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Indian Philosophy v1.c9.s2: V The Hymns of the Ṛg-Veda and the Upaniṣads

Indian Philosophy v1.c9.s2

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V The Hymns of the Ṛg-Veda and the Upaniṣads

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In view of the distinctive character of their contents, the Upaniṣads are regarded as a class of literature independent of the Vedic hymns and the Brāhmaṇas. The simple faith in gods of the hymns was, as we saw, displaced by the mechanical sacerdotalism of the Brāhmaṇas. The Upaniṣads feel that the faith that ends in a church is not enough. They attempt to moralise the religion of the Vedas without disturbing its form. The advance of the Upaniṣads on the Vedas consists in an increased emphasis on the monistic suggestions of the Vedic hymns, a shifting of the centre from the outer to the inner world, a protest against the externalism of the Vedic practices and an indifference to the sacredness of the Veda.

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Amid all the confused ferment of Vedic devotions a certain principle of unity and comprehension was asserting itself. In some hymns the conception of a single central power was actually formulated. The Upaniṣads carry out this tendency. They recognise only one spirit—almighty, infinite, eternal, incomprehensible, self-existent, the creator, preserver and destroyer of the world. He is the light, lord and life of the universe, one without a second, and the sole object of worship and adoration. The half-gods of the Veda die and the true God arrives. “How many gods are there really, O Yājñavalkya?” “One,” he said.¹ “Now answer us a further question: Agni, Vāyu, Āditya, Kāla (time), which is breath (Prāṇa), Anna (food), Brahmā, Rudra, Viṣṇu. Thus do some meditate on him, some on another. Say which of these is the best for us?” And he said to them: “These are but the chief manifestations of the highest, the immortal, the incorporeal Brahman. . . . Brahman, indeed, is all this, and a man may meditate on, worship or discard also those which are its manifestations.”² The visible infinite (objective) and the invisible infinite (subjective) are taken up into the spiritual whole.

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¹ Bṛh. Up., iii. 9. 1.

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² Maitrāyaṇī Upaniṣad, iv. 5-6; see also Muṇḍaka, i. 1. 1; Taittirīya, i. 5; Bṛh., i. 4. 6; see also i. 4. 7; i. 4. 10.

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The polytheistic conceptions were too deeply rooted in the Indian consciousness to be easily overthrown. The many gods were subordinated to the One. Without Brahman, Agni cannot burn a blade of grass, Vāyu cannot blow a whisp of straw. “For fear of him, fire burns, for fear of him the sun shines, and for fear of him the winds, the clouds and death perform their office.”³ Sometimes the many gods are made parts of one whole. The five householders led by Uddālaka approach king Aśvapati, who asked each of them, Whom do you meditate on as the Self? The first answered heaven; the second, the sun; the third, air; the fourth, ether; the fifth, water; and the king replies that each of them worshipped only a part of the truth. Heaven is the head, the sun the eye, the air the breath, the ether the trunk, the water the bladder, and the earth the feet of the central reality, which is pictured as the world-soul. Compromise between the philosophic faith of the few and the fancied superstition of the crowds is the only possible reconciliation; we cannot abolish the old forms, for that would be to ignore the fundamental nature of humanity, as well as the patent differences, in the moral and intellectual states of believers who were not capable of acquiring at once the highest wisdom. Another factor also determined the attitude of the Upaniṣads. Their aim was not science or philosophy, but right living. They wished to liberate the spirit from the trammels of the flesh, that it might enjoy communion with God. Intellectual discipline was subsidiary to holiness of life. Besides, there was the feeling of reverence for the past. The Vedic seers were the ancients of blessed memory, whose doctrines it was impious to attack. In this way the Upaniṣads sought to square a growing idealistic philosophy with the dogmas of a settled theology.

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³ Tait. Up.

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The sources of man's spiritual insight are two-fold: objective and subjective—the wonders of the world without and the stress of the human soul. In the Vedas the vast order and movement of nature engages attention. Their gods represent cosmic forces. In the Upaniṣads we return to explore the depths of the inner world. "The self-existent pierced the openings of the senses so that they turn outwards; therefore man looks outward, not inward into himself; some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the self behind."[1] From the outward physical fact, attention shifts to the inner immortal self situated at the back of the mind, as it were. We need not look to the sky for the bright light; the glorious fire is within the soul. The soul of man is the keyhole to the landscape of the whole universe, the Ākāśa within the heart, the limpid lake which mirrors the truth. The altered outlook brought about a consequential change. Not the so-called gods, but the true living God, the Ātman has to be worshipped. God's dwelling-place is the heart of man. “Brahmaṇaḥ kośo'si,”¹ Thou art the sheath of Brahman. “Whosoever worships another deity, in such a manner as he is another, another ‘I am,’ does not know.”² The inner immortal self and the great cosmic power are one and the same. Brahman is the Ātman and the Ātman is the Brahman. The one supreme power through which all things have been brought into being is one with the inmost self in each man's heart.³ The Upaniṣads do not uphold the theory of grace in the same spirit as the Vedas do. We do not have appeals to the Vedic gods, who were the sources of material prosperity for increase of happiness, but only prayers for deliverance from sorrow.

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¹ Kaṭha Up., iv. 1.

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¹ Tait. Up.

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² Bṛh. Up., i. 4, 10.

