A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.s1.3

c4.s1.3

5. The Vedas, the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanishads have all of them been recognised from times immemorial as "Śruti" or Revelation. Let us try to find out what the real meaning of this expression is. It has been customary among all religious to regard their basal works as being revealed to them by God. Some regard their religious works as having been revealed to them in the midst of light and thunder, either from without or within. Others regard them as having been delivered to them in the form of significant sounds. In this way have the Bible and the Koran, like the Vedas and the Upanishads, been regarded as revelations of God to man. The real meaning of Revelation seems to the present writer to be not any external message delivered to man from without, but a divine afflatus springing from within, the result of inspiration through god-intoxication. It was for this reason that St. Paul said that it was not he but God that spoke through him. It was for this reason that Jesus Christ advised his disciples to take no thought as to what they were going to speak, but that they should speak straightway and then God would speak through them. It was for this reason likewise that Plato explained in his *Ion* the origin of poetical composition through the afflatus of god-intoxication: “The authors of those great poems do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs in a state of divine insanity......Thus every rhapsodist or poet......is excellent in proportion to the extent of his participation in the divine influence, and the degree in which the Muse itself has descended on him. ........And thus it appears to me....that these transcendent poems are not human, as the work of men, but divine, as coming from God.” This passage gives us a very good account of the way in which all poetry, and likewise, all philosophy worthy of the name comes to be produced. It was in this way that we may say that the Vedic seers composed their hymns, and the Upanishadic philosophers set forth intellectual arguments. It is futile to discuss, as the Naiyāyikas and the Mīmāṃsakas later discussed, as to whether the Vedas and the Upanishads are “apaurusheya” or “paurusheya.” The Naiyāyikas maintained that these works were “paurusheya”, that is, composed by God. The Mīmāṃsakas, on the other other hand, believing in the eternity of sound, said that they were "apaurusheya", that is, they were composed neither by man nor by God, but that, in the form of sounds in which they have come down to us, they existed from all eternity. As contrasted with both these schools, the Vedāntins maintain that the Vedas and the Upanishads are "apaurusheya", in the sense that they were inspired by God—*purushaprayatnam vinā prakaṭibhūta*. This last meaning of the word "apaurusheya" comes quite close to the meaning which we have tried to assign to the word Revelation; and thus we may see how the Vedas and the Upanishads must, like the basal literature of all other religions, be regarded as having been composed by seers in a state of god-intoxication.