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The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s5.t4: 4. Brahman as a personal God (îśvara)

The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s5.t4

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4. Brahman as a personal God (îśvara)

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The attempt to clothe the fundamental idealistic conception which refuses to recognise a universe independent of the âtman, and which lies at the foundation of the thought of the Upanishads, in intelligible, *i.e.* realistic forms, led at first, as we saw, to a pantheism which concedes to the empirical consciousness the reality of the universe, and at the same time asserts the sole existence of the âtman by declaring that this entire universe is nothing else than the âtman. This assertion was essentially dogmatic, and amounted to this, that the universe as a phenomenal form of the âtman took up a position over-against the âtman itself as a second; although the endeavour was strenuously made to reconcile this contradiction by the reiterated assurance that the universe is identical with the âtman, the infinitely great without us with the infinitely great within. A further step in the same direction that tended towards realism is implied when the âtman as first principle is contrasted not only with the universe, whose outward form it has put on, but also with the âtman within us with which it is originally identical. Thus is brought into existence the theism which is found in some of the later Upanishads. It has not arisen from the ancient Vedic polytheism, but first makes its appearance long after this has been superseded by the âtman doctrine; the âtman is not a “god,” deva, in the ancient Vedic sense, but he is the “lord,” îśvara. The difference of the two modes of representation will become clear if we first gather together the most important data with regard to the position of the ancient Vedic gods in the Upanishads.

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The existence of the ancient Vedic gods Indra, Agni, Varuṇa, etc. is as little denied by the Upanishads as that of the Greek by Xenophanes. But as by the latter all the other gods equally with men are subordinated to the one god (εἷς θεὸς ἔν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος), so in the Upanishads all the ancient Vedic gods are created by the âtman and dependent on him. From the âtman proceed, like the sparks from the fire, all worlds, all living beings, and no less all gods;¹ on him all the gods depend;² by him they were created as the guardians of the universe;³ “therefore when the people say of each separate god, ‘Sacrifice to this, sacrifice to that,’ (it should be known that) this created universe proceeds from him alone; he therefore is all the gods. This (creation) here is an overplus of creation of Brahman. Because he created the gods higher (than he himself is), and because he as mortal created the immortals, therefore is it called the overplus of creation" (*atisrishti*).¹ It is further related² how the âtman created the divine Kshatriyas (Indra, Varuṇa, Soma, etc.), Vais'yas (the Vasus, Rudras, Âdityas, etc.), and S'ûdras (Pûshan). According to Bṛih. 1. 3. 12-16, it is the organs of the prâṇa, viz. speech, smell, eye, ear, manas, which are by him led beyond the reach of death, and now continue to exist as the gods Agni, Vâyu, Âditya, the heavenly regions and the moon. The number of the gods was in Vedic times usually given as thirty-three. The vague and arbitrary character of this reckoning Yajñavalkhya, in Bṛih. 3. 9. 1, brings home in the following way:—Why thirty-three? why not three hundred and three? or three thousand and three? or both together (3306)? and if we say thirty-three, it might just as well be reduced to six, or three, or two, or one and a half, or one, which is the prâṇa. All these numbers, 3306, 33, 6, 3, 2, 1½, as the manifold forces, parts and organs of nature, come back finally to a unity,—"the prâṇa, thus he said, this men call Brahman, the yonder (*tyad*)." The dependence of all these nature-gods on Brahman is described in the myth of Kena 14-28:—Agni is unable to burn a blade of grass, Vâyu is unable to blow away a wisp of straw, apart from the will of Brahman, which is effective in all the gods. Brahman dwells, according to Bṛih. 3. 7, as the inner guide (*antaryâmin*) in all parts of the universe, and no less in all the corresponding gods. All the gods pursue their tasks, according to a verse preserved in Taitt. 2. 8 and Kâṭh. 6. 3, "from fear" of Brahman; and according to Kaush. 1. 5, even Indra and Prajâpati, the doorkeepers of the heavenly world, are not able to prevent the entrance of the soul of him who knows Brahman, or to turn it back. And just as the power of the gods is dependent on Brahman, so their knowledge also is imperfect; they are not in possession from the very beginning of the knowledge of Brahman.¹ Accordingly in Chând. 8. 7 f. they depute Indra to obtain from Prajâpati the knowledge of the âtman, and for the first time, after they have obtained it, they worship him in the world of Brahman as the self; thereupon they possess all worlds and all desires.² In this respect the gods have no advantage over men:—"Whoever of the gods perceived this ('I am Brahman') he became Brahman; and similarly of the rishis, and similarly of men. . . . And to-day also, he who knows this 'I am Brahman' becomes this universe; and even the gods have no power to prevent his so becoming; for he is the soul (âtman) of it."³

