A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s1.10

c8.s1.10

Sir ”, upon which the teacher told him, “ My dear boy, it is of the very subtle essence that you do not perceive there—it is of this very essence that the great Nyagrodha tree is made. Believe it, my dear boy ” (S. 6). This parable tells us how the underlying essence of things is to be regarded as subtle and unmanifest, and how the gross and manifested objects are to be understood as merely phenomenal appearances. There is, however, a further point in the parable which we must duly notice. When the teacher told his disciple that behind the Nyagrodha tree there lay a subtle essence which was unmanifest, he also told him that it was to be identified with the Self, and further, that the disciple must identify himself with it (S. 6). We see here the limitation of the mere cosmological conception of an underlying essence of things, and it seems as if cosmology must invoke the aid of psychological categories once more before the essence underlying the cosmos could be identified with the essence that lies at the back of the human mind. Thus the whole Universe becomes one, only when we suppose that there is the same subtle essence underlying both the world of nature and the world of mind.