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The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s5: § 5. The Nature of the Absolute

The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s5

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§ 5. The Nature of the Absolute

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The Upaniṣads are essentially concerned with the endeavour to describe the nature of the absolute, and the rich abundance of attempts to succeed in this end, proved by the references to conflicting theories in the Upaniṣads, is clear proof of the busy mental activity of the period. From the earliest Upaniṣad we have, the view is clear that there is a unity, that it is necessary further to grasp the nature of that unity, and that the proper names of the unity are either the Brahman or the Ātman. The two ideas whose history we have seen in the Brāhmaṇas are used constantly in alternation with each other. It is clear that they must have been felt to be practically akin.

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Many of these attempts were, it is clear, of little worth: Bālāki Gārgya in his interview with Ajātaçatru puts forward twelve¹ or sixteen views of the nature of the absolute. They are all of the same type, the soul in the sun, the moon, lightning, ether, fire, water, the person in a mirror, the sound that follows one as he goes, the person in the quarters, the shadow, the person in the body, &c., to which the king opposes in reply the conception of that whence the breaths proceed, and on which the worlds, gods, and men depend. Other suggestions made by Çākalya² which treat breath, love, forms, ether, &c., as the basis of the absolute are refuted by Yājñavalkya, who also rejects the suggestions of speech, the breath, the eye, the ear, mind, and the heart laid before him by Janaka as doctrines enunciated on this head.³ Yājñavalkya shows that these things are only the basis of the attributes of the divine unity, and that it is necessary to go behind the mere attributes or their manifestation, which can only be done by recognizing the essential identity of the absolute and our own spirit. The Brahmans who with Uddālaka are instructed by Açvapati Kaikeya⁴ are supporters of the claims of heaven, sun, wind, ether, water, and earth as the absolute unity, there conceived as the Ātman Vaiçvānara, an idea borrowed from the Agni Vaiçvānara which forms the subject of discussion in the secret doctrine of the fire in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa.⁵ The king, on his part, insists that the Ātman must be within, not an external object. A much longer and more elaborate series of imperfect views is represented in the instruction of Nārada by Sanatkumāra,⁶ where from name the advance is made through speech, mind, conception or judgement (*saṁkalpa*), thought, intuition (*dhyāna*), knowledge (*vijñāna*), force, food (i.e. earth), water, heat, ether, memory, and longing (*āçā*), to the breath which is the individual soul, and finally to the great one, Bhūman, which comprehends all, fills space, and is identical with the principle of egoism, Ahaṁkāra, and the self, Ātman, in man. The transition from the individual to the great one is made thus: truth depends on knowledge, this on thought (*mati*), this on faith, this on concentration (*niḥṣṭhā*), this on productive power, this on pleasure, which exists in the unlimited.

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¹ BAU. ii. 1; KU. iv. For the person in the eye, superior person (*atipuruṣa*) in the sun, and the supreme person in the lightning, see JUB. i. 27. The person in the eye is Prajāpati, Indra, the universe, i. 43. 10 ff.; iv. 24. 13.

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² BAU. iii. 9. 10–17, 26. For ether a the universe, see JUB. i. 27 f.

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³ BAU. iv. 1.

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⁴ CU. v. 11.

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⁵ x. 6. 1.

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⁶ CU. vii.

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More important than these theories are others: Indra⁷ and the demon Virocana went to Prajāpati for instruction: he first describes the Ātman as the body, a view thought adequate by Virocana, who is the prototype of all men who merely see in the body the hope of immortality, and, therefore, deck it out on death with gay raiment. Prajāpati then explains the self as the spirit in dreams, but Indra is not satisfied, since the spirit is still in this condition opposed to a world beyond itself. Prajāpati then propounds the self in dreamless sleep, where there is no distinction of subject and object, which he explains as not the annihilation of the self, but its entry upon the fullest light in identification with the absolute. With this view must be compared a more developed one expressed in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad,¹ where there are distinguished five Ātmans; the first is the *annamaya*, which corresponds to the body; then the *prāṇamaya*, which corresponds to the life of the breaths or vital airs; the *manomaya*, the self of the mind, which here clearly means the activity of the self as conscious will in such actions as sacrifice and study; the *vijñānamaya*, in which for sacrifice is substituted knowledge and worship of the deity in that manner; and finally the *ānandamaya*, that of joy before whom words and thought recoil, not finding him. This last self is not an object of knowledge, and hence it is described as not real—empirically—, as unconscious and unutterable. In it is bliss, which is broken by the belief in any difference between the self and it.

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⁷ CU. viii. 7–12.

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¹ ii. It has also the doctrine of the Brahman as *satyaṁ jñānam anantam* (or *ānandam*); see below. The first three cover *satyam*.