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³ See Chāndogya, iii. 14. Cf. Augustine: “I asked the earth for God, and it answered me, ‘I am not He’; I asked the sea and the depths and the creeping things, and they answered, ‘We are not the God, seek thou above us.’ I asked the breezy gales, and the airy universe, and all its denizens replied, ‘Anaximenes is mistaken, I am not God’; I asked the heaven, sun, moon, stars, ‘Neither are we,’ say they, ‘the God whom thou seekest’; and I asked unto all things which stand about the gateways of my flesh (the senses), ‘Ye have told me of my God, that ye are not He; tell me something of Him,’ and they cried with a loud voice, ‘He made us.’” The search goes on until the inward self is questioned, when the answer is: “Thy God is unto thee, even the life of thy life” (Confessions, x. chap. 6).

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The emphasis on sorrow is sometimes interpreted as indicating an extravagant pessimism on the part of the Indian ṛṣis. It is not so. The religion of the Vedas certainly was more joyous, but it was a lower form of religion, where thought never penetrated beneath the husk of things. It was a religion expressing the delight of man at being in a world full of pleasures. The gods were feared and also trusted. Life on earth was simple and sweet innocence. The spiritual longing of the soul rebukes light-hearted joyousness and provokes reflection on the purpose of man's existence. Discontent with the actual is the necessary precondition of every moral change and spiritual rebirth. The pessimism of the Upaniṣads is the condition of all philosophy. Discontent prevails to enable man to effect an escape from it. If there is no way of escape, if no deliverance is sought after, then dissatisfaction is mischievous. The pessimism of the Upaniṣads has not developed to such an extent as to suppress all endeavour and generate inertia. There was enough faith in life to support all genuine search for truth. In the words of Barth: "The Upaniṣads are much more instinct with the spirit of speculative daring than the sense of suffering and weariness."¹ "Within the limits of the Upaniṣads there are indeed few explicit references to the misery of the life caught in the ceaseless cycle of death and birth. And its authors are saved from pessimism by the joy they feel at the message of redemption they proclaim."² The formulation of the theory of saṃsāra or rebirth is no proof that the Upaniṣads are pessimistic. Life on earth is the means of self-perfection. We have to undergo the discipline of saṃsāra in our efforts towards the higher joy and the complete possession of spiritual truth. That which gives zest to life is the supreme motive of the joy of self-conquest. Saṃsāra is only a succession of spiritual opportunities. Life is a stage in spiritual perfection, a step in the passage to the infinite. It is the time for preparing the soul for eternity. Life is no empty dream and the world no delirium of spirit. In the later versions of rebirth in Indian thought we miss this ennobling ideal, and birth becomes the result of an error of the soul and saṃsāra a dragging chain.

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¹ Religions of India, p. 84.

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² Cave: Redemption, Hindu and Christian, p. 64.

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At the stage of life represented by the Brāhmaṇas, the simple religion of the Vedic hymns was one of sacrifices. Men's relations with the gods were mechanical, a question of give and take, profit and loss. The revival of spirituality was the need of the age immersed in formalism. In the Upaniṣads we find a return to the fresh springs of spiritual life. They declare that the soul will not obtain salvation by the performance of sacrifices. It can be obtained only by the truly religious life, based on an insight into the heart of the universe. Perfection is inward and spiritual, not outward and mechanical. We cannot make a man clean by washing his shirt. A consciousness of the identity of one's own soul with the great All-soul is the essence of a truly spiritual life. The uselessness of ritual, the futility of sacrifices as means to salvation are brought out. God is to be honoured by spiritual worship and not external ceremony. We cannot save ourselves by praising God. We cannot impress Him by sacrifices. The authors of the Upaniṣads had a sufficient sense of the historic to know that their protest would become ineffective if it should demand a revolution in things. They therefore ask only for a change in the spirit. They reinterpret sacrifices and allegorise them. In some passages ¹ we are asked to meditate on the horse-sacrifice.² This meditative effort helps us to realise the meaning of the sacrifice, and it is said to be quite as valuable as making a sacrifice. By giving detailed descriptions of the kind of plank, the nature of the wood, etc., they show that they are not indifferent to the sacrificial religion. While adhering to the forms they try to refine them. They say that all sacrifices are for the sake of realising the self of man. Life itself is a sacrifice. "The true sacrifice is man; his first twenty-four years are his morning libation . . . in hunger, in thirst, in abstinence from pleasure standeth his consecration. . . . In his eating and drinking and in his pleasures he keeps a holy festival, and in his laughter and feasting and marrying he sings hymns of praise. Self-discipline, generosity, straightforwardness, ahiṃsā,³ and truth in speech, these are his payments, and the bath of purification when the sacrifice is over is death."⁴ We are told how the divine nature every day sacrifices itself; by its sacrifice do we live. Sacrifice is made to mean not feasting but renunciation. Make every action, every feeling and every thought an offering to God. Let your life be one sacrament or yajña. Sometimes we are told that the sacrifices are necessary as preparations for the higher path. Nobody can tread the higher road without fulfilling the requirements of the lower. Sacrifices are necessary for the unenlightened, though they alone will not do. They give us admission to the world of the fathers, which after a temporary sojourn in the moon leads back to a new earthly existence. Ceremonialism is contrasted with spiritual worship.¹ There are occasions when the sacrificial and priestly religion strikes them as superficial, and then they give vent to all their irony. They describe a procession of dogs to march like a procession of the priests, each holding the tail of the other in front and saying, " Om! Let us eat. Om, let us drink . . . etc."² Thus the rigid ritual of the Brāhmaṇas, which gave little comfort to the weak heart of man, was held in check in the Upaniṣads.

