The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c11.26

c11.26

As far as India is concerned one thing is certain: real metempsychosis does not enter into the higher thought of India, or, at least, is not stated unmistakably until we come to the Upanishads. When, however, this belief has finally taken shape we find in it the following established items of faith: Every living creature is reborn in some organic shape; every living creature had a previous existence; and every living creature is again and again the prey of death, until in some life all desire and all activity as the outcome of desire shall have been laid aside. This is the Hindu salvation, namely, absolute resignation of the finite, futile, illusory world; cessation of the will to live, and the act of living. This of itself produces union with Brahma. Not until mortal man has cast off every desire of his heart does he enter immortal into Brahma. We have now arrived at the thought or the position of the Upanishads, the last in the long line of Vedic texts. Like all Vedic thought, the thought of the Upanishads is not systematic, but tentative, fanciful, and even romantic. It feels its way through misty, wavering, sometimes conflicting beginnings. The more rigid conclusions come later on in one or the other of the so-called systems of Hindu philosophy.