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A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3: III—Rational Psychology

A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3

Language
English

Contents

III—Rational Psychology

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16. Modern writers on Psychology give no attention to Rational Psychology ; they consider it either useless or metaphysical. As Prof. James Ward points out, modern psychologists vie with each other in writing a psychology *ohne Seele*. The ancient conception of Soul has evaporated, and in its place we find a self, which is regarded as a “ centre of interest,” and which is supposed to be generated when a new interest springs up and destroyed as soon as the interest terminates. The *impasse* into which such a view brings the Psychologists may be realised at a glance when we consider that some of them have been forced to recognise the continuance of such a bloodless self even after the death of the body, and in place of the old-world view of an immortal Soul we find the idea of a “ centre of interest ” which survives (!) after the death of the body when the interest is not fulfilled in the person’s life-time. The old-world view, as in Plato so in the Upanishads, planted itself squarely on the recognition of the Soul as an entity which was free to take on a body, as it was also free to go away and transmigrate. Whatever the limitations of such a view, it was a view which one could at least understand; but the modern notion of an anæmic "centre of interest," which could continue to exist after the death of the body, passes absolutely beyond the comprehension of anybody except a metaphysician who makes such concessions to naturalism as to make an entire farrago of his philosophical ideas.

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17. The first question with which a Rational Psychology may be concerned is the question of the seat of the soul. And when this question is asked, it is not unusual to answer it by taking a spatial view of the habitation of the soul. It is likely to be ignored that the soul is an unextended entity, and that as such it is bereft of all spatial connotation. And yet, Rational Psychology has concerned itself with a discussion of the part or parts of the body with which the soul comes more directly into contact. Prof. James says: "In some manner our consciousness is present to everything with which it is in relation. I am cognitively present to Orion whenever I perceive that constellation, but I am not dynamically present there, I work no effects. To my brain, however, I am dynamically present, inasmuch as my thoughts and feelings seem to react upon the processes thereof. If, then, by the seat of the mind is meant nothing more than the locality with which it stands in immediate dynamic relations, we are certain to be right in saying that its seat is somewhere in the cortex of the brain."' The views that have been held in regard to this question have been many and various. I. H. Fichte, as we know, supposed that the soul was a space-filling principle. Descartes imagined that the seat of the soul was the pineal gland, while Lotze maintained that the soul must be located somewhere in the "structureless matrix of the anatomical brain-elements, at which point....all nerve-currents may cross and combine." We have already seen the opinion of Prof. James that if the soul's activity is to be referred to one part of the body more than to any other, it ought to be referred to the cortex of the brain. Aristotle supposed that the seat of the soul was in the heart; and he came to this conclusion by observing "(1) that the diseases of the heart are the most rapidly and certainly fatal, (2) that psychical affections, such as fear, sorrow, and joy cause an immediate disturbance of the heart, (3) and that the heart is the part which is the first to be formed in the embryo."' The Upanishadic psychology agrees with the Aristotelian in locating the soul in the heart. We have already seen how important a part the "pericardium" plays in the Upanishadic psychology of sleep. The Upanishadic philosophers felt no difficulty in locating the soul in the heart; and it is not till we reach a later era in the evolution of Indian thought that we find that the seat of consciousness is transferred from the heart to the brain. It is only in the Yogic and the Tāntric books² that the cerebro-spinal system comes to be recognised, and it is there that consciousness comes to be referred to the brain instead of to the heart.

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² Vide Seal's *Positive Sciences of the Ancient Hindus* pp. 218-219.

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18. In one important Upanishadic passage, however, we already find an incipient transition from the one view to the other. Though in the Upanishads as a whole we find that the heart is regarded as the seat of the soul, in a passage of the Taittirīya Upanishad, in a very cryptic style and with a good deal of prophetic insight, the Upanishad-seer gives his reflections as to the way in which the soul in the heart

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The heart and the brain as seats.

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¹ Hammond, *Aristotle's Psychology* p. xxiii.

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moves by a passage through the bones of the palate right up to the skull where the hairs are made to part, and on the way greets the Brahman who is his lord and master. It is important to remember that while the soul in the heart is characterised as the *manomaya purusha*, the Brahman that resides in the brain is called *manasaspati*, the soul’s overlord. "What we know as the space inside the heart, therein is this immortal golden being, namely mind (or soul). What we know as hanging like a nipple between the bones of the palate, through it is the entrance to the Lord¹ on the passage right up to the skull where the hairs are made to part. *Bhūḥ*.. *Bhuvaḥ*....*Suvaḥ*......*Mahaḥ*—when these (mystic) words are uttered, the soul moves right up to Brahman. The soul gains autonomy, joins the Ruler of mind (or soul), becomes the lord of speech, the lord of sight, the lord of hearing, the lord of knowledge, becomes (in short) the Brahman who bodies himself forth in space" (S. 15). A great deal of difficulty has been experienced in the interpretation of this passage. The passage no doubt tells us that the sense-centres as well as the intellect-centre are to be referred to the brain, inasmuch as it says that the soul can obtain mastery over these only by moving to the brain from the heart; yet, the actual path which has been indicated in the above passage cannot be traced without difficulty. What is the "nipple-like" appearance of which the Upanishad speaks? Is it the uvula, or the pituitary body? Deussen and Max Müller have both understood it to be the uvula. Are we then to understand that the Upanishad-philosopher was so struck by the inexplicably hanging uvula that he regarded it to be the door to the overlord of soul, and are we to understand that Deussen and Max Müller took into account the experiences of the mystic who regards the uvula as the medium by which he comes to taste the nectar which oozes in the state of ecstasy from the ventricles of the brain into the pharynx ? Or, are we to suppose that the Upanishad-philosopher was so fortunate as to witness a skull dissected open and to observe that the pituitary body is situated just above the pair of bones of the hard palate, and then to be able to suppose that the soul in the heart could travel along the course of the sympathetic nerves to the pituitary body, and through it move further to its overlord in the lateral ventricle, around which, in the grey matter, are situated the various special sense-centres ? The latter interpretation is not improbable : but one does not know whether the Upanishad-philosopher knew anatomy enough to trace the actual path, or was interested in occultism enough to see the path with his mental eye !

