A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c2.11

Language: English

c2.11.1

6. The three-fold purpose of the Work.—As may have been noticed from our previous discussion, the two chief purposes of the Work with which we have been hitherto concerned are to put into the hands of the Orientalists a new method for treating the problems of Indian Philosophy, and into the hands of European Philosophers a new material for exercising their intellects on. But these are not the only purposes with which the Work has been written. The ultimate purpose of the Work is the spiritual purpose. To that end, everything else is subservient. Time and oft have the Upanishads compelled a spiritual admiration from all Oriental Scholars, both European and Indian. Dr. Goldstücker said that the Upanishads formed the basis of the enlightened faith of India. R. C. Dutt, when he read the Upanishads, felt a new emotion in his heart, and saw a new light before his eyes. Ram Mohan Roy felt his whole life transformed when he happened to read a page of the Īśa Upanishad flying past him. Pratt regards the Upanishads as essentially a religious rather than a philosophical work. Geden acknowledges how all the attempts at religious reform in India have taken their rise from the study of the Upanishads. Mead has gone to the length of calling the Upanishads a World-Scripture. From these utterances it may be seen in what high spiritual esteem the Upanishads have been held by Thinkers, both of the East and the West.

c2.11.2

If we may say so without exaggeration, there is no piece of literature in the whole realm of Indian Philosophy, except possibly the Bhagavadgītā, which is so truly religious as the Upanishads, and demands from young India an intellectual justification of her faith in the light of modern thought. Those who have observed the course of the development of European thought during the last half century know how very much it owes its existence, its inspiration, and its fulfilment to the establishment of the Gifford Lectures. It is a good sign of the times that the University of Calcutta should have risen to the occasion, and been a pioneer in establishing Lectureships by means of which a similar ambition might be fulfilled in India. The Upanishads well deserve to constitute a very important chapter in the World's Philosophy of Religion. It will not be possible hurriedly to estimate the contribution which the Upanishads are likely to make to the formation of tendencies in Contemporary Thought. The trend of the present volume is to show how all the teachings of Upanishadic Philosophy converge towards the realisation of the mystical goal. We do not wish to enter here into any philosophical disquisition about the nature and meaning of Mysticism; nor have we any desire to discuss how the Mystic criterion of reality compares with those of the Idealist, the Pragmatist, and the Realist.

c2.11.3

The veracity and the virility of any metataphysical theory is to be gauged by its power of making life more divine, and therefore more worth while living. Readers of the last Chapter of this volume may feel that, after all, the consummation that the Upanishadic philosophy affords is the realisation of the divine in the Individual Soul, and that it is not seen there working itself out in the social and political affairs of humanity. The practical application of the spiritual philosophy was, however, to come later on from the Bhagavadgītā, which taught a life of a disinterested activism on a spiritual basis, so that the divine purpose may come to be realised in the affairs of men. It cannot be denied that the Upanishads supply the philosophic foundation upon which the Bhagavadgītā later on erects its theory of spiritual activism. In either case, however, the mystical motive has been most predominant. It would be a problem for the Philosophy of the Immediate Future to place Mysticism on a truly philosophical basis. Rational Mysticism, which has been hitherto regarded as a contradiction in terms, must now be a truism. The author shall feel his labours amply rewarded if he finds that his exposition of the Upanishadic Philosophy makes a contribution, however small, to the realisation of this Ideal.