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Other efforts are made to realize the Ātman by a process of examination of the merits of the different claimants. Thus we have the account of the rivalry of the senses foreshadowed in the Brāhmaṇas carried out in detail. The breath is the victor over speech, the eye, the ear, and mind, because when all the others go from the body still it is left animated,² and from another point of view breath alone is able in the conflict of the gods, the senses, and the demons to overthrow the demons.³ Another version⁴ adds to the other powers the cosmical equivalents, and ranges speech, eye, ear and breath against one another, and fire, sun, moon, and wind against one another; in each case the result is the victory of breath and wind. In the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad,⁵ following the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa,⁶ the cosmic divinities fire, sun, moon, lightning, and the psychic divinities, speech, eye, ear, mind, enter into the wind and the breath respectively. The same idea occurs in an earlier version of the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa:⁷ in sleep speech enters the breath, and so with eye, mind, ear, and correspondingly with fire, sun, moon, and the quarters in their relation to the wind. Hence we frequently find that the breath is set up as an idea of the Brahman,⁸ but merely to be rejected as inadequate.

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² CU. v. 1. 6–12; BAU. vi. 1. 7–13; AA. ii. 1. 4; Kauṣ. ii. 14; iii. 3; ÇA. ix; PU. ii. 2–4.

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³ BAU. i. 3; CU. i. 2; JUB. i. 60, &c.

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⁴ BAU. i. 5. 21–3.

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⁵ ii. 12, 13.

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⁶ viii. 28.

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⁷ x. 3. 3. 5–8. In JUB. iii. 2 breath swallows up speech, mind, sight, and hearing; Ka (Prajāpati) swallows fire, moon, sun, and the quarters.

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⁸ BAU. iv. 1. 3; v. 13; Kauṣ. ii. 1 and 2; CU. iv. 10. 5; TU. iii. 3. 1; JUB. i. 33. 2.

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Still more clearly inadequate are the identifications of Brahman with mind,⁹ which as in the Brāhmaṇas never achieves a decisive place of importance, and with more material concepts, such as the sun and as the ether. The sun is interesting, as it is clear that efforts were made—as in Egypt in the reform of Akhenaten—to penetrate beyond the mere physical sun to the man in the sun, with whom the dying man declares his identity.¹⁰ The real relation to the sun is, however, declared to be something above that,¹ and similarly against the conception of the absolute as there is set the view that the absolute is in the ether, and is the controller of the ether.²

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⁹ CU. iii. 18; vii. 3; BAU. iv. 1. 6.

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¹⁰ BAU. v. 15; CU. iv. 11–13; i. 6, 7; TU. ii. 8; Īçā 15–18.

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¹ CU. iv. 13.

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² BAU. iii. 7. 12.

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Another set of conceptions is rather different: they are not so much real efforts to explain the absolute as merely to bring it into contact with the sacrifice: it was clearly the most natural thing in the world for the various schools, which were contemporary with the development of the Brahman, to apply to the chief concepts of their special branch of Vedic literature the idea of identification with the absolute. Thus the schools of the Rigveda fixed upon the Uktha,³ the litany, especially that of the Mahāvrata ceremony as the absolute, the Sāmaveda schools chose the Sāman and in special the Udgītha,⁴ and the schools of the Yajurveda the horse⁵ offered at the sacrifice. Much more common is the view that by the mystic syllable, Om, originally no more perhaps than a formal word of assent, the Brahman is denoted.⁶

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³ AA. ii. 1–3.

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⁴ CU. ii. and passim in JUB.

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⁵ BAU. i. 1, 2.

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⁶ Keith, *ERE. s.v.*

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A more advanced conception is to be found in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka⁷ which uses the old conception of breath, but identifies with it Prajñā, ‘intellect’. On intellect the whole world is based, it is guided by intellect, and knowledge is the absolute. The same view is expressed in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad⁸ where the identity of breath and intellect is asserted absolutely, but also later on is more precisely investigated: it shows that the objects of sense depend on the organs of sense, and the latter are dependent in turn on intellect, but it still adheres to the identification of the two. The Chāndogya itself identifies breath, ether, and bliss. The breath, therefore, still here and there appears with its claim to be the Ātman, but it is also now and then made dependent on it, or even the shadow of it.

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⁷ ii. 6=AU. iii. 1–3. Cf. *prājña ātman*, BAU. iv. 3. 21.

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⁸ iii. Oldenberg (*Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 350 f.) minimizes the value of these passages, but unjustly; cf. below, § 9, as to the influence of speculations as to deep sleep on the conception of the absolute.