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¹ Indra, elsewhere paraphrased as Idandra, breaking through the skull; cf. तस्मादिन्द्रो नामेन्द्रो ह वै नाम तामिन्द्रं सन्तमिन्द्र इत्याचक्षते परोक्षेणप्रिया इव हि देवाः । ऐ. 1. 3.14.

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19. However this may be on the physiological side, we may say that the Upanishadic philosophers definitely raised the psychological question of the relation between body and soul. The Maitri Upanishad, though it is a late Upanishad, raises the question of an efficient cause, and in Platonic fashion endows the soul with the power of motion. It tells us that there were certain sages in ancient times called the Vālakhilyas who went to the Prajāpati Kratu and asked him who was the driver of the chariot of the body : " The body, venerable Sir, is verily like an unmoving cart ; may your Honour be pleased to tell us if you know who is the mover of it." And the Upanishad tells us that the

The relation of the body and the soul

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answer which they elicited from the Prajāpati was that the mover of the body-chariot was the soul, "the pure tranquil, imperishable, unborn entity who stands independently in his own greatness" (S. 16. a). Moreover, the Kaushītaki Upanishad tells us that the soul must be regarded as the master of all bodily faculties, the lord of all sense-functions: "As a razor is placed in the razor-case, or fire in the fire-hearth, similarly does this conscious self pervade the body up to the very hairs and nails. These senses depend upon the soul as the relatives upon the rich man. As the rich man feeds with his kinsmen, and as the kinsmen feed on the rich man, even so does this conscious self feed with the senses and the senses feed on the self" (S. 16. b). This passage tells us how the various bodily senses are dependent on the self and how the self is immanent in the whole body.

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20. The passage quoted above leads to the view that the soul fills the whole of the body, a doctrine which is not unlikely to have led to the Jaina doctrine that as large as the body is, even so large is the soul,—that the soul of the elephant is as large as the body of the elephant, while the soul of the ant is only as large as the body of the ant—"hastipudgalam prāpya hastipudgalo bhavati, pipīlikāpudgalam prāpya pipīlikāpudgalo bhavati." This is the reductio ad absurdum of a belief in the extended nature of soul, which will not allow us to think of the soul except under spatial limitations. The history of the doctrine of the space-filling nature of the soul as advanced in the Upanishads is a very interesting one. In the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad we are told that "the intelligent luminous self in the heart is as small as a grain of rice or barley, and yet it is the ruler o all and lord of all, overruling all this and whatsoever else exists" (S. 17. a). In a passage of the Kaṭha Upanishad, as well as elsewhere, we find that the soul is no longer conceived as of the size of a mere grain of rice or barley, but is thought to be of the size of a thumb—an idea which plays a very important part in the Upanishads: "The soul, who is the lord of all things that have been and that are to be, and is therefore over-awed by none of them, is of the measure of a thumb and dwells in the midpart of the body (that is, in the heart)" (S. 17. b).

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In a passage of the Chhāndogya Upanishad, the soul is understood as not of the size of a thumb, but of the measure of a span (S. 17. c). The soul is here called "prādeśamātra" and "abhivimāna." These words have occasioned a very great difficulty to the commentators. Śaṅkarāchārya, who understands the soul as all-pervading, cannot bring himself to be reconciled to the statement that the soul should be merely a span long, prādeśamātra.¹ Now the word prādeśa is really an important word. In the Amarakosha,² it is understood as meaning a span, as also in the Medinīkosha.³ Śaṅkarāchārya himself knew that the word prādeśa was "elsewhere" used in the sense of a span,⁴ which his scholiast Ānandagiri explains as being the meaning of the word in Jābālaśruti. According to Śaṅkara, the word prādeśa elsewhere signified not merely a span’s length but the span’s length from the forehead to the chin. This is a very significant fact as we shall presently see. In the Mahābhārata,¹ Bhīmasena has been described as being a span’s length taller than his younger brother Arjuna. In the Maitri Upanishad,² the word prādeśa has manifestly the same meaning. Under these circumstances it is but natural that the word prādeśa in the passage which we are discussing may be taken to mean a span, especially, as Śaṅkara points out, the span’s length between the forehead and the chin. The word “abhivimāna” has also caused a great deal of difficulty.

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The interpretation which Śaṅkarācārya has put upon it, and with which Deussen, Max Müller and Rajendralal Mitra have all agreed, seems after all to be an unnatural interpretation. Thus Śaṅkara³ explains the word as meaning one who knows himself—the Kantian “I am I”—an interpretation which does not come out of the expression “abhivimāna.” Deussen⁴ translates the whole passage in a way which only supports the meaning of Śaṅkara so far as the word “abhivimāna” is concerned : “Wer aber diesen Ātman Vaiśvānara so [zeigend] als eine Spanne gross auf sich selbst (abhi) bezogen (vimāna) verehrt, der isst die Nahrung in allen Welten, in allen Wesen, in allen Selbsten.” Max Müller⁵ translates “abhivimāna” as, “identical with himself,” while Rajendralal Mitra⁶ says it means “the principal object indicated by the pronoun I.” All these interpretations err in understanding too much by the preposition *abhi*. By no manipulation, however clever, could the meaning of "self" be extracted out of it as Deussen and others have tried to do. Would it not be much more natural to understand " *abhivimāna* " as meaning simply "measuring"?

