1. Philosophy of The Upanishads Edward Gough (1970 Cosmo Reprint).djvu

THE PHILOSOPHY OF

THE UPANISHADS

AND

ANCIENT INDIAN METAPHYSICS

BY

EDWARD GOUGH

COSMO PUBLICATIONS

NEW DELHI

INDIA

1970

105435

FIRST PUBLISHED 1882

THIRD EDITION 1902

REPRINTED 1979

Published by :

Cosmo Publications

24-B, Ansari Road

New Delhi-110002

Printed by :

Mehra offset Press

New Delhi-110002

P R E F A C E .

I HOPE that this book may be more or less useful to two

classes of readers.

Those interested in the general history of philosophy

will find in it an account of a very early attempt, on

the part of thinkers of a rude age and race, to form a

cosmological theory. The real movement of philosophic

thought begins, it is true, not in India, but in Ionia;

but some degree of interest may still be expected to

attach to the procedure of the ancient Indian cosmo-

logists. The Upanishads are so many “songs before

sunrise,”—spontaneous effusions of awakening reflec-

tion, half poetical, half metaphysical, that precede the

conscious and methodical labour of the long succes-

sion of thinkers to construct a thoroughly intelligible

conception of the sum of things. For the general

reader, then, these pages may supply in detail, and

in the terms of the Sanskrit texts themselves, a treat-

ment of the topics slightly sketched in the third

chapter of Archer Butler's first series of “Lectures

on the History of Ancient Philosophy.” The Upani-

shads exhibit the pantheistic view of things in a naïvely

b

vi

PREFACE.

poetical expression, and at the same time in its coarsest

form.1

To readers specially interested in Indian matters an

introduction to the Upanishads is indispensable, and

these pages will help to supply a want hitherto unsup-

plied. The Upanishads are an index to the intellectual

peculiarities of the Indian character. The thoughts

they express are the ideas that prevail throughout all

subsequent Indian literature, much of which will be

fully comprehensible to those only who carry with

them a knowledge of these ideas to its perusal. A

study of the Upanishads is the starting-point in any

intelligent study of Indian philosophy. As regards

religion, the philosophy of the Upanishads is the

groundwork of the various forms of Hinduism, and

the Upanishads have been justly characterised by

Goldstücker as "the basis of the enlightened faith of

India."

The Upanishads are treatises of various length,

partly poetical, partly theosophical, which close the

canon of Vedic revelation. The term Upanishad im-

ports mystic teaching, and the synonymous term

Vedānta means a final instalment of the Veda. The

Upanishads are also called Vedāntas, and the Aupani-

shadī Mīmānsā or philosophy of the Upanishads, in

its developed form, is known as the Vedāntic system.

Śruti, the Vedic revelation, consists of two parts, of a

lower and a higher grade,—the Karmakāṇḍa, or portion

treating of sacrifices, immemorial usages, and theogony;

1 "Wollen wir den sogenannten Pantheismus in seiner poetischen,

erhabensten; oder wenn man will, krassesten Gestalt nehmen, so hat

man auch dafür in den morgenländischen Dichtem umzusehen, und die

breitesten Darstellungen finden sich in den Indischen." — HEGEL.

and the Jñānakāṇda, or portion treating of the release

of the soul from metempsychosis, by means of a recog-

nition of its real nature as one with the characterless

and impersonal Self. This impersonal Self, Brahman,

as distinguished from the personal soul, the living,

conscious, and migrating spirit, the Jiva or Jīvātman

or Vijñātman, is also styled the Paramātman or

highest Self. The mystic teaching in which the Vedic

revelation culminates is relative to the nature of this

highest and impersonal Self. The Karmakāṇda, or

ritual portion of the Veda, is contained in the Mantras

or hymns of the Ṛishis, the spontaneous effusions of

primitive Indian nature-worship, and the Brāhmaṇas

or liturgic and legendary compilations of the specialised

sacrificial functionaries. Theosophic teaching is present,

in combination with liturgic and mythologic elements,

in the Āraṇyakas, a portion of the Vedic aggregate

intimately allied to the Brāhmaṇas. This teaching

is further segregated and explicitly set forth in the

Upanishads, and forms the Jñānakāṇda or theosophic

portion of the Vedic revelation. As compared with the

religion of sacrifices and ancestral rites, this teaching

forms a higher religion, a more perfect way, for the

recluses of the forest,—a religion which will be seen to

be largely metaphysical. Treatises bearing the name

of Upanishads are numerous. Those in highest esteem

have always been the Chhāndogya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka,

Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya, Aita-

reya, Taittirīya, Śvetāśvatara, Maitrāyaṇīya, and Kau-

shitakībrahmaṇa Upanishads. The date of the Upani-

shads, like that of most of the ancient works of Sanskrit

literature, is altogether uncertain. Any date that may

have been assigned is purely conjectural ; and all that

viii

PREFACE.

we can affirm in this regard is, that in relation to that literature they are of primitive antiquity, and the earliest documents of Indian religious metaphysics.

The greatest of the expositors of the philosophy of the Upanishads is Śankara or Śankarāchārya. A great part of the matter of this volume is extracted from the various writings ascribed to him. He is said to have been a native of Kerala or Malabar, and to have flourished in the eighth century of the Christian era.

He is generally represented as having spent the greater part of his life as an itinerant philosophic disputant and religious controversialist. The Buddhists in his time were flourishing and widely predominant in India under the patronage of powerful Rajas, and we may presume that the great Vedāntic doctor was thoroughly intimate with the tenets of Buddhist philosophy and religion. His exposition of some of these in his commentary on the aphorisms of the Vedānta is admirably perspicuous.

The teaching of Śankara himself is the natural and legitimate interpretation of the doctrines of the Upanishads. It is known as Advaitavāda, the theory of universal unity, abstract identity, or absolute idealism. The Advaitavādins or Indian idealists are therefore often styled the Śāñkaras or followers of Śankara. They represent Indian orthodoxy in its purest form.

The commentaries on the Upanishads ascribed to Śankara are elucidated in the glosses of Ānandajñānagiri, a writer to whom reference will be found from time to time in the following pages. The most illustrious of the successors of Śankara, and, next to Śankara, the greatest of the Indian schoolmen, is Mādhava or Mādhavāchārya, known also by the surname of Sāyaṇa. He will also be referred to in this

book. His great work is his series of grammatical and

exegetic commentaries on the Vedas. In philosophical

discussion his language is remarkably quaint and strik-

ing. An opponent arguing in a circle is a man

trying to stand on his own shoulders, and in refuting

another he finds himself breaking a bubble with a

thunderbolt.1 Mādhavāchārya flourished in the four-

teenth century.

This book is based upon a series of articles I con-

tributed some years ago to the Calcutta Review. The

first of these, intitled "Ancient Indian Metaphysics,"

was published in the number for October 1876. This

was followed by five articles on the "Philosophy of the

Upanisnads," the first of these appearing in January

1878, and the last in April 1880. I beg to record my

best thanks to Mr. Thomas Smith, the proprietor of the

Review, for his kind permission to me to utilise the

materials of these articles in preparing the present

work. The materials I have reproduced are for the

most part the translations. These, already containing

the most important texts of the Upanishads, were

indispensable for any new presentation of primitive

Indian metaphysics. They have in every case been

rewritten, new matter has been added, and everything

old is transformed and transposed, so that this book is

not to be regarded as a reprint, but as a new work. My

translations will be found to include the whole of the

Muṇḍaka, Kaṭha, Śvetāśvatara, and Māṇḍūkya Upani-

shads, the greater part of the Taittirīya and Br̥ihadā-

raṇyaka, and portions of the. Chhāndogya and Kena,

together with extracts from the works of the Indian

schoolmen. The matter of the book has been taken in

1 Cf. "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ?"—Pope.

xii

PREFACE.

existence in the earlier constructions of Hellenic

thought, and naturally develops itself out of

them.

As regards this third conclusion, the general reader

will be able to form his own opinion. I think he will ?

pronounce that India had little intellectual wealth for

exportation to the Alexandrian emporium.

A. E. G.

MARSHAM HALL,

NORWICH,

July 21, 1882.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I

THE ANTECEDENTS OF INDIAN METAPHYSICS—METEMPSYCHOSIS.

The scope of the work . . . . . . 1

Indian philosophy the work of a lower race, of mixed Negrito,

Tatar, and Aryan blood . . . . . 2

The Aryan infusion scanty . . . . . 4

Low thoughts in high words the difficulty of the Orientalist 4

Stationary and progressive order contrasted . . . 5

Indian philosophy an Oriental philosophy of inertion . . 6

The social antecedents of Brahmanism and Buddhism . . 7

Personification of elemental forces . . . . 8

The spiritual instinct languid. Absence of moral aspiration 10

The Vedic worship becomes mechanical . . . . 12

First beginnings of cosmologic speculation in the Vedic hymns 13

The Purushasûkta . . . . . . . 14

The Nâsadiyasûkta . . . . . . . 15

Climatic, ethnological, and religious degeneration in the

Hindu pale . . . . . . . 17

The worship of Siva the typical Yogin . . . . 18

Self-torture, thaumaturgy, ecstasy, Yoga . . . . 18

Revival of widow-burning . . . . . . 19

Polyandry . . . . . . . . 20

Belief in the migration of the soul and the misery of every

form of life . . . . . . . 20

No true help from the gods. Pain in paradise . . . 22

The intolerable prospect of life after life and death after

death . . . . . . . . 23

The belief in metempsychosis prevalent among the lower

races of mankind . . . . . . . 24

xiv

CONTENTS.

Current in Egypt Adopted by Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, and Plato

25

Philosophy the release from metempsychosis in the Phædon

26

Asiatic and European pessimism

29

Hume's picture of the miseries of life

29

The similar picture of the Indian schoolmen

32

CHAPTER II.

THE QUEST OF THE REAL—BRAHMAN AND MĀYĀ, THE SELF AND THE WORLD-FICTION:

Fixity amidst the flux of things

34

Repose and peace amidst the miseries of life

35

Unity amidst the plurality of experience

35

These found at intervals in sleep without a dream

36

Permanently in union with the characterless Self, which is the object of the name and notion I

36

Brahman the impersonal Self

37

Etymology of the word Brahman

38

Brahman infinite

38

Brahman incogitable and ineffable

39

Brahman the light that irradiates the mental modes

39

Brahman is pure thought, eternal and objectless

40

Brahman not to be confused with the personal absolute or Christian Deity

41

Brahman the pure light of characterless knowledge

42

Brahman that which being known all things are known,—the ἀρχή

43

Brahman the principle of reality. The co-eternal principle of unreality, Māyā, the world-fiction

45

Māyā the illusion in every individual soul

46

Māyā the illusion in all souls, the unreal emanatory principle of the world, co-eternal with Brahman

47

Brahman and Māyā eternally associated

48

Brahman fictitiously limited by Māyā is Īśvara, and passes into seeming plurality

49

Hierarchic emanations out of Brahman and Māyā

50

Īśvara, the Demiurgus, world-evolving deity, or cosmic soul

51

Īśvara omniscient, the giver of recompense, the internal ruler

53

Īśvara not a personal God, but the universal soul

53

CONTENTS.

xv

Íśvara the first figment of the world-fiction . . . . 53

Hiraṇyagarbha, the spirit of dreaming sentiences . . . 54

Virāj, the spirit of waking sentiences . . . . 55

Six things without beginning . . . . . 56

CHAPTER III

THE RELEASE FROM METEMPSYCHOSIS.

Re-ascent to the fontal Self . . . . . 58

Purificatory virtues, renunciation, meditative abstraction, ecstatic vision, re-union . . . . 59

The Vivekachūḍāmaṇi quoted . . . . . 60

Liberation in this life . . . . . 61

The Sāṅdilyavidyā. The soul one with the cosmic soul und wi:h the Self . . . 62

Renunciation, ecstasy, and liberation, as characterised in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad . . . . 63

The perfect sage is subject to no moral law . . . . 65

But will not therefore do evil . . . . . 66

The mystic syllable Oм as an image of Brahman . . . 67

Invocation of Oм in the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . . 68

The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad. The import of Oм. The four states of the soul . . . . . . 69

The waking state . . . . . . 69

The dreaming state . . . . . . 70

The state of dreamless sleep . . . . . 70

The state of the soul in union with pure Self . . . 71

Literal analysis of Oм . . . . . 72

The doctrine of the five vestures of the soul as taught in the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . . 73

The Brahmānandavallī, the second section of the Taittirīya Upanishad . . . . . . 73

The Self within the mind, inside the heart of every living thing . . . . . . 74

The soul is the Self, but does not know itself to be the Self 75

Procession of the five elements, and their progressive conoretion . . . . . . 75

The first and outermost vesture of the soul is the earthly body . . . . . . 76

xvi

CONTENTS.

Within the earthly body is the invisible body that clothes

the soul throughout its migrations . . . . 77

The second garment, the vesture of the vital airs . . 78

The third garment, the vesture of the common sensory . 78

The fourth garment, the mental vesture . . . . 79

The fifth and innermost garment, the vesture of beatitude.

This clothes the soul in its third state of dreamless sleep 80

Brahman becomes Íśvara and passes into seeming plurality 81

The scale of beatitudes that may be ascended by the sage . 83

The Bhriguvallî, the third section of the Taittirîya Upanishad 85

Steps to the knowledge of Brahman. First step : the earthly

body is Brahman . . . . . . . 85

Second step : the vital air is Brahman . . . . 85

Third step : the common sensory is Brahman . . . 86

Fourth step : the mind is Brahman . . . . . 86

Fifth step : the bliss of dreamless sleep is Brahman . . 86

Outward observances of the meditating sage, and their re-

wards . . . . . . . . . 87

He is to meditate on the various manifestations of Brahman 87

He strips off the five garments of the soul one after another.

Acquires and exercises magical powers. Sings the song

of universal anity. Is absorbed into the one and all . 88

The great text, That art thou . . . . . . 89

The dialogue of Āruni and Śvetaketu from the Chhāndogya

Upanishad . . . . . . . . . 90

Allegory of the sweet juices and the honey . . . . 90

Allegory of the rivers and the sea . . . . . 90

Allegory of the tree and its informing life . . . . 91

Allegory of the seed of the holy fig-tree . . . . 91

Allegory of the salt in salt water . . . . . 91

Allegory of the highwayman and the blindfold traveller . 92

Gradnal departure of the soul at death . . . . 92

Allegory of the fiery ordeal . . . . . . 93

Scholastic explanation of the great text, That art thou . 93

CHAPTER IV.

THE MUNDAKA UPANISHAD.

The religion of rites and the religion of gnosis, the inferior

science and the superior science . . . . . 95

CONTENTS.

xvii

The religion of rites prolongs the migration of the soul.

96

The religion of gnosis frees the soul from further migration .

97

This religion or philosophy must be learned from an authorised

exponent . . . . . . 98

Mundaka Upanishad. First Munḍaka, First Section . . 99

The διδoχή . . . . . . 99

To know the Self is to know all things . . . . 99

Simil of the spider . . . . . . 99

Hume's misapprehension of this simile . . . . 100

The Demiurgus and the world-fiction . . . . 100

First Munḍaka, Second Section . . . . 101

The rewards of the prescriptive sacra transient. The sage

must turn his back upon them all . . . . 102

He must repair to an accredited teacher . . . . 103

Second Munḍaka, First Section . . . . . 103

Simile of the fire and the sparks . . . . 103

Purusha characterised as in the Purushasūkta . . 104

The vision of the Self within the heart is the only salvation

106

Second Munḍaka, Second Section . . . . 106

Use of the mystic syllable Om . . . . . 106

The ties of the heart loosed by seeing the Self, the light of

the world . . . . . . . 107

Third Munḍaka, First Section . . . . . 108

Allegory of the two birds on one tree . . . . 108

Mental purity required of the aspirant . . . . 109

A pure mind the only mirror that reflects the Self . . 110

Third Munḍaka, Second Section . . . . . 111

The Self manifests itself to the perfect sage . . . 111

He loses himself in it as a river loses itself in the sea . . 112

Fichte quoted. Perfect peace from conscious participation

in the divine life . . . . . . 113

CHAPTER V.

THE KATHA UPANiSHAD.

The story of Nachiketás and the regent of the de.

Katha Upanishad, First Valli . . . .

Yama tells Nachiketás to choose three gifts

The first gift, that he may return to his

xviii

CONTENTS.

PAGE

The second gift, a knowledge of the Nāohiketa fire . . 118

Disquieting doubt of awakening reflection . . . 120

The third gift, a knowledge of the soul, and of its real nature* 120

This preferable even to the pleasures that the gods enjoy . 121

Second Vallī. The pleasurable and the good . . . 122

The liturgic experts are blind leaders of the blind . 122

The seekers of the Self are few . . . . 123

Renunciation and meditative abstraction the only path of safety

The mystic syllable Oм must be employed . . . 124

Antithetic epithets of the Self . . . . 125

The Self manifests itself to the purified aspirant . . 126

Third Vallī. The individual soul and the cosmic soul . 126

Allegory of the chariot . . . . . 127

The goal is release from metempsychosis by re-union with the Self . . . . . 127

The path of release is fine as the edge of a razor . . 128

The liberated theosophist wakes up out of this dream-world 129

Fourth Vallī . . . . . 129

The sage eludes the net of death, and has no fear . . 130

It is illusion that presents the manifold of experience . 131

Puruṣa or Brahman is pure light . . . . 132

Fifth Vallī. Various manifestations of Puruṣa . . 132

Vedāntic proofs of the existence of the Self . . . 133

What becomes of the soul at death . . . . 134

The Self is like a permeating fire or pervading atmosphere . 134

Simile of the sun unsullied by the impurities.it looks down upon . . . . . 134

Everlasting peace for them only that find the light of the world in their own hearts . . . . 135

Sixth Vallī . . . . . 135

The world-tree and the seed it springs from . . . 136

The Self to be seen only as mirrored on the purified mind 137

Ecstatic vision and recovery of immortality . . . 137

thy, yacuity, and trance the steps of access to the Self . 138

tic path of egress and ascent to the courts of Brahmā 139

the chariot compared with the Platonic figure

3 . . . . . 140

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD

Dialogues of the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad . . . 144

Ajatasatru and Balaki . . . . . . . 144

Ajatasatru teaches Balaki the doctrine of the three states of

the soul and of the Self beyond . . . . 147

Yajñavalkya and Maitreyi . . . . . . 150

Things that are dear are dear for the sake of the Self . . 150

It is the Self that must be seen . . . . . 150

All things one in the Self, as partial sounds in a total sound 152

The Vedas an exhalation of the Self . . . . 152

No more consciousness for the liberated sage . . . 153

The duality of subject and object is unreal . . . 154

The disputation at the sacrifice of Janaka . . . 155

Yajñaval 'ya takes the prize without waiting to dispute . 155

Asvala challenges him to explain the symbolic import of the

several factors of the sacrifice . . . . . 156

Artabhaga to enumerate the elements of sensible experience 157

The mind and senses of the liberated sage are dissolved at

death . . . . . . . . . 158

The soul of the unphilosophic man enters a new body . . 159

Bhujyu examines him on the reward of the horse-sacrifice . 160

Ushasta demands an ocular demonstration of the Self. The

Self is the unseen seer . . . . . . 161

Kahola questions him about the one Self in all things living 161

The risionary sage is the true Brahman . . . . 162

Gargi questions him. What is the web of the world woven

over? . . . . . . . . . 162

Uddalaka questions him on the nature of the thread soul,

Hiranyagarbha . . . . . . . . 164

On the nature of the cosmic soul or Demiurgus . . 165

The Demiurgus is the internal ruler or actuator. He informs

and animates the elements . . . . . .

He informs and animates all living things . . . .

The Demiurgus is Brahman manifested in the world

Gargi questions him. What is the web of the wo:k

woven across? . . . . . . . . .

It is woven over the Self, the principle that gi:

order to the world . . . . . . .

xx

CONTENTS.

The Self is uniform, characterless vision and thought . . . 171

Vidagdha questions him. All things full of gods . . . 172

Vidagdha fails to answer in turn, and perishes . . . 174

Yājñavalkya's parable. Man is a forest-tree: what root does he spring from again when cut down? . . . 174

The sum of the whole matter. Ecstatic union is the goal . 175

Yājñavalkya's visit to Janaka. Their conversation. The passage of the soul through the five vestures to the Self beyond all fear . . . . 175

Yājñavalkya visits Janaka again. Their conference. What is the light of man? . . . . 177

The true light is the light within the heart. . . . 179

The three states of the migrating soul . . . . 179

In sleep the soul creates a dream-world . . . . 180

Simile of the fish . . . . . . 181

Simile of the falcon . . . . . . 181

Liberation is perfect satisfaction, and exemption from all fear 182

All differences vanish in the unitary indifference of the Self. 182

CHAPTER VII.

THE SENSATIONAL NIHILISM OF THE BUDDHISTS—THE COSMOLOGY OF THE SĀNKHYAS.

The doctrine of the blank. The original nothingness of the Buddhists . . . . . 183

This doctrine as old as the Upanishads. It is the primitive antithesis to the thesis of the Self and the world-fiction . 185

The Buddhist teaching . . . . . . 185

The inner light moonshine, the Self zero . . . . 186

All things momentary and fluxional. All consciousness is sensational . . . . . 186

Śankarāchārya's statement and refutation of Buddhist nihilism 187

Śankarāchārya's statement of Buddhist sensationalism . . 190

Its refutation of this sensationalism . . . . 192

Is it self-consistent? Relative and provisional reality of the . . . . . 197

by of the Sānkhyas. A real and independent emanation, Pradhāna. A plurality of Puru- . . . . . 198

CONTENTS.

xxi

The Sānkhyaṣ pervert the plain sense of the Upanishads

. 199

Praṣriti in the Upanishads equivalent to Māyā or Avidyā

. 200

Śankarāchārya disallows the Sānkhya appeal to the Kaṭha

Upanishad . . . . 201

The "undeveloped" principle of the Kaṭha Upanishad not

Pradhāna, but Māyā, the cosmic body . . . 202

Śankarāchārya disallows the Sānkhya appeal to the Śvetāś-

vatara Upanishad . . . . . 203

The Sānkhyaṣ deny the existence of Īśvara, the cosmic soul,

or world-evolving deity . . . . 204

Śankarāchārya maintains against them the existence of Īśvara

The migrating souls, not Īśvara, to blame for the inequalities

of their lots . . . . 207

The world has had no beginning. Souls have been in migra-

tion from eternity . . . . . 208

The Sānkhya doctrine of real modifications counter to the

Vedāntic tenet of fictitious emanations . . . 209

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SVETASVATARA UPANISHAD.

This Upanishad teaches the same doctrines as the other

Upanishads . . . . . . 211

The Sānkhya originally a new nomenclature, not a new

philosophy . . . . . 212

S'vetāśvatara Upanishad, First Section . . . 213

All things emanate out of Īśvara's Śakti or Māyā, i.e., out of

the power or fiction of the cosmic soul . . . 213

Īśvara the cycle of the universe . . . 214

The river of metempsychosis . . . . 214

The triad based on Braḥman . . . . 215

Māyā or Prakṛiti the genetrix ingenita . . . 215

Māyā or Prakṛiti the handmaid of the Deṇiurgus . . 216

Meditation leads to exaltation to the courts of Braḥmā, and

to extrication from metempsychosis . . .

ḷopetition of Oṃ reveals Braḥman, as friction elicits liṃ

Second Se tion. Invocation of the sun-god, by the

about to practise Yoga .

Fixation of the body and withdrawl of the senși

xxii

CONTENTS.

Signs of approaching ecstatic vision . . . . 219

The vision unites the soul with the world-pervading Self . 220

Third Section. Glories of Rudra, the cosmic soul . . . 220

Antithetic epithets of Purusha or Brahman . . . . 222

Fourth Section. The world is a manifestation of Brahman . 223

Allegory of the two birds on one tree . . . . 223

Prakriti is illusion, and Íśvara the illusionist . . . 224

Íśvara, the cosmic soul, present in every heart . . . 225

In the Self there is neither night nor day . . . . 225

Invocation of Rudra for aid in meditation . . . . 226

Fifth Section. Knowledge and illusion . . . . 226

Kapila, the founder of the Sānkhya, extolled . . . . 226

Íśvara spreads the net of metempsychosis . . . . 228

Sixth Section. The world is an exhibition of Íśvara's glory 230

Íśvara the divine spider . . . . . . 231

The Self is the light of the world . . . . . 232

Knowledge alone saves from the miseries of repeated lives . 233

CHAPTER IX.

THE PRIMITIVE ANTIQUITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA.

The world dissolves itself in the view of the meditating Yogin 235

The current opinion untenable, that the tenet of Māyā is an

innovation . . . . . . . 237

Colebrooke the author of this opinion . . . . 237

Māyā a vital element of the primitie Indian cosmical con-

ception . . . . . . . 238

Part of Colebrooke's statement a glaring error . . . 238

The Sūtras of the Vedānta are in themselves obscure . . 239

Texts of the Upanishads teach the unreality of the world . 240

This doctrine present in a Vedic hymn . . . . 240

Present in the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad . . . . 241

Which allows only a quasi-existence to everything else than

the Self . . . . . . . 243

names given in the Upanishads to the principle of

lity . . . . . . . 244

of subject and object has only a quasi-existence 245

the world taugth in the Chhāndogya Upani- . . . 245

CONTENTS.

xxiii

The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣhad speaks of daily life and Vedic

worship as an illusion

246

The Kaṭha Upaniṣhad contrasts the life of illusion with the

life of knowledge

246

The unreality of the world implied in the sole reality of the Self

247

The unreality of the world taught in the aphorisms of the

Vedānta

248

Duality only a distinction of everyday experience.

249

The manifold only "a modification of speech, a change, a

name"

250

The variety of life is like the variety of a dream.

250

The migrating soul as such is a mere semblance.

251

Śaṅkara emphatic in proclaiming the unreality of the world

251

The world is as fictitions as an optical illusion

253

Falsity of the many, truth only of the one.

254

The world is a dream, the sage awakes to the truth.

255

The cosmic body and the cosmic soul alike fictitions.

256

Thesource of Colebrooke's error theassertion of Vijñānabhikshu

258

This assertion altogether baseless.

260

The ocean of metempsychosis reflects the sun of Self.

260

Recapitulation. The philosophy of the Upaniṣhads a new

religion for the recluses of the jungle.

262

The old religion left valid for the many. The three paths of

the passing soul

264

Purificatory value of the old religion.

264

'The old religion a conformity to immemorial pieties. The

new religion an effort to rise above mental and corporeal

limitations to re-union with the one and all.

265

The new religion no more spiritual than the old conformity.

266

No aspiration towards the true and the good, but only a

yearning for repose. Yet the highest product of the

Indian mind

267

THE

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF INDIAN METAPHYSICS—

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

"The one spirit's plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

All new successions to the forms they wear ;

Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ;

And bursting in its beauty and its might,

From trees and beasts and men into the heavens' light."

—SHELLEY.

"Alors j'ai essayé de traverser la scène mobile du monde pour pénétrer jusqu'au fond immuable, au principe inépuisable de la vie universelle. Là, je l'avoue, j'ai eu un moment d'éblouissement et d'ivresse ;

j'ai cru voir Dieu. L'être en soi, l'être infini, absolu, universel, que peut-on contempler de plus sublime, de plus vaste, de plus profond ?

C'est le dieu Pan, évoqué pour la confusion des idoles de l'imagination et de la conscience humaines. Mais ce Dieu vivant, que d'imperfections, que de misères il étale, si je regarde dans le monde, son acte incessant ! Et si je veux le voir en soi et dans son fond, je ne trouve plus que l'autre en puissance, sans lumière, sans couleur, sans forme, sans essence déterminée, abîme ténébreux où l'Orient croyait contempler la suprême vérité, et où l'admirable philosophie grecque ne trouvait que chaos et non-être. Mon illusion n'a pas tenu contre l'évidence, contre la foi du genre humain. Dieu ne pouvait être où n'est pas le beau, le parfait."

—VACHEROT.

It is the purpose of the following pages to

earliest types of Indian thought in the

thinkers themselves, and in relation

Chap. I.

medium in which they had their life. The reader will

be conducted along the first and only important stages

of the history of Indian philosophy. The data are such

that this history can only be worked out by looking at

the form of the several cosmical conceptions, and find-

ing out how they rise one out of another in the process

of conflict and supersession. The earliest Indian notion

of the totality of things is given in the Upanishads.

These, the earliest records of Indian speculation, pro-

pound the miseries of metempsychosis, and the path of

release from these miseries by recognition of the sole

reality of the Self, and the unreality of the world and

of all the forms of life that people it. They retain the

popular religious imagery, and prescribe the purification

of the mind, the renunciation of the world, the practice

of rigid and insensible postures of the body, and pro-

longed meditative abstraction to reach the unity of

characterless thought, as the several stages towards the

recognition of the one and only Self, and ecstatic vision

of, and re-union with it. This is the safe starting-

point from which to follow the logical movement. The

further progress of the history of Indian philosophy

will rest on probabilities. Certainty as regards the

chronological succession is beyond the reach of the

Orientalist, and he has to be content with approxima-

tions to it. When everything is done, and the history

of Indian philosophy has been fairly traced, the work

will always remain little more than a preliminary and

outlying portion of the general history of the human

mind. The work will be an exhibition of the thoughts

of thinkers of a lower race, of a people of stationary

culture, whose intellectual growth stands almost apart

from the general movement of human intelligence.

on the history of Indian philosophy has to

be mental produce of an unprogressive por-

ind. Negroid aborigines, Tatar hordes,

Arvan swarms have severally contri-

buted their blood to mould the Brāhman theosophist.

Like every other thinker, he is limited by the type of

nervous mechanism he has inherited, by the ancestral

conditions of his life, and by the material and spiritual

present which environs him. It is under these limita-

tions that he is to make himself what he is. As regards

the limitations of race and hereditary nature, the greatest

confusion has been introduced into the popular study

of Indian matters by the term Aryan. This word has

been fertile in every variety of fallacy, theoretical and

practical. Before the work of thought begins in India

the invading Aryan tribes have become Indo-Arians

or Hindus. They have been assimilated to and absorbed

into the earlier and ruder populations of modified Negrito

and Tatar type, whom they at first fought against as

the dark-skinned Dasyus, and made to till the soil and

drudge for them as Śūdras.

As Professor Huxley says, "The old Sanskrit litera-

ture proves that the Aryan population of India came

in from the north-west at least three thousand years

ago. In the Veda these people portray themselves

in characters that might have fitted the Gauls, the

Germans, or the Goths. Unfortunately there is no

evidence whether they were fair-haired or not. India

was already peopled by a dark-complexioned people,

most like the Australian aborigines, and speaking a

group of languages called Dravidian." These races

were Negroid indigenes recruited with Tatar blood.

"They were fenced in," he proceeds, "on the north by

the barrier of the Himālayas; but the Aryans poured

in from the plains of Central Asia over the Himālayas

into the great river basins of the Indus and the Gan...

where they have been in the main absorbed i-u1

pre-existing population, leaving as eviden

immigration an extensive modification,

cal characters of the population, a

literature."

At

4

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

The Aryan

Invasion

scanty.

Following Dr. Latham and Mr. Norris, Dr. Carpenter

points out that it is only by an error that the ordinary

Hindu population are supposed to be the descendants of

this invading branch of the Aryan stock. " he says, " of the Aryan invasion upon the language

and population of Northern India was very much akin

to that of the Norman invasion upon those of England."

This analogy, it must be remarked, is superficial, and

fails in a most important point. The Norman invaders

were not of a higher stock than the English, the Saxons,

and the Anglo-Danes; the Aryan immigrants into India

underwent a progressive deterioration through climatic

influences and intermixture with low and melanous

races akin to the Bhils, the Kols, and Sonthals of the

present day. "The number of individuals of the invad-

ing race was so small in proportion to that of the indi-

genous population as to be speedily merged in it, not,

however, without contributing to an elevation of its

physical characters; a large number of new words hav-

ing been in like manner introduced, without any essential

change in the type of the original languages," the vari-

ous dialects of Northern India. "And thus the only

distinct traces of the Aryan stock are to be found in

the Brahmanical caste, which preserves, though with

great corruption, the original Brahmanical religion, and

keeps up the Sanskrit as its classical language. It is

certain, however, that this race is far from being of pure

descent, having intermingled to a considerable extent

with the ordinary Hindu population."

In treating of Indian philosophy, a writer has to deal

Low thoughts

with thoughts of a lower order than the thoughts of

harsh words

a everyday life of Europe. Looking at the language

of merits and the general medium of intelligence in

s, the thoughts of the European are rich

ance of Hebrew, Greek, and Christian

be noted also that such rudiments of

as are to be found in the Indian

cosmologies are embedded in masses of religious imagery

of rude and inartistic kind. We are treading the

roak-cut temples of Ellora, not the Parthenon. The

great difficulty lies in this, that a low order of ideas

has to be expressed in a high order of terms, and that

the English words suggest a wealth of analysis and

association altogether foreign to the thoughts that are

to be-reproduced. Translation from a lower to a higher

langiage is a process of elevation. However vigilant

he may be, a writer on Indian philosophy will find it

hard to say neither too much nor too little,—to present

the facts as he finds them without prejudice and with-

out predilection. It is all but impossible to place one-

self in the position of the ancient Indian sages,—to see

things as they saw them, and to name them in the

names they gave them. The effort is nothing less than

an endeavour to revert to a ruder type of mental struc-

ture, to put aside our hereditary culture, and to become

for the time barbarians.

It will be well to bear in mind the characters of an Stationary and,

unprogressive as contrasted with the characters of a order con-progressive,

variety of the human race. These are ten-traste.l

dencies engrained in the nervous system, and transmitted

from generation to generation. They are hereditary.

inborn habitudes, and no one can foresee how far they

will give way before foreign influences, or be modified

by them. The contrast between the lower and the

higher human varieties, between the stationary and the

advancing social orders, is instructively set out by the

historian Grote. "The acquisition of habits of regular

industry, so foreign to the natural temper of man, was

brought about in Egypt and Assyria, in China and Hin-

dustan, before it had acquired any footing in Europe;

but it was purchased either by prostrate obedience to a

despotic rule, or by imprisonment within the chain of

a consecrated institution of caste. Even during the

Homeric period of Greece these countries had attained a

CHAP. I.

certain civilisation in mass, without the acquisition of

any high mental qualities or the development of any

individual genius. The religious and political sanction

determined for every one his mode of life, his creed, his

duties, and his place in society, without leaving any

scope for the will or reason of the agent himself."

Grote in the next place speaks of the Semitic races,

the Jews, Phœnicians, Carthaginians, of their individual

impulse and energy, as also of their strenuous ferocity

of character, and then contrasts all these races with the

" flexible, many-sided, and self-organising Greek, not

only capable of opening, both for himself and for the

human race, the highest walks of intellect and the full

creative agency of art, but also gentler by far in his

private sympathies and dealings than his contempo-

raries on the Euphrates, the Jordan, or the Nile." And

elsewhere he points out that in no city of historical

Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or

deliberate mutilation, such as cutting off the nose, ears,

hands, feet, and so forth, or castration, or selling of

children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of

unlimited obedience towards one man ; all of these

being customs which might be pointed out as existing

among the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Per-

sians, Thracians, and other peoples.

Indian

thought is a

tropical philn-

sophy of inor-

tion.

The Orientalist will have to look in the face this

fact of the inferiority of the hereditary type of Indian

character. His work may be hard and unproductive,

but at least it is necessary to a full and complete survey

of the products of the human mind. He has much to

do and little to claim as regards the value of his labours,

and he will not demur to the judgment of Archer Butler :

" It presents a fearful contrast to observe the refine-

ment to which speculation appears to have been carried

in the philosophy of India, and the grossness of the

contemporary idolatry, paralleled in scarcely any nation

of the earth, as well as the degraded condition of the

mass of the people, destitute of active energy, and for

the most part without a shadow of moral principle to

animate the dull routine of a burthensome and scru-

pulous superstition. The aim of human wisdom is the

liberation of the soul from the evils attending the mortal

state. This object is attempted by one modification or

other of that intense abstraction which, separating the

soul from the bonds of flesh, is supposed capable of

liberating it in this life from the unworthy restrictions

of earthly existence, and of introducing it in the next

to the full enjoyment of undisturbed repose, or even to

the glories of a total absorption into the divine essence

itself. In all this we may detect the secret but con-

tinual influences of a climate which, indisposing the

organisation for active exertion, naturally cherished

those theories which represent the true felicity of man

to consist in inward contemplation and complete quies-

cence."

A few words must be said about the social state that

preceded the rise of Indian philosophy. In using the

antecedents of

word philosophy, it is to be taken loosely, as designating

a large amount of pictorial conception covering an inner

nucleus of rudimentary ideas. We are dealing with reli-

gion as well as with metaphysics. In India religion and

metaphysics have grown up in one promiscuous growth,

and have never had a separate life. They cannot be

disengaged from each other, and we can seldom point

to such and such an item in any structure as philosophi-

cal, and such and such another item as religious. A

few words only can be given to an explanation of the

social order that preceded the rise of the Brahmanical

and Buddhist forms of thought and faith, and the

reader must refer for further information, if he needs

it, to the writings of Professor Max Müller and Dr.

John Muir. Let us, then, station ourselves in the com-

munities in which the Rishis lived, the seers that saw

and fashioned the Vedic hymns. The Indian tribes

8

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. have already reached a settled state of order and prosperity. They are gathered together in farms, in huts

of sun-dried mud, and houses of stone, in hamlets and in fenced towns, under village chiefs and Rajas. The

outward aspects of their life are not unlike those of the rural India of to-day. The same villages, the same

thatched huts of the peasantry, with mud-walled yards for cattle, and the same square courts and strawcoed

garden-houses of the village chiefs and princes. There is the same silence, broken only by the creaking

pulleys of the village well and the occasional bark of village curs, the same green mantle on the stagnant

wayside pools, the same square tank; the sunlight glinting as to-day through the delicate foliage of the

tamarind, the glossy leaves of the peepul, and the feathery tufts of the bamboo. There is the same over-

powering glare upon the surface of the earth, and there are the same liquid depths of overarching blue over-

head, but the horizon is fringed with jungle, and the levels are grassy and less arid than to-day, for the

forests are dense and widely spread, and the rainfall is more abundant. In such surroundings, for the most

part tranquil and dreamlike, but at times terrific with shocks of tropical storm and rain, the Indians of the

Vedic age till their rice and barley, irrigate their fields with watercourses, watch the increase of their flocks

and herds, and make a hard or easy livelihood as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, boat-builders, weavers, leeches,

soldiers, poets, priests. They live upon the produce of their cattle and of their fields, drink wine and moon-

plant juice, and exercise their leisure in sacrificial feasts and in games and spectacles.

The powers of nature present themselves to them as so many personal agents. Every striking and unex-

pected change in the things around them is an extra-human volitional activity. They see God in clouds

and hear him in the wind. They impute their whole

Personifica-tion of ele-mental forces.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

9

self to all they see around them, anthropomorphising

all-tature. The environment is a divine community,

in the midst of which the human communities have

their life. To use the words of Archer Butler, "Man's

early tendencies are constantly leading to a wide and

vague application of his whole nature, to see himself in

everything, to recognise his will, and even his sensa-

tions, in the inanimate universe. This blind analogy

is almost the first hypothesis of childhood. The child

translates the external world by himself. He perceives,

for example, successions under the law of causality, but

he adds to this causality his own consciousness of

voluntary effort. He perceives objects under the law

of extension, but he has little conception of an exten-

sion which should overpass his own power of traversing

it. The child personifies the stone that hurts him; the

childhood of superstition, whose genius is multiplicity,

personifies the laws of nature as gods; the childhood

of philosophy, whose genius is unity, makes the world

itself a living, breathing animal, whose body nature is,

and God the soul."

Thus it is that to the communities in which the Ṛishis

dwell a multitude of personalities manifest themselves,

in rain, in fire, in wind, in storms, and in the sun.

They stand above and round about the people, in

ever-varying aspects, powerful to befriend or to injure

them.

Sky and Earth are the father and mother of gods

and men. Aditi, the illimitable expanse, is the mother

of chiefs and heroes. Mitra, presiding over the day,

wakes men and bids them bestir themselves betimes,

and stands watching all things with unwinking eye.

Varuṇa, ruling the night, prepares a cool place of rest

for all that move, fashions a pathway for the sun, sends

his spies abroad in both the worlds, knows every wink

of men's eyes, cherishes truth and hates a lie, seizes the

evil-doer with his noose, and is prayed to to have mercy

10

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

on the sinful. Youthful, lustrous; and beautiful, the

Aśvins go out in their golden car before the dawn, ith

health and wealth for man. Uśhas, the Dawn, the

daughter of the sky, untouched with age, but bringing

age to men, dispels the darkness, drives away the

lurking enemy, visits every house, wakes the sleepers,

sends the labourers afield, and makes the birds to fly

aloft. Agni, the fire-god, of manifold birth, t e off-

spring of the fire-drills, fed with sacrificial butter, bears

the oblation aloft to the gods, brings the gods to the

sacrifice, and is generally internunciary between gods

and men. Sūrya, the sun-god, proceeds through the

sky in his chariot with seven mares, seeing all things,

looking down upon the good and evil works of men.

Indra, ruling the firmament, overthrows Vritra, the

enemy that obscures the brightness of the sky, splits

up the clouds with his thunderbolt, sends down the

rain upon the earth, restores the sun to the heavens,

protects the Aryan colour, and destroys the dark and

degraded Dasyus, godless, prayerless, uninformed of

sacrificial rites. Parjanya, the thunderer, scatters

showers from his waterskin, and fills the earth and sky

with fatness. "The winds blow, the lightnings play,

plants spring up, the sky fructifies, the glebe teems

for the good of all, as Parjanya visits the earth with

moisture." The Maruts, the personified dust-storms,

armed with lightnings, clothed with rain, make dark-

ness in the day, water the earth, and mitigate the heat.

