The Philosophy of the Upanishads c7.s2.5

c7.s2.5

The objects which lie around us on every side in infinite space, and to which by virtue of our corporeal nature we ourselves belong, are, according to Kant, not “things in themselves,” but only apparitions. According to Plato, they are not the true realities, but merely shadows of them. And according to the doctrine of the Upanishads, they are not the âtman, the real “self” of the things, but mere *mâyâ*,—that is to say, a sheer deceit, illusion. It is true that the term *mâyâ* occurs for the first time in S’vet. 4. 10; and therefore some writers, whose recognition of a fact is obscured by the different language in which it is clothed, have hazarded the assertion that the conception of *mâyâ* is still unknown to the more ancient Upanishads. How in the light of this assertion they find it possible to comprehend these older Upanishads (Bṛihad. and Chând.) they themselves perhaps know. The fact is they are penetrated throughout by the conception which later was most happily expressed by the word *mâyâ*. In the very demand which they make that the âtman of man, the âtman of the universe, must be sought for,¹ it is implied that this body and this universe which reveal themselves to us unsought are not the âtman, the self, the true reality; and that we are under a delusion if, like the demon Viroc'ana,¹ we regard them as such. All worldly objects and relationships are, as Yajñavalkhya explains in Bṛih. 2. 4. 5, of no value for their own sake (as "things in themselves"), but for the sake of the âtman; nay, they exist solely in the âtman, and that man is utterly and hopelessly undone who knows them "apart from the Self" (*anyatra âtmano*). This âtman, he concludes,² is Brâhman and warrior, is space, gods, and creatures, "this âtman is the entire universe" (*idam sarvam yad ayam âtmâ*). As when a man touches the instrument³ he at the same time elicits the notes, so when a man has comprehended the âtman he has with it comprehended all these things:—"Verily he who has seen, heard, comprehended and known the Self, by him is this entire universe known."⁴