The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s6.1

v2.c40.s6.1

The theory of Yājñavalkya asserts, as we have seen, that the absolute is unknowable and not definable by any empirical predicates. It, therefore, becomes obviously a pressing question to connect the empirical and the real universes: the gulf between the two is only accentuated by asserting, in so determined a manner, that there is a deep division between the one and the many. The relation of the universe as known to the one is, however, the problem which all philosophies find insoluble in greater or less degree, and the efforts of the Upaniṣads to bridge the difference are not at all satisfactory. The answer given in fact is merely that the absolute is the same as the world, or that the world is the product of the Brahman. The difficulty, however, arises, in considering these passages of the Upaniṣads, which present the doctrines of cosmogonism and pantheism in close and inextricable union, to know whether we have here efforts to explain the Brahman understood in the sense of Yājñavalkya, or merely the natural continuation of the doctrines of the Brāhmaṇas. It is on this point that it is necessary to part company with Deussen, who in his aim at system assumes that the doctrine of the absolute, as expounded in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, underlies the whole thought of the Upaniṣads. We can only say that the deeper view of Yājñavalkya may, though not very probably, have been held now and then by those who express the more crude views of the identity of the absolute and the universe.