History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c95.66

v7.c95.66

The high metaphysical conception that in reality there is no universe outside *brahman* (i. e. brahman is one and is unqualified, *nirguṇa*) and the popular empirical conception that there is a personal God who creates (*saguṇa brahma*) and real universe, often run together in the Upaniṣads. The Praśna Up. V. 2 asserts that *Om* is both *para* (highest) *brahma* and *apara* (other, lower) *brahma*. Śaṅkarācārya on V S. I. 1. 12 (ānandamayo'bhyāsāt) states that in the Upaniṣads brahman is described in two ways, (firstly) as qualified by various adjuncts such as name and form and created objects and meant to be worshipped and (secondly) as devoid of all adjuncts (as meant to be mystically realized). As instances of the 2nd way (*nirupādhika* or *nirguṇa brahman*) he instances several passages viz. Bṛ Up. IV. 5. 15 ('where there is as it were duality, there one sees the other ..... one touches the other or knows the other, but where one has come to realize that all is only Ātman, whom will one see, with what will one understand the knower himself'), Bṛ. Up III. 9. 26 = IV. 4. 22 and IV. 5. 15 (this self is to be spoken of as 'not this, 'not this'), Bṛ. Up. III. 8 8 (it is that imperishable one that the brāhmaṇas speak about as neither coarse nor small, neither short nor long, neither red nor fluid, neither wind nor ether ..neither as having an inside nor outside &c.); Chān. Up (VII. 24. 1 'where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else that is the Infinite, where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else, that is small (finite), the Infinite is immortal, the finite is mortal, the Infinite rests in its own greatness, or does not rest in greatness); Śv Up. VI. 19 (who is without parts, without activities, tranquil, faultless, without taint, the highest bridge to immortality, like a fire that has consumed its fuel). There are also other passages of the same import e. g Bṛ. Up IV. 4. 19 (neha nānāsti kiñcana, there is no diversity in it), Kaṭha Up. IV. 10-11 (mṛtyoh sa mṛtyum-āpnoti ya iha nāneva paśyati). The 4th aspect of Upanisadic thought is concerned with the destiny of the self after the death of the body and the matters that govern it (i. e. Ethics and Eschatology).