The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s13.43

v2.c40.s13.43

It is this fact of universalism that gives the mysticism of the Upaniṣads in its purest form its chief appeal to many minds, which find in the cult of a personal deity too narrow an outlook and too selfish a destiny for man. To such spirits as these the ideal of merger in the absolute presents an effective antidote to the narrowness of traditional religion, and thus the philosophy of the Upaniṣads has for them the same attraction as systems of absolute idealism have had for many types of western mind. The chief distinction, however, between the standpoint of the Upaniṣads in this regard and that of western theories of the absolute is that the Upaniṣads do not feel any serious necessity for finding a place for morality and political life, while in the west from Hegel onwards heroic, if unsuccessful, efforts have been made by the followers of this ideal³ to establish morality and civil life as an essential element in the absolute. The contrast admits of explanation on many grounds, but one of the most obvious is the fact that the system of caste provided ready-made an ethical framework which no philosopher cared to attack, while political organization remained almost stationary.