1. Wisdom of the Upanisahds Srinivaschari P.N

Sri Krishna Library Series—7

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

Ace no

13378

BY

P. N. SRINIVASACHARI, M.A.

Retired Principal and Professor of Philosophy

Pachaiyappa's College, Madras

Academy of Sanskrit Research

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PREFACE

This work is largely based on the Honorary Readership lectures delivered by me under the auspices of the University of Madras. Its humble aim is to present the essential features of the Philosophy of the Upanisads in the light of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, which is not very well known either in the East or in the West. The knowledge of the Vedas ripens into Vedānta, the wisdom of the Upaniṣads, but it is often wrongly identified with Śaṅkara Vedānta, although the systems of Rāmānuja and Madhva are equally logical and philosophical. Rāmānuja did not, like Śaṅkara, write any commentary as such on the principal Upaniṣads; but his Śrī Bhāṣya and Vedārtha Saṅgraha, the gloss on Śrī Bhāṣya known as Śrutaprakāśikā and the Raṅgarāmānuja Bhāṣya on the Upanisads are clear and critical expositions of Viśiṣṭādvaita and serve the purpose of a direct Bhāṣya on the principal Upaniṣads.

In addition to the vast literature in English on the Upaniṣads consisting of translations, selections and essays, there are many systematic expositions of their chief tenets from the Advaitic standpoint by modern thinkers, Western as well as Eastern, unsympathetic as well as appreciative. Among the unsympathetic interpretations may be included the works of Gough, Slater, Prof. McKenzie, Dr. Macnicol and Dr. Urquhart. Gough, perhaps the most learned of these writers, regards Śaṅkara as the greatest expositor of the Upaniṣads.

vi

PREFACE

Max Müller thinks that orthodox Vedānta supports the

illusion theory and Deussen also is convinced that the

illusion theory is the fundamental doctrine of Vedānta.

Dr. Radhakrishnan in his “Philosophy of the Upani-

shads ” is of the opinion that they tend towards non-

dualism or Advaitism. Prof. Hiriyanna is also of the

opinion that monistic idealism is their main teaching. “ A

Constructive Survey of the Upanishads” by Prof. R. D.

Ranade has its consummation and goal in monistic

mysticism. Prof. Das Gupta in his scholarly account

thereon in his “ History of Indian Philosophy” does not

seem to view with favour their absolutistic interpretation.

Thibaut, after a thorough comparative study of the com-

mentaries of Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja on the Vedānta

Sūtras, comes to the conclusion that the Sūtras support

Rāmānuja. He thinks, however, that the Upaniṣads

favour Śaṅkara's view. It will thus be seen that most

modern expositors of Vedānta identify it with Advaita,

and it is therefore necessary to bring out the tenets of

the other schools like Viśiṣṭādvaita to form a correct

estimate of the whole position.

The method followed in this work is a systematic

formulation of the Upaniṣadic thought under the well

known headings of Epistemology, Ontology, Cosmology,

Psychology, Ethics and Eschatology or theories of mukti.

It is a synthetic presentation of the essentials of the Upa-

niṣadic Philosophy of Religion whose keynote is struck in

the opening and concluding portions of the Vedānta

Sūtras, namely, that existence and value are one and that

Brahman is the ultimate ground of all existents and the

supreme goal of all experience. The Upaniṣads, the

Sūtras and the Gītā are integrally related and their teachings are identical though they may stress the mystical, metaphysical and moral aspects respectively, of the same Vedic truths.

It is my pleasant duty to thank all my friends who helped me in the publication of this work. My thanks are due to the authorities of the Madras University for permission to bring out my lectures in book form. I should specially express my sincere gratitude to the Rajah of Pithapuram for the generous and enthusiastic support he has given me in the preparation of this work and some other books in the series. I am deeply indebted to my friends, Messrs. M. R. Rajagopala Iyengar, G. K. Rangaswami Iyengar, K. R. Appalachariar, A. N. Krishna Iyengar, K. R. Sarma and R. C. Srinivasa Raghavan for offering valuable suggestions and looking through the proofs. It is a great pleasure to me to acknowledge the expeditious and excellent execution and printing of the work by the G. S. Press, Madras.

SRI KRISHNA LIBRARY

CHITRAKULAM NORTH ST.

MYLAPORE, MADRAS

P. N. SRINIVASACHARI

CONTENTS

Introduction :—The problem of Metaphysics, Ethics and Religion clearly set forth in the Upaniṣads, "He who knows Brahman attains the Highest" and satisfactorily solved—Its supreme value for mankind—Different schools of Upaniṣadic system or Vedānta: Advaita, Bhedābheda, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita—Modern methods of historic and philosophic criticism examined in the light of Viśiṣṭādvaita—Equal validity and value of the three prasthānas—Method adopted in this work.

1-13

I. The Epistemology of the Upaniṣads :—Enquiry into the knowledge of Brahman—The pramāṇas : Revelation, Reasoning and Intuition reconciled—The view of two vidyās and degrees of truth criticised—The enquirer as mumukṣu.

14-25

II. The Ontology of the Upaniṣads :—As a philosophy of Religion—The nature of Brahman apprehended and comprehended —The theory of two Brahmans—Is Brahman indeterminate or determinate, with or without form ?—The intuitional or logical Highest—The Absolute of Philosophy or the God of Religion ?—Criticism. Reality and value one—Affinities between Practical Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita.

26-43

III. The Cosmology of the Upaniṣads :—Brahman as the first cause and the final cause—The theory of the origin and nature of the universe (tajjalān)—Sṛṣṭi and pralaya, cyclic—Theories of māyā and avidyā, upādhis and Brahmaparināma refuted and restated in terms of the karma of the jīva, the parināma of prakṛti and divine purpose—The purpose of evolution is mokṣa-making.

44-53

IV. Upaniṣadic Psychology :—As the theory of the finite self or ātman—The ātman different from matter, life, sensation and reason—terms soul, spirit and self not so adequate as ātman—Its

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CONTENTS

nature: self-conscious, free and blissful and eternal, infinitesimal

in extent, infinite in intent—ātman different from the three states

—karma and rebirth—Relation between the finite and the infinite

self as śarīra-śarīrin—Other theories examined.

54-65

V. The Ethics of the Upaniṣads :—Ethics rooted in meta-

physics and religion, but distinguishable from them.—Self-

realisation through self-renunciation—Meanings of karma—Moral

avidyā as karma—Criticism of the theories of Advaita and

Bhedābheda—Meanings of the term ‘evil’: Physical, moral and

religious—The nature of dharma—Cardinal virtues—Similarity of

all jīvas—Ethico-religious ideal of goodness and godliness—Satva

and Brahmabhāva.

66-76

VI. Upaniṣadic Culture or the Sādhanas :—Sādhanas as

means to mukti—Thirty-two upāsanas or vidyās—Option or free

choice—goal the same—Rejection of the view of nirguṇa upāsana

or jñāna; of jñāna-karma samuccaya—The moral, spiritual and

religious values of Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga and Bhakti Yoga—

Meaning of mumukṣutva, negative and positive.

77-91

VII. Mukti :—Theories of mukti—True meaning—The theory

of jīvanmukti : textual and philosophic support; criticism by

Bhāskara, Yādhava and Rāmānuja—Paramapada beyond thought

and speech—described by the Upaniṣad in terms of sense

symbolism.

92-104

VIII. Synthetic View of the Upaniṣads :—More important

than the analytic—The need for comparative study of each

system—Requisites of comparative study—Methods of synthetic

study : textual, historic, psychological and pragmatic, evolutionary

—Modern : deductive and inductive method—Method of immanent

criticism—Conclusion.

105-118

INDEX

119-120

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

INTRODUCTION

The Upaniṣads reveal the most sublime truths of

Indian philosophy and the highest values of spiritual

life. The persistent problems of metaphysics, ethics and

religion dealing, respectively, with what a man can

know, ought to do and may hope for are clearly set

forth in the Upaniṣads and the solutions offered by them

are stable and satisfactory. The foundations of the

orthodox schools of Indian philosophy are contained in

them and even heterodox systems are anxious to trace

their ancestry to them. They are the source and

sustenance of all Vedāntic darśanas. Strictly speaking,

the term ‘Vedānta’ applies only to the Upaniṣads. In

them Vedic knowledge ripens into Vedāntic wisdom. All

branches of even secular knowledge have their spiritual

background in the supreme vidyā known as Brahmavidyā.

By knowing Brahman everything in the world is known ;

but if a man knows all things and does not know their

spiritual source, he is still ignorant. It is the Upaniṣads

that lead a man from ignorance to wisdom and from

misery to eternal happiness. It is in Vedānta that

theoretical speculation and practical spiritual experience

go together. Metaphysical enquiry into Reality is neither

cut off from moral life nor sundered from mysticism.

The Taittirīya-Upaniṣad affirms that he who knows

Brahman attains the highest end of life. This sums up

the wisdom of Vedānta and it means that Brahman, the

metaphysical ground of all beings, is also the goal of all

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THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

moral and spiritual endeavour. The mumukṣu or seeker after Brahman not only thinks reality, but lives it and realises it. Then are all his doubts solved, all bonds broken and he attains eternal peace and bliss. The vidvān, as he is rightly called, communicates his jñāna to others and, in this manner, an unbroken continuity of tradition has been maintained from time immemorial. It is, therefore, no wonder that western philosophers like Max Muller who have made a masterly comparative study of philosophy and religion glorify Vedānta by saying that in the Upaniṣads which are the sources of Vedānta, human speculation has reached its very acme. Schopenhauer who extols Plato and Kant as the best exponents of western philosophy comes to the conclusion that, in the whole world, there is no study so beneficial and elevating as that of the Upaniṣads. To a student of Vedānta in particular who is brought up in the Vedāntic tradition, the Upaniṣads are a spiritual heritage and treasure and he cannot afford to lose it even if he gains the whole world instead.

The Upaniṣads are the concluding portion of the four Vedas, and the canonical or principal Upaniṣads are usually considered to be twelve. They are : the Īśa, the Kaṭha, the Taittirīya, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, the Śvetāśva-tara, the Praśna, the Muṇḍaka, the Māṇḍūkya, the Aitareya, the Kauṣītakī, the Chāndogya and the Kena. Of these twelve, the first five belong to the Yajur Veda, the next three to the Atharva Veda, the next two to the Ṛg Veda and the last two to the Sāma Veda. The Īśa is so called because of its well-known opening word īśāvāsyam which declares the immanence of Brahman in all beings. The Kaṭha begins with the immortal

discourse between Yama, the god of Death, and young Naciketas, and teaches sublime ethical truths like self-reverence and self-sovereignty. The Taittirīya contains the famous story of Bhrgu obtaining the mystic knowledge of Brahman as supremely blissful. In the Brhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya expounds to his wife the nature of the immortal self, defines Brahman as the Inner Ruler of all beings and gives a psychological account of the three states of consciousness. The Chāndogya Upaniṣad provides the largest number of topics or viṣaya vākyas for exposition in the Vedānta Sūtras, of which the chief are the Sadvidyā dealing with Brahman as the sat, the Bhūmavidyā defining the nature of Brahman as the infinitely blissful and the Daharavidyā which teaches the in-dwelling of Brahman in the hearts of all beings. The Muṇḍaka distinguishes between two vidyās, the higher and the lower, and employs the celebrated simile of two birds on the same tree to bring out the relation between the finite self and the Supreme Self. The Māṇḍūkya defines the nature of Brahman as praṇava and that of the state of turīya. The Kauṣītakī explains Upaniṣadic eschatology, the value and destiny of the individual self and the glory of Parama-pada. The Śvetāśvatara expounds the nature of prakṛti, puruṣa and Īśvara and their distinction and the need for self-surrender to God and His grace. All the Upaniṣads, however, teach the same central truth, that Brahman is the source of the world and the supreme end of life. The mumukṣu, who seeks Brahman as the All-Self, sees Brahman intuitively, becomes a mukta and imparts his wisdom to others also who seek it. Upaniṣadic wisdom is not an esoteric doctrine meant for elect souls and monopolised by them, but is a rich spiritual treasure

which is accessible to all who would undergo the necessary discipline. It is not secret but sacred in the sense that only the pure in heart can attain the peace that passeth all understanding. The value of the Upaniṣads consists not in merely accepting the formula of śānti and memorising it, but in living the Upaniṣadic life and realising its importance.

Though the essential teaching of the Upaniṣads is the apprehension of Brahman (Brahmajñāna) and the attainment of His bliss (Brahmānanda), fundamental differences arise when attempts are made to determine the exact meaning of the nature of Brahman and of mukti. So conflicting appear the texts in the various Upaniṣads, and sometimes in the same Upaniṣad, that many modern interpreters despair of reconciling them and are driven to the conclusion that they have no coherence and that, even if they admit of co-ordination, they present a variety of systems. The Upaniṣads contain texts to support every type of philosophy and religion—monism, non-dualism, pantheism, theism and pluralism. Monism is said to be expounded in the passages, ‘Thou art that’, ‘I am Brahman’, and non-dualism by the Śrutis "There was one only without a second," "There is here no diversity whatsoever," "From death to death goes he who sees any difference here," "Where there is duality as it were, there one sees the other."

That Brahman is nirguṇa is favoured by the text, "Brahman is without form or qualities. Brahman is not matter nor jīva. It is the true and the infinite." Similarly the bhedābheda view derives its authority from the Śruti "Sat is one and it became the many." Cosmo-logical truth is conveyed in the teaching, "Brahman is

that from which these beings emerge and into which they merge. Brahman desired 'May I be many ' and it became the manifold." The main pramāṇa for Viśiṣṭā-dvaita is the antaryāmī text that Brahman is the self of which the jīva is the body. The nature of Brahman is indicated by the instruction that it is free from sin, hunger and thirst and that its purposes are ever true. Likewise, the pluralistic view of bheda is said to be held in the Upaniṣad " Thinking that the self is different from its Maker and blessed by Him, he reaches immortality." " He is the master of the pradhāna and the individual souls. There are two birds on the same tree." In spite of the divergences of these different texts, there is an underlying unity and Bādarāyaṇa, with his encyclopaedic knowledge and unrivalled synoptic genius, had an insight into the unity of their import and built up the magnificent system of Vedānta by assigning to each text its proper place in the whole scheme. He discerned the common thread that runs through these conflicting texts and harmonised them into a consistent and coherent whole. But his Sūtras are themselves so terse and cryptic that they cannot be understood without the aid of commentators like Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva. Each of these ācāryās interprets the Śrutis and the Sūtras in his own way in the light of his sampradāya or tradition. Besides the systems formulated by them known as Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita, there are other schools like the Bhedābheda of Bhāskara, Yādava and Nimbārka, the Śivādvaita of Śrīkanṭha, the Acintyabhedābheda of Baladeva, the Suddhādvaita of Vallabha and the Viśeṣā-dvaita of Śrīkara. Each of these systems claims to be the only view that fits in with the general drift and spirit of the Upaniṣads and satisfies all the pramāṇas and the

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THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

logical, grammatical, and Mīmāṃsa rules of interpretation and it is very difficult to decide among these rival expositions.

The difficulty is further increased by the application of the modern methods of historic and philosophical criticism to the proper understanding of the Upaniṣads and the Sūtras. The chief among the modern expositors, excluding hostile and prejudiced writers like Gough, Monier Williams and Slater, are Deussen, Max Muller and Thibaut, not to speak of leading Indian thinkers.

According to the historic method, ancient Indian philosophy is a historical growth and can be studied under periods ; the different stages in the development of Vedic religion are traced and progress is evaluated in the light of a true chronological perspective arrived at by historical research.

The four Vedas with their three parts, the Mantras, the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads are the compositions of different ṛṣis at different times and in different places.

The hymnology of the Ṛg Veda composed about fifteen centuries before Christ refers to the creative period of the Vedas when the forces of nature were personified and deified and it marks the earliest phase of the religious consciousness.

The Brāhmaṇas which came later are of the age of the sacrificial cult and they were followed by the āraṇyakas which show the transition from ritualism to rationalism and thus anticipate the speculative tendencies of the Upaniṣads.

The Upaniṣads are assigned to a period 1200 B.C.–600 B.C. and are considered mostly pre-Buddhistic.

In the light of the criteria afforded by the language, the style and the ideological differences of the texts, the canonical Upaniṣads are sifted, selected and chronologically arranged with the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the

Chāndogya as the earliest and the Śvetāśvatara and the Māṇḍūkya as the latest. In the philosophic development of Vedic thought, from the period of the Mantras to that of the Upaniṣads, there are four stages, namely, primitive polytheism, henotheism, monotheism and monism. Polytheism gives place to henotheism when each God is worshipped as if he is the supreme god. Henotheism grows into monotheism and thus satisfies the needs of the theistic consciousness. Varuṇa, the supreme Vedic god, was later superseded by Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu and Rudra, who were minor gods in the Vedic pantheon, were later on identified with Nārāyaṇa and Śiva and they became supreme in the later Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva Upaniṣads. In the history of Indian philosophy, the creative period of the Vedas was followed by the critical period of the schools and by the rise of the systems of philosophy, Vedic and non-Vedic. The Upaniṣads are “broad speculative ideas and mental possessions”; they are “guesses at God” and gropings after the infinite. They are spiritual intuitions, which were later systematised in the critical period and reduced to rigorous uniformity.

The method of philosophic criticism claims to have the advantage of a true insight into the system of the Upaniṣads without being bound by the literalism of the textual method and the dogmatism of the schools. It submits every dogma to critical investigation and rejects blind faith and Vedic externalism. The Upaniṣads, according to this view, lack coherence. Their consistency is intuitive rather than logical. The Upaniṣadic seers are often enigmatic and aphoristic in their language and they employ analogies, myths and symbols to disclose their mystic experience. The prevailing tendency of the Upaniṣads, on the whole, is monistic idealism summed

8

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

up in the text "Tat tvam asi," which connotes the

identity between ātman, the psychic principle, and

Brahman, the Cosmic ground. It was only at the later

period of the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad that idealism allied

itself to realism, lapsed into pantheism and further

deteriorated into theism to suit the needs of the popular

religious consciousness. In the Upaniṣads, there are

three ascending steps or stages. The first stage consists

in realising the fundamental distinction between the

ātman and Brahman and the next stage is the experience

of the inseparable relation between the two, ātman and

Brahman. When the ātman is realised as the Absolute,

philosophy arrives at the final stage and comes to itself.

Thus, following the methods of historic and philosophic

criticism, all disinterested expositors like Thibaut reject

the dogmatic method of the scholiasts who are bound by

rules of textual criticism and who often strain the Śrutis

to suit their own pre-conceived theories. They form their

own independent judgments and state it as their con-

sidered opinion that the Vedas are human compositions

and have no divine origin and that the Vedic gods were

conceived in the image of man and are thus anthro-

pomorphic personifications. If philosophy is a systematic

whole that is coherent in all its parts, is free from self-

contradiction and allows room for different details, there

is, according to this view, no philosophy of the Upaniṣads

as such, because they lack coherence. But if a general

outline of philosophy can at all be made out from the

Upaniṣads, Śaṅkara's system of two vidyās, two

Brahmans and two muktis is the best that can be devised

since it does justice to the different stages of the historic

development of thought, is more capable of amalgamating

heterogeneous material than other systems and better

represents the general drift and spirit of the Upaniṣads. It marks the growth of thought from the external to the internal, from the objective to the subjective and from the personal to the impersonal. But an impartial study of the Sūtras as expounded by Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja makes it clear that Rāmānuja is more faithful to them than Śaṅkara who at first interprets the Sūtras in a normal and natural way and then forces and foists his own views on them. Likewise the teaching of the Gītā is theistic and is an amalgam of Vedānta and Pāñcarātra. It is the idealisation of Vedic Varuṇa worship and is the adaptation of Upaniṣadic monism to suit the needs of the popular religious consciousness.

The soundness of the historical method of research is undeniable as it throws light on the psychological development of religion and widens our sympathy for the followers of religion in its different stages and strata, but its specific application to ancient Indian wisdom is not sound or satisfactory. The ancient philosophers went beyond time and tense and had no use for historic knowledge. The ṛṣis were mainly interested in the discovery and dissemination of spiritual truths which are true for ever. They cared more for the intrinsic values of religion than for their genesis or temporal origin. Even as regards the Sūtra period when chronology is said to be clearer and more definite, it is difficult to fix the relative dates of the various systems as they grew at the same time by mutual criticism and cross references. Spiritual truths which are supersensuous and supra-rational can be known only in a spiritual way. They transcend the regions of history and perceptual knowledge and even the sphere of philosophic concepts and categories. Temporal priority and philosophic

priority are not the same. What comes earlier is not necessarily truer than what comes later. Nor is the reverse true. It is claimed, for example, by the monists

that Upaniṣadic monism came later than Vedic polytheism and is therefore more true; but it is assailed by the theistic argument that the theism of the Śvetāśvatāra,

came later than the monism of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and should therefore be truer than monism. The modern view that there is a development in thought

from Vedic polytheism to Vedāntic monism is not accepted by pundits who have a mastery of the methods of Vedic exposition and of the rules of logic, grammar and

mīmāṃsa. They declare that Veda and Vedānta are integrally related as Veda-Vedānta and that the same Vedic Mantras are employed in the Upaniṣads. In the

daily duty of sandhyāvandana, for example, the Vedic Mantra is addressed not to the sun but to the Inner Ruler of the sun that is the Light of all lights and the

Vedic and the Vedāntic meanings are identical.

