A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.2

c8.2

1. In the midst of all the metaphysical conflicts that we have witnessed in the last chapter, there arises one supreme question—what, if any, is the core of Upanishadic teaching? Shall our minds be only tossed on the waves of philosophical conflicts, or can we have a ballast which will give the necessary poise to our philosophical speculations? Shall our minds be only sunk in the mire of the metaphysical conflicts of Pluralism, Qualified Monism, and Monism as we find them in the Upanishads? Is there not, at the basis of these various attempts at the solution of the central metaphysical problem, one fundamental conception, which will enable us to string together the variegated philosophical speculations of the Upanishads? This raises a very important problem—the problem of Ultimate Reality as understood by the Upanishadic seers. As we shall notice in this chapter, the Upanishadic philosophers solved the problem by taking recourse to the conception of Ātman, a word which originally signified the breathing principle in man, but which came in the end to denote the essence of the Universe. Readers of Greek philosophy need hardly be reminded of the close parallel that exists between this Upanishadic conception of Ātman and the Platonic conception of αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτό. The Ātman, as we shall see in the course of this chapter, is the ultimate category of existence to the Upanishadic seers. How they arrived at this conception, and what use they made of it in the solution of the fundamental philosophical problem will form the theme of the present discourse.