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The expression " *prādeśamātram abhivimānam* " could then be understood as equivalent to "measuring the span's length from the forehead to the chin," and the interpretation of the whole passage becomes easy: "He who worships the Self as measuring the span's length from the forehead to the chin, and as existing in all men, he enjoys food in all worlds, in all beings, and in all selves." In fact, we are asked in this passage to worship the Soul who resides in the span's distance between the forehead and the chin, and who is therefore the master of the head, which by a consensus of opinion is recognised in Hindu thought as the " *uttamāṅga* " or the best part of the body. No wonder that Prof. James could trace the feeling of Self in certain cephalic movements of his, and say that "the Self of selves, when carefully examined, is found to consist mainly of the collection of these peculiar motions in the head, or between the head and the throat."¹

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¹ This is the reason why he explains the expression as द्युमूर्द्धादिभिः पृथिवीपादांतैर्विशिष्टमेकं प्रादेशमात्रम् ।

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² प्रादेशतालगोकर्णस्तर्जन्यादियुते तते । II. 6. 83. The Commentator explains प्रादेश by saying that it means तर्जन्यादिसहितविस्तृतांगुष्ठः ।

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³ प्रादेशो देशमात्रे स्यात्तर्जन्यंगुष्ठसंमिते ।

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⁴ शास्त्रान्तरे तु मूर्द्धादिश्चिबुकप्रतिष्ठ इति प्रादेशमात्रं कल्पयति । इह तु न तथाऽभिप्रेतम् । C. on छां V. 18. 1.

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¹ प्रमाणेन भीमसेनः प्रादेशेनाधिकोऽर्जुनात् । म. भा. V. 51. 19.

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² शरीरप्रादेशांगुष्ठमात्रमप्यप्यं ध्यात्वा अतः परमतां गच्छति । मै. VI. 38.

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³ प्रत्यात्मतयाऽभिबीमीयतेऽहमिति शयत इत्यभिमानः । C. on छां. V. 18. 1.

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⁴ Sechzig Upanishad’s pp. 150-151.

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⁵ Sacred Books of the East Vol. I. p. 88

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⁶ Twelve Principal Upanishads by Tukaram Tatya p. 578,

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¹ Principles of Psychology I. 301.

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21. We have hitherto seen some of the stages in the logical, not necessarily historical, evolution of the idea of the extension of the soul. Being first regarded as merely of the size of a grain of rice or barley, it was then regarded as of the size of a thumb, and later of the size of a span, while we have also seen that the Kaushītaki Upanishad speaks of the soul as filling the whole extent of the body and being hidden in it as the razor is hidden in a razor-case. We now come to treat of the idea of the soul as not being restricted to any part of the body, but being verily infinite and occupying all space. The Muṇḍaka Upanishad speaks of the "eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, subtle, and imperishable Soul who is the origin of all beings, and whom the wise alone can perceive," and the Kaṭha Upanishad lends its support to this statement by saying that "the wise man ceases to grieve when he has known this great all-pervading Soul" (S. 17. d). The Maitri Upanishad, not being able to choose between the rival theories about the size of the soul, offers an easy eclecticism by combining all of them together in a promiscuous statement. It tells us that a man "reaches the supreme state by meditating on the soul, who is smaller than an atom, or else of the size of the thumb, or of a span, or of the whole body" (S. 17. e). In this promiscuous statement it is difficult to make out which theory this Upanishad advocates. An alternative interpretation of the passage can also be offered, as it has been offered by Cowell and Max Müller, following the commentator Rāmatīrtha, but to say as Rāmatīrtha says that the soul is "of the size of a thumb in the span-sized heart in the body" does not lessen difficulties. That the Upanishadic philosophers felt the necessity of reconciling such contrary statements as that the soul is only of the size of a grain of rice or barley, and that it is all-pervading and omnipresent, may be seen from a passage in the Kaṭha Upanishad which asks us to believe the contradiction that "the soul of the living being is subtler than the subtle, and yet greater than the great, and is placed in the cavity of the heart,"—a statement which, with equal seeming contradiction, is corroborated by the philosopher of the Chhāndogya Upanishad who says: "My soul in the heart is smaller than a grain of rice or barley, or a mustard or a canary seed; and yet my soul, which is pent up in the heart, is greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than the heaven, greater than all these worlds ” (S. 17. f). The Nemesis of the theory which attributes a spatial extension to the soul lies just in these contradictions, and there is no way out of the difficulty except on the supposition that the soul transcends all spatial limitations.

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22. And yet, so far as the soul comes to inhabit the body, it must be recognised as passing through certain psychical states; and the analysis which the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad makes of the four states of consciousness must be regarded as very acute, and considering the date of its production, wholly extraordinary. The credit which a modern psychologist gives to Swami Vivekānanda for having introduced the conception of the “superconscious” in psychology must be rightly given to the author of the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad. There are not merely the three obvious states of consciousness, says the philosopher of this Upanishad, but a fourth must also be recognised, which corresponds to what is usually called the “superconscious.” But the word superconscious in our opinion is an unhappy word to designate this fourth state: to speak of a “superconscious state of consciousness” is to utter a solecism. And so, we here propose to use the word “self-conscious” to designate this fourth state. The soul, then, according to the Upanishad, experiences four chief states, namely, those of wakefulness, dream, deep sleep, and pure self-consciousness: “This soul is four-footed (that is, has four conditions). The first condition is that of wakefulness, when the soul is conscious only of external objects and enjoys the gross things, and then it is to be called Vaiśvānara. The second condition is that of dreaming, when the soul is conscious of internal objects and enjoys the subtle things, and then it is called Taijasa. When the person in sleep desires no desires, and dreams no dreams, that state is to be called the state of sound sleep. Thus, the third condition of the soul is that of sound sleep, when being centred in itself and being full of knowledge and bliss, it feeds on bliss : it is then called Prājña. The fourth state of the soul is that of pure self-consciousness, when there is no knowledge of internal objects nor of external ones, nor of the two together ; when the soul is not a mass of intelligence, transcending as it does both consciousness and unconsciousness ; when it is invisible, uncommunicable, incomprehensible, indefinable ; when it is beyond thought and beyond the possibility of any indication, being virtually the quintessence of self-intuition, in which all the five kinds of sensation are finally resolved ; when it is tranquil and full of auspiciousness and without a second : it is then to be called Ātman” (S. 18).