The prevailing view that monistic idealism is the completion and crown of Upaniṣadic philosophy is not accepted by those Vedāntins who insist on the integrity

of the Upaniṣadic texts, the triple prasthānas and the pramāṇas of śruti, yukti and anubhava or revelation, reasoning and intuition. The Upaniṣads should be inter-

preted as a whole and not in terms of sectional thinking which consists in elevating a few texts as expressions of absolute truth and treating other texts as only partially

true and partially false. It is impossible to go from relative truths to absolute truth or from falsity to truth. The ācāryas recognise the equal validity and value of

the three prasthānas; but modern critics like Thibaut declare it as their independent and impartial judgment

that the Upaniṣads support Saṅkara while the Vedānta Sūtras support Rāmānuja. This view cuts at the very root of Vedāntic consistency and does justice neither to the Śruti nor to the Sūtras, neither to Saṅkara nor to Rāmānuja. Saṅkara's theory of two vidyās, two Brahmans and two muktis is founded on the distinction between the esoteric doctrine for the wise man or vidvān and the exoteric doctrine for the ignorant man or the mass-mind. It is a philosophy of compromise and self-complacency. Strictly speaking, there can be no compromise between truth and falsity and the esoteric and the exoteric doctrines are contradictory and have no common ground. Absolutism based on vidyā cannot be reconciled with theism based on avidyā. If the Absolute is all-accommodating, it should accommodate falsity and evil. When monistic idealism based on jñāna lapses into mere dialectic thinking, it degrades the value of religion by equating it with myth, dogma and ritualism and tracing it to the anthropomorphising tendency of the avidyā-ridden mind. At the same time it seeks to elevate philosophy to the level of absolutism by freeing it from the errors of dualistic thinking. This is the way of self-complacency and of dogma and dictation. If, as the Māyāvādīn says, the Upaniṣads speak with the double voice of philosophy and religion, their meaning and relation should be clearly defined. There is no toleration in saying that Advaitic philosophy is for the wise few and that theology and theism are for the ignorant many. If the end of religion as such is the direct intuition of Brahman, which is justified by philosophy, the Upaniṣads are a philosophy of religion which defines Brahman at once as the cosmic source and the spiritual goal. They voice forth in clear terms the one Upaniṣadic truth that

Brahman is the be-all and end-all of life which satisfies the three pramāṇas of Śruti, yukti and anubhava in their integral unity. While some modern Advaitins extol reason as the only guide to Brahmajñāna, others rely on the intuition of Brahman as the only test of Advaitic truth and still others are content to accept the theological view that Śāstra is the only source of gaining Brahma-jñāna. Thus these exponents speak in different ways. The safer method for Advaita would lie in retracing its steps and recognising the integrity of all Upaniṣadic texts, the prasthānas and the pramāṇas and thus falling in line with the Vedāntic philosophy of religion, which speaks of one Brahman, one mukti and one Truth.

Following the usual method of philosophy, the subject is studied in this book under the heads of epistemology, ontology, cosmology, psychology, ethics and religion. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge or the method of knowing Brahman through pramāṇas. Ontology is the enquiry into the nature of the Being of Brahman. Cosmology traces the emergence of the cosmic order from Brahman and its mergence into Brahman, in rhythmic succession. Psychology describes the nature of the ātman and its states of consciousness and its career in the world of karma. Ethics deals with the nature of dharma and the sādhanaṣ or means of gaining Brahma-jñāna and religion defines the nature of mukti and the destiny and value of the emancipated self. This analytical method is implicit in the Upaniṣads themselves and made explicit in the Vedānta Sūtras.

The main purpose of this work is to show that, if the Sūtras and the Gītā support Rāmānuja as is now generally held, the Upaniṣads on which they are based are equally

Viśisṭādvaitic in their general import. The widely prevalent view that the Upaniṣads teach the illusion theory which holds that the world is a phantom and the self a mere reflection of Brahman and that morality and religion are only appearances of Reality -has done great harm to the cause of Hinduism especially in its social and political aspects. It becomes necessary, therefore, that Rāmānuja's interpretation of the Upaniṣads should be better known than at present. Since Brahman is real, the world of acit and cit which have their source in it, is equally real. The world is real and the self is an eternal entity with an intrinsic value of its own. This view does justice as much to the needs of moral and religious life as to the demands of philosophical thought.

I. THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

The problem of epistemology as a theory of knowledge is an enquiry into the relation between knowledge and reality and into the nature of truth. Upaniṣadic epistemology is rooted in its philosophy and its foundational truth is that reality is knowable and not unknown and unknowable. The problem of the Upaniṣad is not a mere metaphysical speculation on the nature of the ultimate and the universal, but it is the spiritual quest of the mumukṣu after the supreme reality known as Brahman. The problem of philosophy is well described by the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad1 in its opening texts : " Whence are we born ? Whereby do we live ? Why do we suffer ?" The same question is formulated in different ways in the other canonical Upaniṣads. Its popular form is stated by the Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad thus : " Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality."2 In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, Uddālaka asks his son, Śvetaketu, who was proud and thought that he knew everything, whether he had acquired the knowledge of the One by which the many is realised ;3 in the next chapter, which is on the Bhūmavidyā,4 Nārada confesses to Sanatkumāra that, though he has acquired mastery in all sciences and arts, he is still tormented by doubt

1. Śv. Up., I. 1

2. asato mā sadgamaya tamaso mā jyotirgamaya mrtyormā amrtam gamaya—Br. Up., I. iii 28

3. Ch. Up., VI. i. 3.

4. Ch. Up., VII.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

15

and discontent ; he is then initiated into the knowledge

of Brahman as the Bhūman, which is infinite and eternal

bliss. Vedic knowledge thus finds its consummation in

Vedāntic wisdom. Later, the same Upaniṣad expounds

the nature of Brahman psychologically as the Self that

is sinless and deathless and beyond the three states of

consciousness. Indra, the king of the Devas, and

Virocana, the king of the Asuras, request Prajāpati to

impart to them the knowledge of the self.5 While

Virocana is satisfied with the materialistic theory that

the self is the body and teaches it to the Asuras, Indra

is not satisfied with the solution and enquires into the

spiritual knowledge of reality by which the mortal

becomes the immortal and the sinless. In the Kaṭhopaṇi-

ṣad, whose subject-matter is mainly ethical, Naciketas

asks Yama, the god of Death, to solve his doubt6 whether

the ātman survives the body after death and to teach

him the way of deathlessness. Naciketas rejects all the

boons, earthly and celestial, offered by Yama, such as

longevity, happiness and world sovereignty,7 and prefers

the way of the good to that of the pleasant8 and seeks to

know the supreme ātman which is ever pure and perfect.

In the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, Śaunaka beseeches Aṅgīras

to initiate him into the metaphysical knowledge of

Brahman, as he is not satisfied with the lower knowledge

which relates to things that are not Brahman. He seeks

parā vidyā as opposed to aparā vidyā,9 rejects what is

5. Ch. Up., VIII. vii.

6. Kaṭh. Up., I. i. 20.

7. Kaṭh. Up., I. i. 23-29.

8. Kaṭh. Up., I, ii. 2-4.

9. Muṇd. Up., I. 3-5.

16

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

empirical and transient and prefers transcendental and

eternal bliss. In the Taittirīya Upaniṣad,10 Varuṇa

expounds to his son, Bhrgu, the nature of Brahman, that

it is trans-empirical and blissful. The disciple is made

to realise by spiritual induction that Brahman is not

annamaya, prāṇamaya, manomaya or vijñānamaya, but

is ānandamaya. Secular knowledge obtained by the

study of the physical, biological, psychological and

normative sciences and even by metaphysical speculation

is only fractional and fleeting ; but the spiritual intui-

tion of Brahman leads to immortal bliss. In the

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Maitreyī tells her husband

Yājñavalkya that the whole world with all its riches has

no attraction for her and requests him to teach her

the way of immortal life.11 In this way every Upaniṣad

defines the problem of the mumukṣu or seeker after

Brahman as different from that of the mere scientist or

metaphysician. While the scientist tries to know a

partial aspect of reality and the philosopher speculates

on the nature of reality as a whole, the mumukṣu seeks

to know reality or Brahman as the ultimate ground of

existence and to realise it as the supreme goal of expe-

rience. The Indian philosopher who follows the Upani-

ṣadic path insists on methodology and on a true theory

of knowledge which alone can lead to the knowledge of

truth and reality. The nature of the prameya largely

depends on that of the pramāṇas. A knowledge of the

pramāṇas and the theories of truth and error are pre-

supposed in a systematic study of the Upaniṣads.

10. Taitt. Up, Bhrguvalli, 1-6.

11. Br. Up., IV. v. 4.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

17

The ultimate problem of Upaniṣadic epistemology

refers to the relation between reason and revelation or

yukti and śruti and the enquiry into their relation is

essential to the understanding of the nature of ātman

and Brahman. Śāstra is the highest authority for

establishing the nature of Brahman12 which is super-

sensuous and supra-rational. Neither sense-perception

nor logical understanding is adequate as a pramāṇa for

proving the positive existence of Brahman. This view

raises the question whether the Vedāntic knowledge of

Brahman is a blind belief without any rational justifica-

tion or verification by personal experience.

It is the age-

long controversy between revelation, reason and intui-

tion, that is to say, between Śruti, yukti and anubhava.

The full meaning of Śāstraic authority can be ascertained

only by bringing out the exact nature and relation

between revelation, reason and intuitive experience.

Some Vedāntins accept the trustworthiness of Veda

and feel that its authority cannot be questioned or dis-

puted. Others argue that Vedānta is essentially rational

and scientific and reject the faith of the fundamentalist

or the scholastic believer. Still others think that the

only proof of the existence of Brahman is direct expe-

rience of Brahman and insist on personal experience as

the highest proof of the existence of God.

Those who make a distinction between reason and

faith and assert that revelation is the only authority for

faith in the existence of God may be classified into

different types. Some appeal to the supernatural origin

of revelation and affirm that its authenticity is super-

human in essence and miraculous in evidence. It is not

12. Brahma Sūtras, I i, 3.

2

accessible to the human faculty of sense-perception or reason, as it is the expression of divine omnipotence. God by a fiat of His will interferes with and suspends the laws of nature with a view to instilling religious faith into the minds of atheists and sceptics. The miraculous is not a violation or breach of law, but is a supersession of, or breach into, law. It is not merely the extraordinary but also what runs counter to the ordinary. What God wills is good but the converse, viz., what is good is divine, is not true. Miracles thus prove revelation and revelation proves the miracle of the working of divine omnipotence. Others think that miraculous intervention is not essential to supernatural dispensation and say that revelation is the word of God. It is a direct communication from God to the inspired prophet. It is breathed forth from God and is the expression of divine omniscience and is therefore infallible.

Still others reject both these theories on the ground that they are dogmatic and are opposed to the evidence of sense-perception and science, and argue that revelation is philosophically intelligible and is not hostile to reason. Rational theology accepts the trustworthiness of the logical intellect and offers proofs for the existence of God, and these proofs are cosmological, teleological, ontological or moral. The first proof employs the category of causality and concludes that God is the first cause or the supreme cause. The second proof is an argument from analogy. The order and wisdom that are found in nature suggest a world designer or God. The third proof refers to a perfect being in whom essence and existence are one. According to the fourth, the moral law of duty and the craving for happiness can be connected only by the conception of God. God alone is

the author of the natural and moral order. In this way reason becomes the ally of revelation and justifies the ways of God to man. These arguments are neither convincing nor final, as there is really no passage from the concept of cause to the first cause, from nature to the god of nature, from idea to existence and from the finite to the infinite. The causal category suffers from the fallacy of infinite regress and it does not reveal the nature of reality itself. Besides, the concept of God is not God and it is impossible to infer the existence of the infinite from the data of finite experience. These theistic proofs may be employed to support polytheism as well.

Some rationalists go a step further and insist on the rationality of the universe. Reality is a rational whole and satisfies the tests of coherence and comprehensiveness. The intellect is trustworthy and even in the attempt to deny reason, reason is presupposed. The rationalist thus offers a pan-logical explanation of reality and says that God is the great universal that is immanent in all beings and is the logical highest. There are some extreme monists who rely entirely on the primacy of reason as the life blood of philosophy and prove the existence of the self as the only reality by sheer vicāra or dialectic thinking. Rationalism like empiricism, however, often ends in agnosticism and scepticism; and there are philosophers, both in the East and in the West, who bring out the contradiction between thought and reality and conclude that the absolute is beyond discursive thought and even go to the extent of denying the possibility of knowledge itself. We can only know the phenomenal and not the noumenal, the relative and not the absolute, the ‘what’ and not the ‘that,’ and the self-contradiction between reality and appearance is somehow

20

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

there and is indeterminable. This sceptic mood is said

to demonstrate the inadequacy of the intellect to grasp

the nature of reality. The intellect spatialises intuition

and dissects it into dead bits and gives us only diagrams

of reality. Divinity cannot be discovered by dialectic

skill.

The mumukṣu as a seeker after God can transcend the

barriers of the intellect as he has acquired mastery over

instinctive life and can have a direct intuition of God.

While reason can reach only the gateway to God, intui-

tion can enter into the heart of reality, and what is

logically inferred can be spiritually intuited. The logic

of the heart has as much constraining power as the

demands of the intellect. The term intuition cannot be

explained in terms of sentient experience, feeling,

intellectual love or intuition or some mysterious and

indefinite faculty as it refers to a supersensuous or supra-

intellectual experience. When consciousness is freed

from the confusions of avidyā and the limitations of

karma, it can know reality. Intuition is alogical

and amoral in the sense that it is a completion

of the intellectual and moral life and is supra-

rational and supra-moral and not irrational or

immoral. Instinctive life is capable of being

rationalised and reason can be spiritualised. The

seeker after Brahman can transcend the fragmentariness

of sense-perception and the necessity of thought and

attain direct knowledge. The antagonism between

revelation and reason is thus sought to be bridged by

the intuitionist as he claims to have a direct and face-to-

face knowledge of reality. He relies on the mystic

method by which the seeker after truth with his genius

for God has a soul-sight of God and loses himself in the

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

21

immortal bliss of such communion. To the mystic,

reality is not a philosophical view but a spiritual vision.

To him the best proof of the existence of Brahman is the

experience of Brahman. Intuition is immediate and in-

effable, but it is not mere sentient experience or occult

knowledge. Mysticism is not opposed to reason, as it

claims to be the fulfilment of all experience.

The Vedāntic philosopher rejects the extremes of

revelational faith, rationalism and mysticism as one-

sided and abstract and seeks to correct their defects by

a synthetic exposition. The believer in mere revelation

distrusts reason and becomes dogmatic and fanatical.

The mumukṣu does not worship mere words, nor is he

interested in every detail of revelation. He accepts as

much of revelation as is relevant to his spiritual quest

and appreciates the contrast set forth in the scripture

between the perishing values of empirical life and the

eternal values of divine life. Besides, he has faith that

revelation is realisable and verifiable by personal rational

experience. But whatever is immediately experienced

or personally verified need not be necessarily true.

Intuition is often subjective and variable and it is very

difficult to decide between rival intuitions. In such cases,

the philosophic intellect subjects every spiritual expe-

rience to the test of reason and evaluates it in the light

of an objective standard. Reason mediates between

revelation and intuition and makes revelation intelligible

and intuition valid. It thus avoids the perils of dogmatism

and subjectivism and offers a synoptic view of experience

as a whole. From this point of view revelation may be

defined as a body of objective spiritual 'ideas' or verities

which are spiritually discernible and verifiable. This

definition has the merit of recognising the place of

22 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

revelation, reason and intuition in Vedānta and co-ordinating them into a systematic unity. The three are organically related and are correlated in a true philosophy of religion in which reality is conceived as an integral whole and realised as the home of all eternal values like truth, goodness and beauty. It corrects the dogmatism of theology, it is philosophically satisfying, and it justifies intuition. Mere theology makes a fetish of faith and supports fanaticism on the ground that truth is fixed and final. Philosophy as speculative activity is the protest of reason against mere belief and it often ends in agnosticism. Intuition makes faith intelligible and inspires the intellect, but is subjective and variable. But wisdom consists in reconciling the conflicts between Śruti, yukti and anabhava by the philosophic faith that Reality or Brahman enshrined in Śāstra can be apprehended by purified thought and attained as the highest end of life and the home of all eternal values.

The faith in Śāstra as the sole authority for Brahmajñāna may lapse into dogmatism and literalism. Blind faith in the letter of the Veda takes the place of philosophy. If revelation is made subservient to reason, Vedānta is liable to the defects of intellectualism and agnosticism. Thought begins with doubt and ends with doubt. If intuition becomes the test of Vedānta, it would end in subjectivism. These difficulties can be overcome by avoiding the extremes and by reconciling the claims of Śruti, yukti and anubhava. Revelation is intuited by the Ṛṣi and rationalised by the ācārya and the three are linked together as one Vedāntic authority. The Upaniṣad says that Vāmadeva intuited Brahman as his very self. Vyāsa was himself both a Ṛṣi and a systematic expounder.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

23

The Upaniṣadic theory of epistemology cannot be understood without the aid of Vedāntins like Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva who are recognised expositors of the Śrutis. According to Śaṅkara, there is really no distinction between knowing and being. In other words, there is no distinction between epistemology, the theory of knowing, and ontology, the theory of being. Brahman is pure, non-differentiated intelligence and Brahma-jñāna is jñāna that is Brahman and not jñāna of Brahman. The Absolute is knowledge as such and there is no knowledge of the Absolute in the adjectival sense. Brahman or Reality simply is, and it is neither true nor false. Just when ajñāna is removed, just then jñāna arises. This is called parā vidyā or the knowledge of Brahman that is indestructible and secondless. But as the popular mind cannot grasp the Absolute, Śaṅkara makes a distinction between vyāvahārika satya and pāramārthika satya. The former is for the ignorant and the latter is for the wise. Though Reality is self-established, it admits, in practical life, of degrees of truth and falsity based upon the principle of non-contradiction and apacchedavāda. According to this view, the Absolute is non-contradictory or Reality in itself. Jñāna is later in order and force than ajñāna and therefore sublates it. By denying the false, the true is affirmed. By applying this principle to establish the truth of Advaita, duality is first affirmed and denied and non-duality is then established. Śruti is of greater weight than perceptual knowledge as it alone enables us to know Brahman. Even in Śruti the non-dualistic texts have more force than the dualistic texts. Śruti first defines Brahman as saguṇa in the interests of the ignorant and then denies it by saying that Brahman is nirguṇa. In this way, in

practical life, there is a passage from the unreal to the real and progression in knowledge. But when the Absolute is intuited as such, there is no question of such progression. This truth is illustrated analogically by what is known as arundhatīnyāya. In ordinary life, a man who wishes to point out to a friend the small star Arundhatī may ask him at first to see a big neighbouring star saying that it is Arundhatī although it is really not so and then may point out the real Arundhatī; in the same way the Advaitic teacher first defines Brahman as saguṇa and then affirms the Absolute.

This theory of two vidyās and of degrees of truth is refuted by Rāmānuja on the ground that Brahman is one and that Brahmanjñāna is attainable by purified and perfected intelligence. The knowledge of Brahman is not Brahman, as knowing and being are different. Epistemology or the theory of the knowledge of Brahman is different from, though it leads to, ontology or the theory of the Being of Brahman. If the Absolute is, as Śaṅkara says, beyond all distinction and difference, then there can be no passage from degrees of truth to the Absolute. Then the theory of knowledge would become the theory of no knowledge and land us in agnosticism if not in scepticism. It serves no purpose to say that Śāstra first teaches duality and then denies it in toto.

The Advaitic impasse is avoided by following the Sūtra method which insists on the authority of the Śāstra as faultless and final and defines Brahman as the ground of all beings cosmologically and the supreme end of life spiritually. Reality and value coincide and Brahman, which is the metaphysical highest, is also the spiritual highest. This view substitutes for the principle of non-contradiction and its world-destroying logic, the principle

of continuity and co-ordination. There can be no going from nescience to knowledge or from untruth to truth. All knowledge is real and of the real; the true can be known only by the true and not by the untrue. Jñāna is a progressive unfolding of what is perfect and it is a real development from world consciousness to self-consciousness and from self-consciousness to God-consciousness. By realising God or Brahman as the One Self everything else is realised.

II. THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

The supreme interest of the Upaniṣads is Brahma-jijñāsa or the enquiry into the nature of Brahman, by knowing which everything else is also known. The Upaniṣadic Ṛṣi posits the truth that Reality is realisable. Brahmajijñāsa leads to Brahmajñāna. The knowledge of Brahman is the beginning and the end of Upaniṣadic enquiry. The mumukṣu who seeks Brahman sees Brahman and attains immortal bliss. The apparent contradictions in the Upaniṣads are reconciled in the Vedānta Sūtras and they constitute a systematic whole of inter-related parts. Śaṅkara says that the Sūtras string together the flowers of the Śrutis and they formulate the main teaching of the Upaniṣads in a clear, distinct and adequate way. But the style of the Sūtras is very terse and cryptic and their meaning cannot be grasped without the help of Vedāntic specialists. Among the chief Vedāntic schools are the systems of Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita as also the various schools of Bhedābheda which are now a forgotten chapter in the history of Indian thought.

Whatever differences may exist among these systems, they all agree in holding that the knowledge of Brahman is the fundamental teaching of all the main Upaniṣads and that the conclusions of Vedānta are opposed to those of the materialism of the Cārvakas, the vitalism of the Prāṇaists, the phenomenalism of the Buddhists and the ritualism of the Mīmāṃsakas. The Lokāyatas or materialists say that there is no metaphysics apart from

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

physics and that what we call self is only a psycho-

physical series. The Prāṇaists or vitalists state that

reality is the vital impulse or prāṇa and prove it by posi-

tive and negative tests. Where there is prāṇa, there i

the self and where there is no prāṇa there is no self

The Buddhistic phenomenalists say that reality is only a

fleeting flux without any substantiality or stability and

adduce arguments to disprove the existence of the self

and God. The rationalists insist on the primacy of

reason. The ideas of God as First Cause and the Cosmic

Designer are open to the charges of infinite regress and

self-contradiction. The Sāṅkhya is also a rationalist and

though he accepts the reality of prakṛti and puruṣa, he

does not require a god to enable him to gain kaivalya

The Mīmāṁsaka asserts that karma alone is Brahman

To him the performance of duty is more important than

the knowledge of the deity.

These theories do not satisfy the philosophic demand

for unity and stability and the spiritual thirst for immortal

bliss. It is Vedānta alone that reaches the bed-rock of

knowledge and brings out the fullest meaning of expe-

rience. Its foundational principle is the knowledge of

Brahman as the logical highest and spiritual highest. But

there are differences amongst the Vedāntic schools them-

selves in ascertaining the exact nature of Brahman and

mukti. The different systems may be divided into two

distinct groups, viz., the Advaita on the one hand and

the other systems, which differ from it in many important

points, on the other. The main point of controversy is

the question whether Brahman is nirguṇa or saguṇa (the

'Absolute of metaphysics' or the 'god of religion') and

this is fully discussed in the branches of philosophy

known as epistemology, ontology, cosmology and religion.

