The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t1.1

v2.c40.s7.t1.1

In the doctrine of Yājñavalkya we have seen the tendency of the Upaniṣads to assert over again, and in still more emphatic terms, the unity of the world, which the poets of the Rigveda already foreshadowed, and to deduce from it the conclusion that the world is nothing that is real in the full sense of the word, since everything in it is not ultimately to be regarded as having a truth of its own. In what sense, then, can the empiric world be said to exist? This Yājñavalkya leaves vague, but in his exposition to Maitreyī of the doctrine that after death there is no consciousness he uses terms to which later at least great weight was attached. A duality is necessary, he argued, for one to see another, smell another, hear another, and so forth, and in death no such duality is present; the phrase,⁴ however, which he uses in this contention is ‘where there is a duality as it were (*iva*)’, and it may be deduced, not unfairly, from the addition of the qualification that he was not prepared to admit as absolutely certain the existence of the duality. Later in the Upaniṣad⁵ we have similar wording, ‘when there seems to be another’, the same particle being used. Here again we cannot simply ignore the qualification; to do so is as one-sided as to ascribe to it the value of a definite assertion of the unreality or illusory character of the universe. What we have is the germ of the illusion theory.