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¹ Bṛh. Up., i. 1, 2.

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² Aśvamedha.

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³ Innocence.

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⁴ Chān. Up., iii. Cf. Isaiah lviii. 6-7: "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?" See Plato: *Euthyphron*, 14. E; *Laws*, 906, D. Jowett's Edition.

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¹ See also Chān. Up., i. 1, 10.

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² Ibid., i. 12, 4. 5.

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The attitude of the Upaniṣads is not favourable to the sacredness of the Vedas. Like the rationalistic thinkers of a later day, they adopt a double attitude towards Vedic authority. They consider the Veda to be of supernatural origin, as when they say, " Just as when a fire is laid with damp wood, clouds of smoke spread all around, so in truth from this great being, has been breathed forth the Ṛg-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sāma-Veda, the hymns of the Atharvas and the Aṅgirasas, the narratives, the histories, the sciences, the mystical problems, the poems, the proverbs, and the expositions—all these have been breathed forth from Him."³ It is also recognised that the Vedic knowledge is much inferior to the true divine insight,⁴ and will not liberate us. Nārada said: " I know the Ṛg-Veda, Sir, the Yajur, the Sāma-Veda, with all these I know only the Mantras and the sacred books, I do not know the Self."⁵ The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad says: " Two kinds of knowledge must be known, the higher and the lower. The lower knowledge is that which the Ṛg, Sāma, Atharva Veda, Ceremonial, Grammar give . . . but the higher knowledge is that by which the indestructible Brahman is apprehended."⁶

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³ Bṛh. Up., ii. 4. 10.

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⁴ See Chāndogya, v. 3. 10. Bṛh., 3. 5. 1; iv. 4. 21; vi. 2. 1. Kauṣītaki, i.; Tait., ii. 4; Kaṭha, ii. 23.

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⁵ Chān. Up., vii. 2.

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⁶ Muṇḍaka, i. 1. 4-5; Maitrāyana, vi. 21.

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THE PROBLEMS DISCUSSED IN THE UPANIṢADS

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The central theme of the Upaniṣads is the problem of philosophy. It is the search for what is true. Dissatisfaction with things and second causes suggests the questions, which we read at the beginning of the Śvetāśvatara: "Whence are we born, where do we live, and whither do we go? O, ye who know Brahman, tell us at whose command we abide here whether in pain or in pleasure. Should time or nature, or necessity or chance, or the elements be considered to be the cause, or he who is called Puruṣa, the man that is the Supreme spirit?" In the Kena Upaniṣad the pupil asks, "At whose wish does the mind sent forth proceed on its errand? At whose command does the first breath go forth, at whose wish do we utter this speech? What god directs the eye or the ear?"¹ The thinkers did not take experience to be an inexplicable datum, as common sense does. They wondered whether the report of the senses could be taken as final. Are the mental faculties by which we acquire experience self-existent, or are they themselves effects of something mightier still, which lies behind them? How can we consider physical objects, effects and products as they are, to be quite as real as their causes? There must be something ultimate at the back of it all, a self-existent, in which alone the mind can rest. Knowledge, mind, the senses and their objects are all finite and conditioned. In the field of morals we find that we cannot get true happiness from the finite. The pleasures of the world are transient, being cut off by old age and death. Only the infinite gives durable happiness. In religion we cry for eternal life. All these force upon us the conviction of a timeless being, a spiritual reality, the object of philosophical quest, the fulfilment of our desires, and the goal of religion. The seers of the Upaniṣads try to lead us to this central reality which is infinite existence (sat), absolute truth (cit), and pure delight (ānanda). The prayer of every human heart is “Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to light, lead me from death to immortality.”¹

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¹ i. 1.

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¹ Asato mā sad gamaya, tamaso mā jyotir gamaya, mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ-gamaya. Bṛh. Up., i. 3. 27.

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We shall deal with the philosophy of the Upaniṣads under the two heads of metaphysics and ethics. We shall present their views of ultimate reality, the nature of the world, and the problem of creation under metaphysics, and their analysis of the individual, his destiny, his ideal, the relation of karma to freedom, the highest conception of mukti or release, and the doctrine of rebirth under ethics.

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THE NATURE OF REALITY

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In solving the question of the nature of ultimate reality, the Upaniṣad thinkers seek to supplement the objective vision of the Vedic seers by a subjective one. The highest conception reached in the Vedic hymns was that of the one reality (Ekaṃ Sat), which realises itself in all the variety of existence. This conclusion is strengthened in the Upaniṣads, where the problem is sometimes approached by way of a philosophical analysis of the nature of the self which they call the Ātman. The etymology of this word is obscure. In the Ṛg-Veda x. 16. 3 it means breath or the vital essence. Gradually it acquired the meaning of soul or self. The theory of the true self or Ātman is not set out with any clearness or fullness of detail, nor are isolated statements connected into a coherent system. In a dialogue between the teacher Prajāpati and the pupil Indra, narrated in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad,² we find a progressive development in the definition of self through the four stages of (1) the bodily self, (2) the empirical self, (3) the transcendental self, and (4) the absolute self. The question discussed is not so much psychological as metaphysical. What is the nature of the self of man, his central being? Prajāpati opens the discussion by giving certain general characteristics which the true self should possess.