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23. This recognition of the four chief states of individual consciousness, the waking, the dreaming, the sleeping, and the self-conscious, as well as the names which are assigned to the soul in these states, namely those of Vaiśvānara, Taijasa, Prājña, and Ātman, have played a very large part in the later more systematized Vedānta. This is the reason why the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad has been regarded as a late Upanishad. But it is to be noted that the Upanishad does not make mention of the corresponding four states of the consciousness of the Cosmic Self. In later Vedānta, the Cosmic Self as it passes through its four states comes to be called the Virāj, Hiraṇyagarbha, Īśa and Brahman respectively. Corresponding to the four

The microcosm and the macrocosm

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aspects of the microcosm, there come to be recognised the four aspects of the "makranthropos," a decidedly better word to use than "macrocosm". The Cosmic consciousness comes to be regarded as corresponding state by state to the Individual consciousness, and what is in the Individual comes to be found also in the World. Even though this idea is not fully brought out in the Upanishads, we already trace in them an incipient tendency towards that view. Leibnitz's theory of representation is already present in the Chhāndogya Upanishad : "Within this city of Brahman (this body), there is a small lotus-like place (the heart), and within it a small internal space ; that which is within this small space is worthy of search and understanding....Of the very kind as this outer space is, of the same kind is this internal space inside the heart ; both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both the sun and the moon, both the lightning and the stars" (S. 19). Here we see the root of the theory that the individual is to be regarded as the world in miniature, and the world only the individual writ large, and that the individual object serves as a mirror in which the whole of reality is reflected—a theory to which Leibnitz gives expression when he says : "In the smallest particle of matter, there is a world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls. Each portion of matter may be conceived as like....a pond full of fishes."'¹

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¹ Monadology 66-67.

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24. Another interesting problem in connection with the Upanishadic psychology is the problem of the so-called sheaths or bodies of the soul. We all know what importance has been attached to the conception of these "bodies of man" by modern Theoso-

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The "sheaths" of the soul.

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phists. Corresponding to these bodies, they have also recognised seven different planes, on which, according to them, the several bodies of man keep functioning. Thus, the various planes which they recognise may be said to be respectively the physical, the astral, the mental, the intuitional, the spiritual, the monadic, and the divine. Let us see what justification there can be for such a view in the light of the theory which the Upanishads advance. In fact, the only Upanishad where we find mention of a theory of this kind is the Taittirīya Upanishad. In the second chapter of this Upanishad, we are told that “ within this physical body which is made up of food, is another body which is made up of vital air ; the former is filled with the latter, which is also like the shape of man. More internal than the body which is made up of vital air is another body which consists of mind ; the former is filled with the latter, which is again like unto the shape of man. More internal still than the mental body is another body which is full of intelligence ; the former is filled with the latter, which is again like unto the shape of man. Finally, still more internal than this body of intelligence is another body consisting of bliss; the former is filled with the latter, which still is like the shape of man” (S. 20. a). Here we are told that various bodies are pent up within this physical body,—as if the physical body were like a Pandora’s box,—that the wise man is he who knows that there are what may be called by sufferance the physical, astral, mental, intuitional, and beatific “ bodies ” of man, that every internal body is enclosed within an external one, and, finally, that all these bodies have the shape of man. It was possibly such a passage as this which has been responsible for spreading such a notion as that of the “ pañcha-kośas ” or the five bodies of man.

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25. Among modern Theosophists, this theory has assumed quite an extraordinary importance. The etheric double, they say, is exactly like the shape of the human body, that it lingers a few days after the death of the physical body, that the etheric double of a child lingers only for three days after its death but that in the case of an adult it may linger for a sufficiently long time to allow for the period of mourning, that in dreams while we are having the curious experience of flying like a bird in mid-air or swimming like a fish in the seas¹ it is our etheric double which by a kind of endosmosis is transmitting its experience into the physical body, that the scheme of the five bodies mentioned in the Upanishads is only a description of the " manifest " bodies of man, and that over and above these, there are two more "unmanifest" bodies which may be called the Monadic and the Divine, the Anupādaka and the Ādi, or in Buddhistic terminology, the Parinirvāṇa and the Mahāparinirvāṇa. So far as we apprehend it, the general mistake of this theory consists in taking words for things, in refusing to see that what are by sufferance called the " bodies " of man in the Upanishads are nothing more than mere allegorical representations of certain psychological conceptions. Man is made up of a physical body, of vital air, of mind and intellect, and of the faculty which enables him to enjoy an ecstatic θεωρία. This only is what is meant by the passage in question. To ignore its mere psychological aspect and to proceed to erect an occultist philosophy upon the doctrine is hardly justifiable. The great Śaṅkara did recognise the " kośas," but he understood them as having merely an ideal existence. We have to discriminate in thought (*viveka*),¹ he says the five different kośas, and to find our true Self beyond the physical body, beyond the *ψυχή* or vital principle, beyond the mind and intellect, and beyond even our beatific consciousness. He wavers,² however, in deciding as to whether we should identify the Brahman with beatific consciousness, or whether we should even penetrate beyond it to find the Brahman; but in any case, he insists that the kośas or sheaths have no real existence, and that a theory which is built upon the conception of the sheaths is a theory which is "built upon ignorance."

