A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.s3.1

Language: English

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truth of philosophy. The poetical method is applicable to philosophy where an emotion is to be created about the nature of reality, or when this reality becomes a fact of mystical apprehension. When such is the case, the seer gives no heed to the principles of metrification, and the metre he employs is wild and irregular, though at the same time pleasing by its wildness. "Like the Corybantes, who lose all control over their reason in the enthusiasm of the secret dance, and during this supernatural possession are excited to the rhythm and harmony which they communicate to men, these poets create their admired songs in a state of divine insanity." And thus, as we may naturally expect, the Upanishadic poetry is mystical, moral, or metaphysical, rather than heroic, or lyrical, or given to the description of nature or love. It may be remembered that the moral tone of Upanishadic poetry is strictly subservient to its metaphysical implications, and it does not rise, as in the case of the hymn to Varuṇa in Ṛigveda VII. 88, to an expression of the innermost feelings of the human heart, to a confession of sin, or to a prayer for gracious atonement to divinity. The poetry of the Īśopanishad is a commixture of moral, mystical and metaphysical elements; that of the Kenopanishad is psycho-metaphysical; that of the Kaṭhopanishad has as its chief topic the teaching about the Immortality of the Soul and the practical way to the realisation of Ātman;

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the poetry of the Śvetāśvatara rises in the sixth chapter to a theistic description of God, and a representation of Him as *causa sui*; it is only in the Muṇḍakopanishad that we find the highest emotion of which the Upanishads are capable. This of course is not yet of the highest order, but we may say that never elsewhere in the Upanishads do we find the stage of emotionalism that is reached in the Muṇḍaka. There are, however, a number of passages in the Upanishads which are couched in prose, and yet are highly poetic in sentiment. They are what a modern writer has called "conflagrations of prose-poetry". Thus for example, as a piece of sustained imaginative composition in prose, we may take the passage from the Chhāndogya which tells us that "the heaven must be regarded as the supporting beam from which the intermundane region hangs like a bee-hive. The Sun is the honey of the gods as preserved in this bee-hive. The rays which the Sun spreads in different quarters, namely, the eastern, the southern, the western, the northern and the upward directions are the different honey-cells looking in the various directions. The hymns of the four Vedas are the bees which work on the bee-hive from the various sides. The different colours of the Sun are the different kinds of nectar on which the various gods live", and, we are told, these gods live on them not by the ordinary processes of drinking or eating, but by merely "looking" at them (S. 12.

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a)—an expression which gives us an insight into the *θεωρία* of the Upanishadic gods. As an example of allegory in the Upanishads, we may take the eschatological passage from the Kaushītaki which speaks of "the river of agelessness, the hall of omnipresence, the couch of grandeur, the damsel of mind, the hand-maid of vision, the flowers of the worlds which these are intent on weaving, the passage of the Soul through the river merely by the motion of the mind, the haven of safety which it reaches by the assertion of its identification with the highest Brahman—a fit concatenation of circumstances that befall the Soul which is described as the Child of the Seasons." We have said above that the Upanishads do not contain either nature-poetry or love-poetry, and hence the beautiful does not much fall within the scope of Upanishadic thought; but the Upanishads deal nevertheless with the sublime in nature, or with the sublime in the region of mind, or even in the transcendental sphere. As an example of the sublime in nature, we may take the passage from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka which tells us that "by the command of the imperishable Brahman, the sun and the moon stand in their places; by the command of that Brahman, the heaven and the earth stand apart; by the command of that Brahman, the moments and the hours, the days and the nights, the half-months and the months, the seasons and the years, all stand apart;

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by the command of that Brahman, some rivers flow out to the east from the White Mountains, and others to the west or some other quarter" (S. 12. b.). As an example of sublimity in the subjective sphere, we may quote the passage from the Chhāndogya in which we are told that the city within is exactly like the city without, that the heart is the citadel of Ātman as the universe itself is, that just as in the outer world there is that unending space which contains within it the heaven and the earth, the fire and the wind, the sun and the moon, the lightning and the stars, similarly, even here, within this little citadel, are they to be equally found (S. 12. c.). Finally, as an example of sublimity in the transcendental sphere, we have the passage from the Chhāndogya which tells us that "Infinity alone is bliss..... When one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is the Infinite......The Infinite is above, below, behind, before, to the right and to the left......I am above, I am below, I am behind, I am before, I am to the right and to the left...... The Self is above, the Self is below, the Self is behind, the Self is before, the Self is to the right and to the left. He who knows this truly attains Swarājya" (S. 12. d.).