall
not see him ? saith the Lord ; Do not I fill Heaven and
earth ? " " In God, we live and move and have our being," 3
and " He who dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God
in him." 4 All true religion recognises the immanence of
God and is highly mystic.

XVII

MOKSA OR RELEASE

Is the highest state of religious realisation, the atone-
ment with the supreme godhead, a mere vanishing into
nothingness ? The Upaniad view is that there is in the
highest condition a disintegration of individuality, a giving
up of selfish isolation, but it is not a mere nothing or death.
" As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their
name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name and
form, goes to the divine person who is beyond all." 5 The
Upaniads do not recognise the ultimate reality of the

* Bj-h., i. 4. 10. Psalm

i St. Paul. 4 St. John.

f Murfaka, iii. 2. 8. See alto Ptafaa, vi. 5.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 118

narrow individual self. Those who pray for personal im-
mortality take their stand 6n the ultimateness of the
individual, and urge its maintenance beyond the world.
The real in finite life, what is best in the individual's nature,
is the infinite, and that persists beyond the limits of physical
existence. Nothing of value is lost. Whatever spiritual
values we seek after on earth and find imperfectly, we
possess in the highest condition absolutely. As human
beings we reach our ideals imperfectly, in flashes and
moments of insight. In the highest condition we attain
to them perfectly, completely and absolutely. The Taitti-
riya Upaniad points out how the bliss we have in the
world is only a shadow of the divine bliss, a feeble apology
for it. 1 After all our troubles in the sea of life we do not
reach a desert shore where we are obliged to die of hunger.
The liberated condition must be looked upon as the fullest
expression of the self. The ascent to God will be a lapse
into the void or the abyss, if the ultimate Brahman is itself
looked upon as an abstraction. Then the goal of man is
annihilation. The Upaniads dispute such a conclusion.
The highest is a state of rapture and ecstasy, a condition
of inanda, where the creature as creature is abolished, but
becomes one with the Creator, or more accurately realises
his oneness with Him. We cannot describe this perfection
adequately. We use symbols. The nature of eternal life
is a condition of inanda or freedom, a state of joyous ex-
pansion of the soul, where heaven and earth are felt to flow
together.

Its nature cannot be characterised except through image
and metaphor. We have some states in this life which
may be taken as illustrations of eternal or timeless existence.
Baron Von Hugel speaks to us of trance conditions which
" appear to the experiencing soul, in proportion to their
concentration, as timeless, i.e. as non-successive, simul-
taneous, hence as eternal. . . . The eternity of the soul is
not here a conclusion drawn from the apparent God-likeness
in other respects, of the soul when in this condition,
but the eternity, on the contrary, is the very centre
of the experience itself, and is the chief inducement

See ii. 8 ; Kau$!taki, i. 3. 5 ; Brh.* iv. 3, 33.

9

114 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

to the soul for holding itself to be divine. The
soul's immortality cannot be experienced in advance of
death, whilst its eternity, in the sense indicated, is or
seems to be directly experienced in such " this-life " states.
Hence the belief in immortality is here derivative, that in
eternity is primary/' x In the enjoyment of a melody,
the contemplation of a work of art, in grasping an argument
as a whole, we have the mystical condition, the sight of
God, the experience of eternity. 9 The temporal happenings
become eternal when viewed in relation to the absolute,
and thus assigned their true worth.

Since from our human point of view it is not possible
to describe the fullness of the absolute reality, the Upaniads
do not describe precisely the condition of ultimate freedom.
There are two conflicting accounts running throughout :
that it is a state of likeness to God, and that it is a state
of oneness with God.

There are passages where the individual is said to
become one with the highest. "The pranava is the bow,
the Atman is the arrow, and the Brahman is said to be its
mark. It should be hit by one who is self-collected, and
that which hits becomes like the arrow, one with the

* Eternal Lift, p. 27.

St. Augustine in his Confessions, says : " Suppose all the tumult of
the flesh in us were hushed for ever, and all sensible images of earth and
sea and air were put to silence ; suppose the heavens were still and even
the soul spoke no words to itself, but passed beyond all thought of itself ;
suppose all dreams and revelations of imagination were hushed with every
word and sign and everything that belongs to this transitory world ; suppose
they were all silenced though, if they speak to one who hears, what they
say is, ' We made not ourselves, but He made us who abides for ever ' yet
suppose they only uttered this and then were silent, when they had turned
the ears of the hearer to Him who made them, leaving Him to speak alone,
not through them but through Himself, so that we could hear His words,
not through any tongue of flesh nor by the voice of an angel, nor in thunder,
nor in any likeness that hides what it reveals ; suppose then that the God
whom through such manifestations we have learnt to love were to be
revealed to us directly without any such mediation just as, but now, we
reached out of ourselves and touched by a flash of insight the eternal wisdom
that abides above all ; suppose, lastly, that this vision of God were to be
prolonged for ever, and all other inferior modes of vision were to be taken
away, so that this alone should ravish and absorb the beholder and entrance
him in mystic joy, and our very life for ever like the moment of clear insight
mad inspiration to which we rose is not this just what is meant by the words
9 Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'?'!

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 115

mark, that is Brahman." * The Atman becomes one with
Brahman. 9 Here absolute identity between the soul and
Brahman is asserted. Again, " All these become one in the
highest imperishable Brahman/' 3 " He becomes merged
in the supreme undecaying Atman." 4 " He becomes
omniscient and becomes all." 5 " He enters into all." * The
redeemed soul enters into all things and becomes all things
in spirit. " Having attained him, the seers content with
their knowledge, their purpose accomplished, free from all
desire, and with full composure, having attained the all*
pervading Atman on all sides, ever concentrating their
minds, enter into everything." 7 They who see the whole
universe held firm in the one all-enfolding presence cannot
have any sorrow or torment. " Having without doubt
well ascertained the significance of the knowledge of the
Vedanta, the seekers, their minds purified by dint of re-
nunciation attain the worlds of that Brahman, and when
their body falls, their Atman being one with the highest
immortal Brahman, are absolved all round." ' The liberated
soul feels his oneness with God so intensely that he calls
himself the creator of the world. " I am the food, I am
the food-eater. I am the subject, I am the object, I am
the two together. I am the firstborn, the destroyer of the
world also. I am the sunlike light I am the centre of
the world, of immortal gods." 9 These passages seem to
imply that there is no sense of individuality, and therefore
no possibility of action in the highest state. It seems to
be a survival without consciousness, where body is dissolved
and mind extinguished and all is lost in a boundless dark-
ness. If we please, we may call it the sleep without dreams,
or the peace without understanding. When Yajnavalkya
explains it to Maitreyi in the words : " As a lump of salt
which is thrown into the water dissolves and cannot be
gathered up again, but wherever water is drawn, it is salty,
so truly is it with this great being, the endless, the unlimited,

ii. 2. 2. See also Katha, ii. 15.
Saravat tanmayo bhavet.

Mimtfaka, Hi. 2. 7. Sarva cklbhavanti. Prana, iv. 9.

iv. 10. Sa sarvajfiafe sarvo bhavati.
i. vii. Sarvam evftviianti.
Mtutfaka, iii. a. 5. ' iii. 2. 6. Tait, iii.