28 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

According to Śaṅkara, the Upaniṣads adopt a dual standpoint and distinguish between parā vidyā (higher knowledge) and aparā vidyā (lower knowledge), saguṇa Brahman and nirguṇa Brahman (God and the Absolute), pariṇāmavāda and vivartavāda (evolution and illusion), jīvanmukti and videhamukti (freedom from embodiment and freedom in embodiment). But the other Vedāntins deny that there is any basis in the Upaniṣads for these distinctions, and according to them the Upaniṣads affirm the absolute reality of saguṇa Brahman, uphold the truths of pariṇāmavāda and do not give room for the theory of jīvanmukti. The divergences of interpretation are examined critically in certain selected topics in the Sūtras, the Sad vidyā,1 the Ubhaya-liṅga Adhikaraṇa,2 the Ānandamayādhikarana3 and the Kāryadhikarana.4 The problem of the Sad vidyā is whether Brahman, the sat without a second, is saguṇa or nirguṇa, determinate or indeterminate ; that of the Ubhayaliṅga is whether Brahman is sākāra or nirākāra, finite or infinite ; and that of the Ānandamayādhikarana is whether Brahman is bliss or blissful, ānanda or ānandamaya. In the last adhikarana, the problem is whether Brahman is the Absolute of philosophy to be realised here-now or the God of theology attained in the world of Brahman yonder. Each of these problems may be studied in some detail in the light of the interpretations given by the different schools. Every school follows the traditional method of establishing its own con-

1. Ch. Up., VI.

2. Br. Sūt., III. ii 11.

3. Br. Sūt., I. i. 12.

4. Br. Sūt., IV. iii. 7.

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

29

clusions or siddhānta by eliminating or reinterpreting the views of other schools which are treated as pūrva-pakṣa or prima facie theories. The supreme merit of Indian philosophy as criticism of knowledge is its analysis of rival views in a spirit of disinterested love of truth.

The first point of difference between the Advaitins and the non-Advaitins lies in the interpretation of the Sad vidyā which refers to Brahman as the sat without a second. According to Śaṅkara, the one without a second is indeterminate or nirvīśeṣa, which transcends the limits of relational thought. Whatever is related to another is also limited by it. He contends that determination, quantitative or qualitative, denies the absolute unity of reality. Every determination is a negation and even the view that the universe is the self-limitation of Brahman is a defect of being and a lapse into non-being. The moment Brahman thinks and desires to be the many, negation enters into it and Brahman becomes finite-infinite. Limitation implies self-discrepancy and imperfection. The Absolute transcends the subject-object relation and is alogical and non-relational. But saguna Brahman is subject-object and is less than the Absolute. Every relation, internal or external, betrays self-contradiction because the terms are independent of the relation and at the same time enter into relation. For example, the cause is different from the effect and at the same time, is continuous with it. It applies to the phenomenal or fictitious world and not to the Absolute. The causal relation leads to endless regress and it cannot be self-explanatory. The effect is continuous with the cause and is yet contradictory to it. It is thus an illusory projection of the cause. Even in the case of the lump of clay and its modifications as pots and pitchers, the cause

alone is real and the effect illusory. Saṅkara admits

degrees of reality and distinguishes between the real and

the existent. The world of space, time and cause exists,

but it is not real, because it is sublated by the knowledge

of the Absolute. He, however, recognises the needs of

the empirical consciousness and concedes the reality of

saguṇa Brahman or personal God. Though Brahman is

nirguṇa and niravayava, it assumes a shape formed by

māyā to satisfy the devotee. To subserve the purpose

of meditation, the infinite beyond space is localised and

limited as the object of nescience and the devotee secures

the ends or rewards of life. Ether is all-pervading, but

it is limited when it is enclosed in a jar. Likewise, Brah-

man is the All-Self, but it seems to abide in the lotus of

the heart to satisfy the ignorant man. The distinction

between the Internal Ruler and the jīva is like that

between universal ether and the ether in the jar, and is

due to nescience. Where there is duality as it were,

there one sees another.5 But Brahman as the subject of

knowledge is free from the limiting conditions of the

subject-object relation and is the one without a second.

But the other Vedāntins repudiate and reject this

distinction on the ground that it is not warranted by any

of the pramāṇas. It is meaningless to say that determina-

tion is negation. On the other hand negation is deter-

mination and has a positive meaning. All knowledge is

relational and a non-relational experience is unthinkable

like burying one's shadow or denying one's mother. If

the indeterminate is devoid of content, there would be

no scope for moral aspiration and no hope of religious

5. yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati tad itara itaram paśyati –

Br. Up., IV. v. 15.

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

31

attainment. Every judgment presupposes the conscious

subject and if self-consciousness is a defect or delusion,

then consciousness itself which is a correlative factor of

the self is a delusion. The nature of Brahman no doubt

is alogical and indefinable, but this does not mean that

Brahman cannot be realised by purified and exalted

consciousness. The causal relation is not self-contra-

dictory. It expresses the spiritual truth that Brahman

is the source of our being and the ultimate meaning or

reason of every finite experience. The distinction

between reality and existence based on the law of non-

contradiction disproves everything and proves nothing.

If there are degrees of reality and truth, then there is no

reality or truth at all. Besides, the criterion of truth is

based as much upon valuation as upon sublation; reality

and value co-exist, and the sat is the ground of existence

and the goal of experience in which all eternal values

are conserved. Therefore, the non-Advaitins reject the

theory of nïrguna Brahman as the root error of the

metaphysics of mïyävâda. Predication is not the perver-

sion of reality, but is its inner revelation. The Sad

vidyā defines Brahman as the one without a second

which differentiates itself into the subjects and objects

of experience and is real reality and the ultimate mean-

ing of experience. The Taittirīya text, viz., Brahman is

satyam, jñānam, anantam, defines the nature of Brah-

man and says that it is different from the world of space-

time-cause and the world of souls and is the true of the

true, the true infinite and the All-Self. It does not refer

to an "absolutely homogeneous intelligence" without any

content. The existence of Brahman can be apprehended

and its nature comprehended and there can be no

apprehension of a thing without comprehending what it

32 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

is. Brahman therefore is and has satyam, jñānam and anantam and is not a bare abstraction. Every term in a proposition, thing and thought, ultimately connotes Brahman as the All-Self and, by knowing the Self everything which derives its form and function from it is also known.

The second point of difference is in the exposition of the Ubhayalingādhikarana6 which considers the problem of Brahman as sākāra or nirākāra with or without form. Śaṅkara as a monist thinks that Brahman is not only nirguṇa but also nirākāra and is indeterminate, non-differentiated and formless and claims that his view avoids the errors of materialism and mentalism. The view that the highest Brahman is finite-infinite is self-contradictory. The world of nāmarūpa is not, according to Śaṅkara, the self-expression of Brahman, but is only an appearance super-imposed on the Absolute by the limiting adjuncts of nescience, like the seeming red colour of the crystal which is white. The sun is one though its reflections appear to be many. Likewise Brahman is uniform though it appears to be multiform. When there is a conflict between bheda Śrutis and abheda Śrutis, the latter alone are valid because they cannot be sublated by any higher knowledge. Finite existence is fictitious like the illusion arising from mistaking the shell for silver. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad therefore affirms that Brahman is the true infinite in the sense that all finitude is false and fictitious. The negative method of neti-neti7 employed in the text denies the finite and affirms the infinite. It negatives the cosmic

6. Bṛ. Up., II. iii. and Brahma Sūtras, III. ii. 11.

7. athāta adeśo neti neti.—Bṛ. Up., II. iii. 6.

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

33

plurality fictitiously super-imposed on Brahman. The

unreal snake is negatived with reference to the real rope.

The denial of difference implies the affirmation of

identity. It is therefore unjust to interpret Advaita as

Buddhistic nihilism or Śūnyavāda. The entire Vedānta

would be stultified if Brahman as an entity is denied.

The perception of plurality is due to avidyā and when

avidyā is sublated by vidyā, the infinite remains identi-

cal with itself as an entity and the idea of difference

vanishes. Śaṅkara thus proves that Brahman is nira-

kāra, but, at the same time, provides for the theistic

demand for a personal God. The idea of God subserves

the purposes of devout meditation.

But the other Vedāntins controvert this interpretation

of ubhayaliṅga and reject its singularistic view that the

infinite alone is real and the finite false and non-existent.

If Brahman is real and is the basis of bhramā and the

world of nāmarūpa, the effect should be as real as the

cause. Since Brahman is real, the world must also be

real and Śaṅkara himself admits the fact that the exist-

ing world is not destroyed by jñāna. The finite is rooted

in the infinite and is not sublated by it. Bhāskara inter-

prets the word ‘neti’ as a denial of the finitude of reality

and not of the finite self. The object of the repetition

of neti, neti is to exclude the world of acit and cit from

the definition of Brahman. The Absolute transcends

relational thought but does not sublate it. According to

Rāmānuja, this adhikarana brings out the ethics of

Vedānta by defining Brahman as absolutely pure and

perfect. Brahman is not only free from the imperfec-

tions of the finite self but has an infinity of perfections.

The infinite is in the finite with a view to infinitising it

and freeing it from its imperfections. The infinite is not

3

24 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

affected by the changes of prakrti and is therefore formless ; but it assumes a spiritual form of its own to divinise the finite self. If logical immanence brings out the divineness of the world order, ethical eminence draws out the divinising quality of Brahman. Brahman is thus the metaphysical highest and the ethical highest.

The Sūtrakāra discusses in the section dealing with ānandamaya the meaning of Brahman as ānandamaya as expounded in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad.8 According to Śaṅkara, who is called Puccha Brahmavādin, Brahman is bliss and not the blissful. Śaṅkara rejects the adjectival theory that Brahman is blissful for three reasons. Firstly, the term ānandamaya refers to the appearance of the Absolute and not to the Absolute itself. Secondly, the term prācurya or abundance of bliss in the suffix mayat of the text presupposes the co-existence of pain and the presence of imperfection which belongs only to saguṇa Brahman and not to the Absolute. The qualities, lower and higher, belong to the qualified Brahman only, and not to the indeterminate. Thirdly, the whole section in the Upaniṣad refers to the transcendental Brahman that cannot be defined logically or described by language.9 Some modern philosophers distinguish between the two Brahmans as the logical highest and the intuitional highest and give a Hegelian version of the former. Saguna Brahman is on the logical level or vijñānamaya. Īśvara is being-non-being with an element of negativity in its content having maximum reality and minimum unreality. The Absolute is intuited as an integral non-dual experience, but the moment we think

8. Taitt. Up., Anandavalli.

9. yato vāco nivartante| aprāpya manasā saha| ānandam brahmano vidvān.—Taitt. Up., Ānand. iv.

the Absolute, we lapse into religion and are caught up in the contradiction of the subject-object relation. The infinite is then cast in the moulds of logic or vijñāna and becomes Īśvara, the highest conceptual reading of the Absolute. Īśvara is noumenal, being phenomenalised and riddled with the contradictions of the finite-infinite, being-non-being. But when we rise to the level of intuition, all thought expires in absolute bliss. But the majority of mankind are on the level of common sense and theistic thinking and are unable to attain the highest state of the Absolute. Saṅkara, therefore, thinks that ānandamaya connotes only saguna Brahman or the god of religion who is different from the absolute bliss which is Brahman. Bhāskara dismisses the distinction between the logical and the alogical highest as mere speculation riddled with fancies, faults and fallacies and treats it as a typical instance of Śruticide or text-torture. The Upaniṣad expounds the whole truth without compromising with ignorance and never adopts the expedient of the dual standpoint. The whole topic deals with the knowledge of Brahman and the attainment of the bliss of Brahman and this truth is enshrined in the central text, “Brahmavid āpnoti param.” The arguments adduced by the Advaitins are not tenable. The suffix maya in ānandamaya is not to be confused with the māyā doctrine, which is grafted on the Upaniṣadic system. There is really no contradiction or vivarta at all between Brahman and the world, leading to the denial of the world order. There is only a co-ordination between the two. The term ānandamaya brings out the quality of bliss as the highest determining attribute of Brahman. In the ecstasy of intuition, the self-feeling may be swallowed up, but is not sublated, and Brahman is

36 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

ānandamaya or the subject of eternal bliss, it differs from the jīva as vijñānamaya, which attains the bliss. Secondly, the view that Brahman transcends relational thought lapses into agnosticism. The Śruti denies only the knowledge of Brahman by a tainted mind, but it does not deny the possibility of a purified mind realising Brahman. Thirdly, the bliss of Brahman is absolute in the sense that it is supreme and unsurpassable. While the pleasures of sense-life and the happiness of intellectual or cultural life are transient and partial, the bliss of Brahman is eternal and ineffable. The Śruti adopts a calculus of pleasures on a progressive scale of values and concludes that the bliss of Brahman is the consummation of all joy or happiness. Deussen thinks that Śaṅkara's explanation is an interpolation, but Thibaut accepts it and regards it as exceedingly strained. Śaṅkara himself at first follows the Sūtras and expounds the topic ānandamaya in its natural sense as the highest Self and then he rejects it in his conclusion with the following statement: "But in reality the following remarks have to be made concerning the true meaning of the term ānandamaya."

The last topic called the Kāryādhikaraṇa10 also provides an occasion for polemical warfare amongst the Vedāntins. The section discusses the value and destiny of the individual self and the meaning of mukti. Śaṅkara thinks that it brings out the distinction between the god of theology in Brahmaloka, the world yonder, and Brahman which is the self-accomplished Absolute of philosophy. Theology is philosophy made concrete and is a concession to commonsense and the craving of ordinary minds for a personal god. It gives a conceptual

10 Brahma Sūtras, IV. iii. 7.

version of the Absolute and spatialises Brahman by referring to the world of God attained by the freed self in an aprākṛta world. Mukti is the progressive ascent to the world of Brahman involving endeavour and attainment. But the Absolute is self-identical and the idea of the progressive attainment of an end is self-contradictory. Theism is rooted in commonsense and it cannot free itself from the anthropomorphic defect of humanising God and clothing Him in spatial and temporal categories. But the jīvanmukta realises freedom in embodiment and not from embodiment. Mukti is immediate self-realisation and not an attainment of a new world, the goal of our going. The jīva is neither a part nor an effect nor a separate entity. The idea of whole and parts and cause and effect does not apply to the Absolute or nirguṇa Brahman. The jīva cannot be atomic as its consciousness pervades its whole being. If it is infinite, then the infinite is one and the jīva is itself Brahman. But when Brahman is spatialised in the interests of upāsana or meditation, it becomes, as it were, kārya Brahman or effected Brahman and admits of progress and attainment. Jñāna destroys ajñāna and there are no stages of dispelling it. Śaṅkara, therefore, concludes that true mukti is the realisation of the self-identity of the Absolute and not the gradual attainment of freedom in a far-off world. The theists are only at the theological level and the intuition of nirguṇa Brahman does not appeal to their empirical consciousness. They belong to the Jaimini type following the realistic tradition and not to the higher Bādari type of philosophy of idealistic thinking. Those who worship the effected or lower Brahmaloka and eventually reach along with Brahmā the highest world of Viṣṇu and attain salvation.

38

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

The other Vedāntins do not accept this condescending toleration and employ counter-arguments to refute the theory of two muktis. Bhāskara, for example, rejects the theory of jīvanmukti on the following grounds.

Firstly, the theory of mukti as the removal of avidyā or negating negation is meaningless and may lapse into the nihilism of Buddhistic nirvāna. If avidyā is bare negation like the square circle there is no meaning in denying it. There can be no stages in sublation, and negation is always significant. Secondly, the removal of avidyā from the empirically-minded individual in jīvanmukti should result in universal freedom or sarvamukti, which is, however, not a fact. If mukti is really the immediate apprehension of Brahman as the self-realised Absolute, it is not philosophical to speak of two muktis and compromise truth.11 The idea of Īśvara as being-becoming man to a-Brahman. The true meaning of gati is spiritual and not temporal or logical, and mukti is the realisation of the world of Brahman which transcends the spatial, temporal and moral order of space-time and karma and getting Brahmanised. It is thus a state of self-transcendence in which the Brahmajñanī lives in spaceless space and views everything under the form of eternity, intuits Brahman and enjoys the fecundative bliss of such Brahmajñāna.

In spite of the divergence between the Advaitins and the other schools of Vedānta in the above essential

11. The interpretation of the whole topic by Śaṅkara in which he regards the first view (held by Bādari) as the siddhānta or settled conclusion and the second view (held by Jaimini) is the prima facie view is opposed to the practice of the Sūtrakāra.

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANISADS

topics of the Śruti chosen by the Sūtrakāra, there are

some affinities between the two, which may be brought

to light by analysing the following five schools of Advaita

and comparing the fifth school with non-Advaitic sys-

tems. (1) Ajāativāda; (2) the subjective and the

psychological theory; (3) the illusion theory; (4) the

phenomenon theory and (5) the ethico-religious theory.

Ajāatavāda refers to the non-origination of the world and

is logically irrefutable. It asserts that Brahman is and

māyā or avidyā is not. What is is and what is not is not.

If the existence of avidyā is once admitted, it cannot

afterwards be denied or destroyed. Therefore avidyā as

a positive something or mūlāvidyā is denied in toto. But

a theory which denies the theorising activity of thought

is no philosophy at all. The text for Advaitic subjectivism

is furnished by the Upaniṣad that the knower cannot

become an object of knowledge and that prajñāna

is Brahman. The absolute ‘I’ is beyond the subject-

object consciousness and the universe of space-time is

only mind-begotten and mind-sustained. It is the

creation of avidyā and is therefore fictitious. An analysis

of the three states of consciousness or avasthātraya is a

classical application of the subjective or psychological

method. When consciousness is withdrawn from the

waking and dream states, it remains in a non-dual state

in sleep, though it is still conjoined with avidyā. But in

the turīya consciousness,12 pure consciousness shines

without the cloud of nescience (avidyā). Subjectivism

reaches its logical conclusion in ekajīvavāda, which

traces the world of space-time to the illusory projection

of the single jīva. This aspect of Vedānta has no affinity

12. Māndūkya Upaniṣad, 7.

40 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

at all with the other schools of Vedānta and it has no value in a true philosophy of religion. Śaṅkara himse'f accepts the relative reality of the external world in his refutation of vijñānavāda. Idealism leads to solipsism in epistemology and to egoism in ethics. The psycho-logical approach to reality should therefore be reinterpreted in terms of cosmology.

The illusion theory as already expounded makes a distinction between the objective and the subjective sides of reality, and says that māyā is cosmic nescience and avidyā is individuated illusion. Īśvara and jīva have their respective cosmic and psychical functions in the three states of consciousness. Īśvara is the aggregate or totality of all semblances and He functions as samasti in the three states of consciousness as Īśvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virāt. The jīva is the product of avidyā and functions as vyaṣṭi in the three states as prājña, taijasa and viśva. The phenomenon theory rejects the view that the world is an illusion. Māyā, on this view, is the divisive consciousness in the infinite which makes it the ground of the pluralistic universe. Brahman is really the Absolute or the non-relational and Īśvara is the phenomenalised and the term māyā is a state-tional thought. The world of nāmarūpa exists but is not real in its own right ; it is phenomenal and not fictitious.

In the empirical or the phenomenal state, the Absolute somehow divides itself into finite centres. But from the transcendental point of view, there is the intuition of Brahman. Advaita does not connote the self-identity of Brahman, but only denies difference and dissolves the pluralistic view of the world. The mukta is in the world, but is not infected by its contradictions. The chief defect

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

41

of this view is that it explains away Īśvara as the one-many or being-becoming and therefore predicates imperfections in the Absolute. All these four schools of

Advaita, on the analogy of the Kantian distinction between the critique of pure reason and that of practical reason, may be regarded as metaphysical or dialectic enquiries into the nature of reality based more on vicāra than on scriptural and spiritual faith.

But a fifth kind of Advaita which may be called practical Advaita is the ethico-religious approach to Advaita. According to it, Śāstra is eternal and self-valid and is the only pramāṇa for the establishment of Advaitic truth by self-experience. Practical Advaita accepts the reality of stages and distinguishes between the karma kāṇḍa, the upāsana kāṇḍa and the jñāna kāṇḍa, the three kinds of reality and the two aspects of Brahman and regards mukti as a progressive realisation. From the ethico-religious point of view, Brahman is the god of religion who has control over māyā without being confronted by it. It is the śakti in Brahman that makes for the world process. The term ‘tajjala’ in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad13 is a cryptic way of saying that the cosmos comes from Brahman, is in Brahman and goes to Brahman. In mukti, consciousness is self-transcendent and Brahman is self-realised. Freedom cannot be attained without the four sāadhanas including intellectual, moral and spiritual disciplines.

From the point of view of Vedānta as a philosophy of religion, the practical side of Advaita offers a basis for inter-Vedāntic understanding. Of the non-Advaitic schools, the systems of Bhedābheda suffer from the

13. Ch. Up., III. xiv. 1.

42 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

inherent defect of predicating imperfections to the Absolute and not to the finite self. Therefore, the true meaning of the ontology of the Upaniṣads is furnished by the insight into the nature of the Absolute as the god of religion, different from the migrating jīvas and the mutations of prakṛti. This is the view of Rāmānuja and it is a meeting ground for all forms of philosophic thought and has the merit of furnishing a common basis for all the schools of Vedānta and may be briefly summarised.

The Absolute of Vedānta is the all-inclusive Self which is also the soul of the universe. Brahman alone exists as the intuitional highest and He is also the ethical highest. He is immanent in the universe logically and at the same time ethically eminent. There is no contradiction between the impersonal sat and the personal God.

The Supreme Self as Brahman is the true of the true and is the eternal of eternals that pervades all beings and is ever perfect. To distinguish Brahman from prakṛti, it may be called impersonal, and to contrast Him from puruṣa, He may be called suprapersonal. This view avoids the defects of materialism as well as mentalism, anthropomorphism as well as abstractionism. Brahman is the true, the self-conscious and the blissful without any taint of error, ignorance or misery. He has satyatva, jñānatva and ānandatva as His determining qualities and is not sat-cit-ānanda as the indeterminate. Experience and value coincide and Brahman is the true of the true,13a the thinker of thinkers or the Inner Ruler Immortal14 and the infinitely blissful.15 Every term, thought or thing

13a. Satyasya satyam — Br. Up., II. iii. 6.

14. Br. Up., III. viii.

15. Br. Up., IV. iii. 32 and Taitt. Up., II. 8

THE ONTOLOGY OF THE UPANISADS

43

refers to Brahman as its ultimate meaning. He is the

light of lights and the sun, the moon and the stars derive

their light from Brahman. All the joys of life are

infinitesimal expressions of the infinite bliss of Brahman.

It is the ultimate teaching of the Upanisad that the seeker

after Brahman should become brahmanised and become

perfect. As the cosmic principle or person or presence,

Brahman is different from the unity of nature and the

community of jīvas. It is from fear of Brahman that the

sun and the moon shine and nature is uniform and the

gods perform their cosmic functions. He enters into all

beings and exceeds their finitude. The truth that Brah-

man is the cosmic centre, source and self is the theme

of the next chapter.

III. THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

Cosmology is the theory of the origin and nature of the universe and the cosmology of the Upaniṣads is an enquiry into the nature of Brahman as the first cause and the final cause. It is a vital part of Vedānta as it defines the nature and value of Brahma jijnāsa, though some schools of Vedānta ignore it. The classical text is furnished in the Sad vidyā of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad1 and is expounded by the Sūtrakāra, chiefly in the section dealing with ārambhaṇa.2 Brahman is defined in the Upaniṣad as the one without a second ; by knowing it as the cosmic ground, everything else which is the effect is known, just as by knowing a clod of clay, everything that is made of clay is known. The Taittirīya Upaniṣad which the world of cit and acit emerges, by Which they are sustained and into Which they merge3 or tajjalān.

