The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s13.12

v2.c40.s13.12

When we pass to the doctrine of Karman, the hopeless inconsistencies of the view of Yājñavalkya become painfully obvious: the doctrine of Karman is now introduced as explaining the nature of man’s fate in life, without regard to the other doctrine that knowledge means emancipation at once. How on the theory of Yājñavalkya conduct could have any effect at all, or any bearing on the matter, cannot be understood, but it is really incomprehensible how Deussen can accept the view that the knowledge of the unity of the Ātman produces liberation. All the effect of the philosophy of Yājñavalkya is to declare the difference of subject and object, and then to assert that the Ātman is one, in which there is no difference of subject and object, and therefore no consciousness, and these views do not show any connexion with emancipation or transmigration by degree of merit of conduct. It is simply inconceivable why on the ground of such theoretic knowledge men should abandon the desire for children, should give up their property, and wander about like beggars, practising a foolish asceticism. Nor as a matter of fact can we imagine that any such conception normally entered the heads of the ascetics of the Vedic age: they doubtless deemed, as the texts indeed show, that what they would attain by these practices was the mystic contemplation of the divine which mystics of every time and clime have aimed at winning.¹ This fact, which is clearly proved by the evidence of the many passages in which union with the absolute is aimed at, and regarded as a state of abiding bliss, is not in any degree compatible with the view that what the priests and sages of the Upaniṣads believed in was the mere fact that there existed a thing in itself, which was for ever unknowable. From such premises no such conclusions as are drawn by the Upaniṣads could possibly be derived at any time. The essence of the doctrine of the Upaniṣads must be looked for in something else.