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¹ The Spencerians would explain these experiences as being due to a remnant of racial experience that may have been transmitted to the individual.

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¹ अन्नप्राणमयोविज्ञानानंदपंचकोशानाम् । एकैकांतभाजां भजति विवेकात्प्रकाश्यतामात्मा ॥ स्वात्मनिरूपणम्

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² Contrast his C. on Taittiriya III. 6 एवं तपसा विशुद्धात्मा (अन्न) प्राणादिषु साकल्येन ब्रह्मलक्षणमपश्यन् शनैः शनैरन्तरनुप्रविश्य अन्तरतमानंदं ब्रह्म विज्ञातवान् तपसैव साधनेन भृगुः with C. on Taittiriya II. 2 अन्नमयादिभ्य आनंदमयांतेभ्य आत्मभ्योऽभ्यंतरतमं ब्रह्म विद्यया प्रत्यगात्मत्वेन दिदर्शयिषुः शास्त्रमविद्याकृतं पंचकोशापनयनेन अनेक-तुषकोद्रववितुषीकरणेव तदन्तर्गततण्डुलान् प्रस्तौति ।

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26. That the words "anna, prāṇa, manas, vijñāna, and ānanda" are not to be understood as meaning veritable *sheaths* may be seen by reference to a celebrated passage in the third chapter of the same Taittirīya Upanishad, where the author is discussing what should be regarded as the *φύσις* of things; and he rules out of order the theories that "matter," "life," "mind," or "intellect" could be regarded as the principle of things, and comes to the conclusion that "intuitive bliss" alone deserves to be regarded as the source of reality. The seer of that Upanishad makes Bhṛigu approach his father Varuṇa, and ask him about the nature of ultimate reality. The father directs him to practise penance and learn the truth for himself ; he only gives him the hint that the ultimate principle should be one " from which things spring, in which they live, and into which they are finally resolved." The boy after practising penance returns to his father and tells him that food (or matter) may be regarded as the principle of things. The father is not satisfied, and asks him to practise penance again. The son comes back with the answer that vital air may be regarded as the principle, and so on. The father is not satisfied with the successive answers which his son brings him, namely, that the ultimate reality may be regarded as vital air, mind, or intellect, and when the son finally brings the answer that it may be beatific consciousness which may be regarded as the source of all things whatsoever, the Upanishad breaks off, and we have no means of knowing whether the father was satisfied with the final answer. We are only told that this piece of knowledge shall be forever mysteriously known as the Bhārgavī Vāruṇī Vidyā and that this is " exalted in the highest heaven " (S. 20. b), meaning thereby that it is honoured even amongst the gods.

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27. We now pass on to discuss the question of Transmigration in the Upanishads, but we cannot understand its full significance unless we see it on its background, namely, the form which it takes in pre-Upanishadic literature. The question of Transmigration may fitly be regarded as the crux of Early Indian Philosophy. We have been often told that the idea of Transmigration is of a very late origin in Indian thought, that it did not exist at the time of the Ṛigveda, that it was an un-Aryan idea, that, as Professor Macdonell puts it, " it seems more probable that the Aryan settlers received the first impulse in this direction from the aboriginal inhabitants of India,"¹ that even though "the Aryan Indians borrowed the idea from the aborigines, they certainly deserve the credit of having elaborated out of it the theory of an unbroken chain of existences, intimately connected with the moral principle of requital." Having said that the idea of Transmigration is of un-Aryan origin and that it was received from the aborigines by the Indian Aryans, Professor Macdonell is obliged to account for the appearance of the same idea in Pythagoras by saying that the "dependence of Pythagoras on Indian philosophy and science certainly seems to have a high degree of probability......The doctrine of metempsychosis in the case of Pythagoras appears without any connection or explanatory background, and was regarded by the Greeks as of foreign origin. He could not have derived it from Egypt, as it was not known to the ancient Egyptians."² Since the appearance of Herr Rohde's book on *Psyche, Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen* in 1894, we have come to see that the real source of a belief in transmigration among any people, under certain circumstances, lies in their own ethno-psychological development, and not in an unproven or unprovable inter-influence from one country to another. It is upon this fruitful hypothesis that we can see the upspringing and the continuance of the idea of transmigration among the Greeks from Homer downwards through Orpheus to Pythagoras in their own native land; it is upon the same hypothesis that we can see the development of the same idea among the Indian Aryans from the Rigveda through the Brāhmaṇas to the Upanishads, without invoking the aid of any unwarrantable influence from the aborigines of India. And thus, the idea of transmigration, so far from being merely an un-Aryan importation in Aryan thought, appears clearly to devlop stage by stage in Aryan thought itself.

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¹ History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 387.

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² Loc. cit. p. 422.

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28. It is quite true that in the major part of the Rigveda, the idea of Transmigration seems conspicuous by its absence. The cheerful and joyous attitude of the Indian Aryans made it impossible for them to think too much of the life after death. They believed in the world of the gods, and they believed in the world of the fathers, and they did not care to believe in anything else. It was sufficient for them to know that the godly men went to a Heaven which overflowed with honey,¹ and that the commonalty went to a world where Yama had the privilege first to go and to gather a number of men about him,—a not uncovetable place, it seems, “ of which it was impossible that anybody could be robbed.”² Even though, then, we grant that the idea of Transmigration is not very conspicuous in the greater portion of the Rigveda, it remains at the same time equally true that, in certain other places, an approach is being made to the idea of Transmigration. The first stage in the evolution of this idea consists in taking an animistic or hylozoistic view of the world. In a verse of the 16th hymn of the tenth Maṇḍala which is devoted to the description of a funeral occasion, the eye of the dead man

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¹ तदस्य प्रियमभि पाथो अश्यां नरो यत्र देवयवो मदन्ति । उरुक्रमस्य स हि बन्धुरित्या विष्णोः पदे परमे मध्व उत्सः ॥ ऋ. i. 154. 5.