Soma, the mountain milk-weed, invigorates the gods,

exhilarates mankind, clothes the naked, heals the sick,

gives eyes to the blind. With Yama, the regent of the

dead, the departed dwell in happiness with the fore-

fathers of their tribes.

The spiritual

These and many others are the luminous beings that

instinot lu-

guid. Absence

stand around them, and require to be flattered with

of moral

hymns, to be fed with butter, to be refreshed with

auhiration.

soma-juice, that they may become friendly and fatherly,

and may send rain, food, cattle, children, and length of

days to their worshippers. As yet these worshippers

feel themselves at one with the things around them;

roused to work or fight in the glare and heat of the

long bright day, by the freshness of the dawn and

the harsh notes of tropical birds; resting as best they

may in the starlit night, seldom silent, for the most

part resonant with monotonous croakings from the

marsh; shrill with the crickets on grass and plant and

tree, and not without peril from the violence of prowling

savages from the adjacent jungle. There is little of

moral or spiritual significance in this propitiation of

the forces of nature. A sinner is for the most part

nothing else than a man that fails to pay praise, and

prayer, and sacrifice to the deities, often only the dark-

skinned savage that infests the Indo-Arian village.

The good man is he that flatters, feeds, and wins the

favour of the gods.

δώρα θeoùς πείθει, δῶρ᾽ αidoίους βασιλῆas.

The gods eat the oblations, giving in return the good

things of life, rain to the arid fields, food, cattle, chariots,

wealth, children, health, a hundred years of life. Life

is as yet no burden to them; there is nothing of the

blank despair that came in later with the tenet of

metempsychosis and the misery of every form of sen-

tient life. Pleasures are looked for in this world; land

is to be had for the conquest; their harvests are enough

for the wants of all; their flocks and herds are many;

and pleasures are looked for again in the after-life in

the body in the kingdom of Yama. As among other

undeveloped races, the sacrifices are offered as propitia-

tory presents, as compensations for liturgic errors, and

as the necessary subsistence of the gods that enables

them to watch over the well-being of mankind. This is

the persuasion that prevailed into later times, and thus

it appears in the Bhagavadgītā: “Prajāpati of old

12

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I

created beings with their rites of sacrifice, and said,

Hereby shall you propagate yourselves : this shall be to

you the cow of plenty. Sustain with this the gods,

and let the gods sustain you : supporting each other in

turn, you shall attain the highest happiness. Fed with

sacrifice, the gods shall give you the food that you

desire. He that gives them nothing and eats the food

they give, is a thief indeed. The god who eat the

leavings of the sacrifice are loosed from their guilt, but

they that cook for themselves alone, and not for the

gods, eat sin. Living things are made of food ; the food

proceeds from rain; the rain proceeds from sacrifice."

The Vedic worship becomes mechanical.

with a view to material benefits gradually hardened

into a series of rites to be performed by the priest-

hood. Each sacrifice came to operate in a blind and

mechanic way towards the production of a specified

result. The sequence of the fruit upon the performance

of the function presented itself as part of the fixed suc-

cession of events. Minute rules were framed for every

step of the sacrificial procedures, and explanations in-

vented to give to every implement and every act its

several symbolic import. Expiatory formulas were

provided to make up for inadvertences and omis-

sions which might otherwise frustrate the purposes of

the initiated votary and the priestly experts he em-

ployed. In this process lies the transition from the

religion of the Mantras, the hymns, the spontaneous

effusions of the primitive seers or Rishis, to the religion

of the Brāhmanas, the petrified ceremonial and formal

symbolism of the liturgists. This latter form of Vedic

religion received the name of the Karmakāṇḍa, or ritual

department of the Vedas. In the course of time it

came to be held that the sacrifices performed without

knowledge of their theologic import produced their

desired effect—some material good, the birth of children,

the prolongation of life, a series of successes in tribal

feuds, and the like; leading the worshipper at the

hignest by the lunar path to a sojourn in the paradise

of the deities, to be followed by a return to a fresh

embodiment. Performed with proper insight into their

theologic significance, they raised the votary after death

along the solar path into the mansion of the supreme

divinity, the sphere of Brahmā, there to reside till the

close or the passing eon.

But in the midst of this life of the primitive Hindu First begin-

in communion with the gods of nature, there are dis-

cernible the first stirrings of reflection. Questions Vedic hymns.

begin to be asked in the hymns of the Rishis in regard

to the origin of earth and sky. Sometimes they said

they were made by the gods, or by one or other of the

gods, working after the fashion of a human artificer.

At other times they said the gods begot them. One of

the Rishis asks about the earth and sky, "Which of

these was first, and which was later? You wise, which

of you knows ?" Another asks, "What was the forest,

what the tree, they cut the sky and earth out of, that

abide and wear not out, while the days and many dawns

have worn away?"1 In one hymn earth and sky are

the work of Viśvakarman. In another it is Hiranya-

garbha, the Golden Germ, that arose in the beginning,

the lord of things that are, that establishes the sky and

the earth, that is the giver of life and breath. In

another it is Varuna, either alone or associated with

Mitra, who fixes the heavens, measures out the earth,

and dwells as ruler in all the worlds. Agni is some-

times the son of Earth and Sky; at other times. he

is said to have stretched out the earth and sky, to

have inlaid the sky with stars, and to have made all

that flies, or walks. or stands, or moves. In other

1 Rigveda x. 31, 7. The ques-

tion is answered in the Taittiriya-

brāhmaṇa ii. 8, 9 : Brahman--the

Self that permeates and vitalises

all things and all forms of life--

was the forest, Self the tree from

which they cut out the earth and

sky. See Muir's Sanskrit Texts,

vol. v. p. 32.

14

THE PHILOSOPHY.

Chap. I.

places it is Indra that has begotten the sun, the sky,

the dawn; that has set up lights in the sky, that up-

holds the two worlds, the waters, the plains, the hills,

and the sky.

"What poet now, what sage of old,

The greatness of that god hath told,

Who from his body vast gave birth

To father sky and mother earth?

Who hung the heavens in empty space,

And gave the earth a stable base,

Who framed and lighted up the sun,

And made a path for him to run."1

Elsewhere it is Soma, the deified moon-plant, that

generates the earth and sky, that puts light into the

sun, and stretches out the atmosphere. In another

hymn Aditi, the endless visible expanse, is all that is :

"Aditi is sky, Aditi is air, Aditi is mother, father, son.

Aditi is all the gods, and is the five tribes of men.

Aditi is whatever has been born. Aditi is whatever

shall be born." The five tribes of men are the Brāh-

mans, Kshatriyas, and Vaiśyas, the priestly, military,

and agricultural orders, more or less of Aryan extrac-

tion, the Śūdras, or indigenous serfs and slaves grafted

into the Hindu communities, and the Nishādas, or tribes

of unreclaimed barbarians outside the Hindu pale.

In Rigveda x. 72, 2 we read: "Brahmanaspati has

forged these births of the gods, as a blacksmith fans his

flame : in the primal age of the gods entity came forth

out of nonentity."

The Puruṣa-

nuktá.

In the Purushasūkta, Rigveda x. 90, the world is

made,—the Rik, the Sāman, and the Yajush, the three

Vedic aggregates, the Brāhman, Rājanya, Vaiśya, and

Śūdra, the four orders of people in the Hindu pale, are

produced,—out of Purusha, the highest deity, the per-

sonality that permeates all living things, offered up by

the gods, the Sādhyas, and the Rishis, as a sacrificial

1 Muir's Metrical Translations from Sanskrit Writers, p. 173.

victim. Here the idea of the emanation of the world

from a divine spirit internal to all embodied sentiencies

is presented in a form gross, obscure, and almost unintelligible

to the modern mind. "Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand

eyes, a thousand feet. He compasses the earth on every side,

and stands ten fingers' breadth beyond. Purusha is all this; he

is that which has been, and that which is to be : the lord also

of immortality, and the lord of that which grows up with food.

Such is his greatness, and Purusha is more than this : one

quarter of him is all existing things, three-quarters that

which is immortal in the sky." It will be hereafter necessary

to return to this hymn, as it contains a portion

of the mythologic imagery of the subsequent Vedic

philosophy of the Upanishads, and to exhibit its natural

interpretation in accordance with that philosophy by

Sāyaṇa, or, as he is otherwise known, the schoolman

Mādhavāchārya.

Meanwhile, to proceed to another hymn. The effusions

of awaken reflection reach their highest energy

in this hymn that is first suggested the primitive type

of Indian thought, the thesis of all the Upanishads,

viz., the emanation of the world and of all the forms of

life that successively people it, out of the sole reality,

the Self that permeates and vitalises all things, through

the agency of the unreality that overspreads it, the self-feigned

fiction, the cosmical illusion, Māyā. "It was not entity,

nor was it nonentity," says the Rishi. The cosmical

illusion neither is nor is not; it is a self-feigned

fiction, a spurious semblance of being, for it is Self

alone. that is. And yet it is not merely nothing, for

then the world of experience would not be here and

everywhere, for living souls to pass through. "No air

was then; no sky above." In the state of things in

which the various spheres of experience and the sentient

lives that inherit them have not yet reappeared

16

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

from their last disappearance into the fontal, spiritual essence, in the infinite series of æons, there is as yet nothing thinkable, nothing nameable. "What shrunded all ? where ? in the receptacle of what ? Was it wate', the unfathomable abyss ?" Water, be it noted, became in the later philosophy of the Brāhmans one of the many names of the inexplicable principle of unreality, the world-fiction. "Death was not then, nor immortality." These are things that have no meaning in the sole life of the undifferenced Self. "There was no distinction of day or night. That One breathed without afflation, self-determined: other than, and beyond it, there was naught." This one, the all, is the sole reality, the aboriginal essence, the undifferenced Self, the Brahman or Ātman of the later Hindu quietist. "Darkness there was, wrapped up in darkness. All this was undifferenced water. That one that was void, covered with nothingness, developed itself by the power of self-torture. Desire first rose in it, the primal germ: this sages seeking with the intellect have found in the heart to be the tie of entity to nonentity." The Self in its earliest connection with the cosmical illusion becomes the creative spirit, the Īśvara of the philosophy of the Upanishads. The creative spirit is said in the Taittirīya Upanishad to perform self-torture, to coerce itself, as the scholiasts say, to rigorous contemplation, to a prevision of the world that is to be, and this prevision is its desire to project the spheres, and to part itself illusively into all the innumerable forms of life that are to pass through them. "The ray stretched out across these, was it above or was it below? There were generating forces, there were mighty powers; a self-determined being on this side, an energy beyond. Who indeed knows? who can say out of what it issued, whence this creation? The gods are on this side of its evolution: who then knows out of what it came into existence? This creation, whether any made it, or

any made it not? He that is the overseer in the highest

'Chāp. I. heaven, he indeed knows, or haply he knows not.'

Thus there is in the Vedic hymns a second line of The hymns of

movement, and this leads us to the primitive type of reflection lead

Indian philosophy as it develops itself in the Upani- up to the phil-

shads. The hymns made in generation after generation losophy of the

by the Ṛishis, fashioned by them as a car is fashioned Upanishads.

by a wheelwright, or fabricated or generated by the

gods, were transmitted by memory from age to age, till

they became of inscrutable origin and authority, of no

mere personal authorship, but timeless revelations com-

ing forth afresh in each successive æon. The period of

the hymns or Mantras was followed, as has been seen,

by the pariod of the ritual and legendary compilations

known as the Brāhmaṇas. Of these Brāhmaṇas, parti-

cular pœrtions, to be repeated only by the recluses of

the forest, were styled Āraṇyakas, and to the Āraṇyakas

were attached the treatises setting forth as a hidden

wisdom the fictitious nature of the religion of rites as

part and parcel of the series of mere semblances, the

world-phantasmagory, and the sole reality of the all-

pervading and all-animating Self, or Brahman. This

hidden wisdom, tne pnilosophy of the Upanishads, in

contradistinction from the Karmakāṇḍa or ritual por-

tion, received the name of Jñānakāṇḍa, or gnostic por-

tion, of the Śruti, or everlasting revelation. There were

now virtually two religions, the Karmamārga, or path

of rites, for the people of the villages, living as if life

with its pleasures and pains were real, and the Jñāna-

mārga, or path of knowledge, for the sages that had

quitted the world and sought the quiet of the jungle,

renouncing the false ends and empty fictions of kom-

mon life, and intent upon reunion with the sole reālity,

the Self that is one in all things living.

After this brief notice of the period that preceded Climatic, eth-

the rise of philosophy in India, it will be necessary, in nological, and

the second place, to point out certain modifications of religious dege-

neration in the Hindu pale.

18

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

the primitive forms of faith, which followed the climatic degeneration of the Indo-Arian tribes, and the degradation of the race through intermixture wi̇th and assimilation to the melanous indigenes.

The worship of Śiva or Mahādeva is towards the close of this period introduced from the mountains of the north, the new deity being identified with the Rudra of the Vedic poets, the howling god of tempests, the father of the Maruts. In Hindu mythology Siva often appears as the divine pattern of the fasting devotee, intent upon the attainment of ecstatic and magical powers through savage self-torture and self-induced vacuity, apathy, and trance. In this character he is the lord of Yogins, the great typical ascetic, living in the solitude of forest and mountain, sitting motionless, with matted hair and body smeared with ashes, with breath suppressed, with vision withdrawn from all outward things, with every thought and feeling crushed within him. The practice of self-torture is alien to the cheerful spirit of the Vedic worshipper, aspiring to health and wealth and length of days, and an after-life in the realms of Yama amidst the forefathers of mankind. It was from the semi-savage races, with which they were coalescing, and whi̇ch they were elevating, that they now adopted the practice of fixing the body and the limbs in statue-like repose, and inducing cataleptič igidity and insensibility,

higher state than the mormal state of human life,—the practice known as Yoga,—union, ecstasy, the melting äway of the consciousness into a state of characterless indétermination. The process seems to be accompanied with intervals of morbid nervous and cerebral exaltation, in which the self-tormentor loses all distinction between perception and imagination, and appears to himself and otȟers to be invested with superhuman powers. He becomes enabled to raise up the forefathers of the tribes before him by a mere act of will

The worship

of Śiva, the

Śroical Yogin.

Self-torture,

thaumaturgy,

and ecstasy,

Yoga.

to animate a plurality of bodies at the same time, to

control the elements, to walk through the air, to enter

into the earth with the same ease as into water, to

remain unhurt in fire, dry in water, and so forth.

"Among the lower races, and high above their level,

morbid ecstasy, brought on by meditation, fasting, nar-

cotics, excitement, or disease, is a state common and

held in honour among the very classes specially con-

cerned with mythic idealism."1 "Throughout the

lower civilisation men believe, with the most vivid and

intense belief, in the objective reality of the human

spectres which they see in sickness or exhaustion,

under the influence of mental excitement or of narcotic

drugs. One main reason of the practices of fasting,

penance, narcotising, and other means of bringing on

morbid exaltation, is that the patients may obtain the

sight of spectral beings, from whom they look to gain

spiritual knowledge, and even worldly power."2

To the close of this period also, and through inter-

Revival of

mixture with the ruder indigenes, may probably be

referred the revival of the ancient rite of burning the

widow upon the funeral pile together with the corpse

of the husband. The actual incremation formed no

part of the ancient Vedic ritual, which directs that the

widow placed upon the pile by the side of the

deceased husband, and then led down again by the

ther-in-law, by an adopted son, or by an old servant,

and bidden to return to the living world. The bow, or

the sacrificial implements of the deceased, are to be burnt

together with the corpse. The fact that the widow

thus ascended the pile is taken by Mr. Tylor to indi-

cate the actual practice of the immolation of widows

before the Vedic age, a practice that outlived the pre-

cept for its suppression, and came to a public revival

under later influences. With climatic degeneration,

and with degradation through absorption of semi-savage

1 Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 277.

2 Ibid., 402.

20

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I

blood, probably came the relapse into the primitive

Aryan rite of widow-sacrifice. Funeral human sacrifice

was a general rite of the Aryan nations while yet in a

rude and barbarous condition. "The episodes of the

Trojan captives laid with the horses and hounds on the

funeral pile of Patroklos, and of Evadne throwing her-

self into the funeral pile of her husband, and Pausanias'

narrative of the suicide of the three Messenian widows,

are among its Greek representatives. In Scandinavian

myth Baldr is burnt with his dwarf foot-page, his

horse, and saddle: Brynhild lies on the pile by her

beloved Sigurd, and men and maids follow after them

on the hell-way. Old mentions of Slavonic heathendom

describe the burning of the dead with clothing and wea-

pons, horses and hounds, and, above all, with wives."1

Polyandry.

Other marks of degradation are the polyandry of

Draupadi, the fierce blood-thirst of Bhīma, and other

savage incidents in the Mahābhārata. Polyandry is one

of the usages of the ruder races the Indo-Arians en-

croached upon, and received as serfs, as subjects, and

as neighbours, prevailing in Tibet, in the Himalayan

and sub-Himalayan regions under Tibetan influence, in

the valley of Kashmir, and in the far south of the

peninsula among the Tudas of the Nīlgiri hills, the

Coorgs of Mysore, and the Nayars of Malabar.

Beliefs in the

migration of

the soul, and

every form of

life.

type, the most noteworthy is the growing belief in me-

tempsyehosis, and the assertion of the misery of every

form of sentient life,—a belief and assertion with which

later Indian literature is replete to saturation. It is

this expectation of a renewal of a life of misery in body

after body, in age after age, and æon after æon, and the

feverish yearning after some means of extrication from

this black prospect, that is, as will be seen, the first

motive to Indian speculation. The sum and substance,

it may almost be said, of Indian philosophy, is from

1 Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 419.

first to last the misery of metempsychosis, and the

mode of extrication from it. Of this fact the student

of Indian philosophy should never for a moment lose

sight, or he will lose his way in what will seem to

him a pathless jungle of abstractions.

The doctrine of transmigration formed no part of the

faith of the earlier Vedic worshipper. The ancient

poets had looked forward to a second life in the body,

among the fathers of their tribes, and in the realms of

Yama. As to punishments in a future state they are

silent. In the later period of Vedic religion,1 the period

of petrified forms already referred to, a passage of the

Śatapathabrāhmaṇa relates how Bhrigu, the son of

Varuṇa, visiting the four uttermost parts of the world,

saw men cut into pieces and eaten by others. The

eaters being asked the meaning of this by Bhrigu, said

that they were revenging upon their victims the wrongs

they had suffered at their hands in the former world.

This marks the first beginning of the expectation of

penal retribution in a future state of being. The doc-

trine of metempsychosis, a belief widely spread among

the lower races of men, coming slowly and surely to

lay hold of the Hindu mind, this penal retribution

came to be expected in a series of embodiments in

vegetal, animal, human, and extra-human shapes. Each

living soul was to pass from body to body, from grade

to grade, from sphere to sphere of life, in obedience to

a retributive operation by which suffering followed

evil-doing with the blind and fatal movement of a

natural law. As the life has been, such will the next

embodiment be in the series of lives, the present and

the future with their pains and transitory pleasures

being the outcome of what the soul has done in its

anterior embodiments. The series of lives has had no

beginning, and shall have no end, save to the perfected

sage finally resolved into the fontal essence of the uni-

1 See Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 322.

22

THE PHILOSOPHY.

Chap. I verse. A life of such and such experiences follows

from works of such and such a nature, good works

sending the soul upwards in the scale of embodiments

into a life human, superhuman, or divine, and evil

works sending the soul downwards into bestial, insect,

vegetal, penal; embodiments in this world, or in a

nether world of torture. In this world, above, below

there is no place of rest; paradises and purgatories are

but stages in the endless journey. In every state there

is nothing to expect but vanity, vexation, and misery.

Omnis creatura ingemiscit. There is nothing to look for

but grief and pain, broken at best with pleasures them-

selves fleeting, empty, and unsatisfying: nothing to

look for but sickness, decay, the loss of loved ones,

death, and the fatal recurrence of fresh birth, through

an endless succession of embodiments. Each present

suffering, intolerable as it is, is the precursor to another

and another, through lives without end. The very

No true help

from the gods.

merit that wins a sojourn in a paradise or the rank of

Pain in para-

dise.

a divinity must sooner or later be exhausted, for the

bankrupt soul to descend to a lower sphere. The plea-

sures of the paradise themselves are tainted with the

fear of their expiry, and with the inequalities of the

inmates of the paradise.

" The happier state

In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw

Envy froth each inferior."

The soul floats helpless along the stream of lives, like

a gourd on the surface of a river. A stream of lives,

wave upon wave—

" Lubitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum."

There is now no longer for the Hindu the cheering

prospect of an after-life with his fathers, but the dreary

vista lies before him of death after death, to be born

that he may suffer and may die, to be born again that

he may suffer and may die again, and this to endless

ages,—to die and go he knows not whither, perhaps

into an ephemeral insect life, perhaps into penal fire,

perhaps into a higher life, but every life alike transitory,

and with another death beyond it. A fitting concomi-

tant to the practice of savage self-torture is this belief

of metempsychosis, with its attendant horror and de-

spair. "The rich, their children round them, are filled

with anguish at the hour of death, and like theirs is the

sorrow of those in a paradise upon the expiry of their

merits. At the hour of death great is the anguish of a

thriving prince, and like his is the sorrow of those in a

paradise upon the expiry of their merits. In the para-

dise itself they are dependent, and cannot help them-

selves. 'The sorrow of the celestial sojourners at the

loss of their merits, is like the sorrow of the rich at the

loss of their riches. In the performance of rites there

is pain, in the fruition of the recompense of those rites

there is pain, upon the expiry of the recompense there

is the direful pain of fresh birth into the world. For

what shall the living soul pass into on its return from

paradise? shall it pass into a high, a middle, or a low

embodiment, or shall it be born into a place of punish-

ment?"1 The series of lives of misery is without

beginning no less than without end, and no one knows

what he has done in the far past and laid up for the

future. Birth from works and fresh works from new

birth, as plant from seed and seed from plant, and who

shall assign the priority to either? In the never-ceas-

ing onward flow of things there is no longer anything

more than a seeming perpetuity for the gods themselves,

and many thousand Indras are said to have passed

away as æon has followed æon. The Hindu looks to

the flow of lives through which he has passed, to the

flow of lives through which he has to pass, till he can

find no fixity or stability in any kind of world. All

things are passing, and passing away; and what re-

mains? anything or nothing? Here we have, as will

1 Ātmapurāṇa xvi. 91–93.

24

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I

be shortly seen, the first point of transition to the metaphysical era. Something must be found that shall be fixed and changeless in the midst of all this change; some place of rest must be provided to limit this vist of restless misery and migration.

In the Upanishads the tenet of transmigration is already conspicuous. Thus in the Chhāndogya we read: "Whatever these creatures are in this world, lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or moth, or gñat, or mosquito, that they become again and again." And again: "Those whose life has been good will quickly attain a new embodiment—embodiment as a Brāhman, a Kshatriya, or a Vaiśya. Those whose life has been evil will quickly pass into an evil embodiment—as a dog, or a hog, or a Chandāla." In the post-Vedic literature the nature of the retributive embodiments is treated of in minute and fanciful detail.

Thus, in the twelfth book of the laws of the Mānavas, it is said: "The greatest sinners, after passing through terrible regions of tortures for long periods of years, pass into the following embodiments: The slayer of a Brāhman enters into the body of a dog, a boar, an ass, a camel, a bull, a goat, a sheep, a stag, a bird, a Chandāla, or a Pukkaśa, according to the proportion of his guilt; a Brāhman that drinks strong drinks shall enter into the body of a worm, an insect, a moth, a fly that feeds on ordure, or of a noxious auimal. A thievish Brāhman shall pass thousands of times into the bodies of spiders, snakes, chameleons, crocodiles, and of malignant vampires."1 And then follows a long series of other penal states of life, proportioned to the guilt of the agents that are to pass through them.

Mr. Tylor2 has shown how widely the belief has prevailed among semi-savage tribes, of the passage of the human soul into the trunks of trees and the bodies of the lower races of mankind.

1 Mānavadharmaśāstra xii. 54, seq.

2 Primitive Culture, vol. ii. pp. 6, seq.

of animals. The Sonthals are said to believe the souls

of the good to enter into fruit-bearing trees. The

Powhattans believed the souls of their chiefs to pass

in o particular wood-birds, which they therefore spared.

The Tlscalans of Mexico thought that the souls of

their nobles migrated after death into beautiful singing-

birds, and the spirits of plebeians into beetles, weasels,

and other insignificant creatures. The Zulus of South

Africa are said to believe the passage of the dead into

snakes, or into wasps and lizards. The Dayaks of

Borneo imagine themselves to find the souls of the

dead, damp and bloodlike, in the trunks of trees. The

belief in the passage of the soul into trees, and animals,

and fresh human bodies having no place in Vedic

literature prior to the Upanishads, it is reasonable to

suppose the Hindus to have taken it from the indi-

genes, in the course of their absorption of indigenous

blood.

It is well known that metempsychosis was one of

the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians in regard to the

destination of the soul. The tenet connects itself with

a belief in the fore- as well as the after-life of the

sentient and thinking principle. From the Egyptians

it is adopted at intervals into the Greek philosophy.

It first appears in the teaching of Pythagoras. Empe-

docles fancies that the blood he has shed in an earlier

form of life is crying out against him in this, and that

he is to be a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth

for thirty thousand years. Exiled from the presence

of the gods, divine though it be, his soul is to pass

through a succession of penal embodiments, until it

regains its purity. It is to enter into the shapes of

plants and trees, of fishes and birds, and other animals,

some of these shapes being higher than others, as the

laurel among trees, the lion among the beasts. From

the Pythagoreans the doctrine is taken up by Plato,

as in unison with his belief of the pre-existence and

26

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

Philosophy the release from metem psychosis in the Phædon.

post-existence of the soul, and as explanatory of the inequalities of human fortune. Thus in the Phædoρ :-

" Are we to suppose, says Socrates, that the soul, an invisible thing, in going to a place like itself, in-

visible, pure, and noble, the true Hades, into the presence of the good and wise God, whither, if God

will, my soul is also soon to go,—that the soul, I say, if this be her nature and origin, is blown away and

perishes immediately on quitting the body, as the many say ? It is far otherwise, my dear Simmias and Cebes.

The truth is much more this, that if the soul is pure at its departure, it drags after it nothing bodily, in that it

has never, of its own will, had connection with the body in its life, but has always shunned it, and gathered

itself unto itself; for this avoidance of the body has been its constant practice. And this is nothing else

than that it philosophises truly, and practises how to die with ease. And is not philosophy the practice of

" death ?

" Certainly.

" That soul, I say, itself invisible, departs to a world

invisible like itself—to the divine, and immortal, and

rational. Arriving there, its lot is to be happy, released

from human error and unwisdom, fears, and wild passions, and all other human ills, and it dwells for all

future time, as they say of the initiated, in the society of

the gods. Shall we say this, Cebes, or say otherwise ?

" It is so, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.

" But do you think the soul will depart in perfect

purity if it is polluted and impure at the time it quits

the body, as having always been the companion and

servant of the body, in love with and fascinated by it,

and by the bodily desires and pleasures, until it comes

to think that nothing is true but that which has a

bodily shape, which a man may touch, and see, and eat, and drink, and gratify his sensuality upon ; and if,

at the same time, it has been accustomed to hate, and

fear, and shun the intelligible world, which is dark and

invisible to the bodily eye, and can be attained only by

philosophy?

"It cannot possibly, he replied.

"It is engrossed by the corporeal, which the continual

companionship with the body and constant attention to

it, have made natural to it.

"Very true.

"And this, my friend, may be conceived to be that

ponderous, heavy, earthy element of sight, by which

such a soul is weighted and dragged down again into

the visible world, because it is afraid of the invisible

and of the world below, and prowls about tombs and

sepulchres, in the neighbourhood of which certain

shadowy apparitions of souls have been seen, souls

which have not departed clean and pure, but still hold

by the things of sight, and are therefore seen them-

selves.

"That is likely enough, Socrates.

"Indeed it is likely, Cebes; and these must be the

souls, not of the good, but of the evil, who are neces-

sitated to haunt such places in expiation of their former

evil way of life; and they continue to wander until

the desire of the bodily element which still cleaves to them

is gratified, and they are imprisoned in another body.

And they are then most likely tied to the same natures

which they have made habitual to themselves in their

former life.

"What natures do you mean, Sucrates?

"I mean to say that men who have followed after

gluttony, and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have

had no thought of avoiding them, would put on the

shape of asses and animals of that sort. What do you

think?

"What you say is exceedingly probable.

"And those who have preferred the portion of injus-

tice, and tyranny, and violence will put on the shape

28

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I. of wolves, or hawks and kites; or where else should

we say that they would go ?

" No doubt, said Cebes, they pass into shapes such

as those.

" And it is pretty plain, he said, into what bodies

each of the rest would go, according to the similitude

of the lives that they have led.

" That is plain enough, he said.

" Even among them some are happier than others;

and the happiest in themselves and in the place they

migrate to, are those who have practised the social and

civil virtues that men call temperance and justice,

which are acquired by habit and exercise, without

philosophy and reflection.

" Why are they the happiest ?

" Because they will be likely to pass into some gentle

social nature like their own, such as that of bees or

ants, or even back again into the form of man, and

moderate men would spring from them.

" That is possible.

" But none but he who is a philosopher or lover of

learning, and altogether clean and pure at departing, is

permitted to reach the gods."

In this place Plato approaches more nearly than in

any other passage in his Dialogues to the Oriental tenets

of the migration of the soul from body to body, and the

sole efficiency of supersensible thinking in disengaging

the soul from these successive lives of sense. For

Socrates, in the Phædon, it is philosophy alone that

can purify the soul, detach it from the body, and lift

it up into communion with the eternal and unchanging

archetypes. But the Platonic abstraction is a contem-

plation of the eternal ideas, the patterns after which

the visible world was moulded, the universal verities

discernible through the things of sense; not a Hindu

meditation on formless being, on the characterless Self,

nor a Buddhist meditation on the vacuity into which

all things are resolvable; and the Platonic after-life of

the free intelligence is a positive exercise of intellec-

tion, neither a Hindu absorption into the fontal essence,

nor a Buddhist extinction into the aboriginal nothing-

ness of things.

The thesis of universal misery is a natural sequel

of the doctrine of the migration of the soul. In his

Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Hume has

painted for us the miseries of life in dark colours, but

these are not nearly dark enough for the Hindu. For

him, the miseries of his present life, hunger, thirst, and

faintness, weariness, care, sickness, bereavement, dying

pangs, are to repeat themselves in life after life, and

death after death, in endless iteration. The morbid

reverie of the hypochondriac is gaiety by the side of

this Indian pessimism, and this pessimism is the ever-

present thought, the very motive power of Indian

speculation.

"The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and pol-

luted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living

creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong

and courageous; fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak

and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish

to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent:

weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that

life; and it is at last finished in agony and horror.

"Observe too, says Philo, the curious artifices of

nature in order to embitter the life of every living

being. The stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep

them in perpetual terror and anxiety. The weaker,

too, in their turn, often prey upon the stronger, and

vex and molest them without relaxation. Consider

that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred

on the body of each animal, or, flying about, infix their

stings in him. These insects have others still less than

themselves which torment them. And thus, on each

hand, before and behind, above and below, every ani-

IS C Lib B'lore

294.5921 N02

735

Ill lllllll

30

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. I.

mal is surrounded with enemies, which incessantly seek

his misery and destruction.

" Man alone, said Demea, seems to be an exception

to this rule. For, by combination in society, he can

easily master lions, tigers, and bears, whose greater

strength and agility naturally enable them to prey

upon him.

On the contrary, it is here chiefly, cried Philo, that

the uniform and equal maxims of nature are most ap-

parent. Man, it is true, can by combination surmount

all his real enemies, and become master of the whole

animal creation ; but does he not immediately raise up

to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of his fancy,

who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast every

enjoyment of life? His pleasure, as he imagines, be-

comes in their eyes a crime; his food and repose give

them umbrage and offence ; his very sleep and dreams

furnish new materials to anxious fear; and even death,

his refuge from every other ill, presents only the dread

of endless and innumerable woes. Nor does the wolf

molest more the timid flock, than superstition does the

anxious breast of wretched mortals.

" Besides, consider, Demea, this very society by which

we surmount those wild beasts, our natural enemies,

what new enemies does it not raise to us? what woe

and misery does it not occasion? Man is the greatest

enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, con-

tumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery,

fraud,; by these they mutually torment each other, and

they would soon dissolve that society which they had

formed, were it not for the dread of still greater ills

which must attend their separation.

" But though these external insults, said Demea,

from animals, from men, from all the elements which

assault us, form a frightful catalogue of woes, they are

nothing in comparison of those which arise within our-

selves, from the distempered condition of our mind and

body. How many lie under the lingering torment of

diseases? Hear the pathetic enumeration of the great

poet—

“Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,

Demonic frenzy, moping melancholy,

And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy,

Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence.

Dire was the tossing, deep the groans : Despair

Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch.

And over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook, but delayed to strike, though oft invoked

With vows, as their chief good and final hope.”

“The disorders of the mind, continued Demea,

though more secret, are not perhaps less dismal and

vexatious. Remorse, shame, anguish, rage, disappoint-

ment, anxiety, fear, dejection, despair; who has ever

passed through life without cruel inroads from these

tormentors? How many have scarcely ever felt any

better sensations? Labour and poverty, so abhorred by

every one, are the certain lot of the far greater number;

and those few privileged persons who enjoy ease and

opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All

the goods of life united would not make a very happy

man, but all the ills united would make a wretch indeed;

and any one of them almost (and who can be free from

every one?), may, often the absence of one good (and who

can possess all?) is sufficient to render life ineligible.

“Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world,

I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital

full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors

and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcases,

a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing

under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay

side of life to him, and give him a notion of its plea-

sures, whither should I conduct him? To a ball, to an

opera, to court? He might justly think that I was

only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.”

32

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. I.

The Indian schoolmen produce a very similar list

1

The similar

of human ills. The miseries that await th

picture of the

soul

Indian school-

men.

in its migration from body to body, are threefold in

their nature. Death itself is no release from suffer-

ing, and the prospect is unending. There are first

the personal afflictions that attach to the body and

the mind, pains of the body arising from disordered

temperament, and pains of the mind proceeding from

lust, anger, avarice, fear, envy, stupefaction, despon-

dency, and severance from all the soul would fain cling

to. The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint.

These are the ills that, in the words of Hume, "arise

within ourselves, from the distempered condition of the

mind and body."

Next, there is the series of miseries

that spring from the environment, injuries at the hands

of men, and evils from beasts and birds and snakes

and other creeping things, and hurts from plants and

trees and stocks and stones. These, in the list of Hume,

are the "external insults from animals, from men, from

all the elem nts." Thirdly, there is the train of ills

proceeding from supernatural agency, the terrors of evil

beings and demoniacal possession. "These are the

"imaginary enemies, the demons of man's fancy, that

haunt him with superstitious terrors."

To recapitulate: the period in which Indian philo-

sophy had its rise, is the period in which the original

worship of the forces of nature has given place to the

mechanical repetition of prescriptive usages and sacred

formulas. Side by side with the decay of living faith

in the personified elemental powers there has gone on

a degeneration of the Indo-Arian tribes, partly from

climatic influences, partly from intermixture with

the rude indigenes. This degradation of the national

type marks itself in the worship of the terrific Siva,

1 The list is given as in the

Sānkhyatattvaknnumudi.

The

three series of miseries are in

Sanskrit ādhyātmika, ādhibhautika, and ādhidaivika.

and in the practice of savage self-torture, and the production of morbid cerebral conditions; in the revival

of the primitive Aryan rite of widow-immolation; in polyandry and Kshatriya savageries pictured in the

Mahābhārata ; and finally, and above all, in the ever-active belief in the migration of the soul, and in the

misery of every form of sentient life.

THE PHILOSOPHY

34

CHAPTER II.

THE QUEST OF THE REAL—BRAHMAN AND MAYA,

THE SELF AND THE WORLD-FICTION.

"A presence that disturbs him with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things."—WORDSWORTH.

"Nature itself plainly intimates to us that there is some such abso-

lutely perfect Being, incomprehensible to our finite understandings, by

certain passions which it hath implanted in us, that otherwise would

want an object to display themselves upon; namely, those of devout

veneration, adoration, and admiration, together with a kind of ecstasy

and pleasing horror."—CUDWORTH.

CHAP. II. LOOKING behind them and before them, the Indian

Fixity amidst sages, meditating in the solitude of the jungle, find that

the flux of things the series of lives through which each sentient thing is

passing is flowing forward without a pause, like a river.

Is the river to lose itself at last in the sea? The sum

of all the several series of lives, and of all the spheres

through which the living soul proceeds, is also in per-

petual flow. The sum of migrating forms of life, and of

the spheres through which they migrate, is the ever-

moving world. Everything in it is coming into being

and passing out of being, but never is. The sum of

lives and of the spheres of living things is not real, for

it 'comes and goes', rises and passes away, without ceas-

ing, and that alone is real that neither passes into being

nor passes out of being, but simply is. To be is to last, CHAP. II.

to perdure. What is there that lasts ?

Every one of the countless modes of life that perpetually replace each other is a new form of misery, or at best of fleeting pleasure tainted with pain, and nothing else is to be looked for in all the varieties of untried being. ' In every stream of lives there is the varied anguish of birth, of care, hunger, weariness, bereavement, sickness, decay, and death, through embodiment after embodiment, and through æon after æon. Evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds push the doer downward in the scale of sentiences, and into temporary places of torment. Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds push the doer upwards into higher embodiments, and into temporary paradises. It is the same wearisome journey above and below, miseries and tainted pleasures that make way for new miseries, and no end to it all. Good no less than evil activity is an imperfection, for it only prolongs the stream of lives. Action is the root of evil. Is there nothing that rests inert and impassive, untouched with all these miseries of metempsychosis ?

Again, the scenes through which the sage finds him- self to be migrating are manifold and varied, and present themselves in a duality of experience,—the subject on the one side, the object on the other. The more he checks the senses and strives to gaze upon the inner light, when he sits rigid and insensate seeking ecstasy, —the more this plurality tends to fade away, the more this duality tends to melt into a unity, a one and only being. A thrill of awe runs through the Indian sage as he finds that this pure and characterless being, this light within the heart, in the light of which all things shine, is the very Self within him, freed from the flow of experiences for a while by a rigorous effort of abstraction. A perfect inertion, a perfect abstraction, have enabled him to reach the last residue of all abstrac-

36

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II.

These are the fontal essence, the inner light, the light beyond the darkness of the fleeting forms of conscious life.

These are found at intervals in sleep without a dream.

Times there are, moreover, when he wakes from sleep unbroken with a dream, and is aware that he has slept at ease, untouched for a space with the miseries of metempsychosis. Dreamless sleep, like ecstasy itself, is a transient union with the one and only being that perdures, and does not pass away as all things else are passing, that is inert and untouched with the miseries of migration, that is beyond the duality of subject and object, and beyond the plurality of the things of experience. Dreamless sleep is, like ecstasy, an unalloyed beatitude; it is a state in which all differences are merged, and for the sleeper the world has melted away. His very personality has passed back into the impersonality of the true Self; and if only this state could be prolonged for ever, it would be a final refuge from the miseries of life.

They are found permanently in union with the characterless Self,

Thus, then, that which only is, while all things else come and go, pass, and pass away; that which is untouched with the hunger, thirst, and pain, and sorrow that wait upon all forms of life; that which is one while all things else are many; that which stands above and beyond the duality of all modes of consciousness, is the Self, the one Self within all sentienencies, the spiritual principle that permeates and vitalises all things, and gives life and light to all things living, from a tuft of grass up to the highest deity. There is one thing that is, and only one—the light within, the light in which these pleasures and pains, these fleeting scenes and semblances, come and go, pass into and pass out of being. This primordial light, this light of lights, beyond the darkness of the self-feigned world-fiction, this fontal unity of undifferenced being, is pure being, pure thought, pure bliss. It is thought in which there is neither thinker nor thing; bliss without self-gratulation, bliss in which there is nothing that re-

joices and nothing rejoiced at; the unspeakable blessed-

ness of exemption from vicissitude and misery. " All

things live upon portions of its joy." " Who could

bu athe, who could live, if there were not this bliss

within the ether in the heart?" It is not an empty

abstraction; that the Indian mystic in his hour of ecstasy

knows well. It is positive and self-affirming ; for, says

Sankarāchārya, the last residuum of all abstraction is whioh is the

not nonentity but entity. It is the object1 of the notion "I."

and beyond2 all modes of conscious thought. " Words

turn back from it, with the mind, not reaching it." It

can only be spoken of as " not this, not that," spoken

of in negatives, and by unsaying what is said. " It is

thought," says the Kena Upanishad, "by him that thinks

it not; he that thinks it knows it not ; it is unknown to

them that know it, known to them that know it not."

It is at once necessitated to thought and withheld from

positive conception : cognoscendo ignoratur et ignorando

cognoscitur.

Such is the Brahman, the ultimate spiritual reality Brahman, the

of primitive Indian philosophy, out of which, in its self.

everlasting union with its counterfeit, Māyā, the self-

feigning world-fiction, proceeds the phantasmagory of

metempsychosis. Avidyā, Māyā, Śakti, the illusion, the

fiction, the power that resides within the Self as the

future tree resides within the seed,3—it is out of this,

overspreading the one and only Self, that all things

living, from a tuft of grass to the highest deity, with

all the spheres through which they migrate, have ema-

nated to form a world of semblances. They are all

alike figments of this inexplicable world-fiction, the

cosmical illusion.4 Personal souls and their environ-

ments are fleeting and phantasmagorical, the dreams of

1 Ahampratyayarishaya, aham-

padapratiyalakshikärtha.

2 Sarvabuddhivatyayätta.

3 Vatakanikāyām tala iva, San-

karna.

4 Vītramāyā, vïvajanmi saktih.

38

THE PHILOSOPHY.