116 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

the fullness of knowledge, from these beings it came into
view and with them it vanishes. There is no consciousness
after death/' Maitreyi observes: "This speech of thine,
that there is no consciousness after death perplexes me/'
Y&jfiavalkya replies : " I tell thee nothing perplexing, it is
quite comprehensible. Where there is a duality of exist-
ences, one can see the other, one can smell the other, one
can speak to the other, one can hear the other, one can
think of the other, one can apprehend the other. But
where everything has turned into his Atman, by whom
and whom shall he see, by whom and whom shall he smell,
by whom and to whom shall he speak, by whom and whom
shall he hear, think and apprehend ? By whom shall he
apprehend him through whom he apprehends this universe ?
Through whom shall he apprehend him the apprehender ? "
From this it is clear that in some way hard for our intellect
to grasp the soul attains liberation devoid of any activity,
perception, thought or consciousness, which are all sympto-
matic of a dualistic vision. These activities rest on the
opposition of subject and object, and are possible only in
the world of relativity. In the absolute world, all plurality
is said to disappear with the resulting activities of percep-
tion and action. It is then the everlasting, unchangeable
itself, in whose perfection all movement is stilled, all colours
pale and all sounds pass away. This is the negative side of
freedom, which is all that is open to finite intelligence. There
is also the positive side. Simply because we as finite cannot
describe the fullness of the absolute state, it does not become
a negative blank. Negatively, the soul seems to lose all
distinction and become something which is neither this
nor that, but some vague indeterminate somewhat. Those
careless beings who make a show of sleeping through it
all may really be very active. When the positive aspect
is emphasised, the liberated soul is looked upon as a perfected
individual with a status of absolute equality with the
supreme soul. 1 The passages which declare that the liberated
soul traverses the worlds, obtaining all its wishes, indicate
that the freed soul has yet an active existence. " Traversing
these worlds, having the food he likes, taking the form he
Paramaifa sftsnyain uj*itL Mtutfak*, iii. i. 3.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 117

likes, he sits singing songs/' l And yet he has the feeling
that he is one with God. According to the Chandogya,
immortality is lifting oneself up to the region of the deity.*
Mu$4aka holds it to be the companionship with God. 3
Absolute likeness with God is also suggested. 4 To make
room for such individual action it is said that the individual
becomes like God. Whatever differences there might be
about the exact nature of the highest condition, one thing
is clear, that it is a state of activity, full of freedom and
perfection. Strictly speaking, we cannot describe that
state, but if a description is wanted, it is best to consider
it to be a state of divine life. The self is not annihilated
any more than the ray of the sun is lost in the sun, the
wave of the sea in the ocean, the notes of music in the one
harmony. The song of the individual is not lost in the
music of the world march. It is the same for ever and
yet not the same. It is said that the liberated soul becomes
one with all and lives a life in unity with God. The positive
description seems to suggest a sense of individuality which
helps him to act in this world, though this individuality
is not based on any self-feeling. This individualisation of
life seems to be necessary for the fulfilment of the joy of
the one supreme. Even though for purposes of self-expres-
sion there is this possession of a centre of individuality,
we are told that the soul is conscious of its glory and the
greatness of immortality. It feels that God is at work in
the cosmic drama, where the divine consciousness plays
and acts. The liberated individual also plays in the same
drama with full possession of the truth. There is nothing
which does not bend to his purposes. " He maketh the
winds His angels, and the flaming fires His ministers/'
The philosophical reconciliation of the varying descriptions
had to wait till a later day. It is possible to eliminate
the sense of egoism even in this life, and he who achieves
perfection in this life is called a jivanmukta. His joy of
immortality realises itself in the freedom of movement.

The vagueness of the Upaniad doctrines led to the
development of different theories from the same texts. Some
Buddhists interpret the Upaniad idea to be an entire loss,

> Tait, iii. 10. 8. * ii. 22. s lii. 2. 6. iii. I. 3.

118 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

some Vedintins as the self-immersion of the individual
soul in the supreme. Others hold that it is an eternal
existence absorbed in the thought, love and enjoyment
of the supreme, and not an annihilation. The cry of the
devotee poet, " I want to eat sugar, and do not want to
become sugar/ 9 expresses this view. The religious philo-
sophers of Vainavism and Saivism adopt this standpoint.
But almost all Indian thinkers are agreed that moka is
release from birth and death. Union with God is another
name for becoming eternal. When " eternity " is translated
into the terms of the phenomenal world, it becomes birth-
lessness and deathlessness.

XVIII

EVIL AND SUFFERING

The problem of evil is a stumbling-block to all monistic
systems. The metaphysical problem of the rise of the finite
has already been dealt with. We are now concerned with
the question of moral evil. In the Vedic hymns, virtue
is conformity with the Vedic precepts and vice non-con-
formity. In the Upaniads knowledge of life eternal is
virtue and ignorance vice. Conduct expressive of this false
vision and consequent isolation of self is evil conduct. All
objects of the world, according to the Upani$ads, are to
be sought after as gateways to God. If we look upon them
as solid and secluded, and regard ourselves as separate
units, then we sin morally. Error is the denial by the
ego of the supremacy of the whole, or its own assertion of
self-sufficiency. Evil is the denial in conduct by the ego
of the supremacy of the whole. Sin is the product of the
shallow insight, breeding selfish egoism, that hugs its own
narrowness and shrinks from all sacrifice. The Upaniads
do not say that evil is illusion or that evil is permanent.
In either case it will be the duty of man to bow submis-
sively to it. Evil is unreal in the sense that it is bound to
be transmuted into good. It is real to the extent that it
requires effort to transform its nature.

Sin is making self higher than God, while holiness is

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 119

displacing self-consciousness by God-consciousness. Man
can never cling to evil for all time. It is in a state of
unstable equilibrium, being opposed to the nature of things.
Morality, according to the Upaniads, expresses the true
nature of things. Only the good can ultimately prevail.
" The true prevails, not the untrue/' l Evil is something
negative, self-contradictory, a principle of death ; good,
positive and real, a principle of life. That evil cannot be
all satisfying is plain from the pathetic unrest of the present
day world, with all its wealth and luxury and control over
mechanism.

There are many passages which emphasise the difficulty
of attaining Brahman. " He of whom many are not even
able to hear, whom many, even when they hear of Him,
do not comprehend ; wonderful is a man when found who
is able to teach Him the self, wonderful is he who compre-
hends Him." * The path that leads to salvation is like
" the sharp edge of a razor, difficult to cross and hard to
tread." 3 The realisation of spirit is not a smooth develop-
ment or uninterrupted advance. The progress to perfection
is through pain and suffering. The hard flints must come
into violent conflict before they can produce the sparks
of fire. The chick has to undergo the pain of separation
from the shell before it can reach the intangible light and
air. Moral conduct seems to go against the grain of things.
The good and the pleasant are not always conjoined. " The
good is one thing, the pleasant another. These two have
different objects and chain a man. It is well with him
who chooses the good. He who chooses the pleasant misses
his end." * Pleasure seems to lie in the satisfaction of the
natural impulse, and the good requires the taming of the
forces of nature. Man in the moral scheme seems to be
seeking the true self which he has somehow missed. But
until the true self is realised, the moral law assumes the
form of an external compulsion. The good does not seem
to be the pleasant. Morality implies a wrestling with the
lower tendency, the pursuit of which appears pleasant.
When man struggles to free himself from his natural

t Murfaka, iii. i. 6. * Katha, i. a. 7; B.G., ii. 39,

$ Ibid., i. 3* <4* * &>&' * * *

180 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

entanglements, life becomes intense with strife. Suffering is
the condition of progress. Struggle is the law of existence
and sacrifice the principle of evolution. The more the
struggle and sacrifice, the greater are the joy and the
freedom. All progress has this destructive side. Every
gain in spirit involves a loss in nature. But the loss is
not a real loss. Were it real and absolute, then the loss
would be a dead loss and we could not afford it. Suffering
is the ransom the son of man has to pay if he would attain
his crown. It reveals to us the incomplete nature of the
self and the world. " It is good for me that I have been
afflicted/' says the Psalmist : for suffering is the messenger
of God revealing to us the imperfection of the world, the
episodic nature of earthly life. The discipline of suffering
has also its use in the education of the spirit. Resistance
drives the soul to put forth its whole strength, and thus
compels it to grow. The darker the sky the brighter will
the stars shine. Suffering cannot be abolished so long as
spiritual life has to be lived under human conditions. Until
the whole being is made an offering to God, the process of
gradual rise through suffering cannot cease. " Man verily
is the sacrifice," says the Upaniad. x Life is a perpetual
dying till we are face to face with God. Life is a place
of torment, where the human spirit writhes to possess the
eternal. Veil after veil is to be withdrawn. The illusions
of life are to be torn away and our cherished dreams dis-
persed before the life divine can be reached.

