The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.72

v2.c40.s7.t3.72

The fact, of course, is that the primitive Vedic belief clung to the doctrine of the survival of something after death, and that, therefore, immortality was no new idea. The view as to what survived was as hazy as it is to-day in popular and philosophic thought alike, for then, as now, it was practically impossible to form any intelligible conception of what a soul is, for such a description of the modern view as that given by Prof. Stcherbatsky cannot be said to have any intelligible meaning. But superinduced on this simple view we have the philosophic doctrine passed off under the name of Yājñavalkya, which asserts that the soul is not, as the ordinary man thinks, independent; it is only a part of a greater whole or more accurately an aspect of that whole, so that at death there is no separate existence in the sense of personal immortality. That this view was ever generally accepted in philosophic circles is not suggested in the older Upaniṣads, and the middle and younger Upaniṣads show that it was not attractive and that the tendency was to consider the matter more theistically, the absolute taking on a definitely personal appearance and less stress being laid on merger in it, though it is essential to note that merger remains as a doctrine alongside with the contemplation of continued existence. But there is not the slightest trace of the advent of personal immortality or the spiritual nature of the soul as new ideas in the period of the middle Upaniṣads; the soul there remains a psychological entity exactly to the same extent as it was such an entity in the older Upaniṣads.