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A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.t1: Self-realisation

A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.t1

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English

Contents

Self-realisation

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to cavil at the theory of Self-realisation by saying that the Self "is realised" already, and that therefore there is no necessity of "realising" the Self seems to us to be merely a listless evasion of the true significance of Self-realisation. When Canon Rashdall says that the Self is realised already, he is speaking about a metaphysical fact. On the other hand, when it is said that the Self is to be realised, we are asked to take into account the whole ethical and mystical process by which the allurements of the not-Self naturally ingrained in the human being are to be gradually weaned out, and the Self to be made to stand in its native purity and grandeur. It is in the doctrine of Self-realisation that the ethical and mystical processes meet, a fact to which we shall have to allude presently. It need hardly be said that by Self-realisation, as the Upanishadic seers understand that expression, is meant the unfoldment and the visualisation of the Ātman within us, instead of the incipid and soul-less realisation of the various "faculties" of man, namely, the intellectual, the emotional and the moral, in which sense Bradley and other European moralists have understood that expression.

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The Bṛhadāraṇyakopanishad tells us that the Ātman, who constitutes the Reality within us as without us, is and ought to be the highest object of our desire, higher than any phenomenal object of love, such as progeny, or wealth, or the like, because, the Upanishad tells us, the Ātman, being the very kernel of our existence, is nearmost to us. "If a man may say there is another object of love dearer to him than the Ātman, and if another replies that if there be God overhead he shall destroy his object of love, verily it shall so happen as this man says. Hence it is that we ought to meditate on the Ātman as the only object of desire. For him who worships the Ātman in this way, nothing dear shall ever perish" (S. 12. a). There is a further reason why, according to the same Upanishad, the Self should be regarded as the highest object of desire; because, when one has attained the Self, there are for him no desires left to be fulfilled, and he becomes entirely desireless (S. 12. b). But the Upanishadic doctrine of Self-realisation implies more than that the Ātman is the sole object of desire.

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In a very celebrated conversation between Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī in the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad, we are told that when Yājñavalkya wanted to make a partition of his estate between his two wives, Kātyāyanī and Maitreyī, Maitreyī chose rather the spiritual portion of her husband's estate, saying "Supposing I obtain the possession of the whole earth full of wealth, by that I shall never attain to immortality." "Verily not," replied Yājñavalkya, "thy life will be only like the life of those who have all kinds of convenience for them; but there is no hope of immortality by the mere possession of wealth." Maitreyī thereupon replied: "What shall I then do with that by which I may not grow immortal?" "Verily most dear to me art thou, my wife, who art talking thus," said Yājñavalkya, "Come, I shall instruct thee in spiritual wisdom. It is not for the sake of the husband, that the husband is dear, but for the sake of the Ātman; it is not for the sake of the wife that the wife is dear, but for the sake of the Ātman; it is not for the sake of the children that the children are dear, but for the sake of the Ātman; it is not for the sake of wealth that wealth is dear, but for the sake of the Ātman....It is not for the sake of everything that everything is dear, but for the sake of the Ātman. This Ātman, O Maitreyi, ought to be seen, ought to be heard, ought to be thought about, ought to be meditated upon;

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for it is only when the Ātman is seen and heard and thought about and meditated upon does all this become verily known" (S. 13). It is important to remember that this passage is not to be interpreted in the interest of an egoistic theory of morals, as some have done, but only in the interest of the theory of Self-realisation. We have not to understand that the wife or the husband or the sons are dear for one's own sake, interpreting the word Ātman in an egoistic sense. The word Ātman which comes at the end of the passage in the expression Ātmā vā are drashtavyo forbids an egoistic interpretation of that word in the previous sentences. We are thus obliged to interpret the word Ātman throughout the passage in the sense of the Self proper, the Ultimate Reality, and, therefore, to understand that the love that we bear to the wife or the husband or the sons is only an aspect of, or a reflection of, the love that we bear to the Self. It is, in fact, for the sake of the Self that all these things become dear to us. This Self the Bṛihadāraṇyaka enjoins upon us to realise by means of contemplation.

