The Philosophy of the Upanishads c7.s3.15

c7.s3.15

Why then do we need a release from this existence? Because it is the realm of sin, is the reply of the Bible. The Veda answers: Because it is the realm of ignorance. The former sees depravity in the volitional, the latter in the intellectual side of human nature. The Bible demands a change of the will, the Veda of the understanding. On which side does the truth lie? If man were pure will or pure intelligence, we should have to decide for one or the other alternative. But since he is a being who both wills and knows, the great change upon which the Bible and the Veda alike make salvation depend must be realised in both departments of his life. Such a change is, in the first place, according to the Biblical view the softening of a heart hardened by natural self-love, and the inclining it to deeds of righteousness, affection, and self-denial. It is however, in the second place and side by side with this, the breaking forth upon us of the light of the great intellectual truth, which the Upanishads taught before Kant, that this entire universe, with its relations in space, its consequent manifoldness and dependence upon the mind that apprehends, rests solely upon an illusion (*mâyâ*), natural indeed to us owing to the limitations of our intellect; and that there is in truth one Being alone, eternal, exalted above space and time, multiplicity and change, self-revealing in all the forms of nature, and by me who myself also am one and undivided, discovered and realised within as my very Self, as the âtman.