Chap. II. the spirit of the world;1 and being such, they may be

left behind, if by any means the sage can wake to their

unreality, and find his true being in the original essence,

the one Self, the only light of life. If only he knows

it, he is already this Self, this Brahman, ever pure,

intelligent, and free.2 Pure as untouched by the world-

fiction, passionless, inert; intelligent as self-luminous,

giving light to all the movements of the minds of living

things; free as unembodied, exempt from the miseries

of metempsychosis.

Etymology of

the word

Brahman.

The original idea of the term Brahman is indicated

in its etymology. It is a derivative of the root brh, to

grow, to increase. Thus the scholiast Ānandagiri, with

reference to a passage in which Brahman is identified

with one of its manifestations, the breath of life, says,

" Brahman is from brh, to grow, and every one knows

how the body grows by respiration and other functions."

And in another place, in his gloss on Śaṅkara's com-

mentary on the Taittirīyaka Upaniṣhad, "The term

Brahman comes from brh, to grow, to expand, and is

expressive of growth and greatness. This Brahman is

a vastness unlimited in space, in time, and in content,

for there is nothing known as a limit to it, and the term

applies to a thing of transcendent greatness." Perhaps

the earliest sense of the term was the plastic power at

work in the process of things, viewed as an energy of

thought or spirit, a power present everywhere unseen,

that manifests itself most fully in vegetable, animal,

and human life. The cause of all changes in the order

of metempsychosis, it is itself unchangeable. It has

nothing before it or after it, nothing within it or without

it.3 It transcends space and time, and every kind of

object.4 It is the uncaused cause of all, but in its real

nature, and putting the world-fiction and its flyments

1 Jagadātman, i.e., Brahman manifesting itself in Īśvara.

2 Tad etad brahmāpūrvam an-

aṅtaṁ anantaṁ avāhyam.

3 Nityasuddhabuddhamukta.

4 Deśakālariśayāticartin.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

39

out of view, it is, in the phrase of Sankara's commentary Chap. II.

on he Svetāśvatara Upanishad, "neither cause nor not

cause,nor both cause and not cause."

" It is," in the words of the Kena Upanishad, "other Brahman in-

than the known and above the unknown." To quote cogitable and

the scholium of Anandagiri, that which is other than

the knowing subject is either known or unknown, and

thus the text, by denying in regard to Brahman both

the known and the unknown, identifies Brahman with

the Self of the knowing subject.

"The eye reaches it not, speech reaches it not, thought

reaches it not: we know not, we understand not, how

one should teach it: it is other than the known, above

the unknown. Thus have we heard of the ancients,

who proclaimed it to us.

"That which is not uttered by the voice, that by which

the voice is uttered: know thou that that only is the

Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

"That which is not thought by the thought, that by

which the thought is thought: know thou that that

only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon

as such."

"Thought," says Sankara in his exposition of this

text, "is the internal organ, mind, intelligence. Thought

is the inward sense or faculty that co-operates with all

the several organs of sense and motion. Thus the text,

' Desire, volition, doubt, faith,' patience and impatience,

and shame, and thought, and fear,-all this is that

inner sense.' The inner sense presents itself only in

the form of desire, volition, and the other modifications,

and therefore a man cannot recognise with his inward Brahman the

sense the intelligential light that gives light to those light that irra-

mental modes.

modifications. This pure light actuates the inner sense

by irradiation; and as this pure light or Self transcends

all objects of outer and inner sense, the inward sense

is incompetent to approach it. The inward sense can

only operate when enlightened by the intelligential

40

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. light within, and therefore it is that the expositors of Brahman speak of the mind and its modifications as permeated and objectivised by the Self within." In plain words, when we are told that it is the Self that thinks the thought, we are to understand, in the language of the Indian mystics, that it is the Self that gives the light to the mental modes in which they shine—that is, it is the Self that causes the otherwise unconscious modes to become the conscious modes of mind. To return to the text of the Kena Upanishad.

" "That which one sees not with the eye, that by which the eyes see : know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

" "That which one hears not with the ear, that by which the ear is heard : know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such.

" "That which one breathes not with the breath, that by which the breath is breathed : know thou that that only is the Self, and not that which men meditate upon as such."

Similarly in the Bṛihadāranyaka Upanishad :-

" "This same imperishable is that which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks unthought, and knows unknown. There is no other than this that sees, no other than this that hears, no other than this that thinks, no other than this that knows. Over this imperishable the expanse is woven woof and warp.1

" "As in dreamless sleep the soul sees, but sees not this or that, so the Self in seeing sees not; for there is no intermission in the sight of the Self that sees ; its vision Brahman is pure thought, eternal, and objectless. is one that passes not away; and there is nothing second to that, other than that, apart from that, that it should see."

What is meant here is that the thought or intelligence with which the Self is one, is something beyond

1 The expanse is here a synonym for Māyā, the self-feigning world-fiction.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

41

the relation of subject and object;1 it is, in the words of Chap. II.

Rāmatīrtha's commentary on the Upadeśasahasrī, an eternal objectless cognition.2 The Self is said to be omniscient, but the reader must not be misled; this only means that it is self-luminous, that it gives light to all things, and to all the modifications of the minds of sentient beings. Withdraw the light of the Self, the Indian sages say, and the whole process of things will lapse into blindness, darkness, nothingness. The omniscience of the Self is its irradiation of all things.3 To cite Ānandagiri,4 “It is not literally, but by a figure that the Self is said to be all-knowing. The cognitions of the everyday thinker in the sensible world presuppose faculties and organs; the knowledge that is the essence of the idea or Self does not presuppose faculties and organs, for in that case it could not exist, as it does exist, in the state of dreamless sleep, in which the functions of the faculties and organs have ceased.”

It will be well here to point out once for all that we Brahman not are to tread warily among these epithets of Brahman. If we are to use the language of European philosophy, or Christianity, we must pronounce the Brahman of the Upanishads to be unconscious, for consciousness begins where duality begins. The ideal or spiritual reality of Brahman is not convertible with conscious spirit. On the contrary, the Upanishads, underlies all things, has per se no cognition of objects; it transcends the relation of subject and object; it lies beyond duality. It is true that these poets speak of it as existence, intelligence, beatitude.

But we must be cautious. Brahman is not intelligence in our sense of the word. The intelligence, the thought, that is the Self and which the Self is, is described as eternal knowledge, without objects, the imparting of light to the cognitions of migrating sentienties. This

1 Jñātrjñeyabhedātirikta. 3 Sarvānavabhāsakatva.

2 Nityam nirviṣayam jñānam. 4 Sarvajñam brahmopachāryate.

42

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II.

thought is characterless and eternal; their cognitions are

charactered, and come and go. Brahman is beatitude.

But we must again be cautious. Brahman is not beatitude

in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a bliss

beyond the distinction of subject and object, a bliss the

poets of the Upanishads liken to dreamless sleep. Brah-

man per se is neither God nor conscious God; and on

this it is necessary to insist, to exclude the baseless ana-

logies to Christian theology that have sometimes been

imagined by writers, Indian and European. Be it then

repeated that the Indian philosophers everywhere affirm

that Brahman is knowledge, not that Brahman has

knowledge; that this knowledge is without an object

known, and that omniscience is predicable of Brahman,

only by a metaphor. If we were to misinterpret such

knowledge by the word "consciousness," we should

still have to say that Brahma is consciousness, not that

Brahman has consciousness or is a conscious spirit.

To return to the text of the Brihadāranyaka.

"As in dreamless sleep the Soul hears, but hears not

this or that, so the Self in hearing hears not; for there

is no intermission in the hearing of the Self that hears;

its audition is one that passes not away; and there is

nothing second to that, other than that, apart from that,

that it should hear.

"As in dreamless sleep the soul thinks, but thinks

not this or that, so in thinking the Self thinks not; for

there is no intermission in the thought of the Self that

thinks; its thought is one that passes not away; and

there is nothing second to that, other than that, apart

from that, that it should think.

"As in dreamless sleep the soul knows, but knows

not this or that, so in knowing the Self knows not; for

there is no intermission in the knowledge of the Self

that knows, for its knowledge is one that passes not

away; and there is nothing second to that, other than

that, apart from that, that it should know."

Brahman the

pure light of

characterless

knowledge.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

43

When overspread with the self-feigning world-fiction,

the Self is that out of which all things and all forms

of life-proceed. It is, in the words of the Mundaka

Upanishad, that on knowing which all things are

known; in the words of the Chhāndogya, that by in-

struction in which the unthought becomes thought,

and the unknown known. As the Indian scholiasts

say : If we know Brahman we know all things : if we

know what clay is, we know what all the variety of

pots and pans are, that the potter fashions out of clay;

if we know what gold is, we know what all the varieties

of earrings, bracelets, and other trinkets are, that the

goldsmith fashions out of gold. Thus, to quote the

Chhāndogya Upanishad :-

"Śvetaketu was the grandson of Āruṇa. His father

Āruṇi said to him : Śvetaketu, thou must enter on thy

sacred studentship. None of our family, my dear son,

is unstudied, a Brahman only in lineage. Śvetaketu

therefore at the age of twelve repaired to a spiritual

preceptor, and at the age of four-and-twenty came home

after going through all the Vedas, conceited, pedantic,

and opinionated. His father said to him: Śvetaketu,

tell me, my son, since thou art so conceited, pedantic,

and opinionated, hast thou asked for that instruction

by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought

thought, the unknown known?

"Holy sir, how is that instruction given?

"His father said : My son, as everything made of

clay is known by a single lump of clay, being nothing

more than a modification of speech, a change, a name,

while the clay is the only truth :

"As everything made of gold is known by a single

lump of gold; being nothing more than a modification

of speech, a change, a name, while the gold is the only

truth :

"As everything made of steel is known by a single

pair of nail-scissors, being nothing more than a modi

44

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II.

fication of speech, a change, a name, while the steel is

the only truth :

" Such, my son, is that instruction."

Brahman is, as has been already seen, said to be

" existent, thought, bliss." In the Taittirīya Upanishad

the Self is said to be " truth, knowledge, infinity."

Śankarāchārya's remarks on this passage of the Tait-

tirīya will serve also to illustrate the foregoing extract

from the Chhāndogya. " Self," he says, " is truth; Self

is knowledge ; Self is infinity. A thing is true if it is

neither more nor less than it is taken to be. It is false

if it is more or less than that. Hence every form of

derived or emanatory existence is fictitious, nothing

more than a modification of speech, a change, a name,

and the clay is the only truth. That which is being

found to be the only truth, the words ' the Self is truth '

negative all modification of the Self. It follows that

Brahman is the cause or fontal essence. It operates as

such, because it is the reality. Lest it should be sup-

posed that Brahman being that of which all things are

made, it must be unspiritual, like the potter's clay, the

text proceeds to say that the Self is knowledge. The

term knowledge is abstract, standing as an epithet of

Brahman together with truth and infinity. If know-

ledge meant here a subject knowing, the epithet would

be incompatible with the other two. If Brahman were

a knowing subject, it would be modified in its cogni-

tions, and how then could it be the truth ? A thing is

infinite when it cannot be limited at any point. If the

Self were a knowing subject, it would be limited by the

cognita and the cognitions. Another text says: That is

the infinite in which nothing else is known, and that is

the finite in which one knows something else. As pre-

dicated of the Self along with truth and infinity, know-

ledge is thus an abstract term. The words ' Self is

knowledge ' are intended at once to deny agency and

action, and to deny that the Self or Brahman is an

unspiritual thing such as the potter's clay in the famil-

iar example. The same words 'Self is knowledge'

might be imagined to imply the finitude of Self, foras-

much as all the cognitions of everyday life are limited

or finite. The epithet 'infinite' is added to exclude

this idea of finitude. The term infinite is negative,

refusing the presence of limits; the epithets truth and

knowledge are positive, giving a sense of their own.

The knowledge of Brahman is nothing else than the

essence of the Self itself, like the light of the sun, or

the heat of fire. It is the eternal essence of the Self,

and does not depend on conditions foreign to itself, as

our experiences do."

These remarks must suffice for the present in regard

to Brahman. The several elements of the cosmological

conception of the poets of the Upanishads are so closely

interfused, that it is not possible with any ingenuity

altogether to separate them for convenience of exposi-

tion. So far as may be, however, these elements must

be exhibited in successive order, proceeding from Brah-

man to Māyā; from Māyā to the union, from before all

time, between Brahman and Māyā; from this union to

the resultant procession of migrating souls and of the

spheres of their migration, and the hierarchic emanations

Íśvara, Hiranyagarbha, and Virāj, severally representing

the sums of living things in the three several states of

dreamless sleep, of dreaming sleep, and of waking con-

sciousness; and finally reverting to the "fourth," so

called in contradistinction to the three states or modes

of life, that is to the original unity of characterless

being or Brahman. Brahman per se is the principle

of reality, the one and only being; Self alone is, and all

else only seems to be. This principle of reality, how-

ever, has been from everlasting associated with an

inexplicable principle of unreality; and it is from the

fictitious union of these principles, the one real, the

other only a self-feigned fiction, that the spheres and

Brahman the

principle of

reality. The

co-eternal

principleof un-

reality, Māyā,

fiction.

46

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II.

the migrating forms of life, the external and internal world, proceed.

Māyā the illu-

sion in every

individual

soul.

Māyā may be regarded both in parts and in the whole. Viewed in parts, it is the particular illusion that veils from each form of life its own true nature as the one and only Self. Under its influence every kind of sentient being is said to identify itself, not with the Self that is one and the same in all, but with its counterfeit presentment,1 the invisible body that accompanies it through its migrations, and the visible bodies that it animates successively. Thus every living thing is a fictitiously detached portion, an illusive emanation of Brahman. Māyā overspreads Brahman as a cloud overspreads the sun, veiling from its proper nature, and projecting the world of semblances, the phantasmagory of metempsychosis. For every form of life, from the lowest to the highest, from a mere tuft of grass up to the highest deity, its own proper nature is veiled, and a bodily counterfeit presented in lieu of it, by the primeval illusion or self-feigning fiction, Avidyā or Māyā. Hence all individual existences, and the long miseries of metempsychosis, in the procession of the æons without beginning and without end; for the world is from everlasting, and every genesis of things is only a palingenesia. The procession of the æons is often likened to a succession of dreams. The world is often said to be the mind-projected figment of migrating souls.2 It is, says Sankarāchārya, only an emanation of the internal sense of sentient beings, and this is proved by the fact that the world is resolved back into their inner sense in their intervals of dreamless sleep.3 As emanating from such illusion, the world of me-

1 Technically styled its upādhi.

The totality of Māyā is the upādhi

of Īśvara. Portions of Māyā are

the several upādhis of the jīvas or

migrating souls.

2 Sarram hy antahkararavik-

ārum eva jagat, manasy era sush-

upte prahajadarśanāt. Elsewhere

the phrase manovijhrimbhitam.

3 Prapañchaya māyayā vid-

yamānatvam, na tu vastutvam.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

47

tempsychosis has an existence, but this existence is

unreal

Māyā, viewed as a whole, is the cosmical illusion, the

self-feigning world-fiction, that is without beginning.

1

It is said to be "neither entity nor nonentity, nor both

in one, inexplicable by entity and by nonentity, fictitious, and without beginning." It is not a mere

nothing, but a nescio quid. It is an illusion projected

by illusion, an unreal unreality, the three primitive

elements of pleasure, pain, and indolence

2

in co-

equality, overspreading the one and only Self from

everlasting. It is the sum of the illusions of all indi-

vidual souls, as a forest is an aggregate of trees. It is

the power, cognitive and active, of Īśvara, the artifex

opifexque mundi deus, the Archimagus, or Demiurgus,

who is th first emanation of Brahman. It is his power

of illusory creation, the power out of which proceed all

migrating souls and all that they experience in their

migrations. Brahman, or Self per se, is changeless,

but in union with Māyā becomes

3

fictitiously the basis

of this baseless world, and underlies the world-fiction

out of which the ever-changing figment-worlds proceed

in æon after æon. From the reflection upon Māyā,

the world-fiction, of Brahman, the one and only Self,

proceeds the first and highest of all emanations, Īśvara,

the cosmic soul, the Demiurgus. Māyā

4

thus pre-

exists with Brahman, but Brahman is not thereby any

the less the one and only being, in like manner as the

possibility of the future tree pre-exists in the seed of

the tree, without the seed becoming any the less a one

and only seed. Māyā is the indifferent aggregate of all

the possibilities of emanatory or derived existences,

pre-existing together with Brahman, as the possibility

1 Yisvamāyā, anīdimāyā.

2 Trigunātmikā māyā, gunatra-

yasāmyam māyātmakam, sukha-

duḥkhumohātmakaśhaprapañcha-

rūpā māyā.

3 Vivartyopādāna.

4 Bhāvivaśavikshakātmad vi-

jam śvasaktyā na sadrśtīyam kat-

hyate, tadvad brahmāpi na māyā-

saktyā sadrśtityam.

48

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. II. of the tree pre-exists in the seed. Māyā is the ancil-

lary associate of the Archimagus. Māyā, though un-

conscious, is said to energise in the evolution of the

world through its proximity to the inert and impassc ve

Brahman, as the unconscious iron is set in motion

through its proximity to the loadstone. Māyā is that

out of which, literally speaking, the world proceeds; it

is said, by a figure of speech, to emanate from Brạhmañ.

Māyā is the literal, Brahman the figurative upādāna, 'or

principle out of which all things emanate.

It is Māyā1 that presents the manifold of experience.

The world, with its apparent duality of subject and

object, of external and internal orders, is the figment

of this fiction, the imagination of illusion. All that

presents itself to the migrating soul in its series of

embodiments, lies unreally above the real like the

redness or blackness of the sky, which is seen there

though the sky itself is never red or black, like the

waters of a mirage, like the visions of the dreaming

phantasy, like the airy fabric of a daydream, like the

bubbles on the surface of a stream, like the silver seen

on the shell of a pearl-oyster, like the snake that the

belated wayfarer sees in a piece of rope, like the gloom

that encircles the owl amidst the noonday glare. All

the stir of daily life, all the feverish pleasures and

pains of life after life, are the phantasmagory of a

waking dream. For the soul that wakes to its own

nature these things cease to be, and, what is more,

have never so much as been.

Brahman and Māyā have co-existed from everlasting,

and their association and union is eternal. Apart from

Avidyā or Māyā, Brahman is purely characterless and

indeterminate,2 and is not to be regarded as the prin-

ciple from which things emanate, and again, is not to

be regarded as not that principle; nor is it to be

affirmed to be both that principle and not that prin-

1 Nānātrapratyupathāpikā 'vidyā.

2 Śaṅkarāchārya ou Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣhad I, 3.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

49

cipe at once, nor is it to be denied to be both. Self Chap. II.

per se is neither principium nor principiala. When

the world is said to emanate from Brahman, we are

a ays to understand that it proceeds, not from Brah-

man per se, but from Brahman reflected upon Māyā,1 or

fictitiously limited by the limitations of the world-

fiction. Māyā, in its totality, is the limitative coun-

terfeit of Brahman,2 or the power of Īśvara, the

Māyāvin, or Archimagus, or Demiurgus. The limita-

tions of the illimitable Brahman are derived from this

limitative counterf -its limitations through which

it manifests itself as god, and man, and animal, and

plant, and so forth. It is through this union from

before all time with this inexplicable illusion, that

the one and only Self presents itself in the endless

plurality and diversity of transient deities, of migrating

spirits, and of the worlds through which they migrate.

It is through this union that the one and only Self is

present in every creature, as one and the same ether

is present in many water-jars, as one and the same sun

is mirrored on countless sheets of water. It is through

this union that the one and only Self permeates and

animates the world. In the words of Śankara:3 "The

image of the sun upon a piece of water expands with

the expansion, and contracts with the contraction, of

the ripples on the surface ; moves with the motion, and

is severed by the breaking, of the ripples. The reflec-

tion of the sun thus follows the various conditions of

the surface, but not so the real sun in the heavens.

It is in a similar manner that the real Self is reflected

upon its counterfeits, the bodies of sentient creatures,

and, thus fictitiously limited, shares their growth and

diminution, and other sensible modes of being. Apart

1 Tad eva chaitanyam māyā-

prativimbitāperca kāraṇam bha-

vati. Ānandagiri on the Mun-

daka Upanishad. Māyā is some-

times said to reflect Brahman,

and sometimes to limit Brahman

fictitiously.

2 Upādhi.

3 In the introduction to his

Commentary on the Svetāśvatara

Upanishad.

D)

50

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II from its various counterfeits, the Self is changeless and unvaried." The one and only Self is present in the heart

of every living thing, as one and the same face may be reflected upon a succession of mirrors.1 Such are the

Indian philosophers, to illustrate the presence of one spiritual essence in all the innumerable forms of living

things. Others will be met with in the sequel. With almost the same imagery Plotinus speaks of the one life

in all things living like the one light shining in many houses, as if itself many, and yet one and undivided; the

one life shining into and vitalising all bodies, project-

ing pictures of itself, like one face seen upon a multitude of mirrors. Elsewhere he says that we are one in

God, and again other than God, as the solar rays are one with the sun and other than the sun. And with a like

simile Fichte: "In all the forms that surround me I behold the reflection of my own being, broken up into

countless diversified shapes, as the morning sun, broken in a thousand dewdrops, sparkles towards itself."

The hierarchy Māyā, then, has fictitiously associated itself to Brah-

of emanations man from everlasting. In the series of æons, without

out of Brah- beginning and without end, the forms of life have at

man and the beginning of each æon emanated in the following

Māya. hierarchic succession.

Īśvara, the First appears Īśvara, the Māyin or Māyāvin, the

Dominus, or arch-illusionist, the world-projecting deity, himself a

world-evolv- figment of the cosmic fiction, himself an unreality;

ing deity, the universal soul. only truth, relatively a reality for the multitude, to

whom the world exists with all its possibilities of pain.

The totality of illusion is the body or counterfeit pre-

sentment of the Archimagus, out of which all things emanate.2 Illusion, the world-fiction, may be viewed

1 Ādarsasthamukham iti yadva1. emanate, the principle of emana-

2 Kāranasarira = the cosmic tion.

body, the body out of which things

OF THE UPANISHADS.

51

in its several parts in the minds of the migrating

sentiencies, or in its totality as the sum of pleasures,

pains, and indolences. The Demiurgus, then, is the

Self with the totality of illusion as its counterfeit

presentment; the Self proceeding into fictitious mani-

festation, as the worlds and the migrating sentiencies

that pass through them. The illusion of each of these

sentiencies veils from it its true nature as the one and

only Self; the illusion of all sentiencies taken together

veils from them all their true nature as the one and

only Self. The Demiurgus is identified with the sum of

sentiencies in the state of dreamless sleep. His body,

the principle of emanations, as the sum of the bodies

of living things in the state of dreamless sleep, is the

beatific vesture.1 The Demiurgus is one, the sentien-

cies are many, as a forest is one and as the trees in it

are many; as a piece of water is one and as the drops

of water in it are many; and the one Demiurgus and

the many dreamless, sleeping sentiencies are one and

the same being, viewed now as whole, and now as

parts. The same Brahman, the one and only Self, is

present wholly in the Demiurgus, and present wholly

in each dreamless, sleeping sentiency, as the same ether,

one and undivided, is present to the whole forest and

present to each and every tree; or as the same sky, one

and undivided, is reflected upon the whole watery sur-

face and on each portion of that surface.

The Archimagus is said to be omniscient, as being

the witness of all lifeless and all living forms of exist-

ence. As ruling all migrating souls, and as giving to

each its dole of pleasures and pains in conformity with

the retributive fatality inherent in the process of things,

he is Īśvara, the lord. As setting all souls in motion,

and thus acting through them, he is the actuator. As

dwelling in the heart of each and every living soul, and

1 Ānandamayakośa, the wrapper

sists of the undifferenced beati-

tude of dreamless sleep.

CHAP. II.

Is'vara omniscient, the

pense, the in-

giver of recom-

ternal ruler.

52

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. II. fashioning its every mental mode, he is the internal

ruler. "The lord of all, himself through all diffused.

Sustains and is the life of all that live."

In this last character the Demiurgus, the highest

emanation of Brahman, is described in the Brihadār-

anyaka Upanishad:-

"That which dwells in earth, inside the earth, and

the earth knows not, whose body the earth is, which

actuates the earth from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in water, inside the water, and

the water knows not, whose body the water is; which

actuates the water from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in fire, inside the fire, and the fire

knows not, whose body the fire is, which actuates the fire

from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler,immortal.

"That which dwells in air, inside the air, and the

air knows not, whose body the air is, which actuates

the air from within,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in wind, inside the wind, and

the wind knows not, whose body the wind is, which

actuates the wind from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler immortal.

"That which dwells in the sky, inside the sky, and

the sky knows not, whose budy the sky is, which

actuates the sky from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the sun, inside the sun, and

the sun knows not, whose body the sun is, which

actuates the sun from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in moon and stars. inside the

moon and stars, and the moon and stars know not,

whose body the moon and stars are which actuates the

OF THE UPANISHADS.

53

moon and stars from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in all living things, inside the

living things, and all living things know not, whose

body all living things are, which actuates all living

things from within,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells within mind, inside the mind,

and the mind knows not, whose body the mind is,

which actuates the mind from within,—that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks un-

thought upon, knows unknown; that other than which

there is none that sees, none that hears, none that

thinks, none that knows,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal."

It must be observed that this conception of the

Īśvara not a Demiurgus or world-projecting deity is not theistic,

but the uni-He is nothing else than the totality of souls in dream-

less sleep, present in the heart of every living thing;

himself only the first figment of the world-fiction,

resolved into the characterless unity of Brahman at

the close of each age of the world, and issuing out of

that unity at each palingenesia in the eternal proces-

sion of the æons. He is eternal, but every migrating

soul is co-eternal with him, a co-eternal and only

equally fictitious emanation of the one and only Self.

He can hardly be conceived to have any separate per-

sonality, apart from the souls he permeates and vivifies;

and his state is not one of consciousness, but that of

the pure bliss of dreamless sleep. One with the sum

of living beings in that state, he is yet said to allot to

each of them their portion of weal and woe, but only

in accordance with their merits in prior forms of em-

bodied existence. Īśvara is feared by the many, as the

deity that retracts them into nis own essence at the

close of each æon, and that casts the evil-doer into

CHAP. II

places of torment; but the perfect sage learns that Īśvara is unreal, and passes beyond all fear of him. Īśvara is no less unreal than the migrating soul; he is the first figment of the cosmical illusion; and both Īśvara and the soul are only so far existent as they are fictitious manifestations of the one and only Self.

The next emanation in the order of descent is Hiranyagarbha, Prāṇa, Sūtrātman, the Golden Germ, the Breath of Life; the Thread-spirit. This divine emanation is the totality of migrating souls in the state of dreaming sleep, the sum of the dreaming consciousness of the world. His body is the sum of the invisible bodies, the tenuous involucra,1 clothed in which the soul passes from body to body in the long process of metempsychosis. These invisible bodies are made up of three vestures one upon the other, the cognitional, the sensorial, and the aerial garments of the soul. Within these, as its first and innermost garment, the soul, as one with the Archimagus, is clad with the beatific vesture already spoken of; and outermost of all it has, as we shall presently see, its fifth and last garment, the nutrimentitious vesture, the visible and tangible body of the world of sense, which is born and dies and passes back into the elements, the muddy vesture of decay. Three, then, of these five wrappers clothe2 Hiranyagarbha. He is called the Thread-spirit, as stringing together all dreaming souls clothed in the invisible bodies that accompany them in their migrations, as pearls are strung upon a thread to form a necklace. He is the sum of souls that illusively identify themselves with their tenuous involucra. It is thus that a place is provided in the cosmical conception of the poets of the Upanishads for the Hiranyagarbha of the ancient Rishis,

1 Lingātarīra, sūkṣmaśarīra.

2 The five wrappers of the migrating soul are styled successively in Sanskrit the ānandamayakośa (this is the kāranaśarīra); the vijñānamayakośha, the manomaya-kośha, the prāṇamayakośha (these three are the lingaśarīra); and the annamayakośha (this is the sthū-laśarīra).

the Golden Germ that arose in the beginning, the lord

of things that are, the establisher of the earth and sky,

the giver of life and breath.

The third and lowest of the progressive emanations Virāj, the

is Virāj, Vaiśvānara, Prajāpati, or Purusha. His body

is the whole mundane egg, the outer shell of the visible

world, or the sum of the visible and perishing bodies of

migrating souls. He is identified with the totality of

waking consciousness, with the sum of souls in the

waking state, and the sum of their gross, visible, and

tangible environments. In this divine emanation a

place is provided by the poets of the Upanishads for

the Purusha of the ancient Rishis, the divine being out

of whom, offered up as a sacrificial victim by the gods, the

Sādhyās, and the Rishis, the visible and tangible world

proceeded. He is the sum of souls that illusively

identify themselves with their outer bodies, and thus

suffer hunger, thirst, and faintness, and all the other

miseries of metempsychosis.

The nature of spiritual entity unmanifest and mani-

fest, in its fourfold grades, is set forth in the following

lines taken from Sankarāchārya's exposition of the

Aitareya Upanishad :-

" First, there is the one and only Self, apart from all

duality, in which have ceased to appear the various

counterfeit presentments or fictitious bodies and en-

vironments of the world of semblances ; passionless,

pure, inert, peaceful, to be known by the negation of

every epithet, not to be reached by any word or

thought.

" Secondly, this same Self emanates in the form of

the omniscient Demiurgus, whose counterfeit present-

ment or fictitious body is cognition in its utmost purity ;

who sets in motion the general undifferenced germ of

the worlds, the cosmical illusion; and is styled the

internal ruler, as actuating all things from within.

" Thirdly, this same Self emanates in the form of

CHAP. II.

Hiraṇyagarbha, or the spirit that illusively identifies itself with the mental movements that are the germ of the passing spheres.

"Fourthly, this same Self emanates in the form of spirit in its earliest embodiment within the outer shell of things, as Virāj or Prajāpati.

"And finally, the same Self comes to be designated under the names of Agni and the other gods, in its counterfeit presentments in the form of visible fire and so forth. It is thus that Brahman assumes this and that name and form, by taking to itself a variety of fictitious bodily presentments, from a tuft of grass up to Brahmā, the highest of the deities."

Ānandagiri, in his gloss on this passage of Śankarā-chārya, adds that the Self fictitiously manifests itself in human and other sentienencies, as well as in the gods, and is thus, illusively, the sum of life.

Brahman per se, apart from fictitious manifestation, is the Nirguṇam Brahma of Indian philosophy ; that is to say, the Self free from the primordia, Self apart from pleasures, pains, and indolences, the three factors of the world-fiction, the three strands of the rope that ties the soul to the miseries of metempsychosis.

Brahman in its hierarchic emanations as Īśvara, Hiraṇyagarbha, and Virāj, is the Saguṇam Brahma or Śabalam Brahma of Indian philosophy ; that is to say, the Self as fictitiously implicated in the pleasures, pains, and indolences that make up the world-fiction, and are experienced by migrating souls.

To six things there has been no beginning: souls have been passing from body to body, through æon after æon, from eternity ; the Demiurgus has co-existed with and in them from eternity ; there has been a distinction between the souls and the Demiurgus from eternity ; the pure intelligence, the undifferenced Self, has existed from eternity ; the distinction between the Demiurgus and that Self is from eternity ; Māyā, the self-

Six things without beginning.

feigning world-fiction,has feigned itself from everlasting,

and the union of Māyā with Brahman is itself eternal.

The migrating souls are nothing else than the one and

only Self fictitiously limiting itself to various individual

minds, these individual minds being various emanations

of the cosmical illusion. Self is true; the ever-moving

world is false; and the migrating souls that seem to be,

and do,'and suffer, are nothing else than that one and

only Self, clothed in the five successive vestures or

involucra, the beatific, the cognitional, the sensorial, the

vesture of the vital airs, and the nutrimentitious ves-

ture or visible body in the world of sense. To him

that sees the truth, all these bodies and their environ-

ments will disappear, merging themselves into that

fontal essence; and the Self will alone remain, a fullness

of unbroken and unmingled bliss.

58

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER III.

THE RELEASE FROM METEMPSYCHOSIS

"To them I may have owed another gift

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened; that serene and blessed mood

In which the affections gently lead us on

Until the breath of this corporeal frame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul :-

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things."—WORDSWORTH.

"Moriturus Plotinus ad Eustochium dixit, se in eo esse ut quod in

se haberet divinum πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ θεῖον adduceret."—FABRIOIUS.

Chap. III. The sum of being, as pictured by the poets of the

Upanishads, may be retraced in the regressive order,

the fontal

from the outermost to the innermost vesture of the

soul, from the outermost to the innermost body, and

beyond to the spiritual reality that alone abides for

ever. The lowest grade of life is that of the soul in

this visible and tangible world, passing from body to

body, through sphere after sphere of being, through

æon after æon. The migrating soul is the one and only

Self fictitiously limiting itself to this or that individual

mind; and each individual mind is nothing more than

one of the innumerable emanations of the cosmical

illusion. To this migration there has been no begin-

OF THE UPANISHADS.

59

hing, and it is hard to find the end. At every stage, Chap. III

above and below, it is. the same wearisome journey,

miseries and tainted pleasures that give pluce to fresh

miséries, to new care, hunger, thirst, bereávement, sick-

ness, and decay. It would be intolerable to think that

this never-ceasing iteration of pains is real, for then it

could not be made to disappear; but to a true insight

it is not real; it is but a fiction, for it comes and goes,

passes into being and passes out of being; and that

alone is real that neither comes nor goes, neither passes

into being nor passes out of being, but simply is. To

be is to last,—to perdure; but what is there that lasts ?

There is, they say, but one thing that lasts : the light

within, the light in which these pains and tainted plea-

sures, these shifting scenes and semblances, come and

go, pass into, and pass out of being. This primordial

light beyond the darkness of the world-fiction, this

fontal unity of characterless being, beyond the duality

of subject and object, beyon the plurality of the phan-

tasmagoric spheres of metempsychosis, is pure being,

pure thought, pure bliss. This alone it is that permeates

and vitalises all things, giving light and life to all that

live. It is through its connection from before all ages

with Avidyā, Māyā, the self-feigning world-fiction, that

this light, this Self, passes into the semblances of dual-

ity and plurality, and in the shape of innumerable

living beings passes through successive spheres of trans-

migratory experience, as through dream after dream.

To wake from his dreams, to extricate himself from

metempsychosis, the sage must penetrate through the

unreal into the real, must refund his personality into

the impersonality of the one and only Self. The way Purifnatory

to this is a process of purificatory virtues, that may be maciation,

the work of many successive lives ; a renunciation of abstention,

family, home, and worldly ties ; the laying aside of the continence

five successive vestures of the soul by the repression of re-union.

of every feeling, every desire, and every thought ; the

practice of apathy, vacuity, and ecstasy. A rigorous

60 THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III. process of abstraction melts away the nutrimentitious vesture of the soul into the vesture of the viññāṇa,

this into the sensorial vesture, this into the cognitional vesture; this into the beatific vesture of the so in

union with the Demiurgus. And after this, it is only a

yet more perfect inertion and yet further abstraction

that can enable him to reach the last residue of all

abstraction, the light within the heart, the spiritual

unity of undifferenced being. After he has stripped off

the successive vestures of his soul, and has reached this

last, this highest mode of being, the intuition of the

Self, nothing remains but that this intuition itself, as

itself a mental modification, pass away, vanishing into

the pure light of characterless being; that this undifferenced unity, may alone remain, the isolated,

only reality. The sage to whose inner faculties this

vision is present lives on in the body, till the expiry of

the merits that have procured his present embodiment.

At last his body falls away, and his soul re-enters the

one and only Self, returning to its proper state of per-

fect indetermination, to abide in itself as characterless

being, pure intelligence, undifferenced beatitude.

"The one remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of eternity."

The Viveka-

chūdāmani

quoted.

On the liberation of the sage, to use the language

of the Vivekachūdāmaṇi, all things visible melt away

into the original Self, as the darkness faints and melts

away before the rising sun. Its fictitiously limiting

mind with all its modes has been dissolved, and the

soul is the Self again; the jar is broken, and the ether

that was in it is one with the one and undivided ether,

from which the jar once seemed to sever it. The sage

has seen the Self, and passed into oneness with it, lost

like a water-drop in water. His implication in metem-

psychosis, and his extrication from it, have been but

fragments of the cosmic fiction; unreal as the snake that

appears and vanishes in place of the piece of rope, to

the eyes of the belated traveller. He has had life after

life from time without beginning, but these were but a

series of dreams. At last he is awake, and his dream-

lives are nullities. In pure verity it is only the Self

that ever is or has been. The world has neither come

into being nor passed out of being. There has been

no fatal migration of the soul, no worshipper seeking

recompense or mental purity, no sage yearning after

liberation, and no soul has been liberated. These things

were phantasmagoric figments, a play of semblances, a

darkness, an absence of light. Now the light is veiled

no more, and remains a pure undifferenced light, and

is in truth the only thing that ever has been, and

ever is.

This is the end of the knowledge of the divine Self,

the consummation of theosophy.

Thus liberated from metempsychosis, but still living

in the body, the sage is untouched by merit and de-

merit, unsoiled by sinful works, uninjured by what he

has done and by what he has left undone, unimplicated

in his actions good or evil. Good works, no less than

evil works, and equally the Demiurgus that recom-

penses them, belong to the unreal, to the fictitious plu-

rality of the world of semblances. As Sankaracharya

says, in his introduction to the Svetasvatara Upanishad,

"Gnosis once arisen needs nothing farther for the reali-

sation of its result; it requires subsidia only that it may

arise;" and Ámandagiri says, "The perfect sage, so long

as he lives, may do good and evil as he chooses, and

incur no stain; such is the efficacy of a knowledge of

the Self."

How the individual soul is to recognise and recover

its unity with the universal soul, and thus with the one

and only Self, is taught in the following verses of the

Chhandogya Upanishad, known as the Sandilyavidya,

or doctrine of the sage Sandilya. These verses are of

62

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. very frequent citation in the works of the Vedāntā schoolmen :-

The Śāndilya-vidya, Chhān-dogya Upani-shad.lit. 14. The soul is one with the cos-mic soul and with the Self.

" All this world is the Self. It arises out of, returns into, breathes in, the Self. Let the wise man be still, and meditate upon the Self.

" The soul is made of thought, and as its thought has been in this life, such shall its nature be when it departs out of this life. The wise man, therefore, must think thus :

" The universal soul1 is operative in the inward sense, embodied in the vital air;2 it is the pure light, the unfailing will, the ethereal essence, out of which all creations, all desires, all sweet sounds, and all sweet tastes proceed. It pervades all things, silent and unperturbed.

" This universal soul is my soul within the heart, smaller than a grain of rice, a barleycorn, a mustard-seed, a grain of millet, or the kernel of a grain of millet. This is my soul within the heart, greater than the earth, the air, the sky, greater than these worlds.

" Out of this universal soul all creations, all desires, all sweet sounds, and all sweet tastes proceed. It per-meates all things, speechless, passionless. This is my soul within the heart. This is Brahman. As soon as I depart out of this life I shall win re-union with the Self.

" He that has this faith has no more doubt. These are the words of Śāndilya."

When Brahman is viewed as in union with Māyā, Brahman becomes Īśvara, the cosmic soul, the world-evolving deity; and Māyā is the cosmic body, the body of the Demiurgus Īśvara. Śāṇḍilya teaches that the soul realises and recovers its unity with the cosmic soul, and with the characterless Self beyond and above the cosmic soul, by meditative ecstasy.

1 The universal soul is Īśvara, the Self in manifestation as the creative spirit and soul of the world, the viśvakartṛi and jaga-dātman.

2 Migrating along with the invisible body or tenuous 'involu-crum through a succession of visible bodies.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

53

emanciation, ecstasy, and the liberation of the soul Chap. III.

are spoken of as follows in the Brihadāranyaka Upani-

shad1 —

Invisible is the path, outspread, primeval, that I Renunciation

have reached, that I have discovered ; the sages, they liberation, as

that know the Self, travel along that-path to paradise, in the Bri-

hadāranyaka

liberated after this embodiment.

They that follow after illusion enter thick darkness ;

they that satisfy themselves with liturgic knowledge, a

thicker darkness still.

“Those spheres are joyless, overspread with thick

darkness ;—to those go after death those infatuated men.

that have no real knowledge.

“If a man know himself, that he is this universal spirit,

what can he want, what can he crave, that he should

go through-the feverishness of a fresh embodiment ?

“He whose soul is found, is gazed upon by him,

amid this wild of troubles,—he is the maker of all

things, the maker of the world; the world is his, for he

is the world.

“Being here, we know this, and if we did not know

it, it would be a great perdition :

“They that know this become immortal, others pass

on again to misery.

“When he sees this Self aright, the luminous essence,

the lord of all that has been, all that shall be, there is

nothing that he shrinks from.

“That outside of which, day after day, the year rolls

round,—that the gods adore, as the light of lights, as

length of life undying.

“That over which the five orders of living things,1

and over which the ether is outspread;—that do I know

to be myself, the universal Self,—even I the sage im-

mortal.

“They that know the breath of the breath, the eye

of the eye, the ear of the ear, the thought of the thought,

1 The five tribes of men. See above, p. 14.

64

THE PHILOSOPHY

-they have seen the Self primeval, that has been from all time.

"It is to be seen only with the mind : there is nothing in it that is manifold.

"From death to death he goes who looks on this as manifold.

"It is to be seen in one way only, it is indemon- stralbe, immutable. The Self is unsullied, beyond the expanse,1 unborn, infinite, imperishable.

"Let the patient Brahman know that, and learn wisdom. Let him not learn many words,2 for that is a weariness of the voice.

"This is indeed the great unborn Self. This has the form of conscious life, amidst the vital airs, dwelling in the ether in the heart; the ruler of all things, king of all things. It becomes no greater by good works, no less by evil works. This is the lord of all, the lord of living things, the upholder of living things. This is the bridge that spans the spheres, that they may not fall the one into the other. This it is that the Brahmans seek after in reciting the Veda.

