The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s13.14

v2.c40.s13.14

Nor indeed is there the slightest doubt as to what that belief was, apart from occasional flashes of insight which led to other conclusions. The absolute is conceived as an ideal, with which unity is as ardently desired, as it was desired in earlier times with the gods in heaven, and the unity with the absolute is conceived in the same mode as unity with the divine had been conceived. The Upaniṣads are essentially pantheistic with a strong theistic leaning, but the extent of that theism differs from passage to passage, and in the case of Yājñavalkya and others doubtless a still more intellectual view of the situation was taken, in which the chief stress was laid on the conception of the Ātman as the one and only reality, free from pollution, serene, unalterable, far above empirical being, or thought of any kind. But this cool intellectualism is not by any means the pervading doctrine of the Upaniṣads,² nor indeed in the record of Yājñavalkya’s views are we without indication that the Ātman itself inspired devotion of a marked kind, as comes out plainly in his address to Maitreyī, on deciding to abandon his goods and his wives and wander forth into the wilderness.³ For most of his contemporaries, who devoted themselves to the study of philosophy, it may confidently be believed that they were pantheists, who were delighted with their discovery of this as the truth of the universe, and who conceived the fate of the enlightened soul as the enjoyment of bliss in the existence to come in union with the one essence of the world.