The theory of creation ex nihilo, or out of nothing, is not recognised by the Upaniṣads. Likewise, the naturalistic theories of the emergence of the higher from the lower and the deistic view of creation by an external Designer find no support in the Upaniṣads. The monistic idea that creation is only an illusory projection is negatived by the above definition and also by the Upaniṣadic statement that Brahman is alone the True, the Self-Conscious

1. sad eva somyedamagra āsīt. Ch. Up., VI. ii. 1.

2. Brahma Sūtras, II. i. 14.

3. yatovā imāni bhūtāni jāyante' yena jātāni jīvanti' yamprāyantyabhisamviśanti.—Taitt. Up., III. 1.

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS 45

and the Infinite.4 These three determining qualities define the supreme nature of Brahman by distinguishing it from the ever-changing world of matter and the matter-bound jīva, and from the freed and free selves. Brahman is the infinite that finitises itself without losing its infinity and is thus both static and dynamic.

The Advaitin distinguishes between satkāryavāda or parināmavāda and vivartavāda and interprets the text in terms of vivarta and not parināma (perversion and not transformation). The modifications of the cause are only in name and not in reality. The theory of causal relation is self-contradictory as it says that the cause and the effect are continuous and at the same time separate.

The effect viewed as different from the cause is an empirical idea, a twist of thought and a trick of speech, and is therefore a mere illusory appearance. The world of nāmarūpa has no existence apart from Brahman which is pure non-differenced being. It is vivarta and not vikāra, like the rope mistaken for the snake and the silver erroneously perceived in the shell. The Śruti itself says that the self is all this, and that there is really no diversity. “He who perceives such diversity goes from death to death.”5 Just as the water in a mirage is non-different from the surface of the salty steppe and as the parts limited by water pots are non-different from the universal ethereal space, Brahman, the cause, is non-different from the world, its effect. The effect is non-existent and the cause alone is real and is self-identical. The world is of such stuff as dreams are made of and

4. satyam jñānam anantam brahma.—Taitt. Up., II. i.

5. neha nānāsti kiñcana | mrtyossa mrtyum āpnoti ya iha nāneva paśyati.—B. U., IV. iv. 19 and Kath. Up., II iv. 11.

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

as no realty. The diversity caused by names and forms

is only a conjurer's trick and Īśvara is an arch-illusionist

and even His omniscience is only a case of nescience on

a cosmic scale.

Jīvartavāda may be interpreted in a variety of ways.

The theory of māyā is really founded upon avidyā and

adhyāsa and the Advaitin, as a subjective idealist, says

that the world is only a mental construction or idea.

The so-called external world is only a self-projection and

it is merely the vrttis objectified. According to him, the

whole universe of cit and acit has its origin in me, is

sustained by me and is absorbed in me. I alone am the

aggregate of all intelligent subjects. Therefore, what is

popularly known as sr̥ṣṭi, sthiti and samhāra is created,

sustained and dissolved only by my individual conscious-

ness. The world of space, time and cause is an illusory

projection of my idea and a fictitious creation of my

avidyā. All idealism ends in subjectivism and super-

solipsism, and this view is the logical conclusion of

Advaitic idealism, and if it is accepted, there will be no

need for the philosophy of cosmology. But it is rejected

by the more moderate Advaitins who recognise the

plurality of jīvas and the existence of Īśvara at least as a

phenomenal or pragmatic necessity.

The Advaitavādins, who uphold the theory of nānājīva

or many souls and the idea of Īśvara, make a distinction

between the subjective and the objective aspects of the

universe. They posit the proposition that what is true

of the anda or macrocosm is also true of the pinda or

microcosm which is tersely stated thus: "as within, so

without"; and they represent two types of monism

known as the bimbapratibimbavāda or reflection theory

and the apacchedavāda or limitation theory. According

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

47

to the bimbapratibimbavāda, the Absolute which is pure consciousness somehow reflects itself in the medium of avidyā which is cosmic nescience in its individuated form and appears as many jīvas, just as there are many reflected images of the same face in different mirrors.

According to the second view, the Absolute somehow divides itself into finite centres owing to the upādhis or limiting adjuncts. The infinite is, as it were, finitised like the all-pervading ākāśa enclosed in a pot.

The Bhedābhedavādins attack māyāvāda on all fronts and conclude that it contradicts all pramāṇas and is spiritually futile.

The nature of Brahman can be ascertained only by means of Śāstra and Śāstra nowhere favours the doctrine of māyā or avidyā.

This doctrine is an alien graft on the Upaniṣads and not an inner growth and the Ṣad vidyā on which Upaniṣadic cosmology is based does not refer to the illusion theory.

The terms sadeva and ārambhaṇa bring out the fact of causal immanence as parināma and not as vivarta.

If the cause, as the illusionist urges, is real and the effect is falsity will infest the cause itself and even the Veda will have to be rejected as illusory.

Vedāntins like Bhāskara, Yādava and Nimbārka, therefore, reject māyāvāda in favour of parināmavāda.

Phenomena change, but they are not fabrications.

Bhāskara says that Brahman has a twofold śakti known as jīvapariṇāma and acetanapariṇāma by which it becomes the finite centres and the objects of experience.

Like the spider weaving its web, the Absolute, which is the unconditioned, transforms itself, owing to the upādhis, into the relative or the conditioned and yet it transcends the limitations of finitude.

The jīva emanates from Brahman and finally enters into it.

Yādava rejects the spiritual monism of Bhāskara and

48 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

insists on the relation between Brahman and cit and acit as identity in difference. Difference and non-difference are the dual aspects of reality and are therefore eternally real. Brahmatva as pure being or sanmātra is the causal unity of the universe with the threefold aspects of Īśvara, cit and acit, persisting as a potentiality in pralaya and is the highest generalisation. Sṛṣṭi is the self-differentiation of this triune unity into the three aspects like the water of the sea turning itself into waves, foam and bubbles and like clay becoming jars, platters and pitchers.

The Absolute becomes Īśvara, jīva and acit, as integral parts of the same unity, and Īśvara is less than the Absolute. Nimbārka also explains the origin of the universe as the self-actualisation of Īśvara. Brahman is self-related in the abheda aspect, but in the bhedābheda aspect of creation, there is distinction between Īśvara, cit and acit owing to its immanent śakti. Cit and acit are not only different from Brahman but also depend upon Him as their Lord.

Rāmānuja rejects māyāvāda and Brahmapariṇāmavāda and explains cosmology in terms of the śarīra-śarīrī relation. He rejects māyāvāda as a theory which has all the defects of acosmism and pan-illusionism and which, in its negative movement. may lead to the doctrine of void. Advaitavāda, as such, claims to have a logical and scientific basis, and, as every rational explanation is causal, it has to explain how illusion co-exists with Brahman. If Brahman is pure non-differenced consciousness, how does it give rise to cosmic nescience ? If even omniscience is nescience on a cosmic scale, then nescience infects its very source and substratum, namely, Brahman, and pan-illusionism will be the only result. Īśvara as the reflection of Brahman in māyā is conditioned by

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

49

māyā and cannot be its controller. He is only the sum

of the semblances and is the Illusory Highest. Cosmic

illusion envelops reality and there is no hope of enlighten-

ment. Likewise the jīva as the reflection of Brahman

in avidyā is only a semblance and not a real entity. If

the distinction of jīvas is traced to avidyā and if distinct

avidyās are traced to distinct jīvas, there arises the

fallacy of circular reasoning and mutual dependence

(anyonya āśraya). The co-existence of Brahman-jīva

and māyā-avidyā involves a duality and dualism which

Advaita is unable to solve. Besides, no moral philosopher

would maintain the view that Brahman deludes itself

as an arch-illusionist and deceives the jīvas by enacting

an unreal play consisting of unreal scenes, actions and

audience. To a person dreaming, even his teacher and

fellow pupils are fabrications of avidyā. If, to avoid the

errors of subjectivism and the reflection and the limi-

tation theories, the Advaitin as identity philosopher

denies the theory of origination and evolution, his view

is practically the same as Śūnyavāda or the theory of

void. On the theory of apaccheda, it is not liable to

subsequent sublation as no negation can go beyond it.

If Advaita connotes inseparable relation between Brah-

man and the world, it allies itself with Viśiṣṭādvaita.

Rāmānuja condemns Bhedābheda with its pancosmic

tendency as a vicious theory, which, in effect, finally

attributes all the imperfections of life to Brahman. The

upādhis, whether they are illusory or real (mithyopādhi

or satyopādhi), suffer from the fatal defects of making

Brahman the source of all errors and evils.

Rāmānuja explains the Sad vidyā by defining the

nature of Brahman, cit and acit as eternally real, but

not external to one another. Like the Bhedābheda-

4

vūdinṣ, he adopts the principle of satkāryavāda and says that the same substance enters into different states without losing its substantiality and that the effect is not a substance different from the cause. In the pralaya state, the manifold of cit and acit exists as a real possibility. But it is so subtle that it may be practically treated as non-existent, and, in this sense, the world is non-different from Brahman. But in the condition of sṛṣṭi or effect state, the one sat wills to be the many and becomes the many and the non-differentiated becomes differentiated. Consequently, by knowing Brahman, the cause, the effect, namely, the universe, is also known. The process of nature or prakṛti is ever changing and is subject to the laws of pariṇāma. Owing to the spiritual freedom of the jīva, it subjects itself to expansion and self-limitation, but Brahman is ever free and perfect. He is the upādānakāraṇa and the nimittakāraṇa, the material cause as well.as the instrumental cause of the universe. He is the first cause and the final cause. He enters into the universe as its inner self and at the same time transcends its imperfections. The process of nature is for the progress of the jīva so that it may become finally brahmanised.

The order of creation as set forth in the Śruti and the Vedānta Śāstra may now be explained in some detail. In the light of the principle of pariṇāma, the law of karma and the immanent purpose of Īśvara, prakṛti exists for consciousness and not in consciousness. This Brahman, and is called māyā, as it connotes the wonders of creation.6 In pralaya, it is undifferentiated and in

6. māyān tu prakṛtim vidyāt—Śv. Up., IV. 10.

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANIṢADS

51

creation it begins to energise and evolve into mahat including the three states of sattva, rajas and tamas. Mahat changes into ahaṅkāra, including the three aspects of vaikārika, taijasa and bhūtādi. From the first emanate the ten cognitive and the conative sense organs or jñānendriyas and karmendriyas. The inner sense organ, namely, manas, is the co-ordinating organ of knowledge and it functions as ahaṅkāra, citta and buddhi. The first, i.e., ahaṅkāra, is due to the false identification of ātman with the body. The second is the desire for a sense-object and the third is what discriminates the true from the false. The indriyas accompany the jīva till it attains mukti. From bhūtādi evolve the cosmic factors of the five subtle elements or tanmātras and the gross elements or the bhūtas. Of these elements, air springs from ether, fire from air, water from fire and earth from water.7

The creation of the elements and the sense organs is the collective aspect or samaṣṭi, which precedes the vyaṣṭi aspect. The principle underlying this process is called trṛṭkarana or pañcīkarana. It connotes the inclusion of all the qualities in all the five elements and the unity of the cosmic order. Each of them is divided into two parts and one part of each is combined with one-eighth of the remaining elements; and in every substance in the universe, the one or the other element preponderates though all the others are present and they constitute the world of name and form. Brahman enters into prakṛti with the collective soul or Brahmā and produces all beings including gods, human beings and sub-

7. akāśād vāyuḥ| vāyoragniḥ| agner āpaḥ adbhyāḥ prthivī.—Taitt. Up., II. 1.

THE ACADEMY OF SANSKRIT RESEARCH MELKOTE-5 KARNATAKA STATE

52

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

human beings. Each jīva is eternal and persists in its

own nature even in pralaya in a subtle state and in sṛṣṭi,

Īśvara bestows bodies and sense organs on each jīva

according to its karma and enters into it as its inner

ruler. Every new sṛṣṭi is but a repetition of the previous

cosmic order. Before creation, the Vedic ideas were

intuited by the creator as the first-born of the Absolute

and he creates the thinking things and objects of thought

in the light of his intuitive insight. Nature acts in a

uniform way and even gods like Indra and Varuṇa

persist with their characteristics as archetypes, though,

as individuals, they come and go. Indras come and go

but Indratva remains. Pralaya and sṛṣṭi bring out the

rhythmic enfolding and unfolding of the cosmos and the

cosmic procession is for the making of souls by the

moulding of matter. The apparent cruelty and caprice

that prevail in the moral world are traceable to the karma

of the jīva; and Īśvara, the Inner Ruler of all, dispenses

justice impartially according to individual desert. Ulti-

mately, pralaya and sṛṣṭi reveal the sportive spontaneity

of Īśvara as the divine artist. The theory of creation is

reinterpreted and it becomes the act of recreation in

which the artist enacts the divine comedy and enjoys the

bliss of the creation of the jīvas with a view to shaping

them into His own image.

The cosmology of the Upaniṣads rejects entirely the

asatkāryavāda of the Vaiśeṣika and his atomic theory of

the origin of the universe. His radical pluralism reduces

the world-order into a multiverse without any under-

lying unity and the idea of an external designer denies

the reality of divine immanence. The Sāṅkhya no doubt

accepts satkāryavāda, and in his cosmological account,

he expounds the evolution of the cosmos, but he ignores

THE COSMOLOGY OF THE UPANISADS

53

the creative function of the Inner Ruler. The various

theories of emanation and emergence held by the Bhedā-

bhedavādins attribute imperfections to the Absolute and

thus make Īśvara Himself a glorified samsārin who has

an infinity of evils in His nature. The illusion theory

says that the Absolute somehow divides or seems to

divide itself into finite centres, but is unable to explain

why the Absolute appears as the many.

Cosmology arouses wonder and a sense of holy

mystery. Though all Vedāntins agree in describing the

pralaya state as the absence of the differentiation of

nāmarūpa, they differ in their accounts of sṛṣṭi. They

attribute creation to māyā, the upādhiṣ or the pariṇāma

śakti in Brahman or to karma. From the ethico-religious

point of view, the exposition of Rāmānuja has the merit

of maintaining the purity of Brahman by tracing the

imperfections of life to the moral freedom of the self and

of providing a common ground for the meeting of the

extremes of monism and theism. The Advaitin accepts

pragmatically the reality of the cosmic order and its

Ruler and his thesis agrees with Rāmānuja's in accepting

the direct import of tajjala. From the spiritual stand-

point, there is no doubt that the endless procession of the

space-time world is for the progression of the self and

its final attainment of perfection. The next chapter

seeks to define the nature and characteristics of the self

or jīva.

IV. UPANIṢADIC PSYCHOLOGY

Upaniṣadic psychology has a metaphysical and spiritual background and is therefore different from the theories which are founded upon mere empirical and rational methods. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, Indra seeks from Prajāpati the knowledge of the nature of the eternal self that is different from its changing states of waking consciousness, dreams and dreamless sleep.1 In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya expounds to King Janaka the psychology of the three āvasthās or psychical states and the way to overcome evil.2 In the Kaṭhopaniṣad, Naciketas desires to know from the God of Death the nature of the self and the meaning of immortality.3

The Upaniṣadic method of solving this problem is that of self-realisation through self-renunciation and spiritual induction as opposed to the logical method of elimination. The spiritual aspirant gradually realises that the self is different from the body, gross and subtle, prāṇa or vital air, sensation and reason. It is not a fleeting flux of psycho-physical states, but is eternally and essentially blissful.

A brief account of the rival theories, which look plausible, may be given before the correct theory or the siddhānta is stated. First, there is the view of the Dehātmavādins and the Indriyātmavādins, who say that the ātman is the body or the sense organs. What is

1. Ch. Up., VIII. vii.

2. Bṛ. Up., IV. iii.

3. Kaṭh. Up., I. i. 20.

called ātman is, to them, only the configuration of elements or the aggregate of physical changes which is dissolved at death. Consciousness can be explained mechanically as an epi-phenomenon or bye-product of nature without resorting to any supernatural or spiritual explanation. The brain is said to secrete thought as the liver secretes bile. Self-consciousness emerges gradually from matter or prakrti. The self is said to be a late arrival in the process of evolution. But this is the view of the materialist or Lokāyatika, and its vital defect is its failure to explain the primacy, if not the priority, of the moral and spirtual consciousness. The physico-chemical sciences can explain only the nature of the visible and tangible universe. They fail to explain the nature of self-consciousness and the striving for the moral or spiritual values of life. The self is quite different from the gross body consisting of the twenty-four tattvas, gross and subtle. While the self is aware of the sensations, the sensations have no such self-consciousness.

Next there are the Prānātmavādins who go a step further and contend that the prāṇa is the self. The Upaniṣad brings out this view by the story of the speech, mind and the senses contesting for supremacy with prāṇa and proving by the anvaya vyatireka method or positive and negative test, that prāṇa alone maintains life.4 It alone has vital power or creative activity which is capable of self-origination and self-multiplication. Prāṇa-vāda is more comprehensive than the atomic or materialistic theory, because no machine is self-creative or has the power of self-origination like the vital impulse.

4. Br. Up., VI. i and Kauṣ. Up., II. xiv.

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THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

But it does not go far enough, as consciousness cannot originate from prāṇa. Therefore, the psychologist says that consciousness is more comprehensive than matter or life. The theory is more concrete than the physical theory of atoms and the biological theory of life. To the psychologist, the self is a series of perishing psychical presentations.

The Buddhist as a Kṣanikavijñānavādin denies the existence of the self or ātman and explains it away as a mere perishing psycho-physical series without any substantiality or stability. The self is not a static being but a ceaseless becoming though it seems to be a single entity. It consists of five skandhas, namely, rūpa (form), vedanā (feeling), samjñā (perception), samskāra (will) and vijñāna (reason). It is a series of momentary sensations without any permanence. But this view is untenable as it cuts at the very root of personal identity based on the fact of recognition or memory. As the Upaniṣad says, the speaker is different from speech and the mantr from manas. The self persists in its own being in spite of all its momentary mental modifications and to depersonalise the self is to decapitate it. Abnormal psychology no doubt refers to dissociation or dispersal of personality, but the science of yoga based on metapsychics describes the possibility of realising the personal identity of the self as distinct from its psychic changes.

It is therefore true to say that there can be no psychology without the psyche, just as there can be no play of Śākuntala without Śakuntalā. The rationalist therefore goes further and affirms that reason is more comprehensive than the atom, soul or sensation and that it is sui generis. As the Taittirīya Upaniṣad holds,

vijñāna is a higher category than matter, life or consciousness.5 It is the self that sustains the senses and synthesises their functions. The rationalist defines the self as a rational being and posits the rationality of the universe. It is reason that distinguishes man from the plant and the animal and makes him the crown of evolutionary progress. But reason is not the final category of reality because it often starts with doubt and ends with scepticism. The rationalist is oppressed by the ultimate mystery of all things and develops finally an agnostic, if not a sceptical, attitude towards life. The self can never be discovered by syllogistic thinking. The Jaina goes a step further and affirms the existence of a plurality of jīvas forming a monadic hierarchy from the plant to the perfect self. The ātman is therefore different from the logical intellect and, from the Vedantic point of view, is different from the western terms, spirit, soul and self, as they are not free from the defects of animism and the riddles of the mind-body theories. The ātman can be realised by yogic introversion as eternally effulgent and blissful, and this truth is capable of verification by a process of spiritual induction. The existence of the self as different from the body is an indubitable fact of spiritual experience.

As contrasted with these, Vedānta affirms the eternity of the self as opposed to the theory of its sudden creation or dissolution and defines it as the subject having cognition, conation and feeling as its functions and not as a mere ābhāsa or reflection of buddhi. It persists as a monadic being or anu in all states and cannot be explained away as a mere metaphor or as an anuvāda.

5. Taitt. Up., II. 5.

58 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

The process of thought implies the thought of the process and also the thinking self as its subject. The ‘I’ persists in all mental states as a pervading identity and not as a mere connection of content, and there is no self-contradiction between one state and another. On the other hand, among the Āstika philosophers, the Sāṅkhya accepts Vedic authority and says that the puruṣa is nirguṇa (formless) and nirguṇa (attributeless) and a silent solitary self, but it is a witness that witnesses nothing. It is emptied of all content and is abstract. The Vaiśeṣika holds that intelligence is produced by the conjunction of the self with the mind. This conjunction is purely adventitious and intelligence is not an essential quality of the self. This view makes the ātman mechanical. Vedānta insists on the moral freedom of the ātman and its self-sovereignty and is opposed to the method of depersonalising it and denying its spontaneity.

Advaita combats the theistic idea of the self as a separate personality. According to it the atomic and monadic nature of the self is metaphorical and not metaphysical. Owing to the superimposition of the quality of buddhi on ātman, ātman appears to be monadic though it is really infinite. It is fictitiously hypostatised by buddhi, its limiting adjunct. Antahkaraṇa, which is the false limiting adjunct of the ātman, is variously described as manas when it is in a doubting state, citta, the fleeting psychosis, buddhi, the state of determination, and ahaṅkāra, the sense of egoity. The idea of agency arises from avidyā and is not of the essential nature of the ātman, which is the one non-dual pure consciousness. Just as light appears straight or bent owing to its passing through a medium, pure intelligence affected by avidyā seems to act and feel though it is ever free from nescience.

UPANIṢADIC PSYCHOLOGY

The jīva appears to be a finite self which has the qualities of knowing, feeling and willing; it works with the tools of thought, suffers from sorrow and migrates in the world of samsāra. But when the darkness of avidyā is dispelled, it knows that it is Brahman which is ever partless and perfect. This view, it should be emphasised, has no support in the Upaniṣads or in the Sūtras expounding them as they insist on the eternity of the self and its moral and spiritual freedom.

The Upaniṣadic view of karma is opposed to fatalism and predeterminism on the one hand and mere indeterminism on the other. It attributes the imperfections of life to the finite self. The ātman has somehow fallen from its Brahmabhāva but it retains the will to free itself from the causality of karma or samsāra and regain its divine nature. It is essentially blissful and its threefold sorrows arising from natural, moral and supernatural causes are traceable to the career of sensuality and sin, which it has chosen. The pessimistic view that the ātman suffers from the will to live and from innate sinfulness is foreign to the Upaniṣads.

The jīva is essentially a knowing subject and is not mere intelligence or non-intelligence. The theory of pure consciousness, without a self to integrate the conscious processes, is as unthinkable as that of a self whose consciousness is adventitious or occasional. Consciousness presupposes an entity that persists in all states and gives a meaning to their unity and continuity; and there can be no self without consciousness as its essence. It shines by itself like the light of a luminous body. Consciousness is always out there in the self whether it is latent or patent. Though the self is infinitesimal or monadic, its consciousness is infinite and all-pervading.