XIX

KARMA

The law of karma is the counter-part in the moral world
of the physical law of uniformity. It is the law of the
conservation of moral energy. The vision of law and order
is revealed in the Rta of the Rg-Veda. According to
the principle of karma there is nothing uncertain or capricious
in the moral world. 4 We reap what we sow. The good

< a**., iii. 16. i.

* Carlyte puts this principle thus : " Fool I thinkest thou that because
ao Boswell it there to note thy jargon, it therefore dies and is buried ?

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 121

seed brings a harvest of good, the evil of evil. Every tittle
action has its effect on character. Man knows that some
of the tendencies to action which now exist in him are the
result of conscious or intelligent choice on his part. Con-
scious actions tend to become unconscious habits, and not
unnaturally the unconscious tendencies we find in ourselves
were regarded as the result of past conscious actions. We
cannot arrest the process of moral evolution any more
than we can stay the sweep of the tides or the course of
the stars. The attempt to overleap the law of karma is
as futile as the attempt to leap over one's shadow. It is
the psychological principle that our life carries within it
a record that time cannot blur or death erase. To remedy
the defects of the old Vedic idea, that redemption from
sin could be had by sacrifices to gods, great emphasis is
laid on the law of karma. It proclaims the awful doom,
the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Not through sacrifices,
but through good deeds does a man become good. " A
man becomes good by good deeds and bad by bad deeds." z
Again, " Man is a creature of will. According as he believes
in this world, so will he be when he is departed/' * So
we are asked to will the good and do the good. " What-
ever world he covets by his mind, and whatever objects
he wishes, for the man of pure mind, he gains those worlds
and those objects ; therefore let him who longs for bhuti,
manifested power, worship him who knows the Atman." 3
The requital of action makes saihsara with birth and death,
beginningless and endless. The karma theory embraces
in its sweep men and gods, animals and plants.

Since the sense of individual responsibility is emphasised,
there are critics who think that the karma doctrine is in-
consistent with social service. It is said that there is no
emphasis on the bearing of one another's burdens. As a
matter of fact, the Upaniads hold that we can be free
from karma only by social service. So long as we perform

Nothing diet, nothing can die. The idlest word thon speakest is a seed cast
into time, which brings forth fruit to all eternity." " Be not deceived ;
God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap '*
(Gal. vi. 7).

Brh., iii, 2. 13. * Chan., iii. 14. i. See also Brh., iv. 4. 5.

Chin., iii. x. to.

122 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

selfish work we are subject to the law of bondage* When
we perform disinterested work we reach freedom. " White
thus you live there is no way by which karma dings to
you/' l What binds us to the chain of birth and death
is not action as such but selfish action. In an age when
the individual was ever ready to shirk responsibility for
what he did by throwing the burden on providence or stars
or some other being than his own self, the doctrine of karma
urged that a man " fetters himself by himself, like a bird
by its nest." a What looms over us is no dark fate but
our own past. We are not the victims of a driving doom*
Suffering is the wages of sin. There is no question that
such an idea is a great incentive to good conduct. It only
says that there are some limiting conditions of human
action. We did not make ourselves. When we come up
against the impossible, we realise that we cannot do any-
thing we please. Karma rightly understood does not dis-
courage moral effort, does not fetter, the mind or chain the
will. It only says that every act is the inevitable outcome
of the preceding conditions. There is a tendency of the
cause to pass into the effect. If the spirit, which is on a
higher plane than nature, does not assert its freedom, past
conduct and present environment will account completely
for the actions of man. Man is not a mere product of
nature. He is mightier than his karma. If the law
is all, then there is no real freedom possible. Man's life
is not the working of merely mechanical relations. There
are different levels the mechanical, the vital, the sentient,
the intellectual and the spiritual these currents cross and
recross and inter-penetrate each other. The law of karma,
which rules the lower nature of man, has nothing to
do with the spiritual in him. The infinite in man helps
him to transcend the limitations of the finite. The essence
of spirit is freedom. By its exercise man can check and
control his natural impulses. That is why his life is some-
thing more than a succession of mechanically determined
states. His acts to be free must not be expressive of the
mere force of habit or shock of circumstance, but of the
freedom of the inner soul. The spiritual nature is the basis

' lift, ii. * Maitrftyatf Up,, iii. 2,

PHILOSOPHY OF THE tJPANISADS 128

of his initiative and endeavour. The mechanical part is
under constraint. Were man merely the sum of natural
conditions, he would be completely subject to the law of
karma. But there is a soul in him which is the master.
Nothing external can compel it. We are sure that the
material forces of the world must bend to the spiritual
rule, and so can the law of karma be subjected to the freedom
of spirit. Man can have the highest freedom only when he
becomes one with God. " He who departs from this world,
without having known the soul or those true desires, his
part in all worlds is a life of constraint. But he who departs
from this world after having known the soul and those true
desires, his part in all worlds is a life of freedom." * Becoming
one with God is the attainment of the highest freedom.
The more we live in the presence of God, the more we assert
the rights of spirit, the more free we are ; the more we lose
our grip on the whole to which we belong, the more selfish
we are, the more is our bondage to karma. Man oscillates
between nature and spirit, and so is subject to both freedom
and necessity.

Karma has a cosmic as well as a psychological aspect.
Every deed must produce its natural effect in the world;
at the same time it leaves an impression on or forms a
tendency in the mind of man. It is this tendency or saihs-
kira or vasana that inclines us to repeat the deed we have
once done. So all deeds have their fruits in the world
and effects on the mind. So far as the former are concerned,
we cannot escape them, however much we may try. But
in regard to mental tendencies we can control them. Our
future conduct holds all possibilities. By self-discipline we
can strengthen the good impulses and weaken the bad ones.

The actions of men are capable of prediction and pre-
calculation. If rational, they will show certain properties :
we shall detect in them an inward coherence, an unselfish
purpose, and so on. But from that we cannot assume
that the acts are determined in any mechanical sense.
Every living soul is potentially free. His acts are not a
mere unwinding of the thread from a reel. Man possesses
freedom as the focus of spiritual life. God has not granted

' Chin., viii. x. 6.

124 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

him freedom from outside. He possesses freedom because
he is rooted in God. The more he realises his true divine
nature, the more free is he.