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² यमो नो गातुं प्रथमो विवेद नैषा गव्युतिरपभर्तवा उ । यत्रा नः पूर्वे पितरः परेयु रेना जज्ञानाः पध्या ३ अनु स्वाः ॥ ऋ. x. 14. 2.

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Transmigration in the Rigveda : the Xth Mandala.

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has been asked by the Seer to move back to the Sun which is its analogue in the makranthropos, the anima to the wind which is its analogue, and the animus has been directed to go to the heaven or to the earth according to its qualities (dharma), or else to move even to the waters or the plants if it so suited it.¹ This verse instead of expressing transmigration proper may be said to be putting forth certain hints towards an animistic or hylozoistic view of the world; but the word dharma which it introduces is a very significant word. It is the earliest trace of a theory of karman, especially as the soul is asked to go to heaven or to earth according to its qualities. But a still more definite passage is found in another hymn of the tenth Maṇḍala of the Ṛigveda, where a hylozoism is advocated with even greater stress. There we definitely know that the whole hymn² is addressed to a departed spirit, and the poet says that he is going to recall the departed soul in order that it may return again and live. The poet says that the spirit which has gone far away to the world of death he will recall and make live once more. The spirit, he continues, "which may have gone to heaven or earth or to the four-cornered globe, which may have been diffused in the various quarters or have taken resort in the waves of the sea or the beams of the light, which may have ensouled the waters or the herbs, or gone to the sun or the dawn, or rested on the mountains, or which may have spread through the whole universe and become identical with the past and the future"—that soul, says the poet, he will recall by means of his song, and make it take on a tenement.

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¹ १ सूर्ये चक्षुर्गच्छतु वातमात्मा द्यां च गच्छ पृथिवीं च धर्मणा ।

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¹ अपो वा गच्छ यदि तत्र ते हितं ओषधीषु प्रतितिष्ठा शरीरैः ॥ ऋ.

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¹ x. 16. 3.

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² Ṛigveda X.58.1—12.

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१ सूर्ये चक्षुर्गच्छतु वातमात्मा द्यां च गच्छ पृथिवीं च धर्मणा ।
अपो वा गच्छ यदि तत्र ते हितं ओषधीषु प्रतितिष्ठा शरीरैः ॥ ऋ.
x. 16. 3.

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Too great a belief in the power of song! But the fact remains that the whole hymn breathes an atmosphere of hylozoism, and the poet makes us feel that a soul is not wholly lost after bodily death, being mixed with the elements.

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29. But is hylozoism the final word of the Rigveda? By no means. We have one very characteristic hymn of the Rigveda which, we fear, has not been noticed with even a tithe of the attention which it really deserves. The meaning which Roth, and Böhtlingk and Geldner have found in at least two verses of the hymn has been strangely overlooked, and it is wonderful that people keep saying that the idea of Transmigration is *not* to be found in the Rigveda. The hymn we refer to is the great riddle-hymn of the Rigveda, i. 164. It consists of fifty-two verses and breathes throughout a sceptico-mystical atmosphere. It says that He who made all this does not himself probably know its real nature,¹ and it sets such a high price on the mystical knowledge which it glorifies that any one who comes to be in possession of this knowledge, so the hymn proclaims, may be said to be his father’s father.² It is no doubt true that even though the hymn occurs in the first Maṇḍala of the Rigveda, it is not for that reason to be understood as belonging to the oldest part of the Rigveda. For example, it advocates a facile unity of godhood,³ which is only a later development of thought. It quotes the

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¹ [Note text not present on page]

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² [Note text not present on page]

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³ [Note text not present on page]

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1 य ईं चकार न सोऽस्य वेद । ऋ. I. 164. 32.
2 कविर्यः पुत्रः स ईमा चिकेत यस्ता विजानात् स पितुष्पिता सत् ।
ऋ. I. 164. 16.
3 एकं सद्विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति अग्निं यमं मातरिश्वानमाहुः ॥ ऋ.
I. 164. 46.

