The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s5.t2: 2. Origin of Dualism
The Philosophy of the Upanishads c10.s5.t2
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2. Origin of Dualism
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As there can be, to use popular language, only one God and no more, so it is involved in the nature of a philosophical principle to be a unity, from which the variety of the phenomenal universe is derived. It follows that monism is the natural standpoint of philosophy, and wherever dualism has appeared in its history it has always been the consequence of antecedent stress and difficulty, and as it were a symptom of the wane of the philosophising spirit; just as the dualism of Empedokles, Anaxagoras and Democritus was occasioned by the apparently irreconcilable opposition of the doctrines of Heracleitus and Parmenides, and the dualism of Descartes had its ultimate source in the unnatural separation of the abstract and the concrete representations (*cogitatio* and *extensio*), which began with Plato and Aristotle. In a similar way the dualism of the Sāṅkhya doctrine also cannot be regarded as a primitive view of nature; for how should two principles like *purusha* and *prakṛiti*, distinct from first to last, be accidentally lighted upon in infinite space and infinite time, and further be so marvellously suited to one another that they could unite to evolve a universe? The result attained is rather to be conceived as the consequence of a natural disintegration of the doctrine of the Upanishads, as we propose now to show.
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The thought of the Upanishads in its pantheistic form asserted, as above shown, that Brahman created the universe and then as soul entered into it.¹ The individual soul is in no respect different from Brahman, but is very Brahman complete and entire. Individuality as much as the plurality of souls is mere appearance. This appearance however is transformed into reality as the method of empirical knowledge gains acceptance. Pantheism becomes theism, according to which the individual soul makes its appearance over-against the supreme soul with a reality of its own, and the result is the plurality of individual souls,—the first dogma which divides the Sânkhya from the Vedânta, and consequently the first *reductio ad absurdum* of this theory of the universe. For the soul remains as before, in accordance with Yâjñavalkhya’s teaching, the knowing subject. A plurality of knowing subjects! What philosophical mind can admit this thought? The knowing subject is in me (*aham brahma asmi*) and nowhere else, for everything beside me is object, and for this very reason not subject.
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¹ *tat sṛiṣṭvâ tad eva anuprâvis’at*, Taitt. 2. 6.
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A further consequence of theism is atheism. The division of the âtman into supreme and individual souls must lead to the destruction of the one branch, the supreme soul, since it had derived its vital force solely from the âtman existing in me, which indeed alone exists. After its separation from the latter it could only with difficulty be maintained at all. No more was necessary than to transfer the creative faculties (the *guṇas*, viz.—*sattvam*, rajas and tamas) to matter itself, and God became superfluous. The S'vet. Up. protests in vain against the irruption of the realistic tendency, in vain asserts that it is the divine power that lies hidden in its own guṇas,¹ that the threads of the web of the pradhânas proceed only from God,² that indeed the entire prakṛiti is only an illusion wrought by God.³ When the existence of God was no longer certified by my âtman, the attestation of him in general ceased to be sufficiently strong to prevent his being abandoned by the unscrupulous realism of the Sânkhya; and in this way from the ancient trinity (god, universe, and soul), which was in reality a unity,⁴ the dualism of prakṛiti and purusha originated. Nothing further could then be determined as to their origin, or how they came to be so suited to one another as to be able to combine for a common end, as the strong man blind and the lame man with sight.⁵
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¹ S'vet. 1. 3.
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² S'vet. 6. 10.
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³ S'vet. 4. 10, mâyâm tu prakṛitim vidyâd, mâyinam tu mahes'varam.
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⁴ S'vet. 1. 7. 12, etc.
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⁵ Sânkhya-kârikâ 21.
Cites (3)
- Śvetāśvataropaniṣad — Śvetāśvatara, Sanskrit
- Taittirīyopaniṣad — Sanskrit
- Sāṃkhyakārikā — Īśvarakṛṣṇa, Sanskrit