It is sometimes argued that the law of karma is incon-
sistent with theism. 1 Karma is a blind unconscious prin-
ciple governing the whole universe. It is not subject to
the control even of God. We do not require a judge to
administer a mechanical law. The principle of karma is
not inconsistent with the reality of the absolute Brahman.
The moral law of karma is the expression of the nature
of the absolute. Anthropomorphically we can say a
divine power controls the process. Rta is the law in
the Vedas. Varuna is the lord of Rta. Karma refers to
the unchanging action of the gods. 9 It is an expres-
sion of the nature of reality. It renders impossible
any arbitrary interference with moral evolution. The
same conclusion is arrived at by modern theories of
scientific law and habit, which are irreconcilable with cap-
ricious interference. If miracles are necessary to prove God,
then science has killed God for all time. Divine interference
is regulated by laws. God does not act by private volitions,
as Malebranche would say. Only the karma theory can
give us a just conception of the spiritual universe. It
brings out the living rational nature of the whole. It is
the mechanism by which spirit works. The freedom of
the spiritual world is expressed in the world of nature by
the iron law of mechanical necessity. 3 Freedom and karma
are the two aspects of the same reality. If God is immanent
in the cosmos, then His spirit resides in the machine. The
divine expresses itself in law, but law is not God. The

See MacNicol : Indian Theism , p. 225. * Dev&nam dhrnv&ni vratftni.

s We need not oppose the law of karma to the will of God as conceived
in the Upanisads. The two are not exclusive of each other. Should there
be many gods as in the Vedic theory, the gods themselves will be subject
to karma. " The Gods cannot save even a man whom they love when the
dread fate of death lays hold upon him. Zeus himself laments that it
is ' fate ' that his son Sarpedon, dearest to him of all men, must die at the
hands of Patroclus. He ' does not venture to undo what fate decrees.*
It is impossible even for a God to avoid the fate that is ordained. ' What
it ordained/ says Athena in Euripides, using Anaadmander's word, 'if
master of the Gods and the*. " Comferd : From Region to Philosophy,
pp, M. 13.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIS ADS 125

Greek fate, the Stoic reason, and the Chinese Tao, are
different names for the primary necessity of law.

There is no doctrine that is so valuable in life and con-
duct as the karma theory. Whatever happens to us in
this life we have to submit in meek resignation, for it is the
result of our past doings. Yet the future is in our power,
and we can work with hope and confidence. Karma inspires
hope for the future and resignation to the past. It makes
men feel that the things of the world, its fortunes and failures,
do not touch the dignity of the soul. Virtue alone is good,
not rank or riches, not race or nationality. Nothing but
goodness is good.

XX

FUTURE LIFE

In the Upaniads we find an advance on the Vedic
and the Brahmanical conceptions of future life, though
there is not yet any consistent theory about it. It is the
idea of rebirth that is the prominent one in the Upaniads.
The earliest form of this idea occurs in the Satapatha Brah-
mana, where the notion of being born again after death
and dying repeatedly is coupled with that of retribution.
It is said that those who have right knowledge and perform
their duties are born again after death for immortality,
while those who do not have such knowledge and neglect
their duties are reborn again and again, becoming the
prey of death. 1 The Brahmaria assumes births and deaths
only in the next world. In the Upaniads the belief is
transformed into the doctrine of rebirth in the world. We
cannot say that the two have been reconciled. Sometimes
we find them together. Good and evil actions experience
a two-fold retribution, once in the other world and again
by a renewed life on earth. It is said that the soul, after
it has journeyed to heaven in radiant form on the burning
of the corpse, returns thence immediately through the
three regions to a new existence.* There are evidences
that the belief in rebirth was only being matured in the

* Cf. The conception of punarmrtyu. Kau#taki BrfUimaga, xxv. i.

Bfh., vi. 2.. 14.

196 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

time of the Upani$ads, since some passages of the Upanijads
are not familiar with it. 1 The earliest passages incorporating
the belief of rebirth are ChSndogya, v. 3. 10, and Brhadinuj-
yaka, vi. 2.

That the highest kind of immortality is becoming one
with Brahman is dearly enunciated in the Upaniads.
When Gods were the supreme realities, freedom lay in union
with them. Now Brahman is the first principle of things
and the ultimate basis of the world. So life eternal is
union with Brahman. When we fall short of our highest
freedom, we are bound down in the sphere of time and
are hurried from one state of being into another. The
undelivered soul is subject to the law of birth and death,
and has to work out its destiny by lives on earth. While
true immortality is for the liberated, survival in time is
for the bound. We hear the prayer, " May I never go to
the white, toothless, devouring abode." * The kind of birth
depends on the nature of the work done. It is called
heaven when the individual lifts himself up to a higher life,
and hell when he throws himself down into a lower one
This existence in saihsara is not the true existence of the
soul. We have to bear the servitude of saihsSra so long
as the finite elements cling to us. With the finite we can
never reach the absolute, however near we may come to it.
Progress is a ceaseless growth or perpetual approximation.
When the finite element is completely given up, then one-
ness with God is realised, and there is no return to saihsara. 3
SamsSra is intended to discipline the spirit.

The world of nature reveals to us how all things on earth
are impermanent and unreal. We find in it recurrent
death and rebirth of all things. " Like corn decays the
mortal, like corn is he born again/' 4 In destruction we
find only the precursor of renewed existence. Death is
only the gate of life. Though the law of karma is not yet
committed to any precise equivalence between merit and
experience, still it is asserted that the nature of the birth
depends on the conduct of man. "Those whose conduct
has been good will quickly attain some good birth, the birth

* Bj-h., i. 5. 16. Chin. vili. 14. i,

i Chan., iv. 16. 6* 4 Katha, i* 8.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 127

of a Bribmin, a Katriya or a VaiSya. But those whose
conduct is evil will quickly attain an evil birth, the birth
of a hog, or dog, or a ca$4la." x

Between one life and another there is a persisting identity,
though our consciousness may not testify to it. This is
not a great weakness, since large portions of human life
tend sometimes to be forgotten. The theory is concerned
more with the conservation of values than with the con-
tinuance of consciousness. Since the Brahman which is
the universal soul is not subject to bondage, that which
persists from birth to birth is said to be what a man does
or his karma. " Does the soul survive bodily death ?
Yajnavalkya, if after the death of the man his spirit goes
into fire, his breath into wind, his eyes into the sun, his
mind into the moon, his ear into the directions of space,
his body into the earth, his self into the ether, the hair
of his body into plants, the hair of his head into trees, the
blood and semen into water what then becomes of the
man ? " is the question put by Artabhaga to Yajnavalkya.
They arrive at the conclusion, " verily one becomes good
through good deeds, evil through evil deeds/' * The reality
of life is character, not body or mind. It survives the
disruption of death. The Upaniads hold that while
karma changes, the universal self endures. If with some
Buddhists we dismiss Brahman as useless, we shall have
to say that only karma persists.

There id no mention of animals in the teaching of Yajna-
valkya, which ends with the fourth book of the Bj-hada-
ragyaka Upaniad, though in some later passages of the
same Upaniad,3 as well as in the Chandogya, Kauitaki,
etc., the migration into animal bodies is also mentioned.
The idea may have been derived from the beliefs of the
aboriginal tribes. In almost all regions of the world the
untutored savage thought that human souls could pass into '
animal bodies. The Aryan invaders, in their commerce
with the original inhabitants of India, came across the
notion that animals and plants possessed souls, and human
souls sometimes took their dwelling in them. The holiness
of life in all things, the equality of origin in the flower, the

* Chin., v. to. 7. Bfh., iii. a. 13. s vi. 3. 16.

18$ PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANI$ADS

insect, the animal and the man were the fundamental ideas
of the Upani^ads, which betrayed them into an acceptance
of this position. It has also great practical value. The
tenderness shown to animals in the a dramas of the forests
favoured the doctrine. Proud man was required to get
rid of his snobbery and exclusiveness, and admit with the
humility of a St. Francis that the black beetle was his brother.
This is not strange when we think of the modern theories
of evolution and their emphasis on the dose affinity between
men and animals.