"By sacrifice, by almsgiving, by self-inflicted pains, by fasting, if he learns this, a man becomes a quietist. This it is that the holy mendicants long for, in setting out upon their wanderings. Yearning after this it was that the wise men of old desired no offspring, saying, What have we to do with children, we to whom belongs this Self, this spiritual sphere ? They arose and for- sook the desire of children, of wealth, of worldly exist- ence, and set out upon their life of wandering. For the wish for children is the wish for wealth, and the wish for wealth is the wish for worldly existence, and there are both of these desires.

"This same Self is not this, not that : it is impal-

1 The expanse is a synonym for: Māyā, the self-feigning world- fiction.

2 Words = hymns and liturgic formulæ.

pable, for it cannot be handled; undecaying, for it

waste not away; unattached, for it has no ties; invul-

nerable, for it is not hurt by the sword or slain. Things

done and things left undone cross not over to it. It

passes beyond both the thought that it has done evil,

and the thought that it has done good. That which it

has done, and that which it has failed to do, afflict it

not.

"Therefore it has been said in a sacred verse: This,

the eternal greatness of the sage that knows Brahman,

becomes not greater by works, and becomes not lesser.

Let him learn the nature of that greatness. He that

knows it is no longer sullied by evil acts. Checking

his senses, quiescent, passionless, ready to suffer all

things, fixod in ecstasy, he sees within himself the Self,

he sees the universal soul. Imperfection crosses not

over to him, he crosses beyond imperfection, he burns

up all his imperfections. He that knows Brahman

becomes free from imperfections, free from doubt, en-

sphered in Self.

"This same great unborn Self is undecaying, un-

dying, imperishable, beyond all fear. The Self is

beyond all fear. He that knows this becomes the Self

beyond all fear."

The imperfections beyond which the sage of perfect

insight, living in the body but already free from fur-

ther transmigration, has passed, are merit and demerit,

the fruits of good and evil works, which serve alike

only to prolong metempsychosis. Good works as well

as evil are, from the higher point of view, an evil to be

shunned, as they protract the migrations of the soul.

It is not exertion, but inertion, and a perfect inertion,

that is the path to liberation. The sage is beyond all

fear, as already one with the one and only Self, and

free from the fear of misery in new embodiments. He

may, as we have seen that Ānandagiri says, do good

and evil for the rest of his days, as he pleases, and

66

THE PHILOSOPHỲ

CHAP. III.

incur no stain. Everything that he has done and

everything that he is doing, all his works, save only

those that are resulting in his experiences in his pre-

sent body, are burnt up in the fire of spiritual intuition.

And therefore in the Taittirīya Upanishad we read,

"The thought no longer tortures him, What good have

I left undone, what evil done ?" And in another pas-

sage of the Brīhadāranyaka : "Here the thief is a thief

no more, the Chandāla1 a Chandāla no more, the

Paulkasa1 no more a Paulkasa, the sacred mendicant

no more a sacred mendicant: they are no longer fol-

lowed by good works, they are no longer followed by

evil works. For at last the sage has passed through

all the sorrows of his heart." At the height reached

by the self-torturing sage, at last arrived at insight

into and re-union with the one and only Self, there is

no longer any distinction of personality; and at this

height of insight and re-union, saint and sinner, the

holy Brāhman and the impure alien and the degraded

outcast, are all one in the unity of characterless

being. The objection is obvious that this doctrine is

immoral, and the objection has been foreseen and met.

The reply is that the theosophist has had to go through

a process of initiatory virtues, in order to purify his

mind for the quest of reality and escape from further

misery, and that after he has attained his end, and is

one with the one and only Self, these virtues will ad-

here to him as habits, so far as others are concerned

for to himself they are unrealties like all things else

excepting Brahman. This is the reply of Nrisimha-

rasvatī towards the end of the Subodhini, an exposition

of the Vedāntasāra.

"Some one may urge: It will not surely follow from

this that the living yet liberated sage may act as he

chooses. We cannot allow this to be urged. It can-

not be denied that the perfect sage may act as lie

But will not therefore do

evil, for the

purificatory

virtues adhere to him as

habits.

1 Degraded indigones or outcasts from the Hindu pale.

pleases, in the presence of such texts, traditions, and

arguments as the following:-‘Not by killing his

mother, nor by killing his father.’ ‘He that does not

mistake not-Self for Self, whose inner vision is unsul-

lied,—he, though he kills these people, neither kills

them nor is killed.’ ‘He that knows the truth is sul-

lied neither by good actions nor by evil actions.’ ‘If

he sees the unity of all things, he is unaffected alike

whether he offer a hundred horse-sacrifices or kill hun-

dreds of holy Brāhmans.’ ‘Sages act in various ways,

good and bad, through the influence of the acts of for-

mer lives now at work in shaping their acts and their

experiences in their present embodiment.’ If then you

say that we teach that a perfect sage may do what he

likes, it is true we do teach this, but as these texts are

only eulogistic of the liberated sage, it is not intended

that he should act at random. As a great teacher says,

‘Ignorance arises from evil-doing, and wilful action

from ignorance : how can this wilful action, this doing

as one likes, result from good works, when the good

works pass away ?’ The preliminary acquirements of

the aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis, his

humility, sincerity, tenderness towards every form of

sentient life, stick to him like so many ornaments, even

after the rise of this spiritual intuition.”

The repetition of the sacred syllable Om is said to

conduct the slow aspirant to a gradual and progressive

liberation from metempsychosis. Om is a solemn affir-

mation, Yes. It is regarded by the Indian sages as made

up of the three letters A, U, M, in euphonic combina-

tion. This mystic syllable Om is said to be the nearest

similitude of Brahman;1 it is an image of the Self,

as the black ammonite serves instead of an image of

Vishṇu.2 It is said to include all speech; and as names

are in some way one and the same as the things they

name, it is one with all things, one with Brahman. In

1 Brahmano nediṣṭham pratīkam.

2 Śilagrāma.

68

THE PHILOSOPHY

the Praśna Upanishad the great teacher Pippalāda says,

"This syllable Om is the higher and the lower Brah-

man." That is to say, Om is Brahman as unconditioned,

and Brahman in fictitious manifestation as the

Demiurgus. In their exposition of this passage the

scholiasts say that the Self, as characterless and super-

sensible, cannot be made an object to the thinking

faculty, unless this faculty be previously purified by

meditation on the mystic Om, taken and devoutly iden-

tified with Brahman, as a man may take an image and

devoutly identify it with Vishnu. Upon the mind

thus purified the Self shines of itself, undifferenced.

The following verses of the Taittirīya Upanishad are

an invocation of this sacred utterance :-

"May that Indra, Om, that is the highest thing in

the Vedas, that is all that is immortal, above the im-

mortality of the Vedas, may that divine being strengthen

me with wisdom.

"Let me, O god, become a holder of immortality.

Let my body become able, my tongue mellifluous.

Let

me hear much with my ears. Thou art the sheath of

Brahman, only obscured by earthly wisdom. Preserve

in me what I have heard. That prosperity which

brings, and adds, and quickly provides raiment and

cattle and meat and drink at all times,-that prosperity

bring thou to me. Wealth wouldly with flocks : Svāhā.1

Let sacred students come to me : Svāhā.

Let sacred

students repair to me: Svāhā. Let me become a glory

among men: Svāhā. O holy one, let me enter into

thee : Svāhā. In thee, with thy thousand branches,

let me become pure : Svāhā.

"As the waters flow downwards, as the months pass

away into the year, even so let the sacred students

come to me. O maker, let them come in from every

side : Svāhā. Thou art the refuge. Give me thy light.

Receive me into thyself."

1 Svāhā is an exclamation made in invocations of the deities.

CHAP. III.

Invocation of Om in the Taittirīya Upanishad.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

69

The mystic import of Om, and the nature of the three Chap. III.

states of the soul, above which the aspirant to extrication is to rise, and the fourth or undifferenced state of the Self one and the same in all souls, into which he is to rise, are set forth in the Māndūkya Upanishad, one of the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda. This Upanishad is as follows :-

"Om. This syllable is all. Its interpretation is that The Māndūkya Upanishad: All is Om, and only Om, and whatever is beyond trinal time is Om, and only Om.

"For all this world is Brahman, this Self is Brahman, this same Self has four quarters.

"The first quarter is the soul in the waking state, externally cognitive, with seven members, with nineteen inlets, with fruition of the sensible, the spirit of waking souls, Vaiśvānara."

In the ascending order the first state of the Self, after it has passed into a fictitious plurality of migrating souls, is its waking state in the gross body, in which it stands face to face with outward things. Vaiśvānara or Purusha, the spirit that permeates all living bodies, is said to have seven members; the sky is his head, the sun is his eye, the air is his breath, the ethereal expanse is his body, the food-grains are his bladder, the earth is his feet, the sacrificial fire is his mouth. The nineteen inlets of the waking soul are the five organs of sense, the five organs of motion, the five vital airs,1 the common sensory, the intellect, the self-assertive, and the memorial faculties. The individual embodied

1 The five organs of sense are those of hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell. The five organs of motion are those of speech, handling, locomotion, excretion, and generation. The five vital airs are that of respiration, the descending, the permeating, the ascending, and the assimilative vital airs. The four internal organs are the common sensory, manas ; the intellect, buddhi ; the self-assertive, ahankāra ; and the memorial, chitta. These organs are made up of the elements as yet in a supersensible condition, the elements becoming sensible only after a process of concretion, technically known as quintuplication, panchīkarana.

70

THE PHILOSOPHY.

CHAP. III.

soul is termed Viśva, the sum of embodied souls Vaiś-

vānara.

The dreaming

"The second quarter is the soul in the dreaming

state,

state, with seven members, with nineteen inlets with

fruition of the ideal - the dreaming spirit."

In the dreaming state, Śankarāchārya says, the senses

are at rest, but the common sensory proceeds to work,

and the images, painted upon it like pictures on a canvas,

simulate the outward objects of the waking experiences.

The common sensory is set in motion in this way by

the illusion, the desires and the retributive fatality,

which cling to the soul. through all its migrations.

The individual sleeping soul is styled Taijasa, the sum

of sleeping souls in their invisible bodies is Hiraṇya-

garbha.

the state of

dreamless

sleep.

"Dreamless sleep is that state in whic. the sleeper

desires no desire and sees no dream. The third quarter

is the soul in the state of dreamless sleep, being one in

itself, a mass of cognition, pre-eminent in bliss, with

fruition of beatitude, having thought as its inlet; and

of transcendent knowledge."

In dreamless sleep the soul is said to be one in itself,

the unreal duality of the waking and the dreaming

consciousness having melted away into unity. The

soul is, in this state, also said to be a mass of cognition,

as it for the time reverts to its proper nature as undif-

ferenced thought. All things become one, as in a dark

night the whole outlook is one indistinguishable blur.

The soul is now pre-eminent in bliss, as no longer

exposed to the varied miseries that arise from the ficti-

tious semblances of duality, yet it is not yet pure bliss

itself, for the state of dreamless sleep is not abiding.

The individual soul in this state is styled Prājña, trans-

cendent in knowledge, and the sum of such souls is

Īśvara, the arch-illusionist, the world-projecting deity.

The involucrum of the soul at this stage is the beatific

vesture, and the counterfeit presentment or body of

OF THE UPANISHADS.

71

Īśvara is the body out of which all things emanate, the

cosmi al illusion. The soul is not yet at rest. As

Ānandagiri says, "It cannot be admitted that in this

dreæmless sleep the transcendentally cognitive soul is in

perfect and unmingled bliss, for it is still connected

with the world-fiction. If it were not so, the sleeper

would be already released from further migration, and

he could not rise up again as he does to fresh experi-

ences." The soul is not at rest till it has reached its

final extrication from metempsychosis. To return to

the Māṇdūkyā.

"This Self is the lord of all, this the internal ruler,

this the source of all things; this is that out of which

all things proceed, and into which they shall pass back

again.

"Neither internally cognitive nor externally cogni-

tive, nor cognitive both without and within; not a

mass of cognition, neither cognitive nor incognitive,

invisible, intangible, characterless, unthinkable, un-

speakable; to be reached only by insight into the

oneness of all spirits; that into which the world

passes away, changeless, blessed, above duality ;—such

do they hold the fourth to be. That is Self. That is

to be known."

To cite a few remarks of the scholiasts. The pure

Self, the fourth and only real entity, is that in the

place of which the fictitious world presents itself to the

uninitiated, as the fictitious serpent presents itself in

place of a piece of rope to the belated wayfarer. There

is something that underlies every such figment; it is

the sand of the desert that is overspread by the waters

of the mirage, it is the shell that is fictitiously replaced

by seeming silver, it is a distant post that in the dusk

is mistaken for a man, and so on. Thus illusion every-

where points to a reality beyond itself. The three

so-called quarters of Brahman previously spoken of,

only fictitiously present themselves in place of the sole

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III reality, the fourth. They are principles that emanate,

and out of which other principles emanate. Māyā,

the world-fiction, is the seed, and its figments, the ele-

ments and elemental products, are the growing world-

tree. The fourth, the Self, does not emanate from

anything, nor does anything (save fictitiously) emanate

from it; it is neither seed nor tree. It is unthinkable

and unspeakable, to 'be enounced only in negations.1

It is absolute. The world does not emanate from, but

fictitiously presents itself in place of, Brahman.

Literal analy- "This same Self is exhibited in the mystic syllable.

sis of Om. Om is exhibited in letters, The quarters are the letters,

and the letters are the quarters,—the letter A, the letter

U, and the letter M.

"The first letter, the letter A, is Vaiśvānara, the spirit

of waking souls in the waking world, because it per-

meates all utterance, because it has a beginning. He

that knows this attains to all desires, and becomes the

first of all men.

"The second letter, the letter U, is Taijasa, the spirit

of dreaming souls in the world of dreams, because this

letter is more excellent, or because it is the intermediate

letter. He that knows this elevates the train of his

ideas, becomes passionless; there is none in his family

that knows not Brahman.

"The third letter, the letter M, is Prājña, the spirit of

sleeping and undreaming souls, because it comprehends

the other two, because the other two proceed out of it.

He that knows this comprehends all things, and becomes

the source of things.

"The fourth is not a letter, but the whole syllable

Om, unknowable, unspeakable, into which the whole

world passes away, blessed, above duality. He himself

by himself enters into the Self,—he that knows this,

that knows this."2

1 Nishedhadvaitiraṃ tainirdedadh enmbhānti, Ānandagiri.

2 Therepetitionhereaselsewhere marks the close of the Upanishad.

The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad is thus an exposition of Chap. III.

the significance of the sacred syllable Om, of the three The doctrine

unreal states, and of the one real state of Brahman. of the five

The several vestures or involucra of the migrating souls the soul as

in the ascending order; the mode in which they and taught in the

their spheres of migration emanated out of Brahman Taittirīya

overspread with Māyā; and the scale of beatitudes by Upanishad.

which the soul may re-ascend to its fontal essence, the

one and only Self, are the themes of the second and

third sections, the Brahmānandavallī and the Bhṛiguvallī

of the Taittirīya Upanishad. This Upanishad belongs,

as its name imports, to the so-called Black Recension of

the Yajurveda. From the first section, the Śikhāvallī,

treating of the initiation and purification of the aspirant

to release from metempsychosis, the hymn to Om has

been already presented to the reader. The scale of

beatitudes the soul may mount by, is given in the

same words also in the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad.

The second and third sections of the Taittirīya are not

so engaging and impressive as many portions of the

Upanishads are; but as they contain many of the texts

of most frequent occurrence in the records of Indian

philosophy, a translation is subjoined. One of these

texts occurs in the opening lines of the second section,

the Brahmānandavallī, which is as follows :-

"Hari.1 Om. May he preserve us both, may he The Brahmān-

reward us both. May we put forth our strength to- andavallī, the

gether, and may that which we recite be efficacious. second section

May we never feel enmity against each other. Om. of the Tait-

Peace, peace, peace." tīya Upanishad.

This is an invocation on the part of the teacher and

his disciple, to remove any possible obstacles to the com-

munication and acquisition of the traditional science

of Brahman. The preserver and recompenser is the

universal soul or Demiurgus.

"He that knows Brahman attains the ultimate reality.

1 Hari is a name of Viṣṇu.

74

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. Therefore this sacred verse has been pronounced: Truth, knowledge, infinite, is Brahman. He that know this Self seated in the cavity in the highest ether, has fruition of all desires at one and the same moment by means of the omniscient Self.

The Self is within the mind, inside the heart of every living thing.

The scholiasts tell us that the word ether is here another name for the world-fiction, as it is also in the text of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka: “Over this impərishable principle the ethereal expanse is woven warp and woof.” The cavity is the mind, so called because knowledge, the subject knowing and the thing known, are contained in it, or because implication in metempsychosis and extrication from it depend upon it. The migrating soul is nothing else than the one and only Self fictitiously limiting itself to this or that individual mind; every individual mind being, equally with its successive environments, an emanation of the cosmical illusion. He that sees through the illusion the Self within his mind, enters into the fulness of undifferenced beatitude. He has every form of happiness at one and the same moment; not a succession of pleasures through this or that avenue of sense; such pleasures are mere products of the retributive fatality that prolongs the migration of the soul. The highest aim of all is to pass beyond such experiences to the further shore of union with Brahman, the fulness of bliss; to refund the personality of the migrating soul into the impersonality of the Self exempt from the experiences of metempsychosis. The aspirant to release from misery must learn that he and all other individuals are but particular and local manifestations of the universal soul; and that the universal soul, the Jagadātman, is the one and only Self veiled beneath the self-feigning world-fiction; and thus conscious of a seeming twofold order of subjects and objects. The world-fiction is made up of the sum of pleasures, pains, and indolences, the three primordia rerum of Indian cosmology. As soon as he

recognises his true nature he shall repossess it, and on

Chap. III. the ise of spiritual intuition the world of semblances

shall dissolve and pass away. The soul is already the

The soul is the characterless being, the pure thought, the undifferenced

bliss—how can it be said to regain it, to recover that

Self, but does not know it. self to be the Self.

which it already is? It recovers it by seeing it, by

knowing it. In its everyday life the soul has lost

itself by identifying itself with what it is not, with

its temporal vestures, its fictitious envelopments.

Nrisimhasarasvati teaches us that the soul seeking

to find itself in the impersonal unity of the Self, is

like a man looking for a necklace he thinks that he

has lost and suffers from the loss of, the necklace

being all the time about his neck. Terrified at the

miseries that await his soul in its migrations, he is

only trembling at his own shadow, for these miseries

are unreal. His affliction ceases as soon as he learns

what he truly is; his fears cease as soon as he learns the

unreality of everything that only seems to be. To the

highest point of view won by abstraction pursued to

its last limit, the implication of the soul, and its re-

lease, in and from metempsychosis, are unreal, mere

figments of the cosmic fiction. To return to the text:-

“Out of this same Self the ether rose, from ether air,

Procession of the five ele- from air fire, from fire water, from water earth, from

earth plants, from plants food, from food the germ of

ments and their qualita- life, from the germ of life man. This is man as made

up of the extractive matter of food.”

tive concretion or progressive concrétion.

Such are the five elements in their progressive con-

cretion as they emanate from Brahman overspread with

Māyā. Ether comes first with its single property of

sound : it is the soniferous element, and in it all finite

things exist. From ether the atmosphere proceeds,

with the property of ether and with a superadded pro-

perty of its own, namely, tangibility. Thus air has two

properties. From air comes fire with the properties

of ether and air, sound and tangibility, and with a

76

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III. superadded property of its own, namely, colour. Thus

fire has three properties. From fire proceeds water

with the properties of ether, air, and fire, and with a

superadded property of its own, namely, taste. Thus

water has four properties. From water emanates earth

with the properties of ether, air, fire, and water, and

with a superadded property of its own, namely, odour.

Thus earth has five properties. It is Brahman as illu-

sively overspread with Māyā, that manifests itself in

this progressive concretion of the elements and of

elemental things; and it is into Brahman that by a

regressive process of abstraction the whole series may

be made to disappear. Man in his visible and earthly

body is made up of the materials of food. Man here

stands for the whole scale of animal life, as being the

highest representative, and alone capable of the worship

of the gods and the knowledge of the sole reality that

The first and is veiled beneath the world. The earthly body is the

outermost first of the five vestures of the soul in order of ascent

vesture of the to the fontal essence: it is the nutrimentitious involu-

soul is the crum. Each lower is to be resolved into each higher

earthly body. garment of the soul; by a progressive insight into the

fictitious nature of them all, till the aspirant passes

through the last, the so-called beatific vesture, to the

Self within. We are told that he is to strip every

wrapper off himself one by one, as he might peel off

the successive shells of a grain of rice. The several

portions of the outermost shell of the soul, the earthly

body, are next described in grotesque similitude to the

parts of a bird:-

"Of this, this head is the head, this right arm is the

right wing, this left arm the left wing, this trunk is the

body, this nether part the tail, the prop. Therefore there

is this memorial verse: It is food that living creatures

spring from, all they that dwell upon the earth. They

live by food, and at the last they pass into food again,

for food is the earliest of creatures. Therefore food is

the panacea."

The body dies and restores its elements to the earth,

out of which they reappear in fresh vegetable forms,

to supply food again to animals and men—an Indian

statement of the circulation of matter.

"See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetate again :

All forms that perish other forms supply,

By turns we catch the vital breath and die ;

Like bubbles, on the sea of matter borne,

They rise and break, and to that sea return.

Food, Śankarāchārya says, is called the panacea, as

quenching the burning of the body,1 that is, as repair-

ing the waste of the system. It is a standing rule of

Indian philosophy that everything passes back into

that out of which it came. The body came out of, was

made out of food, and it passes back into the form

of food. To proceed with the text. Every item of

knowledge 's promised its proportionate reward, and

so we read :-

"They that meditate upon food as Brahman obtain

all kinds of food. For food is the earliest of created

things, and it is called the panacea. From food all

creatures are born, and after birth they grow by food.

It is eaten by them, and it eats them, and therefore it

is called food."

Animals are said to be eaten by food, in one of the

rude metaphors so frequent in the Upanishads, because

the elements of their bodies after dissolution enter into

the forms of vegetable life. The aspirant is now sup-

posed to have seen into the unreality of the food-made

body; and to have made it to disappear by an effort of

abstraction. He is now called upon to dissolve the

vesture next within, the so-called vesture of the vital

1 Sarvaushadham, sarvaprāninām dchadāh aprakamanam annam uchyate.

78

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III.

airs. This vesture is invisible, and one of the three factors of the invisible migrating body, the tenuous involucrum, the other two being the sensorial and the cognitional vestures. The body has been got rid of, the vesture of vital airs must next be put away.

The second vesture, the vesture of the vital airs.

"Within this same body made of the extractive matter of food, there is another and interior body, made of the vital airs, and with that the outer body is filled up. This interior body is also in the shape of man, fashioned after the human shape of the outer body. Of this interior body the breath is the head, the pervading air is the right wing, the descending air is the left wing, ether is the trunk, and earth is the tail, the prop. Therefore there is this memorial verse :

It is 'breath' that gods breathe, and men, and cattle, for the breath is the life of living things. Therefore it is called the life of all. They that meditate upon breath as Brahman live the full life of man. This body of vital air is embodied within the food-made body."

Animals, and men, and gods live in the outer body by virtue of an inner body made of the breath of life. To this inner body there is another, the sensorial body, which fills it up; to that another, the cognitional; to that another, the beatific. They are all alike permeated and animated by the universal Self, their true being, everlasting, unchanging, beyond the five vestures. Meditation upon the vesture of vital air is rewarded with length of life, according to the maxim that the votary is assimilated to that manifestation under which he meditates upon the Self. This second wrapper being opened and laid aside by meditative abstraction, the sage proceeds to the third or sensorial vesture of his soul.

The third vesture, the vesture of the common sensory.

"Within this same body of the airs of life there is another inner body made of the common sensory, and with this the vesture of the vital airs is filled. This

also is in the shape of man, fashioned after the human

shap of the vesture of vital airs. Of this sensorial

body the Yajush is the head, the Ṛik is the right wing,

the Sāman the left wing, the Brāhmaṇas the trunk,

and the Atharvāṅgirasa the tail, the prop. Therefore

there is this memorial verse: From which words turn

back with the thinking faculty, not reaching it; he

that knows the bliss of the Self is for ever free from

fear. This sensorial body is embodied in the body of

vital airs."

After stripping off this wrapper in his quest of the

reality hidden within, the aspirant proceeds to the

fourth vesture of the migrating soul, its garment of in-

tellect or cognition.

" Within this same sensorial body there is another

interior body, the cognitional body, and with this

sensorial body is filled. This also is in the shape of

man, fashioned after the human shape of the sensorial

vesture. Of this cognitional body faith is the head,

justice the right wing, truth the left wing, ecstasy the

trunk, the intellect the tail, the prop. Therefore there

is this memorial verse: It is knowledge that lays out

the sacrifice and performs the rites. All the gods

meditate upon knowledge as the earliest manifestation

of the Self. If a man learn that knowledge is the Self,

and swerves not from that, he has fruition of all desires

after leaving his imperfections in the body. This same

cognitional vesture is embodied in the sensorial body."

The aspirant, after laying aside the first wrapper, is

free from the body; after laying aside the second, third,

and fourth, he is free from the invisible body, the tenuous

involucrum, which clothes the soul in its migration

from body to body. Passing beyond the visible and

the invisible body, he arrives at the last vesture of the

spirit, the beatific involucrum, that clothes the sleeping

but undreaming soul.

" Within this same cógnitional body there is another,

80

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

The fifth and innermost vesture, the vesture of beatitude.

This clothes the soul in its third state, the state of dreamless sleep.

an inner body, the blissful body; and with this the cognitional body is filled. This also is in the shape of man, fashioned after the human shape of the cognitional body. Of this blissful vesture tenderness is the head, joy is the right wing, rejoicing the left wing, bliss the trunk, and Brahman is the tail, the prop. Therefore there is this memorial verse : If a man think that the Self is not, he becomes as if he were not: if he knows that the Self is, then they know that he is indeed. This same blissful vesture is embodied in the cognitional body.

This blissful vesture of the soul reposing in dreamless sleep is not Brahman, but it has Brahman beneath it as its prop or basis. In this vesture the soul that sleeps without dreaming is for the time at one with Brahman, and all the duality projected by illusion is for the time at an end in the pure unity of the Self. This is the last vesture to be laid aside in order to reach the ultimate truth within.

So far the doctrine of the five vestures of the migrating soul1 has been propounded in the text of this Upanishad. A similar tenet makes its appearance in the philosophy of the neo-Platonists. Thus Proclus teaches that even before it comes into the world the soul must have animated a body, just as the dæmons and deities are embodied souls. This body is immaterial and ethereal, and emanates, like the soul itself, out of the Demiurgus. Proclus places between this immaterial body and the earthly body a series of other involucra, which come with it into the world, clothe it after death, and accompany it in its migrations so long as it remains in the phenomenal order of things.

The Brahmānandavalli proceeds to represent the disciple as asking his teacher who it is that is to attain to re-union with the one and only Self. The emanation of elements and elemental things from

1 Panchakoshavidyā.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

81

Brahman and Māyā, and the five wrappers of the soul, Chān. III.

are matters that relate to the ordinary man and to the sage alike: is the re-union with the fontal essence open to both alike? The text proceeds :—

" After this arise the questions: Does a man without knowledge go after death to that veritable world? or is it only he that has knowledge, that has fruition of that veritable world?"

The sequel of the Upanishad is the reply to these questions. It is he only that surmounts the general illusion and sees the Self within by spiritual intuition, that shall pass into the Self never to return. The text first speaks of the creation of the world at the opening of each æon in the infinite series of æons, by the fictitiously-conditioned Brahman,1 the cosmic soul, or Archimagus.

" He desired: Let me become many, let me pass into plurality. He performed self-torture, and having performed that self-torture, projected out of himself all into seeming this world, whatever is."

The notion of the creative action of the Demiurgus here exhibited, is the same as that in the Nāsadīyasūkta, Rigveda, x. 129, presented to the reader in the first chapter of this work. As the Indian scholiasts say that the words, " It was not entity, nor was it non-entity," in that hymn refer to Māyā, so they also hold that " the one that was void, covered with nothingness," which " developed itself by the power of self-torture," is Brahman in its earliest manifestation, the illusory creator, or Demiurgus, or soul of the universe. The passing of Brahman into the fictitious plurality of the phenomenal world, is frequently spoken of in the Upanishads as the self-explication of Brahman under

1 We must be cautious not to refer what is predicable only of Īśvara to Brahman per se. Īśvara, Brahman fictitiously associated with Māyā, and thus the fictitious creator of the fictitious world.

F

82

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

names and colours, that is to say, its manifestation under visible and nameable aspects.1 Brahm a, the one and only Self, when mirrored upon Māyā, the world-fiction, is that out of which the world emanates.2 The desires of this Demiurgus are the emanations of the world-fiction.3 “His self-torture is a figurative expression for his prevision of the world that is to be; and after this prevision he projects out of himself the world as it is to be experiéced by migrating souls, waking, dreaming, or in dreamless sleep, in space and time, in name and colour,—a world that is suitable to the residuary influence of the works of those souls in the last æon.” For it must always be remembered that the series of worlds is without beginning, and that every genesis is a palingenesia. To

“Having evolved that world, he entered into it, and having entered it, he became the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite, the receptacle and not the receptacle, the living and the lifeless, the true and the false; he became the true, for whatever is they call the true. Therefore there is this memorial verse: Non-existent was this in the beginning, from that the existent proceeded. That made itself, and therefore it is called self-made or holy.4 He is taste, for on receiving taste a man becomes blissful. For who could live, who could breathe if in this ether there were not bliss? For he gives bliss; for when a man finds a safe footing in this invisible, incorporeal, undeflnable, ultimate principle, he arrives beyond all fear; but when he admits even the smallest difference in that principle, fear comes upon him. That very principle is a fear to the sage that views such difference. Accordingly there is this memorial verse: In awe of

1 Nāmarūpavyākaraṇa.

2 Māyāpratibimbitaṃ brahma jagataḥ kāraṇam, Ānandagiri.

3 Śankarāchārya's Commentary on the Taittirīya Upanishad.

4 Sukrita.

this the wind blows, in awe of this the sun rises; in awe

nis speed Agni and Indra, and the Death-god speeds besides those other four.

The universal soul enters into the ether in the heart

of every living thing, and there lodges in fictit 'us limi-

tation to each individual mind, like the ether one and

undivided in every jar and other hollow thing, or like

the one sun reflected upon every piece of water. Thus

lodged, it is many in the many that see, that hear, that

think, that know. It is the life of all. In saying that

this was non-existent in the beginning, the text does

not deny that Brahman existed in the beginning, but

only that it existed in the fictitious modes of the

phantasmagoric world. The text now presents the

scale of beatitudes in human and divine embodiments,

through which the migrating soul may remount on its

passage to the fontal unity of Self.

"There is the following cumputation of beatitude: The male of

Let there be a youth, a good youth, versed in the Veda, that may be

an able teacher, hale and strong, and let the whole asconded by

earth, full of wealth, belong to him. This is one

human bliss. A hundred of these human beatitudes

are the one bliss of the man that has become a Gand-

harva, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and un-

stricken with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes

of the man that has become a Gandharva, are the one

bliss of the divine Gandharvas, and also of a sage

learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A

hundred of these beatitudes of the divine Gandhar-

vas, are the one bliss of the forefuthers of the tribes

in their long-lasting sphere, and also of a sage learned

in the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred

of these beatitudes of the forefathers in their long-

lasting sphere, are the one bliss of those born as gods

in the sphere of the gods, and also of a sage learned in

the Veda and unstricken with desire. A hundred of

these beatitudes of those born as gods in the sphere of

84

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. the gods, is the one bliss of those that have become

gods, having gone to the gods by means of Sacrifice,

and also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken

with desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of those

that have become gods, is one bliss of the gods them-

selves, and also of a sage learned in the Veda and

unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beati-

tudes of the gods is the one bliss of Indra, and also of

a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with desire.

A hundred of these beatitudes of Indra is the one bliss

of Brihaspati,1 and also of a sage learned in the Veda

and unstricken with desire. A hundred of these beati-

tudes of Brihaspati is the one bliss of Prajāpati,2 and

also of a sage learned in the Veda and unstricken with

desire. A hundred of these beatitudes of Prajāpati is

the one bliss of Brahmā,3 and also of the sage learned in

the Veda and unstricken with desire. It is the same

universal soul4 that is in the soul and that is in the sun.

"He that knows this turns his back upon the world,

passes through this food-made body, passes through

this body of the vital airs, passes through this sensorial

body, passes through this cognitional body, and passes

through this beatific body. Therefore there is this

memorial verse : It is the Self from which words turn

back with the mind, not reaching it; he that knows

the bliss of the Self no longer fears anything. He is

no longer tortured with the thought, What good thing

have I left undone, what evil have I done? When he

knows this, these two, the good and the evil, strengthen

his spirit, for both are only Self.5 These two only

strengthen his spirit when he knows this. Such is the

mystic doctrine."

1 The spiritual teacher of the

gods.

2 Prajāpati is the same as Pu-

rusha, Virāj, or Vaiśvānara.

3 Brahmā is Hiranyagarbha.

4 The Demiurgus.

5 That is, the good and the evil

things that he has done are now

seen by' him to have 'been only

fictitious manifestations of the

one and only Self.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

85

The aspirant on his way to liberation passes through Chap. iii.

and beyond all finite and local phases of bliss, into the

pure, undifferenced beatitude, in which there is no

longer the distinction of subject and object. He enters

into the beatitude beyond duality ; and good and evil

for him have lost their sting, the power of giving rise

to the miseries of fresh embodiments. The Bhriguvalli

opens and closes with the same invocation as that pre-

fixed to the Brahmānandavalli. It treats of self-torture

and of meditation on the five wrappers of the soul, as

subsidiary to the knowledge of Brahman.

"Hari: Om. May he preserve us both, may he The Bhrigu-

reward us both. May we put forth our strength to-

gether, and may what we recite be efficacious. May We ralli, the third

we never feel enmity against each other. Om. Peace,

peace, peace.

"Bhrigu, the son of Varuṇa, approached his father

and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. His father

said this to him : Food, breath, eye, ear, the thinking

organ, speech."

Varuṇa is said to be here enumerating the several

avenues to the knowledge of Brahman, these being

food, i.e., the outer body, the breath within, and within

the cognitional and sensorial vestures of the soul.

"And again he said to him: Seek to know that out First step, to

of which these living things come forth, by which they the knowlwlge

live when they have come forth, and into which they of Brahman.

pass again and re-enter : that is Brahman. Bhrigu prac-

tised self-suppression, and upon performing it perceived The earthly

that food is Brahman, in that all these living things body is Brah-

arise from food, live by food when they have arisen,

and pass back into and re-enter food.

"After learning this he came again to his father Second step.

Varuṇa and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He The vital air is

said to him, Seek to know Brahman by self-suppres-

sion : self-suppression is Brahman. He practised self-

86

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III.

suppression, and upon performing it perceived that

vital air is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living

things proceed from vital air, live by vital air, and

pass back and re-enter vital air."

The self-torture1 or self-suppression prescribed as

introductory to the knowledge of Brahman, is a pro-

longed effort to annul the individual consciousness, to

put away sense and thought, desire and will. It con-

sists in the fixation of the muscles, the senses, and the

intellect, with a view to riveting the senses and the

thought upon one single object.

Third step.

The common

sensory is

Brahman.

"Upon learning this he again came to his father

Varuṇa and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He

said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-

suppression : self-suppression is Brahman. He prac-

tised self-suppression, and on practising it learned that

the common sensory is Brahman, inasmuch as all these

living things issue out of, live by, and return into the

common sensory.

Fourth step.

The mind is

Brahman.

"After learning this he again came to his father

Varuṇa and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He

said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-

suppression : self-suppression is Brahman. He prac-

tised self-suppression, and on practising it perceived that

cognition is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living things

issue out of cognition, live by it, and pass back into it.

"Upon learning this he again came to his father

Varuṇa and said, Sir, teach me about Brahman. He

said to him, Seek the knowledge of Brahman by self-

suppression : self-suppression is Brahman. He prac-

tised self-suppression, and on practising it perceived

that bliss is Brahman, inasmuch as all these living

things issue out of bliss, live upon it, pass back into it.

This is the science that Varuṇa imparted and Bhrigu

received, a science made perfect in the supreme ether

1

Tapas.

Tach cha tapo rāhyān-

tahkaranaṣamādhānam,

manas

tapas,

Sankaracharya.

chandriyānām chaikāgryam para-

in the heart. He that knows this is made perfect; he

beco rich in food, an eater of food; he becomes

great in offispring, in flocks and herds, and spiritual

power; he becomes great in fame. Let him never find

fault with food: that is his observance. The vital air

is food. The body is the eater of that food. The Outward ob-

body is based on vital air, and vital air is based on the body, and thus food is based on food. He that knows

this food based on food is made perfect; he becomes

rich in food, an eater of food; he becomes rich in

offspring, flocks and herds, and spiritual power; he

becomes great in fame.

"Let him never despise food: that is his observance.

Water is food, light is the eater of that food.

Light is based on water, and water is based on light, and thus

food is based on food. He that knows this food based

on food is made perfect; he becomes rich in food, an

eater of food; he becomes rich in offspring, flocks

and herds, and spiritual power, and rich in fame.

"Let him make much of food: that is his observance.

Earth is food, ether is the eater of that food. Ether is

based on earth, and earth is based on ether, and thus

food is based on food. He that knows this food based

on food is made perfect; he becomes rich in food, an

eater of food; he becomes rich in offspring, in flocks

and herds, and spiritual power, and rich in fame.

"Let him forbid no man to enter his house: that is

his observance. Let him then store up food in what-

ever way he can. They tell him that comes to the

house that his food is ready. If the food is given at

once, it shall be given at once to the giver; if it be

given later, it shall be given later to the giver; if it be

given only at the last, it shall be given only at the last

to the giver.

"Let Brahman be meditated on as that which is

preservative in speech, as that which is acquisitive and

preservative in the ascending and descending vital airs,

38

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. III. as work in the hands, as locomotion in the feet. These

are the meditations on the Self in man. Now for its

manifestations in the gods. It is fertility in the rain,

mightiness in lightning. It is wealth in flocks and

herds; in the stars it is light. It is offspring, immor-

tality, beatitude. In the ether it is all that is. Let

him meditate upon Brahman as the basis of all that is,

and he shall be-firmly based. Let him meditate upon

it as greatness, and he shall become great. Let him

meditate upon it as thought, and he shall become a

thinker. Let him meditate upon it as that which

overawes, and the things that he desires shall bow

before him. Let him meditate upon it as powerful,

and he shall become powerful. Let him meditate upon

it as that into which divine things die away, and his

enemies and rivals shall perish, and his brother's sons,

if they displease him, shall die. It is the same uni-

versal spirit that is in the soul and that is in the sun.

He strips off

the five ves-

tures of the

soul one after

another. He

acquires and

exercises ma-

gical power.

He sings the

song of uni-

versal unity,

and is ab-

sorbed into

the one and

all.

"He that knows this turns his back upon the world,

passes through this food-made body, passes through

this body of the vital airs, passes through this cognitional body, and passes

through this beatific body. Expatiating through these

worlds, with food at will, and taking shapes at will, he

is ever singing this song of universal unity : O wonder-

ful, wonderful; wonderful. I am food; I am food, I

am food; I am the eater, I am the eater, I am the

eater; I am the transmutter of food into the eater, I

am the transmutter of food into the eater, I am the

transmutter of food into the eater. I am the first-born

of creation, earlier than the gods, the navel of immor-

tality.1 He that gives me keeps me. I am the food

that eats the eater. I stand above every world, with

light as of the sun. He that knows this is all this.

Such is the mystic doctrine.

"Hari. Om. May he preserve us both, may he re-

1 Hiranyagarbha.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

89

ward us both. May we put forth our strength together, CHAP. III.

and y what we recite be efficacious. May we never

feel enmity against each other. Om. Peace, peace,

peace."

In this song of universal unity the sage finds that he

is one with every manifestation of Brahman, from the

visible elemental things of the world of sense up to the

divine emanations Purusha, Hiranyagarbha, and Īśvara;

one also with the underlying reality, the one and only

Self. At this stage he is said to possess magical powers;

he can range at will from this world through the several

worlds of the deities, and assume what shapes he

pleases. A trace of illusion1 adheres to him at times,

so that he still sees the sem lances of duality; he knows

himself to be the Self that is in all things, and finds

that he possesses the wonder-working powers of the

Yogin or ecstatic seer; he can take upon himself any

shape, visible or invisible, from the least to the greatest,

and go where he chooses among the worlds of men and

gods, and is said figuratively to enjoy every form of

pleasure at one and the same moment. Thaumaturgy

is the gift of ecstasy. The epithets that Archer Butler

bestows upon the philosophy of Proclus are applicable

to the philosophy of ancient India. It is sublime and

it is puerile. It is marked at once by sagacity and by

poverty, by daring independence and by grovelling

superstition.

In the view of the Indian schoolmen, the greatest of

all th: texts of the Tpanishads is the text That art thou,

in the sixth Prapāthaka2 of the Chhāndogya

Upanishad. This is pre-eminently the Mahāvākya, the

supreme erouncement. It is on the comprehension of

this text that spiritual intuition3 or ecstatic vision rises

in the purified intelligence of the aspirant to extrication

from metempsychosis. This text is the burden of the

instruction given by Āruni to his son, the pedantic and

1 Ānandagiri in loco. 2 Lecture. 3 Samyagdarsana.

Chap. III.

opinionated Svetaketu, already mentioned in the second

chapter of this work.

The dialogue

of Aruni and

Svetaketu1, from the

Chhāndogya

Upanishad.

"Rooted in the existent are all these created things,

built upon the real, based upon the real, It has been

said already how these divine elements heat, water,

earth, in man are threefold 1 When a man is dying,

his speech passes into his inner sensory, his inner sen-

sory into his vital breath, his vital breath into heat, his

heat into the supreme divinity. All this world is ani-

mated by the supersensible. This is real, this is Self.

That art thou, Svetaketu. Hearing this, Svetaketu

spoke again: Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my

son, he replied.