60 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

The individual soul is to be known as part of the hundredth part of the point of a hair divided a hundred times but yet it is also infinite.6 Even the monist who has to accept the fact of sarvamukti has to concede the existence of a plurality of jivas at least as a working hypothesis. The freedom of the self is a moral and religious necessity as no Vedic duty or Vedāntic upāsanā is possible without such freedom and responsibility. The text in the Katha Upanisad, "If the slayer thinks he slays the ātman and if the slain thinks he is slain, they both do not understand the truth," 6a affirms the indestructibility of the self and does not deny its agency.

To say that agency belongs to prakrti or manas is to deny the reality of the moral and spiritual endeavour of the mumuksu and his achievement of freedom. Prakrti does not meditate on mukti or attain it. The self is by nature blissful and all its misery is traceable to its false identification with the body and its fall from its blissful state in the world of Brahman.

The self abides in its own being and persists in all the three states of consciousness, of waking, dream and dreamless sleep, and its self-identity may be obscured by karma but is never destroyed. The jiva in the waking state suffers from the ills of samsāra in accordance with its karma; in the intermediate state called the dream the Self shapes its desires. There are no chariots in that state. no horses, no roads; no happiness, joy and so on as He himself creates all these.7 According to

6. valāgra śatabhāgasyā śatadhā kalpitasy ca | bhāgo jīvas sa vijñeyah sa ca antyāya kalpyate - Śvet Up., V. 9.

6a. Kath. Up. I. ii 19

7. na tatra rathā na rathayoga na panthāno bhavanti atha rathān rathayogān pathah srjate sa hi kartha -Br. Up., IV iii 10.

UPANIṢADIC PSYCHOLOGY

61

Advaita, the dream world is a mere phantom or māyā as it does not fit in with the whole of reality or the world of space-time-cause and as it is sublated by the waking state; even the so-called physical world is not absolutely real as it is sublated in the turīya state. The non-Advaitins oppose this view on the ground that the world of space-time is real and is divinely ordained. They argue thus: the pleasures and pains of the dream state follow the moral law of karma and the rules of the lawgiver; as Śaṅkara himself admits, it is the Highest Self that rules the self in all its states. Rāmānuja accordingly gives a moral interpretation of the terms māyā and avidyā by equating avidyā with karma and thus invests the whole of experience with moral and religious seriousness. ‘Life is real, life is earnest’. It is better to say that the dream states are real and have the same morally constraining power and purpose as the waking state, than to say that the waking state is unreal like dreams. In deep sleep, there are no dreams and no subject-object consciousness; and the sleeper, obscured by avidyā, puts off all instruments of knowledge and action, rests on the bosom of the Infinite and refreshes himself. “Whatever these creatures are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a mosquito, that they become again on waking.”8 In a state of swoon occasioned, for example, by a blow on the head, there is no consciousness and it is a ‘half-way house’ to death.9 At

8. Ch. Up., VI. x. 2.

9. The analysis of the three avasthas, waking, dream and dreamless sleep as successive stages in the Advaitic process of progressive abstraction and sublation leading to the transcendental state of turīya is open to the charge of subjectivism and it ignores the reality of the cosmic order and its divine ruler.

62

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

the time of death, the heart is illumined and the self moves out and is followed by its conscious quality, karma and its memory stored up in the subtle body. Like the caterpillar that, after reaching the end of a blade of grass,10 finds another place of support and then draws itself towards it, the self, when it leaves the body, finds a place of support and then draws itself towards it. The evolution of the self is determined by the nature of its character. Good deeds are rewarded and one who has done punya karma ascends to svarga and enjoys the pleasures arising from one's good deeds and is born again in good surroundings. The evil-doer goes to a dark and joyless region and when the effect of the evil deed is exhausted, he is born again as a low creature.11 The eschatological ideas of the Upaniṣads are fully developed in the conception of two paths known as pitṛ-yāna (the way of the Fathers) and arci-rādimārga or devayāna (the way of the gods).12 Those who do good deeds ascend by the path of smoke, the night and the dark half of the month to the world of the pitṛs and finally to the moon and then they descend to the sky and cloud and rain and are born again. But those who seek Brahman, ascend to the world of Brahman by the shining path of the sun and are freed for ever from the sorrows of saṃsāra.

The relation between ātman and Paramātman requires exact determination. According to the Māyāvādin, avidyā is an inner obscuring something, by which the one self

10. Bṛ. Up., IV. iv. 3.

11. tadya iha ramanīya caranā abhyāśo ha yat te ramanīyām yonim āpadyeran…ya iha kapūya caranā abhyāśo ha yat te kapūyām yonim āpadyeran.—Ch. Up., V. x. 7.

12. Ch. Up., V. x. 1 to 4 and Bṛ. Up., VI. ii. 15 & 16.

UPANIṢADIC PSYCHOLOGY

imagines itself to be the many and appears as manifold. The self is a mere apparition of the Absolute and its three states bring out the self-contradiction between its existence and content. Its atomic or monadic nature is a hypostatisation of buddhi or the limiting adjunct of avidyā. Ātman is essentially the Absolute and this truth is realised in mukti or disillusionment. The term amśa or part of Brahman means part ‘as it were’ of Brahman as Brahman is impartible and non-differenced intelligence. This view cuts at the very root of moral and spiritual progress and makes mukti itself a make-believe. To say that jñāna sublates ajñāna and also sublates itself is a case of negating negation and has no meaning or value. The limitation theory is a more moderate type of Advaita because it invests the finitising process of the infinite with some reality. Brahman with super-excellent limiting adjuncts rules the jīvas with inferior adjuncts. This view marks the transition to Bhedābhedavāda which makes the upādhi real limiting adjuncts and not an illusory process. Brahman is perfect and unconditioned but owing to the limitations of the upādhis and the complex of avidyā, kāma and karma, the psycho-physical complex, it becomes finite. The Vedāntic term amśa refers to the real principle of individuation that is due to the upādhi in the Absolute. But even this view destroys the freedom of the finite self. The emanation theory (Brahmaparināmavāda) therefore says that the finite self is not a phantom of the Absolute, but is a real fact or factor which has formal distinctness of its own in the empirical as well as the emancipated state. It is identical with the Absolute and yet different from it and thus the emanation theory provides both for the monistic and the pluralistic needs of

64 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

philosophy. The Absolute is both the one and the many and owing to the parināma śakti in Brahman, the static becomes dynamic and Brahman becomes Īśvara and the finite centres. Even this view explains away the personality of the finite self and its moral and spiritual autonomy. The theistic pluralists, however, go to the other extreme and affirm the eternal distinction between jīva and Īśvara and their externality. Īśvara is self-dependent and extra-mundane and though He comes into personal relation with the self, He is absolutely distinct from it. The jīva is always dependent upon Īśvara and there is a contrast between the omnipotence and omniscience of Īśvara and the impotence and nescience of the jīva. But this view does not fully bring out the immanence of God in the finite self and the reality of its mystic intimacy. The śarīra-śarīrī theory of Rāmānuja seeks to remove the defects of the other theories by regarding the ātman as the finite self but with infinite intelligence and defines Brahman as the sarīrī13 or the source and sustenance of the jīva. While the jīva suffers from finitude and sorrow, Īśvara is the infinite that is eternally blissful and can infinitise the nature of the jīva. The self is not to be spatialised or given an empiric dress, but is eternal and free and Brahman is the life of its life and the ultimate subject of consciousness and is the meaning of all its endeavour. The self or prakāra is logically distinguishable from Brahman, its prakārī, but is spiritually inseparable from it. The jīva is not an appearance or limitation of the Absolute, but is an

13. ya ātmani tisthan ātmanontaro yamātmā na veda yasyātmā śarīram ya ātmānam antarō yamayatisa ta ātmāntaryāmyamṛtah.—Br. Up., V. vii. 22 (Mādhyandina).

organ of the All-Self and it lives, moves and has its being in the self-communicating love of the All-Self. This theory reconciles all the extremes of idealism and realism, and of monism and pluralism and it has the merit of satisfying the metaphysical, moral and mystic needs of life. The relation between Brahman and ātman is not to be conceived in terms of cause and effect, substance and quality, whole and parts which are after all categories of the understanding, but in the spiritual language of inseparability and intimacy. The analogies of the soul and the body, light and its luminosity, the flower and its fragrance are but devices of the intellect to portray the unity of the ātman and Paramātman and their union. While psychology describes the process of the empirical self or the jīva, ethics deals with the jīva or ātman as it ought to be and the next chapter develops this normative aspect of conduct.

V. THE ETHICS OF THE UPANIṢADS

The ethics of the Upaniṣads deals with the moral endeavour of the jīva to free itself from the obscurations, allurements and contractions of avidyā, kāma and karma, and to realise Brahman as the supreme goal of life, and it also furnishes the most inspiring motive for conduct in its individual and social aspects. The Vedāntin is at once a metaphysician, moralist and mystic. He is more interested in the synthetic insight into the soul of things than in the analytic method of discovering distinctions. To him the different branches of philosophy, like metaphysics, ethics and religion, are vitally related; they form logically an integral whole and are distinguishable, but not divisible. In this sense, Vedān- tic ethics is not a separate science as in Western thought, but is merged in the system of Vedānta as a whole. To satisfy the demands of practical reason, the system of Vedāntic ethics may, however, be studied by itself to bring out its essential features. The metaphysician, who has a critical knowledge of epistemology, ontology and cosmology should develop into a mumukṣu seeking mukti or emancipation from the cycle of saṃsāra. The method followed in this study is different from that of most modern expositors of Upaniṣadic ethics. They adopt the Western view of ethical history, and trace the evolution of the moral standard from heteronomy and theonomy to autonomy, and they conclude that Vedānta is on the whole deficient in the principle of autonomy. The rule for conduct was at first heteronomy, viz., the law of man as in the Taittirīyopaniṣad "Follow the wise man", then it became theonomy or the law of God as

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANIṢADS

in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, viz., ‘the fear of God makes all

gods do their work.’ The idea of moral autonomy was

fully appreciated only in the later days of the Gītā.1 It

also rejects some theories of absolutism which dwell on

the self-contradiction between the actual and the ideal,

and between action and knowledge and which favour

the false ascetic view of exit from life and world nega-

tion as the goal of conduct. The true ethics of the Upani-

ṣads expounds the way of self-purification through self-

renunciation leading to the goal of Brahmajñāna, and it

insists on the innate spiritual worth of man and the

solidarity of life in all its levels from the amoeba to the

amara. It deals with the nature of karma in its psycho-

logical and ethical aspects and insists on the disinterested

performance of duty or dharma without any hedonistic

or utilitarian considerations. In its social aspect, Vedān-

tic ethics insists on the performance of dharma and refers

to the duties of man to others like parents, teachers,

gods and society in general and solves the dualism

between egoism and altruism.

The chief requisite of the mumukṣu is the practice of

self-renunciation or vairāgya and the effort to free him-

true aham. His ideal of conduct is self-realisation

through self-renunciation. The Sūtras, following the

way of the Upaniṣads, insist on the need for vairāgya

arising from a reflection on the impermanence of worldly

life. Owing to the confusions of avidyā and the con-

tradictions of karma, the jīva is caught up in the triple

fetters of avidyā, kāma and karma and the miseries of

1. Ranade : Constructive Survey of Upaniṣadic Philosophy,

p. 290.

68 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS metempsychosis. Karma is both good and evil and is never lost, but is conserved in the psycho-physical body that accompanies the jīva in its samsāric career. When the physical body is dissolved after death, the good soul ascends with the psychic apparatus to the plane of the devas and enjoys the pleasures of svarga. But it has no freedom there, as it has to minister slavishly to the needs of the devas. When the effect of the good deeds is exhausted, the jīva is hurled down once again into the world of karma and its next birth is determined by the moral tendencies stored up in the psychic body and they constitute the predisposing cause of its next birth. The wicked soul suffers at death from hellish pains and when the evil is exhausted by expiation, it also enters into a new body in accordance with its karma. Every one acts according to karma, but the mumukṣu alone is conscious of its consequences and when he reflects on the trivial and transient values of worldly life, he longs to obtain freedom from the clutches of karma and the wheel of samsāra. Mundane existence is a tragic waste. It is futile and weary. Youth fades away like a mushroom ; manhood vanishes in a moment. Fame lasts only for a second and life itself ends in death. Every pleasure is fraught with pain and hope itself leads to despair. Even from the point of view of knowledge, there is really no scope for optimism. Science and philosophy vainly knock at the gate of knowledge and scepticism grows with increasing knowledge. The active man who turns away from philosophic thought and dedicates himself to world welfare withers away in work and worry and knows at the end that the world is like the dog’s curly tail which can never be straightened, and the attainment of the millennium is only moonshine.

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANIṢADS

69

merely delights in dreams and empty imaginings. Thus

the avidyā-ridden self imprisoned in the world of karma

is tormented by the pairs of opposites like pleasure and

pain, and desire and aversion and it realises at last the

hazards and hardships of earthly life and longs for the

stability and security of mukti.

Advaita traces the source of evil and suffering to

avidyā, defined as the innate obscuration of pure con-

sciousness. Avidyā, somehow, distorts the one and

divides it into the many and thus creates a confusion in

the mind between reality and its appearance or appari-

tion. This misunderstanding is called adhyāsa and is

illustrated by the rope-snake analogy. Pure conscious-

ness or sat-cit-ānanda is eternal, self-effulgent bliss, but

is somehow mistaken for the empirical self or anātmā

which is anrta, jaḍa and duḥka, a perishing and sorrow-

ridden thing, and it is this false identification with the

anātmā, called abhimāna that is the cause of all the pairs

of opposites like good and evil, pleasure and pain, love

and hatred and the cycle of saṃsāra. The pleasures of

life are mere semblances without any stability. The ills

of saṃsāra are traceable to karma, abhimāna, adhyāsa

and finally to avidyā. Avidyā is indeterminable as it

cannot be explained as sat (being), asat (non-being) or

sat-asat (being-non-being), and to seek for the cause of

avidyā is illegitimate as the causal category has only an

empirical and not a transcendental use. The in-

Advaitins. To the illusionist, avidyā is an apparition or

a magical show; to the phenomenalist, it is a fact of

finiteness which is empirical; to still others it is the

statement of the self-contradictions of life in the world

of space-time-cause and to the identity philosopher it is

70

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

non-existent like the flower in the sky. It is a phantom,

phenomenon, self-discrepancy or bare negation. It is

overcome by jñāna which may be explained as tran-

scendental experience or sublation of avidyā. The ātman

appears as anātman, and it is only by jñāna that the

illusion or defect is removed. The performance of

karma is only indirectly helpful to the mumukṣu in

apprehending Brahman as it clarifies the mind and makes

it conclude that the only utility of karma is to know its

futility and destructibility.

Bhāskara refutes the theory of avidyā on the ground

that the stultification of ajñāna by jñāna is as

inconceivable as the origin of existence. Ajñāna should

be either prior to jñāna, present along with it or it is

bare negation. It cannot precede jñāna as conscious-

ness is presupposed even in its denial and its antecedent

non-existence is inconceivable. It cannot co-exist with

jñāna as the two are contradictory, and bare denial is

meaningless. Jñāna is essentially relational and non-

relational consciousness is non-existent like the square-

circle. Avidyā is not a fictitious, but a real, limiting

adjunct of reality and may be described as the principle

of individuation or the finitising power of the infinite.

The upādhi is a psycho-physical complex made of avidyā-

kāma-karma conditioning the unconditioned and impli-

cating the jīva in the errors, evils and other imperfec-

tions of its empirical life. The mumukṣu seeks to retrace

the steps and ascend to his home in the Absolute by

means of jñāna-karma samuccaya or the co-ordination

of jñāna and karma. While the Mīmāṃsaka insists on

the performance of duty or karma or explains away the

value of jñāna as mere arthavāda, the Advaitin goes to

the other extreme and abandons karma altogether as his

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANIṢADS

71

philosophy of self-identity is opposed to ethical dualism. But the Bhedābhedavādin avoids these extremes of activism and asceticism by rationalising karma and energising jñāna and thus correlating the claims of will and thought. The barriers to mukti are intellectual as well as moral and wisdom consists in utilising the insight afforded by jñāna and the dynamic element of activism or niṣkāma karma and attaining the bliss of unitive life. According to Yādavaprakāśa, Brahman, by His parināmaśakti, emanates into Īśvara, cit and acit; and the jīva, dissatisfied with its isolation, longs to escape from the fetters of karma and enter into bhedābheda relation with Brahman. Thus all the schools of Advaita and Bhedābheda trace the source of imperfection to Brahman itself, whether it is defined in terms of avidyā, upādhis or pariṇāmaśakti.

Rāmānuja objects to these views and offers a solution. He attributes all change, imperfection and suffering to the jīva and defines Brahman as the pure and perfect self. Advaita affirms that Brahman itself is under the illusive influence of beginningless avidyā. To Bhāskara, Brahman is conditioned by limiting adjuncts. Yādava makes Brahman experience the sufferings arising from karma. But, to Rāmānuja, Brahman has an infinity of perfections and it is the jīva that is accountable for all the ills of life. He reinterprets avidyā, upādhis and pariṇāmaśakti in terms of karma and the moral responsibility of the finite self. The law of karma admits of a psychological explanation in the light of the principle of causality and moral interpretation based on the affirmation of the freedom of the will. From the scientific standpoint, every act or karma is determined by the environment and the disposition or guṇas of the individual and

72

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

is subject to the rigour of causal necessity. From the

religious or mystic aspect, every act of man is divinely

ordained, as Īśvara is the real actor in the world of līlā.

But, morally, the doer is greater than his deeds, since he

has the freedom to determine his future and he is free

but for himself. Though he cannot undo his prārabdha

karma or karma which has begun to bear fruit, he can

conquer the sañcita karma, attain moral autonomy and

shape his destiny. Karma in the broad sense of the

term includes not only overt action, but desires or ideas

of ends. Good karma connotes purity of thought, word

and deed and expresses the consistency between what is

thought, what is said and what is done. There is really

no conflict between the motive or the inner attitude and

intention and the outer action and even if there is a

conflict between the two, inner purity is preferable to

mere conformity to an external law. What is good may

be pleasant, but what is pleasant is not necessarily good.

It is on this anti-hedonistic standpoint that Naciketas in

the Kathopanisad rejects the boons like longevity, beauty

and earthly sovereignty offered to him by the God of

Death and prefers the good (śreyas) to the pleasant

(preyas).2 Goodness implies self-sovereignty and the

good or wise man like a skilful charioteer has control

over the unruly senses that run after the pleasures of

the senses. Self-realisation is the supreme goal of life

and not the attainment of sense-pleasures. In the famous

dialogue between sage Yājñavalkya and his wife,

Maitreyī, in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Maitreyī tells

2. anyatra śreyaḥ anyad utaiva preyāḥ te ubhe nānārthe

purusaṃ siniitah | tayoḥ śreya ādadānāsya sādhu bhavati

hīyate arthād ya u preyo vṛṇīte ||—Kath. Up., II. 1.

her lord that she prefers eternal life and love to the ephemeral wealth offered by him and he then utters these words of wisdom : " The husband is dear not on account of the husband but on account of the ātman or the Highest Self."3 The term ātman is to be interpreted as the Highest Self. The aim of self-realisation is not egoistic satisfaction but the satisfaction of Paramātmā or the Highest Self. It is by seeking the infinite that we get infinite satisfaction. Human love is not to be shunned or spurned in a spirit of egoism or false asceticism, but is to be treated as a partial expression of divine love. Love, truth, goodness and peace are eternal values of life that are conserved in the self. In ethical effort there is a harmonious blending of feeling, thought and action which satisfies the highest ideals of the mystic, the contemplative man and the man of action. Moral and spiritual perfection presupposes the endeavour to realise the end as well as the end to be accomplished and this view avoids the defects of hedonism and rationalism. Brahman is the perfect self and perfection is the gradual realisation of the perfect self. In this way, Upaniṣadic ethics leads the aspirant step by step from wickedness to goodness and from goodness to godliness and thus enables him to realise that the supreme end of conduct is not only the attainment of goodness, but the realisation of God as the soul of goodness. The Absolute is beyond good and evil in the sense that it is ever perfect and free from the limitations of karma. It is supra-moral and not less than moral. The term 'evil ' has three mean- ings, physical, moral and religious, and connotes res- 3. na vā are patyuh kāmāya patih priyo bhavatyātmanastu

kāmāya patih priyo bhavati.—Bṛ. Up.. IV. v. 6.

pectively suffering, moral taint and sinfulness. In the

first sense, evil means suffering externally or centrally

originated or caused by things outside or by celestials

above ; but every case of suffering may not be the result

of moral evil as the sorrows caused by self-sacrifice and

love are cheerfully courted. Moral evil arises from the

violation of the moral law or of the imperatives of duty

and it deepens into sin when it is a transgression of duty

laid down as a divine command. Sin is ultimately a fall

or lapse from divine life and connotes self-alienation from

God and though its origin is logically unaccountable or

inconceivable, it can be cured and therefore it has an

end.

The practical side of Upaniṣadic ethics or applied

ethics is of vital importance to the moral person who

desires to know what is good, to do good, to be good

and thus to become godly. Virtue and duty are the inner

and outer sides of every moral act. The Upaniṣads

insist more on inner purity and righteousness than on

the rights of man or mere conformity to passing conven-

tion. The nature of duty or dharma cannot be rationally

demonstrated. The essence of goodness comes from God

who alone is all good. Duty is a divine command. It is

the voice of God in the inner moral consciousness or the

self. The moral consciousness is rooted in the philo-

sophic view that Reality is essentially good, and culmi-

nates in the religious conviction that Reality is the ātman

in us that is righteous and makes for righteous-

ness. The Upaniṣadic commandments as imperatives of

duty are more comprehensive than the Sermon on the

Mount and more concrete and significant than the

Buddhistic code of eightfold virtues. The specific duties

of every man are determined by his station in life. In

THE ETHICS OF THE UPANIṢADS

75

this way, ethics is related to metaphysics and religion on the one side and to psychology and sociology on the other.