No philosophy could discard its past. The Upaniad
theory of future life had to reckon with 'the old Vedic
doctrine of rewards and punishments in another world.
The conservative spirit of man tried to combine the new
idea of rebirth with the earlier eschatology, which spoke
of the joyous world of the spirits of the dead where Yama
presided and the joyless regions of darkness. This led to
a complication of the Upaxuad theory, which had to dis-
tinguish three ways after death. " For we have heard
even the saying of a r$i, ' I heard of two paths for men,
one leading to the fathers, the other leading to the devas.
On those paths all that lives, moves on, whatever there
is between father Sky and mother Earth/ " * The Upani-
ads mention the two paths by which a departed soul
proceeds to enjoy the fruits of its karma done in its life-
time on earth. One is called the devaySna or the axcimSrga,
the path of light, and the other pitjySna or the dhumamSrga,
the path of darkness. The former leads to the plane of
Brahma or satyaloka, through the different spheres of Agni,
etc. From this there is no return. DevaySna had a
meaning so long as Brahma was looked upon as an objective
being, seated on a high throne in his own palace, to which
the good went. But when the identity of self Und Brah-
*man is reached, the throne of Brahma totters and devaySna
becomes the pathway to the oneness with the highest. The
pitrySna takes to candraloka or the region of the moon
through the different spheres of smoke, night, etc. He who
goes to the devaySna does not come back to this world,
but he who goes to the pitjyana, after enjoying the fruits

vi. 2. a.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 129

of his good acts, comes back to the earth. There are many
differences in detail. According to the Kau!taki, all go
to the moon after death, though from the moon a few go
by the path of the fathers to BrahmS, while others return
to the various forms of existence, ranging from man to
worm, according to the quality of their work and degree
of knowledge. 1 The devayana and pit jy ana correspond
to the Jdngdom of light and the kingdom of darkness
or ajfiina, which involves us in samsara. A third path
leading to the joyless regions enveloped in darkness
is also mentioned. 2 " Those who make a gift of barren
cows, which have drunk water and eaten hay and given
their milk, themselves go to the joyless regions." 3 This
is the third road on which creatures which live and die,
worms, insects, creeping things crawl. 4 The freed man who
realises his identity with Brahman need not go anywhere
for his salvation. 5 Even where he is, he enjoys Brahman.
" His pranas do not go anywhere. Being Brahman he is
merged in Brahman." 6 Those who realise freedom do not
go through any path, but those who have to reach it by
an ascent go through the devayana. Since a gradual ascent
is described, it is said to be the path of kramamukti.

The mechanism of rebirth is explained in different ways.
" Then his knowledge and his works and his previous ex-
perience take him by the hand. As a caterpillar which
has wriggled to the top of a blade of grass draws itself over
to a new blade, so does the man after he has put aside his
body draw himself over to a new existence." 7 Again :
" As a goldsmith taking a piece of gold forms another shape
with it, more new and agreeable, so throwing off this body
and obtaining that state of knowledge, the soul forms a
shape which is more new and agreeable, suited to the world."
" As the sculptor takes the material from a statue and chisels
therefrom another, newer, fairer form, so this soul also,
after it has taken off the body and rid itself of ignorance,

1 i. 2. 3. Brh. t iv. n. s Katha, iii. 3.

4 Brh., vi. 2. 16. We meet with similar traditions in the Gnostic
writings as well as in St. Paul. See Harrison: Prolegomena to Greek Religion;
and Gardner: The Religious Experiences of St. Paul.

I Katha, 16, 14. * Brh., 4. 4. 6. 7 Brh., iv. 4. 3.

10

WO PHILOSOPHY OF THE tTPANIADS

creates for itself another, newer, fairer form, whether of the
fathers, of the Gandharvas, or the gods, or Prajipati, or
Brahmi, or other beings." * It is sometimes said that the
soid at death gathers into itself the vital spirits and departs,
taking them all to another body, exalted or not according to
the deeds done in the body it has left. 2 This view is developed
in the later doctrines into the conception of a liftga garira,
made familiar to western readers by theosophists as the
astral body. This subtle body serves as the vehicle of mind
and character, and is not disintegrated with the death of
the physical body. It forms the basis of a new physical
body which it moulds upon itself, effecting as it were a
materialisation maintained throughout the next life. It is
also said that the creatures emerge into individual life
from the one true being and merge into it again. 3

The thinkers of the Upaniads do not support the
materialistic view that the soul is annihilated at death.
They have a strong conviction of the continuity of life, and
maintain that there is something which survives bodily
death. The sexual act creates the conditions in which a new
life appears, but it is, on no account, an adequate explana-
tion of the new life itself. The birth of consciousness cannot
be explained by the development of a cell. The theological
hypothesis that God creates a new soul every time a child
is born does not seem to be more satisfactory than the
Upaniad theory that the individual jiva is manifesting itself
in the germ and assuming the shape that it is obliged to take.

The theory of rebirth is quite as logical as any other
hypothesis that is in the field, and is certainly more satis-
factory than the theories of absolute annihilation or eternal
retribution. It accounts for the apparent moral disorder
and chaos of suffering. The unfair distribution of pain
seems to contradict the rationality of the universe* As
irregularities of the empirical world are a challenge to the
logical faith, so moral disorder is a challenge to the belief
in the goodness of the principle at work. If our faith is
rational, there cannot be any intellectual or moral confusion.

* Bfh., iv. 4. 4. See also Chin., v. 10. 2 ; Kftutftaki, i. 2 ; Bfh. L 5. 16,
See Bj-h., iv. i. 6 ; P*a*na. i. 9* 16 ;&">; Kautftaki, iii. 3.
l Chan., vi. 9. 2 ; vi. to. i. 2.

PHILOSOPHY OP THE UPANISADS 181

If moral chaos is ultimate, then moral paralysis would be
the result. We have to reconcile the strangely chaotic
appearances of the moral world with the faith in a good
and great God. We should not be content with thinking
that the world is organised in a haphazard manner. The
hypothesis which traces the disorder and the suffering of
the moral world to the freedom of man cannot account for
the inequalities with which men are thrust into the world.
These differences in the initial equipment contradict the
idea of a divinely ordered universe. This hypothesis of
rebirth gives us some explanation of the original difference.
It makes us feel that the joy and suffering of the world are
there for the progressive education of character. Punish-
ment is not only vindictive but also remedial. We are
punished for our sins, and are at the same time purified by
punishment. It is good that we suffer.

The question of the origin of the hypothesis of rebirth we
have answered by anticipation. We have seen how it arises
naturally from the mass of thought by which the Upani$ad
thinkers were surrounded. The Vedas speak to us of the
two ways of the gods and the fathers. The original in-
habitants of India supply us with the idea of the migration
of human souls into trees and animals. The need for
recompense is urged in the Brahmarias. With these ready
to hand, the Upaniads had only to round them off into the
doctrine of sariisara. We are not therefore obliged to seek
for it any independent source. If in ancient Greece we find
doctrines similar to it, they may have had independent origin
and growth, though modern scholarship is against such
a view. On this question we may quote two authorities
on Indian and Greek thought. Macdonell observes that
the " dependence of Pythagoras on Indian philosophy and
science certainly seems to have a high degree of probability.
The doctrine of metempsychosis in the case of Pythagoras
appears without any connexion or explanatory background,
and was regarded by the Greeks as of foreign origin. He
could not have derived it from Egypt as it was not known
to the ancient Egyptians." x Gomperz writes : " There is
a far closer agreement between Pythagorism and the Indian

* History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 42**

182 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

doctrine, not merely in their general features, but even m
certain details such as vegetarianism ; and it may be added
that the formulae which summarise the whole creed of the
circle and the wheel of births are likewise the same in both.
It is almost impossible for us to refer this identity to mere
chance. ... It is not too much to assume that the curious
Greek who was the contemporary of Buddha, and it may
have been of Zarathustra too, would have acquired a more
or less exact knowledge of the religious speculations of the
East, in that age of intellectual fermentation, through the
medium of Persia/' x One thing is clear that the Indians
did not borrow it from outside.