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"The self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to desire and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, *that* it is which we must try to understand."¹ It is the subject which persists throughout the changes, the common factor in the states of waking, dream, sleep, death, rebirth and final deliverance.² It is the simple truth that nothing can destroy. Death does not touch it nor vice dissolve it. Permanence, continuity, unity, eternal activity are its characteristics. It is a world self-complete. There is nothing outside of it to set against it. Modern criticism will object to the whole procedure as a case of *petitio principii*. By the characteristics of self-containedness and self-completeness being assumed, the solution is taken for granted. But as we shall see, this line of procedure has its own meaning. Prajāpati makes it clear that the self of man consists in the truly subjective, which can never become an object. It is the person that sees, not the object seen.³ It is not the bundle of qualities called the "me," but the I which remains beyond and behind inspecting all these qualities. It is the subject in the truest sense, and it can never become the object. Much of the content of the self as ordinarily used can become an object. The argument assumes that whatever becomes an object belongs to the not-self.

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We must strip away everything of our actual self alien to or different from the self. The first answer given is that the body which is born, grows up and decays and dies, is the true self. The self, according to Prajāpati, is indeed he who is seen when you look into another's eye or a pail of water or a mirror. It is suggested that we observe a picture even to the very hairs and nails. To indicate that it is not the self, Prajāpati asks Indra to adorn himself, put on the best clothes and look again into the water and the mirror, and he sees his likeness well adorned with best clothes and clean. A doubt occurs to Indra. "As this self in the shadow or the water is well adorned when the body is well adorned, well dressed when the body is well dressed, well cleaned when the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled, and perish, in fact, as soon as the body perishes. I see no good in this.”¹ Indra approaches his teacher Prajāpati, and after another long interval is told that “he who moves about happy in dreams is the self.” The true self is not the body which is exposed to all suffering and imperfections, which is a material phenomenon. The body is only an instrument used by consciousness, while consciousness is not the product of the body. And now Indra is told that the dreaming subject is the self, but he feels another difficulty.

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“Though it is true that that self is not rendered faulty by faults of body, nor struck when it is struck, nor lamed when it is lamed, yet it is as if they struck him in dreams, as if they chased him. He becomes even conscious as it were of pain and sheds tears, therefore I see no good in this.”² Prajāpati took the dream states instead of other mental experiences, because dreams being more independent of body are crucial in their nature. The self is supposed to roam untrammelled in dreams. In them the mind is said to float free of the accidents of body. This view equates the self with the ever-growing and changing mental experiences. This is the empirical self, and Indra rightly recognises that this empirical self is subject to the accidents of experience. It cannot be the subject, for every moment it is changing. Though it is independent of body, dream states do not seem to be self-existent, which the true self or Ātman must be. The ego dependent on the limitations of time and birth cannot be said to be eternal. The self tethered to a local and temporal environment is a creature of time. It is the wanderer in the world of saṃsāra. It constructs for itself an imperfect world out of imperfect data. It is not indestructible, nor has it boundless freedom. We seem to require a subject as the ground and sustainer of all experience, a vaster reality of which the dream states as well as waking experience are only imperfect revelations.

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A mere flux of states cannot be sustained by itself. The empirical self is not eternal in its own right. Indra again approaches Prajāpati, explains to him his position, and after a long time is taught. “When a man being asleep, reposing and at perfect rest, sees no dreams, that is the self.”¹ Prajāpati understands Indra’s difficulty. The self could not be reduced to a series of states, for that would be to explain away the reality of a permanent ego, and make Ātman subject to the vicissitudes of our chance experiences. Indra has to be taught that the objects of experience require a permanent subject by which they could be experienced. Prajāpati intended to bring out how, while a grin required a cat, everywhere except in Alice’s wonderland, a cat need not always have a grin. The object depends upon the subject, but not the subject on the object in the same sense. Without the self there can be no knowledge, no art, no morality. Objects out of relation to a self are non-existent. From the subject are all objects and the subject itself is not a thing among other things. To enable Indra to realise that the self is the subject of all experiences, Prajāpati employs the method of abstraction which has its own disadvantages. Our life is ordinarily busy with things. The world is too much with us. Our self is lost in feelings, desires and imaginations, and does not know what it really is.

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Leading the life of mere objectivity, absorbed in the things of nature, ever busy with the active pursuits of the world, we do not want to waste a moment’s thought on the first principle of all things—the self of man. Knowledge is taken for granted. To reflect on it, to understand its implications, means mental strain. In the history of European thought the question of the possibility of knowledge is a late one, but when it was put, it was realised that knowledge was impossible without what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception, what Plotinus referred to as the “accompaniment” by the soul of its own mental activities. The most elementary presentation requires the reality of self. In the most apparently passive perceptions we realise the activity of the self. All changes, all experiences, assume a central self. The changes themselves are recognised as changes within a whole, which we are trying to actualise. Prajāpati wishes to bring out the necessity of this self by urging that the self continuously exists, even when the waking or the dreaming experience is suspended. In sleep, deep and dreamless, we have no felt objects of experience, but we cannot on that account say there is no self. Prajāpati assumes that Indra will admit the reality of a self in sleep, for the continuity of consciousness, despite the temporal gaps, cannot otherwise be accounted for.