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But the nature of the Brahman is not intellect alone: it is also bliss and reality, and these ideas are here and there already united as in the later Upaniṣads, though the enumeration of the triad as the actual character of the Brahman is not actually found in the early Upaniṣads. In its place the Taittirīya⁹ once presents the Brahman as being (*sat*), thought (*cit*), and eternity, where *ananta*, ‘eternity’, stands probably in error for the Ānanda, ‘bliss’, of the later triad. As being the Brahman, it is at once being and not-being: the old duplication of the Rigveda,¹⁰ which asserts that at first there was neither being nor not-being is recognized here and there, but in the definite sense that, as not-being, the absolute is not empirical being, and that as being it is also not empirical being, so that the question is one of terminology alone and is decided in favour of the appellation being.¹ Much more important is the attribute of thought, which is asserted repeatedly in the doctrine of Yājñavalkya.² He there asserts that the hearer, the seer, the understander, the knower, are all unknown: they are the soul within, which again is in essence the divine, for all else than it is liable to suffering. In this subject of knowledge ether or space is interwoven: it is the meeting-place of all sounds, smells, sights, and other experiences. The different organs—and their functions—are only names for the one subject. In his conversation with Janaka,³ the philosopher traces the Ātman as the knowing subject, which persists without change through the stages of waking, dreaming, deep sleep, death, transmigration, and final deliverance of the soul. The spirit in the waking state beholds the good and the evil of the world, but it is not moved by it, since as subject it is really incapable of affection: in the state of dreaming it builds up its own world, and in deep dreamless sleep, wrapped round by the intellectual self, it has no consciousness of objects, and yet is not unconscious. The self is compared to a lump of salt which has no inner or outer aspects: it is simply a single unit, and so consciousness has no inner and outer side, and is one unity alone. The Brahman is also the light of lights, and through it alone is there any light in the universe. For the wise man there is perpetual and abiding light, and this idea in the later Upaniṣads appears in a variety of metaphors such as the day of Brahman which is eternal.

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⁹ ii. 1. Deussen (*Sechzig Upanishad’s*², p. 225) reads *ānandam*, followed by Jacobi, *Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den Indern*, p. 16.

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¹⁰ x. 129.

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¹ BAU. i. 6. 3; ii. 1. 20.

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² ii. 4. 11; iii. 4; 8. 11; *vijñānam ānandam brahma*, iii. 9. 28; *vijñānaghana*, ii. 4. 12; *prajñānaghana*, iv. 5. 13; *prājña ātman*, iv. 3. 21.

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³ iv. 3, 4; 5. 13.

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The conception of the self as essentially consciousness is not, however, confined to Yājñavalkya: the same view is expressed, in words which may be dependent on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, in the Chāndogya,⁴ and the Aitareya⁵ and the Kauṣītaki⁶ texts as we have seen emphasize the same conception under the view that the self is intellect. In neither case, however, need we assume dependence on Yājñavalkya, for unlike the case of the Chāndogya the line of argument differs, and is, in the later case directly, and in the former indirectly, linked with the conception of the self as breath, which does not appear in the development of the ideas of Yājñavalkya.

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⁴ CU. iii. 11; viii. 3. 4; 12. 3, 4.

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⁵ iii.

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⁶ iii and iv.

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The nature of the absolute as bliss is also asserted by Yājñavalkya,⁷ who brings the conception into the closest relation with his idea of its nature. The bliss which he contemplates is that of the man in dreamless sleep, when the consciousness of individuality is lost, and when the self, therefore, is above all pain and grief and enjoys pure bliss, whence it is a simple step to the equation of the absolute and bliss. Nor is there much doubt that here again the Chāndogya¹ depends on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka,² when it enunciates the doctrine of the absolute as ether, breath, and joy under the mystic name of Kha. The Kauṣītaki³ also seems to borrow from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, and the whole idea is further developed in the Taittirīya,⁴ in the Ānandavallī. There special stress is laid on the error of seeking to find any division of subject and object in bliss: that would create division and would admit the idea of fear, which can arise only from division. The dependence on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka of this doctrine is borne out by the relation of the *ānandamaya* self to the *vijñānamaya*: in the former text they are the same idea, and, therefore, the conscious self is the highest, there being no difference of subject and object in it: the Taittirīya refines by making the *vijñānamaya* still have the distinction of subject and object, and then erecting the *ānandamaya* above it in rank. It is characteristic of the growth of these distinctions that, later on,⁵ the *ānandamaya* itself became regarded as a mere sheath (*koça*) in which the self or the Brahman resided.