XXI

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE UPANISADS

Though there is no systematic psychological analysis
in the Upaniads, we can gather from them the ideas
which they adopted. In the PraSna Upaniad, a the ten
indriyas, the five organs of action and the five senses of know-
ledge, the motor and the sensory apparatus are mentioned.
These indriyas work under the control of manas, the central
organ whose chief functions are perception and action.
Without mind the senses are useless.3 That is why the
mind is called the chief of the senses. Without mind or
prajni, speech does not make known anything. " My mind
was absent," he says. " I did not perceive that world ;
without prajfiS, the eye does not make known any form." 4
" I was absent in mind, I did not see ; I was absent in mind,
I did not hear ; in this manner it is evident that a person
sees with the mind, hears with the mind." 5 The mind
was looked upon as material in nature. 6 For sense, per-
ception, therefore, the Upaniads make out thaty)*ai' ip
necessary is neither the mere sensq nor its mere ^p^nKaing,
but a self which perceives through the sense, a seeing eye.

> Grtak Thinkers, vol. i., p. 127. For a different view, see Keith on
Pythagoras and Transmigration, J.R.A.S., 1909. iv. 2. **JNL

i Brh.. i. 5- 3- . Kautftaki. * 5 Brh,, iii. U *$>

* Professor Alexander reduces mind to a particular reality as mam*!
in structure as the electron of the physicist. " ,

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 188

Perception is said to be due to the proximity of the senses to
their objects. 1 One can do only one mental act at a time. 1
Buddhi or intelligence is higher than manas. The functions of
buddhi are found in the Aitareya. " Sensation, perception,
ideation, conception, understanding, insight, resolution,
opinion, imagination, feeling, memory, volition, conation, the
will to live, desire and self-control, all these are different names
of intellection." 3 This analysis cannot stand criticism, but
is important, since it indicates that even so early as the
period of the Upaniads there were psychological discus-
sions. The highest of all is the soul which is the eye of
the eye, the ear of the ear. It controls buddhi, manas,
the indriyas, the pranas, etc. 4 It is known to be all-per-
vasive and absolute. 5 There are passages where the soul
is given physical properties and said to dwell in the cavity
of the heart. 6 It is also said to be of the size of a grain
of barley or rice,? of the measure of a span, 8 or the thumb.9
If we remember that Aristotle in his DC Anima located the
soul in the heart and Galen in the brain, and Descartes
imagined the seat of the soul to be the pineal gland, and
Lotze the brain, it is not surprising that the psycho-
logists of the Upaniads located it in the region of the
heart.

The mind is wider than consciousness. That conscious-^
ness is only one aspect of mental life, a state of our spiritual
world, and not that world itself, is a profound truth, which
western thought is slowly coming to recognise. Since the
time of Leibniz consciousness is admitted to be only an
accident of mental representation, and not its necessary
and essential attribute. His contention that " our inner
world is richer, ampler and more concealed/' was well known
to the writers of the Upaniads.

* Compare the views of Empedocles and Democritus on the point.
> Kaotltaki, iii. 2. 3 iii. 2.

4 Bra., iv. 4 5 ; i. 4. 17 ; v. 6 , ii. i. 17 ; iii. 7. 22 ; iv. 3. 7 ; iv. 5. 13.

5 Katha, i. 2. 21 ; Mwrfaka, i. i. 6.

* Brh., iv. 3. 17 ; v. 6 ; Chan., viii. 3. 3 ; v. i. 6 ; Katha, ii. 20 ; iii. x ;
iv, 6 ; vi. 18 ; and vet&vatara, iii. n. 20. Hfdaya or hrtpadma is a subtle
o6&\ie of the spinal cord.

t Bfh., v. 6. i ; Chn., iii. 14. 3. * Chin., v. 18. i,

Katha. vi. 17 ; ii. 21 ; gvet., iii. 13.

184 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

The Mijujukya Upaniad mentions the different con-
ditions of the soul, waking, dreaming, sleep and the intuitive
turiya. In the waking condition the manas and the sense
organs are all active. In dream states the senses are said
to be quiescent and lost in the manas, a proposition which
modern psychology disputes. But according to the Upani-
$ads, so long as our sense organs are active, we are only
dozing, but not dreaming. We are in a half-waking condition.
In authentic dream states the mind alone operates in a
free and unfettered manner. The difference between the
waking and the dream states consists in this, that in the
waking condition the mind depends on the outward im-
pressions, while in dreaming it creates its impressions and
enjoys them. It may, of course, use the materials of the
waking hours. Suupti, or deep sleep, is also a normal
occurrence of man's life. In it the mind and the senses
are both said to be inactive. There is a cessation of the
empirical consciousness with its distinction of object and
subject. It is said that in this state we have an objectless
consciousness when the self attains to a temporary union
with the absolute. Be that as it may, it is clear that it
is not complete non-being or negation. It is difficult to
concede that the self continues to exist in deep sleep, en-
joying bliss though it is bereft of all experience. As a
matter of fact, the Upaniads themselves account for the
physiological and unconscious activities by the principle
of life, " prSna," which is said to govern the processes of
breathing, circulation, etc. Perhaps organic memory may be
the explanation of the continuity of consciousness. Notwith-
standing the absence of cognition, it is open to question
whether the self in the condition of sleep experiences positive
bliss. Turiya is the consciousness of unity, though not the
empirical apprehension thereof. It is the mystic realisation
of the oneness of all, which is the crown of spiritual life.

Before we take up the question of the non-Ved5ntic
tendencies of the Upani$ads, it may be well to sum up
the general metaphysical standpoint of the Upani$ads.
At the very start we said that there was considerable am-
biguity in the position of the Upani$ads, making it liable
td different interpretations. It is difficult to decide whether

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANJSADS 185

it is the Advaita (or non-dualism) of Samkara, or the modified
position of RamSnuja that is the final teaching of the parent
gospel. Tendencies which could be completed in either
direction are to be met with. The Upani$ads are not con*
scious of any contradiction between them. The advaitic
(non-dual) Brahman reached by intuition and the concretely
defined reality are not really distinct, since they are only
two different ways of representing the same. They are
the intuitional and the intellectual ways of apprehending,
the same reality. On the former view the world is an
appearance of the absolute ; to the latter it is an expression
of God. In neither case is the world to be dismissed as alto-
gether unreal or illusory, since on such a view we cannot admit
of any distinctions of value in the world of experience.
Through the influence of Buddhism and its schools, the non-
dual nature of reality and the phenomenal nature of the world
came to be emphasised in the systems of Gaudapada and
Samkara. As a matter of fact, such an advaitic philosophy
seems to be only a revised version of the Midhyamika
metaphysics in Vedic terminology. The religious recon-
struction of the epics and the Bhagavadgita and the theistic
emphasis in the Nyaya, led to the development of the
Vi&t Stdvaita, or modified monism of Ramnuja. As a
matter of fact, the non-dualists or Advaitins are called
Pari&uddha Saugatas, or purified Buddhists, and the Viit5d-
vaitins PariSuddha Naiyayikas, or purified NySya followers.