A brahmacāri who finishes his studies and becomes a householder or gṛhasta is taught the basic truth of the solidarity of man and the duties that a social man owes to the divinely ordained universe consisting of gods, pitṛs, teachers and fellow beings, which has given him the rights of life, education and freedom. Among the imperatives of duty deduced from this truth are the following : Worship your parents and pitṛs as God ; worship your teacher and guests as God ; do not swerve from the truth and the study of the Veda.4 According to the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Prajāpati repeats Da thrice to the devas, asuras and men ; it is interpreted as dāmyata, dayadhvam and datta respectively.5 The celestials with the sāttvika quality predominant in them think that they are taught self-control. The asuras with the ‘dark’ (tāmasic) quality construe it as an injunction that they should practise dayā or pity and men with the rājasika quality explain it as a command to them that they ought to practise charity. In this way the three virtues of self-mastery, mercy to all beings and charity are taught to three types of people according to their qualities. The Upaniṣads insist on the practice of truth as a cardinal virtue as is illustrated in the case of Satya-kāma who told the truth about his birth to his guru. To be perfect even as God is perfect is the supreme moral ideal of every person and, because the self is perfect by

4. satyam vada | dharmam cara | svādhyāyānmā pramadah | … mātr devo bhava | pitṛ devo bhava | ācārya devo bhava | atīthī devo bhava ||—Taitt. Up., I. 11.

5. Br. Up., V. ii. 3.

its very nature, such a perfection is possible for all. Evil no doubt is, but it ought not to be, because the ātman is essentially good and, when the ātman is realised, evil becomes sterile and self-destructive. He who realises the ātman sees good in all persons and God in all beings. Every jīva is essentially good; goodness is the chief quality of God and He is immanent in all jīvas and makes them in His own image. Goodness is perfected in godliness. Every jīva is good and godly. The godly man loves all beings because they are all jīvas like him and because the same ātman abides in them as their All-Self.

The ethics of the Upaniṣads is thus an enquiry into the nature of the morally good and the supreme good and thus has its culmination in religion. The supreme good or puruṣārtha is the realisation of Brahman by renouncing the values of economic, political and hedonistic life (artha and kāma) which are only extrinsic and transient. Even the practice of dharma as an imperative of duty is an endeavour without any end and affords no satisfaction. Brahman is ever perfect in itself, and the jīva, now avidyā-ridden and imperfect, seeks the perfection of rightness till the aspiration is crowned with achievement. Ethical religion presupposes the distinction between the supreme good which is the self-accomplished Brahman and the ethical good which implies the effort on the part of the jīva to attain that end. The means by which the end is realised is called the sādhana or ceaseless moral and spiritual effort to attain Brahman. The end can be attained because Brahman is itself the endeavour and the end, the sādhana and the sādhya, the moral good and the supreme good. The study of the sādhanas is the theme of the next chapter.

VI. UPANIṢADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANAS

The mumukṣu has to practise certain sādhanas or means to mukti and the attainment of Brahman, but there are sharp differences of opinion amongst Vedāntins in defining their exact nature. All Vedāntins begin with a criticism of the Mīmāṃsakas. They insist on the primacy of the moral law of dharma or duty. The Veda extols even our normal mental life is sensory-motor or ideo-motor. Consciousness is essentially conative and even in contemplation there is incessant thought activity or inner tension.

The Upaniṣad furnishes a classical example, namely, King Janaka, a Brahmajñānī who preferred the active life to the ascetic ideal of inaction or cessation of all activity. The Advaitin combats this view by tracing karma to avidyā, which can be dispelled only by jñāna. Karma and jñāna are opposed to each other like darkness and light. Jñāna as enlightenment dispels ajñāna which seems to obscure it and in this way truth is affirmed and falsity is rejected.

The sublation of illusion is immediate and not mediate. The Dhyānaniyogavādin controverts the Advaitic view that Brahman is immediately apprehended and contends that mukti is progressively attained by seeking truth, reflecting on its nature and finally realising it.

The Niṣprapañcīkaraṇa-niyogavādin goes a step further and explains mukti acosmicaily as the apprehension of Brahman by the destruction of the world show. The Bhedābhedavādin arrests this monistic tendency, insists on the equal

78 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

validity and value of jñāna and karma and utilises the highest values of moral and philosophic life in the meditational process. Jñāna is the ceaseless reflection on the abheḍa aspect of Brahman and karma is spiritualised as the worship of God or Brahmārpaṇa. Jñāna provides the rationale for karma and karma is is the dynamic side of philosophic insight. Jñāna-karma quest. This view is free from the defects of Vedic ritualism and the illusionism of Māyāvāda, but its fatal error is the attribution of imperfection to the infinite. Viśiṣṭādvaita rejects ritualism, illusionism and the self-contradictions of Bhedābheda and formulates a scheme with Bhakti Yoga and Jñāna Yoga and ends with Bhakti Yoga and Prapatti. In this way, each Vedāntic philosopher has his own scheme of means (sādhanas) and it is therefore necessary to examine the relative merits of each and determine its function and nature as methods of Vedāntic culture.

The rationale of the sādhanas is furnished by the Upaniṣadic view of the upāsanas. Brahmopāsana is meditation on the nature of Brahman and is the means to the attainment of liberation. He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman1 and he attains the supreme end of life.2 The Upaniṣads enjoin on the mumuṣu the practice of the thirty-two vidyās and though they may differ in form and procedure the goal is the same, namely, intuition of Brahman ; option is given to the aspirant to choose any one of the vidyās. From the list of the important

1. brahma veda brahmaiva bhavati—Mund. Up., III. ii. 9.

2. brahmavid āpnoti param.—Taitt. Up., II. i. 1

UPANIṢADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANAS

79

vidyās given below, it will be seen that the Chāndogya

Upaniṣad mentions the largest number and variety and

the other vidyās are described in the Bṛhadāranyaka,

Kaṭha, Taittirīya, Īśāvāsya and Kauṣītakī Upaniṣads.

Sadvidyā

Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI.

Antarādityavidyā

"

"

I. vi. 6.

Ākāśavidyā

"

"

I. ix. 1.

Prāṇavidyā

"

"

I. xi. 5.

Paramjyotirvidyā

"

"

III. xiii. 7.

Śāṇḍilyavidyā

"

"

III. xiv. 1.

Upakosalavidyā

"

"

IV. x.

Vaiśvānaravidyā

"

"

V. xi.

Bhūmavidyā

"

"

VII.

Satyakāmavidyā

"

"

IV. iv.

Daharavidyā

"

"

VIII.

Madhuvidyā

"

"

III. i.

Samvargavidyā

"

"

IV. iii.

Gāyatrīvidyā

"

"

III. xii.

Pañcāgnividyā

"

"

V. iii to x.

Akṣividyā

"

"

IV. xv. 1.

Antaryāmividyā Bṛhadāranyaka Upaniṣad III. vii.

Akṣaravidyā

"

"

III. viii. 8.

Jyotiṣāmjyotirvidyā

"

"

IV. iv. 16.

Maitreyīvidyā

"

"

II. iv.

Sarvāntarātmavidyā

"

"

III. iv.

Ānandamayavidyā Taittirīyopaniṣad

Ānandavalli

Vāruṇividyā

"

"

Bhṛguvalli

Nyāsavidyā

"

Nārāyaṇam

49--52

Paramapuruşavidyā Kaṭhopaniṣad I. iii.

Naciketavidyā

"

"

I. ii.

Aṅguṣṭapramitavidyā

"

"

II. iv. 12.

80

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

Paryañkavidyā Kauṣītakī Upaniṣad I.

Pratardana vidyā

Bālākividyā III.

Akṣaraparavidyā Mundakopaniṣad I.

Īśāvāsyavidyā Īśāvāsyopaniṣad 3

All these meditations on Brahman insist on moral and spiritual discipline and initiation by a guru or

Brahma jñānī as the essential conditions for realising Brahman. By the practice of self-renunciation

(vairāgya) and introversion4 (āvṛtta cakṣus) the mumukṣu is led step by step by the guru5 till he regains

his home in the Absolute.

Śaṅkara, in his exposition of these vidyās, divides them into two classes : (1) the worship of a personal God or

saguṇa upāsana and (2) the intution of the Absolute by nirguṇa upāsana. Brahman is the sat without a second

and is impersonal and indeterminate, transcending the limits of logical thinking; but, owing to avidyā, Brahman

is conceived, in the interests of devout meditation, as if it has name and form. What is limitless and impersonal

and invested with a spatial and temporal character. But,

really speaking, Īśvara is only a conceptual reading of the Absolute and is conjoined with cosmic nescience if

not controlled by it. It is only by the consciousness of identity that the jīva realises that he is Īśvara,

3. Reference may be made to A. Govindāchār Swāmi's translation of the Bhagavad Gītā and Nārāyanaswāmi Aiyar's Thirty-two

Vidyās.

4. Kaṭh. Up., II. iv. 1.

5. Ch. Up., VI. viii. 7.

UPANIṢADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANAS

81

ignorance is dispelled and Brahman shines without a

second. The mumukṣu who has Advaitavāsanā or follows

the monistic tradition should satisfy the four requisites or

sādhana catustaya, before he seeks Brahman. These are

described by Śaṅkara in his introduction to the Sūtra

Bhāṣya. The first is the discrimination between

Brahman that is real and the world that is false or

illusory (nityānitya vastu viveka). The second follows

from the first and is the renunciation of the pleasures of

empirical life or illusory existence both here and in

svarga and the feeling of detachment (ihāmutra karma-

phala bhoga virāga). The third is the discipline of the

will which comprises the six kinds of śama or mind-

control, dama or sense-control, uparati or steady self-

renouncement and equanimity, titīkṣā or indifference

to the pairs of opposites, samādhāna arising from

focussing the will on Brahman and śraddhā or faith

in Śāstra and the guru. As the result of this triple

discipline of thought, feeling and will or viveka, vairāgya

and the śama series arises mumukṣutva or the desire for

Brahmajñāna induced and impelled by the idea of

escaping from the scorching fire of saṃsāra. This desire

later deepens into a yearning for mukti like the panting

for breath of a drowning man. It may be awakened by

the first three disciplines or result in them. With the

mind purified by karma, exalted by the worship of

saguṇa Brahman and equipped with the four sādhānas,

the mumukṣu seeks the aid of the guru who has intuited

Brahman and he is initiated into the essentials of

Advaitajñāna and enabled to realise Truth.

The Upaniṣadic imperatives prescribing the stages in

self-realisation, such as “Hear the truth of the ātman,

reflect and meditate on it” (śrotavyah, mantavyah and

6

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THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

nididhyāsitavyah) 6 are explained by the Advaitin in this way. In the first stage, the mumukṣu learns the meaning

of the mahāvākya, “tat tvam asi” (‘Thou art that’) 7 In the interpretation, the beginning and the end of the Upaniṣad

(upakrama and upasamhāra) convey the same idea of the identity of Brahman and ātman. It is explained by

the nine illustrative instances (abhyāsa) and shown to be a new transcendental truth (apūrvaṭa) which results

in freedom from the dualistic outlook of saṃsāra (phala). It is preferred to bhedajñāna and extolled as the only

jñāna and rationally justified (arthavāda and upapatti). In the second stage of manana, faith is strengthened by

argumentation and reflection on the truth conveyed by the Śruti. Anumāna establishes the thesis that ātman

and Brahman are identical by the discovery of the hetu that both are sat cit ānanda. Upamāna confirms it by

the comparison of kūṭastha and Īśvara with the ether in the pot and ether itself (ghaṭākāśa and mahākāśa).

Anupalabdhi points to the truth of the reality of the non-dual consciousness as experienced by every one in the

sleep state. But even logical thinking or tarkadrṣṭi is different from tattvadrṣṭi or intuitive realisation and the

next stage nididhyāsa is a transition from reason to intuition and it consists in the practice of savikalpa

samādhi by the thought of Brahman as the partless whole or infinite (akhaṇḍākāra vrtti). While śravaṇa results

in self-analysis and manana is the destruction of vāsanās, nididhyāsa leads to the cessation of the activity of citta

itself. Thus the thought on the truth, “Thou art that” gradually ripens into the spiritual experience of Brahma-

6. Bṛ. Up., II. iv. 5.

7. Ch. Up., VI. viii. 7.

UPANISADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANAS

83

jñāna. While śravaṇa and manana dispel the doubts relating to the pramāṇa and the prameya, nididhyāsa removes the false feeling (viparīta bhāvanā) that the body is Brahman. In this way the seeker after Brahman ascends the paths of karma, upāsanā and jñāna as expounded in the Karma Kānḍa, the Upāsanā Kānḍa and the Jñāna Kānḍa of the Vedas and develops his moral, devotional and metaphysical ideals.

From the metaphysical standpoint of pure Advaita, there is really no progression involving the stages of Karma Yoga, Upāsanā and Jñāna, as mukti is not the attainment of a goal, but is the intuition of the Absolute as nirguṇa Brahman. Ajñāna clouds the ever-shining Brahman (svayam jyotis) and multiplies itself into numberless forms and jñāna is disillusionment; and though it is immediate it appears to be an unveiling process admitting of stages of stultification. Avidyā claims to be real and is then proved to be self-contradictory and is finally rejected as illustrated in the case of the rope-snake illusion. To explain it in another way, the metaphysical transition from external relations to internal relations exposes the self-contradictions of relational thought itself and points to the truth of the identity of consciousness. This is a reversal of the Hegelian method of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, since it envisages an ascent from the stage of samsāra becoming or synthesising, to that of antithesis or the knowledge of the opposition between being or ātmā and non-being or anātmā and finally to the state of thesis in which the ātman returns to itself as pure consciousness. Repose comes after posing and opposing. From another point of view, the metaphysical development consists of three stages. In the first stage, the world is felt to be a fleeting flux and

84 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS evanescent like the ripples in a river. In the second it is known to be self-contradictory like the rope-snake riddle and in the last stage it is rejected as tucca i.e., false like the hypothetical sky-flower, khaga puṣpa. The true meaning of the three levels of niṣkāma karma, upāsanā and jñāna is now recognised as stages in the process of the self-stultification of ajñāna. The first removes mala doṣa or the soilure of avidyā, the second eliminates vikshepa doṣa or the confusions of the divisive consciousness and the third is the last step of the process and it consists in the disappearance of the veil or āvaraṇa doṣa. Thus, when the false is known to be fleeting or self-contradictory, the true is realised as the eternally self-existent in the light of the familiar Advaitic principle of apaccheda. Jagat or the universe is empirical or phenomenal or false and Brahman is transcendental and absolute and is true.

The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad extols the meditation on aum as the highest mode of nirguṇa upāsana higher than jñāna or reflection on the object, and dhyāna or inner introversion. Jīva and Īśvara co-exist as praṇava in the four states of waking, dream, sleep and turīya. In the first stage as symbolised by the first mātra or letter, jīva is called viśva and Īśvara, virāt ; in the second, jīva is taijasa and Īśvara is Hiraṇyagarbha and this is symbolised by the second letter ; in the third the jīva is prājña and the lord is Īśvara and is represented by the third letter and in the fourth and final stage of turīya pure consciousness exists as jīva sākṣin and Īśvara sākṣin. The analysis of the three states of consciousness results in the sublation of the waking consciousness by the dream state, the sublation of the dream state in

UPANIṢADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANAS

85

dreamless sleep and the return of consciousness to itself

in turīya which is pranava itself.

Idealism carried to its logical conclusion as the theory

of the single jīva denies the existence of the external

world even as a phenomenal reality or vyāvahārika

satya, reduces it to a mere mental construction or

kalpanāmātra or projection of avidyā, and denies the

plurality of jīvas. The whole universe of space-time is

mind-made and mind-sustained and is dissolved in ‘my’

mind.8 What is perceived is only a mere mental creation

like a dream, and the true sādhana lies in analysing all

vrttis and vāsanās. Jñāna is not attained by seeking the

grace of God, but is the effulgence of pure consciousness

in which the ‘That,’ the cosmic self, is dissolved into the

‘I’ consciousness.

The Dvaitavāda of Pūrṇaprajña, which is called

pluralistic realism, goes to the other extreme and

repudiates the identity philosophy as an apostasy or

heresy. The root idea of Dvaita philosophy is the

absolute difference between Brahman and the jīva.

While Brahman is self-dependent, the jīva is entirely

dependent on Brahman and there is absolute distinction

between the omnipotent creator and the impotent

creature. The Chāndogya text is not “Thou art that”,

as the Advaitin wrongly construes it, but it is really

“Thou art not that” and this is proved by the nine

illustrative instances used in the Upaniṣad like the

blindfolded person trying to return to the city of

Gāndhāra.9 This conclusion it seeks to establish by the

8. mayyeva sakalam jātam mayi sarvam pratisthitam | mayi

sarvam layam yāti—Kaival. Up., I 19

9 Ch. Up., VI xiv. 1.

six Mīmāṃsaka rules of exposition as the beginning and end of the whole topic refer to the radical difference between ādeśa the creator, and Śvetaketu the creature, and confirm the conclusion by the tests of abhyāsa, apūrvata, phala, arthavāda and upapatti. The same idea is illustrated by the analogy of the two birds on the same tree. Śvetaketu gives up his conceit or ahaṅkāra and realises that the relation between the jīva and Īśvara is expressed in the sentence ‘dāsoham’ and not ‘soham’, ‘I am the servant of God and not God.’ Dvaita insists on the need for moral and spiritual discipline which consists in the practice of niṣkāma karma and bhakti. Devotion arises from śāstrābhyāsa or the metaphysical knowledge of the supremacy of God and the dependence of the jīva on His grace and the steady and strenuous practice of spirituality realised as service to the supreme Lord.

Viśiṣṭādvaita avoids the pitfalls of ceremonialism, pan-illusionism and pantheism of the Bhedābheda schools by affirming the reality of experience in all its levels, assigning relative values to the different kingdoms regarding experience and giving the highest value to the religious experience of Brahman. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads are integrally related as one śāstra and they are complementary and not self-contradictory. There is a real progression, ethical as well as religious, in the apprehension and attainment of Brahman. Viśiṣṭādvaita provides a systematic account of the sāadhanas consisting of moral, spiritual and religious disciplines or Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, by which the mumukṣu becomes a bhakta thirsting for divine communion. The self has its being in God and belongs to Him, but somehow, owing to its ancient propensity to

avidyā-karma, it identifies itself with the body and, ensnared by the lusts of the flesh, it subjects itself to the infinite hazards and hardships of samsāra. But when the jīva becomes a mumukṣu he retraces his steps and seeks his home in God. The first step in the ascent to the Absolute is the practice of niṣkāma karma or the performance of disinterested duty emptied of all subjective inclinations and objective ideas of utility. The next stage is Jñāna Yoga or the method of introversion by which the ātman is distinguished from the twenty-four categories of prakṛti and realised as an eternal spiritual entity. But self-realisation is only a stepping stone and not a stopping place as it suffers from the ego-centric fallacy and therefore there is a transition from self-centredness to God-consciousness, and from Jñāna Yoga to Bhakti Yoga or Brahmopāsanā.

There are seven requisites of this upāsanā described in the Laghu Siddhānta of the Srī Bhāṣya on I. i. 1 and known as sādhana saptaka. They consist of viveka, vimoka, abhyāsa, kriyā, kalyāṇa, anavasāda and anuddharśa. Viveka is the purification by sattvic food of the mind-body which is a living temple of God or Brahmapuri. Vimoka is freedom from sensuality and the cultivation of detachment. Abhyāsa is the practice of the presence of God as the Inner Self. Kriyā is the performance of one's duties to all beings in the universe. Kalyāṇa consists in the cultivation of the virtues of satya or truth, ārjava or uprightness, ahiṃsā or non-violence, dayā or compassion and dāna or benevolence. Anavasāda and anuddharśa consist in avoiding the extremes of dejection and exultation and maintaining the golden mean. The chief aim of these sāadhanas is the harmonious development of thought, feeling and will as

essential stages in the building up of bhakti. Yoga consists of eight stages and it aims at the control of the mind

made restless by rājasic distractions. The practice of yoga presupposes the twin requisites of self-renouncement (vairāgya) and introversion or retirement into the

cell of spiritual knowledge. Yama consists in the practice of the five virtues known as aparigraha (non-possession), asteya (non-stealing), satya (truthfulness),

brahmacarya (continence) and ahimsā (non-violence). Niyama includes reflection on the import of the Upaniṣads, śama (self-purification), santosa (contentment)

and tapas (austerity). Prānāyāma is breath-control resulting in psychic control. Pratyāhāra is the method

of turning the mind inward and thus arresting the externalising tendency. Dhāranā is fixing the mind in the self by thinking away the distractions of citta.

Samādhi is the consummation of moral and spiritual endeavour and the realisation of the śānti or peace that passeth all understanding.

Equipped with these disciplines, the mumukṣu becomes an upāsaka who meditates on Brahman in any

of the thirty-two ways prescribed in the Upaniṣads. To apprehend Brahman is to comprehend His nature and His

essential qualities and meditation on one quality includes with the metaphysical perfections of Brahman like truth,

purity and infinity. The Sadvidyā describes Brahman as the real reality and the true of the true. The Antaryā-mividyā further defines the sat as the inner self of all

beings and the ultimate subject of all experience. The Akṣaravidyā refers to the imperishable Absolute which is different from cit-acit. The Daharavidyā expounds the

nature of the infinite becoming infinitesimally small and

dwelling in the heart of all beings without being affected by their imperfections, to satisfy the devotional needs of the aspirant. The Bhūmavidyā and the Ānandamayavidyā stress the blissful nature of Brahman. The Paryankavidyā points to the blissful world of Brahman yonder that transcends the passing shows of prakṛti and the perishing values of karma. What is known as the worship of iṣṭa devatā or chosen deity is really the worship of the Inner Ruler Immortal that is the source and centre of all the devas. The aesthetic side is brought out in the worship of Brahman with a shining beauteous form of His own. In the Gāyatrīvidyā or Pranavavidya, the upāsaka fixes his mind on the praṇava mantra which means Brahman itself. In the Nyāsavidyā, the aspirant surrenders his self to Brahman. In the Vaiśvānaravidyā, the threefold world is treated as the body (expression) of the Self. Wherever there is reference to the physical world like ākāśa or jyotis, it connotes Brahman the Highest Self that pervades all things. Likewise terms denoting the devas like Indra and Sūrya really connote Brahman the indwelling Self. The meditation rejects the animistic and anthropomorphic interpretation of Vedic worship and reveals the all-comprehensive interpretation of worship and catholicity of the Upaniṣadic religion. The immanence of Brahman in all beings also implies His ethical eminence and the two are connected by the idea of Brahman as the supremely beautiful. This triple truth frees the Vedāntic ideal of worship from the defects of illusionism, pantheism and deism. By reflecting on the scriptural injunction 'Know the ātman,' knowledge deepens into conviction and vedana ripens into upāsanā or bhakti. Upāsanā is the ceaseless practice of the presence of God till the

30

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

concept of God as the recollection of a prenatal divine life acquires the intensity of directly contacting Him. Representation becomes as vivid as a direct realisation. Bhakti is love for love's sake, and is absolute, unconditional and reciprocal, and knows no bargaining nor fear. Even mukti or liberation from the bonds of karma has no attraction for the bhakta if it is emptied of love. Love ripens into a longing for God and the mumukṣu as devotee yearns for his home in the Absolute and the bliss of divine communion.