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⁷ The unit of bliss is that of a happy man in this world; that in the Fathers' world is ten times greater; that of the Gandharvas 100 times; that of the gods by merit 1,000 times; that of the gods by birth 10,000 times; that in Prajāpati's world 100,000 times; and that in the Brahmaloka 1,000,000 times, and this is attributed to the Brahman; BAU. iv. 3. 33. For a later version, see TU. ii. For another series of worlds, BAU. iii. 6. 1 (atmosphere, Gandharvas, sun, moon, stars, Indra, Prajāpati, Brahman); KU. i. 3.

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¹ iv. 10. 5.

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² iv. 3. 19-33.

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³ iii. 8.

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⁴ ii; cf. iii.

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⁵ Maitr. vi. 27; Mahānār. lxiii. 16.

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The other side of this exaltation of the bliss of the absolute is of course the view that all the world is misery,⁶ but the pessimism of the Upaniṣads is moderate: we hear of the miseries of old age and death or disease, and trouble which the knowledge of the absolute removes, but the growth of the spirit of pessimism is only to be traced in Upaniṣads of the quite late class.

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⁶ BAU. iv. 2. 4; iii. 8. 8.

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But, despite the giving to the absolute of these three attributes or characteristics, Yājñavalkya returns constantly to the fact that they are not to be taken in the empirical sense, and that, therefore, our knowledge of the absolute is non-existent. The most drastic expression for this view is the formula⁷ *neti neti*, ‘not so, not so’, which denies to the absolute any and every attempt to define it in terms of ordinary knowledge. Its existence is a transcendental reality, which is essentially from the empirical point of view a nonentity: its consciousness involves the essential fusion of subject and object, and the transcendence of their diversity, although the phraseology of the Upaniṣads always treats the Ātman as subject,⁸ and, therefore, is not ordinary consciousness at all, and the bliss arises from this state of non-distinction. Hence we have two different conceptions which are repeated times without number: on the one hand every empirical attribute is attributed to the absolute and also denied of it: in the second place the most contradictory observations are made regarding it. The ideas thus enunciated are clear: the absolute is not in space¹ which is expressed by the assertion that it is infinitely large and infinitely small, that space is interwoven in it, and that it is all pervading. The absolute is not in time:² hence it appears as above the three times, independent of the past and the future, at its feet time rolls on its course: on the one hand it is of infinite duration, but at the same time it is of the instantaneous character of the flash of the lightning, or the swift rush of thought. The absolute is also free from causal connexion:³ it is said to be absolutely without diversity, and this point is variously developed: the Kaṭha⁴ is emphatic that the absolute is independent of becoming and not becoming, of good and evil, of past and future, the knowing seer is not born, does not die, abides from everlasting. The Īçā⁵ insists that it is unmoving, yet swifter than mind; far, yet near; within, yet without the universe; above knowledge and ignorance; that it differs essentially from coming into being and not coming into being. The final answer to the question of the nature of the Ātman is that recorded for us in a legend by Çañkara: Vāṣkali asked Bāhva as to the nature of the Brahman: the latter remained silent, and on being pressed for an answer replied, 'I teach you, indeed, but you understand not: silence is the Ātman.'⁶

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⁷ BAU. iv. 2. 4; 4. 22; 5. 15; iii. 9. 26. Hillebrandt’s theory (DLZ. 1897, p. 1929; ZDMG. lxix. 105 f.) that *na* is an affirmative particle here is clearly erroneous. Oltramare (*L'histoire des idées théosophiques*, i. 74) thinks it merely denies (*iti* signalling out *na*) every effort to define; so Jacobi, *Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den Indern*, p. 15.

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⁸ Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 101, n. 1, against Simmel, *Hauptprobleme der Philosophie*, p. 95.

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¹ BAU. iii. 8. 7; CU. iii. 14. 3; KU. ii. 20; iv. 10, 11; ÇU. iii. 20; Mahānār. x. 1. How far the idea was clearly felt must be left undecided; cf. Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, p. 73.

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² BAU. iv. 4. 16, 17; KU. ii. 14; iii. 15; v. 6; ÇU. v. 13, &c.

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³ BAU. iii. 8; iv. 4. 20; CU. vi. 1. 3.

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⁴ ii. 14, 18.

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⁵ 4, 5, 9, 10, 12–14.

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⁶ Brahma Sūtra, iii. 2. 17. It is clear that such an absolute cannot be regarded either as conscious or unconscious; Oldenberg, *Die Lehre der Upanishaden*, pp. 100–5. Hertel’s view (*Die Weisheit der Upanischaden*, p. 32), that in Kena we have a polemic against the doctrine of the Brahman, is untenable. The polemic is rather against knowledge as the one way of salvation, but a reply to the Muṇḍaka specifically need not be assumed.

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