XXII
ELEMENTS OF SAMKHYA AND YOGA IN THE UPANISADS

There are germs of non-Ved5ntic philosophies such as
S&xhkhya and Yoga in the Upani$ads. The Samkhya
philosophy establishes a dualism between purua and
prakfti, where prakfti is the source of all existence and
purua the disinterested spectator of the evolution of
prakrti. It also holds to the plurality of puruas or
knowing subjects. 1 The Upaniads do not support the

* The idea of an avyakta or prakrti, the source of all differentiation, is
distinctly suggested in the Upani^ads. " Beyond the senses are the rudi-
ments of its objects ; beyond these rudiments is the mind ; beyond the

186 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

theory of a plurality of puruas, though a natural process
of criticism and development of one side of the doctrine
leads to it. We have seen how the monism of the Upamjads
becomes a monotheism so far as the purposes of religion
are concerned. A monotheism implies the separate existence
of the individual soul over against the supreme soul. The
result is a plurality of individual souls. But the S&hkhya
theorists had the insight to perceive that the independence
of the supreme and the individual souls is hard to maintain.
One is subversive of the other. One of them, either the
supreme or the individual souls, had to be cancelled. When
the function of productivity was assigned to prakjti, God
became superfluous. The Upaniads protest against the
transfer of creative functions to mere matter divorced from
God. Their main tendency is to support the hypothesis
t>f an absolute spirit on the background of which subject
and object arise. 1

The beginnings of the Yoga system are to be found in
the Upaniads. It is the conviction of the Upani$ad
writers that reality is not rightly perceived by our imperfect
understandings. The mind of man is compared by them
to a mirror in which reality is reflected. The extent to
which we know reality depends on the state of our mind,
whether it can respond to the full wealth of reality or not.
Colours are not revealed to the blind nor music to the deaf,
nor philosophic truth to the feeble-minded. The process
of knowing is not so much a creation as a discovery, not

mind is Atman known as mahat (great), beyond the mahat is avyakta, the
unmaaifested ; beyond the avyakta is the purusa, beyond the purusa
there is nothing." (Katha, m. 10. n , see also vi 7. 8.) Beyond the indeter-
minate whence all creation issues there is only God. " By tapas Brahman
increases in size and from it food is produced , from food life, mind, the
elements, the worlds, karma, and with it its fruits." (Muntfaka, i. i.)
Food or annam in this passage is interpreted by &axhkara as the unmani-
ferted (avyakrtam). In the Pralna Upanisad, iv., we have an account of
how all things are resolved into the imperishable in the order of the five
elements with the corresponding m&tras or subtle elements. See Prafoa,
iv. 8. In the Upanisads prakrti is said to be derived from God. The word
" Purusa " means the supreme Atman. The Samkhya theory of punisa as
a passive witness may have been suggested by the famous passage about the
two birds, " where the one feed* on the delicious fruit and the other, not
tatting it, look* on." (Muntfaka, hi. i I.)

i See Aitareya, i. x. 2 ; Brh., i. 4. 3 ; Chan,, vi. a, 6 ; Tait, ii, I.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE tJPANISADS 187

so much a production as a revelation. It follows that the
revelation will be imperfect or distorted, if there is any taint
or imperfection clinging to the instrument. The selfish
desires and passions get between the instrument of mind
and the reality to be revealed* When the personality of
the subject affects the nature of the instrument, the reflection
becomes blurred. The ignorance of the observer clouds
the object with his fancies. His prevailing prejudices are
cast over the truth of things. Error is just the intrusion
into the reality of the defects of the instrument. An im-
partial and impersonal attitude is necessary for the discovery
of truth, and all that is merely personal impedes this process.
We must be saved from the malformation and the mis-
carriage of our minds. The clamant energies of the mind
must be bent to become the passive channels for the trans-
mission of truth. The Yoga method gives directions how
to refine the mind and improve the mirror, keep it clean
by keeping out what is peculiar to the individual. It is
only through this discipline that we can rise to that height
of strenuous impersonality from which the gifted souls of the
world see distant visions. This method is in consonance with
the Upaniad theory of the self. Our ordinary conscious-
ness turns its back on the eternal world and is lost in the
perishing unreal world cast by the mind out of sense im-
pressions. When we rise above the empirical self we get
not a negation but an intensification of self. When the
self is bound down to its empirical accidents, its activities
are not fully exercised. When the limitations of empirical
existence are transcended, the universal life is intensified,
and we have an enrichment of self or enhancement of
personality. Then it draws all experience into it. In the
lower stages, when the self is identified with any definite
centre generated by the accidents of time and space, the
world of experience is not made its own. The adherence
to a narrow circle of experience must be overcome before
we can gather into ourselves the world of experience, whose
centre as well as circumference is God and man. Then
we rise to a condition in which, in the words of the Upani-
$ads, " there is no difference between what is within and
what is without." The Yoga method insists that the false

188 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

outward outlook must be checked before the true inward
ideal is given a chance of life and expression. We must
cease to live in the world of shadows before we can lay
hold of the eternal life.

The Yoga system requires us to go through a course of
mental and spiritual discipline. The Upaniads also em-
phasise the practice of austere virtues before the end can
be reached. In the Pra&na Upaniad Pippalada sends
away six inquirers after God for another year of discipline
with the command, "Go ye and spend another year in
leading the life of celibacy (brahmacarya), in practising
asceticism, in cherishing reverential faith (SraddhS)." The
life of celibacy, where the student will have no family
attachment to perturb his mind, would enable him to
give whole-hearted attention to his work. The penances
will give him mental quiet and remove the restlessness of
mind which is such a great obstacle to knowledge. SraddhS,
or faith is necessary for all work. The essence of Yoga
philosophy, as of all mystic teaching, is the insistence on
the possibility of coming into direct contact with the divine
consciousness by raising the human to a plane above its
normal level.

We must control the mind which binds us to outer
things and makes slaves of us, to realise freedom. Being
the victims of outer objects and circumstances, we do not
reach satisfaction. " As rain water that has fallen on a
mountain ridge runs down on all sides, thus does he who
sees a difference between qualities run after them on all
sides. As pure water poured into pure water remains the
same, thus, O Gautama, is the self of a thinker who knows." x
The mind of a man who does not know his own self goes
hither and thither like the water pouring down the crags
in every direction. But when his mind is purified, he be-
comes one with the great ocean of life which dwells behind
all mortal forms. The outward mind, if allowed free scope,
gets dispersed in the desert sands. The seeker must draw
it inward, hold it still to obtain the treasure within. We
have to force utterance into feeling, feeling into thought,
and thought into universal consciousness; only then do

* Katha Up., ii, 15.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 189

we become conscious of the deep peace of the eternal. 1
Oifly when " the five sources of knowledge are at rest along
with the mind and the intellect is inactive" do we reach
the highest. 4 "Having taken the bow furnished by the
Upaniads, the great weapon, and fixed in it the arrow
rendered pointed by constant meditation, and having drawn
it with the mind, fixed on the Brahman, aim happy youth
at that mark, the immortal Brahman." 3 The Kauitaki
Upaniad speaks of Pratardana as the founder of a new
system of self-control or samyamana, which is known by
the name of the Inner sacrifice. 4 He insists that the in-
dividual should exercise perfect control over his passions
and emotions. The Upaniads sometimes suggest that
we can induce the trance condition by control of breath, 5
though more often they speak to us of the method of
concentration. 6 Mystic words such as Aum, Tadvanam,?
TajjalSn, 8 are the symbols on which we are asked to fix
attention. The way to reach steadiness of mind is by
concentration or fixing the thought for a time on one
particular object by effacing all others. Only practice
helps us to grow perfect in this art.

