A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.s2.7

c7.s2.7

19. How does Śaṅkara’s philosophy lead to such a view of the immortal life? What are the logical presuppositions of such a doctrine? What, in other words, are the fundamental conceptions of Śaṅkara’s philosophy which ultimately justify such a view of the absorption of the Individual into the Universal Soul? How does Śaṅkara answer the problems which have been mooted in the systems of Madhva and Rāmānuja? A full solution of these questions cannot be attempted here. We can only indicate the lines on which Śaṅkara answers the opposite points of view and constructs an Advaitic philosophy, which is all the while, according to him, based on the Upanishads themselves. From the point of view of the Absolute, *sub specie æternitatis*, Nature and Soul and God are all equally appearances. The Absolute alone is : and Nature and Soul and God are, only so far as they are, the Absolute. But, *sub specie temporis*, there is a Nature, there are the Souls, there is a God. Śaṅkara makes the great distinction between the Pāramārthika and Vyāvahārika views of reality as Kant makes the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal. It is from the phenomenal point of view that we may say that Souls are different from God; that Nature exists as a *heteros*; that God creates; but noumenally, the Absolute alone exists, and Nature, and Souls, and God are all merged in the Absolute. For him who sees the Ātman everywhere, what difference can ever remain, asks Śaṅkara? All difference vanishes for him. “Theologians may battle among themselves, but the Absolutist battles with none.” It is from this point of view that the truths of the dualistic and the qualified-monistic systems of the Vedānta are both subsumed in the higher synthesis of the monistic. We shall see how Śaṅkara finds justification for such views in the Upanishads.