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very same verse¹ which we find in the celebrated Puruṣasūkta, which has been rightly recognised as one of the late productions of the Vedic period. It even contains the famous verse² on the “Two Birds” which later plays such an important part in the Muṇḍaka Upanishad. All these things point unmistakably to the fact that the hymn of the Ṛgveda which we are considering must be regarded as a late hymn of the Ṛgveda, even though it has the privilege of being included in the canon of the first Maṇḍala. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the very important revelations which it makes on the subject of the idea of transmigration have been strangely neglected. In spite of the Herakleitean style in which the whole hymn has been composed, in spite of the fact that it contains allusions to such various conceptions as those of the Fire, the Cow and the Calf, and the First-born of the Law, a psychological vein is ever present through the whole hymn, and among other things, the reference to the “Two Birds,” namely the individual soul and the universal soul, makes it unmistakable that the poet is darkly expressing, in his own metaphorical way, his ideas about the nature of soul and the relation between the individual and universal souls. For example, the poet asks us, who has ever seen the precise mode in which the boneless soul, the very life-blood and informing spirit of the earth, comes to inhabit a bony tenement? And if a man did not know this himself, who has ever moved out of himself and gone to the wise man to receive illumination on it?³ Then the seer says categorically that this breathing, speedful, moving life-principle is firmly established inside these tenements of clay.¹ Moreover he tells us that the immortal principle, conjoined with the mortal one, moves backwards and forwards by virtue of its natural power; but the wonder of it is, the poet goes on to say, that the mortal and immortal elements keep moving ceaselessly in opposite directions, with the result that people are able to see the one but are unable to see the other.² These two last verses were regarded by Roth and Böhtlingk and Geldner as against Oldenberg to have supplied sufficient evidence as to the proof of the existence of the idea of transmigration in the Ṛigveda, as they rightly thought that the verses tell us that the soul is a moving, speedful life-principle which comes and goes, moves backwards and forwards, comes in contact with the body and then moves from it in the opposite direction. Oldenberg is evidently wrong when he understands verse 38 to refer to the morning and evening stars, as he must acknowledge that the verse speaks of the mortal and immortal principles. But the culminating point of the whole doctrine is reached when the poet tells us that he himself saw (probably with his mind's eye) the guardian of the body, moving unerringly by backward and forward paths, clothed in collected and diffusive splendour, and that it kept on *returning frequently* inside the mundane regions.³ That this "guardian" is no other than the soul may be seen from the way in which verse 31 follows immediately on verse 30 which mentions the "breathing, speedful, moving life-principle"; moreover, the frequentative (*varīvarti*) tells us the *frequency* of the soul's return to this world. It was with this idea uppermost in his mind that the poet talks, in Herakleitean fashion, of those who come hither as those who are moving away, and those who are moving back as already returning hither, as Herakleitos should talk of the gods being mortals and the men immortals.

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¹ यज्ञेन यज्ञमयजन्त देवास्तानि धर्माणि प्रथमान्यासन् । ऋ. I. 164. 59.

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² द्वा सुपर्णा सयुजा सख्या समानं वृक्षं परिषस्वजाते । तयोरन्यः पिप्पलं स्वाद्वत्त्यनश्नन्नन्यो अभिचाकशीति ॥ ऋ. I. 164. 17.

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³ को ददर्श प्रथमं जायमानमस्थन्वंतं यदनस्था बिभर्ति । भूम्या असुरसृगात्मा क्वस्वित् को विद्वांसमुपगात् प्रष्टुमेतत् ॥ ऋ. I. 164. 4.

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¹ अनच्छये तुरगातु जीवमेजद् ध्रुवं मध्य आ पस्त्यानाम् । ऋ. I. 164. 30.

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² अपाङ् प्राङेति स्वधया गृभीतोऽमर्त्यो मर्त्येन सयोनिः । ता शश्वन्ता विषूचीना वियन्ता न्यन्यं चिक्युर्न निचिक्युरन्यम् ॥ ऋ. I. 164. 38.

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³ अपश्यं गोपामनिपद्यमानं आ च परा च पथिभिश्चरंतम् । स सध्रीचीः स विषूचीर्वसान आ ह्यवर्ति भुवनेष्वन्तरिति ॥ ऋ. I. 164. 31.

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30. We have been obliged to make this long survey of the Vedic idea of life after death only in order to prove that the three chief moments in the idea of Transmigration, namely the passage of the soul from the body, its habitation in other forms of existence like the plants or the waters, and even its return to the human form, are all implicitly found even so far back as the times of the Rigveda; and when these are coupled with the incipient idea of the quality of action (*dharma*) which determines a future existence, we see that there is no reason why we should persist in saying that the idea of Transmigration is an un-Aryan idea, that the Indians borrowed it from the non-Aryan aborigines of India, and that in some inexplicable way the idea found entrance in other countries and cults beyond India. On the principles of ethnic psychology, almost every nation contains within it the possibility of arriving at the idea of Transmigration from within its own proper psychological development; and there is no more reason why we should say that Greece borrowed the idea of Transmigration from India than we might say that Egypt

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1 येऽर्वाञ्चस्तँ उ पराच आहुर्ये पराञ्चस्तँ उ अर्वाच आहुः ॥ ऋ.
I 164. 19.

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herself borrowed it from India. If Prof. Keith¹ acknowledges that the Egyptians themselves believed in the possibility of a dead man “returning to wander on earth, visiting the places he had loved in life, or again changing himself into a heron, a swallow, a snake, a crocodile or a girl,” there is no justification for saying, as he does, that “this is indeed transmigration, but a different transmigration from either that of Greece or India.” Whenever there is recognised the possibility of the soul coming to inhabit a body as a god-like principle from without, wherever it is supposed that the soul could likewise part from the body as it came, wherever it is thought that the soul after parting from the body could lead a life of disembodied existence, and wherever it is supposed to return again to the earth and inhabit any form of existence whatsoever, there is a kind of undying life conceived for the soul from which the step to actual Transmigration is not very far removed; while the crowning idea in transmigration, namely that of ἀνάμνησις is a product of very late growth, and even though it is found in Pythagoras and Plato and the Indian system of Yoga, we have no reason to attribute it definitely to the Vedic seers or to the Upanishadic philosophers, unless perhaps we scent it in the rather unconscious utterance of the sage Vāmadeva that he was in a former life “Manu or the Sun.”²

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¹ R. A. S. Journal 1909 p. 569 seq : “Pythagoras and transmigration.”

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² अहं मनुरभवं सूर्यश्च । बृ. I. 4. 10.