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Devadatta, after good sleep, continues to be Devadatta, since his experiences unite themselves to the system which existed at the time when he went to sleep. They link themselves to his thoughts and do not fly to any other's. This continuity of experience requires us to admit a permanent self underlying all contents of consciousness. That which exists in sleep without any objects to contemplate is the self. The mirror is not shattered simply because nothing is seen in it. Prajāpati tries to bring out the absolute supremacy of the subject over the object, the truth of Yājñavalkya's statement that even when all objects are extinguished, the subject persists in its own light. "When the sun has set, when the moon has set, and when the fire is put out, the self alone is his light."¹ But Indra was too much of a psychologist for Prajāpati. He felt that this self, freed from all bodily experience, from the shapeless mass of dreams, etc., this objectless self, is a barren fiction. If the self is not what it knows, feels and reacts upon, if it is divorced from it and thus emptied of its content, what remains? "Nothing," said Indra. "To be free from everything is to be nothing."² Gautama, the Buddha, takes up the analogy of a tree and asks what is that tree which is supposed to remain, after we tear away its leaves, hew down its branches, strip off its bark, etc.? Peel off layer after layer of an onion, and what remains? Nothing.

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Bradley points out: "The ego that pretends to be anything either before or beyond its concrete psychical filling is a gross fiction and a mere monster, and for no purpose admissible."³ On this view in dreamless sleep there is no self at all. Locke declares that every drowsy nod explodes the self theory. "In sleep and trances the mind exists not—there is no time, no succession of ideas. To say the mind exists without thinking is a contradiction, nonsense, nothing."¹ Indra seems to have been an empiricist ages before Locke and Berkeley. "If the soul in a perfectly dreamless sleep thinks, feels, and wills nothing, is the soul then at all, and if it is, how is it?" asks Lotze. "How often has the answer been given, that if this could happen, the soul would have no being. Why have we not the courage to say that as often as this happens the soul is not?"² Indra has the courage to declare it.³ "It is indeed destroyed." This has an important lesson which is again and again forgotten in Indian thought. To deny the life without is to destroy the god within. Those who think that we reach the highest point attainable, in pure subjectivity must turn to the dialogue of Indra and Prajāpati. The condition freed from the limits imposed by the organism, from time and space, from the existence of objects, is simple annihilation, according to Indra.

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This contentless ego, this abstract cogito of Descartes, this formal unity of Kant, this objectless subject supposed to stand behind, unrelated to all empirical consciousness, is an impossibility. Philosophical reflection as well as psychological analysis leads to this result. But Prajāpati was trying to emphasise the identity of the self which is unaffected by the changes of experience. He was anxious to point out that while the self was not exclusive of conscious states, it was not the conscious states. Dr. McTaggart puts the whole point thus: "What does the self include? Everything of which it is conscious. What does it exclude? Equally—Everything of which it is conscious. What can it say is not inside it? Nothing. What can it say is not outside it? A single abstraction. And any attempt to remove the paradox destroys the self. For the two sides are inevitably connected. If we try to make it a distinct individual by separating it from all other things, it loses all content, of which it can be conscious, and so loses the very individuality which we started by trying to preserve. If, on the other hand, we try to save its content, by emphasising the inclusion at the expense of the exclusion, then the consciousness vanishes; and since the self has no contents, but the objects of which it is conscious, the contents vanish also.” ¹ Indra shows the risks in conceiving the self as a transcendental one.

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The self must be shown to be the true life of the whole, and not a mere abstraction. Hence the next step, when Indra explains to Prajāpati his difficulty in the words, “in truth that dreamless sleeping subject does not know himself that he is, nor does he know anything that exists. He is gone to utter annihilation, I see no good in this.” ² Prajāpati points out how it is an identity, running in and through differences. The whole world is the one process of the self-realisation of the absolute thought. “Maghavan! ³ This body is mortal and all is subject to death. It is the abode of the self, which is immortal and without body. He is the person of the eye, the eye itself is the instrument of seeing. He who knows, let me smell this, he is the self, the nose is the instrument of smelling, etc.” ⁴ The self is shown to be not an abstract formal principle, but an active universal consciousness, existing, to adopt Hegel’s phraseology, both in itself and for itself. It is simple self-sameness as well as varied distinctions. It is both subject and object. The objects we know in experience are based on it. The true infinite self is not the self which is simply not finite. It is none of the limited things, but yet the basis of all of them. It is the universal self, which is immanent as well as transcendent. The whole universe lives and breathes in it.

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“The moon and the sun are its eyes, the four quarters of the sky its ears, the wind its breath.” ⁵ It is the blazing light that burns in the deeps of personality, the universal ākāśa from which all creatures proceed,¹ the vital principle of creation,² the subject in which the entire world moves trembling.³ There is nothing outside it. It contains all consciousness of objects implicitly. There is nothing in the universe which is not involved in the infinite self in us. This self which embraces all is the sole reality containing within itself all the facts of nature and all the histories of experience. Our small selves are included in it and transcended by it. This is the subject which is more than the flux of presentations, which are only imperfect revelations of it. All our states of consciousness revolve round this central light. Abolish it, they vanish. Without a subject there will be no flux, no order of sensations in space or sequences in time. It renders possible memory and introspection, knowledge and morality. The Upaniṣads contend that this subject is the universal ground which is in all individuals. It is hidden in all things and pervades all creation.

