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A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t1: The relation of the body and the soul

A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c6.s3.t1

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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

Cites (4)