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14. The ethical and mystical sides of Self-realisation are fused together nowhere better than in that celebrated passage from the Chhāndogya Upanishad, where having started an inquiry as to what it is that induces a man to perform actions, and having answered that it is the consideration of happiness which impels him to do so,—for, we are told, had he experienced unhappiness in his pursuit, he would not have gone in for the actions at all,—the author of the Chhāndogya Upanishad comes to tell us that real happiness is the happiness that one enjoys in the vision of the Infinite, and that every other kind of happiness is only so-called, and of really no value whatsoever as contrasted with it. It thus comes about that, according to the author of that Upanishad, there are two radically different kinds of happiness, namely what he calls the Great and the Small. Great happiness consists in seeing, hearing, and meditating upon the Ātman. Little happiness consists in seeing, hearing and meditating upon other things besides the Ātman. Great happiness is immortal; Little happiness is perishable. If the question be asked, in what this Great happiness consists, the answer may be given, in Herakleitean fashion, that it consists in its own greatness, and possibly not in its own greatness! People say that cows and horses, elephants and gold, servants and wives, lands and houses—these constitute greatness. No, says the author, these rest in something else, but the Infinite rests in itself. Great happiness is experienced when the Infinite is seen above and below, before and behind, to the right and to the left, and is regarded as identical with everything that exists; when the Being, that calls itself the I within us, is realised above and below, before and behind, to the right and to the left, and is regarded as identical with everything that exists; when the Ātman is seen above and below, before and behind, to the right and to the left and is regarded as identical with everything that exists. He who thus realises the triune unity of the Infinite, the I, and the Ātman, and experiences the truth of the sentence *So Aham Ātmā*, is alone entitled to enjoy the highest happiness. One who comes to see this, and think about this, and meditate on this, really attains Svārājya: he loves his Self, plays with his Self, enjoys the company of his Self, and revels in his Self (S. 14). In this way, according to the Chhāndogya Upanishad, the ethical Summum Bonum consists in the mystical realisation of the triune unity as the goal of the aspirant's one-pointed endeavour.

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15. We must not fail to take account, however, of a phase of the theory of the moral ideal as propounded in the Upanishads. This is the theory of what we may call Supermoralism, the state of being beyond good and bad, the ethical counterpart of the metaphysical theory of Absolutism. There is, however, a distinction between the supermoralism of Bradley and Nietzsche on the one hand, and the supermoralism of the Upanishads on the other. Neitzsche's supermoralism affects only the superman, who, in the possession of absolute strength, defies, and therefore rises above, all conceptions of good and bad. The Bradleyan supermoralism affects only the Absolute, which in its absoluteness is to be regarded as being beyond both good and bad. On the other hand, the Upanishadic supermoralism affects the Individual as well as the Absolute, and the Individual only so far as he may be regarded as having realised the Absolute in himself. The passage from the Kathopanishad which tells us that "the Absolute is beyond duty and beyond non-duty, beyond action and beyond non-action, beyond the past and beyond the future," supported likewise by the passage from the Chhāndogya Upanishad which tells us that "the bodiless Ātman is beyond the reach of the desirable and the undesirable" (S. 15. a), has its counterpart in the passage from the Muṇḍakopanishad which tells us that "the Moral Agent shakes off all conceptions of merit and demerit, that is, in other words, goes beyond the reach of virtue and vice, and good and bad, when he has attained to divine assimilation after realising the golden-coloured Being who is the lord and governor of all" (S. 15. b). Similarly, we are told in the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad that the Ātman who lives in the citadel of our heart, and who is the lord and protector of all, grows neither great by good actions nor small by evil actions (S. 16. a), while he who contemplates upon this Ātman himself attains a like virtue, when his greatness ceases to grow by good actions, or diminish by bad actions (S. 16. b). These passages tell us that the Moral Agent goes beyond the reach of good and bad, when and only so far as he has attained to likeness with, or becomes merged in, the Ātman, who is himself, metaphysically speaking, beyond the reach of good and bad.

Cites (4)