Allegory of

the sweet

juices and the

honey.

"As bees make honey, gathering into one mass, into

unity, the sweet juices of various plants; as those

juices cannot distinguish themselves the one from the

other, as the juices of this plant and that: so all these

creatures, though they are one in the real, know not

that they are one in the real. What they are severally

in this life, lion, or wolf, or boar, or worm, or moth, or

gnat, or mosquito, that they become again and again.

All this world is animated by the supersensible. This

is real, this is Self. That art thou, Svetaketu. He

said again: Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son,

he replied.

Allegory of

the rivers and

the sea.

"These rivers flow east and west, they are drawn

from the sea east and west, and flow into the sea again.2

They become sea and only sea. They know not there

that one is this river and another that. And so with

all these living things. They come out of the real, and

do not know that they come out of it, and therefore they

1 The threefold nature of the

elements, as taught in the Chhān-

dogya, is said by the scholiasts to

imply the fuller doctrine of quin-

tuplication, or the fivefold succes-

sive concretion of the elements

already described in this chapter.

2 "They are drawn up from the

sea into the clouds, fall again in

the form of rain, and in the shape

of the Ganges and other rivers

flow back into the sea, and be-

come one with it again."—Śan-

karāchārya in loco.

become in this life, as it may be, lion, or wolf, or boar,

or worm, or moth, or gnat, or mosquito. All this world

is animated by the supersensible. That is real, that is

Self. That art thou, Svetaketu. He said again :

Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son, said Aruni.

"Here is a great tree. If a man strike the root, it still

lives, and its sap exudes. If he strike it in the trunk, it

still lives, and its sap exudes. If he strike it at the top, it

still lives, and its sap exudes. This tree, permeated by

the living soul, stands still imbibing, still luxuriant.1

If the living soul forsake one of its branches, that

branch dries up: if it forsake a second branch, that

branch dries up: if it forsake a third branch, that

branch dries up: if it forsake the whole tree, the whole

tree dries up. Know this, my son, said Aruni. In-

formed as it is by the living soul, it is this body that

dies, the soul dies not. All this world is animated by

the supersensible. That is real, that is Self. That art

thou, Svetaketu. Hereupon Svetaketu spoke again :

Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my son, said Aruni.

"Take a fig from the holy fig-tree. Here it is, sir,

said he. Break it open. It is broken open, sir. What

dost thou see in it? These little seeds, sir. Break

open one of them. It is broken open, sir. What dost

thou see in it? Nothing. His father said : From this,

so small that thou canst not see it, from this minute-

ness the great holy fig-tree grows up. Believe, my son,

that all this world is animated by the supersensible.

That is real, that is Self. That art thou, Svetaketu.

He said again : Teach me further, sir. Be it so, my son,

said Aruni,

"Take this lump of salt, and throw it into some

water, and come to me again to-morrow. Svetaketu

did so. His father said : Take out the lump of salt

thou threwest into the water yesterday evening. He

1 The tree is the body, the body. These are vitalised by the

branches the constituents of the indwelling soul.

92

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III

looked for it, but could not find it, for it was dissolved.

His father told him to sip some water from the surface.

What is it like ?

It is salt, he answered.

Taste it further down : what is it like ?

It is salt.

Taste it from the bottom : what is it like ?

It is salt.

Now thou hast tasted it, come to me, said Āruṇi.

Śvetaketu came and said : It remains always as it is.

His father said : The salt is still there, though thou seest it not.

All this world is animated by the supersensible.

That is real, that is Self.

That art thou, Śvetaketu.

So Śvetaketu said again : Teach me further, sir.

Be it so, my son, he replied.

Allegory of

the highway-

man and the

blindfold tra-

veller.

"A highwayman leaves a wayfarer from Kandahār blindfold in a desolate waste he has brought him to.

The wayfarer brought blindfold into the waste and left there, knows not what is east, what is north, and what is south, and cries aloud for guidance.

Some passer-by unties his hands and unbinds his eyes, and tells him,

Yonder is the way to Kandahār, walk on in that direction.

The man proceeds, asking for village after village, and is instructed and informed until he reaches Kandahār.

Even in this way it is that in this life a man that has a spiritual teacher knows the Self.

He is 'de-

layed only till such time as he pass away.1

All this world is animated by the supersensible.

That is real, that is Self.

That art thou, Śvetaketu.

Then Śvetaketu said again : Teach me further, sir.

Be it so, my son, he replied.

Gradual de-

parture of the

soul at death

"His relatives come round the dying man and ask,

Dost thou know me ? dost thou know me ?

He recog-

nises them so long as his voice passes not away into his thought, his thought into his breath, his breath into his vital warmth, his warmth into the supreme divinity.

But when his voice has passed away into thought,

1 The sage liberated and yet living, the jīvanmukta, has to wait only till his body fails away from

him, to make his personality pass away for ever into the impersonality of the one and only Self.

thought into breath, his breath into warmth, his warmth

into the supreme divinity, then at last he ceases to

know them. All this world is animated by the super-

sensible. That is real, that is Self. That art thou,

Śvetaketu. After this Śvetaketu spoke yet once again :

Teach me further, holy sir. Be it so, my son, said

Āruni.

"They bring a man with his hands tied before the

Raja, saying, He has carried something off; he has

committed theft. Heat the axe for him. If the man

is guilty of the deed, but falsifies himself, intending

falsehood, and screens himself with a lie, he lays hold

of the red-hot hatchet and is burnt, and thereupon is

put to death. If he is guiltless he tells the truth

about himself, and with true intent, clothing himself

with the truth, he lays hold of the glowing hatchet

and is not burnt, and is not put to death. As he is not

burnt in that ordeal, so is the sage unhurt in the fiery

trial of metempsychosis. All this world is animated

by the supersensible. This is real, this is Self. That

art thou, Śvetaketu."

That art thou.1 The word THAT, in the first place,

denotes the totality of things in the whole, that is,

world-fiction, the Demiurgus or universal soul, and the

characterless Self. These three fictitiously present

themselves in union; the universal soul and the ficti-

tious universe being penetrated and permeated by the

Self, as a red-hot lump of iron is penetrated and per-

meated by fire. The word THAT, in the second place,

points to the characterless Self apart from the fictitious

universal spirit, and the fictitious universe which over-

lies it.

The word THOU, in the first place, denotes the totality

of things in the parts, that is, the various portions of the

world-fiction, the various individual minds or migrat-

ing souls to which these portions are allotted, and the

1 This explanation is taken from Nṛsimhasarasvatī's Subodhinī.

94

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. III. characterless Self. These three also fictitiously present

themselves in union; the various phases of the world-

fiction and the various migrating souls being penetrated

and permeated by the Self as a lump of iron by fire.

The word THOU, in the second place, points to the

characterless Self, the pure bliss, that underlies the

various phases of the world-fiction and the various

migrating souls.

The sense of the text is therefore this: the individual

soul is one with the universal soul, and the universal

soul is one with. the one and only Self. It is of this

Self, throtgh the operancy of the world-fiction, that all

individual things and persons are the fictitious parts:-

" Not all parts like, but all alike informed

With radiant light, as glowing iron with fire.

The differences that mark off thing from thing and

soul from soul are false, and shall pass away; the

spiritual unity that pervades and unifies them is true,

and shall abide for ever.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

93

CHAPTER IV.

THE MUNDAKA UPANISHAD.

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body nature is, and God the soul :

That changed through all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ;

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns

As the rapt seraph that adores and burns :

To him no high, no low, no great, no small ;

He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all."—POPE.

" And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all

accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every bour, but

the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the sub-

ject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun,

the moon, the animal, the tree ; but the whole, of which these are the

shining parts, is the soul. From within or from behind a light shines

through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but

the light is all."—EMERSON.

It is said in a Vedic text that every Brāhman1 comes into the world bringing with him three debts. These are The religion

his debts to the Rishis of sacred studentship, that he may learn the primitive hymns by heart, and become prior solenne

able himself to teach them to pupils of his own to ensure and the sine

their perpetual transmission ; his debt of sacrifice to the

gods ; and his debt to the Pitris or forefathers of the

1 Jāyamānā vai brāhmaṇas trib- rishibhyo, yajñena devbhyah, pra-

ḥir riṇavān jāyate, brahmacharyeṇa jayā pitṛibhyah.

96

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. tribes, of sons to offer the food and water to their deceased father and to their progenitors. The pavment of these debts is incumbent on those living in the world; and they must fulfil every prescriptive usage, and live in obedience to the religion of tradition and liturgic rites. Worship with its proper ritual is binding upon the multitude, and has its fruit in raising the worshipper to higher embodiments, or procuring for him a sojourn in a paradise of the deities. This religion belongs therefore to the world of fictions and semblances, to the phantasmagoric world of migrating souls and their spheres of recompense; and has its reality only for the unpurified and unawakened spirit, for whom it is true that the miseries of metempsychosis are real enough. These immemorial rites and ordinances have their place; they are the religion of the many, and if followed with the understanding of their mystic import, and a knowledge of the deities invoked, may elevate the worshipper to the paradise of Brahmā. This understanding and this knowledge are the "inferior science," aparā vidyā. The worship of the deities and the ancestral usages, however, bear also a higher fruit. The aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis may practise them with a sole view to the purification of his intellect for the reception of higher truth. He turns his back upon the world, and upon the religion of the world and all its promises. He wishes for no higher form of life, for every form of life is hateful; he wishes for no paradise, for the pleasures of every paradise are tainted

The religion and fugitive. The religion of usages and liturgic rites is a mode of activity, and, like every other mode of action, tends to misery. Activity is the root of pain, for so long as a living being acts so long must he receive the award of his good and evil works, in body after body, in æon after æon. The aspirant has already learnt, imperfectly as he may have realised it, that to the true point of view taught by the recluses in the

longa the migration of the soul.

jungle, the religion of rites and of immemorial usages,

the sacrifices, and the gods sacrificed to, are alike un-

real: for the sage made perfect they have no existence.

There is no truth in things many, in things finite ;

no truth where the thinker is other than the things

around him. A Vedic text says that he that medi-

tates upon any deity as a being other than himself

has no knowledge, and is a mere victim to the gods.

As soon as a man turns his back on every form of

life, and aspires to escape from all further embodi-

ment, he is free from the debt of sacrifice to the

deities, and the debt of progeny to the forefathers of

the tribes. He may, if he will, leave these debts

unpaid, and proceed at once from sacred studentship to

meditation and self-discipline in the jungle. After his

initiation into the Veda, the path of abnegation and

knowledge is at once open to him. As there is no

truth in the many, all truth is in the one ; and this

one that alone is is the Self, the inmost essence of all

things, that vivifies all sentiencles and permeates all

things, from a tuft of grass up to the highest god, up to

Brahmā himself. This is the pure bliss, and it dwells

within the heart of every creature, and to see this and

to become one with it for ever is the highest end of

aspiration. It is to be reached only by a never-failing

inertion and a never-failing abstraction, by a rigid and

insensible posture, by apathy, vacuity, and ecstasy. To

see it, to become one with it, to melt away his per-

sonality into its impersonality, a man must renounce

all ties, must repair to the solitude of the forest, must

crush every desire, and check every feeling and thought,

till his mind be fitted to reflect the pure light of undif-

ferenced being, to be irradiated with, till it pass away

into, "the light of lights beyond the darkness." In the

course of this procedure the cosmic fiction gradually

vanishes, and the Self shines forth as the sun shines

out slowly as the clouds disperse. There is thus a

98

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. higher religion for the few, to which the religion of the

many is only the first step of preliminary purifi tion.

This higher religion, the knowledge of the Self, is the

superior science, the parā vidyā. The sacrifices, and

the deities sacrificed to, and the recompenses, have a

relative reality to the unawakened multitude. They

have no reality to the already purified aspirant to

liberation from metempsychosis ; he refuses reality to

everything but the one and only real, and renounces all

things that he may find that one and only real, the Self

within. His only business is with the spiritual intuition.

Such is the subsumption of karmavidyā, the knowledge

of rites, under brahmavidyā, the knowledge of the Self;

and such is the absorption of the religion of usages

into the religion of ecstatic union. The inferior science

is a dharmajijñāsā, or investigation of th several re-

wards of the various prescriptive sacra; the superior

science is a brahmajijñāsā, or investigation of the fontal

spiritual essence, Brahman.

This religio1 or philosopy

must be learnt from an

the individual intellect. It is everywhere taught in the

Upanishads that it was revealed by this or that god or

other semi-divine teacher, and handed down through a

succession of authorised exponents.1 It is only from

one of these accredited teachers that the knowledge of

the Self is to be had; as we have already read, "A man

that has a spiritual teacher knows the Self." All teach-

ing that is out of accordance with the traditionary ex-

position of the Upanishads, is individual assertion and

exercise of merely human ingenuity.2

These things premised, and with the information given

in the preceding chapters, the reader is in a position to

understand the Mundaka Upanishad. This is one of

the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda, and one of the most

1 Āchāryaparamparā, sampradāyaparamparā,

2 Svabuddhiparikalpita, utprekshāmitra.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

99

important documents of primitive Indian philosophy. CHAP. IV.

Explanations will be given from time to time from the traditional exposition of the scholiasts Sankarāchārya and Anandagiri. The text is as follows:-

I. I. "Om. Brahmā was the first of the gods that emanated, the maker of the world, the upholder of the spheres. He proclaimed the science of the Self, the basis of all science, to his eldest son, Atharvan.

"Atharvan in ancient days delivered to Angis that science of the Self which Brahmā had proclaimed to him, and Angis to Satyavāha the Bhāradvāja, and the Bhāradvāja transmitted the traditionary science to Angirasa.

"Saunaka the householder came reverently to Angirasa and asked : Holy sage, what must be known that all this universe may be known ?

"Angirasa replied : Those that know the Veda say that there are two sciences that are to be known, the superior science and the inferior.

"Of these, the inferior is the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda, the Atharvaveda, and the instrumental sciences, the phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metrics, and astronomy. The superior science is that by which the imperishable principle is attained to.

"That which is invisible, impalpable, without kin, without colour, that which has neither eyes nor ears, neither hands nor feet, which is imperishable, manifested in infinite variety, present everywhere, and wholly supersensible,—that is the changeless principle that the wise behold as the origin of all things.

"The whole world issues out of that imperishable principle, like as a spider spins his thread out of himself and draws it back into himself again, or as plants grow up upon the earth, or as the hairs of the head and of the body issue out of the living man."

Māyā, the world-fiction, is, as has been already seen, the body of Íśvara, the Archimagus, the first and highest of emanations,—the body out of which all things proceed.

100

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV. ceed, the kāranasatīra. Īśvara projects all things and

all migrating souls out of his body, and withdraws them

into it again at the close of each æon, as the spider

extends its thread out of its body and draws it back

into it again. The simile of the spider occurs also in

the Brihadāranyaka Upanishad. A curious misappre-

Hume's misinterpretation of this simile.

hension on the part of Hume, or rather of some inform-

ant of Hume, is noteworthy in reference to this image.

It is to be found in his Dialogues concerning Natural

Religion:—"The Brahmins assert that the world arose

from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated

mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the

whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again and resolving

it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony

which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a

little contemptible animal, whose operations we are

never likely to take for a model of the whole universe.

But still here is a new species of analogy even in our

globe. And were there a planet wholly inhabited by

spiders, this inference would then appear as natural

and irrefragable as that which in one planet ascribes

the origin of all things to design and intelligence.

Why an orderly system may not be spun from the

belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult to

give a satisfactory reason." To return to the text:—

The Demiurgus and the world-fiction.

"Brahman begins to swell with fervid self-coercion.

Thence the aliment begins to unfold itself, and from that

aliment proceed Prāna, the internal sensory, the elements,

the actions of living souls, and their perennial fruits

"This Brahman,1 Hiranyagarbha, and name and

colour, and food, issue forth out of that being that

knows all, that knows everything, whose self-coercion

is prevision."

Here again we meet with the same idea as in the

NāsadIyasūkta and in the Taittirīya Upanishad. The

1 The sagunam brahma, or sa-balam brahma, the divine emana-tion of Brahman and Māyā, the māyopadhīkam brahma.

one, the Self, Brahman in association with Māyā, Chap. IV. and has already the creative Íśvara,—that is to say, Brahman in the first quasi-personal manifestation or emanation as the Demiurgus,—is said to engage in self-torture,1 self-suppression, or self-coercion. This self-torture of the Demiurgus is a meditation, a pre-vision of the world that is to be. The “aliment” is the cosmical illusion, developing itself in such a way that each migrating soul shall pass through successive lives appropriate to the residuary influences of its works in the last æon. Prāṇa or Hiranyagarbha, the spirit of dreaming sentiences, emanates out of Íśvara, the all-knowing Demiurgus. “Name and colour” is a constant phrase of the Upanishads for the outward world in its visible and nameable aspects. Food as the material of the earthly body, is the latest manifestation of Brahman in the descending order of progressive concretion.

The text speaks, in the next place, of the matter of the two sciences. The inferior science, it says, has to do with metempsychosis, and with the usages and rites on the fulfilment or neglect of which higher and lower future states of life depend; the superior science treats of the knowledge of the Self as the means of releasing the aspirant from further migration.

I. 2. “This is the truth: The rites which the sages saw in the Mantras were widely current in the Tre-tāyuga or second age of the world. Perform them regularly, you that wish for rewards. This is your path to recompense in a higher embodiment.

“When the fire is kindled, and its blaze is flickering, the sacrificer should throw the offering between the two portions of sacrificial butter, throwing it with faith.

“If the sacrifice upon the perpetual household fire

1 Tapas, in this verse translated and at the same time with its usual in accordance with its derivation, sense, as fervid self-coercion.

102

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. be not followed by the oblation at new-moon, by the

The rewards full-moon rites, by the Chāturmāsya, and by th offering of first-fruits; if it be unfrequented with guests; or

of the pre- scriptive sacra are transleut. if it be unaccompanied with the oblation to all the

The sage mutat deities; or if it be presented with any error in the

tirm his back form; the sacrificer forfeits the seven ascending worlds

upon them all of recompense.

"Fire has seven wavy tongues,—the black, the terrific,

the thought-swift, the red, the purple, the scintillating,

and the tongue of every shape, divine.

"If a man offers his sacrifices while these tongues of

fire are flashing, and offers them in proper season, his

very sacrifices become the solar rays to lead him up to

the abode of the one lord of all the gods.

"The shining sacrifices bear the sacrificer upward

through the solar rays, crying, Come hither, come

hither; greeting him with kindly voice, and doing

honour to him, saying, This is your recompense, the

sacred sphere of Brahmā.

"But these sacrifices with their ritual and its eighteen

parts are frail boats indeed; and they that rejoice in

sacrifice as the best of things, in their infatuation shall

pass on again to decay and death.

"They that are infatuated, dwelling in the midst of

the illusion, wise in their own eyes, and learned in their

own conceit, are stricken with repeated plagues, and go

round and round, like blind men led by the blind.

"They are foolish, and living variously in this illu-

sion, think that they have what they want : and since

they that trust in sacrifices are too greedy of higher

lives to learn the truth, they fall from paradise on the

expiry of their reward.

"In their infatuation they think that the revealed

rites and works for the public good are the best and

highest thing, and fail to find the other thing that is

higher and better still. When they have had their

reward in the body in some upper mansion in paradise

they return to a human embodiment, or to a lower- life

than that of man.

"They among them that practise austerity and faith

in the forest, quiescent, versed in the knowledge of the

gods, and living upon alms,—these put away the stain

of good and evil works, and go after death to the sphere

of the imperishable deity, the abiding spirit, Hiranya-

garbha:

"Surveying these spheres won by works, the seeker

of Brahman should learn to renounce all things. No

uncreated sphere of being is to be gained by works.

Therefore he should take fuel in his hands, and repair

to a sacred teacher, learned in the Veda, intent upon

the Self, that he may learn the uncreate.

"The spiritual guide, when he comes to him with

reverence, with a humble heart and with his senses re-

pressed, must truly expound to him the science of the

Self, as he knows the undecaying spirit, the sole reality."

The aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis

must turn his back upon every sphere of recompense,

even upon the paradise of the gods that is won by

sacrificial rites, and upon the paradise of Hiranyagarbha

or Brahmā, that is attained to by those that add to their

outward worship a knowledge of the deities and of the

import of the rites. These latter reside in the paradise

of Brahmā till the close of the æon. All these spheres

of fruition are transitory; they reproduce each other

like seed and plant; they are empty and unsatisfying,

perishing like a reverie or dream, like the waters of a

mirage, like the bubbles and foam upon the surface of

a stream. To return to the text. The first section of

the second Munḍaka treats of Brahman and the supe-

rior science.

II. I. "This is the truth: As its kindred sparks fly

out in thousands from a blazing fire, so the various

living souls proceed out of that imperishable principle,

sparks and return into it again.

104

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV.

"That infinite spirit is self-luminous, without and within, without origin, without vital breath or thinking faculty, stainless, beyond the imperishable ultimate."

The imperishable ultimate is the cosmical illusion. Brahman is in truth untouched by the world-fiction. It is only fictitiously that this overspreads Brahman, as the waters of the mirage fictitiously overspread the sands of the desert. All living things are only the one Self fictitiously limited to this or that fictitious mind and body, and return into the Self as soon as the fictitious limitation disappears. As soon as the jar is broken the ether from within it is one with the ether without, one with ether one and undivided. The text next speaks of the several unreal effluences or emanations from the Self as illusorily overspread with the cosmical illusion. Each such emanation is false; in the words of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, "a modification of speech only, a change, a name."

"From that proceed the vital breath, the thinking principle and all the organs of sense and motion, and the elements, ether, air, fire, water, and the earth that holds all things."

Purusha or Vaiśvānara, the universal soul that emanates from Hiraṇyagarbha, dwells in every living body, and every living body is made up of the elements just spoken of. The text accordingly proceeds to characterise this Purusha: The scholiast identifies him with Viṣṇu.

Puruşa char-acterised, as in the Purusha-sūkta.

"Fire is his head, the sun and moon his eyes, the regions his ears, the open Vedas are his voice, the air is his vital breath, the whole world is his heart, the earth springs from his feet, for this is the inner soul of all living things."

The whole world is said to be the heart of Purusha, because it is all an effluence of the mind,1 into which it is seen to melt away in the state of dreamless sleep,

1 Antahkarana, the aggregate of buddhi, manas, ahankāra, and chitta.

and out of which it re-issues when the sleeper awakes, Chas. IV.

as sparks fly up out of fire. The mind is in the heart.

Purusha is the soul internal to all living things, for in

every living thing it is he that sees, hears, thinks, and

knows.

" Fire proceeds from him, and the sun is the fuel of

that fire. From the moon proceeds the cloud-god Par-

janya ; from the cloud-god the plants upon the earth;

from these the germ of life. Thus the various living

things issue out of Purusha.

" The Rik, the Sāman, and the Yajush, the initiations,

the sacrifices, the offerings of victims, and the presents

to the Brāhmans, the liturgic year, the sacrificer, and

the spheres of recompense, those in which the moon

purifies, and those in which the sun purifies the elevated

worshipper, -all these things issue out of Purusha.

" The gods in various orders, the Sādhyas, men, and

beasts, and birds, the breath and vital functions, rice

and barley, self-torture, faith, truth, continence, and the

prescriptive usages,—all issue out of Purusha."

The imagery of the Nāsadīyasūkta was reproduced

in the first section of the first Mundaka, that of the

Purushasūkta is reproduced in these verses. The cos-

mological conception of the poets of the Upanishads

seems to have had its first beginnings in the later part

of the Mantra period of Vedic literature.

" The seven breaths proceed from him, the seven

flames, the seven kinds of fuel, the seven oblations, the

seven passages of the vital airs, the vital airs that reside

in the cavity of the body, seven in each living thing,

" It is from him that the seas and all the mountains

proceed ; it is from him that the rivers flow in various

forms ; it is from him that plants grow up, and their

nutritious material by which the inner invisible body

is clothed with the visible elemental frame.

" All this world, with its sacrifices and its knowledge,

is Purusha: Self is supreme, immortal. My friend,

106

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV. he that knows this Self that is seated in the heart of

The vision of every living thing, scatters off the ties of illusion ven

the Self within in this present life.

the heart is the only salva-

tion.

The second section of the second Mundaka sets-forth

the means of a fuller knowledge of Brahman. The

aspirant is to meditate upon it as the characterless

2nd Mundaka, essence that shines forth in every mode of mind, the

2nd Section. one and only Self illusorily manifested in the-plurality

of migrating souls.

II. 2. "This Self is self-luminous, present, dwelling

in the heart of every living thing, the great centre of

all things. All that moves; and breathes, and stirs is

centred in it. You know this as that which is and

that which is not; as the end of aspiration, above the

knowledge of all living things, the highest good:

"As bright; as lesser than the least and .reater than

the greatest; as that on which all the spheres of recom-

pense are founded, together with the tenants of those

spheres. This same imperishable Brahman is the vital

air, the inner sensory, the voice. This same Brahman

is true, this is immortal. That is the mark. Hit it

with thy mind, my friend.

"Let a man take the great weapon of the Upanishads

Use of the for his bow, and let him fix upon it his arrow sharpened

mystic with devotion. Bend it with the thoughts fixed upon

syllable Om. the Self, and hit the mark, the undecaying principle.

"The mystic utterance Om is the bow, the soul the

arrow, the Self the mark. Let it be shot at with un-

failing heed, and let the soul, like an arrow, become

one with the mark.

"It is over this Self that sky and earth and air are

woven, and the sensory, with all the organs of sense

and motion. Know that this is the one and only Self.

Renounce all other words, for this is the bridge to

immortality.

"This Self dwells in the heart where the arteries

are concentred, variously manifesting itself. Om: thus

meditate upon the Self. May it be well with you that

yo may cross beyond the darkness.

"This Self knows all, it knows everything. Its glory

is in the world. It is seated in the ether in the irra-

diated heart, present to the inner sensory, actuating

the organs and the organism, settled in the earthly

body. The wise fix their heart, and by knowledge see

the blissful, the immortal principle that manifests itself.

"When a man has seen that Self unmanifest and

manifest, the ties of his heart are loosed, all his per-

plexities are solved, and all his works are exhausted.

"The stainless, indivisible Self is in that last bright

sheath, the heart: it is the pure light of lights that

they that know the Self know.

"The sun gives no light to that, nor the moon and

stars, neither do these lightnings light it up; how then

should this fire of ours? All things shine after it as it

shines, all this world is radiant with its light.

"It is this undying Self that is outspread before,

Self behind, Self to the right, Self to the left, above,

below. All this glorious world is Self."

The aspirant is bidden to renounce all other words.

He is to renounce the inferior science, the knowledge

of the gods and of the various rites with which they

are worshipped; for these things only prolong the series

of his embodied lives. The knowledge of Brahman is

said to be the bridge to immortality, as it is the way

by which the sage is to cross over the sea of metemp-

sychosis to reunite his soul with the Self beyond. The

Self or Brahman is said to reside in the heart, in the

midst of all the arteries. By this it is only meant that

the modifications of the mind seated within the heart

shine, or as we should say, rise into the light of con-

sciousness, in the light of the Self. The mind is in

the heart, and there receives the light of the one and

only Self, that itself is everywhere, ubique et in nullo

loco. It is only in semblance that the Self, which is

108

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV. everywhere, can be said to come and go to dwell here

or there. The indwelling of the Self is its manif-

tation in the mental modes. A lotus-shaped lump of

flesh in the heart is styled the brahmapura, the abode

of Brahman. It is here that the Self is said to witness;

that is, to give light to, every feeling, thought, and pas-

sion of the soul. It is here that it sees unseen, hears

unheard, thinks unthought upon; but its vision, its

hearing, and its thought are unintermittent and un-

differenced. It does not see as we see; or hear as we

hear, or think as we think, but as a pure light of char-

acterless intelligence. It gives light to all, and receives

light from nothing. It is the pure light beyond the

darkness of the world-fiction; the pure bliss of exemp-

tion from evil, pain, and weariness. All the things

that present themselves in nameable and coloured

phases seem to be, and this only is.

The first section of the third Mundaka opens with

the simile of the two birds upon one tree. They repre-

sent the migrating soul and Íśvara the cosmic soul,

residing together in the body of each and every living

thing. This section is said to treat of the qualifications

required in an aspirant to liberation, before he can

enter on the pursuit of ecstasy and intuition of the

Self.

3d Mundaka,

1st Section.

Allegory of

the two bird

on one tree.

III. 1. "Two birds always together and united nestle

upon the same tree; one of them eats the sweet fruit of

the holy fig-tree, the other looks on without eating.

"In the same tree the migrating soul is immersed,

and sorrows in its helpless plight, and knows not what

to do; but its sorrow passes as soon as it sees the adored

lord, and that this world is only his glory.

"When the sage sees the golden-hued maker of the

world, the lord, the Purusha that emanates from Brah-

man, he shakes off his good and evil works, and without

stain arrives at the ultimate identity."

The body is a tree that bears the fruits of actions

in a former life. The migrating soul, clothed in the

Chap. IV.

ten ous involucrum, resides in the body, and eats the

various fruits of its good and evil actions in earlier

embodiments. Not so the Demiurgus, the golden-hued,

that is, the self-luminous, universal soul, ever pure,

intelligent, and free. He actuates all the migrating

souls and all the spheres through which they migrate,

but takes no part in the experiences they pass through.

The soul, laden with illusions, and with cravings after

temporal felicity, is fated to pass through all the varied

anguish of hunger, thirst, faintness, sickness, partings,

bereavements, decay, and death, in body after body in

vegetal, animal, or human shape, through countless

ages; till at last the good works that it has done in a

series of lives may bring it in a human embodiment

into the presence of a spiritual guide, who shall teach

it the way of release from further migration, through

self-torture, ecstasy, and intuition in which it identifies

itself, first with the universal soul, and then with the one

and only Self.

"This Íśvara is the living breath that variously

manifests itself in all living things. Knowing him, the

sage ceases to speak of many things; his sport is in

the Self, his joy is in the Self, his action is relative

to the Self, and he is the best of those that know the

Self.

"For this Self is to be reached by persevering truth-

Mental purity

fulness, self-coercion, precise intuition, and continence.

This Self, which ascetics behold after the annulment of

their imperfections, is within the body, luminous and

pure.

"It is truth that prevails, not falsehood. The road

is laid out by truth, the divine path by which the

Rishis free from all desire proceed to the treasure of

truth.

"That Self is great and luminous, unthinkable; it is

supersensible beyond the supersensible, farther than the

110

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. IV.

farthest, and yet near, within the body, seated within the cavity of the heart of those that see it.

"It is not apprehended by the eye, nor by the voice, nor by the other organs of sense and motion, nor by self-coercion, nor by sacrificial rites. He whose mind is purified by the limpid clearness of his knowledge, sees in meditation that undivided Self.

"This supersensible Self is to be known by the mind, in the body in which the vital air has entered to its fivefold functions ; every mind of living things is over-spread with the vital airs, and when this mind is purified the Self shines forth.

"He whose mind is purified wins whatever sphere of recompense he aspires to, and whatever pleasures he desires. Therefore let him that wishes for prosperity worship him that knows the Self."

A pure mind

is the only

mirror that

reflects the

Self.

Truthfulness, the repression of the senses and the volitions, and continence, are part of the purification of the mind required in the seeker of spiritual insight and ecstatic union. They are among the qualifications of the aspirant. In its natural state the mind is stained with desires, aversions, and passions relative to external things, and like a tarnished mirror or a ruffled pool, is unprepared to mirror the Self that is ever present to it. The senses must be checked and the volitions crushed, that the impurity and turbid discoloration of the mind may be purged away, and that it may become an even and lucid reflecting surface, to present the image of the Self. This image of the Self1 is itself a mode of mind, but it is the last of the modes of the mind, arising only when the mind is ready to melt away into the fontal unity of the characterless Self. As this mode passes away, the personality of the sage passes away with it into the impersonality of Brahman. The magical powers of the Yogin or ecstatic seer are again asserted. All that is promised to the follower of the prescriptive

1 Phatitam brahma.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

112

sacra, of the religion of the many, is promised to him, if

Chap. IV.

he d sire it, before his re-absorption into the spiritual

essence. The promise is intended as a farther incite-

ment to the seeker of release from the miseries of

metempsychosis.1 Here again, as elsewhere, the Mun-

daka Upanishad is remarkable for the clearness with

which it states the relation of the philosophy of the

recluses of the forest to the religion of those living in

the world. This religion is retained as part of the ficti-

tious order of things; real for the many, as bearing fruit

in the unreal series of embodied lives, and unreal for

the few that turn their back upon the world, and refuse

reality to all things but the spiritual unity that per-

meates them.

The old religion, unreal as it is, is needed

for the purification of the unreal mind, and has its

place prior to the quest of the sole reality. It has its

place and passes away: for the perfected sage it is a

figment.

The last section of the Mundaka Upanishad is as

follows:-

III. 2. "He knows the supreme Brahman, the base

3rd Mundaka,

on which the world is fixed, which shines forth in its

2nd Section.

purity. The wise that have put away desire and wor-

ship this sage, pass beyond all further re-embodiment.

"He that lusts after pleasures and gives his mind to

them, is born by reason of them into sphere after sphere

of recompense; but if a man has already all that he

desires and has found the Self, all his cravings melt

away even in his present embodiment.

"This Self is not attainable by learning, by memory,

The Self mani-

by much sacred study, but if he choose this Self it is

attainable by him: the Self itself manifests its own

essence to him.

"This Self is not attainable by a man that lacks for-

titude, nor without concentration, nor by knowledge

1 Sagunavidyädphalam api nirgunavidyätutaye pra-rochanärtham uch-

yate. Anandagiri.

112

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chaf. IV.

without the renunciation of the world; but if a sage exert himself with these appliances, his soul ente a the abode of Brahman.

" When they that have this inner vision, satisfied with knowledge, perfected in the spirit, their imperfections passed away, their faculties quiescent,—when they have reached this Self, when they have fully reached the all-pervading principle,—with perfect insight and with spirits uuified, they enter into the all of things.

" All these quietists, familiar with the object of intuition in the Upanishads, purified in mind by renunciation and ecstatic union, are liberated in the hour of death, being one with the supreme immortal principle.

" The fifteen constituents of their bodies re-enter their several elements; their senses return into their several presiding deities; their works and their conscious soul are all unified in the imperishable Self.

He loses him-

" The sage, quitting name and colour, enters into the self-luminous spirit beyond the last principle,1 in like manner as rivers flow on until they quit their name and colour, and lose themselves in the sea.

" He that knows that higinest Self becomes that highest Self only. There is none in his family ignorant of the Self. He passes beyond misery; he passes beyond the taint of good and evil works, he is released from his heart's ties, and becomes immortal.

" Therefore it has been said in a memorial verse: Let a sage reveal this knowledge of Brahman to those only that have fulfilled the prescriptive rites, who know the Veda, intent on the Self, who sacrifice to that one Rishi, the fire-god Agni, and have duly achieved the self-torture of carrying fire upon their heads.

" This true Self was proclaimed of old by Angiras the Rishi. Let none that has not undergone discipline presume to study it. Glory to the great Rishis. Glory to the great Rishis."

1 The world-fictions.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

113

They, says Śankarāchārya, that rise to the ecstatic vision become one in the unity of the one and only Self. The images of the sun are seen no longer when the watery surfaces evaporate. The jar is broken, and the ether that was in it is again one with the ether one and undivided. On the rise of the ecstatic vision all the difficulties of the sage are past; to raise fresh impediments is beyond the power of the gods themselves. He has passed through the darkness into light. His personality passes into impersonality, his mortality into immortality. He has found himself, and is for ever one with the one and all.

Fichte,1 in like but higher terms, rich with the thought of centuries, speaks of his recognition of his nature as one of the many manifestations of the one abiding spiritual essence, the life of which is the progressive life of all things. "I have indeed dwelt in darkness during the past days of my life. I have indeed heaped error upon error, and imagined myself wise. Now for the first time do I wholly understand the doctrine which from thy lips, O wonderful spirit, seemed so strange to me, although my understanding had nothing to oppose to it; for now for the first time do I comprehend it in its whole compass, in its deepest foundation, and through all its consequences. Man is not a product of the world of sense, and the end of his existence cannot be attained in it. His vocation transcends time and space, and everything that pertains to sense. What he is and to what he is to train himself, that must he know: as his vocation is a lofty one, he must be able to lift his thoughts above all the limitations of sense. He must accomplish it : where his being finds its home, there his thoughts too seek their dwelling-place; and the truly human mode of thought, that which alone is worthy of him, that in which his whole spiritual strength is manifested, is that whereby he

1 Dr. W. Smith's Popular Works of Fichte, pp. 368, seq.

114

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. IV. raises himself above those limitations, whereby all that pertains to sense vanishes into nothing,—into a mere reflection, in’ mortal eyes, of the one self-existent infinite. Thou art best known to the childlike, devoted, simple mind. To it thou art the searcher of the heart, who seest its inmost depths; the ever-present true witness of its thoughts, who knowest its truth, who knowest it although all the world know it not. The inquisitive understanding which has heard of thee, but seen thee not, would teach us thy nature; and as thy image shows us a monstrous and incongruous shape, which the sagacious laugh at, and the wise and good abhor. I hide my face before thee, and lay my hand upon my lips. How thou art and seemest to thy own being, I shall never know, any more than I can assume thy nature. After thousands of spirit-lives, I shall comprehend thee as little as I do now in this earthly house. That which I conceive becomes finite through my very conception of it; and this can never, even by endless exaltations, rise into the infinite. In the idea of person there are imperfections, limitations: how can I clothe thee with it without these?

Now that my heart is closed against all earthly things, now that I have no longer any sense for the transitory and perishable, the universe appears before my eyes clothed in a more glorious form. The dead, heavy mass which only filled up space is vanished ; and in its place there flows onward, with the rushing music of mighty waves, an eternal stream of life, and power, and action, which issues from the original source of all life,—from thy life, O infinite one, for all life is thy life, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of true beauty. The ties by which my mind was formerly united to this world, and by whose secret guidance I followed all its movements, are for ever sundered; and I stand free, calm, and immovable, a universe to myself. No longer through my affections,

OF THE UPANISHADS.

but by my eye alone, do I apprehend outward objects

and am connected with them; and this eye itself is

purified by freedom, and looks through error and deformity to the true and beautiful, as upon the unruffled

surface of water shapes are more purely mirrored in a

milder light. My mind is for ever closed against embarrassment and perplexity, against uncertainty, doubt,

and anxiety: my heart against grief, repentance, and

desire"

116

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER V.

THE KATHA UPANISHAD.

"If the red slayer think he slays,

Or the slain think he is slain,

They little know the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near,

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanished gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out,

Me when they fly I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt,

And I the hymn the Brahman sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred seven;

But thou, meek lover of the good,

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven."

—EMERSON.

CHAP. V. The reader is by this time becoming familiar with the

The story of general conception of the primitive Indian philos-

Nachiketas ophers, and with the grotesque imagery and rude subli-

and the regent mity with which it is exhibited in the Upanishads.

of the dead. Epithet is added to epithet, and metaphor to metaphor,

and sentence stands by sentence in juxtaposition, rather

than in methodical progression, till we are at a loss to

pass any judgment, and feel alternately attracted and

repelled. The thoughts of these thinkers formed them-

selves out of other antecedents, and other predisposi-

tions, and in another medium, than any of which we

have had experience. In the present chapter the work

of exposition will proceed by the presentation of the

Katha Upanishad, a perspicuous and poetical Upani-

shad of the Yajurveda. This Upanishad opens with

the legend of the revelation of the brahmavidyā, or

knowledge of the one and only Self by Yama, the regent

of the dead, to Nachiketas the son of Vājaśravasa.

I. "Vājaśravasa, with the desire of recompense;

offered sacrifice, and gave all that he possessed to the

priests. He had a son named Nachiketas.

"While the presents were in course of distribution

to the priests and to the assembly, faith entered into

Nachiketas, who was yet a stripling, and he began to

think:

"These cows have drunk all the water they will

ever drink, they have grazed as much as they will

graze, they have given all the milk that they will ever

give, and they will calve no more. They are joyless

spheres of recompense that a sacrificer goes to, who gives

such gifts as these.

"He therefore said to his father : Father, to whom wilt

thou give me? He said it a second time and a third

time, until his father exclaimed : I give thee to Death.

"Nachiketas thought: I pass for the first among

many disciples, I pass also for the middlemost among

many : what has Yama to do that he will do with me

to-day?"

Seeing his father's regretful looks, and fearing that

he would break his promise to the regent of the dead,

Nachiketas begs him not to waver.

"Look back and see how those of old acted, and how

those of later days. Man ripens and is reaped like the

corn in the field, and like the corn is born again."

His father sends him to the realm of Yama. The

death-god is absent, and Nachiketas is neglected. On

Yama's return his wife and servants admonish him :

"When a Brāhman comes into the house he is like

a fire, and therefore men offer him the customary pro-

pitiation. Bring water for his feet; Vaivasvata,1

1 A patronymic of Yama the son of Vivasvat.

118

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

"A Brāhman that stays without eating food in the

house of an inattentive host lays waste all his hopes

and expectations, the merits that he has earned by

intercourse with good men, by friendly speech, and by

sacrifices and works for the public good,1 as well as all

his children and his flocks and herds.

Yama bade

Nachiketas to

choose three

gifts.

"Hearing this, Yama said to Nachiketas : Three

nights hast thou lodged in my house fasting, thou a

Brāhman guest that shouldst be worshipped. Hail,

Brāhman, and may it be well with me. Choose there-

fore three wishes, a wish for each such night.

The first gift,

that he may

return to his

father.

"Nachiketas said: God of death, I choose as the first

of these three wishes that my father Gautama may be

easy in his mind, that he may be gracious towards me,

that his anger may be turned away from me, that thou

send me back to him, and that he may know me again

and speak to me.

"Yama replied: Auddāliki,2 the son of Aruna, by my

permission shall be as tender towards thee as of old.

He shall sleep peacefully at night, and his anger shall

pass away when he sees thee released from the power

of Death.