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31. We now come to deal with the question of the idea of Transmigration in the Upanishads themselves. We have already tried to prove that the idea of Transmigration has been adumbrated in the great riddle-hymn of the Ṛigveda. In the Upanishads, on the other hand, the idea has been most explicitly advanced. When the father of Nachiketas told him that he had made him over to the God of Death, Nachiketas replied by saying that it was no uncommon fate that was befalling him : " I indeed go at the head of many to the other world ; but I also go in the midst of many. What is the God of Death going to do to me ? Look back at our predecessors (who have already gone) ; look also at those who have succeeded them. Man ripens like corn, and like corn he is born again" (S. 21. a). Nachiketas is anticipating the gospel, and saying more than the gospel of St. John : " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."¹ The gospel never says that the corn of wheat is reborn ; but Nachiketas says that just as a corn of grain ripens and perishes and is born again, so does a man live and die to be born again.

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¹ St. John. 12.24.

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32. The *locus classicus*, however, of the idea of Transmigration is to be found in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad, which goes into great details over the manner in which a man dies and is born again. We are first told how at the time of birth all the elements wait upon the approaching soul, their lord and king ; and then we are told, how these wait again upon the soul to give him a send-off when he is about to depart : " And as on the approach of a king, the policemen, magistrates, charioteers, and governors of towns wait upon him with food, and drink, and tents, saying ' he comes, he approaches,' similarly do all these elements wait on the conscious self, saying this Brahman comes, this Brahman approaches ; and again, as at the time of the king's departure, the policemen, magistrates, charioteers, and governors of towns gather round him, similarly do all vital airs gather round the soul at the time of death" (S. 21. b). Then follows a very realistic description of the actual manner of death: "When the vital airs are gathered around him, the Self collecting together all the portions of light moves down into the heart; and when the 'person in the eye' has turned away, then he ceases to know any forms. He becomes concentrated in himself, that is the reason why they say he is not able to see; he becomes at one with himself, that is the reason why they say he is not able to speak, or hear, or know.

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Then the tip of his heart is filled with light, and, through that light the soul moves out either by the way of the eye, or the head, or any other part of the body. As the Self moves out, life moves after it; and as the life moves, the various vital airs depart after it. Him follow¹ his knowledge, his works, and his former consciousness" (S. 21. c). It is important to notice that in this last sentence a doctrine of *karman* is being advanced, which becomes still more explicit almost immediately; "And as a caterpillar, after reaching the end of a blade of grass, finds another place of support and then draws itself towards it, similarly this Self, after reaching the end of this body, finds another place of support, and then draws himself towards it. And as a goldsmith, after taking a piece of gold, gives it another newer and more beautiful shape, similarly does this Self, after having thrown off this body and dispelled ignorance, take on another, newer, and more beautiful form, whether it be of one of the Manes, or Demi-gods, or Gods, or of Prajāpati, or Brahman, or of any other beings. This Self, then, as his conduct and behaviour has been, so does he become. He whose works have been good becomes good; he whose works have been evil becomes evil. By holy works, he becomes holy; by sinful works, sinful. It is for this reason that they say that a person consists merely of desires; as his desire is so is his will; as his will, so his work; as his work, so his evolution” (S. 21.

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d). This passage is important from various points of view. It tells us in the first place that a Soul finds out its future body before it leaves its former one: in fact, it seems that the passage calls in question a “disembodied” existence. Then again, it tells us that the Soul is a creative entity, and in Aristotelian fashion, creates a body as a goldsmith creates an ornament of gold. Then again, the passage says that the Soul is like a Phœnix which at every change of body takes on a newer and more beautiful form. Next, it regards the Soul as amenable at every remove to the law of karman, and tells us that it receives a holy body if its actions have been good, and a sinful body if its actions have been bad. Further, the same passage tells us that “as to the man who has no desires left in him, who is desireless because he has all his desires fulfilled, his desires being centred only in the Self, the vital airs do not depart: such a man being Brahman (while he lived) goes to Brahman (after death). Of that import is this verse: ‘when a man becomes free of all desires that are in his heart, mortal as he is, he nevertheless becomes immortal and obtains Brahman.’ And as the slough of a snake might lie on an ant-hill, dead and cast away, even so does his body lie. Being verily bodiless he becomes immortal; his vital spirits are (merged in) Brahman, and become pure light” (S. 21. e).

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¹ The verb *anvārabh* is understood by Max Müller and Deussen as meaning 'take hold of', e.g., Deussen translates "Dann nehmen ihn das Wissen und die Werke bei der Hand und seine vormalige Erfahrung"—*Sechsig Upanishad's* p. 475.

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33. Of this immortal existence, however, we shall have occasion to speak presently. Before we do this, we must explain what was supposed by the Upanishadic philosophers to be the fate of the ordinary soul, and especially of the bad soul. To speak of the latter first, there are various passages in the Upanishads, for example, in the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Īsa, and Kaṭha Upanishads, which tell us that the Upanishadic philosophers believed that the wicked soul was destined to go to a "joyless" "demonic" region which was "enveloped in darkness." This conception—the belief in a Hades—the Upanishadic philosophers share with many other branches of the Aryan race. There is however, nothing on record in the Upanishads to show whether these bad souls had to suffer eternal damnation in this sunless region, or whether their stay in that region was only temporary. "Joyless indeed are the regions" says the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad "and also enveloped in pitchy darkness where ignorant and unenlightened men go after death." "Demonic" are the regions" says the Īśa Upanishad "and also enveloped in pitchy darkness, where those who have destroyed their souls are obliged to go." This same Upanishad adds that "those who worship what is not real knowledge enter into gloomy darkness," which idea is also elesewhere expressed by the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishad. While the Kaṭha Upanishad tells us that "those who make a gift of barren cows which have drunk water and eaten hay and given their milk, themselves go to the joyless regions" (S. 22). These passages show us that the Upanishadic philosophers believed in a sunless region where the ignorant, the unenlightened, the self-murdering, and the pseudo-charitable were obliged to go after death.

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