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¹ Bṛih. 2. 1. 20.

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² Kâṭh. 4. 9.

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³ Ait. 1. 1. 3.

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¹ Bṛih. 1. 4. 6.

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² Bṛih. 1. 4. 11-13.

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¹ cp. Bṛih. 1. 4. 10, 4. 3. 33, 5. 2. 1, Taitt. 2. 8, Kaush. 4. 20, Kâṭh. 1. 21.

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² Chând. 8. 12. 6.

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³ Bṛih. 1. 4. 10.

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These passages make clear the part which the gods play in the texts of the oldest Upanishads. It is quite a different matter however, not to be confused with the other, when individual gods appear occasionally as symbolical representatives of the âtman, as for example Indra in Bṛih. 1. 5. 12, Ait. 1. 3. 14, Kaush. 2. 6, 3. 1, Varuṇa in Taitt. 3. 1, or Prajâpati in Chând. 8. 7 f.

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The monotheism which meets us in some later Upanishads has not been developed from this ancient Vedic polytheism, which still has its echoes in the Upanishads, but from entirely different premisses. The proof of this is furnished already by the external fact that the personal god of the Upanishads, usually and apart from exceptions,⁴ is called not deva (god), but îs', îs'a, îs'âna, îs'vara (the lord), and in later times commonly parames'vara (the supreme lord). As these names already show, we must look for the origin of the theism of the Upanishads in such texts as celebrate the âtman as the "inner guide" (antaryâmin) in all the parts and forces of nature and of mankind,¹ and which represent all effects in the universe as the result of his command (pras'âsanam), as in Bṛih. 3. 8. 9:—"At the bidding of this imperishable one, O Gârgî, sun and moon are held asunder," etc. Here it is the "imperishable" (aksharam, neuter) that is spoken of, which for the moment is poetically personified. This is not yet theism, but only the first step towards it. Similarly in Bṛih. 4. 4. 22:—"Here within the heart is a cavity, therein he dwells, the lord of the universe, the governor of the universe, the chief of the universe; he is not exalted by good works, he is not degraded by evil works; he is the lord of the universe, he is the governor of living beings, he is the protector of living beings; he is the bridge that holds asunder these worlds, and prevents them from clashing together." The same is the case with the temporary personification of Brahman as the refuge of love, the lord of love, the lord of brightness;² and in the injunction of Îs'â. 1 also, "to sink in god" the universe (îs'â vâsyam idam sarvam) there is still no theism, for the god who is here referred to is, as the following verses show,³ the âtman within us. The doctrine of a personal god, and with it predestination, appears to be taught also in Kaush. 3. 8:—"He is not exalted by good works nor degraded by evil works, but it is he who inspires to do good works the man whom he will lead on high out of these worlds, and it is he who inspires to do evil works the man whom he will lead downwards. He is the guardian of the universe, he is the ruler of the universe, he is the lord of the worlds,—and he is my soul (âtman), that ought man to know." As the last sentence shows, it is still man's own self again that determines him to good or evil, and accordingly there is still no theism. The latter first certainly appears, where the âtman is contrasted not only with the universe, but also with the self within us. This seems evidently to be the case first in the Kaṭhaka Upanishad, where in 3. 1 the supreme and the individual self are distinguished as light and shadow; and according to 2. 23 the knowledge of the âtman depends upon a kind of free grace:—

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⁴ Such as Kâṭh. 2. 12. 21, S'vet. 1. 8, and frequently.

