A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c2.10.4

c2.10.4

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.