A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s3.5

c8.s3.5

14. We have hitherto seen how the philosopher of the Chhāndogya Upanishad arrives at the conception of Self-consciousness as constituting the ultimate reality. We have seen also how the Upanishadic philosophers generally regard God as identical with this pure self-consciousness. The philosopher of the Taittirīya Upanishad gives us certain characteristics of this final reality which enable us to regard his argument as almost an ontological characterisation of reality. "The Absolute," he says, "is Existence, Consciousness, and Infinity" (S. 12. a). In this identification of the Absolute with Consciousness, we have again the real nature of the Ātman brought out in bold relief. Existence to that philosopher means Consciousness. The same idea is repeated elsewhere in the Aitareya Upanishad, where the author of that Upanishad speaks "of the gods of the heaven and the beings of the earth, whether produced from eggs, or embryo, or sweat, or from the earth, everything that moves, or flies, or is stationary—Self-consciousness is the eye of all these. They are rooted in Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is the eye of the world; it is Self-consciousness which is the Absolute" (S. 12. b). Here we have unmistakably the ontological argument, namely, that ultimate Existence must be identified with Self-consciousness. Thus by a survey of the different approaches to the problem of Reality, namely, the cosmological, the theological, and the psychological, we see that the Upanishadic philosophers try to establish Reality on the firm footing of Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness to them is the eternal verity. God to them is not God, unless he is identical with Self-consciousness. Existence is not Existence if it does not mean Self-consciousness. Reality is not reality, if it does not express throughout its structure the marks of pure Self-consciousness. Self-consciousness thus constitutes the ultimate category of existence to the Upanishadic philosophers.