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"There is no second outside it, no other distinct term."⁴ "As breathing he is named breath, as speaking speech, as seeing eye, as hearing ear, as understanding mind, all these are but names for his operations."⁵ It is only the self thus understood that can be looked upon as the permanent subject persisting in waking and dreaming, death and sleep, bondage and liberation. It is present throughout, surveying all the worlds. It is the universal subject and yet the universal object. It sees and yet sees not. As the Upaniṣad has it, "When then he sees not, yet is he seeing, although he sees not; since for the seer there is no interruption of seeing because he is imperishable; but there is no second beside him, no other distinct from him, for him to see."⁶ The self is the whole. "I indeed am this whole universe."⁷

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² viii. 3-12.

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¹ viii. 7. 1.

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² See Bṛh. Up., iv. 4. 3.

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³ viii. 7. 3.

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¹ viii. 9. 1.

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² viii. 10. 2. 3.

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¹ viii. ii. I.

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¹ Bṛh. Up., iv. 3. 6.

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² Bradley : Ethical Studies, p. 52.

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³ Appearance and Reality, p. 89.

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¹ Berkeley's Works, vol. i. p. 34.

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² Metaphysics, Eng. Translation, vol. ii., p. 317.

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³ Vināśamevāpīto bhavati, Chān. Up., viii. 11. 1-2.

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¹ *Hegelian Cosmology*, sec. 27.

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² viii. 11. 1.

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³ Another name for Indra.

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⁴ viii. 12. Cf. Plato, who distinguishes in the *Timæus*, two souls, one immortal and the other mortal. The mortal soul consists of passions and affections. It is the empirical ego which identifies itself with the perishing world of change and death. The immortal soul is the intelligent principle common to man and the world, the divine spark enclosed in human personality (*Timæus* and *Phædo*). We have also the same distinction in Aristotle’s *intellectus agens* as opposed to perishing mind and memory.

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⁵ Muṇḍaka, i. 1; Chān., iii. 13. 7.

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¹ Chān., i. 91.

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² Chān., i. 11. 5.

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³ Kaṭha, vi. 1.

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⁴ Bṛh., iv. 3. 23; Chān., viii. 1. 3.

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⁵ Bṛh., i. 4. 7; Kauṣītaki, iii.

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⁶ Bṛh., iv. 3. 23.

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⁷ Aham eva idam sarvo'smi.

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This universal self by its very nature cannot be perceived. As Śaṃkara puts it, "The witness self illumines consciousness, but never itself is in consciousness." It is not a datum of experience, not an object, though all objects are for it. It is not a thought, but all thoughts are for it. It is not a thing seen, but is the principle of all seeing. As Kant would say, the condition of the empirically known is not the known itself. "What I must presuppose in order to know an object," says Kant, "I cannot know as an object." The subject of all experience cannot itself be an experience. If it is experience, the question arises, by whom is it known? Knowledge always works dually. This self, therefore, is indefinable. Like all ultimate principles, it has only to be accepted. It is the explanation of all else, though it itself remains unexplained. The old difficulty of Comte that the subject cannot turn round and catch itself is not altogether imaginary. "The soul which is not this or that, nor aught else, is intangible, for it cannot be laid hold of."¹ The Upaniṣads refuse to identify the self with the body, or the series of mental states or the presentation continuum or the stream of consciousness. The self cannot be a relation which requires a ground of relations, nor a connexion of contents, which is unintelligible without an agent who connects. We are obliged to accept the reality of a universal consciousness which ever accompanies the contents of consciousness and persists even when there are no contents. This fundamental identity, which is the presupposition of both self and not-self, is called the Ātman. None can doubt its reality.²

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¹ Bṛh., iii. 7. 3; iv. 4. 22.

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² Na hi kaścit sandigdhe ahaṃ vā nāhaṃ veti. Bhāmatī.

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The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad gives us an analysis of consciousness leading to the same conclusion. We shall start with a free rendering of what it says on this point.³ The soul has three conditions which are all included in a fourth. They are waking, dreaming, sleeping, and what is called turīya. The first condition is that of wakefulness, where the self is conscious of the common world of external objects. It enjoys the gross things. Here the dependence on the body is predominant. The second condition is that of dreaming, where the self enjoys subtle things,⁴ fashions for itself a new world of forms with the materials of its waking experience. The spirit is said to roam freely unfettered by the bonds of the body. The third is the condition of sound sleep, where we have neither dreams nor desires. It is called suṣupti. The soul is said to become temporarily one with Brahman and enjoy bliss. In deep sleep we are lifted above all desires and freed from the vexations of spirit. The oppositions are, so to say, lost in this pure-objectless-knowing subject condition.¹ Śaṁkara observes that the phenomena of duality caused by the action of the mind are present in the other two conditions, but absent here. In several passages we are told that we taste the nature of absolute bliss in dreamless sleep, where a man is cut off from the distracting world. The soul is divine in origin, though clogged with the flesh. In sleep it is said to be released from the shackles of the body and to gain back its own nature. We read in an Aristotelian fragment, “ whenever the soul is alone and by itself in sleep, it recovers by its proper nature.”² The natural divinity of the soul reasserts itself when freed from the tyranny of the flesh. “ He giveth his beloved truth in sleep.” The analogy of eternal dreamless sleep is used to bring out how all outer activities are then suppressed. But there was the likelihood of its being confused with sheer unconsciousness. So the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad points out that the highest is not this dreamless sleep, but another, a fourth state of the soul, a pure intuitional consciousness, where there is no knowledge of objects internal or external. In deep sleep the spirit dwells in a region far above the changeful life of sense in absolute union with Brahman. The turīya condition brings out the positive aspect of the negative emphasised in the condition of deep sleep. “ The fourth is not that which is conscious of the subjective, nor that which is conscious of the objective, nor that which is conscious of both, nor that which is simple consciousness, nor that which is an all-sentient mass, nor that which is all darkness. It is unseen, transcendent, inapprehensible, uninferrable, unthinkable, indescribable, the sole essence of the consciousness of self, the completion of the world, the ever peaceful, all blissful, the one unit, this indeed is the Ātman.”³