The supreme sādhana for attaining mukti is the Viśiṣṭādvaitic theory of bhaktirūpāpanna jñāna which is a harmonious blend of jñāna and bhakti and it avoids the evils of mere intellectualism and emotionalism. Jñāna illumines bhakti and bhakti imparts moving or dynamic power to jñāna, and the two together constitute the nature of mumukṣutva. According to the jñāna aspect, the text "Thou art that" refers not to identity or difference or union between Brahman and the jīva or viśistaikya. The cosmic self is also the inner self of the jīva. Brahman is the śarīrī of the jīva or the self of the self as taught in the Upaniṣad 'I am thou, holy divinity and thou art I.' The ṛṣi Vāmadeva realised the same truth in the cosmic form when he said 'I am Manu, I am Sūrya'.10 This philosophic idea of unity between Brahman and the jīva or avibhāga deepens into the mystic quest for union or sāyujya: the Gītā, as the quintessence of the Upaniṣads, affirms that the jñānī who with his hunger for the Absolute seeks Vāsudeva in all beings is a mahātmā and

10. Br. Up, I. iv. 10.

UPANIṢADIC CULTURE OR SĀDHANA

is the very self of God Himself. The God-hun

great soul is as nothing when compared to

hunger of God and, when the yearning become

sible, the two become one and the jīva is free

fetters of samsāra and attains mukti or unitive

ness and this topic is the theme of the next ch

VII. MUKTI

The various Vedāntic interpretations of the nature of mukti may be briefly considered before arriving at its exact meaning and value. To the Cārvāka who denies the existence of the ātman after death, the question does not arise ; for, to him, mukti is only the dissolution of the body. When the body functions, consciousness also functions ; when the body does not function consciousness does not function. The Buddhist goes a step further. He contends that the self is only a fleeting psycho-physical series without any substantiality and that mukti or nirvāṇa is the cessation of the ceaseless flux and the extinction of the aching thirst for life. The negative logic of this view leads to the abyss of nothingness. The Jaina claims to prove the existence of the jīva, and he explains mukti as release from embodiedness and the soilure of karma and as progression to perfection. But the endless progression is meaningless and futile. Among the āstika philosophers and theistic thinkers, who accept Vedic authority, there are also divergent views, which are often contradiction and confusing. To the Sāṅkhya, mukti is a state of kaivalya or aloneness, in which the puruṣa freed from the fancied entanglement in prakrti regains its self-identity as a formless, featureless state of consciousness and remains for ever as a silent spectator seeing nothing and doing nothing. The Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika systems define mukti as the absence of sorrow without any positive content or meaning; in that state, the jīva remains like a nonsentient or inert thing without any intelligence. When consciousness is abolished, the self

becomes still and statuesque. In the Mīmāṃsaka scheme,

the performance of duty takes the place of devotion to

the deity and the reward of duty is mainly the hedonistic

enjoyment of the pleasures of svarga. The moral

'ought' or endeavour is preferred to the attainment of

the religious end. It is Vedānta alone that, relying on

Upaniṣadic authority, expounds the true meaning of

mukti when it affirms that Brahman, the source of all

existence, is also the supreme goal of all experience. The

supreme end of Vedāntic enquiry is the realisation of

Brahman as the Self of all beings and the consequent

freedom from the triple ills of saṃsāra arising from

avidyā, kāma and karma.

The supreme end of all the sāadhanas is the realisation

of Brahman and the attainment of mukti or freedom

from bondage. The Upaniṣads repeatedly declare this

truth in various ways. "He who knows Brahman

reaches the Highest",1 "He knows Brahman, becomes

Brahman",2 "Having known Him only, he passes beyond

death".3 "When all desires which once dwelt in his

heart are removed, then the mortal becomes immortal,

then he attains Brahman".4 "Thus does that serene

being, having risen from the body and having approached

the highest self, manifest itself in its true form".5 "When

the seer sees the shining maker and Lord, the person

1. brahmavid āpnoti param.—Taitt. Up., II. i. 1.

2. brahma veda brahmaiva bhavati.—Muṇd. Up., III. ii. 9.

3. tam eva viditvā atimṛtyum eti.—Śv. Up., VI. 15.

4. yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā yesyahrdi śritāḥ | atha mar-

tyomṛto bhavatyatra brahma samaśnute.—Br. Up., IV. iv. 7.

5. evam evaisa samprasādosmāccarīrāt samutthāya paramjyotir-

upasampadya svena rūpeṇābhīniṣpadyate.—Ch. Up., VIII. xii. 3.

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THE WISDOM OF THE UPANISADS

who has his source in Brahman, then he is wise and shaking off good and evil, free from all passions, he reaches the highest".6 "The bondage of the heart is broken, all doubts are solved, all his karma perishes when he has beheld the Highest".7

Mukti is not merely the direct apprehension of Brahman, but also the attainment of Brahmaloka, and the ascent to the world yonder is described in glowing but symbolic terms. When the body is dissolved at death, the mukta or the released self with its homing instinct withdraws itself from its psycho-physical functions and the world of sense and sensibility. The indriyas enter into manas and manas into prāṇa and then the prāṇa together with the essence of the five elements is absorbed in the jīva.8 A sudden flash of light coming from the indwelling self or hṛda reveals the path to perfection or arcirādi and the mukta enters the Brahmarandhra or gateway to God While the avidvān or ignorant man follows the dark and dreary path of dhūmamārga and suffers from the hardships of avidyā-karma, the vidvān exalted by the idea of going back to his home in the Absolute enters the straight and shining path or devapathah that leads to Brahmaloka, and passes victoriously through the shining spheres of Agni, Vāyu, Varuṇa, Indra and Prajāpati before he enters the world of eternal

6 yadā paśyah paśyate rukmavarnam kartāram īśam puruṣam brahmayonim |

tadā vidvān punyapāpe vidhūya niranjanaḥ paramam sāṃ-yam upaiti.—Mund. Up, III i. 3.

7. bhidyate hṛdayagrānthiśchidyate sarva saṃśayāḥ | kṣī-yante cāsya karmāṇi tasmin dṛṣṭe parāvare ||—Mund. Up, II. ii. 8.

8. vaṅmanasi sampadyate manah prāṇe prānastejasi tejah |

syām devatāyām—Ch. Up., VI. xv. 2

bliss. The chief function of these cosmic deities consists

in greeting and glorifying the mukta in his heavenward

progress. Then a trans-human person who is really the

ambassador of the Absolute leads him to Brahman and

the mukta no longer returns to the world of samsāra.9

The world of Brahman is beyond the world of space-

time-cause and the mukta who attains it has a direct

knowledge of Brahman and enjoys the eternal bliss of

divine communion.

To the Advaitic philosopher, mukti is freedom in

embodiment here and now, and not freedom from

embodiment to be enjoyed in a world yonder. It is

Brahmajñāna or jñāna that is Brahman which arises

from the negation of nescience in the state of nirvāna.

There can therefore be no question of ascent to or attain-

ment of Brahman. The Upaniṣadic passages above cited

dealing with eschatology, however, explicitly describe

the ascent of the mukta and wind up by stating that, after

he is led to Brahman by the trans-human person, he stays

there for ever and never returns. To reconcile this with

Advaita, Śaṅkara, following Bādari, assumes that these and

all other Upaniṣadic passages referring to ascent must, from

the nature of the case, refer not to the Absolute or nirguṇa

Brahman, but to effected (kārya) or lower Brahman. Support

is sought for this view from the wording of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka

passage about worlds

9. tat puroṣo amānavah, sa enān brahma gamayatyeṣa deva-

patho brahmapatha etena pratipadyamānā imam mānavaṁ

āvartam nāvartante.—Ch. Up., IV. xv. 6.

tān vaidrutāt puroṣo mānasa etya brahmalokān gamayati | teṣu

brahmalokesu parāḥ parāvato vasanti teṣam na punarāvṛttiḥ.—Bṛ.

Up, VI. ii. 15.

of Brahman and residence there. “For it would be

impossible to qualify the highest Brahman by means of

the plural number (‘worlds’) ; while the plural number

may be applied to the lower Brahman which may abide

in different conditions. The term ‘world’ can also

directly denote only some place of enjoyment”.10 But the

passages quoted above declare that “those who have set

out on that path do not return to the life of man ” and

“for them there is no return here ” and this truth cannot

apply to any merely effected or lower Brahman.

To answer this difficulty Śaṅkara, following Bādari,

states : “When the reabsorption of the effected Brahman

world draws near, the souls in which meanwhile perfect

knowledge has sprung up proceed, together with

Hiraṇyagarbha the ruler of that world, to ‘what is higher

than that,’ i.e., to the pure highest place of Viṣṇu. This

is the release by successive steps which we have to

accept on the basis of the scriptural declarations about

the non-return of the souls”.11 The arcirādigati there-

fore leads, according to Śaṅkara, to the world of Brahmā

otherwise known as Hiraṇyagarbha and the souls reach

perfect knowledge there and eventually are released from

saṃsāra along with Brahmā. The Upaniṣadic passages on

the face of them do not contemplate such an exalted posi-

tion for Hiraṇyagarbha at the top of the arcirādi mārga

and Śaṅkara is only forced to accept such a solution as

10. Śaṅkara Bhāṣya, IV ii. 8—Thibaut’s translation, Part II,

p. 390.

11. Śaṅkara Bhāṣya, IV. iii. 10—Thibaut's translation, Part II,

p. 391.

he cannot escape in any other way from the plain state-

ment of the Śruti that the arcirādi mārga leads to Brah-

man from which there is no return.

Even so there is the fundamental grammatical diffi-

culty that whereas Brahman in the neuter signifies the

supreme Brahman, the name of Hiranyagarbha is

Brahmā in the masculine gender. The use of the neuter

gender in the Upaniṣad clearly indicates the supreme

Brahman and not Brahmā the four-faced creator. Śaṅ-

kara accepts this but states that though Brahman strictly

signifies only the supreme nirguṇa Brahman, it may also

signify, by proximity, the lower Brahman which is after

all only the higher Brahman described for purposes of

pious meditation as possessing certain effected qualities.

Śaṅkara does not definitely identify the kārya Brahman

of Bādari either with saguṇa Brahman as stated here or

with Hiranyagarbha as implied in the previous argument

nor does he hold that saguṇa Brahman and Hiranya-

garbha are one. He is compelled by the Śruti to accept

full mukti to these souls and therefore with the aid of

the Smṛti promising eventual release to Brahmā and his

co-residents he is prepared to identify Brahman in these

passages with Hiranyagarbha. As regards the use of the

neuter gender, however, Śaṅkara apparently feels that

to interpret Brahman in the neuter gender as referring

to Hiraṇyagarbha even by proximity would be somewhat

of a violence to language and grammar, and so in meet-

ing this objection he prefers the milder expression of

"Brahman possessing certain effected qualities". Other

interpreters, however, following the natural order of the

Sūtras treat Bādari's theory as a prima facie view refuted

later and so they have no hesitation in describing the

kārya Brahman of Bādari as Brahmā the four faced.

7

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The Sūtrakāra, after giving Bādari's view as described above, proceeds to detail Jaimini's view that the former is untenable as the term Brahman should be given its direct meaning of the supreme Brahman. There are also several passages in the Upaniṣads declaring that immortality is reached by going, e.g., “going upwards by that, he reaches immortality,”12 and this Kathopanisad passage clearly refers from the context to the highest Brahman only. The passage in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad “I enter the hall of Prajāpatī, the house”13 cannot have the lower Brahman for its object. For the immediately preceding passage shows that the highest Brahman, different in nature from the effected one, is the general subject matter. The text from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad VIII. xii. 3 about “the serene being having arisen from the body and having approached the highest self manifests itself in its true form” confirms the same truth. As regards the expression “worlds of Brahman”, the ‘of’ is appositional and there is no opposition between Brahman and the worlds as Brahman is spoken of as “this Brahma world”14 in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad.

From the philosophic point of view as different from the textual, the Advaitin holds that while Krama-mukti is gradual ascent to the Absolute, jīvan-mukti is immediate, involving no change or progress. Progress in or of the Absolute is self-contradictory and illusory. The moral ideas of progress betray the self-discrepancy between progress and attainment and the religious view

12. tayordhvam āyannamṛtatvameti.—Kath. Up., III. vi 16.

13. prajāpatessabhām veśma prapadye—Ch. Up., VIII. xiv. 1.

14. esa brahma lokaḥ.—Br. Up., IV. iii. 32 ; IV. iv. 23.

of perfection in a far off world involves the self-contradiction between Being and Becoming and also the dualistic distinction between the finite self that seeks God and the infinite that is sought by the finite. This self-discrepancy is ultimately traceable to avidyā. Mukti is immediate disillusionment or freedom from avidyā in which there is no distinction between the apprehension of Brahman and its attainment. In that state, even the Veda or scriptural knowledge, being relational and mediate, is transcended or sublated. To the ordinary or empirically minded man with his anthropomorphic tendencies, the world of space-time and its creator Īśvara are real and he attains mukti in a far off divine world along with Brahmā the first born of cosmic nescience. There are, however, differences in the Advaitic exposition of mukti varying with the four main types of Advaita already described. To the extreme Advaitin in excelsis, mukti is jñāna that is Brahman which is ever existent and avidyā with the world based upon it is non-existent like the square circle. The illusionist describes mukti as disillusionment due to the dispelling of ignorance by sublating it. The phenomenon theory says that avidyā arises from dualistic thought and mukti is the integral intuition of Brahman. To the last school which is more Brahmavāda than Māyāvāda, avidyā is a real obscuring something and Brahmanajñāna is a process of self-transcendence involving the stages of upāsanā, mediate knowledge or parokṣajñāna and immediate knowledge or aparokṣajñāna.

These arguments of the Advaitin are controverted by the non-Advaitins and shown to be fallacious and futile. The very term jīvanmukti is self-contradictory as embodiedness and emancipation cannot co-exist. The

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extreme view that illusion is non-existent dissolves the whole problem of philosophy and therefore it can neither be explained nor criticised. The illusion theory admits of stages in sublation which is impossible, as mukti is immediate. If everything is an illusion, even mukti becomes a make-believe. The phenomen theory defines mukti as the abolition of the pluralistic consciousness or illusoriness and not of the pluralistic world itself and this view fits in with that of Bhāskara and Rāmānuja. The theory of mukti which accepts the reality of stages like mediate knowledge and immediate knowledge practically recognises the reality of the phenomenal world, but it does not clear the confusion arising from the dualism between phenomenal reality and transcendental reality. The charge that the theist suffers from anthropomorphism and has not risen to the level of jñāna has no point or force as no man can escape his own thought and even jñāna is as much a human quality as karma or bhakti. Therefore the distinction which Śaṅkara draws between the metaphysical view of nirguṇa Brahman and nirvāṇa and saguṇa Brahman and kramamukti has neither textual sanction nor philosophic justification. If nirvāṇa is identity consciousness, mukti or freedom has no meaning. But if it is an ascent not to the Absolute but to a finite God, it does not satisfy the religious consciousness. A true philosophy of religion abolishes the distinction and defines mukti as the apprehension as well as the attainment of Brahman.

Mukti cannot be attained by merely asking for it as it is won by spiritual sādhana and not by mere intellectual apprehension. Even the Māyāvādin tacitly recognises this truth when he admits the persistence of prārabdhakarma even after enlightenment. If jñāna and karma are

opposed to each other like light and darkness, then the

effect of karma should be completely destroyed as soon

as there is the awakening of advaitajñāna.

Avidyā must be existent, or non-existent or existent

as well as non-existent. If it exists as an entity, it cannot

be sublated; if it is non-existent, there is no meaning in

seeking mukti. It cannot be both existent and non-

existent as an indefinable something, as jñāna and ajñāna

cannot co-exist. Jñāna cannot sublate ajñāna and sublate

itself; mukti is either individual or collective; if it is

considered to be the former, the view would lead to

solipsism; if it is the latter, there should be sarvamukti

in the strict sense but in the identity philosophy there is

neither sarva nor mukti. Advaita as a philosophy is a

work of thought and is therefore caught up in duality

but if it is non-dual, it ceases to be a philosophy.

To Bhāskara, mukti is freedom from conditionateness

and the attainment of the world of Brahmā and it is not

disillusionment here-now. The Upaniṣads repeatedly

glorify the triumphant progress of the mukta from

the pluralistic world of samsāra to the attainment of

the unitive consciousness or ekībhāva. The pluralistic

consciousness alone is abolished in mukti and not

the pluralistic world. When consciousness is free

from the real limiting adjuncts, it becomes infinite,

eternal and blissful and is not emptied of

content or character. Bhāskara avoids the two

extremes of abstract monism and the pluralism

based on difference and distinction. Like rivers that

merge into the sea, the finite is merged into the Absolute.

According to Yādavaprakāśa, the finite self is a real fact

or factor of the infinite, existing in a bhedābheda rela-

tion, and is thus finite-infinite. But, owing to its identifi-

cation with the body, it suffers from the evils of divided consciousness, and submits itself to the miseries of metempsychosis. By transcending the limitations of finitude, the jīva enters into union with Brahman and attains His perfections and enjoys eternal bliss in the world yonder as a member of the Absolute. Nimbārka also accepts the ethics of Bhedābheda and defines mukti as the state of self-transcendence in the world of Brahman in which the particular remains without the defects of particularism owing to the identity that pervades the difference.

The Viśiṣṭādvaitic theory of mukti accepts the integrity of Upaniṣadic texts in all aspects, bheda, abheda, bhedābheda, nirguṇa and aikya texts, and defines it as the return of the self to its home in the Absolute. It reconciles the apparent self-contradictions between the transcendence and immanence of Brahman, and between the intrinsic value of the self and its modal dependence on Brahman. It defines emancipation as enlightenment as well as the attainment of ānandaloka. The world of space-time-cause (deśa-kāla-nimitta) and punya-pāpa (good and evil) is a three storeyed universe qualitatively satisfactory. Freedom in the fullest sense of the term is physical, moral and spiritual and can be attained only when the jīva sheds its spurious individuality by transcending the finite and fractional world of space-time-cause and the claims and counter-claims of karma which is punya-pāpa. The ātman belongs to Brahman and it is brahmanised. The Kauṣītakī Upaniṣad portrays in the language of sense-symbolism the glory of the freed self when it enters the world of spaceless space, acquires the form and fragrance and flavour of Brahman (Brahma-

rūpa, Brahmagandha and Brahmarasa) which is nira-

vayava and nirguna, and is immersed for ever in the

fecunditive bliss of divine communion. In the unitive

experience of bliss, there is the loss of self-feeling, but

not of self-existence. The headquarters of Reality is not

only a region of spaceless space and time under the form

of eternity, but also a realm of ends and the home of the

eternal values of truth, goodness and beauty. Mukti is

freedom from embodiment and the attainment of infinite

consciousness and eternal bliss. Not only are values

conserved in the Absolute, but also personality in the

supra-personal sense. The self regains its godliness,

acquires the quality of God and effaces itself in the ser-

vice of God. The self gains itself by making a free gift

of itself to God and is thus transvalued. Paramapada is

a noumenal realm which cannot be perceived or con-

ceived, but is alogical, amoral and supra-personal. Matter

shines there without any modification. Time exists

under the form of eternity. It is not a block universe

which is static and stirless, but is the eternal realised

through the temporal. By plunging into this Ocean

Pacific, the self is purified and perfected, and the

brahmavid apprehends Brahman with the divine eye,

comprehends His nature and sees Brahman in all beings

and all beings in Brahman.

The charge is often levelled against the Upaniṣadic

theory of mukti that it is absorption in the Absolute and

provides no scope or hope for the perfection of the self

as a person and for social and spiritual service to

humanity. This criticism is due to bias and is not based

on truth. The Ṛṣis of the Upaniṣads intuited Brahman

as the Self of all beings and imparted their spirituality

to others and made them Ṛṣis. Ṛṣi-making was the chief

vocation of the Upaniṣadic seers and if it were true that they sought selfish salvationism and self-extinction, the Upaniṣads would have long ago ceased to exist and be the solace of life and death for humanity. The Gītā which sums up Upaniṣadic wisdom extols activism and work for world-welfare and points to Janaka as the exemplar of jñāna and karma. Hindu culture was born in the expansive atmosphere of the tapovanas or the forest life of sanyāsins and Ṛṣis who specialised in Brahman the universal self and it bears a striking contrast to the exclusive cultures of the west which had their origin in the city States of Greece fighting for frontiers. Ṛṣi-Upaniṣadic or Hindu culture. The mukta seeks to be born again and again as a freed jīva working for the freedom of other jīvas and this view is a more inspiring kind to jīvas. But there is really no universal or jīva in the Buddhistic scheme of becoming without being. It is likewise a more exalting gospel than that of the advent of the Kingdom of God in which the faithful are elected and the infidels are eliminated. It is the immortal glory of the Upaniṣads that they proclaim for all ages the truths of the eternity of the jīva, the indwelling God in all jīvas and their consequent kinship and universal redemption and release. Unless humanity, especially of the aggressive west, imbibes these truths, there is no hope of peace or śānti on earth and the reign of divine love and grace.

VIII. A SYNTHETIC VIEW OF THE UPANIṢADS

The analytic study of the Upaniṣads outlined in the foregoing chapters under the headings of epistemology, ontology, cosmology, psychology, ethics and religion is the elaboration of their central theme enshrined in the text, ‘Brahmaavid āpnoti param’ (he who knows Brahman attains the highest). Analysis and synthesis go together and are complementary as the former stresses variety and the latter, unity; and the truth of unity in variety forms the first principle of Upaniṣadic wisdom. Epistemology distinguishes between revelation, reason and realisation and at the same time stresses their organic unity as there can be no verities if they are not verified and verifiable. Ontology refers to the three entities, Brahman, cit and acit which really refer to Brahman in cit and acit as their one Self. Cosmology defines Brahman as tajjalān1 and also as the one and only cosmic ground. Psychology describes the eternity and infinity of the jīvas, but denies their externality and exclusiveness. Ethics relies on the moral freedom of the self, the similarity and solidarity of all jīvas and insists on the need for self-sacrifice and service to all jīvas. Religion affords the hope that Brahman the ultimate reality is realisable by all and thus guarantees universal salvation. In this way, the central truth of the above Upaniṣad text is expounded by defining the word Brahman as the chief tattva or metaphysical ground of the universe, the word vid as the hita or means of knowing Brahman ethically and spiritually and the words āpnoti param as

1. Ch. Up., III. xiv. 1.

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the supreme mystic goal of life. Metaphysics, morals and mysticism are synthetically one and Brahman, the metaphysical highest, is also the ethical and intuitional highest. This synthetic view affords a comprehensive insight into the meaning of the texts, bearing on abheda, bhedābheda and viśiṣṭādvaita and their harmonisation in the light of the intellectual intuition that Brahman is the being of all beings and the ideal in which all the ideals of truth, goodness and beauty are eternally self-realised. With a view to bringing to light the wisdom of the Upaniṣads from the synthetic standpoint, this chapter is added.