The only indication of the later Nyaya logic occurs in
Mumjaka.9 " This At man cannot be attained by one devoid
of strength, or by excitement, or by tapas, or by liAga."
Liftga, as we shall see, is a technical term of Nyiya logic,
the binding link, the middle term of inference. 10 The
empirical theory of knowledge, that the nature of reality
is to be known by way of induction, is brought out in some
passages. " By one clod of clay all that is made of clay
is known ... by one nugget of gold all that is made of
gold is known." " Pratardana insists that knowledge is
possible only through a subject-object relation.

> Katha, 11. 13. Cf. " Thought is best when the mind is gathered into
herself, and none of these things trouble her neither sounds nor sights nor
pain, nor any pleasure when she has as little as possible to do with the
body and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after being " Plato's
Pkado.

Katha, ii. 12. s Mungaka, 11. 2. 2.

Antaram agnihotram, ii. 5. 5 Brh., i. 5. 23.

PraSna, v. i. 7 Kena, iv. 6. * Chan , hi. 14. i.

ili. 2. 4. Deusen and Hume give to the text a different sense.

Unga link. See also Chan., vi. ^. 4. " Chftri., vi. i 4-6.

140 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS

XXIII

PHILOSOPHICAL ANTICIPATIONS

The Upani$ads determine the main issues of philo-
sophical inquiry and mark out the lines of subsequent
philosophical discussion. Apart from suggestions of other
theories, we have seen that the Upaniads contain the
elements of a genuine philosophical idealism, insisting on
the relative reality of the world, the oneness and wholeness
of spirit, and the need of an ethical and religious life. Though
the philosophical synthesis presented in the Upani^ads,
with its fundamental idea of the unity of the consciousness
of self, with the principle which binds all things, constitutes
the strength of the Upaniad thought, its weakness lies
in the fact that this synthesis is achieved not so much by
explicit reason as by intuition. It does not offer a logical
reconciliation of the different elements which it brings
together, though it has a firm hold on the central idea of
all true philosophy.

The beliefs of the Vedic religion weighed upon the
Upaniad thinkers. Though they did not scruple to
criticise them, they were still hampered by the legacy of
the past. They tried to be champions of future progress
as well as devotees of ancient greatness. This was obviously
a hard task judged from the results. The Upani$ad re-
ligion, while it preached a pure and spiritual doctrine, which
had no specified forms of worship, which did not demand
a priestly hierarchy, yet tolerated these things, nay, even
recognised them. " The various karmas which seers found
in the mantras are true, and were much practised in the
Treta age ; practise them always with true desires ; it is
your way to the attainment of the fruits of karma/' *
The Vedic gods had their own place in the sun. None asked
the people to forsake the gods they were wont to worship.
Ingenious explanations, suggestions and symbolism helped
to interpret the old superstition in consistency with the

> Mujwjak*, i. 2, I,

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 141

new idealism. While the hour demanded fidelity to the
spiritual ideal, we find in the Upaniads a good deal of
temporising. They began as a movement towards the
liberation of the individual from the shackles of external
authority and excessive conventionalism. They ended in
rivetting the old chains. Instead of establishing new values
for life, they tended to propagate the traditional ones. To
preach a spiritual democracy is a very different thing from
establishing it. The Upaniads endeavoured laudably to
combine a lofty mysticism with the ancestral faith. But
the age never felt even a living option between the new
spiritual ideal and the mythologies of the past. The
lofty idealism of the Upaniads did not realise itself as
a popular movement. It never influenced society as a
whole. The sacrificial religion was still the dominating
force ; the Upaniads only added respectability to it.
The old faith was inspired with a new vitality derived from
the breath of a spirit from another sphere If the idealism
of the Upaniads had permeated the masses, there would
have been a great remodelling of the racial character and
a regeneration of social institutions. But neither of these
things happened. The lower religion with much of super-
stition prevailed. The priesthood became powerful. The
conservatism of the religious institutions and contempt
for the masses lived side by side with a higher spirit adopted
by a few votaries of the perfect life. It was an age of
spiritual contradiction and chaos. The teaching of the
Upani^ads became so flexible as to embrace within it the
most diverse forms of doctrine from a refined idealism to
a crude idolatry. The result was that the higher religion
was swamped by the lower.

Everywhere we had contradictory notions. In religion,
there was Vedic polytheism and sacrifices tempered by
Upaniad monism and spiritual life. In social matters,
there was caste, the rigours of which were miti ^

catholic spirit of universalism. In ejc
the conception of rebirth mixed up
But the true was overwhelmed by the
of the BrShmanical religion, with all its
soon reached a climax in the post-Il

142 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANIADS

Buddhist period. This period was one of spiritual dryness,
where truth hardened into tradition, and morality stiffened
into routine. Life became a series of observances. The
mind of man moved within the iron circle of prescribed
formulas and duties. The atmosphere was choked with
ceremonialism. One could not wake up or rise from his
bed, bathe or shave, wash his face, or eat a mouthful,*
without muttering some formula or observing some rite.
It was an age when a petty and barren creed set too much
store by mere trifles and hollow superstitions. An arid
and heartless philosophy, backed by a dry and dogmatic
religion, full of affectation and exaggeration, could not
satisfy the thinking few for any time, or the masses for
a long time. A period of disintegration followed when
attempts were made to carry out the Upani$ad revolt
in a more systematic manner. The illogical combination
of the Upaniad monism and the Vedic polytheism, the
Upaniad spiritual life and the Vedic sacrificial routine,
the Upaniad moka and samsara and the Vedic hell
and heaven, the Upaniad universalism and the popular
caste, could no longer live together. Reconstruction was
the greatest need of the hour. A deeper and more spiritual
religion which could come down to the common life of man
was what the times were waiting for. Before a true synthesis
could be obtained, the elements artificially combined re-
quired to be torn away from the connection into which
they have been brought and set in abstract opposition to
each other. The Buddhists, the Jainas, and the Carvikas
or materialists pointed to the artificial condition of the
prevailing religion. The first two attempted a reconstruc-
tion, emphasising the ethical needs of the spirit. But their
attempts were on revolutionary lines. While they tried
to carry out the ethical universalism of the Upaniad
teaching, they imagined that they completely broke off
from the authority of the BrShmanical caste, the sacrificial
system and the prevailing religion. The BhagavadgitS, and
the later Upaniads tried to reckon with the past and
bring about a synthesis of the illogical elements in a more
conservative spirit. It may be that these radical and

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISADS 148

conservative protests against the religion as it prevailed
in the post-Upani$ad period were formulated in different
parts of 'the country, Buddhism and Jainism in the east
and Bhagavadgiti in the west, the ancient stronghold of
the Vedic religion. It is to this period of intellectual
ferment, revolt and reconstruction that we now pass.

Jr**rf fc Cra* Brit** |y
VNW1N BftOTHSftS, LIMITED, LONDON AND WOldM*

GEORGE ALLEN & UNW1N LTD.

LONDON: 40 MUSBUM STRBBT, W.C.i

CAP* Town: 73 ST. GSORGB'S STRBBT

SYDHSY, N.S.W. : 318222 CLARBNCB STREET

WX-X.LIXGTON, N.Z. : 110112 LAMBTON QUAY