"Nachiketas said: In the sphere of paradise there is

no fear. Thou art not there, and there man fears not

decay. A man passes beyond both hunger and thirst,

leaves misery behind, and rejoices in the sphere of

paradise.

"Thou, Death, knowest the sacred fire that is the means

of winning a sojourn in paradise. Teach me about it, for

I have faith. They that are inspbired in paradise par-

take of immortality. I choose this as the second wish.

The second

gift, a know-

ledge of the

Nācbiketa

fire.

"Yama said: I know the fire that leads to paradise,

and tell it to thee: therefore listen. Know that that

fire that wins the endless sphere for him that knows

it, the basis of the world, is seated in the heart."

1 Such as tanks, wells, roads, bridges, gardens.

2 A name of Vājaśravasa.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

119

The fire the knowledge of which is recompensed by a sojourn in Swarga, the paradise of the gods, is a figurative name for Vaiśvānara, Purusha, or Virāj, the divine soul that dwells in all that live in earthly bodies. Yama proceeds to teach Nachiketas the nature of that divine Vaiśvānara. The sage is to meditate upon himself as one with that mystic fire; the seven hundred and twenty bricks that form the sacrificial hearth are the days and nights of the year, and so on. He will then become one with Vaiśvānara.

"He revealed to him that fire, the origin of these spheres of migration, and what were the bricks, and how many, and how laid out, in building the sacrificial hearth; and Nachiketas repeated everything after him as he had said it. So Death was pleased, and spoke again.

"Feeling-gratified, the large-minded Yama said, I give thee now and here another gift: this fire shall be called by thy name. Take also this necklace of gems of various colours.

"He that thrice performs the Nāchiketa fiery rite, taking counsel of three,—of his father, his mother, and his spiritual teacher,—and fulfilling the three observances of sacrifice, sacred study, and almsgiving, passes beyond birth and death. He that knows and gazes upon the lustrous and adorable emanation of Hiranya-garbha, the divine being that proceeds from Brahmā (or Īśvara), passes into peace for ever.

"He that has performed three Nāchiketa rites, and knows these three things,—the bricks, their number, and the arrangement of them,—he that thus piles up the Nāchiketa fire, shakes off the ties of death before he dies, leaves his miseries behind, and rejoices in the sphere of paradise.

"This is thy fire, Nachiketas, the knowledge of which wins paradise. This thou hast chosen as thy second boon, and men shall call this fire thine. Choose the third wish, Nachiketas."

120

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. Identification with Purusha or Vaiśvānara, with its consequent exemption from personal experiences in body after body till the close of the æon, is the promise to those that meditate on the allegory of the Nāchiketa fire. In this there is no final release from metempsychosis, as the soul of the rewarded votary will have to enter afresh on its transit from body to body and sphere to sphere at the opening of the next æon. The third gift requested by Nachiketas is teaching relative to the renunciation of all things and the quest of the real and immortalising knowledge of Brahman. The form in which the request is preferred points to the existence of doubt and dissentiency on spiritual questions in the age of the Upanishads. A similar indication occurs in the second verse of the Śvetāśvatara Upanishad: "Is time to be thought the source of things, or the nature of the things themselves, or the retributive fatality, or chance, or the elements, or the personal soul?" Another occurs in the sixth Prapāṭhaka of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, with a reference to Buddhistic or pre-Buddhistic teaching of the emanation of migrating souls and the spheres through which they migrate from an aboriginal void or blank: "Existent only, my son, was this in the beginning, one only, without duality; but some have said: Non-existent only was this in the beginning, one only, without duality, and the existent sprang out of the non-existént; but how could it be so, how could entity come out of nonentity?" To return to the Kaṭha Upanishad.

Disquieting doubt of awaking re-action.

The third gift, a knowledge of the soul and of its real nature.

"Nachiketas said: When a man is dead there is this doubt about him: some say that he is, and others say that he is no more. Let me learn how this is from thy teaching, and let this be the third boon."

Some people say there is, and some say there is not, a Self1 other than the body, the senses, and the mind,

1 Śartrendriyamanobuddhivyatiriktō dchāntarasambandhy ātmā, Saṅ-karṭikūrya.

that passes onward into another body. This is a matter

that is beyond human observation and human reason-

ing, and yet we must know it if we would know the

highest end of man.

"Yama said : The gods themselves have been puzzled

about this long ago, for it is no easy thing to find out.

This is a subtle nature. Choose another boon, Nachi-

ketas, press me not; but release me from this gift.

"Nachiketas answered: As for thy saying, Death,

that the very gods have been perplexed about this long

ago, and that this is no easy thing to learn,—there is

no other teacher to be found like thee, no other boon

that shall be equal to this.

"Yama said: Choose sons and grandsons gifted with

a hundred years of life, many flocks and herds, ele-

phants, and gold, and horses : choose a wide expanse

of soil, and live thyself as many autumns as thou wilt.

"If thou thinkest of any other gift as great, choose

that. Choose riches and long life, and rule over a wide

territory, and I will give thee the enjoyment of thy

desires.

"Ask what thou wilt, ask for whatever pleasures are

hardest to get in the world of men. Ask for these

nymphs, their heavenly chariots and heavenly music,

for such as these are not to be won by men; have

thyself waited upon by these, for I will give them;

but ask me not about dying.

"Nachiketas answered : These are things that may

or may not be to-morrow, and things that waste the

strength of all the faculties; and every life alike is

short. I leave to thee the chariots, and the singing

and the dancing.

"A man is not to be satisfied with wealth. We

shall obtain wealth. If we have seen thee we shall

live so long as thou rulest, but no more. The boon

that I choose is preferable to this.

"For what decaying mortal in this lower world, after

122

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

coming into the presence of the undecaying and immortal gods,—what mortal that has knowledge, and

that reflects upon the fleeting pleasures of beauty and

love, would be enamoured of long life ?

"Tell us, Death, about that great life after death

that the gods are themselves in doubt about. Nachi-

ketas chooses no other boon than this boon that pene-

trates that mystery."

So far Yama has tested the readiness of Nachiketas

to renounce the pleasures of the world. Finding him

ready to put away all ties, he judges that he is a fit

disciple, and proceeds to contrast the two pursuits of

men, the pursuit of the pleasurable, which prolongs

the series of embodied lives, and the pursuit of the

good, which leads to a final release from metempsy-

chosis. Nachiketas has already chosen the pursuit of

the good.

Second Vallī.

II. "The good is one thing, the pleasurable another.

Both these engage a man, though the ends are diverse.

Of these, it is well with him that takes the good, and

he that chooses the pleasurable fails of his purpose.

"Both the good and the pleasurable present them-

selves to man; and the wise man goes round about them

both and distinguishes between them. The sage pre-

fers the good to the pleasurable; the unwise man chooses

the pleasurable that he may get and keep.

"Thou, Nachiketas, hast thought upon these tender

and alluring pleasures, and hast renounced them.

Thou hast not chosen the path of riches, which most

men sink in.

"Far apart are these diverse and diverging paths,

the path of illusion and the path of knowledge. I

know thee, Nachiketas, that thou art a seeker of know-

ledge, for all these various pleasures that I proposed

have not distracted thee.

1 "They that are infatuated, dwelling in the midst

1 This verse occurs also in the second section of the first Mundaka.

See above, p. 101.

The liturgic

experts are

blind leaders

of the blind.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

123

of the illusion, wise in their own eyes, and learned in

their own conceit, are stricken with repeated plagues,

and go round and round, like blind men led by the

blind.

"Preparation for the hereafter does not suggest itself

to the foolish youth neglecting everything in his infa-

tuation about riches. Thinking that this life is, and

that there is no life after this, he comes again and again

into subjection to me.

"The good, the Self, is not reached by many that

they should hear it; and many hearing of it know it not.

Wonderful is he that teaches it, and wise is he

that attains to it; wonderful is he that knows it when

he is taught by the wise.

"This Self is not proclaimed by an inferior man;

it is not easy to know when variously thought upon.

When it is taught by one that is one with it, there is

no dissentiency about it. It is supersensible beyond

the infinitesimal, and is unthinkable.

"This idea of the Self that thou hast gained is not

to be attained by the discursive intellect, but it is easy

to know it when revealed by another, dearest disciple.

Thou art truly steadfast. May I find another questioner

equal to thee, Nachiketas!

"I know that the treasure of recompense is fleeting,

for that lasting Self is not gained by transient works;

and therefore I have piled up the Nāchiketa fire, and

have won with perishable goods a lasting sphere."

There is an apparent inconsistency between the former

and the latter portions of this last verse. The scholiast

explains that the lasting sphere that Yama has attained

by means of the Nāchiketa sacrifice is the regency of

the dead. This is said to be lasting, not as everlasting

like the Self, but only as enduring throughout an æon

until the next dissolution or collapse of all things into

the aboriginal unity of Brahman. In the verse that

next follows Yama commends Nachiketas for refusing

124

THE PHILOSOPHY

to be satisfied with the sphere of the highest divinity

already promised to his knowledge of the Nāchiketa

rite, and for insisting on the pursuit of a knowledge of

Brahman, the one and only Self.

"Though thou hast seen the consummation of desire

the basis of the world, the lasting meed of sacrifice, the

farther shore where fear is left behind,—great and

glorious and wide-spread, a place to stand upon, —yet,

Nachiketas, thou hast renounced it all, wise in thy

fortitude.

"By spiritual abstraction the sage recognises the

primeval divine Self, invisible, unfathomable; put out

of sight by things of sense, but seated in the heart,

dwelling in the recesses of the mind; and on recognis-

ing it he bids farewell to joy and sorrow.

"When a mortal man has heard this, and grasped it

on all sides, and parted Self from all that is not Self,

and reached this subtile essence, he rejoices at it, for he

has won pure bliss. I know thee, Nachiketas, to be a

habitation open to that spiritual essence.

"Nachiketas said: Tell me about that which thou

seest, which is apart from good and apart from evil,

apart from the create and the uncreate, apart from that

which has been and that which is to be.

"Yama said: I will tell thee briefly the utterance

that all the Vedas celebrate, which all modes of self-

The mystic

syllable Om

must be em-

ployed by the

worker of the

Self.

coercion proclaim, and aspiring to which men live as

celibate votaries of sacred science. It is Om.

"This mystic utterance is Brahmā, this mystic utter-

ance is Brahman. He that has this has all that he

would have.

"This is the best reliance, this is the highest reliance;

he that knows this reliance is glorified in the sphere of

Brahmā."

The repetition of the mystic monosyllable and medi-

tation upon it, is said to raise the less-skilful aspirants

1 The mandūdhikārin and madhyamādhikārin.

to the paradise of Brahmā, the highest of the deities,

the first emanation out of the divine Self. To the

higher order of aspirants1 it serves as a help on the

way to knowledge of Brahman, and extrication from

the miseries of metempsychosis, as being an image or a

substitute for the characterless Self.

"This Self is not born, and dies not; it is omniscient.

It proceeds from none, and none proceeds from it; it is

without beginning and without end, unfailing, from

before all time. It is not killed when the body is

killed.

"If the slayer think to slay, and if the slain think

that he is slain, they neither of them know the Self

that they are.

"Lesser than the least and greater than the greatest,

this Self is seated in the heart of every living thing.

This the passionless sage beholds and his sorrows are

left behind : in the limpid clearness of his faculties he

sees the greatness of the Self.

"Motionless it moves afar, sleeping it goes out on

every side. Who but I can know that joyful and

joyless deity ?

"It is bodiless and in all bodies, unchanging and in

all changing things. The sage that knows himself to

be the infinite, all-pervading Self, no longer sorrows."

The scholiasts remark that contradictory attributes

are simultaneously predicable of the Self, as, on the

one hand, it is the characterless Self per se, and as, on

the other hand, it is the Self present in this or that

fictitious embodiment. The Self may thus be likened

to a colourless gem reflecting the various hues of the

things that are nearest to it, or to a magic crystal,2

presenting to the spectator the various things he may

choose to think about. The pure indifference alone is

true, the differences are illusory, mere figments of the

cosmical illusion.

1 Uttamādhikārin.

2 Chintāmaṇi.

126

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

1" This Self is not attainable by learning, by memory,

The Self man! by much sacred study; but if he chooses this Self it

rosta itself to the purified is attainable by him: the Self itself manifests its uwn

aspirant essence to him.

"Neither he that has not ceased from evil, nor he that

ceases not from sensations, nor he that is not concen-

trated, nor he whose mind is not quiescent, can reach

this Self by spiritual insight.

"Who in this way knows where that Self is, of

which Brāhman and Kshatriya are the food and death

the condiment ?

All personal distinctions are merged in the cha-

racterless impersonality of the Self. Brāhman 2 and

Kshatriya, and death itself that swallows all, are

swallowed up and reabsorbed into it, at the close of

every æon. To return to the text.

Third VallI.

III. "The universal and the individual souls residing

Theindividual in the cavity, in the ether of the heart, in the sa e

soul and the body, drink in the recompense of works. Sages that

know the Self, householders that keep up the five

sacred fires,3 and worshippers who have thrice per-

formed the Nāchiketa rite,—alike pronounce that these

universal and the individual souls are like shade and

sunshine."

Properly speaking, it is only the individual soul that

has fruition of its works in body after body. The

visiblê body is the place of pleasures and pains.4 The

universal soul, or īśvara, abides together with it in the

heart, the regulator of its actions and witness of its

experiences, as is set forth in the simile of the two

birds in the first section of the third Mundaka. The

individual soul differs from the universal as shade from

1 This verse occurs also in the

each pralaya or period of uni

second section of the third Mun-

versal collapse.

daka. See above, p. 110.

2 Brahman, manifested as Īś-

3 The five fires known as Anvā-

vara, is here spoken of as the viś-

hṛyapachana, Gārhapatya, Āha-

vasamhartri, as retracting all

vaniya, Sabhya, and Āvasathya.

things into its own essence at

4 Sukhaduḥkhāyatana, bhogā-

yatana.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

127

sunshine, the individual soul migrating from body to

Chap. V.

body, and the universal soul being free from such

migration.

" We know and can pile up the Nāchiketa fire, the

bridge that leads the sacrificers to the sphere of the

highest deity; and we also know the undecaying,

highest Self, the farther shore beyond all fear for those

that will to cross the sea of metempsychosis."

There now follows the celebrated simile of the cha-

riot.1 The migrating soul is compared to a person in

• chariot; the body is the chariot, the mind is the

*charioteer, the common sensory or will the reins, the

senses the horses. The soul drives in this chariot

either along the path of metempsychosis, or along the

road of liberation from further embodiments.

" Know that the soul is seated in a chariot, and that

Allegory of

the body is that chariot. Know that the mind is the

the chariot.

charioteer, and that the will is the reins.

" They say that the senses are the horses, and that

the things of sense are the road. The wise declare

that the migrating soul is the Self fictitiously present

in the body, senses, and common sensory.

" Now if the charioteer, the mind, is unskilful, and

the reins are always slack, his senses are ever unruly,

like horses that will not obey the charioteer.

" But if the charioteer is skilful, and at all times

firmly holds the reins, his senses are always manageable,

like horses that obey the charioteer.

" If the mind, the charioteer, lacks knowledge, and

does not firmly hold the will, and is always de-

cient in purity, the soul fails to reach the goal, and

returns to further transmigration.

" But if the charioteer has knowledge, and firmly

The goal is re-

holds the will, and is at all times pure, the soul then

lease from

arrives at the goal, and on reaching it is never born again.

metempsy-

" The soul whose charioteer is skilful and holds

chosis by ro-

the Self.

union with

1 Ratharūpaka.

128

THE PHILOSOPHY

Char. V. firmly the reins of the will, reaches the further term of

its migration, the sphere of Vishnu the supreme.

"For their objects are beyond and more subtle than

the senses, the common sensory is beyond the objects,

the mind is beyond the sensory, and the great soul

Hiranyagarbha is beyond the mind.

"The ultimate and undeveloped principle1 is beyond

that great soul, and Purusha,2 the Self, is beyond the

undeveloped principle. Beyond Purusha there is

nothing ; that is the goal, that is the final term.

"This Self is hidden in all living things, it shines

not forth ; but it is seen by the keen and penetrating

mind of those that see into the supersensible.

"Let the sage refund his voice into his inner sense,

his inner sense into his conscious mind ; let him refund

his mind into the great soul, and let him refund the

great soul into the quiescent Self.

"Arise, awake, go to the great teachers and learn.

The path of release is fine The wise affirm this to be a-sharp razor's edge hard to

walk across, a difficult path.

"When a man has seen the Self, inaudible, intan-

gible, colourless, undecaying, imperishable, odourless

without beginning and without end, beyond the mind,

ultimate and immutable,—when he has seen that, he

escapes the power of death.

"The sage that hears and recites this primeval nar-

rative that Death recited and Nachiketas heard is

worshipped as in the sphere of Self.

"If the purified sage rehearse this highest mystery

before an assembly of Brāhmans, or to those present

at a Srāddha ceremony, it avails to endless recompense,

it avails to endless recompense."

Self is said to be hidden within all living things, as

lying veiled beneath those fictitious presentiments of the

senses that make up the experience of common life.

1 Māyā, Avidyā, the world-fiction, the cosmical illusion.

2 Purusha is here synonymous with Brahman.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

129

The aspirant to extrication from metempsychosis is to melt away the visible and nameable semblances that hide it from him; to cease to see the figments, and to see only that which they replace; as a man may cease to see the waters of the mirage, and may come to see the sands of the desert in place of which they have fictitiously presented themselves to his illusive vision.

The varied phases of fictitious life, and the varied elemental environments of migrating souls; are to be set aside by progressive abstraction and ecstatic vision ; they are like so many webs of finer and finer tissue woven across and across the Self, and veiling it from heedless eyes. In the descending order each successive manifestation is more and more concrete; in the ascending order each is more and more simple, fine, or subtle.

In the progress of abstraction each later is melted away into each earlier manifestation ; the mind of the aspirant rises to more and more subtle and supersensile emanations, until he arrives at that which lies beyond them all, the Self that emanates from nothing, and cannot be melted away into any principle from which it has emanated.

In a new metaphor he is then said to have awakened from his dreaming vision of the figments of the world-fiction to the intuition of his true nature as one with the characterless and impersonal spiritual essence.

To return to the text.

IV. "The self-existent Íśvara has suppressed the Fourth Valli. senses that go out towards the things of sense. These senses then go out, not inwards to the Self. Here and there a wise man with the craving for immortality has closed his eyes and seen the Self.

"The unwise follow after outward pleasures and enter into the net of wide-spread death ; but the wise, who know what it is to be immortal, seek not for the imperishable amidst the things that perish."

The net of death is metempsychosis; the endless succession of birth and death, decay and sickness. To be

130

THE PHILOSOPHY

immortal is not to be as the gods are, who live till the

' close of a period of evolution, but to be at one' with

the transcendent Self. The state of the gods is said to

be a relative immortality:1 they are implicated' in me-

tempsychosis until they liberate themselves by self-

suppression and ecstatic meditation.

" What is left over as unknown to that Self by which

the soul knows colour and taste and smell and sound

and touch ? This is that."

This is that, this is the imperishable principle in

man, as to the existence of which the gods themselves

are said to have been puzzled, the principle about

which Nachiketas has inquired, the spiritual reality

that manifests itself in the world of semblances.

" He that knows that this living soul that eats the

The sage

eludes the net

of death, and

has no fear.

honey of recompense, and is always near, is the Self; and

that it is the lord of all that all that has been and all

that is to be, no longer seeks to protect himself from

anything. This is that."

The sage that knows that his true nature is imperish-

able, and that his bodily life is only a source of misery,

is exempt from fear, and there are no longer any perils

against which he can seek to protect himself. He has

won—

" A clear escape from tyrannising lust,

And full immunity from penal woe;"

and is one with the universal soul, the deity that makes

the world, and one with Brahman.

" He sees the Self who sees Hiranyagarbha, that

emanated from the self-coercion of Íśvara, that came

forth before the elements, that has entered into the

cavity of the heart, and there abides with living crea-

tures. This is that.

" He sees the Self who sees Aditi, one with all the

gods, who emanated out of Hiranyagarbha, and has

1 Āpekshikam amṛitatvam. Abhūtasamplaram avasthānam amṛita-

tvam hi bādhyate.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

131

entered into the cavity of the heart, and there abides

with living creatures. This is that.

"Agni, the fire that is hidden in the fire-drills as the

unborn 'child within the mother, to be adored day by

day by men as they wake and as they offer their obla-

tions -this is that."

Agni the fire-god, worshipped in the Vedic sacrifices,

is here identified with Hiranyagarbha, as also the fire

within the heart meditated upon by the self-torturing

mystic or Yogin. Hiranyagarbha is said to be one with

Brahman, as an earring is one with the gold of which

it is made.

"All the gods are based upon that divine being

Hiranyagarbha, out of whom the sun rises, into whom

the sun sets. No one is beyond identity with that

divine being. This is that.

"What the Self is in the world, that is it outside the

world; and what it is outside the world, that it is in

the world. From death to death he goes who looks on

this as manifold."

The Self manifested in every form of life, from a tuft

of grass up to the highest deity, and passing in sem-

blance from body to body, is the same with the Self

outside the world, Brahman per se, the characterless

that presents the manifold

thought beyond the fictions of metempsychosis. He

that sees in his individual soul an entity apart from

the universal soul, and other than the one impersonal

Self, retains his fictitious individuality, and must ass

from body to body so long as he retains it. Let a man

therefore see that he is one with the one reality, the

characterless thought, that is, like the ether that is

everywhere, a continuous plenitude of being. It is

only illusion 1 that presents the variety of experience, a

variety that melts away into unity on the rise of the

ecstatic vision. The many pass, the one abides.

"It is to be reached only with the inner sense; there

Nānātvamratnupasthāpilā 'vidyā.

132

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

is nothing in it that is manifold. From death to death

he goes who looks on this as manifold.

"Puruşha, the Self, is within the midst of the body,

of the size of a thumb, the lord of all that has been and

of all that is to be. He that knows this seeks no longer

to protect himself. This is that."

Puruşha or

Brahman is

pure light.

"Puruşha, of the size of a thumb, is like a smokeless

light, the lord of all that has been and of all that is to

be. This alone is to-day and is to-morrow. This is

that."

"He that looks upon his bodily manifestations as

other than the Self, passes into them again and again,

as rain that has fallen on a hill loses itself among the

heights."

"The soul of the sage that knows the unity of souls

in the Self, is like pure water poured out upon a level

surface."

The Self is figuratively said to be of the size of a

thumb, inasmuch as it is manifested in the mind, and

the mind is lodged in the cavity of the heart; in the

same way as the ether within a hollow cane may be

said to be of the same size as the hollow, whereas in

propriety this ether is one with the ether present every-

where, one and undivided. The soul of the sage that

sees the unity of all things is compared to pure water

upon a level surface, as having returned to its proper

nature of pure undifferenced thinking. It is a unifor-

mit of thought in which every particular character of

thought has been suppressed.

Fifth Vallī.

V. "The sage who meditates upon his body as an

eleven-gated city for the Self, without beginning, and

of changeless thought, ceases to sorrow, is already

liberated, and liberated once for all. This is that."

"This is the all-permeating Self; it is the sun in the

firmament, the air in middle space, the fire on this

earth as its altar; it is the guest in the house; it

dwells in men, it dwells in the gods, it dwells in the

Various mani-

festations of

Puruşha or

Brahman.

sacrifices, it dwells in the sky; it is born in the waters

in the shapes of aquatic animals, it is born on the earth

as barley, rice, and every other plant, it is born in the

sacrifical elements, it is born on the mountains in the

form of rivers. It is the true, the infinite.

" It impels the breath upwards, it impels the descend-

ing air of life downwards. All the senses bring their

offerings to this adorable being seated in the midst of

the heart.

" When the spirit that is in the perishing body is

parted from it, what is left of the body ? This is that.

" No mortal lives by his breath or by the descend-

ing vital air. They live by another principle in which

these vital airs reside."

The scholiasts remark of the last three verses that

they give the proofs of the existence of the Self. These

proofs are these:—The activities of the vital airs (on

which, in Indian physiology, the functions of the viscera

are said to depend), and the functions of the senses and

the muscles, are for the sake of some conscious prin-

ciple ulterior to themselves; the activity of unconscious

things being instrumental to the ends of conscious

beings, as the activity of a chariot is instrumental to

the ends of the person driving in it. Again, the body

implies a conscious tenant, as it loses all sense of

pleasure and pain on the departure of that tenant.

Again, the body is composite, and everything composite

exists for the sake of something ulterior to itself,—a bed

for the sake of the sleeper, a house for the sake of the

inmates, and so forth. That there is an ultimate prin-

ciple of reality beyond the plurality of experience, is

proved by the fact that the last residuum of all abstrac-

tion is entity. After all differences have one by one

been thrown away, the mind remains to the last filled

with the idea of being. And this ultimate reality is

proved to be spiritual, by that power of intuition to

which the aspirant to extrication may rise even in this

134

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. life. He comes to see the light within the heart, the

light of consciousness in which the modes of mind are

manifested. He puts away the duality of subject and

object as the fictitious outflow of the world-fiction,1 and

recovers the characterless bliss of unity, the fulness

of joy that is the proper nature of the soul as Self.

Every phase of happiness 2 in everyday experience is

only a fictitious portion of that total blessedness, and

everything that is dear to us is dear only as it is one

with us in the unity of the beatific Self.3 To return to

the text.

What becomes

of the soul at

death.

"Lo, Gautama, I will again proclaim to thee this

mystery, the everlasting Self, and how it is with the

Self after death.

"Some souls pass to another birth to enter into

another body, and some enter into vegetable lives,

according to their works, and according to their know-

ledge.

"The spirit that is awake in those that sleep, fasl n-

ing to itself enjoyment after enjoyment,—this is the

pure Self, this is the immortal; on this the spheres of

recompense are based; beyond this none can pass. This

is that.

The Self is like

a permeating

fire, or like a

pervading at-

mosphere.

"As one and the same fire pervades a house and

shapes itself to the shape of everything, so the one Self

that is in all living things shapes itself to all their

several shapes, and is at the same time outside them.

"As one and the same atmosphere pervades a house

and shapes itself to the shape of everything, so the one

Self that is in all living things shapes itself to all their

several shapes, and is at the same time outside them.

Sïnïle of the

sun unsullied

by the impurï-

ties it looks

down upon.

"As the sun, the eye of all the world, is unsullied

by the external impurities, so the one Self that is within

1 Niraste 'vidyākrite vishayavis-

hayivibhāge vidyayā svābhāvikah

nripatīrṇa eka ānando 'draite bha-

rati.

2 Laukiko hy ānando brahman-

andasyaiva mātrā.

3 Āmapratisaddhanatadd gaunī

nyatra pritiḥ.

all living things is not soiled by the miseries of migra-

tion, and is external to them.

"The wise see within their own heart the one and

only lord, the Self that is in all living things, that makes

its one form to become many; and everlasting bliss is

for them and not for others.

"The wise see within their own heart the one thing

that perishes not in all things that perish; the one thing

that gives light in all things that have no light; the one

being that gives the recompense to many ; and peace

eternal is for them and not for others.

"This is that, so think they; this is the unspeakable,

the bliss above all bliss. How shall I come to know

that bliss ? does it shine forth, does it reveal itself ?

"The sun gives no light to that, nor the moon and

stars; neither do these lightnings light it up; how then

should this fire of ours ? All things shine after it as it

shines, all this world is radiant with its light.

VI. This everlasting holy fig-tree stands with roots

above, with branches downwards. Its root is that pure

Self, that immortal principle. All the spheres of recom-

pense have grown up upon it, and no man can pass

beyond it. This is that.

"All this world, whatever is, trembles in that living

breath; it has come forth and stirs with life. They

that know this, the great awe, the uplifted thunderbolt,

become immortal.

"In awe of this, fire gives heat; in awe of this, the

sun scorches; in awe of this speed Indra and Vāyu,

and the Death-god speeds besides those other four.

"If a man has been able to see this in this life before

his body falls away from him, he is loosed from future

embodiments. If not, he is fated to further embodi-

ments in future ages and future spheres of recompense.

1 This verse occurs also in the

second section of the second Mun-

daka. See above, p. 106.

2 A similar verse occurs in the

Taittirīya Upanishad. See above,

p. 82.

136

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

"This Self is seen in the heart as in a mirror, in the sphere of the forefathers as in a dream, in the sphere of the Gandharvas as on a watery surface, in sphere of Brahmā as in light and shade."

The world-tree and the seed

Brāhman, it has been seen, is the seed of the world-tree, and Māyā is the power of growth residing in the seed. Here Brahman is said to be the root of the world-tree. The world of semblances is a tree, and may be cut down with the hatchet of ecstatic vision. It grows up upon Brahman as its root, out of the world-fiction Māyā as its seed. Hiranyagarbha is the sprouting seed. It is watered by the cravings of migrating souls, whose actions through the law of retribution prolong the existence of the spheres of metempsychosis.

Its fruits are the pleasure and pains of living things. The spheres of recompense are the nests in which deities and migrating souls dwell like birds. It rustles with the cries, the weeping, and the laughter, of the souls in pain or for the moment happy. It is like a holy fig-tree in constant agitation, tremulous to the breeze of emotion and of action. Its pendulous branches are the paradises, places of torment, and spheres of good and evil recompense. It is in constant growth and change, varying from moment to moment. It is unreal as the imagery of a reverie; as the waters of a mirage, and vanishes away in the light of intuition of the one and only truth, the Self beyond it.

The Self in its earliest manifestation as Īśvara is the great awe; the being in fear of whom the sun and moon and stars, and all the powers of nature, perform their never-ceasing ministrations. The sage is urged to strive with all his force to rise to the intuition of the Self, before he quits his present body. In this life he can see the light within his heart in the polished mirror of a purified mind. In the sphere of the Pitris or forefathers of the tribes, to which the soul of the worshipper of the deities proceeds, he can see it faintly and dimly only as in a

dream, for in that sphere the soul is engrossed in the

enjoyment of its reward. In the sphere of the Gand-

harvas, he can see it only fitfully reflected as on a

ruffled sheet of water. In the sphere of Brahmā, the

highest deity, it may indeed be seen as a thing is seen

in the sunlight and in the shade, but this sphere is

promised only to the rarest merit, and the sage may

fail to win it. To return to the text.

"The wise man knows that the senses are not him-

self, and that they rise and set as they have severally

issued forth, and knowing this he grieves no more.

"The inner sensory is beyond the senses, the mind

is higher than the inner sensory, the great soul Hiran-

yagarbha is higher than the mind, and the undeveloped

principle 1 is higher than that great soul.

"The su preme Purusha 2 is beyond the undeveloped

principle, pervading all things, characterless; and the

migrating soul that knows this Purusha is loosed from

etempsychosis, and passes into immortality.

"Its form is not in anything visible; no man has seen

This Self with his eyes: it is seen as revealed by the

heart, the mind, the spiritual intuition. They that

know this Self become immortal.

"When the five senses and the inner sense are at

rest, and when the mind ceases to act, they call this

the highest state.

"They account this motionless suspension of the senses

to be the ecstatic union. This is the unintermittent

union, for union has its furtherances and hindrances.

"The Self is not to be reached with voice, or thought,

or eye. How shall it be known otherwise than as he

knows it who says only that it is?

"It is,—only thus is the Self to be known, and as

that which is true in both that which is and that which

is not. Its regal nature reveals itself only when it is

known as that which is.

1 Mylh. 2 Brahman.

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THE PHILOSOPHY

Chānd. V.

"When all the desires that lie in his heart are shaken off, the mortal becomes immortal, and in this life rejoin

the Self.

"When all his heart's ties already in this life are broken off, the mortal becomes immortal. This is the

whole of the sacred doctrine."

Apathy,

vacuity, and

trance, the

stages of nearness

to the Self.

The aspirant must become passionless. If he desires anything he will act to get it, and action is followed by recompense in this or in a future body. All desire arises from the illusion by which a man views his animated organism as himself. Action, good and evil alike, serves only to prolong the miseries of migration, by giving rise to retributive experience. The aspirant must learn the falsity of plurality, the fictitious nature of the duality in experience, and the sole reality of the supersensible and unitary Self He must crush every sense and suppress every thought, that his mind may become a mirror to reflect the pure, characterless being, thought, and bliss. Its everyday experience is a dream of the soul, and it is only by suppressing this experience that it awakes to its proper nature. It is true that the Self is not to be reached by desire or thought; but if it be argued that it is not, for if it were it would be reached, the reply, says Sankarāchārya, is as follows: The Self is, for it may be reached as the ultimate principle from which all things have emanated. Refund by progressive efforts of abstraction each successive entity in the world of semblances into the entity out of which it emanated; ascend through the series of emanations to the more and more rarefied, the less and less determinate; do this, and you will find, at the end of this process, the idea of being. The final mode of mind is not non-entity but entity.1 The mind, after thus resolving all things into the things from which they came, is itself

1 Yadāpi vishayapravildāpanena pravildāpyamānd buddhis tadāpi na satyratayāgarbhasthā vilitiyate.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

139

resolved; yet as it melts away it melts away in the

Chap. V.

form of existence and full of the idea of being; and

the mind is our only informant as to what is and is not.

• Again; another reply is, that if non-existence were

the root of the world, all the things of the world that

have successively come into manifestation would mani-

fest themselves as non-existent. This is not the case;

these things manifest themselves as existent, as an

earthenware vessel manifests itself as made of earth;

It is only as apart from that which underlies them

that these things are non-existent, "a modification of

speech only, a change, a name." The Self is "true in

both that which is, and that which is not," it is true in

its proper nature as the fontal characterless essence,

and true underneath the figments of the world-fiction

that illusively overspread it. The desires are said to

lie in the heart. The feelings, passions, thoughts, and

volitions are modes of mind, and the mind is lodged in

the heart. When these modes are blown out like a

lamp, the personality passes away into the imperson-

ality of Brahman. To proceed with the text.

"There are a hundred and one arteries to the heart,

The soul's

and one of these issues up through the head. Going

path of egress

upwards by that artery a sage ascends to immortality.

the courts of

The other arteries proceed in all directions."

Bruhman

The coronal artery, sushumnā, is the passage by which

the soul of the aspirant to extrication from metempsy-

chosis ascends to the sphere of Brahmā, there to sojourn

till it wills its reabsorption into the pure spiritual

essence Brahman. The other arteries are the passages

through which the soul issues out to new embodiments.

"Of the size of a thumb, the Purusha, the Self within,

is ever seated in the hearts of living things. The sage

should patiently extract it from his body, as he might

extract the pith out of a reed; and he should learn that

that Self is pure and immortal, pure and immortal.

"Thus Nachiketas received this gnosis revealed by

140

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. V. the god of death, together with all the precepts for eostatic union; he reached the Self, and became free from good and evil, and immortal; and so will any other sage become who thus knows the fental spiritual essence.

"May he preserve us both, may he reward us both. May we put forth our strength together, and may that which we recite be efficacious. May we never feel enmity against each other. Om. Peace, peace, peace. Hari. Om."

The formula with which the Katha Upanishad closes has already several times occurred in these pages. It is intended to secure the co-operation of the universal soul or Demiurgus, and the safe tradition and reception of its doctrines of gnosis and eostatic vision by teacher and disciple.

The allegory of the chariot

One of the most striking passages in this Upanishad is the allegory of the chariot in the third section. The tonic figure in migrating soul is said to be seated in the body as in a chariot. The mind is the charioteer, the will is the reins, the senses are the horses, and the journey is either towards fresh embodiments or towards release from metempsychosis. This allegory of the chariot has often been compared with the Platonic figure in the Phædrus, in which the souls of gods and of men in the ante-natal state are pictured as a charioteer in a chariot with a pair of winged horses. The charioteer is the reason. In the chariots of the gods both horses are excellent, with perfect wings; in the human chariot one of the horses is white and fully winged, the other black and unruly, with imperfect or half-grown wings. The white horse typifies the rational impulse, and the black violent and rebellious horse represents the sensual and concupiscent elements of human nature. In these chariots gods and men ascend to the vision of the intelligible archetypes of things, men for ever slipping down again to intercourse only with the things

of sense, to feed upon opinion, and no longer upon

truth.

"Now the winged horses and charioteers of the gods

are all of them good and of good breed, while those of

men are mixed. We have a charioteer who drives them

in a pair, and one of them is excellent and of excellent

origin, and the other is base and of base origin; and

necessarily it is hard and troublesome to manage them.

The teams of the gods, evenly poised, glide upwards in

obedience to the rein; but the others have a difficulty,

for the horse that has evil in him, if he has not been

thoroughly broken in by the charioteer, goes heavily,

inclining towards the earth, and depressing the driver."

The gods ascend to the heaven above the heavens,

the place of pure truth, and there contemplate the

colourless and figureless ideas. "This is the life of the

gods, but of the other souls that which follows the gods

best and is likest to them lifts the head of the charioteer

into the outer region, and is carried round in the revo-

lution of the worlds, troubled with the horses, and

seeing the ideas with difficulty. Another rises above

and dips below the surface of the upper and outer region,

and sees and again fails to see, owing to the restiveness

of its team. The rest of the souls are also longing

after the upper world, and they all follow; but not

being strong enough, they sink below the surface as

they are carried round, plunging, treading on one an-

other, striving to be first. There is confusion, and

conflict, and the extremity of effort, and many of them

are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-

driving of the charioteers; and all of them, after a long

toil, depart without being initiated into the spectacle

of being, and after their departure are fain to feed upon

the food of opinion. The reason why the souls show

this great eagerness to see the field of truth is that

pasturage is found in that meadow suited to the highest

part of the soul, and to the growth of the opinions on

142

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. V.

which the soul flies lightly upwards. And the law of Nemesis is this, that the soul which, in company with the gods, has seen something of the truth, shall remain unharmed until the next great revolution of the world; and the soul that is able always to do so shall be unharmed for ever. But when a soul is unable to keep pace, and fails to see, and through some mishap is filled with forgetfulness and vice, and weighed down, and sheds its plumage, and falls to the earth beneath the weight, the law is that this soul shall not in its first birth pass into the shape of any other animal, but only into that of man. The soul that has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or lover of beauty, or musician, or amorist; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be a righteous king, or warrior, or lord; the soul that is of a third-order shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of hard exercise, or gymnast, or physician; the fifth shall have the life of a soothsayer or hierophant; to the sixth the life of a poet or some kind of imitator will be suitable; to the seventh the life of an artisau or husbandman; to the eighth that of a pro- fessor or a people's man; to the ninth that of a tyrant. In all these varieties of life he who lives righteously obtains a better lot, and he who lives unrighteously a worse one." The soul of him that has never seen a glimpse of truth will pass into the human form, but into some lower form of life. "The intellect of the philosopher alone recovers its wings, for it is ever dwelling in memory upon those essences, the vision of which makes the gods themselves divine. He is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries, and alone becomes truly perfect. But as he forgets human inte- rests and is rapt in the divine, the many think that he is beside himself and check him; they fail to see that he is inspired."

OF THE UPANISHADS.

143

CHAPTER VI.

THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD.

"The thing visible, nay the thing imagined, the thing in any way

conceived as visible, what is it but a garment; a clothing of the higher

celestial, invisible, unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright.

This so solid-seeming world, after all, is but an air-image over Me, the

only reality; and nature, with its thousand-fold production and de-

struction, but the reflex of our own inward force, the phantasy of our

dream; or what the earth-spirit in Faust names it, the living visible

garment of God':-

"In being's flood, in action's storm,

I walk and work, above, beneath,

Work and weave in endless motion,

Birth and death,

An infinite ocean;

A seizing and a giving

The fire of living :

'Tis thus that at the roaring loom of time I ply,

And weave for God the garment thou seest him by."

—CARLYLE.

Many of the most impressive utterances of the primi-

tive Indian philosophy are to be found in the Brihad-

āranyaka Upanishad, a long treatise on the science of

Brahman, forming the last portion of the Śatapatha-

brāhmaṇa, the legendary and liturgic dissertation an-

nexed to the Vājasaneyisamhitā, or so-called White

Recension of the Yajurveda. A passage treating of

renunciation, ecstasy, and the liberation of the soul

has been already laid before the reader in the third

chapter of this work. The present chapter will present

the greater part of the narratives and dialogues of this

Upanishad that relate to the revelation of the Self,

144

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI.

with a few words of explanation from the scioliasts interposed from time to time.

The Brihadar-

anyaka Upanishad.

The earlier part of the Brihadāraņyaka Upanishad, setting forth the mystic significance of the Aśvamādha or 'horse-sacrifice, and relating the generation of the world by Prajāpati or Purusha, may be passed over.

The first extract selected is the dialogue between Gāṅgya and Ajātaśatru. It is as follows:-

"Once upon a time there lived the proud son of Balākā, a Gāṅgya, an able reciter of ancient learning.

On a particular occasion he visited Ajātaśatru, the Raja of Kāśi, and said: Let me expound Brahman to you. Ajātaśatru replied: I will give you a thousand head of cattle as a return for your instruction; for people go about with the idea that a liberal man is the best disciple.

"The Gāṅgya said: I meditate upon the Purusha, the divine spirit that is in the sun, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said: Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that.

meditate upon the Self as that which stands beyond; the head of all things, the king of all things. He that meditates upon the Self in this manner stands beyond, the head of all things, the king of all things."

The being that the Gāṅgya identifies with the Self is his own individual soul, Brahman as it is manifested in the sun and in the eye, and that through the eye has entered into the hearts of living things, and seems to know and act and suffer in the world of semblances.

He finds the Self in his own body and senses: Ajātaśatru at once rejects this presentation of the Self as inadequate; he himself already meditates upon the Self in a higher manifestation.

1 It is a Hindu maxim that a man rises to that grade of being under which he meditates upon Brahman. The Gāṅgya proceeds to enumerate a variety of other manifestations under which he meditates upon the sole spiritual essence.

1 Yathā yatho 'pāste tad eva bhāvati.

Dialogue of

Ajātaśatru

and the Gār-

gya.