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³ 1. 2. 7.

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⁴ See Bṛh., iv. 3. 9. 14.

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¹ See Bṛh., ii. 1; Kauṣītaki, iv.; Chān., vi. 8. 1; Praśna., iv. 4; iv 3. 7.

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² Fragment 2.

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³ i. 7.

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It is symbolised by the Aumkara, with its parts of A-U-M, the waking, the dreaming and the sleeping states. It is not an exclusive self, but the common ground of all, their basis of identity.¹ In deep sleep we may be said to reach an eternal unity in which all distinctions vanish and the entire universe is obliterated. But since this cannot be considered the highest state, a higher positive is suggested. To the empirical individual, if the not-self goes, his individuality also vanishes. So there is a suspicion that the abolition of the objects would reduce the self into a thin abstraction, but in the highest universal self the reality of all objects is included. Objects of the world are known and loved by us only in so far as they enter our self, which comprehends in itself all objects of the universe and has nothing outside. It is the unchanged and persistent identity which continues in the midst of all change. The moods pass and vary but the self remains the same. It has no beginning, no end, though the objects of which it is conscious have a beginning and an end. "Never has the cessation of consciousness been experienced, or witnessed directly; or if it has been, then the witness, the experiencer, himself still remains behind as the continued embodiment of that same consciousness."² It is the foundation of all existence, the one witness to and the only possible support of all we know, though the nature of the dependence of the objects of knowledge on the subject so insistently repeated is not very clear. The three conditions of the self, waking, dreaming, sleeping, together with that which comprehends them all, are called respectively the Viśva, the Taijasa, the Prājña and the Turīya states.³

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¹ Triṣu dhāmasu yat tulyam sāmānyam—Gauḍapāda's Kārikās, i. 22.

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² See Devī Bhāgavata, iii. 32. 15-16.

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³ The Buddhist discrimination of the four planes of kāma, rūpa, arūpa and lokottara, answers to this division.

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From this analysis of the three states of dreaming, waking and sleeping, it follows that all of them are unreal, though not non-existent. "What is naught at the beginning and naught at the end must surely be naught in the middle."⁴ Judged by it, waking experience is not real. If it is said that the dream states are unreal since they do not cohere with the rest of our experience, may it not be urged that the waking experience does not cohere with dreams? Dreams may be coherent within themselves, even as waking experience is within its own bounds. The worlds seem to be real only in relation to the particular moods of the self. It is not right to apply the standard of waking experience to the dream world and condemn it. Dreaming and waking experiences are both unreal though in different degrees. The condition of dreamless sleep is one in which we have no distinct cognitions of anything internal or external. It is a distinctionless mass under the pall of darkness, comparable to Hegel’s night, in which all cows are black. We have here the negative condition of the highest state, freedom from sorrow. But Ātman is not this absence of unhappiness. It is positive bliss. It is neither waking nor dreaming nor sleep, but the fourth witnessing to as well as transcending the three. The negative descriptions given indicate that we as finite cannot know the positive nature of it. The fourth is realised, not so much by negating the three as by transcending them all. It is impossible for us finite beings to define the character of the ideal reality, though the Upaniṣads are quite emphatic that it is not a blank. Yet to refute false ideas of the highest and to point the truth that it is no abstraction, they indulge in inadequate concepts. Strictly speaking we cannot say anything of it. Yet for purposes of discussion, we are obliged to use intellectual concepts with their limited validity.

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⁴ Gauḍapāda's Kārikā, i. 6.

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The problem of the self is one of the most important discussed in the Upaniṣads. It occurs again as the Adhyātma Vidyā in the Bhagavadgītā and the Vedānta Sūtras. The analysis of the nature of self is the legacy of the Upaniṣads bequeathed to the subsequent systems of thought. It has given rise to many misconceptions. Contradictory doctrines of the nature of self are held by Buddha and Śaṃkara, Kapila and Patañjali, whose views can be traced to the Upaniṣads. It was not the intention of the Upaniṣads to make of the deeper self an abstract nothingness. It is the fullest reality, the completest consciousness, and not a mere negative calm, untroubled by any unrest and unpolluted by any blot or blemish. The logic of thought has in it a negative movement, where it rises by the repudiation of the finite, but this is only a stage in the onward march. By the negative process the self has to recognise that its essence is not in its finitude or self-sufficiency. By the positive method it finds its true self in the life and being of all. All things exist within this true self. Some Buddhists make of the self mere emptiness, and on this assumption rightly dismiss it as an abstraction of the metaphysician. We cannot find this self in any corner of the field of consciousness. Not finding it there, we rush to the conclusion that it is nothing. The Sāṅkhya takes it to be a simple and pure, though passive, spirit, which in spite of its apparent simplicity has some character and uniqueness, and so we get the doctrine of the boundless plurality of souls. Some Vedāntins adopt the view that the true self or Brahman is pure, calm, peaceful and untroubled, and hold that there is only one self. By throwing the emphasis on the passive side they run the risk of reducing it to mere emptiness. There are Buddhistic sects which reduce the self to mere intelligence, which can somehow think without any contents.