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¹ Bṛih. 3. 7. 3–23.

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² Chând. 4. 15. 2–4.

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³ vv. 6, 7.

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Only by the man whom he chooses is he comprehended,
To him the âtman reveals his essence.

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Whether Kaṭh. 2. 20 also is to be understood in a theistic sense depends upon whether we read *dhātu-prasādād* “by the repose of the elements,” or *dhātuḥ prasādād* “by the grace of the creator” (having regard to the majesty of the âtman). On the recurrence of the verse in S'vet. 3. 20 and Mahân. 1.10 it is in any case to be interpreted in a theistic sense.¹

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¹ cp. also S'vet. 6. 18, *âtma-buddhi-prasâdam*.

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We come next to the S'vetâs'vatara Upanishad, the leading example of the theistic teaching of the Upanishads, in which God and the soul, though their original identity is not denied, are yet clearly distinguished from one another. Thus in S'vet. 4. 6, 7 it is said:—²

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² Interpreting the verse Rigv. I. 164. 20.

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Two bright-feathered bosom friends
Flit around one and the same tree;
One of them tastes the sweet berries
The other, without eating, merely gazes down.

On such a tree the spirit, depressed,
In its weakness mourns, a prey to illusion,
Yet when it gazes worshipping on the might
And majesty of the other, then its grief departs.

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These verses are repeated in the Muṇḍ Up. 3. 1. 1, 2, but since elsewhere this Upanishad breathes a pantheistic spirit, they are probably borrowed here from the theistic S'vetâs'vatara. But in the latter also traces of the idealism that regards everything besides the âtman as unreal, and of the pantheism that identifies the universe with the âtman, both of which were taken over from the earlier Upanishads, continue to exist side by side with the theism; thereby making its representations often contradictory and philosophically unintelligible. This is the case when in 4. 10 the universe is declared to be mâyâ (illusion) caused by the supreme god; although with the reality of the universe the reality of god also in lost, and only the âtman within us survives as real. Or when in S'vet. 1. 6 the distinction of soul and god (the swan and the drover) is explained to be illusory, and at the same time the removal of this illusion appears as a grace of the supreme god, who is thereby first contrasted with the soul as another. Hence it follows that the S'vetâs'vatara is a work brimful of contradictions. It is like a codex bis palimpsestus. Beneath the characters of theism are discerned, half obliterated, those of pantheism, and under the latter again those of idealism. Just as in the later Vedânta, so already in S'vet. 5. 5, 6. 4, 6. 11, 6, 12 the task of bringing works to maturity and apportioning their fruit to the souls is indicated as the chief function of îs'vara; although to the Upanishad also this entire conception of the îs'vara, as later in the Vedânta, proves to be merely exoteric, and is not to be derived with certainty from 3. 7.

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The theism of the S'vetâs'vatara is adopted and further developed by the later Upanishads, which endeavour to establish a connection with the popular religions by attaching the âtman of the Upanishad doctrine to the cult of S'iva (the beginning of which we may observe in the S'vet. Up.) or of Vishnu. But even in them the original idealism, which dissolves universe and god in the âtman, reveals itself. This is the case in Nrisimhottara-tâpanîya Up. 1, where the "fourth" and highest state of the soul, the turîya, is distinguished from its three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep, and is represented as the abyss of the eternal unity, in which all distinctions of being and knowing vanish, the entire expanse of the universe is obliterated, “and even îs'vara (the personal god) is swallowed up by the turîya (the fourth), by the turîya.”

Cites (11)