The wisdom of the Upaniṣads is fully appreciated only by the vidvāns or Vedāntins who have specialised in Brahmajñāna. But the Vedāntic philosophers disagree in their exposition of the Upaniṣads, and a comparative study of each siddhānta is of absorbing interest to the student who seeks to discern the common features of the systems and the points of convergence. Each system has its own individuality, claims the sanctity of immemorial tradition or sampradāya and also the merit of satisfying the pramāṇas of Śruti, yukti and anubhava. Each regards itself as the only philosophy that is true to the spirit of the Upaniṣads and fulfils the needs of dialectic thinking and the authority of personal experience (or Śruti, yukti and anubhava). It insists on the necessity for moral and spiritual discipline and the practice of specific sādhanaṣ for the attainment of the goal of mukti. But the views of mukti vary with each school though all of them reach the same negative conclusion that mukti is freedom from avidyā and karma and the sorrows of saṃsāra. Each system has a body of basic philosophical literature which thrives in an atmosphere

of mutual disinterested criticism in the light of certain fundamental principles accepted by all Vedāntins. The task of discovering the common features of Vedānta is rendered difficult on account of the clear-cut formulations of each school and the exclusive intellectual and social habits cultivated by the followers of each faith in conformity with its tenets. Nevertheless Vedānta has a genius for synoptic and coherent thinking and for discerning the unity that is behind difference and discord and it is the faith in this principle that furnishes the motive for this concluding chapter.

The synthetic study of Vedānta presupposes certain requisites which are universal and constructive. The chief qualification is the possession of sympathetic insight into the soul of each system for which no rules can be given. It postulates also a first-hand knowledge of the fundamentals of each philosophy freed from the evils of dogmatism and dilettantism. Dogmatism is blind faith in authority leading to fanaticism, and relationism is the justification of each system as a particular standpoint of truth without any finality. The second requisite is a clear and comprehensive grasp of each darśana as a speculative system based on a direct intuition of Brahman marking a transition from the metaphysical enquiry into Reality to its spiritual realisation. The third condition relates to the philosophy of values and is an insistence on each system satisfying the highest values of truth, goodness and beauty. The fourth criterion is the cultivation of a sense of proportion or perspective which consists in assigning to each philosophy its rightful place in the synthetic scheme of Vedānta as a whole. The foremost qualification of a synoptic thinker should be insight into the meaning and value of each system as expounded by

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its best ācāryas and illuminated by the lives of its highest

exemplars. The chief value of the synthetic method lies

in the critical but constructive survey of the best features

of each system in the light of a common standard furnish-

ed by the Upaniṣad itself. As aids to such an understand-

ing the following principles of criticism are employed :

(1) textual consistency ; (2) the historic method ; (3) the

psychological and pragmatic methods ; (4) the evolu-

tionary method ; (5) modern synthetic views ; and

(6) the method of. immanent criticism.

The first method insists on faith in the trustworthiness

of the traditional method followed by all Vedāntic

teachers. This method postulates or posits the truth that

the three prasthānas, the Upaniṣads, the Gītā and the

Sūtras form an integral unity and that they do not main-

tain divergent views. Brahman is enshrined in the

Upaniṣads as intuited by the Ṛsis ; the Sūtras give a

systematic exposition of these intuitions by making them

intelligible to the logical intellect and by clarifying

apparent inconsistencies in the Upaniṣads ; the Gītā

contains the essentials of these intellectual intuitions, and

the three should be considered in their integrity. The

Upaniṣads no doubt seem to be self-contradictory and

confusing when the texts affirm the truths of bheda,

abheda, bhedābheda, aikya and viśiṣṭa aikya and thus

lack coherence. They provide ample scope to each

ācārya to select the relevant texts and deduce his own

system in the light of the texts and strain the meaning

of other texts to suit his own views. The variety of

Vedāntic schools formulated in this way is almost

exhaustive as the systems deduced from the Upaniṣads

contain a wide and complete range of philosophic

thought. Though every school establishes its own

siddhānta by a criticism of rival theories, it claims to follow the synthetic method of the Sūtras and arrive at a comprehensive view which reconciles the apparently conflicting texts. Vyāsa, who collected the Vedas and co-ordinated the teaching of the Upaniṣads in the Brahma Sūtras is the very incarnation of the synthetic wisdom contained in Hinduism and he came to fulfil and not to destroy. He is the Vedāntin whom the other Vedāntins accept as the master of all those that know. The central idea of every Vedāntic system is that every kind of knowledge has its consummation in Upaniṣadic wisdom and that the vidvān who realises Brahman as the All-Self attains the supreme end of life and is ever free from the hardships of samsāra.

Secondly, in true history, there is an increasing purpose of spiritual life that runs through the ages, and, though it distinguishes between the ideal and the actual, it does not divide. History does not mete out justice, but simply justifies by placing men and events in proper relation to their environment. It explains all things by revealing their causal sequence, but condemns nothing as it refers to the passage from the good to the better. In the light of this method every Vedāntic school is justified, because it is a fact of history. It may be right also on account of the principle that each system is a reflection of the age that produced it. The Advaita of Śaṅkara, for example, checked the spreading of the agnostic and nihilistic tendencies of Buddhism that had become pronounced in his age, and he re-established the philosophy of the Upaniṣads and to that extent was justified. But the monistic idealism of Advaita tended towards subjectivism, which was later on corrected by the philosophy of Bhāskara which denied the reality of

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nirguṇa Brahman and jīvanmukti. But Bhāskara's theory of ekībhāva eventually led to the denial of the individual, and this pantheistic tendency was arrested by Yādava who affirmed the equal reality of the bheda and abheda aspects of life. The schools of Bhedābheda did not satisfy the ethical needs of Vedānta as they traced every error and evil to the Absolute. This defect was removed by Rāmānuja who attributed every imperfection to the freedom of the finite self and an infinity of perfections to the All-Self or Paramātman. But his idea of God as the sarīri of all beings did not fully meet the requirements of theistic pluralism and therefore Madhva came to establish the philosophy of absolute difference between jīva and Īśvara. In this way each system may be explained historically as a response to the needs of the age which gave birth to it, but it does not mean that every succeeding system is a new synthesis of conflicting elements in a dialectic way and that Dvaita as the last of the series is the fulfilment of all previous theories.

The historic view fails to distinguish between 'what is' and 'what ought to be' and we cannot say that 'what has occurred' is consequently good. The main Vedāntic systems are in a flourishing condition today and exist side by side peacefully and there is no evidence to show that one system alone is the fittest and best and that other views should be or will be eliminated.

Thirdly, the psychological method of synthesis consists in accounting for the merit of each darśana by analysing the mentality of its expositors. This view is crisply expressed by the psychological idea that matabheda is invariably determined by mati-bheda. The thirty-two vidyās mentioned in the Upaniṣads and explained at length in the Sūtras are optional and the upāsaka who

meditates on Brahman may choose any one of them, as the goal is one and the same, namely, the realisation of Brahman. What a man meditates on, that he becomes. The theory of God as iṣṭa devata provides for freedom of worship based on temperamental variations and it affords a basis for toleration. Besides, there is the divine assurance in the Gītā that whosoever worships God in whatsoever form ultimately attains Him. The starting point of intellectual, volitional and emotional men may differ, but their goal is the same. The chief requisite of the Advaitic mumukṣu is Advaita vāsanā and that of the other Vedāntins is coloured by their temperament and innate disposition. The four Yogas known as Karma Yoga, Jñāna Yoga, Rāja Yoga and Bhakti Yoga are devised in accordance with the psychological principles based on the aptitude and the nature of the adhikārin. The Advaitin chooses the way of jñāna ; the Viśiṣṭādvaitin prefers the path of love and the Dvaitavādin extols the ideal of service. Since knowledge, feeling and will are variations of the same psychical process, there is no fundamental difference in these attitudes. The psychological method is thus of immense importance in the synthetic study of Vedānta, but it labours under an inherent defect. The value of a system is intrinsic and is not determined ab extra by psychologically analysing its origin. For example the theory of God as iṣṭa devata does not promote devotional fervour and loyalty associated with monotheistic faith; it may lapse into polytheism and the anthropomorphic idea of man making god in his own image. The method of evaluation in the light of an ideal is different from the genetic account. Vedāntic experience is transcendental and it cannot be described in terms of empirical psychology.

Fourthly, the evolutionary method adopted by Advaita explains the varieties of Vedāntic experience as stages in the progressive realisation of nirguṇa Brahman. Truth is not the denial of falsity but is a progress from truth to more truth. The test of truth is non-contradiction and is based on the principle of apaccheda which proves that what cannot be sublated is alone true. The Absolute is beyond logical and moral distinctions as it transcends relational thought, but there are degrees of truth and goodness and each darśana has a place in the hierarchical scheme but is not wholly true or good. The Naiyāyika, for example, is on the level of commonsense and therefore occupies the first stage in philosophic endeavour. The Mīmāṃsaka is only on the moral and ritualistic stages and even the Sāṅkhya who adopts the metaphysical method does not reach the heights of monistic idealism.

The Dvaita system deals with external relations and suffers from the self-contradiction of the dualistic consciousness. Viśiṣṭādvaita with its theory of internal or organic relations no doubt comes near Advaita ; but its view of Brahman is moulded on the logical pattern and its theory of mukti is liable to be charged with the defect of anthropomorphism. Buddhism with its devastating dialectics brings out the self-discrepancy involved in theism and thought, and leads to Advaita as the highest stage of Brahmajñāna though it does not prove it. The Dvaitavādin adopts the tu quoque method, reverses the argument and proves that the illusion theory of Advaita is illusory and is allied to Buddhistic nihilism. The history of Indian philosophy reveals, according to him, the progress of Vedāntic knowledge from Śaṅkara, Bhāskara, Yādava and Rāmānuja till it becomes

perfect in the darśana of Pūrṇaprajña. Rāmānuja dis-

covers a ladder from earth to heaven and points out

that Karma Yoga and Jñāna Yoga lead to bhakti and

prapatti and the mumukṣu renounces the pleasures of

prakṛti and puruṣa and attains the bliss of communion

with Puruṣottama. But the evolutionary method as such

has no fixity or finality and Brahmajñāna cannot be

attained by mere karma, jñāna or bhakti. As the

Upaniṣad says "whom Brahman chooses, unto him He

reveals Himself,"2 and this is due to divine grace.

Fifthly the synthetic method adopted by neo-Vedānta

is the method of philosophic criticism unfettered by the

rules of textual exposition and faith in fundamentalism

or literalism. It denies the divine authority of the

Upanisads and their finality and accepts the view that

philosophy is still progressive and that many new pages

of Truth are yet to be written. Orthodox Hindu thought

is said to be still in the scholastic period, as its main

feature lies in the worship of words and empty dialectical

disputations ; its blind allegiance to sampradāya which

consists mainly in straining texts to suit preconceived

notions tends to destroy intellectual freedom and the

spirit of fresh enquiry. But the darkness of such

mediaevalistic method is gradually dispelled by the new

spirit of renaissance and loyalty to Truth. Truth takes

the place of loyalty to dogma and conformity to tradi-

tion. A new synthesis of Vedānta in the light of philo-

sophic criticism is attempted by modern Indian philn-

sophers, though their solutions are varied and conflict-

ing. One way of harmonising the different schools con-

sists in the application of the monistic principle that

2. Kath. Up, I. ii. 22.

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114 THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

truth is a passage from the lower to the higher till it becomes self-explanatory. It is the ladder theory that Dvaita is in the level of common sense, Viśiṣṭādvaita is a higher stage and Advaita is the completion of Vedāntic knowledge. This triple process is, according to it, discernible even in Christianity as different from churchianity and also in Islam, especially in its Suñ aspect. It is a common sense view of Christianity when its founder prays to the Father in Heaven; the experience of the Kingdom of God within us is a higher stage and Christianity comes to itself when Christ utters the truth of Advaita, "I and my Father are one." Other philosophers say that the Upaniṣads speak with the double voice of philosophy and religion and that while Rāmānuja is on the theistic level of logical thinking, Śaṅkara is on the high ground of monistic idealism and prefers intuition to the light of logical understanding. Still others reject the ladder theory and hold that the three darśanas are different aspects of reality and that there is as much delight in seeing difference as there is in the non-dual experience. Still others reconcile Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja by vivisecting Vedāntic experience and assign the intellect to Śaṅkara and the heart to Rāmānuja. The philosophers who apply the historico-critical method to the Upaniṣads conclude that their main teaching supports the monistic idealism of Śaṅkara and that the Sūtras and the Gītā favour the theism of Rāmānuja. The only way of avoiding the confusions resulting from these conflicting opinions is to accept the traditional view of the old Vedāntins that the three prasthānas form a single authority and teach the same truth. The ladder theory betrays self-complacence, lack of sympathetic insight into non-Advaitic systems and refusal to accept their

A SYNTHETIC VIEW OF THE UPANIṢADS

115

terms of peace. Finally to deny the eternity and

impersonality of the Upaniṣads is to seek the dangers

of subjectivism and agnosticism.

The traditional Vedāntic method avoids all extremes

and is a siddhānta as well as a synthesis. It is free

alike from the dangers of the dogmatic or deductive

temper and the hazards of inductive enquiry. It is a

middle course between institutional religion and

mysticism. The former aims at the standardisation or

uniformity of faith and makes it rigid and final but the

latter relies on personal conviction and spiritual com-

munion. The mystic with his instinct for the infinite

yearns for direct realisation and has an intuition of

Brahman. He seeks God intensely by a method of

spiritual induction and sees Him face to face and mind

to mind, but the ācārya formulates this experience in a

systematic way and imparts it to others by employing

the deductive method. Intuition serves as the first

principles of religion and a philosophy or siddhānta is

deductively developed from them. When philosophy is

purely deductive, it becomes a theology with its fixed

dogmas, myths and rituals and gradually external

coercion takes the place of personal conviction. A

siddhānta is based on the principle of the Excluded Middle

and its truth is established by the rejection of its

contradictories. One's own siddhānta is true and exclu-

sive and therefore the other siddhāntas are false and

this is the logic of institutional religion. It is so

compelling and coercive that, if it is not āccepted logically,

it has to be forced on the unbeliever by the use of the

big stick or brute force. In the name of uniformity of

faith and loyalty to truth institutional religion stifles

freedom of thought and intellectual honesty. In its

fanatical zeal it often allies itself with secular power and resorts to the method of persecuting the dissenters who are called unbelievers, heretics and sinners. Mysticism offers a corrective to such bigotry by its insistence on personal experience as the only test of truth. When spirituality is standardised, it dissects the living flow into dead bits and offers stone instead of bread. But, personal religion strikes at the root of organised congregational worship with its own doctrines and rituals. Besides, mystic experiences are often varied and conflicting and have no stability or coherence.

The Upaniṣads avoid the extremes of institutionalism and mysticism and follow the middle course. They define spiritual truths as objective revelations which can be verified by personal experiments and experiences. This view guarantees the stability of śāstraic faith as well as the spontaneity of religious experiences. It recognises the values of immediate and mediate knowledge as spiritual intuition is justified by philosophic thinking.

The Upaniṣadic teachers like Sanatkumāra, Uddālaka, Āruni and Varuṇa are knowers of Brahman and in their teaching to their disciples they follow the deductive or a priori method. But disciples like Nārada, Śvetaketu and Bhṛguvāruni seek Brahman by a process of spiritual induction and finally realise Him. Thus the deductive and inductive methods of the Upaniṣads are complementary and not self-contradictory and they steer clear of the dangers of dogmatism and relativism and lead the mumukṣu safely to the goal of Brahmajñāna or God realisation.

Sixthly and lastly the method of immanent criticism is based on the Vedāntic truth that Brahman resides in

all jīvas as their inner life, light and love and that every

seeker after mukti gravitates towards God and attains

his security and stability by attaining Brahman. Every

Vedāntic school insists on the need for renouncing the

egoistic and separatist ideas of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, or

ahaṅkāra and mamakāra and regaining the unitive

consciousness by Brahmanisation. The content of mukti

is so rich and varied that it cannot be defined and

described and the only definition that can be given is the

experience-definition or Brahmānubhava. The Vedāntic

philosopher, however, seeks to define the indefinable by

meditating on Brahman as satyam, jñānam, ānandam and

apahatapāpmatvam. To apprehend Brahman is also to

comprehend His essential nature and since every idea

of Brahman refers to Brahman owing to the identity

of content or meaning, all the qualities or ideas of

Brahman connote Brahman as the ultimate subject. The

varieties of Vedāntic experience consist mainly of the

Advaitic idea of jñāna or enlightenment, the theistic

idea of selfless service to the Redeemer or Svāmin

and the mystic view of losing oneself in divine love and

ānanda, and these ideas are of Brahman or Brahman

itself. Whether mukti is svarūpa aikya, viśiṣṭa aikya

or selfless service to God, it is the Brahmanised state of

the self by the attainment of the unitive consciousness

in sāyujya. The more spiritual a man is the more help-

ful he is to humanity, and in the highest state of

Brahmānubhava the mukta sheds his ahaṅkāra or the

narrow egoistic outlook, enjoys eternal bliss and peace

that passeth all understanding and loses himself in the

service of all jīvas, human, sub-human and celestial,

without any distinction. Brahman not only resides in

the hearts of all jīvas but is also immanent in all faiths.

118

THE WISDOM OF THE UPANIṢADS

In the immortal words of the Upaniṣads, sat is one though the sages call it variously. The Gītā as the cream of the Upaniṣads guarantees Brahmānubhava to all persons and proclaims the spiritual hospitality of Hinduism in the ever-ringing words “whoso worships me in whatsoever form ultimately reaches me.”3

3. ye yathā mām prapadyante tāmstathaiva bhajāmyaham mama vartmānuvartante manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ.—B. G., IV. 11.

Agni, 94

79, 80, 82, 85, 93, 94, 95, 98, 105

Aitareya Upaniṣad, 2

Christ, 6

Ākāśavidyā, 79

Deussen, 6, 36

Akṣaraparāvidyā, 80

Gāndhāra, City of, 85

Akṣaravidyā, 79, 88

Gāyatrīvidyā, 79 89

Akṣividyā, 79

Gītā, 9, 12, 67, 80, 90, 111, 118

Ānandamayavidyā, 79, 80

Gough, 6

Angīras, 15

Govindāchār Swāmi, A., 80

Aṅguṣṭhapramitavidyā, 79

Hiraṇyagarbha, 96, 97

Antarādityavidyā, 79

Indra, 15, 52

Antaryāmividyā, 79, 88

Īśāvāsyopaniṣad, 2, 79, 80

Arundhatī, 24

Īśāvāsyavidyā, 80

Arundhatīnyāya, 24

Jaimini, 38, 98

Āruni, 116

Jaimini type, 37

Atharva Veda, 2

Janaka, King, 54, 77, 104

Bādarāyaṇa, 5

Jyotiṣāmjyotirvidyā, 79

Bādarī, 38, 95, 96, 97, 98

Kaivalyopaniṣad, 85

Bādarī type, 37

Kant, 2, 41

Baladeva, 5

Kaṭha Upaniṣad, 2, 15, 45, 54, 60, 67, 72, 75, 79, 80, 98, 113

Bālākividyā, 80

Kauṣitakī Upaniṣad, 2, 3, 55, 79, 80, 102

Bhāskara, 5, 33, 35, 38, 47, 70, 71, 100, 101, 109, 112

Kena Upaniṣad, 2

Bhṛgu, 3, 16

Madhuvidyā, 79

Bhṛguvāruni, 116

Madhva, 5, 23

Bhūmavidyā, 3, 14, 79, 89

Maitreyi, 16, 72

Brahma Sūtras (see also Vedānta Sūtras), 17, 28, 32, 36, 44

Maitreyividyā, 79

Brahmavidyā, 1

Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, 2, 3, 15, 78, 80, 83, 94

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 2, 3, 6, 10, 14, 16, 30, 32, 42, 45, 54, 60, 62, 64, 73, 75, 79, 82, 90, 93, 95, 98.

Naciketas, 3, 15, 54, 72

Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 2, 3, 7, 14, 15, 16, 28, 41, 44, 54, 61, 62,

120

INDEX

Naciketavidyā, 79

Nārada, 14, 116

Nārāyana, 7

Narayanaswami Aiyar, 80

Nimbārka, 5, 47, 48, 102

Nyāsavidyā, 79, 89

Pañcāgnividyā, 79

Paramapuruşavidyā, 79

Paramjyotirvidyā, 79

Paryankavidyā, 80, 89

Plato, 2

Prajāpatī, 15, 75, 98

Prāṇavidyā, 79

Pratardana vidyā, 80

Pūrnaprajña, 85, 113 (see also Madhva)

Rāmānuja, 5, 9, 11, 12, 13, 23, 24, 33, 42, 48, 49, 53, 64, 71, 100, 109, 112, 113, 114

Ranade, R D, 67

Rg Veda, 2, 6

Rudra, 7

Sadvidyā, 3, 29, 44, 47, 49, 79, 88

Sarva Upanisads, 7

Śākuntala, 56

Sāma Veda, 2

Samvargavidyā, 79

Sanatkumāra, 14, 116

Śāndilyavidyā, 79

Śankara, 5, 8, 9, 11, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 61, 80, 81, 95, 96, 97, 100, 109, 112, 114

Sankara Bhāsya, 96

Sarvāntarātmavidyā, 79

Satyakāmavidyā, 79

Śaunaka, 15

Schopenhauer, 2

Śiva, 7

Slater, 6

Śrikantha, 5

Śrīkara, 5

Śvetaketu, 14, 36, 116

Śvetāśvatara Upanisad, 2, 3, 7, 8, 14, 50, 60, 93

Taittirīyopanisad, 1, 2, 3, 16, 31, 34, 44, 45, 51, 56, 57, 66, 75, 78, 93

Thibaut, 6, 8, 10, 96

Uddālaka, 14, 116

Upakosalavidyā, 79

Vaisnava Upanisads, 7

Vaisvānaravidyā, 79, 89

Vallabha, 5

Vāmadeva, 22, 90

Varuna, 7, 9, 52, 94, 116

Vārunīvidyā, 79

Vāyu, 94

Vedānta Sūtras, 3, 12, 26, 109

Virocana, 15

Viṣṇu, 7, 37

Vyāsa, 22, 109

Williams, Monier, 6

Yādavaprakāśa, 5, 47, 71, 101, 109, 112

Yājñavalkya, 3, 16, 54, 72

Yajur Veda, 2

Printed and published by G. S Press, Madras, M.S 97—20—10—47.