The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s2.t6: 6. Gradual Instruction of Nârada

c9.s2.t6.1

It is not always opponents or pupils who betray their entanglement in incorrect or defective conceptions of Brahman. We repeatedly meet with a Brâhman inquirer who, like Sanatkumâra in Chând. 7 or Bhṛigu in Taitt. 3, makes his way through a succession of inadequate conceptions in order step by step to rise to an ever purer and more refined knowledge of the Brahman or âtman. The most complete example of this kind is Chând. 7, where Sanatkumâra begins his instruction of Nârada by declaring the whole of the experimental knowledge that he has acquired to be mere name. Speech is greater than name, manas greater than speech, and in this way the inquirer, ever advancing, is led upwards from the conditioned to the conditioning, from great to greater by successive stages, in which Brahman is apprehended as *nâman, vâc', manas, saṅkalpa, c'ittam, dhyânam, vijñânam, balam, annam, âpas, tejas, âkâs'a, smara, âs'â* up to *prâna* (the individual soul); and from this last to *bhûman*, the absolutely "great," the "unlimited," beyond which there is nothing, that comprehends all, fills all space, and yet is identical with the self-consciousness (*ahaṅkâra*), with the soul (*âtmàn*) in us. The greatness of this final thought impresses us as in strange contrast to the laborious series of conceptions by which we ascend to it. It was probably intended for more patient readers than are to be found at the close of the nineteenth century, and was evidently meant, by passing from the visibly great to a still greater, to serve the purpose of exciting expectation to the highest pitch. Otherwise, in this transition from name to speech, from this to the intellectual faculties (mind, judgement, thought, intuition, knowledge), from these through the intermediary of force to the four elements (food, water, heat, space), and from these through memory and expectation to prâṇa, it is impossible, in spite of the rich poetic ornament with which these ideas are set forth, to discern a satisfactory reason for this progressive advance; and the question is perhaps justified, whether the author himself was entirely in earnest, or whether these ideas from name right up to prâṇa were not all more or less intended to serve as mere foil, in order to set in so much clearer light the absolute unconditioned and unlimited nature of the âtman, as lying above and beyond all thought. It is on other grounds remarkable that, in connection with all the members of the series that precede prâṇa, rich reward is promised to the man who “worships as Brahman” name, speech, mind, etc. The author therefore admits the possibility of “worshipping as Brahman” all these things, and in the case of many of them this may actually take place in a more or less consciously symbolic manner. For ordinary men, relying on their empirical consciousness as though on a rope, prefer to worship rather than to know. To such an end the absolute is naturally only with difficulty or not at all adapted. The use of symbols therefore for its expression is inevitable, and these in the hands of the multitude very readily become idols. The manner also is remarkable in which our author passes from prâṇa, the individual soul, for which the distinction of subject and object still exists, to *bhûman*, the supreme soul, for which these like all distinctions have no meaning. We seek, he says, the truth. This depends on knowledge, this again on thought, this on faith, this on self-concentration, this on productive power, this on pleasure (*sukham*, more usually *ânanda*, the so-called bliss), which exists in the unlimited, the *bhûman*. Gradually, therefore, from the sphere of the intellectual in which differences obtain, we are led upwards through an ever-increasing blending of subject and object to a region in which all distinctions are lost in the All-one.