OF THE UPANISHAḌS

145

As in the first instance he found Brahman in the sun and the organ of vision, of which the sun-god is the tutelary deity, so next he finds Brahman in the moon and in the inner sense or common sensory, of which the moon-god is the tutelary deity.

"The Gārgya said : I meditate upon the Puruṣha, the divine being that is in the moon, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as the great, white-robed Soma, the king. If a man meditate upon the Self in this wise, his soma libation is pressed out and poured forth day by day, and his food does not fail.

"The Gārgya said : I meditate upon the Puruṣha, the divine being that is in the lightning, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as the glorious being. He that meditates upon the Self in this wise becomes glorious, and his progeny becomes glorious.

"The Gārgya said : I meditate upon the Puruṣha, the divine being that is in the ether, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon that which fills all things and is inoperative as the Self. He that meditates upon the Self in this wise has the fulness of offspring and of flocks and herds, and his posterity is never cut off in this world.

"The Gārgya said : I meditate upon the Puruṣha, the divine being that is in the air, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as Indra the unassailable, and as the never-vanquished host of the Maruts. He that meditates upon the Self in this wise becomes an invincible victor, the vanquisher of the aliens.

"The Gārgya said : I meditate upon the Puruṣha, the divine being that is in fire, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as the sustainer. He that meditates upon the Self in this way becomes a sus-

K

146

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI

tainer of things, and his posterity become sustainers of things.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the divine being that is in water, as the Self. Ajātaśatru replied : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as that which is in conformity with prescriptive ordinances. If a man meditate upon the Self in this wise, the fruit of such conformity accrues to him, and a religious son is born to him.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the divine being that is seen upon a mirror, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as the shining being. If a man meditate upon the Self in this way, he shines, his children shine, and he outshines all men that he meets with.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the sound of my footsteps as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon Self as the breath of life. If a man meditate upon the Self in this wise, he lives out his whole life in this world, and his breath does not fail him before his day.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the divine being that is in the regions of space, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon the Self as the companion that never leaves me. If a man meditate upon the Self in this way, he has friends, and his friends are never parted from him.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the divine being that is my shadow, as the Self. Ajātaśatru said : Nay, never teach me of such a Self as that. I meditate upon death as the Self. If a man meditates upon the Self in this way, he lives out all his days in this life. does not come to him before his hour.

" The Gāṛgya said : I meditate upon the Purusha, the

OF THE UPANISHADS.

147

divine being that is in the mind, as the Self. Ajātasatru

said: Nāy, never teach me of such a Self as that. I

meditate upon the Self as that which has peace of mind.

If a man meditate upon the Self in this manifestation,

he has peace of mind in this life, and his children have

peace of mind. After this the Gāṛgya held his peace."

Bālāki the Gāṛgya knows the Self in its particular

and local manifestations, as it presents itself fictitiously

in the shape of the gods, in the forces of nature, and in

the hearts and minds of living things. He does not know

the Self as it is in its own nature, the Self per se, the

Self unmanifested, the nirguṇam brahma, the muḳhyam

brahma; and Ajātasatru the prince, finding that the

Gāṛgya is put to shame and has nothing more to say,

has to instruct the Brāhman in his own Brāhmanic

lore.

"Ajātasatru asked, Is this all you have to say? The

Gāṛgya replied, It is all. Ajātasatru said: The Self is

not learnt by anything you have said so far. The

Gāṛgya said: Let me wait upon you as your disciple.

"Ajātasatru said: It is preposterous that a Brālman

should come to a Kshatriya to be taught about the

Self, but I will teach you. So he stood up and took

him by the hand, and they went to a place where a

man was lying asleep. The Raja called to him by the

names, Great white-robed King Soma, but he did not

rise. He patted him with his hand and woke him,

and the man stood up.

"Ajātasatru said: When this man was fast asleep

where was his conscious soul, and where has it come

from back to him? The Gāṛgya did not know what to

say.

"Ajātasatru said: When the conscious soul was

asleep within him, it was in the other in his heart,

and had withdrawn into itself the knowledge that

arises from the intimations of the senses. When the

soul withdraws these into itself, it is said to sleep in

148

THE PHILOSOPHY

Oñap. VI. the dreamless state; its sense is withdrawn into itself,

its speech is withdrawn, its sight is withdrawn, its

hearing is withdrawn, its inner sense is withdrawn.

"But when the soul enters into the dreaming state

the retributive experiences present themselves,'and the

man seems to himself to be, it may be a great Brāhman, or he

it may be a great Raja, or

he passes into bodies

higher or lower than those of man. If he seems to be

a great Raja, he seems to have his subjects, and to live

as he pleases in his kingdom. In this way it is that

he has withdrawn the outer senses into the inward

sense, and lives as he wills within his own person.

"But when the soul returns to dreamless sleep and

is no longer cognisant of anything, it retires by way of

the seventy-two thousand arteries that proceed out of

the heart and ramify throughout the body, into the

body and reposes in it. It passes into the state of

highest bliss and sleeps at peace like a child, like a

great prince or Brāhman. It is thus that the spirit

rests in dreamless sleep.

"All the senses, all the spheres of recompense, all

the gods, and all living things proceed in all their

diversity out of this Self, in like manner as a spider

issues out of itself in the form of its threads, and as

the little sparks fly on all sides out of a fire. The

mystic name of this Self is the true in the true: the

senses are true, and the Self is the truth of them."

Ajitaśatru thus teaches Bālāki that Brahman is

the one and only Self, that manifests itself in the

seeming plurality of souls in their three states of

dreamless sleep, dreaming sleep, and waking experi-

ence, The peaceful state of the undreaming sleeper,

in which the duality of subject and object has for the

time melted away, is the highest manifestation of the

one divine life that lives in all things. In this state

the soul recovers its native purity; it is like water that

has been purified from previous discolorations. To

OF THE UPANISHADS.

149

asleep without dreaming is to be released awhile from

the miseries of metempsychosis. To be for ever in

such a state would be final peace and blessedness, the

devoutly-to-be-wished-for consummation. In the state

of dreamless sleep the Self is said to permeate the

whole body, as fire penetrates and permeates a redhot

mass of iron. In the state of dreaming sleep the

senses are withdrawn through the arteries into the

mind 1 within the heart, and the inner sensory 2 pre-

sents a series of images that simulate the objects of

perception. On awaking, the organs of sense and

motion are sent out of the mind to their several sta-

tions in the body through the network of the arteries.

In dreaming and in waking the modes of the mind

shine, that is, rise into consciousness, in the light of

the Self that dwells in the heart. In dreamless sleep

there are no modes of mind to be lighted up, for the

mind is for the time melted away. The Self is said at

that time to permeate the body, only in the sense that

it is ready to reillumine the mind so soon as it shall

reappear. Brahman is said to be the true in the true.

Brahman is that out of which all things arise, that

upon which they abide in false presentment, and that

into which they disappear again. All things are the

five elements, or made of the five elements, in their

supersensible or their sensible manifestation. The

mind and the senses are themselves made of the super-

sensible elements. The elements are designated name

and colour; name and colour are said to be the true,

and Brahman is that which is true in this true.

The next dialogue in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

is that between the Rishi Yajnavalkya and his wife

Maitreyi. Yajnavalkya is on the point of quitting the

ties of home to become a religious mendicant, that he

may be able to ponder on the emptiness of life and

to seek reunion with the one and only being, the im-

personal Self.

1 Buddhi.

2 Manas.

150

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

Dialogue of

Yājñavalkya

and his wife

. Maitreyī.

"Yājñavalkya said: Maitreyī, I am about to leave

this home-life; come, let me divide the property be-

tween thee and my other wife, Kātyāyanī.

"Maitreyī said : If all this earth were mine and full

of riches, should I be any the more immortal? . No,

replied Yājñavalkya; your life would be like the life

of other wealthy people; but as 'for immortality, there

is no hope of that from riches.

"Maitreyī said: What am I to do with a thing that

will not make me immortal? Tell me, holy lord, the

thing that thou knowest. Yājñavalkya said: I love

you indeed, and I love what you now say ; come, sit

down, and I will tell you, and you must think deēply

about what I say.

Things that

are dear are

dear for the

sake of the

Self.

"He said: A husband is loved, not for love of the

husband, but the husband is loved for love of the Self

that is one within us all. A wife is loved, not for love

of the wife, but a wife is loved for love of the Self.

Children are loved, not for love of the children, but

children are loved for love of the Self. Wealth is

loved, not for love of wealth, but wealth is loved for

love of the Self. The Brāhmanic order is loved, not

for the love of that order, but for the love of the Self.

The Kshatriya order is loved, not for the love of that

order, but for the love of the Self. The spheres of re-

compense are loved, not for the love of those spheres,

but for the love of the Self. The gods are loved, not

for the love of the gods, but the gods are loved for love

of the Self. Living things are loved, not for love of

the living things, but for love of the Self. The world

is loved, not for love of the world, but the world is

loved for love of the Self that is one in all things. Ah!

Maitreyī, it is the Self that one must see, and hear

about, and think about, and meditate upon. All this

world is known by seeing the Self, by hearing about it,

thinking about it, meditating upon it."

It is the Self

that is to be

seen.

These expressions look strange and not very lucid,

but the words must be taken to represent a nascent

feeling that there is a universal and impersonal element

in every form of interest, attachment, love, and worship,

and that in these the individual rises above his usual

limitations. All other love, say the scholiasts, is im-

perfect; the love of the Self that is one in all things,

alone is perfect; all other love has fictitious limitations,

the love of the Self alone is illimitable. And therefore

it is that the Self is what one has to see, and that the

aspirant must turn his back on all things that he may

come to see it. First he is to hear about it in the

teaching of his spiritual guide and in the words of

revelation ; next it is to be thought about in the exer-

cise of the understanding; next it is to be meditated

upon in prolonged ecstasy ; and, last of all, the inner

vision rises clear within the purified mind, so soon as

all the semblances of the world have been melted away

into their fontal unity by a never-failing effort of ab-

straction. Then and not till then he shall have reached

the only satisfying love and blessedness. The words,

It is the Self that one must see, and hear about, and

think about, and meditate upon,1 form one of the texts

of highest importance and most frequent citation in the

philosophy of the Upanishads. To return to the text.

"The Brāhmanic order would reject any one who

should view the Brāhmanic order as elsewhere than in

the Self. The Kshatriya order would reject any one

who should regard the Kshatriya order as elsewhere

than in the Self. The sphere's of recompense would

reject any one who should regard the spheres as else-

where than in the Self. The gods would reject any one

who should view the gods as elsewhere than in the Self.

All living things would reject any one that should view

the living things as elsewhere than in the Self. All

things would reject any one that should view all things

as elsewhere than in the Self. This Brāhmanic order,

1 Ātmā va'ra draṣṭavyaḥ śrotavyo mantavyo nididhyāsitavyaḥ.

154

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. the Self; the flowers are withdrawn, and the crystal is

pure and colourless again. There is no consciousness

for the soul freed for the time or freed for ever from

the body, the senses, and the mind; there is only the

state of characterless bliss beyond personality and

beyond consciousness, unthinkable and ineffable. To

return.

"Maitreyī said: Holy sir, thou hast bewildered me

by saying that there is no consciousness after one has

passed away. Yājñavalkya answered her: I have said

nothing bewildering, but only what may well be under-

stood.

The duality of "For where there is as it were a duality, one sees

subject and another, one smells another, one hears another, one

speaks to another, one thinks about another, one

knows another; but where all this world is Self alone,

what should one smell another with, see another

with, hear another with, speak to another with, think

about another with, know another with? How

should a man know that which he knows all this

world with? Wherewithal should a man know the

knower?"

The dialogue of Yājñavalkya is followed by the Mad-

huvidyā or allegory of honey, in which the following

verses may be noticed:-

"The body is the honey of all living things, and all

living things are the honey of this body; and this same

luminous immortal Purusha that is in the body and

this same luminous immortal Self are one. Purusha

is Self. This is immortal, this is Brahman, this is all

that is.

"This same Self is the lord over all living things, the

king of all living things. All living things, all the

gods, all the spheres, all the faculties, all souls are con-

centred in the Self, as the spokes of a wheel are all

fixed in the axle and the felly.

"This is the honey that Dadhyach the son of Atharvan

OF THE UPANISHADS.

155

proclaimed to the Aśvins. Seeing this, the Rishi has CHAP. VI said : This Self shaped itself after the shape of every- The Demi- thing, that it might unfold its essence. Indra 1 appears urgue passes multiform -by his illusions, for his horses are yoked, a plurality of hundreds and ten. This Self is the horses (the senses), souls and en- this is the ten (organs of sense and motion), this is the vironments of many thousands, the innumerable (living souls). This souls. same Self has nothing before it or after it, nothing inside it or outside it: This Self is Brahman and is omniscient. Such is the doctrine.

The fourth book of the Bṛihadāranyaka Upanishad introduces us to a public disputation on the import of various elements of sacrificial worship, and on the know- ledge that liberates the soul, between the Ṛishi Yājña- valkya and the Brāhmans present at a sacrifice offered by Janaka, the Raja of Videha or Tirhut. The ceremony was thronged with visitors, who came either at the invi- tation of the prince, or of their own accord, to see the spectacle, some Brāhmans having come from the lands of the Kurus and Pañchālas in the distant north. The story is as follows :-

"Janaka, the Raja of Videha, performed a sacrifice, The disputa- and gave numerous gifts to those that came to it. tion at the Brāhmans from the countries of the Kurus and Pan- sacrifice cele- chālas had come to be present at it. A desire arose in brated by Janaka, the Raja of Vide- the mind of Janaka to know which of all these Brāh- ha. A drove of cattle is mans was the most proficient in the repetition of the the prize. sacred text. He accordingly had a thousand head of cattle driven into a pen, the horns of each being over- laid with ten measures of gold.2

"He said: Holy Brāhmans, let him that is most Yājñavalkya takes the learned of you all drive off these cattle. Not one of prize without them took upon himself to do so. Yājñavalkya said to waiting for the disputar tion.

1 Indra is Iśvara. Iśvara appears in a fictitious plurality of forms, by illusively entering into and identifying himself with the plurality of bodies and minds that

proceed out of the elements that emanate from Māyā.

2 Of Odyssey, iii. 426; Tibullus Eleg., iv. 1, 15.

156

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. his disciple, Good Sāmaśravas, drive these cattle to

my house; and the youth did as he was bid. The

Brāhmans were angry, thinking, Why should this man

think himself more learned than any of us all ? Now

Janaka had a Hotri priest named Aśvala, and Aśvala

asked Yājñavalkya, Yājñavalkya, art thou more learned

than any one of us? He answered, I offer my profound

obeisance to the most learned, but I must have the

cattle; and thereupon Aśvala took courage to put ques-

tions to him.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are pervaded by death and under

the dominion of death: what shall the sacrificer es-

cape beyond the reach of death withal? He replied:

He shall escape beyond death by seeing that the Hotri

priest and the voice are one and the same with Agni,

the god invoked by means of them. It is the voice

that is the Hotri priest at the sacrifice, and this same

voice is the fire-god Agni, and is the Hotri priest. This

is the escape, this is the escape beyond death.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are things that exist in day and

night, and under the dominion of day and night: what

shall the sacrificer escape beyond the reach of day and

night withal? He replied: He shall escape beyond

day and night by seeing that the Adhvaryu priest and

the eye are one and the same with Āditya. It is the

eye that is the Adhvaryu priest at the sacrifice, and

this same eye is the sun-god Āditya, and is the Adh-

varyu priest. This is the escape, this is the escape

beyond day and night.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all these

sacrificial elements are things that exist in the waxing

and the waning of the moon, and under the dominion

of the waxing and the waning of the moon: what

shall the sacrificer escape beyond the reach of the

waxing and the waning of the moon withal? He

replied: He shall escape beyond the two semi-lunations

by seeing that the Udgātri priest and the vital breath

are one and the same with Vāyu. The vital breath is

the U gātri priest at the sacrifice, and this same breath

is the wind-god Vāyu, and is the Udgātri priest. This

is the escape, this is the escape beyond the periods of

the waxing and the waning of the moon.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how yonder

sky seems unsupported. By what ascent shall the

sacrificer ascend to the paradise that is his recom-

pense? He replied: He shall ascend to paradise by

seeing that the Brahman priest and the inner sense are

one with Chandra. The inner sense is the Brahman

priest at the sacrifice, and this same inner sense is the

moon-god Chandra, and is the Brahman priest. This

is the escape, the escape beyond the sky. Such are

the modes of liberation, and the preparations at the

sacrifice."

śvala's questions relate to the mystic significance

of the various persons and things employed in the great

sacrifice of Janaka. They are questions in the kind of

knowledge which may be added to the performance of

the time-hallowed ritual ; and the ritual, and the know-

ledge of this kind added to it, may elevate the wor-

shipper to higher and higher spheres of recompense,

but they are of no avail towards the highest end of

all, the final escape from metempsychosis. The next

interrogator, Ārtabhāga, proceeds to examine Yājña-

valkya on, the nature of the bondage of the soul, its

implication in metempsychosis. The soul is in bondage

so long as it attributes reality to the objects of its

sensible experience, and the nature of its experience is

determined by the senses and the things of sense.

" Next Ārtabhāga the Jāratkārava began to question

him. Yājñavalkya, he said, how many organs of sense

and motion are there, and how many objects of those

organs? Yājñavalkya replied: There are eight such

158

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

organs and eight such objects. He asked: What are

the eight organs, and what are the eight objects?

"Yājñavalkya said: Smell is an organ, and the ex-

haling substance is its object; for a man is sensible

of odours by the sense of smell.

"The voice is an organ, and the utterable word is its

object; for a man utters words by means of the voice.

"The tongue is an organ, and the sapid thing is its

object; for a man is sensible of taste by means of the

tongue.

"The eye is an organ, and colour is its object; for a

man sees colours with the eye.

"The ear is an organ, and sound is its object; for a

man hears sounds with the ear.

"The common sensory is an organ, and the pleasur-

able is its object; for a man lusts after the pleasurable

with this sensory.

"The hands are an organ, and the thing handled is

the object; for a man handles things with the hand :

"The skin is an organ, and the tangible is its object;

for a man is sensible of touch by means of the skin.

These are the eight organs and the eight objects of the

organs.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, thou knowest how all this

world is food for death, what divine being is death the

food of ? Yājñavalkya replied: Fire is the death of

death and fire is the food of water.1 A man may over-

come death.

'Yājñavalkya, he said, when the sage that has won

release from metempsychosis dies, do his organs issue

upwards to pass into another body or not ? Yājñavul-

kya replied: They do not; they are melted away at the

1 All things in the spheres of

recompense, the world of metemp-

sychosis, may be destroyed by fire;

fire itself again may be destroyed,

that is, extinguished, by water.

All these things being perishable,

the soul, as imperishable, may be

disengaged from them, and may

a accome death, that is, may

achieve its extrication from me-

tempsychosis.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

159

moment of his death. He is inflated, and swells, and Chap. VI.

lies a swollen corpse.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, when the liberated sage dies,

what is it that does not leave him ? The Ṛishi replied :

His name; his name is endless: the Viśvadevas are

endless, and therefore he wins an endless recompense.

"Yājñavalkya, he said, where does a man that has

not won this release go when he dies, and his voice

passes back into fire and his vital breath into the air,

his eyes into the sun, his common sensory into the

moon, his ears into the regions of space, his body

into the earth, the ether in his heart into the ether

without, the hair of his body into plants, the hair of his

head into trees, and his blood into water? Yājñavalkya

said : Give me thy hand, good Ārtabhāga; we will find

out the answer to thy question, but this is no matter

to discuss in public. So they went out and conferred

together, and said that it was the law of retribution

that they had been speaking of, and pronounced it to

be this law that sent the soul from body into body.

A man becomes holy by holy works, and unholy

by unholy works in previous lives.

"Hereupon Ārtabhāga the Jāratkārava held his

peace."

At the death of an ordinary man his several organs

of sense and motion, as forming part of the tenuous

involucrum of his soul, pass out and enter into a new

body, and he is born again. At the death of the perfect

sage they sink back into the original unity of Brahman,

as waves sink back into the sea. The answer to the

question, 'Where does the soul that has not won its

release go after the dissolution of his present body ? is

that it goes into some new embodiment, higher or lower

in the scale according to its works in former lives. By

the law of retribution the soul becomes holy, that is, is

born into higher grades of life, by good works, by con-

formity to the prescriptive sacra ; and it becomes un-

160

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. holy, that is, is born into vegetal, animal, or other lower grades of life, by unholy works, that is, by neglect of immemorial usages. The reader must beware of attaching to the text a higher moral and spiritual significance than properly belongs to it.

"Next Bhujyu, the grandson of Lahya, began to question him. Yājñavalkya, he said, when we were itinerating as sacred students in the country of the Madras, we came to the house of Patancala the Kāpya. He had a daughter possessed of a spirit more than human, a Gandharva. We asked the Gandharva who he was, and he said that he was Sudhanvan, an Āngirasa: In talking to him about the uttermost parts of the world, we asked what had become of the descendants of Parikshit. Now I ask thee, Yājñavalkya, what has become of the Pārikshitas?

"Yājñavalkya said: They have gone to the sphere to which they go who have celebrated an Aśvamedha or sacrifice of a horse. Bhujyu asked: And where do the celebrants of an Aśvamedha go? This world, said Yājñavalkya, is equal to thirty-two daily journeys of the sun-god's chariot. This is surrounded on every side by a land of twice that size. That land again is surrounded by a sea twice as extensive. Beyond this sea there is an ethereal space of the width of a razor's edge or a mosquito's wing. There Indra, taking the shape of a bird, conveyed the Pārikshitas to the air, the air holding the Pārikshitas within itself forwarded them to the sphere where all former celebrants of an Aśvamedha reside. The Gandharva therefore revealed to you that it was the air through which the Pārikshitas passed. Air is each and every thing, and air is all things. He that knows it as such overcomes death.

"Hereupon Bhujyu Lāhyāyani was silent.

"Next Ushasta Cākrāyana began to question him. Yājñavalkya, he said, tell me plainly what that present and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

OF THE UPANISHADS.

161

things? Yājñavalkya replied: The Self that is thine is

CHAP. VI.

the Self within all living things. What Self, Yājña-

Ushasta calls

valkya, is in all things? Yājñavalkya answered: That

upon him for

which breathes with the breath is the Self that is thine,

an ocular de-

and that is in all living things. That which descends

monstration

with the descending air of life is the Self that is thine,

of the Self.

and that is in all living things. That which circulates

He replies

with the circulating air of life is the Self that is thine,

that the Self

and that is in all living things. That which ascends

is the unseen

with the ascending air of life is the Self that is thine,

seer.

and that is in all living things. This is thy Self that is

in all things that are,

"Ushasta Chākrāyaṇa said: Thou hast only taught

me as a man might say a cow is so and so, a horse is

so and so. Point out to me plainly what that present

and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

things. Yājñavalkya replied again, The Self that is

thine is the Self within all living things. Ushasta

asked again, What Self is in all things? Yājñavalkya

answered him: I cannot point it out. Thou canst not

see the seer of the sight; thou canst not hear that that

hears the hearing; thou canst not think the thinker of

the thought; thou canst not know the knower of all

knowledge. This is thy Self that is in all things that

are, and everything else is misery.

"Hereupon Ushasta Chākrāyaṇa ceased from farther

questioning."

So far, says Śankarāchārya; the text of this dialogue

has treated of the bondage of the soul, its implication

in metempsychosis, and has taught that the migrating

soul is, if only it be truly viewed, the Self itself. The

text now proceeds to treat of the renunciation of all

things and spiritual intuition, as the means by which

the soul may win its release from further transmigration.

Next Kahola Kaushītakeya began to question him. Kahola ques-

Yājñavalkya, he said, tell me plainly what that present

about the one

and visible Brahman is, that is the Self within all living

things living.

162

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. things. Yājñavalkya said, This Self of thine is the

Self that is within all things. What Self, Yājñavalkya,

is in all things ? Yājñavalkya answered him : The Self

that is beyond hunger and thirst, and grief and stupor,

and decay and death. Knowing the Self to be such,

Brāhmans have risen and laid aside the desire of chil-

dren, the desire of wealth, and the desire of spheres of

recompense, and have wandered forth as sacred mendi-

cants. For the desire of children is the same as the

desire of wealth, and the desire of wealth is the same

as the desire of the spheres of recompense; for there

are both of these kinds of desire. Therefore1 let a

Brāhman learn wisdom, and stand fast in the power of

wisdom; and having made an end of wisdom and the

power of wisdom, let him become a quietist; and when

he has made an end of quietism and non-quietism, he

The visionary

sage is the

true Brāhmin.

shall become a Brāhman, a Brāhman indeed. Whatso-

ever kind of a Brāhman he may have been, he becomes

a veritable Brāhman now.

"Hereupon Kāholā Kaushītakeya held his peace.

"Next Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu began to

tions him.

Over what is the cosmic web woven ?

how all this earth is woven upon the waters warp and

woof; what are the waters woven upon warp and woof?

Upon the air, Gārgī, replied the Rishi. What is the

air woven upon warp and woof ? Upon the regions of

middle space, Gārgī. What are the regions of middle

space woven upon warp and woof ? Upon the spheres

of the Gandharvas, Gārgī. What are the spheres of

the Gandharvas woven upon warp and woof ? Upon

the solar spheres, Gārgī. What are the solar spheres

woven upon warp and woof ? Upon the lunar spheres,

1 The translation of this part

of the verse follows the gloss of

Sankaraśbhārya. Quitting the tra-

ditional explanation, the words

might be translated, "Let a Brāh-

man renounce learning and become

as a child ; and after renouncing

learning and a childlike mind, let

him become a quietist ; and when

he has made an end of quietism

and non-quietism, he shall become

a Brāhman, a Brāhman indeed."

OF THE UPANISHADS.

163

Gārgī. What are the lunar spheres woven upon warp

and woof? Upon the starry spheres, Gārgī. What are

the starry spheres woven upon warp and woof? Upon

the spheres of the gods, Gārgī. What are the spheres

of the gods woven upon warp and woof? Upon the

spheres of Indra, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Indra

woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of

Prajāpati, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Prajāpati

woven upon warp and woof? Upon the spheres of

Brahmā, Gārgī. What are the spheres of Brahmā woven

upon warp and woof? He said to her: Gārgī, push not

thy questioning too far, lest thy head fall off. Thou

goest too far in putting questions about the divine

being that transcends such questioning; push not thy

questioning too far.

"Hereupon Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu ceased

to speak."

Here as elsewhere in the Upanishads, the various

spheres of recompense through which the soul has to

go up and down in its migrations in obedience to the

law of retribution, are said to be woven warp and woof,

like so many veils of finer and finer tissue, across and

across the one and only Self. The whole world of

semblances is only a vesture that hides from the soul,

the underlying spiritual essence of which it is only

one of the innumerable fictitious emanations.

The soul is one of the countless sparks of the fire,

one of the countless wavelets of the sea, one of the

countless images of the sun upon the waters; and is

only the inexplicable power of the illusion that

cises itself from before all time, that hides from it its

pure and characterless nature, its unity with the pri-

mative essence, thought, and bliss. The true Self is

hidden from the eyes and thoughts of living souls by

veil after veil of illusory presentation, by sphere after

sphere of seeming action and suffering; the successive

figments of the primitive world-fiction, the principle of

164

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI.

unreality that has unreally associated itself from before all æons with the principle of reality.

So far the various speakers in the dialogue have talked about the spheres of recompense lower in ascent than the sphere of Hiranyagarbha. Beyond Prajāpati or Purusha, beyond the souls in the waking state, is Hiranyagarbha, the Sūtrātman, the spirit that permeates all dreaming souls; and beyond Hiranyagarbha and the dreaming souls is Īśvara, the internal ruler, the spirit that is present in all souls in their dreamless sleep, that directs every movement of every living thing, and metes out to the migrating sentiencies their varied lots from the lowest to the highest, in accordance with the law of retribution. Accordingly the dialogue proceeds to treat of the thread-soul Hiranyāgarbha, and the internal ruler Īśvara within the thread-soul.

Uddālaka

"Next Uddālaka the son of Aruṇa began to question Yājñavalkya, he said, we once lived in the country of the Madras, in the house of Patanchala the Kāpya, studying the nature and import of sacrificial rites. He had a wife possessed of a spirit more than human, a Gandharva. We asked the Gandharva who he was, and he said, I am Kabandha the son of Atharvan. He also said to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgists: Kāpya, dost thou know what the thread is by which this embodiment and the next embodiment and all living things are strung together? Pat chala the Kāpya said, I do not know it, venerable spr'ing. He said again to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgists: Kāpya, dost thou know that which actuates this embodiment and the next embodiment and all living things from within? Patanchala the Kāpya said, Great spirit, I know it not. The Gandharva said again to Patanchala the Kāpya, and to us liturgic students: Kāpya, he that knows that thread and that internal actuator within the thread-soul, knows Brah-

man, knows the spheres of recompense, knows the

gods, knows the Vedas, knows all living things, knows

the Self, knows all things. He revealed the thread-

soul and the internal actuatior that is within it to us,

and I know them. Now if thou, Yājñavalkya, hast

driven away the cattle that are the prize of the most

learned Brāhman, without knowing that thread-soul

and that internal ruler, thy head shall fall off. Yājña-

valkya said, Gautama, I know that thread-soul and

that internal ruler. Uddālaka rejoined, Any one can

say, I know them; tell me what thou knowest.

"Yājñavalkya said: Gautama. the air is that thread-

soul. This embodiment and the next embodiment and

all living things are strung together by the air. It is

for this reason that they say of a dead man that his

limbs are unstrung, for his limbs are strung together

by the air as by a thread. Just so, Yājñavalkya, said

Uddālaka ; now tell me about the internal actuator."

Sankarāchārya tells us that the air is here a me-

tonym for the supersensible rudiments, or elements in

their primitive state, as yet uncondensed by progres-

sive concretion. It is out of these supersible ele-

ments that the tenuous involuera, or invisible bodies of

migrating souls, are formed. These invisible bodies

clothe the soul in its transit from body to body, and

the retrib tive influences of the good and evil works

of former ves adhere to them. Yājñavalkya proceeds

to answer Uddālaka by a description of the Demiurgus,

the universal soul that permeates and vivifies all

nature and all migrating personalities. This cosmic

soul is the first manifestation of Brahman ; it is Brah-

man itself in its first illusory presentment, as ficti-

tiously overspread with Māyā, or, as it is otherwise

said, with the whole world-fiction as a body, the cosmic

wody out of which all things lifeless and living eman-

ate. It is in virtue of the presence and light of this

universal soul within them that the deities of earth,

166

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. and water, and fire, and other natural agents, pass

from rest to motion and from motion to rest again.

This universal soul is also present in every living

thing, from the grass below the feet to Brahmā the god

high over all; and it is in virtue of his presence and

his light that they pass from rest to motion, and from

motion back to rest. He is invisible, and vision is his

being; unknowable, and knowledge is his being; as

heat and light are the being of fire. As the universal

soul he is exempt from the varied experiences of me-

tempsychosis, which are the modes of individual life,

and which he allots, in conformity always with the

law of retribution, to the innumerable migrating souls.

"Yājñavalkya said: That which dwells in earth,

inside the earth, and earth knows not, whose body the

earth is, which actuates the earth from within,—that

is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in water, inside the water, and

the water knows not, whose body the water is, which

actuates the water from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in fire, inside the fire, and the

fire knows not, whose body the fire is, which actuates

the fire from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in air, inside the air, and the

air knows not, whose body the air is, which actuates

the air from within,—that is thy Self, the internal

ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in wind, inside the wind, and

the wind knows not, whose body the wind is, which

actuates the wind from within,—that is. thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the sky, inside the sky, and

the sky knows not, whose body the sky is, whicn

actuates the sky from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

167

That which dwells in the sun, inside the sun, and

the sun knows not, whose body the sun is, which

actuates the sun from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the regions of space, inside

the regions, and the regions know not, whose body the

regions are, which actuates the regions from within,—

that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the moon and stars, inside

the moon and stars, and the moon and stars know not,

whose body the moon and stars are, which actuates the

moon and stars from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the ether, inside the ether,

which the ether knows not, whose body the ether is,

which actuates the ether from within,—that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in darkness, inside the darkness,

which the darkness knows not, whose body the dark-

ness is, which actuates the darkness from within,—

that is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in light, inside the light, which

the light knows not, whose body the light is, which

actuates the light from within,—that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"Such are the elemental manifestations of the internal

ruler; now for his manifestations in animated nature.

"That which dwells in all living things, inside all

living things, which no thing living knows, whose body

all living things are, which actuates all things living

from within,—that is thy Self, the internal ruler, im-

mortal.

"That which dwells in the breath of life, inside the

breath, which the breath knows not, whose body the

breath is, which actuates the breath from within,—that

is thy Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the voice, inside the voice,

168

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

which the voice knows not, whose body the voice-is,

which actuates the voice from within,-that is thy

Self, the internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the eye, inside the eye, which

the eye knows not, whose body the eye is, which

actuates the eye from within,-that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the ear, inside the ear, which

the ear knows not, whose body the ear is, which

actuates the ear from within,-that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal.

"That which dwells in the inner sense, inside the

inner sense, which the inner sense knows not, whose

body the inner sense is, which actuates the inner sense

from within, — that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in the sense of touch, inside the

touch, which the touch knows not, whose body the

sense of touch is, which actuates the sense of touch

from within, — that is thy Self, the internal ruler,

immortal.

"That which dwells in the consciousness, inside the

consciousness, which the consciousness knows not,

whose body the consciousness is, which actuates the

consciousness from within,-that is thy Self, the inter-

nal ruler, iïmmortal.

"That which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks

unthought upon, knows unknown; that other than

which there is none that sees, none that hears, none

that thinks, none that knows; — that is thy Self, the

internal ruler, immortal. Everything else is misery.

"Hereupon Uddālaka the son of Aruṇa ceased from

questioning."

From Brahman as manifested in the form of the

Demiurgus or universal soul that permeates and ani-

mates all things, the dialogue next passes to Brahman

as beyond manifestation, the present and visible Brah-

The Demiurgus is Brahman manifested in the world.

in within the heart of every living thing the pure Chap. VI.

light, the characterless fontal essence.

"Next Gārgī the daughter of Vachaknu spoke again : Gārgī exa-

Reverend Brāhmans, I will ask this man two questions. mines him

'If he can answer them, no one of you can outvie the web of the

him in exposition of the Self. They said, Ask him, woven?

Gārgī.

"Yājñavalkya, said Gārgī, I rise to put two ques-

tions to thee. I rise as some Raja of Kāśī or Videhā

might rise to encounter thee, a father of heroes, with

his bow strung, and with two sharp threatening arrows

of cane in his hand. Answer me these questions.

Yājñavalkya said, Put the questions to me.

"Yājñavalkya, she said, across what is that principle

woven warp and woof, which they say is above the sky,

below the earth, and within which this earth and yonder

sky exist, and all that has been, is, and is to be?

"Yājñavalkya said: That principle that they say is

above the sky, below the earth, and within which this

earth and yonder sky exist, and all that has been, is,

and is to be,—is woven warp and woof across and

across the ethereal expanse.1

"Gārgī said: Glory to thee, Yājñavalkya, that thou

hast answered this my first question; now prepare

thyself to meet the second. He said, Put it to me.

Gārgī.

"She said: Yājñavalkya, across what is that principle

woven warp and woof, which they say is above the sky,

below the earth, and within which this earth and

yonder sky exist, and all that has been, is, and is

to be?

"Yājñavalkya answered her again: That principle

that they say is above the sky, below the earth, and

within which this earth and yonder sky exist, and all

that has been, is, and is to be,—is woven warp and

woof across and across the ethereal expanse. And I

1 Ethereal expanse is here a synonym of Mityū.

170

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. pray, said she, across what is the ethereal expanse

woven warp and woof?

It is woven over the Self, the principle that gives fixity and order to this moving world.

"Yājñavalkya said: Brāhmans say that that across which the ethereal expanse is woven is the imperishable principle, neither great nor small, neither long nor short, neither glowing like fire nor fluid like water, shadowless; without darkness, neither aerial nor ethereal, without contact with anything, colourless, odourless, without eyes or ears or voice or inward sense, without light from without, without breath or mouth. It has no measure; it has nothing within it or without it. It consumes nothing, and is consumed of none.

"Under the dominion of this imperishable principle, Gārgī, the sun and moon stand fixed in their places; under the governance of this imperishable principle the earth and sky stand fixed in their places.

"Under the dominion of this imperishable principle, Gārgī, the moments and hours, and days and nights, and fortnights and months, and seasons and years; stand fixed in their periods; under the governance of this imperishable principle, Gārgī, some of the rivers flow eastward from the snowy mountains, some westward, and others in other directions.

"Under the dominion of this imperishable principle men praise those that give freely; the gods are dependent on the sacrifices, and the ancestral spirits upon the obsequial offerings.

"If a man presents oblations and sacrifices or tortures himself for many thousand years in this life, and knows not this imperishable principle, his recompense is one that has an end. If, Gārgī, a man quits this life without knowing this imperishable principle, he is helpless; but if he knows this principle he is indeed a Brāhman.

"This same imperishable principle, Gārgī, is that which sees unseen, hears unheard, thinks unthoughtupon or knows unknown; there is no other than this that

OF THE UPANISHADS.

171

seen no other than this that hears, no other than this that thinks, no other than this that knows. It is across

this imperishable principle, Gārgī, that the ethereal expanse is woven warp and woof.

"Then Gārgī exclaimed: Venerable Brāhmans, you may think it a great matter if you can save yourselves

by making obeisance to this Rishi. Never will any one of you all outvie this Rishi in the exposition of the

Self."

In the words of Śankarāchārya, the Self is unseen, The Self is inasmuch as it cannot be made an object, but it is that

which sees, inasmuch as it is a pure and unceasing act of vision itself. Elsewhere 1 he tells us that the Self is

the object of the notion and the name "I." It cannot be heard, but it is that which hears, being a pure and

unceasing act of hearing. It cannot be thought upon, but it is that which thinks, being a pure and unceasing

act of thought. It cannot be known, but it is that which knows, being itself the pure and unceasing act

of knowledge. It sees with a sight that does not come and pass away, like our sight, but with a sight that

always is, a sight that is its being, as the sun shines for ever with a light that is its own being. It is the Self

that sees through the eyes, hears through the ears, thinks through the thought, knows through the mind,

of all living things. This is the present and visible Brahman, present in the heart of every creature, visible

to the purified soul of the ecstatic seer. This is the Self that seems to act and suffer in the

acting and suffering souls, as the moon seems to move as the clouds scud past it. This is the one and only

Self beyond the hunger, thirst, and misery of metemp-sychosis, and over this the world-fiction ,and all the

figments that issue out of it are woven warp and woof.

This is the goal, the final term. This, ever-present

1 As in the Śatīrakamīmāmsābhāshya, i. 1.1, and the Vivekachūḍāmaṇi, verse 127.

CHAP. VI

uniform,

characterless

vision and

thought.

172

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. though it be, it is veiled from the hearts and eyes of the

multitude, and reveals itself only to the spiritual vision

of the perfect sage. He alone can find himself one

with the universal soul, and one with the impersonal

Self.

The dialogue now proceeds to point out how the gods

are all of them only local and particular manifestations

of the one life that lives in all things. It is one and

the same divine being that fictitiously presents itself

in every living being, to fulfil a variety of functions

under all the variety of na and form and attribute

and power.

"Next Vidagdha the son of Śakala began to question

Vidagdha

him. Yājñavalkya, he said, how many gods are there ?

All things are

full of gods,

and gods are

only local.

manifesta-

tions of the

Self.

Yājñavalkya answered him according to the following

Nivid or enumerative text. There are, he said, as many

as are enumerated in the Nivid of the Vaiśvadevaśāstra,

three and three hundred, and three and three thousand.

Even so, said Vidagdha; how many gods are there then,

Yājñavalkya ? Three and thirty, replied the Ṛishi.

Even so, said Vidagdha; how many gods are there

then, Yājñavalkya ? Six, he replied. Even so, said

Vidagdha; and again, how many gods are there then,

Yājñavalkya ? Three, he said. Yes, said Vidagdha; and

how many gods are there then, Yājñavalkya ? Two, he

said.

Yes, said Vidagdha; and again, how many gods

are there, Yājñavalkya ? One and a half, he said. Yes,

said Vidagdha; how many gods are there, Yājñavalkya ?

One, he answered. Yes, said Vidagdha; and what are

those three gods and three hundred gods, and those

three gods and three thousand gods ?

"Yājñavalkya said: The glories of these are three

and thirty. Which are those thirty-three ? asked the

son of Śakala. The eight Vasus, replied the Ṛishi, the

eleven Rudras, and the twelve Ādityas are thirty-one;

and Indra and Prajāpati make thirty-three.

"Who are the Vasus ? Fire, the earth, the air, the

OF THE UPANISHADS.

173

welkin, the sun, the sky, the moon, and the stars, are

the Vasus. In these all places of recompense are con-

tained, and therefore they are called the Vasus.

"Who are the Rudras? These ten organs of sense

and motion in the living soul, together with the com-

mon sensory which is the eleventh organ. When

they issue upwards out of this mortal body they make

mea weep, and for this reason they are called the

Rudras.

"Who are the Ādityas? The twelve months of the

year are the Ādityas, for these take all things together

with them in their course; and for the reason that they

take all things with them they are called the Ādityas.

"Who is Indra, and who is Prajāpati? Indra is the

thunder, and Prajāpati is the sacrifice. What is the

thunder? The thunderbolt. What is the sacrifice?

The sacrificial victims.

"Who are the six gods? They are fire, earth, air,

welkin, sun, and sky. They are six, for all things are

these six.

"Who are the three gods? They are these three

worlds, earth, air, and sky; for all these gods are in

these three. Who are the two gods? They are food

and vital air, or Purusha and Hiranyagarbha. Who

is the god that is one and a half? The wind that

blows.

