The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s3.1

v2.c40.s3.1

It was attempted by the great philosopher Çaṅkara to find in the Upaniṣads the expression of a single simple doctrine, carried out consistently through all, and in his commentary on the Vedānta as set out in the Brahma Sūtra of Bādarāyaṇa it is his object to interpret that Sūtra and to bring out at the same time the doctrines of the Upaniṣads, the whole forming a great system of philosophy in which no contradictions should exist.² The plan adopted by the philosopher for this purpose was simple: he found in the Upaniṣads the principle that knowledge was of two kinds, wholly different. On the one hand the higher knowledge recognized the existence of absolutely nothing save the Brahman or the Ātman, the one unity, which was at once real, thought, and bliss. The force of these terms must be understood in a special sense: reality is not something outside the Brahman: no predication is possible of the Brahman, for predication involves diversity and in the Brahman there is no diversity. Thought or consciousness, which is not an attribute of, but the essence of the Brahman, does not mean actual activity, the νοῦς νοήσεως of Aristotle on the most probable view of that famous doctrine:³ it is consciousness without any object or subject, and therefore differs so entirely from the very nature of consciousness as not in our view to deserve the name at all. The bliss also is that of being which has no consciousness of any kind and no feeling, and therefore is merely a metaphorical expression. This single thing is all that the world really is, the one Brahman which is the Ātman. All the multiplicity of phenomena is unreal: the saving truth which redeems the individual from the constant stream of births is the recognition of this fact, that he himself is really the one Ātman, not related as part to it, but solely and absolutely it. In the expression 'That thou art',⁴ which is enunciated in the Upaniṣads, is set out the fundamental fact of all existence, the indivisible unity.