A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.2

c4.2

1. In the History of Indian Thought, every revival of the study of the Upanishads has synchronised with a great religious movement. When, about two thousand four hundred years ago, the author of the Bhagavadgītā tried for the first time to synthesise the truths of Upanishadic philosophy in that immortal Celestial Poem, it was evidently with the desire of giving a new impulse to religious thought and thus laying the foundations of a truly mystical religion which should prove the guiding light of all mystical activities for ages to come. Then, about twelve hundred years later, when for a second time the architectonic builders of Vedāntie philosophy came to construct their Systems of Reality out of the material placed at their disposal by the Upanishadic Seers, there was again witnessed a phenomenon of a new religious revival, this time the religious revival taking the shape more of an intellectual than of a purely mystical religion. In the twentieth century to-day, after the lapse of another twelve hundred years, under the impact of Western civilisation and Western culture, supported by the infinite progress of modern science and an all-round study of the philosophies and religions of the world, we in India, who are the inheritors of a great spiritual past that has been left to us by our Upanishadic ancestors, stand face to face with a very difficult problem, namely, that of reconciling mysticism with intellectualism in such a way that any thought-construction that we might put forth on the basis of the eternal truths of Ātmanic experience suggested to us by the Upanishads, might harmoniously synthesise the claims of Science and Philosophy and Religion, so that our philosophical view of reality may not be disturbed but may only be supported by the advance of modern science, and both our scientific and philosophic views be made to redound in such a way to the glory of God that "the highest link of Nature's chain may only be seen to be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair." The present writer believes that the Upanishads are capable of giving us a view of reality which would satisfy the scientific, the philosophic, as well as the religious aspirations of man; because they give us a view which may be seen to be supported by a direct, first-hand, intuitive, mystical experience, which no science can impeach, which all philosophy may point to as the ultimate goal of its endeavour, and which may be seen at once to be the immanent truth in the various forms of religion which only quarrel because they cannot converge.