"Hereupon they cried out: This wind that is blowing

seems to be one, how sayest thou that it is one and

a half? Yājñavalkya replied: It is one and a half

(adhyardha) because everything grows up (adhyardh-

noti) in it. Who is the one god? asked Vidagdha

Yājñavalkya said: It is the breath of life. It is the

Self. They call it That.

"He who knows that Purusha, that living being,

whose body is the earth, whose eye is fire, whose inward

sense is light, in whom all are one who live in the body,

he indeed has knowledge. Yājñavalkya, said the son

174

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI. of Śakala, I know that Puruṣa, in whom all that live

in the body are one, about whom thou speakest: it is

this very living soul that is in the body. Tell me then,

son of Śakala, said the Ṛishi, what is the divinity1 of

that embodied soul? It is the assimilated portion of

food, said Vidagdhā.

Vidagdhā puts question after question to Yājñavalkya,

till the Ṛishi again proclaims that all things in the

world, and the ethereal expanse, or world-fiction, out of

which they proceed, are woven web upon web across

the one underlying reality, the spiritual essence, Brahman.

"This Self is not this, not that: imperceptible, for it

cannot be perceived; indiscernptible, for it cannot be

parted asunder; illimitable, for nothing can be placed

beside it; inviolable, for it cannot be hurt or injured.

Vidagdhā falls Now I ask thee what is that Puruṣa, that spiritual

to answer him essence, revealed in the mystic doctrines, that trans-

in turn and cends those other Puruṣas or embodied souls; and if

thou caust not tell me, thy head shall fall off. The son

of Śakala did not know that Puruṣa, so his head fell

off; and as his disciples were carrying home his bones

to burn them on the funeral pyre, thieves stole them,

taking them to be some other thing.

"Meanwhile Yājñavalkya said: Holy Brāhmans, any

one of you who wishes may question me, or you may

all of you put questions to me; or I will put questions

to any one of you that you may choose, or to all of you.

But the Brāhmans had no heart to answer him.

"So Yājñavalkya put a question to them in these

verses. Man, he said, is indeed like a tree of the forest;

Yājñavalkya'sparable. Man is a forest-tree.

When he is cut his hair is the leaves, his skin the outer bark. The

down, what blood trickles from his skin, as the sap trickles from the

root has he to bark; wound him, and the blood will flow like sap from

grow again a tree that is split open. His flesh is the inner bark,

from!

1 Divinity here means informing or plastic principle. Vidagdhā

says that the body is built up out of materials assimilated from food.

the flesh about his bones is the membrane about the

woody fibres, his bones are the wood within, and his

marrow is the pith. The tree is cut down, and the tree

grows up anew from its root; a mortal is cut down by

death, but what root has he to grow up from anew?

Say not from procreation, for that comes not from the

dead but from the living. The seed-sprung tree that

has, seemed to die springs up again apace, but if they

tear up the tree by the roots it cannot grow again.

Man is cut down by death, what root has he to grow

again from? You may say that he is already born

again, but this not so; who then can again beget

him?

The Brahmans were unable to answer Yājñavalkya,

not knowing that the soul, as it passes from body to

body, has one continuous life, as being one with, and

only in fictitious semblance severed from, the one and

only Self that is the root of the world. After thus

putting his successive opponents to silence, and over-

awing the whole assembly, the Ṛishi remains in undis-

puted possession of the prize, the thousand head of

cattle. He sums up the whole matter in the following

words, which close the discussion :-

"The Self is thought and bliss, the wealth of the

sacrifice, the final goal of the sage that knows it, and

perseveres in ecstatic union with it."

The sum of the

whole matter.

Ecstatic union

is the goal.

In the next book of the Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad

we have an account of two later interviews between

the Ṛishi Yājñavalkya and the Raja Janaka. Princes

are frequently mentioned in the Upanishads as taking

a leading part in theosophic discussions.

"Janaka of Videha was sitting giving audience, and

Yājñavalkya

came before him. He said: Yājñavalkya, what have you come for? Do you want more cattle,

or do you want subtle disputations ? He said: I want

both, great king."

Their conver-

sation. The

passage

through the

vestures of the

soul to the

Self beyond

all fear.

Yājñavalkya proceeds to question Janaka about the

176

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VI. instruction he has received from his various spiritual directors, and points out how each of them has only taught him about the Self in some one or other of its local and particular manifestations, a knowledge of which leads only to transitory recompenses, not to extrication from metempsychosis.

"Then Janaka of Videha came down from his seat and said: Glory to thee, Yājñavalkya; teach me more. The Ṛishi said: Great king, thou art thoroughly equipped with these mystic instructions that thou hast received, as is a man who has provided himself with a carriage or a boat, being about to start on a long journey. Great and rich, versed in the Vedas and informed of mystic doctrines as thou art, when thou quittest this life whither wilt thou go? I do not know, said Janaka, where I shall go. Then I will tell thee where thou wilt go, said the Ṛishi. Say on, holy sir, replied the prince.

"This Purusha that is in the right eye is named Indha, but for the sake of mystery men call him Indra: for the gods love mystery and hate familiarity.

"The Purusha in the left eye is his wife Virāj. Their meeting-place is the ether in the heart, their nourishment is the blood within the heart, their coverlet is the network of arteries in the heart, their path of transit is the artery that goes upward out of the heart. The arteries, minute as a hair split a thousand times, converge into the heart, and the food proceeds along these; so that the tenuous involucrum has a more refined kind of nutriment than the body.

"When the sage has passed through the body to the tenuous involucrum, and through the tenuous involucrum to the beatific vesture in the heart, the forward vital air is the eastern quarter, the vital air to the left is the south, the hinder vital air is the west, the upward vital air is the north, the upper vital air is the space above, the nether vital air is the space below. The vital airs are the regions of space."

OF THE UPANISHADS.

177

In the beatific vesture and in the state of dreamless sleep the sage returns to unity with the vital air, that is, with the universal soul. In the state of ecstasy he makes this universal soul to disappear into the characterless Self, of which Yājñavalkyā proceeds to speak.

"This same Self is not this, not that ; imperceptible, for it cannot be perceived; indiserptible, for it cannot be parted asunder; illimitable, for nothing can be placed beside it; inviolable, for it cannot be hurt or injured. O Janaka, thou hast reached the point where there is no more fear. Janaka of Videha said: 'May this salvation come to thee also, Yājñavalkya, for teaching me about this spiritual reality that is beyond all fear. Glory to thee : here is this kingdom of Videha, and here am I, and both are thine.'

The text, O Janaka,1 thou hast reached the point where there is no more fear, is one of those most frequently quoted in the works of the Indian schoolmen. The point beyond all fear is the pure spiritual essence, Brahman, on reaching which there is no further fear of birth and the miseries of life and death. The Rishi has lifted the veil of illusion, and thus enabled Janaka to see the sole reality, the one and only Self, and to recognise, and by recognition recover, his own unity with it. The story of Yājñavalkya's next interview with Janaka is as follows :-

"Yājñavalkya went again before Janaka, the Raja of Videha, and thought as he went that this time he would not say anything. Janaka of Videha and Yājñavalkya had, however, formerly talked together at a sacrifice to the fire-god Agni, and Yājñavalkya had promised Janaka to grant the next request that he might have to make of him. Janaka now chose as his guest permission to ask any question he liked, and Yājñavalkya granted it. The Raja first asked him :-

1 Athayam vai Janaka prāpto 'si.

M.

178

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.}

"Yājñavalkya, what light has man ? The light of

the sun, great king, said the Rishi. It is by the light

of the sun that he sits down, or goes about and does his

work, and comes home again. The Raja said: It is as

thou sayest, Yājñavalkya.

"But when the sun has set, Yājñavalkya, what light

has man ? The light of the moon, the Rishi answered.

It is in the light of the moon that he sits down, or goes

about and does what he has to do, and comes home

again. It is as thou sayest, Yājñavalkya, said the Raja.

"But, Yājñavalkya, when the sun has set and the

moon has set, what light has man? A fire, he an-

swered, is his light. It is by the light of a fire that he

sits down, or goes about and does what he has to do,

and comes home again. The Raja said: "It is as thou

sayest, Yājñavalkya.

"But, Yājñavalkya, when the sun has set, and the

moon has set, and the fire has gone out, what light has

man? The voice,1 he answered, is his light: it is by

the light of the voice that he sits down, or goes about

and does what he has to do, and comes home again ;

for when a man cannot see his hand before him, he

walks in the direction that a voice is heard in. The

Raja said: It is as thou sayest, Yājñavalkya.

"But, Yājñavalkya, when sun and moon are set, and

the fire is out, and all sounds are hushed, what light

has man? He answered: The Self within him is his

light: it is by the light of the Self that he sits down

or goes about, does what he has to do, and comes home

again."

In explanation of this last verse, Sankarāchārya says:

"In every state the mind has some light to act in, a light

that is other than the body and the senses. In the

1 "In a cloudy night in the

rainy season a man cannot see his

hand before him. He is guided

in his movements by the voices.

he hears about him, or it may be

by the barking of a dog, the bray-

ing of an ass, or other signs of

village life."—Sankarāchārya.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

179

waking state it acts through the bodily organs in the

Chap. VI.

light of sun, or moon, or fire. In the dreaming state,

in the state of dreamless sleep, and in the waking state,

whem there is neither sun nor moon nor firelight to

guide it in its actions, it still continues to act, and does

so in some light that is incorporeal and immaterial.

In dreaming a man sees himself meeting with or part-

ing from his friends, and on waking from sleep without

a dream he still is conscious that he has slept in peace

and without a cognisance of anything. This immaterial

light is the light of the Self, which is other than the

body and the senses, and illumines them like the ex-

terior light, and itself requires no light from outside

itself. This is the light within." To return to the

text.

"What Self is that? asked the prince. The Rishi

said: It is this conscious soul amidst the vital airs, the

The true light

light within the heart. This Self, one and the same in

is the light

every mind and every body, passes through this life

within the

and the next life in the body, and seems to think and

heart.

seems to move. The same Self, entering the dreaming

state, passes beyond the world of waking experience,

beyond the varied forms of metempsychosis.

"This self-same Self is born, and as it enters into a

body is involved in the good and evil deeds that attach

to the members and the senses; it passes up at death

out of the body, and leaves them behind.

"This same Self has two stations: any given present

The three

embodiment, and the embodiment that is next to fol-

states of the

low. And there is a third place: the state intermediate

soul—waking,

between the two—the place of dreams. Standing in

dreaming, and

the place of dreams, it sees both these stations, this

dreamless

emjodiment and the embodiment next to come. In

sleep,

the place of dreams it steps on to the path it has made

itself to the next embodiment, and sees the pains and

pleasures that have been in earlier lives and are to be

in after-lives. When it proceeds to dream, it takes to

180

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VI.

itself the ideal residues of its waking experience

former lives; it lays aside the body; it fashions for

In sleep the

soul creates a

dream-world.

itself an ideal body, and dreams in its own light, and

then the Self is its own light. In the dreaming state

there are no chariots, no horses, no roads; but it pre-

sents to itself chariots, horses, and roads. There are

in that state no pleasures, no joys, no raptures; but it

creates for itself pleasures, joys, and raptures. There

are no houses, no pools, no rivers; but it projects

before itself houses, pools, and rivers, for it is still in

action.

" Therefore there are these verses. In sleep it lays

aside the body, and itself unsleeping looks upon the

visions of its sleep. It takes its radiant imagery with

it, and again enters the place of waking experience, for

it is the luminous Self, the one spirit that is ever pass-

ing onward.

" Keeping alive with the vital air its vile nest the

body, it soars beyond its nest: it goes where it lists,

the immortal, luminous Self, the one spirit that is ever

passing onward.

" In the place of dreams1 it passes upward, passes

downward, in its own light: it projects a variety of

shapes before itself, dallying with women, laughing,

or it may be seeing perils.

" Men see the garden 2 that it strolls in, but no man

sees the Self itself. They say they cannot rouse it

when it is asleep.

" That part of the body to which this does not come

back again is hard to heal; it is blind, or deaf, and

lifeless. Some, indeed, say that the place of dreams is

not an intermediate position, but the same as the place

of waking experience, because it sees the same things

1 In its dreams the soul rises to

the position of a god, or descends

to the state of one of the lower ani-

mals. This it does in reminiscence

of a former embodiment, or in an-

ticipation of a future one, higher

or lower, as it may be, than its

present human embodiment.

2 The dream-world.

its dreams as it sees when awake; but this is not so.

In dreaming, the Self is its own light.

Janaka ex-claimed: Holy sir, I will give thee a thousand kine.

Teach me again, that I may be liberated from metem-psychosis,

"Yājñavalkya said: This same Self, after rejoicing

and expatiating in its dreams, and seeing good and evil,

passes into the peaceful state of dreamless sleep; and

thence again flits back into the place of dreams it came

from, back to other dreams. It is not followed by the

good or evil that it sees itself do in its dreams, for the

Self is not really in union with the bodily organs. It

is as thou sayest, Yājñavalkya, said the prince. Holy

sir, I give thee a thousand kine. Teach me again, that

I may be liberated.

"Yājñav lkya said: This same Self, after rejoicing

and expatiating in the waking state, and seeing good

and evil, flits again into the place of dreams.

"This Self passes from dreams to waking life, and

Simile of the

from waking life back to dreams; in the same way as a

fish

fish swims from one bank of a river to the other, from

riverside to riverside.

"This Self passes into the state of dreamless sleep,

Simile of the

and in that state desires no pleasures and sees no dreams;

falcon.

in the same way as a kite or falcon, tired of flying about

in the firmament above, folds its wings and covers in

its nest.

"There are in man arteries thin as a hair split a

thousand times, filled with fluids white, blue, yellow,

green, and red.

These ramify in all directions through the body, the

tenuous involucrum is lodged in them, and the ideal

residues of the experiences of former embodiments

adhere to the tenuous involucrum, and accompany it in

its passage from body to body. These ideal residues

furnish the imagery of dreams, and dreams point back

to the former lives of the soul, or forward to its future

182

THE PHILOSOPHY

Uṣap. VI. lives. The tenuous involucrum is the body of the sleep

ing soul.

"Now whatever peril a man sees when he is awake,

he may also see in his sleep. Enemies kill him or take

him captive, or a wild elephant chases him, and he

falls into a pit.

"Whatever peril he sees awake, he sees asleep through

the force of illusion ; but when, in the same way as in

his dreams he had seemed to be a god or a king, he

comes to know that he is all that is,—this is his highest

position.

Liberation is perfect satis-

faction, and

exemption

from all fear.

"This intuition of his oneness with all that is, is his

state of exemption from desire, and freedom from the

good and evil that prolong the migration of the soul ;

his state in which there is no more fear. The soul in

the bosom of the Self is conscious of nothi'g within or

without him, even as a man in the arms of his beloved

wife ceases to be conscious of anything within him or

without him. This oneness with all that is, is the state

of the fulfilment of all desires, the state of satisfaction

in oneself and of exemption from desires, the state in

which there is no more sorrow.

All differences

vanish in the

unitary indif-

ference of the

Self.

"In this state a father is no more a father, a mother

is no more a mother, the spheres of recompense are no

longer spheres of recompense, the gods no longer gods,

the Vedas no longer Vedas. Here the thief is a thief

no more, the Chandāla a Chandāla no more, the Paul-

kasa no more a Paulkasa, the holy mendicant no more

a holy mendicant, the anchorite an anchorite no more.

He is no longer followed by his good works, no longer

followed by his evil works ; for now at length he has

passed beyond all the sorrows of his heart."

OF THE UPANISHADS.

183

CHAPTER VII.

THE SENSATIONAL NIHILISM OF THE BUDDHISTS—

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE SANKHYAS.

"Suppose yourselves gazing on a gorgeous sunset. The whole western

heavens are glowing with roseate hues. But you are aware that in

half-an-hour all the glorious tints will have faded away into a dull

ashen grey. You see them even now melting away before your eyes,

although your eyes cannot place before you the conclusion that your

reason draws. And what conclusion is that? That conclusion is that

you never, even for the shortest time that can be named or conceived,

see any abiding colour, any colour which truly is. Within the millionth

part of a second the whole glory of the painted heavens has undergone

an incalculable series of mutations. Before any one colour has had

time to be that colour, it has melted into another colour, and that other

colour has in like manner melted into a third, before it has attained

to any degree of fixedness or duration. The eye indeed seems to

arrest the fleeting pageant, and to give it some continuance. But the

senses, says Heraclitus, are very indifferent witnesses of the truth.

Reason refuses to lay an arrestment on any period of the passing scene,

or to declare that it is, because in the very act of being it is not; it

has given place to something else. It is a series of fleeting colours, no

one of which is, because each of them continually vanishes in another."—

FERRIER.

So far the primitive thesis of Indian philosophy has been presented to the reader; it is time to present the

primitive antithesis, and also the new position taken up by a later school of Indian thinkers with the purpose

of superseding this antithesis, and of gaining a firmer footing by means of a cosmology approaching more

nearly the convictions that work unrecognised in the popular mind. As has been said already, in the absence

of historical data, the only methodical exposition of early Indian philosophy that is possible, must be the

presentation of theses and antitheses that in their succession made up its process.

184

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VII.

The primitive thesis, the original Indian cosmological conception, is that of the fictitious nature of the world, and of the various forms of life that migrate through it in body after body, in age after age, and of the sole reality of the one impersonal Self. The primitive antithesis is that there is no such impersonal Self, nor spiritual reality underlying the world of passing semblances. Sensations and the ideal residues of sensations are the only things that are; and these are only semblances or fleeting shows, that come out of and pass back into a fontal nullity, void, or blank. The things of sense are fictitious presentments, but not fictions that replace at the same time that they conceal, a reality beneath: the mirage of life is an aerial vision that covers no expanse, unless it be an expanse of nothingness. The things of sense are only sensations variously assorted, rising and passing away at every moment like the shifting colours of a sunset cloud.1 All things are in unceasing flow, and the soul itself is only a series of sensations and ideal residues of sensations. There is no inner light, no perduring Self within; the sensations and ideas flit by lit up with their own light, and each several stream of these is a migrating soul. The soul in every successive life has nothing but misery to look forward to; and the highest end of aspiration is a lapse into the void, a return to the primeval nothingness, a final extinction. In the philosophy of the Upanishads, the mind of the perfect sage is said to be blown out like a lamp as he returns to union with the one and only Self. In the philosophy of the Indian sensational nihilists, the successive mental modes are the mind, and the mind is the only soul. This mind or soul is extinguished as the sage returns to the aboriginal nothingness of things. The liberation promised in the Upanishads is a return to the pure

1 This simile occurs in the second chapter of Madhavacharya's Sarva-darsanasangraha, to which the reader may refer for further details.

tate of the soul as characterless being, thought, and

blessedness. The liberation promised by the Indian

nihilist is a return to the void beyond the miseries of

the pāntāeimagy of metempsychosis. It is Nirvāna,

extinction, return into the fental nullity. All things

have come out of nonentity, and shall pass back into

nonentity; and as soon as it has fully learnt its un-

reality, the soul shall pass back into the primordial

nothingness.

This doctrine of the emanation of migrating souls

and the spheres of recompense out of an original

entity, is as old as the Upanishads, and appears in a

text of the sixth lecture of the Chhāndogya Upani-

shad: "Existent only, my son, was this in the begin-

ning, one only, without duality. Some indeed have

said, Non-existent only was this in the beginning,

one only, without duality, and the existent proceeded out

of the non-existent. But how should this be so? how

should entity emanate out of nonentity? This then

was existent only in the begiuning, one only, without

duality."

This passage refers either to philosophical forerunners

of the Buddhists, or to the Buddhists themselves. It

is easy to see how the teaching of the primitive Brah-

manical philosophers would at once provoke opposition.

In the earliest and the rudest age, as in the latest and

richest in hereditary culture, there will always be

people that fail to see the necessity of finding a posi-

tive reality at the root of things, and mistake a shallow

wit for a deeper wisdon; to whom the light within is a

piece of transcendental moonshine. These primitive

Indian sensationalists have so far the advantage over

the sensationalists of the present day, that they do not

tacitly substantialise their sensations, or invent such

trange abstractions as a background of permanent

possibilities of sensations, to replace the realities they

seek to explode. In this Indian proclamation of an

186

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VII

The inner light is moon-

shine, the Self is zero.

aboriginal vacuum or blank, which either already was or afterwards became Buddhism, the inner light, the impersonal Self or Brahman, is replaced by zero. The pessimism, metempsychosis, and Māyā, Avidyā, the primitive world-fiction, are retained. There is the same dread of every future state of life, and the same teaching that inertion, not exertion, is the path of extrication; and that the sage must loose himself from every tie, turn his back upon the world, and make all things disappear by a prolonged effort of abstraction, by a rigid and insensible posture of body, and by apathy and vacuity of mind. The phantasmagory of metempsychosis is a series of sensations and ideas, reproducing each other like plant and seed and seed and plant. The successive scenes present themselves that the migrating souls may find the recompense of their good and evil works, in higher and lower embodiments through æon after æon, in conformity with the law of retribution. The migrating souls are themselves as unreal as the spheres through which they pass. The soul1 is identified with the mind2 of the Brahmanical philosophers; and the mind is said to exhibit itself illustriously in the twofold aspect of subject and object of consciousness. The process of things is thus pictured as so many series of sensations variously grouped, presenting themselves to so many migrating sentiencles; these sentiencles themselves being in turn only so many series of sensations and ideal residues. Everything is momentary, everything is fluxional, like the fugitive colours of a sunset cloud. The sensations and ideas pass on, lit up with their own light; and beyond them

All things mo-

mentary and

fluxional

Sensations

shine in their

own light, i.e.,

all conscious-

ness is sensa-

tional.

there is nothing but the void, the primordial nothingness. There is no longer any real Self to be clothed upon with the successive involucra of the Brahmanical philosophy. The investitures of the Self, the Koshas of the Upanishads, become the aggregates of experience.

1 Ātman.

2 Buddhi.

tial elements, the Skandhas of the Buddhist philosophy. Cháp. VII.

Buddhism is the philosophy of the Upanishads with Brahman left out. There is no light of lights beyond the darkness of the world-fiction. The highest end and final hope of man is a return into the vacuum, the aboriginal nothingness of things. This is Nirvāna, the extinction of the soul; and the path to it is the path of inertion, apathy, and vacuity.

This then is the primitive antithesis. Asadvāda, Śūnyavāda, the theory of the unreality of all things, the tenet of the void or blank, is set up in opposition to Brahmavāda, the doctrine of the fontal spiritual essence. This antithetic doctrine of the emanation of all things out of nonentity, is explained and redargued by Śankarāchārya in his gloss on the aphorisms of the Vedānta.1

The Vedānt is the philosophy of the Upanishads in its later and systematic shape. The Upanishads are themselves often called Vedāntas, or final portions of the Veda.

"The Buddhists," he says, "try to prove that what is comes out of what is not, according to a formula they have that nothing that comes out of another thing can come out of it without the previous suppression of that thing. Thus it is only from a seed that has already ceased to exist that a plant begins to germinate; only from milk that has ceased to exist that curds are produced; only from a piece of clay that has ceased to exist that a pot is made by the potter. They say that if things emanated out of an imperishable principle such as the impersonal Self, anything might emanate from anything; there being no particularity, as there is no limit to the power of such a principle. The plant, the curds, and the pot come into being out of the already non-existent seed, milk, and clay. They hold then that entity emanates out of nonentity.

"The reply we make is that entity cannot emanate

1 Śrīrakamimāmsābhāshya, ii. 2, 26.

188

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VII. out of nonentity; what is cannot come out of wh t is not. If every cause is alike already non-existent, it is senseless to talk of particular things only emanating out of other particular things. Grant the seed, the milk, the clay, and so forth, to be already nonentities, being suppressed to make way for the plant, the curds, the pot that come into being out of them, and there will be no difference between these several nonentities, they being all characterless alike; just as there is no difference between the horns of a hare, the flowers in the sky, and the like pieces of absurdity. Thus the Buddhist plea that everything in particular must emanate out of something in particular, the plant out of a seed and nothing but a seed, and so on, comes to nothing; If things can come out of a characterless nullity the plant, the curds, the pot, and so forth may come out of such mere nullities as the horns of a hare and the flowers in the sky, and every one sees that this is not the case.

"If, on the other hand, the Buddhist contends for a difference between this, that, and the other nullity, just as this, that, and the other lotus differ, this being blue, that red, and the other white; his nothings will become somethings, as much as the lotuses themselves are somethings. A nothing cannot give birth to a something,for the very good reason that a nothing is a nothing. The horns of the hare and the flowers of the sky are nothings, and as nothings they give birth to nothing.

"If entity came out of nonentity, every entity that has come into being would be nonentitative, and this is not the case, for every one can see that each and every entity is entitative in its own particular modes of being. Everything is of the same nature as that out of which it has had its origin. No one imagines the pots that have been made of clay, and retain the nature of clay; to have been woven out of threads, or imagines textile fabrics to have been fashioned out of clay. Every one

is sufficiently aware that earthenware things are only

new forms of earth.

"As for the Buddhist assertion that things that are

come out of things that are not, nothing coming into

being prior to the suppression of the thing it came out

of,—this is false. Every one sees that things can only

be made out of things that continue to exist; bracelets

out of gold that continues to have its being in the

bracelets, and so on. If you suppress the proper nature

of the seed, the power of germination and the future

plant are suppressed along with it. The plant pro-

ceeds just out of those elements of the seed that have

not perished, but which go on existing in the plant that

grows up out of them. This tenet, then, of the emana-

tion of the existent out of the non-existent is inadmis-

sible; inasmuch as we see, on the one hand, that entity

does not issue out of nonentity,—you cannot make a

bow out of a pair of hare's horns, or a garland out of

sky-flowers; and, on the other hand, that entity does

issue out of entity, as golden trinkets are made out of

existing gold, and other things out of things that are."

It is thus that Sankarāchārya refutes the Asadvāda,

Śūnyavāda, or nihilism of the Buddhists. Elsewhere he

points out that the last residuum of abstraction car-

ried to its highest point is not nonentity, but entity.

The entity thus reached is, of course, a pure indeter-

mination of being; and the principle of movement to

account for the existence of all the variety of life is

found in Māyā. All differences are figments of illu-

sion; the pure indifference of being, thought, and bliss

alone is true.

Let us now see how the great Indian schoolman

states and refutes the Vijñānavāda or sensationalism

of the Buddhists. 'The statement and refutation of this

theory also are taken from his gloss on the aphorisms

of the Vedānta.1

1 Śārirakanimānasābhasya ii. 2, 28.

190

THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VII.

"The theory of the sensationalists proposes to account

for the whole world of everyday life, with its cognitions

S'ankara-

and cognisable objects, as something internal, as only a

charya's state-

ment of Bud-

dhist senaa-

tionalism.

form taken by the mind of the migrating sentiency.

They say that even if there were things outside the

mind, the distinction between the perceptions and

the things perceived could only be furnished by the

mind itself. If you ask, they say, how it can be known

that all the things of daily life are internal to the mind

and that there are no outward things, it must be re-

plied that external things are impossible. The external

things you plead for, they continue, must be either

atoms, or masses made up of atoms, such as posts and

pillars and the like. Now, atoms cannot present them-

selves as posts and pillars, for there is no presentation

of an atom; nor, again, can masses of atoms present

themselves as posts and pillars, for you could not say

whether these posts and pillars were the same or not

the same as the atoms. In the same way it may be

shown, they say, that the external things are not uni-

versals, or qualities, or actions."

We do not know that the post is a mass of atoms,

because we do not know that the several atoms, each of

which is beyond all perception, can come together in

such a way as to form a mass that can be seen and

handled. Again, if the posts and pillars and other

outward things are not atoms, or made up of atoms,

they cannot be placed under the category of substance.

The sensationalist is represented as employing the lan-

guage of the Naiyāyikas and Vaiśeshikas, and requir-

ing to find some one or other of their categories under

which to place the outward things which are under

dispute. They cannot be placed under the head of

substance, for substances are, in the Naiyāyika and

Vaiśeshika philosophies, atomic aggregates. The sen-

sationalist proceeds to try whether they can be placed

under either of the three categories of universality,

quality, or action, there being no other category under Chap. VII

which they could possibly be ranked. He finds that they

cannot, for every universal, every quality, and every

action is either one with the thing to which it belongs

or not one with it. If it is one with it, the thing is a

thing no more; if it is not one with it, it cannot stand

to it in any other relation than that of an independent

thing outside it, and such an independent thing it

cannot be. Such appears to be Ānandagiri's explana-

tion of this obscure argument:

"Further, they say, the particularisation of the

several cognitions as they succeed each other in the

mind, in such a way that this is a cognition of a post,

that of a wall, this of a water-pot, that of a piece of

cloth, and so on,—this particularisation supposes some

distinction in the cognitions themselves, and you must

admit that the cognition has the same form as the object

cognised. This once admitted, the hypothesis of the ex-

istence of external things is gratuitous; for the forms of

the objects are not without but within the cognitions.

"Again, as the perceptions and the precepts are

always presented simultaneously, and as if one be not

presented the other is not presented, they are insepar-

able. They would not be inseparable if they were not

really one in nature; for if they were two different things,

there would be nothing to prevent the presentation of

the one in the absence of the other. There is therefore no external world.

"The nature of external perception is similar to

that of a dream. The presentments we call posts and

pillars and so forth, appear to us in our waking expe-

rience in a relation of subject and object; precisely in

the same way that the presentments of a dream, of an

illusion, of a mirage, or of a reverie, appear to us in

the relation of subject and object; and in each state equally

in the absence of any things external to us. In each

state the presentments are alike presentments.

192

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VII.

"If you ask us, they proceed, how to account for all

the variety of the presentments of the senses, in the

absence of external things to give rise to that variety ;

it may be replied that this variety proceeds from the

variety of ideal residues of past sensations. There has

been no beginning to the process of the æons ; and thus

there is no reason to deny that sensations give rise to

ideas and ideas to fresh sensations, in the same way

that the seed produces the plant and the plant the seed

in endless progress, and thus give rise to all the variety

that is around us. You, they say, no less than we our-

selves, teach that in dreams and reveries the variety of

ideas or mental images, and there is proof enough that

variety of ideas is followed by variety of presentments,

and want of variety in the ideas by want of variety in

the presentments. We do not allow that the variety

in perception is due to the action of external things.

And thus again we assert that there is no external

world."

Such is Śankarāchārya's statement of the Buddhist

theory of sensationalism. His refutation of that theory

proceeds upon an appeal to the primitive convictions

of the human race. The reader will be interested in

remarking to how great an extent the arguments of

Reid and his successors are anticipated by the Indian

schoolmen perhaps more than eleven hundred years

ago. The refutation is as follows :-

"To all this we reply that external things do exist.

It is impossible to judge that external things have no

existence, and why ? because we are conscious of them.

In every act of perception some one or other outward

thing is presented to the consciousness, be it post or

wall, or cloth or jar, or whatever else it may be; and

that of which we are conscious cannot but exist. If a

man, at the very moment he is conscious of outward

things through his senses, tells us that he is not con-

scious of them, and that they have no existence, why

Chap. VII. should we listen to him, any more than we should

listen to a man who, in the moment of eating and

enjoying, told us that he was not eating and was not

enjoying what he ate?

"Perhaps you will reply that you do not say you are

not conscious of any object, but only that you are not

conscious of an object external to the consciousness.

Yes, it is true that you say this, but you say it in the

plenitude of your self-conceit, and you say nothing

that you can prove. The consciousness itself certifies

to us that the thing is external to the consciousness.

No one is conscious of the post and the wall as forms

of perception, and every plain man knows that the post

and the wall are the objects of perception. It is thus

that all ordinary people perceive things. The sensa-

tionalists repudiate external things and at the same

time talk about them freely, as when they say that the

percept is internal and that it only appears to be ex-

ternal. They are all the while dealing with a percep-

tion that all the world knows to be external; and as

they insist on refusing an external world, they say the

external thing only seems to be external. If there be

nothing external, how can anything seen external, that

is, be like an external thing? No one says, Vishnu-

mitra looks like the son of a childless mother. If we

are to accept the truth as it is given to us in our expe-

rience, we must affirm that the thing perceived is pre-

sented externally, not ouly that it is presented like an

external thing.

"I suppose you will rejoice that you decide that the

thing perceived is like an external thing, because it is

impossible that anything should really be external.

This is no fit decision, for the possibility and impossi-

bility of things are to be learned in the exercise of the

faculties ; and the exercise of the faculties is not to

follow any preconception about the possibility or im-

194

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VII. possibility of things. A thing is possible, if it is cog-

nisable in perception or in the exercise of any other

faculty. A thing is impossible, if it is incognisable to

each and all the faculties. How can you say that an

external world is impossible, on the strength of diffi-

culties in the shape of the positive and negative infer-

ences you adduce, if the existence of this external

world is at the same time presupposed in the exercise

of every faculty ?

Again, you cannot argue that there are no outward

objects, on the ground that the perception takes the

form of the outward object; for if there were no out-

ward object in existence, the perception could not take

the form of an outward object. You will have to admit

then that the reason that the perception and the object

perceived are always presented simultaneously, is not

that the object is one and the same with the act of

perception, but that the object is the occasion of the

perception.

"Again there is the perception of a jar, and there is

the perception of a piece of cloth. Here the difference

lies not in the perception, but in the things perceived,

the jar and the cloth; in the same way as there are

white cows and black cows, and these differ, not in

being cows, but in being the one white and the other

black. So, further, there is the perception of a jar and

the memory or representation of a jar, and in this case

the difference lies in the acts of presentation and repre-

sentation, not in the jar perceived and represented; in

the same way as the smell of milk and the taste of milk

differ as smell and taste, and not in respect to the milk

smelt and tasted.

"If you say that the thing we are conscious of is the

perception, you should more properly say that the ex-

ternal thing is that of which we are conscious. You

will no doubt rejoin that the sensation, as you call the

perception, shines in its own light like a lamp, and that

OF THE UPANISHADS.

we in be conscious of it, and that the supposed ex-

ternal thing does not shine in its own light, and that

we cannot be conscious of it. The irradiation of the

perception by itself, which you propose, is extremely

absurd; it is as if you said that a fire burned itself.

At the same time, you are such a great philosopher

that you will not allow the clear and plain belief of

plain people, that the external thing is presented to con-

sciousness by a perceptive act that is not the thing itself.

It is of no use to urge that a sensation, which is not an

external thing, presents itself to the consciousness, for

to say that a thing acts upon itself is an absurdity.

"I foresee that you will rejoice that if the sensation

is to be apprehended by something not itself, that

something must again be apprehended by something

not itself, and so ad infinitum. You will also rejoin

that if there is to be a fresh cognition to cognise the

perception, the perception already shining of itself like

a lamp, the cognition and the perception being both

alike, the one cannot be supposed to shed its light upon

the other; and thus it is an idle hypothesis that makes

the sensation or perception one thing, and the con-

sciousness of the sensation or perception another thing;

Both your rejoinders are null; for there is no need to

suppose a consciousness of that which is conscious, viz.,

of the Self that witnesses or irradiates the perception;

and we only suppose a consciousness of the perception,

not a consciousness of a consciousness of the percep-

tion. There is no fear of an infinite regression. And

as regards your second rejoinder; the witness or Self

that irradiates the perception and the perception that it

irradiates are essentially different, and may thus be

held to stand to one another in the relation of thing

knowing and thing known. The witness or Self is self-

posited, and cannot be repudiated.

"When you talk about a sensation, incognisable to

any faculty, shining of itself with nothing ulterior to

196

THE PHILOSOPHY

Chap. VII. give the light of consciousness to it, a sensation that there is no sentient being to cognise, you might as well say that there are a thousand lamps shining inside such and such an impenetrable mass of rocks, but that there is no one to see them. You are talking nonsense.

"The philosopher who denies the existence of external things asserts that the presentments of posts and walls, and pots and pans, and so forth, in the waking experience, arise in the absence of all external things, like the things seen in a dream; the presentments being presentments alike, and nothing more, whether we wake or dream. This we deny. The perceptions of the waking state differ from the presentments of a dream; the perceptions are not negated, and the presentments of sleep are negated. On waking out of his sleep, a man denies the reality of what he saw in a dream. He says, for example, that he had a false presentation of an interview with a great man, but that no such interview took place, only his inward sense was dull and sleepy, and thus the illusion arose. Reveries, hallucinations, and the like states are all negatived, each in its proper mode of sublation; but the thing perceived in the waking state, be it post or pillar, or what it may, is never negatived in any later state of mind. The visions of a dream are representations, the visions of the waking experience are presentations; and the distinction between perception and memory, or presentation and representation, is self-evident. In perception the thing is present, in memory it is absent. When I recollect the son I am missing, I do not perceive him, but only want to perceive him. It is of no avail for you to assert that the presentations of the waking experience are as false as the presentments of a dream, in that both are alike presentments and nothing more; for you are all the time yourself conscious of the difference between presentations and representations."

Śankarāchārya's arguments will at first sight appear

inconsistent with his doctrine of the unreality of all

CHAP. VII.

things save the one and only Self. Has not he told us

In S'ankara-

himself that the world is only a series of dreams, through

chārya self-

which the soul is fated to wander until it recover its

consistent?

unity with the sole reality, the fontal spiritual essence ?

The inconsistency will be seen to be less than it ap-

The external

pears, if we remember that the external things in his

world is only

philosophy, the philosophy of the Upanishads, are as

relatively and

real as the minds that perceive them. This degree of

provisionally

reality they have, and the presentments of a dream

real.

have not. Individual souls and their environments are

true for the many; they have an existence sufficient

to account for all that goes on in daily life; they are

real1 from the standpoint of everyday experience. The

visions of a dream are false from this standpoint. In-

dividual souls and their environments are false for the

reflective few; their existence disappears in the higher

existence, to be won by abstraction and spiritual intui-

tion; they are unreal2 from the standpoint of meta-

physical truth. So long as a man is engaged in the

avocations of common life, the things he has to deal

with are real enough for him. If neither he nor they

have the true and real being3 that belongs to Self

alone, they have their own conventional existence,4 an

existence that is enough to account for all we are and

do and suffer. If we use the language of metaphysical

truth, we must say that the existence of the soul and

its environment, apart from the Self, is only enough to

account for all we seem to be and do and suffer; that

it is spurious, fictitious, mere semblance; that it may

be negatived by spiritual intuition or ecstasy. But

such an existence is very different from the merely

apparent existence5 of the presentments of the dream-

ing phantasy, which are negatived by the ordinary

experience of the unphilosophic man. This conven-

1 Laukikavyavahāratah. 2 Paramārthatah. 3 Pāramārthiki sattā,

4 Vyāvahārikī sattā. 5 Prātibhāsiki sattā.

198 THE PHILOSOPHY

CHAP. VII. tional existence of souls and their environments is an apparent existence for the philosopher; not an apparent existence for the many; for them it is real enough. They at least find no lack of truth in the miseries they have to go through; Beyond the apparent existence of the images of a dream there is a lower depth of unreality, the unreality that belongs to such mere figments of the imagination as the horns of a hare, the flowers of the sky, the son of a childless mother. These things are the nonsensical pure and simple.1 Now the world-fiction and its figments, souls, and the things they see and do and suffer, are not pure and simple nonsense; not things that have a merely apparent existence even for the many but things that have a conventional existence for the many, and an apparent and fictitious existence only for the philosophic few, who have attained to an insight into the one high verity, the sole existence of the characterless Self.

The philo- sophy of the Sānkhyas A real and in dependent principle of emanation, Pradhāna or Prakṛti plurality of Purushas or selves. judging the succession of Indian systems by the nature of the notions they exhibit, and there is no other way to judge it, the system that follows next will be the philosophy of the Saṅkhyas. In this philosophy, with the purpose of presenting a firmer front against the Buddhists, a still higher degree of reality is assigned to the mind and its environments, to the world at large, than in the primitive Indian philosophy, the philosophy of the Upanishads. The world is said to have a separate and independent origin or principle of emanation; it comes out of Prakṛti or Pradhāna. This Prakṛti or principle of emanation is the equilibrium of the three primordia rerum of Indian philosophy, pleasure, pain, and indolence or indifference. These are the basal sensibility out of which, on an impulse2 given by the law of nemesis that upsets their equilibrium, mind,3 as yet unconscious, emanates; from mind personality4 pic-

1 Tuchchhamātra. Guṇakṣobha, Prakṛtilakṣubha.

2 Buddhi Ahankāra.

OF THE UPANISHADS.

199

eeḍs, and from personality the as yet imperceptible

CHAP. IX.

rudiments of the world, and so on. The world is thus

a reality, no illusion, not a figment-world even for the

philosopher. It is real for him, as well as for the

multitude. . This is the first step the Sānkhyas, or

emmerative philosophers, take in the direction of

common sense. They take a second step in the same

dizection, at the expense, it must be expressly stated,

plain sense

of their ingenuousness, by pretending that the term

Upanishads

Brahman in the Upanishads is only a collective term

for a plurality of Selves or Purushas. They say that

the texts of the Upanishads that teach that all souls

are one in the unity of the one and only Self, merely

assert a common nature in all souls. There are many

Selves, they pretend, and their unity is generic, not

numerical. This is a mere tour de force on the part of

the Sān'khyaṣ, as must be evident enough to any atten-

tive reader of the preceding chapters of this work.

They further say that when Brahman is said in the

Upanishads to be the principium, the origin of the

worlds, the term Brahman is only a synonym for Pra-

kriti or Pradhāna: a perfectly monstrous assertion.

They allow full reality to the Purushas or Selves, and

a lower but still true and independent reality to the

minds and bodies and environments of the Purushas.

These minds, bodies, and environments are emanations

out of Prakriti, and are said by the Sānkhyas to have

a practical or conventional existence, inasmuch as they

are in unceasing change, and never at a stand. The

world is not negatived for them, not sublated, by a per-

fect knowledge, as it is in the primitive philosophy of

the Upanishads, but the Purusha is detached from it.

The mind ceases to mirror its ceaseless modes upon

that Purusha or Self on which a perfect knowledge has

been reflected. Mind is reflected or mirrored on the

Pūruśhas, and the Purushas give light to mind, the

light of consciousness. A soul is extricated from