A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c2.10

Language: English

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5. The Upanishads and Contemporary Thought.—The comparison of Upanishadic Philosophy with Kant suggests the parallelism, in a number of points, of the philosophical thought of the Upanishads with the tendencies of Contemporary Thought. Time was when Upanishadic Philosophy was compared with the doctrine of Plato and Parmenides; time was yet again when it was compared with the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer; we, however, who live in the world of Contemporary Thought can scarcely afford to neglect its parallelisms with the tendencies of the thinking world of to-day. Anybody who will take the trouble to read the argument of the present work will see how very provocative of thought it would be for one who is interested in the tendencies of contemporary philosophy. Here, in the Upanishads, we have doctrines of Absolute Monism, of Personalistic Idealism, of Pluralism, of Solipsism, of Self-realisation, of the relation of Intellect to Intuition, and so forth,—doctrines which have divided the philosophic world of to-day. Had it not been for the fact that Comparative Philosophy, like a virgin consecrated to God, bears no fruit, the parallelism of Upanishadic Philosophy with the tendencies of Contemporary Thought would have even invited a volume on Comparative Philosophy. What we, however, would much rather like to have is a constructive than a comparative philosophy.

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With the advance of knowledge and with the innumerable means for communication and interchange of thought, the whole world is being made one, and the body of Western philosophers could ill afford to neglect the systems of Indian philosophy, and more particularly the Upanishads. The same problems which at the present day divide a Bradley from a Bosanquet, a Ward from a Royce, a Pringle-Pattison from a McTaggart, also divided the Upanishadic philosophers of ancient times. Here we have the same conflict of views about the relation between the Absolute and the Individual, the nature of Immortality, the problem of Appearance, and the Norm of human conduct. The *élan vital*, which, in Bergson, wears not much more than a physiological aspect, appears in Āruṇi (Chh. VI. 11) as a great organic force, only much more psychologised and spiritualised. The pyramidal depiction of Reality as on the basis of Space and Time with the qualitative emergence of Life and Mind and Deity in the course of evolution, which we meet with in Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, is present in those old Upanishads only with a stress on the inverted process of Deity as the primary existent, from which came forth Mind and Life and Space and Time in the course of devolution.

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The very acute analysis of the epistemology of Self-consciousness, which we meet with in the Upanishads, can easily hold its own against any similar doctrine even of the most advanced thinker of to-day, thus nullifying once for all the influence of that ill-conceived and half-thought-out bluster of an early European writer on the Upanishads that " they are the work of a rude age, a deteriorated race, and a barbarous and unprogressive community." Our presentation of the problems of Upanishadic philosophy would also lay to rest all the charges that are made against it on the supposition that it is a block-philosophy and does not allow of any differentiation inside it. For is it not a familiar charge that we hear made against Indian philosophy, that it is all Pantheism, Determinism, Karmism, A-moralism, and Pessimism? It would be out of place here to answer each and all of the charges that have been thus made against Indian Philosophy in general, and Upanishadic Philosophy in particular. If our present work brings to the notice of these critics the variety and wealth of Upanishadic ideas on every conceivable subject in the domain of philosophy, it should have fulfilled its *raison d'etre*. Thus, to say that the Upanishads teach only "an unreal morality, or a mere Antinomianism”, would entirely miss the mark, because it would be a flank-attack and not directed against the main body of Upanishadic doctrine.

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Finally, to say that the Upanishads teach only a Pessimism is to entirely miss the tenor of Upanishadic Philosophy. For the simple reason that there is a phase of Pessimism in a certain portion of Upanishadic teaching, it does not follow that all Upanishadic teaching is pessimistic. It has been customary with European writers on Indian subjects to suppose that all was pessimism and sorrow before the days of Tagore in India, and that Tagore brought the evangel of joy and bliss from the West. It is nothing of the kind. Tagore’s philosophy of joy and bliss is only the crest-wave of that great huge ocean of blissful existence depicted in Upanishadic philosophy. If the present book points to any moral, it is the moral of the life of beatific vision enjoyed at all times by the Mystic. When Lord Ronaldshay, therefore, fixing himself, among other things, on a passage of the Upanishads, says in his book on “India, a Bird’s eye-view” that pessimism infects the whole physical and intellectual life of India, and that the Indian Philosophers have never been able to paint any positive picture of bliss (p. 313), with all due deference to him we must ask him to see if the final upshot of Upanishadic Philosophy, as we have depicted it, would not enable him to revise his judgment.

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To the charge, finally, that even supposing that the Upanishads teach a doctrine of bliss, the bliss of the Indian is one thing and that of the Christian another, that the one is negative while the other is positive, (“Upanishads and Life” pp. 69, 70), we may say, as against Mr. Urquhart, in the first place, that we cannot conceive of any bliss being negative, for it would be a contradiction in terms, and in the second place, that this bliss is the same for all human beings whether they live in India or in Europe, for where the same intellect and feeling and will have been ordained to mankind by God, He has also made provision for a like consummation in each case. Oldenberg indeed has the candidness to admit, which these critics have not, that the opposite view is at least equally tenable that it should be inconceivable how the world which is "pierced by Brahman through and through" should ever wear a pessimistic aspect (pp. 115-116). Let those, however, who wish to find sorrow in the Upanishads, find sorrow, and those who wish to find bliss, find bliss! πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος.