A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.s2.2

c7.s2.2

There is a passage in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka which tells us that God is the Antaryāmin of the universe: He lives inside and governs the universe from within. This doctrine of the Antaryāmin, which is advanced in that Upanishad in the conversation between Uddālaka Āruṇi and Yājñavalkya, constitutes the fundamental position in the philosophy of Rāmānuja when he calls God the the Soul of Nature. Uddālaka Āruṇi asked Yājñavalkya two questions. “Pray tell me,” he said, “what is the Thread by which this world and the other world and all the things therein are held together?” “Pray tell me also,” he continued, “who is the Controller of the Thread of this world and the other world and all the things therein?” These are the two celebrated questions propounded in the passage which we are discussing, namely, the doctrine of the Thread and the doctrine of the Thread-Controller. Yājñavalkya answered the first question by saying that Air might be regarded as the Thread by which this world and the other world and all the things therein are held together. The second question he answered by saying that He alone might be regarded as the inner Controller “who dwells in the earth and within the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body the earth is, who from within controls the earth. He is thy Soul, the inner controller, the immortal. He who dwells in the waters and within the waters, whom the waters do not know, whose body the waters are, who from within controls the waters, He is thy Soul, the inner controller, the immortal.” Thus Yājñavalkya went on to tell Uddālaka Āruṇi that the inner Controller is He who is immanent likewise “in fire, in the intermundia, in air, in the heavens, in the sun, in the quarters, in the moon, in the stars, in space, in darkness, in light, in all beings, in Prāṇa, in all things and within all things, whom these things do not know, whose body these things are, who controls all these things from within. He is thy Soul, the inner controller, the immortal. He is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the ununderstood understander; other than Him, there is no seer, other than Him there is no hearer, other than Him there is no thinker, other than Him there is no understander; He is thy Soul, the inner controller, the immortal. Everything beside Him is naught" (S. 23. a). In this wise does Yājñavalkya declare the immanence within, and the inner control of the universe by the all-pervading God. In the same fashion does the author of the Taittirīya tells us that "at the time of creation, God entered everything that he created, and after having entered, became both the This and the That, the Defined and the Undefined, the Supported and Supportless, Knowledge and Not-Knowledge, Reality and Unreality—yea, he became the Reality; it is for this reason that all this is verily called the Real" (S. 23. b). This passage also declares the immanence of God in all things whatsoever, even in contradictories, and tells us that what thus comes to exist is the Real. The whole of Nature, therefore, which is God's handiwork, as well as God's garment, is filled and inspired by God who is its inner Controller and Soul.