The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s8.60

Language: English

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This doctrine obviously is more metaphysical than psychological in interest, and goes a very little way to solve the question of the nature of perception or sensation. This is further borne out by the failure to make clear what is meant by senses as opposed to objects; later we find in the Sāṅkhya⁷ a distinct recognition of the difference between function and the material organ, the faculty of hearing, for example, and the gross ear, but such a distinction is nowhere hinted at in the Upaniṣads, and it is uncertain how the matter was regarded in them. In the later texts we find two different theories represented: on the one hand, in the Sāṁkhya philosophy¹ there is a consistent and harmonious materialism of process which, however, is made conscious only by the intervention of the Puruṣa, which is the equivalent in that system of the Ātman of the Vedānta. On the other hand, in the Vedānta, as interpreted by Gauḍapāda,² stress is laid on the fact that ultimately the visions of a dream and those of our waking state cannot be absolutely distinguished: if the dream apparitions are truly produced by the activity of the Ātman, so in the case of waking states the objects are equally produced by the Ātman: the thing and its representation condition each other: each separately has no existence: they exist only in the Ātman, a position which, though differentiated by Çaṅkara from the idealism of the Buddhist Vijñānavāda, tends indefinitely to merge into it.

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As against these clear theories, which recognize the problem of ideal and real or even material factors in knowledge and supply their varying solutions, we have in Buddhist texts³ of the earlier period a theory of contact which in the Milindapañha⁴ is frankly materialist and was doubtless so *ab initio*, but which at any rate seems not to have appreciated the real question involved. It is to this confused species of thought that we must in the main turn in considering the views of the Upaniṣads: the haziness of their ideas is shown conclusively by the fact that often, as later in Buddhism, organ and function seem hardly consciously to be separated in their conception of the activities of sense. Neither realism nor idealism can be said to be yet clearly held. If, as we have seen, in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad⁵ we find all existential elements, &c., referred to and made dependent on consciousness, i. e. apparently a subjective idealism, yet in the Mādhyandina recension of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad⁶ we expressly hear of the Ātman that after death it is not possessed of empirical consciousness, because it is not in contact with Mātrā, which is most naturally interpreted as a realist or materialist conception, somewhat like that of the Sāṁkhya, such consciousness arising from the contact of the mind and matter, but the term Mātrā may have a wider sense of all empirical existence.

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Similarly there is abundant evidence of a naïve realism, which places side by side the facts of the macrocosm and the microcosm without suggestion that there is any but a real relation. The parallelism of the cosmic order (*adhidaivata*) with the disposition of man (*adhyātma*) is constant and wearisome; the space within the heart is parallel to cosmic space;¹ the breath of man to the wind,² the speech to fire, the eye to the sun, the ear to the moon, the mind to the lightning;³ there are five cosmic spaces, five gods of nature, five classes of beings, and correspondingly we have five vital airs, five senses, five parts of the body;⁴ to name, form, and action in the world correspond speech, sight, and man in the individual;⁵ there is Dharma, law, and truth for the world and for the man, and the macrocosm and the microcosm are interrelated in an indissoluble union of reciprocal service and support.⁶ The general attitude of the Upaniṣads must, therefore, be described as realistic, and, accordingly, not incompatible with a rejection of the subjective idealism of the Vijñānavādins.

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Here and there this interpretation suggests itself with special force, as when it is expressly made clear that the Ātman is the real active force in seeing, in smelling, in speaking, in hearing, in thinking, and the senses are but means,⁷ or again the Ātman is pictured like the ocean as the abode of all the sense activities.⁸ From the Sāṁkhya view the Upaniṣads are distinguished in an important respect, the frank recognition accorded by them of the activity of the Ātman,⁹ while in the Sāṁkhya view the Puruṣa has really no activity, though paradoxically all consciousness is made to depend on the imaginary connexion of the Puruṣa with Prakṛti.