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BRAHMAN

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We may now proceed to define the ultimate reality from the objective side, when it is called Brahman¹. In the Rg-Veda we have seen that the monistic idea was arrived at. The Upaniṣads undertake the task of a more logical definition of the Eternal Spirit ever acting and ever resting. In another place we have traced the progress from the lower imperfect conceptions to the more adequate ones as formulated in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad.¹ In chapter iii the son approaches the father with the request to teach him the nature of reality from which all things flow and to which all return. The son is given the general features of Brahman, and is asked to discover the content which satisfies these requirements. "That from which these beings are born, that in which when born they live, and that into which they enter at their death, that is Brahman."² Things of the world are ever changing their forms, and they cannot be considered to be real in an ultimate sense. Is there anything unalterably fixed underlying the universe of changing things, nāmarūpa, name and form, as the Upaniṣads call them? The son considers matter to be the ultimate reality. It is the most prominent aspect of the outer world. This view is held by the lokāyatas, or the materialists. The son soon discovers that matter cannot account for the life phenomena. Vegetable growth requires a different explanation. He hits upon prāṇa or life as the ultimate principle.³ Matter does not hold the secret of life, though life cannot exist without matter. There is something in life which enables it to absorb and transmute the inorganic elements. This something is the vital principle which in man helps to change the vegetable product into blood, bone and muscle. It is the principle which pervades the universe and binds human beings with the rest of creation.⁴ The son is sure that life belongs to a different order from matter though prāṇa is the essence of the body.⁵

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¹ The question how Brahman came to denote the supreme reality of the Upaniṣads has been answered in different ways by different scholars. Haug holds that Brahman means prayer, being derived from the root Bṛh, to swell or to grow. It is that which swells or grows. Sacred prayers cause the growth, and then it came to mean the force of nature, and later the supreme reality. According to Roth, Brahman is first the force of will directed to the gods, then it came to mean a sacred formula, and then the Absolute. Oldenberg thinks that in the Vedic times, when the world was peopled with many gods and mysterious forces capable of producing happiness and misery, the most powerful man was the medicine man, who wielded the magic spell and produced whatever effect was desired. Then Brahman meant a magic spell. During the time of the Brāhmaṇas it referred to the sacred hymns used in the sacrifices. Perhaps some of these hymns were used as spells for producing magical effects. The word was slowly transferred to the central energy which produces the world. Deussen

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¹ See *Reign of Religion*, chap. xiii.

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² iii. 1.

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³ Prāṇa means breath. See R.V., i. 66. 1; iii. 53. 21; x. 59. 6.

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⁴ See Praśna, ii.

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⁵ Bṛh.. i. 3. 90. See Chān., vi. 2. 4.

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holds that Brahman is prayer, which elevates the soul, when we perceive the truth, and the truth came to be denoted by the word. Max Müller traces it to "word," as is evident from the name Bṛhaspati or Vācaspati, lord of speech. That which utters is Brahman (S.S., pp. 52, 70). We need not trouble ourselves about the etymology of the word. To us, it is clear, Brahman means reality, which grows, breathes or swells.

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Again he is dissatisfied with the solution of prāṇa as the ultimate reality, for conscious phenomena which we come across in the animal world are not explicable by the principle of life. Manas, or perceptual consciousness, is a product distinct from life and matter. It seems to be the crown of the vital process. So the son believes that manas is Brahman. Even this will not suffice, for there are intellectual facts which mere perceptual consciousness does not take into account. Vijñāna or intelligence is Brahman.¹ Some schools of Buddhism adopt this view. The son realises that even intellectual self-consciousness is incomplete, being subject to discord and imperfection. It is the aim of the Upaniṣads to point out that elements of duality and externality persist at the intellectual level, however much we may try to overcome them. In knowledge and morality we have the subject-object relation. There must be something higher than mere intellect, where existence is no longer formulated in terms of knowledge. The unity of existence requires that we must transcend the intellectual level. Thought, as ordinarily understood, deals with objects viewed as beyond or other than the process of thinking. It reaches outwards to a somewhat other than and contrasted with itself. Reality is different from thought, and can be reached in the turīya state of highest immediacy, which transcends thought and its distinctions, where the individual coincides with the central reality. Ānanda or delight is the highest fruition, where the knower, the known and the knowledge become one. Here the philosophical quest terminates, the suggestion being that there is nothing higher than ānanda. This ānanda is active enjoyment or unimpeded exercise of capacity. It is not sinking into nothingness, but the perfection of being.² "The discerning see by their superior knowledge the Ātman which shines all bliss and immortality."³ Strictly speaking, we cannot give any account of the highest reality of ānanda. Even the question whether it is abstract or concrete is illogical. Intellectual necessities require us to give some description. It is truer to consider it concrete than abstract.

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