The Philosophy of the Upanishads c7.s3.6

c7.s3.6

The question as it concerns God, immortality, and freedom, stands on an altogether different footing if this entire empirical reality, the occupant of space and time, and ruled by causal laws, is mere appearance and not a disposition of "things in themselves," to use Kant's words; or is mere *mâyâ* and not the *âtman*, the "self" of things, as the Upanishads teach. For in this case there is room for another, a higher order of things, which is not subject to the laws of space, time, and causality. And it is precisely this higher order of things set over-against the reality of experience, from the knowledge of which we are excluded by our intellectual constitution, which religion comprehends in faith by her teaching concerning God, immortality, and freedom. All religions therefore unconsciously depend on the fundamental dogma of the Kantian philosophy, which in a less definite form was already laid down in the Upanishads. These last therefore by virtue of their fundamental character lie naturally at the basis of every religious conception of existence.