A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.t1.1

Language: English

c9.t1.1.1

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.

c9.t1.1.2

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.

c9.t1.1.3

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;

c9.t1.1.4

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.